By late morning the following day, I have my first insight into what it must feel like to belong to a criminal gang or team of kidnappers. There is something powerfully attractive to it. In the back of the G, somewhat resembling a nodding dog on the back shelf of a car only with an Afghan scarf tied over his head, the Talib escort has become our reluctant passenger.
We owe our success in part to Aref, who as night falls leaves the room where they’re all gathered on the pretext of paying a visit to the outdoor privy, from where he contacts us in a whisper on the two-way radio. They’re staying at a primitive mehman-khana with several others travellers, and there’s nothing to be done until the morning when they all leave.
So we wait for the dawn, taking two-hour stretches on watch in a dried-up irrigation ditch which, if cold, is surprisingly comfortable. It’s the nearest we can get to the vehicles, which are several hundred yards away, without breaking cover. In the early morning we all hear the triple burst of static on the radio as Aref attempts to alert us. A few moments later we hear the urgency in the near-whisper of his voice.
‘Come now,’ he says.
We’re about thirty yards from the vehicles when the others emerge from a nearby building. Momen waves to them. Aref and Sher Del wave back as if they’ve seen an old friend. The Talib escort turns in our direction as we walk up, and we see the look of uncertainty come across his face as we approach, but he makes no move for his weapon. He’s in his early twenties. The tail of his black turban hangs over his left shoulder. The look of uncertainty turns to confusion as H cocks his Browning and lines it up on the Talib in a swift and unambiguous motion. I follow up with Mr Raouf’s AK-74, and all that remains is for Sher Del to lift the victim’s weapon from his shoulder and put it on his own, and then for H to tie a scarf around his bewildered features.
‘We don’t want him doing much sightseeing,’ he says as he tightens the knot. ‘He can come in the G with us. That way he doesn’t get to overhear anything except my bad English.’
We have a certain sympathy for our extra passenger, at whose expense we’re unable to resist a few jokes.
‘Do you think he’s got a mobile? Ask him to call his girlfriend so she can come and pick him up later,’ says H.
‘He says he hasn’t got a girlfriend. But he’s got a nice-looking donkey who he misses a lot.’ And so on, because for the time being we have the advantage.
A single range of mountains separates us from our objective. In a straight line we are a little more than fifteen miles from the fort, but there’s no way to cross the range with vehicles, so we’re forced to take a route that is three times the distance and loops north and then south again around the mountains. It takes all day and half the following day. A few miles from the target we pass through a small settlement called Kadjran, where we stop to buy a few supplies. We don’t stay long, because we don’t want to be noticed, and camp out in a high deserted fold of the hills, where the GPS tells us we’re only half a mile away from the fort.
As darkness falls we take the scarf from the Talib’s head and, this being Afghanistan, allow him to eat with us because there are courtesies to be observed. Then we tie his hands again, and return him to the metal bed of the pickup with a blanket.
The colour of the sky turns imperceptibly from turquoise to an ever-deeper purple, and we see the first stars appear. Above us, silhouetted against the sky like a primeval saw blade, lies the ridge to which we’ll walk in the morning, and from which we’ll have a view, at long last, of the place we’ve come so far to see.
15
The fort stands on a high narrow spur with a commanding view of the valley below. It is perhaps a hundred years old, and built in the form of a perfect square, the walls linking four circular bastions with defensive slits in their upper sections. A driveable track, cut into the steep approach from the front, links it to the valley floor in a coil of tight switchbacks. Behind the fort and on its flanks the barren slopes of the mountains rise another thousand feet or more. The closest of these rising slopes is at least 300 yards distant. Nearer to, a footpath leads from the side of the fort over the shoulder of the spur and into the next ravine, and a bigger track gives access to the ravine on the other side. They are too steep to be negotiated by vehicle. On the neck of the spur overlooking the fort sits a Soviet BMP like a stranded turtle, abandoned at least a decade ago and stripped even of its wheels. There’s no sign of life from within the fort other than a tiny plume of grey smoke, which drifts silently skyward from the central courtyard. It’s a picture of rural peace.
From a nest of boulders on a ridge above our final lying-up point, H and I have been watching through the Kite sight since dawn. Sher Del is with us, taking turns to peer at the target, and agrees that there’s nothing to indicate we shouldn’t drive there and back again without any surprises.
At 10 a.m., as the sun begins to lose the innocence of early morning and climbs with growing strength into the clear sky above, H looks at his watch and then at me.
‘We shouldn’t wait much longer,’ I say.
‘Then let’s go to work.’
We scramble down into our little camp, where Momen and Aref are nursing a kettle over a small fire. Our captive sits cross-legged on the ground with a scarf still tied over his head and his hands fastened behind his back.
‘Time he went back to find his donkey,’ says H after we have packed up the vehicles and are ready to leave. He cuts the cord on the Talib’s wrists and unties the scarf. We give him a glass of tea and he drinks it in silence with a strangely matter-of-fact expression. Then H gives him enough money for a few days’ food.
‘Now fuck off and get a proper job,’ says H, the gist of which Aref kindly translates. He’ll walk down into the village, get his bearings and begin the long walk back to his headquarters, by which time we’ll be long gone.
We drive to the valley floor and then ascend again, winding up through the dust until, beyond the final bend, the fort looms suddenly above us. The walls are about fifty feet high and broken only by a giant pair of wooden doors, within which a smaller door the size of a man is framed. Aref and Sher Del walk to it, rattle the heavy iron loops and exchange some words with a voice on the far side. The small door opens and a turbanned armed man emerges. After a few minutes he goes back inside and the two main doors swing open. We drive in.
A double storey of dilapidated rooms runs around the wide central courtyard. Above them the turrets are linked by a narrow earthen parapet. It’s strange to think that in London we’ve seen a satellite photograph of this very place. The two guards are local men, who tell us they’ve kept watch over the place for the past month. They both have AKs, and when H asks what other weapons they have they point to a PK light machine gun in one of the turrets and an RPG-7 grenade launcher in a corner of the courtyard, beside which lie several bulbous rounds.
The two guards ask whether, now that we’re here, they can leave. For a small sum we persuade them to stay a little longer.