He reacted slowly to the first sound of gunfire, hoping that it wasn’t real, amazed by the power of denial, wanting so much to be able to turn back time and order his brother to stay at home. Still underwater, Fahad watched as the water around him turned red. He stood up. There was heavy gunfire, bullets chipping the concrete dam, ripping through the water. One of the men was floating on the surface. His brother was alive, pressed up against the dam, unable to move, paralysed with fear. Fahad reached out for the explosives. They would have to detonate them now, killing themselves but doing as much damage as possible. A bullet hit his brother in the face, his features disappearing. He dropped the bag. The explosives were swept away.
The two remaining men fired back, hopelessly, emptying their magazines at targets they couldn’t see. Fahad didn’t fire a shot, sinking to his knees, clasping his dead brother. He had failed. His love for his brother had blinded him. The boy was not a soldier. He should never have been allowed to come with them.
There was a rumble and the water level suddenly rose, from his waist up to his shoulders. The entire river swelled. The level of discharged surged. A mass of water was released from the dam. It crashed down around him. Fahad was separated from his brother’s body, picked up and lost in the newly created white rapids. Tossed downstream, he was helpless. A poor swimmer, he found himself underwater, his body pounded against the riverbed. He kicked hard, only for another wave to catch him, spinning him round. Smashed against a rock, he lost consciousness for a moment. When his thoughts returned, he was on the surface. The velocity of the river had dropped, the sudden swell had dispersed and he was able to keep himself from going under again.
In a matter of seconds he’d been carried several hundred metres downstream from the dam. The sound of machine-gun fire was distant. Alone, he allowed himself to be carried away by the river. Wretched, he wondered why he’d been saved.
Greater Province of Kabul City of Kabul Kabul Police Headquarters Dih Afghanan
Next Day
Leo and Nara had been rescued from the fire minutes before the roof collapsed. Several members of the mob had tried to climb up, at the points where the building wasn’t ablaze. Their determination forced Leo into action, kicking their hands and stamping on their faces. As more of the building was engulfed, including the shop underneath the apartment, the mob waited for the pair to die. Nara buried her head in Leo’s shoulder, unable to watch as the flames moved closer. The sheets of tin roofing buckled and bent, becoming too hot for their bare feet, forcing them to hop like schoolchildren playing a game. Just as they were on the brink of deciding whether to jump into the flames or into the mob below, a Soviet military detachment arrived, investigating the deteurbance.
Helped down, they were brought to the police station, examined by a doctor, given food, and then told the news. The reason they’d been saved by a military detachment was because martial law had been imposed on the city. The attack on Nara had not been an isolated incident. Every member of Leo’s class of trainee students had been targeted in a coordinated series of attacks. Nara was the only survivor. The murders took place within a four-hour period. Marking out the crimes on a map of the city it was evident that one set of attackers couldn’t have carried them all out. In total there were fifteen dead: nine students and six family members, either because they’d been obstructive or because they’d been considered complicit in their child’s education. The murders themselves were savage. The intent was two-fold: to kill and to provoke. Some victims were found with their throats cut, their tongues sliced off. One man had been decapitated, the Communist sickle cut into his forehead. These were attacks on the institution of the secret police and part of a propaganda war fought not on radio airwaves but in blood, an event with enough scale and horror to be talked about across the entire city. A message was being sent to those considering forming an alliance with the infidel government – death awaited them. Leo took no consolation from the fact that he had always been honest with his students about the dangers of the profession they’d chosen, warning them that they’d experience hatred as they’d never experienced before.
Unlike the other officers, Captain Vashchenko did not appear perturbed or tired, entering the room with his usual abrupt efficiency.
– Nara Mir, you did well to survive. We’re impressed by your strength. You are a powerful symbol that we cannot be beaten so easily. As the only survivor you are also the key to solving these crimes.
Leo raised his hand, interrupting:
– Nara has only recently started learning Russian. Perhaps I should translate.
The captain nodded, showing no embarrassment at his mistaken presumption. Once Leo had finished, the captain continued:
– These murders are a sensation. They were intended to be. The city’s population is talking of nothing else. For this reason, we must solve this crime today. It seems to me no coincidence that at the same time as trainee agents were being murdered an audacious attack was launched on the Sarobi Dam. Had it succeeded there would have been a power shortage across the entire city. The two events together would have dramatically undercut our authority and made it impossible to plausibly assert that we were in control. Fortunately the Sarobi Dam attack failed. We’re trying to identify the bodies of the bombers.
Hearing the translation, Nara asked:
– What about the man I injured?
– His body was removed from your home before we arrived. We found the blood but nothing more. One thing is for certain: this cannot be allowed to stand. In the same way that the deserting officer is to be executed in order to send a clear signal to our soldiers, we must send a clear signal to the Afghans that those who threaten our operation will be killed.
Leo didn’t translate, instead asking:
– Fyodor Mazurov is to be executed?
He glanced at Nara to see ifhe understood. The shock on her face confirmed that she had. It was a lesson that could not be taught – she was forced to experience the sensation for herself, responsibility for another person’s death. Blind to the nuances of these emotions, the captain was breezy in his summary.
– As I said, he must be made an example of. For the same reason, we must make an example of these attackers and return life in the city to normal. I have repealed the order for martial law. The impact of these crimes must be reduced, not exaggerated. Life will continue as normal. And we will catch the killers.
There was silence. Nara said, in awkward Russian:
– And the woman, Ara?
The captain was becoming impatient with their interest in matters he considered concluded.
– That is a matter for her father. She has lost her job. He has been humiliated. I would imagine her life is difficult right now. She only has herself to blame.
Leo was clasping the bundle of incomplete letters in his pocket. He imagined his daughters listening to this conversation, he imagined Raisa standing beside him, and knew exactly how they would react. Outraged, they would plead for clemency; they would petition Vashchenko for Fyodor and Ara to be shown mercy. They would not understand that there was nothing Leo could do. They would not accept that as an excuse to stand idly by. But even imagining their anger, Leo was too beaten down, too tired, to stand up to this judgement, sensing its inevitability regardless of anything he might say or do. He was just an adviser, a man on the margins, paid for opinions whether they were heeded or not. He’d tried to save the couple. The satisfaction he might gain from outrage and indignation were of no use to them now. He mumbled:
– I tried.
Vashchenko and Nara looked at him. The captain asked:
– What did you say?
Returning the conversation to the investigation, Leo pointed out:
– How can we solve the murders when we don’t even have a suspect? You said yourself the body of the attacker was removed.
– We have a lead.
– Who?
Seeming to ignore the fact she didn’t speak fluent Russian, the captain addres
sed Nara directly:
– Your parents.
Shocked, she evidently understood what had been said, repeating in broken Russian:
– My… parents?
The captain registered Nara’s distressed response. He turned to Leo.
– Her parents have been picked up and taken into custody. I want her to question them. I’d like you to help.
Leo was being asked to act as an interrogator. Nara said again, her Russian improving with the practice:
– My parents?
Greater Province of Kabul 8 Kilometres East of the City of Kabul
Same Day
Unaccustomed to using an army vehicle, or any vehicle other than a bicycle, Leo drove slowly. The allocation of a Soviet UAZ-469, a Russian version of the American Jeep with bulletproof windows and reinforced-armour sides, was an attempt to ensure their safety. There were distress flares in the back, spare gasoline, a first-aid kit, water, dry rations, guns and ammunition. Even so, he much preferred his bicycle as a way of getting around. The dust trails launched up from the back tyres of the jeep formed a plume of sand that rose for at least twenty metres, signalling the vehicle’s presence to the entire valley. Captain Vashchenko had insisted that they take the UAZ-469, not understanding that driving a conspicuously Soviet vehicle made it far more likely that someone would shoot at you. The belief in technology as a solution to the dangers of the insurgency was flawed. The armour and bulletproof glass might protect Leo and Nara today but in a few months the enemy would improvise new methods of destruction. The Soviet response would be to increase the vehicle’s defences, to reinforce the doors and clad the undercarriage. But it was always easier to destroy something than to protect it and that was ultimately why Leo was sure the edifice of this occupation would fail: there was too much to protect, with too many people seeking to destroy it. No matter how many troops were sent, or how much money was spent, the imbalance would remain.
Seated next to him, Nara had hardly spoken since being given the orders to interrogate her parents. Shortly after daybreak, her mother and father had been extracted from their home village, a Spetsnaz team securing the area, pulling them from their house and bundling them onto the helicopter. Hearing this, Nara had asked if they’d been injured, concerned for their welfare, convinced that they were innocent of the allegations. In her mind she was heading to the prison with one agenda: to arrange their release.
Leo preferred to travel in silence; however, in this silence he could hear Nara’s thoughts as clear as if she were speaking aloud: her attempts to argue the evidence and to defend her parents’ behaviour. They love me.
They would never hurt me.
They’re peaceful people.
They’re good people.
I’m their daughter.
Puzzling over how best to prove their innocence, busy constructing explanations as to why her parents happened to be away when the attack took place, Nara finally couldn’t resist testing her arguments on him.
– My father has built more of Kabul than any other man alive. He is a creator, a visionary, not a terrorist. He might be old fashioned. Most men are. I might have disappointed him in some respects. That does not make him a murderer.
Leo took his eyes off the road, regarding this beautiful young woman with her large pale-green eyes. Quite unlike Raisa, she was naive and earnest – it was impossible to imagine Raisa ever being so gullible. Raisa was a survivor and the shrewdest woman Leo had ever known. He was unsure if Nara Mir wanted him to contradict her. Without answering, Leo turned back to the dirt road. Though the swirls of dust, coming into view directly ahead, was the outline of Pul-i-Charki prison.
Though the plans and design for the prison predated the Communist Revolution, the completion of the flity coincidentally corresponded with the arrival of the Revolution, creating the impression that one could not exist without the other: an infamous political prison required a revolution as much as a revolution required an infamous political prison. Remarkably, this was Leo’s first time here. He’d avoided Pul-i-Charki, declining any assignments connected with it. There was no need for him to go inside to know what kind of place it was. Conditions would be inhumane. Degradation and humiliation would be institutionalized. Under the reign of the former president, guards preferred broken soda bottles as a torture instrument of choice, displaying an inexplicable loyalty for an American soda brand that could be bought in Kabul, a type of fizzy, orange-flavoured sugar water called Fanta. There were the more familiar methods, some lifted directly from the Soviet model, including electrodes, bare knuckles and truncheons. Savagery had its cliches too.
The familiarity was not limited to the instruments of terror but extended to the lines spoken by its lead players. Aarif Abdullah, one of the former guards in charge of Pul-i-Charki, had boasted to Leo: A million Afghans are all that should remain alive – a million Communists, and the rest, we do not need. We’ll get rid of all of them.
This indifference to human life, this absurd and chilling pomposity, could have been the anthem of authoritarianism. These grandiose proclamations were made by men drunk on the power of life and death, unaware that they were behaving more or less exactly the same as the Soviet guards and prison governors who’d lived thirty or forty years before them, thousands of miles away, surrounded by snow and ice, rather than dust and desert. Despite their supreme power they expressed no trace of individuality or personality, as if power possessed their minds and made puppets of them, these would-be gods.
As Leo came to a stop, Nara became even more flustered, her hands fidgeting. She opened the glove compartment. There was a pistol and a clip of ammunition. She shut the glove compartment. Briefly, Leo wondered if she was going to be sick. She looked at Leo, utterly lost.
– But I’m their daughter.
Leo took out his sunglasses, glancing at the dirt on the lens and not bothering to clean them. They’d arrived.
Greater Province of Kabul 10 Kilometres East of the City of Kabul Pul-i-Charkhi Prison
Same Day
Like a sprawling desert fortress, the prison was surrounded by yellow-brick outer walls, three times the height of a man, running unevenly across the terrain, linking squat guard towers with pyramidal roofs. Rake-thin guards in ill-fitting uniforms slouched in the shadows, antique rifles slung over their shoulders. The scene would not have looked out of place in an American Western, the frontier outpost, housing gunpowder, whiskey and stables. Leo regarded the institution through the smudged lens of his aviator sunglasses, his eyes drawn less to the building itself and more to the vast space around the prison. It was in the middle of nowhere, rising from an arid plain; there was no clue for its existence: a fortress with nothing to protect, no river, or valley, no crops or people, as if it had been built thousands of years ago, surviving s away, the reason for its construction was eroded by the sand. There was no doubting the symbolism of this far-flung place: geographically and morally beyond the reach of civilization, a world of its own. Leo had heard talk of fifteen thousand people being executed here but he was numb to these statistics, numb to notoriety. Over the course of his life he’d heard so many numbers about so many different prisons, seen so many lists, heard so many whispered atrocities. Whatever the true number might be, it was certain that not one of those men or women had received proper burials, their bodies tossed into shallow graves outside the walls. Perhaps that’s why they’d designed the prison to look like a fortress, to guard over the angry souls trapped in the sand. It was a fanciful idea and one Leo might have taken more seriously if he had ever believed in life after death.
He entered the prison-fortress, akin to being allowed into a medieval castle through the great gates. And like a medieval castle, this was a facility concerned solely with the preservation of power. These walls had nothing to do with justice. The Soviet occupation force had immediately recognized the prison’s importance and sent a detachment of soldiers, as many as to the power stations and government ministries. This was where the dirty work o
f protecting a regime took place, processing the risky elements of the population. Soviet objections to the previous President’s techniques weren’t underpinned by morals, there was nothing wrong with a bloody purge, but murder had to be smart, and for the benefit of the party, rather than a personal grievance. Indiscriminate murder was a tactical mistake, undermining the Communist regime; murder needed to pacify, not aggravate, to make the job of the occupation easier, not more complicated.
Though he did not know them, the Soviet soldiers nodded at Leo as he passed them by, one foreigner saluting another. There was no such camaraderie between soldiers of different nationality: the Afghans and Soviets weren’t mixing, separated not merely by language but by profound mistrust. Only three months ago Pul-i-Charki had been under the direct control of a tyrannical president shot dead by the Soviets. Some of his deputies had been also been killed, but many of his prison guards were still here, subsumed beneath a new tier of management. Within a matter of minutes Leo counted three distinct groups: the Soviet troops, the new Afghan guard and the remnants of the old guard. If anyone asked him to write a report he’d argue the chances of an uprising were high. Corruption, betrayals and enemy informers were inevitable. His recommendation would be for Soviet reinforcements to take over the prison entirely. This unreliable patchwork of allegiances was repeated across the army and police. Leo knew of military advisers who believed the only solution was to have the Soviets do everything. Integration and cooperation were a fiction, peddled by politicians reluctant to commit more troops.
Nara had regained some composure, fearful of seeming weak in this fierce and unfriendly environment. As far as Leo could ascertain, she was the only woman officer. Hundreds of eyes trailed her with a muddle of lust and contempt. They were being shown the way by a highly obsequious prison governor, newly appointed by the regime and eager to please. He gave a commentary on his changes to the prison, pointing out various details, including the newly cleaned and improved kitchens that would provide basic but wholesome food. Leo remarked:
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