“Are you going to tell me where the cave is?” Severinov asked. “I’m sure you have a map.”
Now Baz looked as though he was about to slump into unconsciousness. His head lolled sideways and his eyes closed. Severinov slapped him hard, first on the right cheek, then on the left.
“Threaten to cut his throat,” Vasily said. He was watching intently now, seemingly enjoying the process.
Severinov carefully pointed the sharp tip of the knife right under Baz’s chin and pricked him with it slightly, just enough to draw a thin trickle of blood.
“You see this knife? It can take your life with one tiny flick of my wrist,” Severinov said. “I’m going to push it up against your artery, like this.” He moved the knife to the carotid artery that was visibly throbbing on the right side of Baz’s neck and pushed the blade into the skin next to it. Now Baz’s eyes were bulging, his mouth hanging slightly open, and he stared at Severinov, clearly in shock. Meanwhile, blood continued to pour from his severed finger.
The silence in the house was broken by a loud rattle at the external door behind Severinov, followed instantly by the shrill, high-pitched scream of a child. Severinov flinched at the noise, and as he did so, the razor-sharp blade of his knife pushed a fraction, just enough to cut into Baz’s carotid.
The incision was a small one, but it was enough. Blood immediately gushed out in a thin, fine spray, all over Severinov’s chest just a few centimeters away.
The door behind them slammed shut and Severinov swiveled around. “Who the hell was that?” he demanded.
“A kid,” Vasily said. “He’s run off.” He noticed the blood squirting from Baz’s neck and his voice rose. “What the hell have you done? You’ve cut his neck. I said threaten him, not kill him.”
Severinov ignored the comment. “Did the kid see us?”
“Yes, of course he did. Why the hell do you think he screamed?”
“Shit,” Severinov said. “He’s going to tell someone.” He turned back to look at Baz, who had passed out. “This guy’s bleeding like crazy now.”
“Well, you stuck a knife in his throat—”
“Shut up, asshole,” Severinov interrupted. He wiped his hands down the front of his kameez, which was splattered with Baz’s blood. “He was telling us nothing. Maybe he didn’t even have a map. We need to get out of here. I don’t want a horde of angry Pashtuns coming in here after us.”
“What are we going to do, then?” Vasily asked.
“Leave the bastard—he’s useless,” Severinov said. “He deserves it, anyway. Let’s get to Sandjar’s house. He’ll have to guide us to the cave as best he can. He’s not 100 percent sure where it is.”
Vasily threw his head back. “Okay. This is all becoming shit now.”
Severinov picked his bag up from the floor and put the knife in.
Maybe I should have brought Lvov along as well, he thought. A third person standing guard outside would have headed the kid off. Too late now.
He took the Makarov from his belt and flicked the safety off. “Let’s move.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Kabul-Gardez Highway
The fifth police roadblock on the Kabul-Gardez highway was the final straw for Johnson.
The roadblocks, with their red and white concrete barriers funneling long lines of trucks and cars through the inspection points, were manned by lethargic-looking officers who only seemed energized when drivers, bored of negotiations, finally furnished them with the obligatory bribe in order to be on their way again.
At the fifth one, however, Johnson’s US passport and Jayne’s British one came under particularly long scrutiny. The policeman wrote down both their passport numbers on a notepad, then took the documents to the office.
Despite Omar’s warning to remain in the pickup because of the risk of being robbed or worse, Johnson got out. He had been fighting the temptation to smoke, but now his anxiety was mounting. He gave in and lit a Marlboro while they waited, politely declining the wares of the dozen or more hustlers who descended on him, touting everything from chitrali caps to soap and socks.
Ten minutes later the policeman returned, demanding forty dollars before they were allowed to progress.
It seemed odd to Johnson. If the officer was only after a quick bribe, why take the passports away and waste time that could be used for extracting a payment from the next driver?
By the time they reached Pol-e Alam, capital of Logar Province, the roadblock count had risen to eight, and Johnson’s cigarette count was at five.
Omar spent most of the journey south from Kabul navigating a path between overladen trucks that swayed alarmingly in a strong wind, moped riders and cyclists who seemed equally incapable of steering straight, the ubiquitous yellow and white taxis, and a myriad of cars of varying vintages.
The 170-kilometer route initially followed the Logar River valley, with its mishmash of small cultivated fields combining to form a narrow strip of quilted green across an otherwise parched landscape. The river, which flowed northeast to eventually join the Kabul River near the capital, was almost a permanent fixture to the left of the road as they continued south.
But from Pol-e Alam onward, they left the river valley behind. The land became more mountainous, brown, and treeless, with no birds in sight. This was a remote, stark part of Afghanistan that neither Johnson nor Jayne had seen before. Their activity in the ’80s had been covert and, with the odd exception, such as Johnson’s foray into Jalalabad, mainly restricted to the areas bordering on Pakistan.
Once through Gardez, another dust-filled town, Johnson checked the map. It was around fifty kilometers to Wazrar, and quickly they found themselves on the fairground switchback ride of a highway that formed the Khost-Gardez Pass.
Omar cursed his way past the sharp corners and the slow-moving trucks, and then let out a further stream of expletives when the road turned from tarmac to gravel just after yet another Afghan police checkpoint. Here the vegetation was nothing more than the occasional blob of green scrub on a khaki blanket.
Five hours after leaving Kabul, they finally pulled into Wazrar village. Johnson immediately realized there was some detective work to do: there were more houses than he expected, perhaps three or four hundred at least, and he didn’t know exactly where Javed’s family home was or even if he still had one here.
Haroon got out and tried asking several locals but was met with blank, unhelpful stares. Eventually, he found a man pushing a bicycle up the hill who pointed vigorously toward a group of houses up a track farther along the hillside.
“They are all at Baz’s house,” he said as he got back into the Hilux. “That qalat over there.”
A group of about twenty people was gathered outside the compound, which Johnson could see comprised four houses. As they pulled up outside, a slender, gray-haired woman wearing a long green kameez emerged through a gate, clutching her head and crying. She was supported by two younger women, both also weeping, and a man.
The older woman sat on a large blue plastic fuel drum outside the gate and bent over, her head down near her knees, now weeping openly. A few of the other people went to her and placed their hands on her back, trying to comfort her.
Two men dressed in white, one carrying a bag, came running up the track from the main highway, going around the corner and through the gate.
“This doesn’t look good,” Jayne said, adjusting her customary blue hijab. “We’d better go and see what’s going on in there.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Wazrar
“You’re going to have to take us, whether you like it or not. And we need to go now,” Severinov said. He folded his arms and looked around Sandjar’s darkened living room.
The house was one of the smartest in the village, constructed mainly of concrete blocks rather than mud like most of the others. But nevertheless, it was sparsely furnished: the living room, badly painted in a shade of mu
stard yellow, had only a few brown wooden chairs, a burlap rug, some maroon cushions on the floor around the edges of the room, and two long, low tables in the center. The laptop computer on the table was the only sign of modernity.
Sandjar shook his head. “I have told you, I am not sure where it is. That’s why we needed Baz. It is thirty years since I’ve been there. I might be taking you the wrong way.”
Severinov pushed his face close to Sandjar’s. “I don’t care. Get your boots on. We need to go. We’re already way behind.” He pointed his Makarov right between Sandjar’s eyes. “Do you understand, or would you like me to make it a little clearer still?”
At that point, Sandjar appeared to realize he was out of options. He grimaced and began strapping on his boots.
After removing their ski masks, Severinov and Vasily had driven the two kilometers from Baz’s house to Sandjar’s in the gray double-cab Ford Ranger pickup rented under a false name at Kabul Airport.
To Severinov, who realized that Javed must be ahead of him by some distance, every minute now counted. His urge for revenge was one thing, but the prospect of Javed getting his hands on a clutch of powerful weapons was another. And it was also a matter of time before Baz’s body was discovered, which would trigger a manhunt.
“Where do we start from?” Severinov asked. “And not the village.”
The question elicited a shrug from Sandjar, and Severinov pointed his pistol in the Afghan’s face again.
“You’re right. We can’t walk through the village,” Sandjar said eventually. “They hate Russians around here. If I get spotted helping you, they’ll kill all of us.”
Severinov and Vasily were both carrying forged letters of authority from the United Nations that showed that they were part of an international antidrug enforcement team carrying out checks across rural Afghanistan. But Severinov knew the letters, put together at short notice by Lvov, would not stand up to any detailed scrutiny.
“You’d better start thinking of an alternative,” Severinov said, his voice now rising.
“There’s a place two or three kilometers south of the village,” Sandjar said. “We can leave your pickup there. We walk from there and go east along a track that runs into the mountains. I’m just worried about the Taliban—”
“You’d better make sure we don’t run into the Taliban,” Severinov interrupted. “But if we do, we’re ready.” He nodded at Vasily, who was putting an AK-47 rifle and two rocket-propelled grenades into one large backpack and an RPG launcher and three missiles into a second.
The bags also contained night-vision infrared goggles and spare magazines for the rifle and the Makarovs, plus water bottles and snacks. They had brought all the weaponry from Severinov’s safe house in Kabul in a locked crate marked as sensitive scientific equipment for use as part of their antidrug work. It had only come under scrutiny at one of the checkpoints, and they had talked their way through that without a search.
The rifle, missiles, and the launcher, all of them almost a meter long, were sticking way out of the backpacks, and Vasily had to adjust the specially adapted head covers to conceal them as best he could. Eventually, he finished and stood, put one backpack on himself, and handed the other to Severinov, who strapped it on.
“Let’s go,” Severinov said, stuffing the Makarov into his belt.
Ten minutes later, Vasily had parked the Ranger behind some boulders a few hundred meters off the highway south of Wazrar. After checking carefully, Severinov was content that the vehicle was indeed invisible from the highway, although it would be in plain sight to anyone on the mountainside. The spot where they had parked was, however, well away from the village, and there seemed to be no obvious reason why anyone would stop there.
“We go from here, up that track,” Sandjar said, pointing up a steep slope that led east. Severinov looked. There was a faint line across the scree that marked where others had walked. But this was clearly not a well-used path.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Wazrar
Johnson took an involuntary step back when he walked through the door. There, tied to a wooden chair that stood in a pool of blood, was a man he hadn’t seen in twenty-five years.
Baz’s head lolled sideways and his clothing was soaked in blood, which continued to trickle from a wound in his neck. His severed finger lay on the floor next to his chair.
The two men dressed in white, local medical workers of some sort, were heatedly discussing whether to call for a doctor.
Don’t waste your time, Johnson thought.
He turned to the woman behind him who was standing next to Jayne and Haroon, her shoulders hunched, arms folded, weeping uncontrollably, her tears leaving dark stains down the front of her green kameez.
This was Baz’s wife, Nazia, whom he had seen crying outside the house upon their arrival.
“I’m so sorry,” Johnson said in Pashto. “Let’s go to the other room.” He led her through to a living room and helped her sit, crouching next to her so he was at the same level.
She was understandably suspicious of this American stranger and demanded to know who he was. Johnson explained quickly that he was an old friend of Javed’s, dating to the ’80s, when they had worked together against the Soviet occupiers. He showed her his US passport.
“Did you find your husband’s body?” Johnson asked.
“No, my grandson came to the house and saw him,” Nazia said. She turned and pointed toward a boy, aged about ten, who stood in the doorway, his head bowed, avoiding eye contact. “He saw two men in black attacking him with a knife and guns. Then the boy ran and got help. I have only just arrived back here from Khost, and I find my husband dead.” She burst into tears again.
Johnson waited a moment for her to settle. “I am sorry. It is important to ask questions because we need to try to find the men who have done this,” he said. “But if you don’t feel able to answer questions now, I can talk to you later.”
He waited silently as she continued to cry and took a handkerchief that Jayne offered to wipe her eyes, the rims of which were now bright red.
“I will talk to you now,” she said eventually.
Johnson breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. Do you know what your husband was doing yesterday?”
“Yes, he had Javed here. Now Javed and Noor, Baz’s brother, have gone into the mountains.”
“He told you this?” Johnson asked.
“Yes, we spoke on the cell phone,” Nazia replied.
“Why have they gone into the mountains?” Johnson asked.
Nazia looked away and said nothing.
“I really need to know,” Johnson said. “It may be important to explain what has happened.”
“I c-cannot . . . I cannot tell you.” Now Nazia was stuttering.
“Take your time, Nazia,” Jayne said. “Can we talk to the boy?”
Nazia hesitated. “I think so, yes. You must.”
Johnson beckoned the boy over and explained that he wanted to find the men who had killed his grandfather. “Can you describe the men? Were they Afghans? Were they from the village?” he asked.
The boy then also began crying, and Johnson had to wait again. Eventually, the boy composed himself. “They were not Afghans. They spoke another language I didn’t recognize. They had black hair and they looked different, although they were wearing kameez.”
Johnson nodded. This felt like a jigsaw puzzle, but one or two pieces were starting to fit together and make sense. “Did the language they speak sound something like this?” Then he spoke a couple of sentences in Russian.
“I think so, yes. Not English, and not any other language I have heard on the radio,” the boy said, pointing at a black radio on the table. “It was like you just said.”
Johnson turned back to Nazia. “Listen, I think these men who killed your husband were Russian. Can you just tell me, please, I am asking you, why Javed and Noor have gone into the mountains.”
Nazia looked at the floor, then looked behi
nd her to see who was there. “They have gone to fetch some weapons.”
“Some weapons? Guns you mean?”
“No, not guns. Missiles, I think.”
“Missiles? You mean rockets or grenades or something?”
“Maybe. They are old Stinger missiles.” Nazia sank back into the chair and covered her face with her hands. “Please, please. I don’t want to get them in trouble.”
Johnson struggled to keep the surprise from showing on his face. Stingers? Surely they weren’t relics from the mujahideen stocks the CIA had supplied all those years ago?
“I think they are in trouble already,” Johnson said. “They’re in danger from the men who killed your husband. Can you tell me why they want the missiles?”
Nazia put her head in her hands, staring at the floor. She just shook her head.
“I need to try to stop them. Do you know where they are fetching the Stingers from?”
“It’s a cave,” Nazia said. “But I don’t know how to get to it. I have never been there. I know it is several kilometers from here. It’s a long and difficult walk.”
“Is there a map? Can you show me roughly where it is?”
Nazia raised her head. “A map?” She shook her head. “I need some water. I’m going to the kitchen.” She stood and headed toward the kitchen door. Johnson made to follow, but she turned and said, “No, I’ll go. You wait here.”
Johnson nodded and sat again. He watched as she closed the kitchen door behind her. Seconds later, he heard a loud scraping noise from behind the door.
A minute later, there was another scraping noise, and then the door opened and Nazia emerged, carrying a cup of water in one hand and a folded piece of paper in the other. She sat down, drank the water, then unfolded the paper. It was a printed map.
“Here,” she said. “Baz kept it hidden. It shows where the cave is. Look here.” She stabbed her finger on a circle drawn in blue ink.
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