Crossfire (31 page)

We stumbled as far as the double doors.

'Wait here!' I swung the right one open,
blinked in the sunlight and staggered across to
the nearest wagon. I dumped Mr Sheen in the
front passenger seat and belted him up. I tipped
some Jack Daniel's down his front, then laid the
bottle on the dash tray.

I moved round and opened the rear doors,
then ran back and dragged Dom across the compound.
'Lie down and shut the fuck up.'

He pulled the bag over his head as I slammed
the door.

I sat in the driver's seat and changed mags on
the used Sig, checked the other was made ready,
then slid one under each thigh. Mr Sheen
slumped next to me. He looked like he'd pissed
himself.

I brushed back my hair with my fingers and
zipped up the fleece, hoping the ISAF boys on
the other side of the gates wouldn't look at me
too closely. I made sure I had a fresh mag handy
and hit the ignition.

I stopped two or three metres short of the
gates. There were no quarter-circle scrape marks
in the dirt this side. They must open outwards.

I jumped down from the cab and put my ear to
the steel but heard nothing close by; no voices, no
radio traffic, no guards complaining to each
other or listening to Radio Kabul.

I pulled back the bolts and eased it open an
inch or two. All I could see was HESCOs, tents
and flagpoles. They were about two hundred
metres away, the other side of the runway. I
pushed the gate some more. It opened directly on
to a dirt road. There were no guards.

I pushed it all the way, then did the same with
the other and ran back to the GMC.

'Good news, mate – I'm pretty sure this joint
isn't official. The ISAF set-up is the other side of
the airfield. Keep down and keep quiet – I'll confirm
in a second.'

Mr Sheen lolled next to me. I reached inside his
coat pocket for his wallet. I pulled out a fistful of
dollars and stowed them in my lap.

I drove through the open gates and turned left.
The checkpoint was a hundred metres or so
down the road. It was manned by a couple of old
guys in suits, polo-neck jumpers and pancake
hats. The drop-bar was two branches roped
together and painted red and white.

We drew level. I grabbed a dollar bill from my
lap. The old guy accepted the bribe with a nod.

The other guy began to lift the barrier.

He glanced up as he waved the GMC through,
and frowned. He stopped the barrier halfway.
There was no point putting my foot down. I
lowered the window, tilted my head at Mr Sheen
and the bottle on the dash, jiggled my wrist and
rolled my eyes.

He looked in and immediately smelt the
whisky. He shook his head with disapproval and
waved the infidels through.

We drove out past the burnt-out shells of
buildings. Wrecked Russian vehicles rusted at
the roadside. The MiG in the middle of the
roundabout still gleamed in the early-morning
light.

We turned south on to a dead-straight road. Mr
Sheen's head bobbed about beside me like it was
on a spring. Dom was lying on the back seat.
He'd sparked out straight away.

The dash clock said 10:28.

'Dom, get up here!' I fished in the front of the
fleece and pulled out one of the mobile phones.
'Up here, mate. I need your help.'

I flicked open the lid. As it sparked up, a
picture of Mr Sheen appeared, with his arm
round a woman and two little boys making faces
in front of them.

'Dom, for fuck's sake, get up! You've got to call
Siobhan! Tell her to get out of the house!'

I saw his head jerk up in the rear-view mirror.
'Up here, mate, I need your help.'

He clambered painfully over to the seats
behind me, then leant his head forward until it
was more or less level with mine. His wounds
were open and weeping.

'Listen, the mobile in your front room, in the
drawer. You know the number?'

He looked puzzled. 'Finbar's old one. But why
does—'

I passed him a phone. 'Siobhan must go somewhere
safe. Where? A place you both know . . .'

He thought for a few moments. 'We had our
honeymoon in a little B and B up in Donegal.'

'Think proof of life – tell me something just
you two know about the place. Did something
happen – unusual, funny, romantic – something
you talk about even today?'

A smile flashed across his damaged face. 'The
hot water always ran out after one bath. We had
to share.'

'Dial whatever number you'd normally use for
her, then give me the phone. I need to talk to her
first.'

TV Hill appeared in the distance, dead centre
of the windscreen. Bleached-out buildings lined
both sides of the boulevard. We came to a run of
stalls and shops.

He handed the phone to me. It rang three or
four times before I got a very sleepy 'Hello?'

'Siobhan? It's Nick.'

'Nick?'

'You saw me Tuesday. I just need you to know
Dom is safe.'

'Oh, my God—'

'Listen. This call's being monitored. You're in
danger. Do you understand?'

There was silence.

'Listen carefully, Siobhan. I want you to leave
the house right away. Get dressed, but don't
waste time packing or doing anything else. Just
grab that grey mobile from the drawer in the
living room and any cash you have in the house.
Then go and draw as much money as you can
from an ATM. After that, don't use the card
any more or pay for anything on credit. Don't
phone, don't make contact with anyone. You
understand?'

'Yes.'

'Don't say the name, but I want you to go to
the place you and Dom had to share a bath every
day because the hot water always ran out. Do
you understand?'

'Yes.'

'Go there, wait, and keep the grey mobile on.
Dom will make contact later. It could be an hour,
it could be a few days. Do you understand?'

'Yes, but how is he? Where is he?'

'He's with me, and he's alive. I'm going to pass
you over. Don't talk about where you're going
and don't call this number afterwards.'

I passed it behind me.

High walls, razor wire and floodlights protected
the buildings either side of us. Outside
almost every one of them was a plywood guardhouse.
The guards weren't interested in us. They
just sat in the shade and stroked their beards.

Dom sobbed bits of his story to her. There were
long silences as he tried to pull himself together.

'Dom, end the call. They could be triangulating.
Our drama's not over yet.'

Reluctantly, he said goodbye and closed down.
He went to hand the mobile back.

I shook my head. 'Chuck the fucking thing
out!'

I thrust my hand into the fleece and passed
him the other. 'This too!'

The window powered down and I watched
them bounce along the road in the wing mirror.

I took the first available left. If they'd been
quick off the mark and were tracking the phones,
they'd assume we were still heading south,
maybe to the Serena.

Where I really wanted to go was west, to
Khushal Mena.

We drove down narrow residential streets with
crumbling pavements, cars, donkeys and carts
parked on each side. Dom bounced each time we
hit a pothole.

'Where are we going, Nick?'

'Basma's.'

'We can't put Baz in danger . . .'

'Least of our problems. Predator could
be up there now, breathing down our necks. We
have to get off the streets. And listen, mate. Bad
news.' I turned my head to get eye-to-eye.
'The guy who's tracking us? He has Finbar.' I
looked back at the road. 'You've got to tell
me everything. About this film, about Pete. Tell
me what the fuck's going on.'

He gripped my shoulder. 'You think he'll try to
get Siobhan as well?'

'Now he's lost us he'll cover his bases, believe me.'

He slumped across the rear seats. I took a
couple more turns until TV Hill was to our left
and I knew where we were. The market popped
up on our right and we drove past the twisted
and burnt-out hulk of the suicide-bomber's
wagon.

I pushed past anything in the way, hitting the
horn to fuck them off, just like this wagon would
have done on a normal day.

It wasn't long before I saw the peak of a wood-stack
and the reinforcement rods sticking out of
the unfinished buildings either side. There were
no vehicles parked on the hard mud in front of
the corrugated-iron shacks. Magreb would be
on the missing list for another three days, until
his brother got back.

A handpainted sign at the roadside announced
the polytechnic.

'Nearly there. I need navigation, mate.'

'Left here, Nick.' I could smell him at my right
shoulder. A couple of open scabs glistened
beneath his stubble.

One more junction and we came to Basma's
road. I stopped outside the blue wooden gate
and honked the horn twice. When nothing
happened I jumped out. I could hear women's
voices inside.

The gate opened an inch on the security chain.
The mesh of a burqa pressed against the gap.

'Basma –
get Basma
.'

She didn't understand me, but I didn't have
time to mess about. I shouldered the gate open.
The woman ran shrieking towards the house, her
burqa flapping behind her. Fuck it, we'd sort out
the small print later.

I jumped back into the wagon and drove
through the entrance. There was a parking area
to the right. A wriggly-tin roof kept off the sun
and snow. Under it was a knackered rusty red
estate. I drove towards it and stopped just short.

'What is happening?' Basma was bearing
down on me. 'You can't just barge in here like
this!'

I ignored her.

I leant inside the estate and released the handbrake.
With both feet out on the ground and just
one hand on the wheel, I started pushing it out.

'Get out of here! Leave at once!'

The 1980s Datsun estate rolled out in a straight
line because the wheel lock was on. It didn't matter.
I only needed enough room to get the
Suburban past it.

'I've got Dom!' I jabbed a finger. 'Get that gate
closed!'

She started running, then stopped in her
tracks. She ran back to the Suburban and looked
inside. 'Oh, my God.'

Mr Sheen's face was pressed against the
window.

'Fuck him. He's dead. Dom's in the back.'

I jumped in and drove the GMC under the
wriggly tin. 'I'll get him inside – you get that
fucking gate closed!'

'Was it Noah James?'

Basma helped me get Dom out of the wagon.

'Yeah – close the gate!'

She looked around but there were no
pepper-pots to delegate to. They'd scattered to
the main house or outbuildings. Washing hung
from lines. Smoke curled from holes in the
roofs.

Basma caught up with us again as we
staggered up the path. There wasn't a stick of
furniture in the entrance hall. The cracked and
crumbling walls were bare. A naked bulb hung
from the ceiling.

Frightened voices echoed further inside the
house. Basma left us. 'Poor girls – I must tell
them everything's OK.'

The first door on the right was open. 'In here,
Nick.'

The bed in the corner had a lumpy mattress
covered by a furry nylon blanket with pictures of
lions. The old pillow didn't have a case and was
stained yellow and brown. The light was fuzzy.
The sun had to fight its way through a thick
square of muslin over the window.

Dom dropped to his knees and tried to pull up
one of the floorboards. His hands scrabbled but
his fingers couldn't grip. I grabbed him, sat him
on the bed and draped the green sleeping-bag
round his shoulders. 'Just concentrate on keeping
warm, mate. This board, yeah?'

I worked my fingers into the gap. The board
lifted. Beneath it was a black nylon holdall.
I lifted it out and took it to the bed.

I had to unzip it for him.

'The laptop, Nick.'

It was among the clothes and overnight stuff.

Basma struggled in with a bowl of water and
rags in one hand, a small suitcase in the other.
'This is all I can do until the girls get some more
heated up for a bath. We've got antiseptic cream
but no antibiotics. The hospital can't give us any
– they ran out weeks ago. The Americans have
stopped supplies.'

She tried to dab at Dom's wounds, but he was
too busy sparking up the laptop.

'What happened, Dominik? How did Noah
find you?'

His eyes never left the screen. 'They set me up.
I thought I was going to meet the Taliban. I fell
for it.'

She looked up at me hopefully. 'Is Noah dead?'

'All of them.'

She didn't bother to hide her smile. 'Good.'

I turned to Dom. 'Basma told me you were
looking for the guy in the Taliban who supplies
the Brits with the gear. But which Brits?'

He fished around and pulled out a washbag.
Among the kit was a plastic carrier-bag. 'This
one . . .'

He unfolded it and produced a memory stick.

The clip kicked off outside what looked like
the front door of 10 Downing Street. A tall, good-looking
young guy with long blond hair went in
with bags of shopping.

Dom's finger hovered over the image. 'Finbar.'
He almost choked as he said the word.

I watched as the camera panned up to the top
window. An older man in a white shirt stood with
his back to the lens. Finbar walked into the room.
The older man held him in his arms and they
kissed. A few moments later, they moved out of
shot.

Dom pressed the soft screen so hard where the
older man had last been that the picture blurred.
The film cut and zeroed in again on the large
black door. It opened. Both of them stood just
back from the threshold, talking. The older one
had an overnight bag at his feet.

Dom's voice grated with sadness. 'Finbar had
come out to us when he was seventeen. Then,
after about a year, he was getting into drugs.'

He looked down. 'We tried to get him to rehab,
but he just pushed us away. He took to disappearing
for days on end. Eventually he told us
he was moving in with a friend.'

My eyes hadn't left the screen. Whoever the
older man was, Finbar was kissing him again.

'He wouldn't tell us who the friend was, even
where he was living. Siobhan was out of her
mind. She needed to know he wasn't killing
himself.'

He was breathing heavily. 'We eventually
found him.' He pressed the screen again. 'Here,
in St Stephen's Green. We just wanted to keep
contact, try and help him . . . Can you imagine
how Siobhan felt? Seeing her son smacked up
like that . . .'

He pulled at his blood-matted hair. 'Finbar
finally said his friend was a businessman who
came to the city a couple of times a month. Said he
was in property development, a firm from
London.' His eyes blazed. 'I wanted to see his face,
this arsehole property developer from London
who supplies young boys with drugs so he can . . .
so he can . . .' He shook his head helplessly.

'You got Pete to film?'

'Yes. He said he was coming on Friday, for the
weekend.'

'And who was it?'

'I don't know. That's the bizarre thing, Nick. I
had his photograph, but even with all the
resources at my disposal I couldn't get anyone to
put a name to the face.'

He pressed pause. 'Nick, if I don't make it out
of here, I want you at least to have seen his face.
I don't know who he is, but I found out he's an
immensely powerful man. Maybe you can trace
him. I got started before, well, before . . .'

He bit at a scab on his lip. 'Siobhan's father
made his fortune in the property boom. You saw
our house? His wedding present to us. There's
not much he doesn't know about Dublin
property. As one line of enquiry, he got his guys
to do some digging. The Land Registry showed
the flat was owned by a legit UK company, but
then there was all kinds of smoke and mirrors
with offshore trusts and stuff in the Caymans,
Panama, you name it. Everything was shielded
behind nominees and God knows what else.
They hit a brick wall.

'I had other irons in the fire. I talked to a
contact at the Inland Revenue. He came back
promptly and said a very strange thing. They
said it was unwise to keep digging, it was a
government matter. A government matter?
What's the government got to do with offshore
trusts and property companies?

'Then the wheels really started to come off.
Moira sent us to Iraq, and I had to do everything
by phone and email. We'd only been there a
couple of days and I got word that the FCO had
something for me. Remember when I thought
they were going to give me an interview?

'I went to the compound. Basically, the shit hit
the fan. I was told my enquiries in Dublin and
Kabul had to stop. The whole drugs thing, off the
agenda. Just like that. I told them they had no
right to tell me what to do. Next thing I knew,
those two Irish bastards were in the room. They
told me to do as I was told or else.

'The following day I spoke to Siobhan and she
said Finbar had gone walkabout again. She was
contacting drug outreach programmes, hospitals.
Nothing. He'd vanished into thin air.'

His voice trailed off. He was exhausted. It
seemed to take everything he had just to hit play
again.

I watched as Finbar and the property
developer kissed once more, then the older man
picked up his overnight bag and walked out on
to the street.

He walked towards the camera, until he nearly
filled the screen.

It was then that I realized who he was.