Cold (5 page)

To find proof of that, he’d ended up in Kabul. The lead had been a shipment of one hundred thousand British-designed .303 Lee Enfield rifles and thirty million bullets, which had arrived in Karachi paid for by the CIA, destined for Afghanistan. This particular arms deal had been odd.

He had found out more in a cheerless strip club by the docks in Copenhagen, dimly lit by flashing blue lights, like being inside a police car. To the relentless upbeat nonsense, to Zeke’s ear, of ABBA’s ‘Waterloo’, a Danish ship’s engineer had told him a story that made no sense.

‘Never had a job like it,’ said the big Dane, taking a great swig of beer as a stripper’s bottom synced in his face to the rhythm of the music. Ignoring the buttocks, the Dane set it out for Zeke: ‘We arrive in Karachi just before midnight. With guns and ammunition, there’s a lot of paperwork and that kind of thing. Over there, in Pakistan, it can take a week, maybe two. The bureaucracy, it makes you mad. But with this job, the paperwork is signed off in two minutes, they load the guns, the ammo, in a flash. It’s a hush-hush job. We leave that morning, before dawn. The skipper, he was Ukrainian. I don’t like the guy, he says very little to me, I never work with the guy again. So we sail for three days out into the Indian Ocean, due south, and then turn round and sail the whole way back to Karachi, three days. This time, we arrive midday, it takes ten days to unload, everything is as slow as Christmas. Made no sense.’

Zeke bought him another beer and stared into his orange juice. It did make sense, of course, if the guns and bullets had been in Pakistan the whole time, if the ISI had loaded up the ship in Karachi with Pakistan’s own military stores, ordered the ship to sail into the middle of the Indian Ocean and then sail back to Karachi. That way they could make a markup of some three thousand per cent. If the Dane was telling the truth, the ISI was ripping off Uncle Sam.

The proof of the pudding would be if the shipped bullets were marked ‘POF’ – Pakistan Ordnance Factories. The whole thrust of the CIA’s secret arms supply to the rebels in Afghanistan was based on plausible deniability. If he could find bullets in Afghanistan marked ‘POF’, he was on to something.

Zeke’s instinct had told him that the ISI – or, more correctly, a secret enclave inside the Pakistani intelligence service, known as Division S – was conning Uncle Sam. It was the equivalent of a raid on Fort Knox.

Zeke’s urgency, his impatience to be proved right about the robbery, had led him to a basement garage in Kabul and a world of pain scented with lavender. Castration, paralysis . . . there was no limit to the horizon of his bodily fear. But his mind was still working overtime.

The fat man with the electrodes kept on asking questions about things he should not have had any knowledge of, period. How exactly was the power play between the regional station chiefs – Weaver in Delhi and Crone in Islamabad – being read back at CIA HQ in Langley? Who did the CIA trust the most, Weaver or Crone? Who had told Zeke about the POF cargo that had been shipped out of Karachi only to be shipped back in again? Was it the Danish seaman?

The only person Zeke had told about the Dane was Jed Crone, to get his sanction for the trip into Afghanistan.

Zeke did his utmost to hold out. The fat Georgian got serious sexual pleasure from making people suffer intense pain, it was true, but he was also extraordinarily well informed about the inner workings of the Company and Zeke’s mission. And then his torturer switched off the electricity. His whole body heaved with relief but it was short-lived. Now the fat guy was spraying water on his skin. And then the electricity came back on, more unbearable than before.

‘Does anyone in Langley suspect that the fraternal forces’ – meaning the Soviets – ‘have an American asset?’

And Zeke knew he couldn’t last another ten seconds.

The door burst open and a Soviet general marched in, followed by a sergeant, a Yakut from Siberia by the look of him: raven-black hair, a great barrel of a man, a brother of the Inuit of Alaska. They were followed by five soldiers with AKs, barely out of school.

‘Give the American to me,’ said the general in Russian.

‘
Nyet
,’ said the fat man.

The general issued an order, softly, almost on the edge of hearing, and Zeke heard five Kalashnikov safety catches click off.

‘Twenty of my boys are being held by the
dukhi
’ – he used the Russian for ‘ghosts’, Soviet slang for the mujahedin – ‘and with this American, I can make a trade. That’s of some use to us.’ The general’s voice was extraordinarily deep, vocal cords dragged over gravel and ice by chains of iron. ‘Unlike this sadism.’ He spat on the floor.

Zeke remained cuffed to the sturdy chair, electrodes clamped to his left index finger and the tip of his penis.

‘Move it, Grozhov,’ said the general. ‘I’ve got my boys to look after. The American comes with me. Or do I have to shoot you?’

‘You may be a Hero of the Soviet Union, General, but do this and I promise things will not be good for you,’ Grozhov hissed.

‘Listen, slimeball. He comes with me. He comes with me and I shoot you in the balls. Or he comes with me and I don’t shoot you in the balls. Which would you prefer?’

Grozhov’s bulk stepped into the light, blocking it, and Zeke could feel the metal cuffs fixing his arms and feet to the chair being unlocked. Then the electrode crocodile clips were removed. Zeke tried to stand up but his back and leg muscles were still in spasm, knotted in pain. He stumbled, half falling, and grunted ‘Help me’, but became aware of an entirely new source of tension in the room. Blinded by the glare from the spotlight, Zeke had to jerk his head to the side to see what was happening.

The general had his hands in the air and was walking backwards, one step at a time. A small Afghan boy dressed in a bright purple
shalwar kameez
, barely ten years old, if that, was moving out of the shadows in the corner of the cell, a Kalashnikov in his hands, finger on trigger, the muzzle aimed directly at the general’s heart. The boy knew how to handle a gun. He had long black eyelashes, kohl around his eyes, and a line of spittle rested on his lips. What he was doing was exciting him.

Grozhov said something softly in Pashto. Zeke realised that this boy must be Grozhov’s catamite, determined to avenge the honour of the master he loved. The boy licked his thin lips, but there was too much spittle to remove. He lifted his trigger hand to wipe the saliva away with his palm and suddenly he was down on the floor, knocked flat by a heavy steel spanner thrown by the Yakut.

In a flash, the sergeant had captured the boy in a bear hug, but the boy was spitting and snarling, his legs flailing. He bit the tip of the sergeant’s thumb clean off and the Yakut roared in pain. Now the general was on him and the two men managed to handcuff the boy’s hands behind his back; he sat in the middle of the floor, writhing and wriggling.

‘You’re screwing this kid?’ the general asked, revolted.

Grozhov said nothing, the heavy lids of his eyes masking all emotion. The general’s fist smashed into the side of the fat man’s face, once, twice, until he drew blood. Grozhov, still showing no emotion, brought out a handkerchief and patted himself clean.

‘No wonder these people hate us,’ said the general. He motioned for the Yakut to let the boy go. Still handcuffed, he ran up the stairs, hissing something in Pashto.

The general turned to Grozhov, who had remained silent. ‘The American comes with us. You can tell Moscow he escaped – you can make something up. You Chekists are good at fairy tales. Keep us out of it. If anyone breathes a word about us taking the Yank, then I will tell Moscow about you fucking little boys. And I have six witnesses.’

The Yakut sergeant got Zeke dressed, put a blanket over his shoulders and helped him stand up. The moment he put weight on his legs, he buckled and collapsed to the floor. The general and the sergeant half carried, half dragged him out of the basement of the villa and into the first of two Soviet jeeps. Zeke was placed in the back, between the general and the Yakut.

‘Uygulaan,’ said the general to the sergeant, ‘if you weren’t so fucking ugly, I’d marry you.’

The Yakut chuckled, a gold tooth glinting in the sun, but said nothing and sucked his bleeding thumb. To Zeke’s astonishment, they headed straight to the only international hotel in Kabul, full of Soviet officials but also UN monitors and aid workers from the fraternal countries in the Warsaw Pact. It was the last place that any ordinary Russian officer would want to take an American spy, but then the general was no ordinary officer.

The jeep shot past the sentry at the hotel gate and headed down to the basement garage. They got out and hurried into a lift, coming out on the tenth floor, the very top of the hotel, where they entered a large suite. It looked out on the mud-coloured drabness of Kabul, and beyond, to the snow-topped mountains of the Hindu Kush.

This was the first time that Zeke had a proper opportunity to study the general, the closest thing to Palaeolithic man he had ever set eyes on: physically brutish, short, powerful, his forehead low and knitted with muscle. But his eyes were bright blue, vivid and dancing with inner merriment, suggesting a sardonic detachment from the world. A caveman, maybe, but a bright one.

‘Listen, American, we have not so much time. My name is General Gennady Semionovich Dozhd of the 345th Guards Independent Parachute Assault Regiment. My friends call me Genya. And you?’

‘General, I’m under no obligation to divulge my name,’ said Zeke.

The general roared with laughter. ‘Absolutely, Mr Chandler of the Central Intelligence Agency. Or may I call you Ezekiel?’

Despite himself, Zeke allowed one of his wide-open smiles. ‘You can call me Zeke.’

‘Good. One month ago the dukhi captured one of my officers, Kiril. He was a good man, a bard, we say – wrote songs, liked to read Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. Civilised, not like me, not like Uygulaan here, who likes to eat human curry.’

The Yakut had returned from the bathroom, having bandaged his bloody thumb, and smiled his gold-tooth smile.

‘Our agents write fiction much of the time,’ the general continued. ‘But in this case, five of them all tell the same story, that the dukhi castrated Kiril and put a ring through his nose and led him naked through a village our brothers in the air force had just carpet-bombed by mistake. Not for the first time, they’d bombed the wrong village. They didn’t earn their chocolate, as we say. The villagers stoned Kiril to death. For him, a mercy. He hated this fucking war.’

The general went silent for a few seconds, long enough for Zeke to register his humanity and sense of loss for his officer. Then he came back, more sardonic than before: ‘But I haven’t got time for the ironies of our internationalist fraternal duty right now. Yesterday, the same dukhi gang captured twenty of my men. So, let’s trade. Twenty raw recruits, snot-nosed infants, for a top CIA agent. The deal is, I want my men back with their testicles. We do the handover at the wooden bridge over the river, ten miles south of Jalalabad, in two days’ time, at noon.’

The general gestured to the hotel phone sitting on the table in front of them.

‘Call the American embassy in Islamabad and ask your friends to tell the dukhi to play by the rules. I want all twenty of my men back, whole. If not, it’s not just my balls on the line. It’s yours too.’

The Yakut sergeant took out a large knife, its blade glinting in the sun.

‘Deal?’

Zeke nodded and picked up the phone. He had things to tell Langley. He got through to the Islamabad embassy, then Jed Crone, officially the cultural attaché, came on the line.

‘Yeah?’

‘Mr Palmer here. It’s good news.’

That was Agency-speak for
I’ve been captured
– for ‘disaster’.

‘What?’ Crone couldn’t hide his dislike for Zeke from his voice. With difficulty, he got back to the code: ‘That’s great to hear, Mr Palmer. We’d love to join the party, but you didn’t send us an invite.’

That was code for:
Why the fuck is this conversation happening on an open line?

‘It will be a great party.’

There’s no choice
.

Zeke set out the deal, that the ‘saints’ (the dukhi) honour the trade: one ‘jack’ (CIA man) for a score of ‘clubs’ (Russians grunts), and they must be intact, unharmed, uncastrated. Crone said he’d phone back in five.

He never did. After forty minutes of anxiety, the general scowled at Zeke. ‘What are they waiting for? It’s a good deal. They’re getting one clever Yank for twenty grunts? The CIA doesn’t like our exchange rate?’

Giving up on Crone, Zeke phoned Dave Weaver in Delhi. He OK’d the deal on the spot.

They left the hotel in even more of a hurry than they’d entered it. In the back of the jeep, Zeke was blindfolded. Within a few minutes he heard the thwack of rotor blades. They were going up in a ‘bee’ – a troop-carrying helicopter. Zeke was guided into a seat in the fuselage and then heard the general’s basso profundo in his ear: ‘Mr CIA, do you ever worry that you might get blown up by one of your own Stingers?’

Zeke started to laugh, but then he felt his stomach surge up towards his throat as the bee lurched into the sky. Still blindfolded, he couldn’t see the ground whizz past at one hundred miles an hour, only thirty feet below, but he could hear the echo from it, sickeningly close. They were fifty or so minutes into the flight when the bee started swaying heavily in the sky, soaring left, dipping right.

Clang-zzzt-clang, clang-zzzt-clang –
once you’ve heard the sound of metal biting into spinning metal, you never forget it. Zeke felt the blindfold being ripped from his face. Blinking, his eyes burning with the speed of the wind and the ferocity of the bee’s lurches, this way and that, he was thumped in the chest by the general, who tugged at his arm and led him, running, down to the open ramp at the back of the chopper and pushed him over the edge. They fell fifteen, maybe twenty paces down an almost vertical slope of scree, rolling with the falling stones until they came to rest just short of a sheer drop.