The Afghan Read Free

day had suddenly become Christmas and several birthdays rolled into one.
    ‘No question, Brian. The call came from a top-floor apartment of a five-storey building in the Old Quarter. Two of my undercover people are slipping down there to have a look and work out the approaches.’
    ‘When are you going in?’
    ‘Just after dark. I’d like to make it three a.m., but the risk is too big. They might fly the coop . . .’
    Colonel Razak had been to Camberley Staff College in England on a one-year Commonwealth-sponsored course and was proud of his command of idiom.
    ‘Can I come?’
    ‘Would you like to?’
    ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ said the Irishman.
    Razak laughed out loud. He enjoyed the banter.
    ‘As a believer in the one true God I would not know,’ he said. ‘All right. My office at six. But it is mufti. And I mean our mufti.’
    He meant there would not only be no uniforms but no western suits either. In the Old Town, and especially in the Qissa Khawani Bazaar, only the shalwar kameez assembly of loose trousers and long shirt would pass unnoticed. Or the robes and turbans of the mountain clans. And that also applied to O’Dowd.
    The British agent was there just before six, with his black and black-windowed Toyota Land Cruiser. A British Land-Rover might have been more patriotic, but the Toyota was the preferred vehicle of local fundamentalists and would pass unnoticed. He also brought a bottle of the whisky known as Chivas Regal. It was Abdul Razak’s favourite tipple. He had once chided his Pakistani friend on his taste for the alcoholic tincture from Scotland.
    ‘I regard myself as a good Muslim but not an obsessive one,’ said Razak. ‘I do not touch pork, but see no harm in dancing or a good cigar. To ban these is Taliban fanaticism which I do not share. As for the grape, or even the grain, wine was widely drunk during the first four Caliphates and if, one day in Paradise, I am chided by a higher authority than you, then I shall beg the all-merciful Allah for forgiveness. In the meantime, give me a top-up.’
    It was perhaps strange that a tank corps officer should have made such an excellent policeman, but such was Abdul Razak. He was thirty-six, married with two children and educated. He also embodied a capacity for lateral thought, for quiet subtlety and the tactics of the mongoose facing the cobra rather than the charging elephant. He wanted to take the apartment at the top of the block of flats without a raging fire-fight, if he could. Hence his approach was quiet and stealthy.
    Peshawar is a most ancient city and no part is older than the Qissa Khawani Bazaar. Here caravans travelling the Great Trunk Road through the towering and intimidating Khyber Pass into Afghanistan have paused to refresh men and camels for many centuries. And like any good bazaar the Qissa Khawani has always provided for man’s basic needs: blankets, shawls, carpets, brass artefacts, copper bowls, food and drink. It still does.
    It is multi-ethnic and multilingual. The accustomed eye can spot the turbans of Afridis, Waziris, Ghilzai and Pakistanis from nearby, contrasting with the chitral caps from further north and the fur-trimmed winter hats of Tajiks and Uzbeks.
    In this maze of narrow streets and lanes where a man can lose any pursuer are the shops and food stalls of the clock bazaar, basket bazaar, money-changers, bird market and the bazaar of the storytellers. In imperial days the British called Peshawar the Piccadilly of Central Asia.
    The apartment identified by the D/F sweeper as the source of the phone call was in one of those tall, narrow buildings with intricately carved balconies and shutters; it was four floors above a carpet warehouse in a lane wide enough for only one car. Because of the heat in summer, all these buildings have flat roofs where tenants may catch a breath of cool night air, and open stairwells leading up from the street below. Colonel Razak led his team quietly and on foot.
    He sent four