by Andrew Smyth
My thoughts were interrupted by Brent on my mobile phone. He told me that there was a flight leaving for Islamabad in Pakistan and that I should be able to get an onward flight from there. Juma was still mopping up in Shimoni and there wasn’t anything more he could do in Mombasa. Meanwhile, I went to track down the aid agency and introduce myself as an additional passenger on the Pakistan flight.
The transport plane had no outside communication beyond the local traffic controllers, so when we finally touched down at Bost Airfield in Lashkar Gah, I was in a state of frustrated excitement. I glared at my phone willing the bars to emerge to tell me I had a signal and as soon as it did so I dialled Brent’s number. I’d been out of touch for nearly twenty-four hours – time in which the vaccines could have been distributed and even, perhaps, used.
Nobody stopped me as I walked through the customs area, waiting for Brent to answer. I had no idea where – or even whether – the vaccines had been delivered and until Brent gave me a lead I couldn’t see what I could do. Frustratingly, my call eventually went to his voicemail and I left another message. I looked around me. If the goods had been sent airfreight then this was one of the airports they would have used, so I went over to the customs office to ask. As I did so I heard my name called out and turned. ‘Ali! What on earth are you doing here?’ He was the last person I expected to see.
‘When you told me there was a problem with the vaccines, I made some enquiries and found a flight coming out here, so I decided I’d jump on and see what I could find out.’
‘And what have you found out?’ I asked, although I was still trying to understand why he was here. He’d never shown any interest in the Afghanistan health programmes before.
‘I made contact with the FDA man as you suggested and he’d managed to track down the main delivery to Kabul Airport. I told him that I’d go there myself and get the authorities to hold it back.’
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘When I got to Kabul it seemed that one onward shipment had been made here to Bost Airport, so I came to check it out.’
‘And have you been able to locate it yet?’ There was something about his explanation that didn’t quite ring true.
‘Yes, they’re looking after it back in the customs shed.’
‘Show me. I’ve got the Truscan equipment and can test it.’ I followed him back inside and recognised the boxes containing the vaccines which I had seen in Shimoni.
It took me a few minutes to test a sample with the same result. ‘Identical to the consignment we stopped in Kenya. These drugs are lethal. Did you manage to stop them all?’
‘All except a batch that’s been sent onto the clinic at Chorjah. I was arranging transport so I could follow it down there and then you turned up. I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘I wasn’t expecting to come either, but you’ve managed to hold back the vaccines?’
‘There are still army liaison officers at the major airports. I contacted them and told them to hold onto the vaccines until we arrived. I’ve got a vehicle outside but we need to hurry if we’re going to catch them.’
‘Where’s your car?’
‘I’ve borrowed a Land Rover – it’s parked outside. But we’ve got to hurry.’
I looked him up and down. ‘You’re not armed? If we meet trouble we might need some firepower. I’m a civilian now, I can’t carry guns.’
‘That’s okay. Don’t worry about it.’
‘Great! Give me a few minutes. I’ve been travelling all night and I need to clean up a bit.’
‘We have to leave now,’ he insisted. ‘I can go ahead on my own and you can follow.’
‘A few minutes isn’t going to make any difference. We can easily catch up with them.’ I went back into the customs area to have a look around and tried Brent one more time. He answered and I relayed what Ali had told me and listened carefully to his response before going back to the customs shed and talking to the security guards there.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Ali asked as I joined him in the Land Rover a little while later.
‘I told you I needed to clean up first. We’ll be okay.’
Ali put the car into gear and was about to drive off when I stopped him. ‘The customs officer needs some kind of authority to hold back the vaccinations. I told him he could use my name but he said he needed a signature from someone in authority so there wouldn’t be a comeback if it all went wrong. They know who you are so can you go and sign his wretched clipboard?’
‘I told them myself,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t need to tell them a second time.’
‘Apparently, you do. It’s only a signature.’
Ali put the car back into neutral and swore loudly.
‘It’ll only take a few minutes,’ I said encouragingly. ‘We’ll soon catch up with them.’
Ali looked at me and swore again. ‘Stay there. Don’t wander off.’
I watched him go back inside the terminal and then climbed out to check what he had in the back.
As Ali drove through the dusty roads, I looked around at the familiar landscape and wondered about warfare. There were many different types of weapon. When I’d been here it was the gun, the landmine and the bomb, but now things were more sophisticated – if that was the right word. There didn’t seem to me to be anything sophisticated about attacking children by denying them the protection of modern medicine. To me it seemed positively medieval. The stakes were raised at every stage and the deceptive monochrome landscape around me hid even more horrors than it had before. This apparently anodyne, featureless terrain was once again hiding an even greater hatred and opposing it with ever more desperate measures. Bombs or mines could kill only a few dozen, adulterated vaccines could affect thousands.
I was brought up suddenly in my reveries when the car swerved off the road and pulled to a halt at the edge of a bluff overlooking the long valley beneath. As the dust settled around us, I realised that the time had finally come.
‘Wait here,’ Ali said and went around to the back and opened up his case. ‘I think this, as they say, is where you get off.’ I looked across as he came back with a gun pointing at me. ‘Get out.’
Under the circumstances I couldn’t see any reason not to. ‘I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,’ I said. ‘But that was never very likely, was it? It all started here for you, didn’t it?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Move over there.’ He gestured with the gun. ‘No one will ever find you here. In a few days the dust will cover you and no one will know.’
‘This is it, then? You’re going to shoot me here?’
Ali looked around and shrugged. ‘It’s as good a place as any. It’s probably something I should have done a long time ago.’
‘When we were both here together, you mean? When you first saw the light at the head of your twisted road?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. When you were here you were turned, weren’t you? All that professing to be done with religious dogma, being modern and forward-looking? I have to say you hid it well; there were only a few clues.’
A look of doubt crossed Ali’s face. ‘Clues? What clues?’
‘I should have realised when you had everyone following Sayed’s van – everyone except me, that is. You almost got away with it, didn’t you?’
‘We don’t have to win all the battles,’ he said defiantly. ‘But this is one I’m about to win. Now move over there.’ He waved his gun towards the cliff edge.
At that moment, we heard the low growl of a diesel truck which was labouring up the incline behind us. Ali glanced at it. ‘Get back into the car. Back into the passenger seat, until the truck’s gone past.’
I wanted to see this through, so I perched on the seat while we watched the truck. I looked back at Ali who appeared increasingly nervous and when the truck had gone he snapped at me to stand up.
I stood up, but kept my hands by my side. ‘I can’t
believe that with your education these people were able to corrupt you. What were you thinking of? You must know they’re fanatics.’
Ali waved his gun again. ‘Over there. Stand on the edge and look down. It’ll be the last thing you see.’
‘Can’t you answer? How do you justify the warped ideology that you seem to be following? What you’re doing is crazy.’
‘No. What the West is doing is crazy. You don’t think I haven’t wrestled with this? But in the end, you made it easy for me.’
‘Me? How?’
‘That time in Chorjah, it all became clear to me. People like you shouldn’t be allowed to tell other countries how they should behave. When you shot at that boy it was like a mist lifting.’
‘But I aimed to miss him, you must know that. Anyway, isn’t it you who’s telling others how they should behave?’
‘It’s the Koran that tells them, not me.’ He waved the gun again. ‘Now get over there.’
I realised it was pointless reasoning with him and moved closer to the edge. ‘You planted the files, didn’t you? It was you who got me sacked, but why? I thought we were friends.’
‘We had no business in places like Chorjah. You shouldn’t have been there – we shouldn’t have been there.’
‘So you think it will make it all right if you manage to get these counterfeit drugs through? They’re fakes – you watched me test them back at the airport, but you already knew that, didn’t you?’
He nodded. ‘After you’d rung me from Kenya I made some enquiries through my handlers and they told me about it. That’s why I flew out here. I knew you might try to stop them and so I had to stop you.’
‘But you’ve made one mistake too many, haven’t you?’
Ali moved closer towards me. ‘I don’t think so. I think it’s you who made the mistake by coming out here.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s one of the first lessons we’re taught, isn’t it? We’re told to look out for the sign. You even told Sayed about it.’
‘What sign?’ Ali waved his gun again.
‘It’s a giveaway. The make-up.’
Involuntarily, he reached up and wiped his finger across his forehead.
‘You see?’ I said. ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. You hoped the mark wouldn’t show. You’ve been praying, haven’t you? Praying quite hard by the look of it. Every time you push your head to the ground it leaves a mark.’
Ali took his hand away. ‘Okay, so now you know, but it’s too late to do you much good where you’re going.’
‘I think I should tell you that I spoke to the FDA man Brent and he brought in his people who spoke to the customs people at Bost. The signature they asked for was show, the vaccines aren’t going anywhere and they’ve all been held at the other locations. This is a battle you haven’t won.’ I could see that Ali was trying to work out where exactly he’d gone wrong. ‘What is it about people like you?’ I asked. ‘Why do you want to run other people’s lives for them? Why don’t you leave them to bring up their families in peace? Why do you think you know better than them?’
‘Don’t try and make out you know about me. People like you can never know what the real truth is.’
‘You turn everything upside down. For you the real truth is lies. For you, death is life while dealing with the sick is to let them die. How many people will suffer if they don’t get proper medicines? Think about Shamir Alam – Sayed’s brother with polio. Having the right vaccines could have prevented that. Why do you want to hurt them?’
‘Because it’s the will of Allah, but you wouldn’t understand that, would you?’
‘Just as it’s the will of Allah to kill me?’
‘You’re insignificant, you count for nothing; less than a grain of sand.’ He raised the gun, cocked it and pulled the trigger. I couldn’t help flinching.
‘I told you, the attempt at make-up gave you away.’ I reached into my pocket and held out the bullets. ‘You don’t think I was going to leave you with a loaded gun, did you? I took them out when you went back to the customs shed. So now what?’
Ali screamed in fury, hurled his gun at me and threw himself forward but I was ready for him and sidestepped quickly and crouched low to trip him. As he fell, he managed to grab at a tree root and hang on, but the root slowly started to pull out of the ground. He stared up at me, an expression of pure hatred on his face, but he said nothing as he slowly slipped and then fell down the cliff. His body bounced a couple of times but then lay still. I left him there. After a few days the dust would cover him and he would be just another anonymous casualty of this never-ending war.
I drove on slowly to Chorjah.
As Sayed had reported, the clinic had been restored and the village was looking, if not yet prosperous, at least peaceful – a peace that people like Ali wanted to destroy.
At the rear of the clinic I found the driver unloading the vaccines and I told him to take them back to the airport. I looked inside his truck where more neat boxes of blister-packed drugs were waiting to be unloaded. Something that was designed to help cure people had instead been sabotaged to try to kill them. They looked so innocent, but they’d been turned into yet another weapon. Things in this war were rarely as they seemed.
When I’d left the last time I’d been a soldier; now I was back and all I’d done was to substitute one kind of fighting for another.
I watched the driver put back the boxes and drive off and as the swirling dust gradually settled behind him, I thought that although there had been times when I’d nearly given up, at least this had been one battle we’d won.
Epilogue
‘The owner was supposed to be coming back next week, but his contract has been extended so I can stay.’ Greta and I had finished dinner and were sitting up on deck drinking coffee. The river was putting on its usual performance, with the office lights high in the sky competing with the stars. The floodlit Tower Bridge was looking particularly splendid as a flotilla of tourist boats passed underneath with the flashes of their cameras looking like distant gunfire. ‘I suppose that means that I’ve got to get around to completing all the outstanding work, but I’ve been a bit busy.’
Greta laughed. ‘A bit. So what are you going to do now?’
‘Apart from finishing the barge, you mean? I had a funny conversation with Ken Maxwell when we got back to London. He kept talking around the subject, but I think he was asking whether I wanted a job with them. These people never come out with a straightforward offer – they have to sort of dangle the prospect in front of you for a few days to see if you bite and ask them for a job.’
‘And will you? Bite, I mean.’
‘It’s funny that. I walked out into the street with Brent and I think he was offering me a job as well. A sort of roving trouble-shooter for drug enforcement. Sounded quite interesting. You know that when they added up all the fake drugs they seized in Kenya, Zanzibar, Mumbai and Afghanistan it added up to nearly twenty million dollars’ worth. Perhaps if the FDA were to put me on commission it might be interesting. But he told me that there would be some kind of reward from the big pharmaceutical companies, so that’s a bonus. It should mean that I won’t have to make any decisions for the time being.’
‘So when they arrested everyone in the Kenyan operation, everything they were unloading was fake?’
‘We stopped them unloading and got them to put everything back. They went into the hold and sampled a few of the packages with a Truscan unit and got almost zero readings for the active ingredients. So I suggested that they impound the dhow and take it straight to Mombasa where they could destroy them. It was clear that the drivers of the pickups hadn’t a clue about what they were supposed to be collecting, although being there at sunrise in a secluded mangrove swamp should have given some of them an idea that what they were doing was at least dubious. It would have been difficult to prove anything against them so we let them go. Kenyan customs, with a bit of help from the FDA, raided Tau’s operation and found a complete r
ange of counterfeits – everything from anti-HIV treatments to blood-pressure medications – the lot.’
‘But what about Afghanistan?’
‘We were just in time. The FDA managed to hold them back at the airports before they were used.’
‘And the Bakaar family?’
‘Ajmal Bakaar hired a hotshot firm of public relations consultants to firefight for him. You can imagine the damage this has done to his reputation but I believe him when he said he knew nothing about it.’
‘But from what you say, they were running a production line of fake drugs in one of his main factories. How could he not know about it?’
‘It’s only one of the things they do. They’ve got interests all over the place and Ajmal can’t be expected to know everything. But I think they’ll be cleaning out their stables after this. I heard that his son Jamaal has been removed as head of the East African division, which is a pretty good indication of guilt, even if nothing can be proved.’
‘But what’s going to happen to the immunisation programme?’
‘That’s the good news. Ajmal Bakaar has offered to supply them with the drugs at no charge by way of compensation – I suppose that’s the advice the PR company gave him. It certainly made him look good and the cost of it is nothing compared with the potential damage. If he hadn’t made the offer, he might have been forced to pay up anyway, so it’s not really that generous.’
‘Perhaps.’ Greta seemed preoccupied and I realised how tough things had been for her while I was away.
‘I’m sorry, Greta, I haven’t asked how you’ve been. It must have been difficult with all the… the arrangements. I was sorry I couldn’t get to the funeral – how did it go?’
‘It was my father’s funeral – how do you think it went?’ Greta stopped suddenly and stared into the distance.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,’ she said after a while. ‘It hasn’t been a good time and then to discover that the drugs that killed him might have killed thousands more made it very difficult.’