(1984) In Honour Bound Read online

  They talked.

  'You'll forgive me for saying this, Foreign Secretary, but we find it extremely hard to work alongside SIS. On this particular case ... a fellow comes to see me, says he's going into Afghanistan, offers me first option on any hardware he brings out, for a fee.

  I don't mess about, I tell him he's on. Down I go to SIS, and they don't want to know.

  The attitude is: if we haven't thought of it, it's not worth thinking. The most I can get from them is that they'll bag the stuff once it's in Pakistan. They seem to think they're the best and the brightest because they're all Oxbridge. I didn't get the chance to go to University, I was fighting with the Commonwealth Brigade in Korea . . .'

  The Foreign Secretary nodded sympathetically.

  'I'd like to hear about the Mi-24.'

  'We call it Hind . . . it's big and powerful and quite naughty. The tribesmen in Afghanistan can't cope with it. It's the one thing that scares the hell out of them. The D

  and E versions of Hind, the most advanced, are deployed there, but they're also littered across every Frontal Aviation base in the Warsaw Pact. We'd love to have our hands on one; we'd love a camera round one. We'd love the paperwork for the inside.'

  'What shoots it down?'

  'Occasionally the Afghans get one with conventional ground fire, once in a green moon. A ground-to-air missile would give it a bit of a fright.'

  'And the Americans?'

  'The Americans, in my experience, believe either that they have everything or, failing that, then they can buy it. They haven't much of a file on Hind, which peeves them.'

  'If we possessed that information?'

  'We'd be happy to share it, at a price. I'm sure we'd find a price, and a high one.'

  'I'd like that.'

  The Brigadier glanced up sharply.

  'This isn't meant to be an impertinence, but do you know what you're getting into, sir? Do you know how deep the water gets? You'd have to snaffle one for yourself, you couldn't sit around banking on the locals getting one with their fire power.'

  'I'd like to be in a seller's market,' the Foreign Secretary said easily.

  The Brigadier had gone long before the Foreign Secretary's wife returned with a long, impassioned complaint about the sermon.

  The following Sunday, the Foreign Secretary was once more absent from his place in the front right hand pew of the village's small Norman church.

  Again he entertained the Brigadier.

  'We've done nicely on the missile, sir.'

  'Tell me.'

  'American, and we can cover the tracks quite beautifully The Brigadier grinned, they shared a moment of mischief.

  '. . . Found the works down at the School of Infantry in Wiltshire. I've requisitioned it. The paperwork says it's for evaluation in case the Provisionals get their hands on the system in Northern Ireland; and there's nothing that says Uncle Sam needs it back. If there was a risk of it blasting us out of the Irish skies, then we'd have to know the capabilities. And if those buggers were to get their hands on ground-to-air missiles it would only be through the States. The cover's going to work rather well, actually.'

  'What about the personnel?'

  'I've taken in tow a fellow who used to be with us. Made it to Major, I think, before he was passed over, he's an old hand

  in that part of the world, in FCO now, quite used to muddy jobs. . . I hope you'll excuse me, but I need your ink on this, sort of a requisition paper for him . . .'

  The Foreign Secretary had signed it, and the Brigadier had pocketed it, before a bell rang in the Foreign Secretary's mind. The clever bastard had picked a man from the Foreign Secretary's own stable, and had the authorisation for it. The Foreign Secretary breathed deep, smiled again.

  'He'd be the organiser, the fix-it fellow. We need an instructor, I'm looking down in the Gulf for him. There's a fair few running around Muscat and Oman, but that's just a detail.'

  You'll require SIS co-operation.'

  I might require it, but 1 won't get it. Put it this way, we'll by-pass SIS if you want this to happen. If you don't want it to happen, then we can involve them, up to their bloody throats.'

  The Foreign Secretary fancied he walked on ice. He remembered the rudeness of the man in the private dining room at the American Embassy.

  'I want it to happen very much,' he said distantly.

  You'd best leave it to me, sir,' said the Brigadier affably. 'That way it will happen, happen well and satisfactorily.'

  The Foreign Secretary heard the crunch of his wife's car on the gravel drive.

  'Thank you, Brigadier Fotheringay. I'm much obliged.'

  He had climbed two thousand feet from the valley floor to the summit of the escarpment in a few minutes over four hours. He was breathing heavily, and the weight of the loaded Bergen pack dug down into the small of his back. The sun had soared into a blue hazed sky, and the wind blew warm suffocating air that dried out his throat, and made him crave for water. He would resist the craving, because the route march he was tasked to make would take him five more days,

  and he had no more water than that which he carried, and on the roof of the mountains he would find no more water.

  His ankle was sore. Not cracked but sore from the landing j after the parachute descent in the High Altitude Low Opening fashion. He knew of no man who would not admit to a knotted cold stomach at the prospect of a HALO free fall and late rip-cord jump. Bad enough to jump from the Skyvan with only the moonlight to show the rock ground hurtling up to meet you, bloody daft when you were free falling and counting

  'one pineapple', 'two pineapple', all the way to fifteen of the lousy, sweet, messy, bloody fruits.

  He had a fondness for these mountains between the beaches of Muscat and the northern extremity of Oman, the Empty Quarter. Not a love of these mountains, but an affection. It was a soldier's place, a man's place. It was a place of raw survival. If he was grateful for anything in this life, and if he were he seldom made his feelings known, then he would j have thanked the distant War House in Whitehall for de- creeing that men of the 22nd Regiment of the Special Air Service could still take their recreation in these magnificent hills.

  When he had rested, he stood and eased the load of the Bergen and crooked the Armalite rifle over his lower arm before setting off westwards. And the sun coming behind him blasted his shadow into his path.

  A turban hid his hair, and baggy trousers covered his legs, but his boots and his smock and the big pack and the high velocity rifle identified him as a serving soldier of the British army.

  There were no casual watchers on the peak of the escarpment. Had there been, had they watched his departure from the rock lip where he had regained his breath, then they would soon have lost sight of him. It was within the skills of this man to blend into the upper lands around him.

  He was Captain Crispin.

  2

  ' You're late.'

  '1 wasn't driving,' Barney Crispin said.

  He looked past the tall, gaunt, wire-thin man who had met him, shaken his hand at the entrance to the Terminal building.

  He was late. For five hours he had sat at Dofar waiting for the connection that would complete the long, hot sleepless journey from Muscat to Rawalpindi. He was in no great humour and he didn't need a stranger telling him he was late.

  Yesterday morning was the first he'd known of it. The Colonel would like to see Captain Crispin. Before lunch? No, Sir, not before lunch . . . Right away, Sir. The orderly had saluted, Barney had grunted, tucked his shirt into his shorts, and ambled away across the sand compound to the Colonel's office. There were only a few of them now, the British officers who trained and 'advised' the armed forces of Muscat and Oman. The Colonel wore no badges of rank, no flashes. Five minutes of conversation.

  Something out of the ordinary, something from London, a particular request for Captain Crispin. So, the afternoon flight to Dhofar, the small hours flight to Rawalpindi. Pack for a few weeks, no letters home as to where you
're going. The passport flipped across the Colonel's table gave Technical Representative as his profession. Might he ask what he would be doing in Rawalpindi? Yes, he might ask, but no, he wouldn't be told, couldn't be told because the Colonel didn't know. Better just get on with it, hadn't he, better get himself packed. Not a lot of time to spare. The Colonel had wished him good hunting, yes, very good hunting and we'll expect you when we see you. Oh to be young, eh? Handshake across the desk. Salute at the door. Goodluck.

  Goodbye.

  Barnaby Crispin had been ten years in the regular army, and seven of them in the 22nd Regiment, Special Air Service. Those ten years had given him a type of patience, he could wait a few more hours to be told why it was thought necessary to pitch him out of a quiet billet in Muscat.

  He disliked the name of Barnaby, and called himself Barney. He was 5 foot eleven.

  His hair was blond with a tinge of redness when the sun caught it. He was fit, solid, muscled. He walked with an easy stride, rolling on the balls of his feet. He spoke with the accent of the south of England, usually cursorily as if words were running-away bath water and were useless things. Not an easy man to read, and a difficult man to ignore.

  Now Barney Crispin stood at the entrance to the Customs and Immigration hall and took in the chaos around him. Men with suitcases straining against their string bindings, women bent down with the burden of London department stores' soft furnishings, kiddies in long-trousered grey suits and bright frocks holding tin toys and howling. All around him, pushing him, shoving him, elbowing him, and he didn't even know why he was in Rawalpindi.

  'I wasn't blaming you, I just said you were late,' Howard Rossiter said.

  'I didn't say you were blaming me, I just said I wasn't driving.'

  Rossiter decided there was little point in pretending .a good humour. He had been out of his bed at first light to meet the flight. He had sat about for five hours, occasionally sipping warm orange juice, never once finding anyone capable of giving him an accurate arrival time.

  He gazed into the face of the younger man. All the same ihese SAS men, arrogant and conceited because they're a bloody elite. This one didn't look any different. But he had to work with this one, so he mustered a thin puddle of a smile.

  There was a pain behind his temple. He'd been with some pathetic businessman the night before, all piss and wind and money success talk, but the creature had brought a quart of Chivas Regal into Pakistan, and Rossiter hadn't taken a drink for the previous ten days. All right for a business creature to run the Customs gauntlet, not all right for anyone in Rossiter's line. Crap on Islamisation, they'd agreed. About the only bloody thing they had agreed upon. Crap on dry countries. God knew how much they'd drunk while the creature spelled out the triumphs of his line of commerce and seemed to think Rossiter should be interested. But he wasn't, not one atom. Foreign and Commonwealth Office career man, that was Howard Rossiter. Not a diplomat, a diplomat was too grand for Howard Rossiter. He was an official of FCO, a road sweeper for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Something to be done that's not Intelligence and that's not Embassy or High Commission, then wheel out old Rossiter because he's a good sort of chap who gets on with things, a good sort of chap who'll get his hands dirty and hasn't the clout to whine if the work's a bit messy.

  He would be fifty the next year. His grey, cut-short hair was thinning. His suit was too weighty for Pakistan in August, but his ranking did not run to Overseas Dress Allowance. He was pale and he was sweating. He thought he loathed the place they had sent him to, he thought he had loathed it from the moment he had stepped off the plane from Heathrow with the family row still clamouring in his mind. Should a sixteen-year-old girl be at a drinks party until three o'clock in the morning? That had started it. Somewhere along the way his wife had declared her imperative need of a new refrigerator. Could he leave a cheque? No, alas, he could not. What a bloody way to leave home. No kiss on the cheek, not from his wife, not from his daughter, not from his son still in bed, just a slammed bloody door and a smirk on the face of the cab driver who had heard most of it from the pavement. The row still rankled.

  Getting himself out through the Customs areas and onto the apron to meet the Tristar passengers had been his one hard earned victory of the day. He'd given the officious little fart in Customs uniform a part of his mind, and that had been joyous. It was twenty-five years since Rossiter had been in Pakistan and, God, how the place had changed, and nothing for the better that he'd noticed.

  He pulled back his concentration. Again the smile.

  'I'm Howard Rossiter, I'm usually called Ross.'

  'Pleased to meet you, Mr Rossiter. I'm Barney Crispin.'

  'You didn't bring a bottle, did you?'

  'No.'

  'We'd better get your bag.'

  Barney Crispin's bag was one of the last onto the conveyor belt.

  It didn't matter to him. He yawned a couple of times and stood with his legs firm and apart and his arms casually folded and waited, and quietly enjoyed the impatience of Rossiter hovering behind him. They'd been fast enough through Passport Control and when they'd left the Immigration area a little man in uniform had snapped a salute to Rossiter as though he were the bloody Viceroy, and that had curled a smile at Barney's mouth.

  The heat didn't bother him. It was his second tour to Muscat and Oman that had been interrupted. The sun didn't burn him, just leathered his face and his arms, and he could absorb the scents and smells and odours of the East.

  The canvas grip bag was collected.

  Rossiter shouldered his way through the hawking taxi cab drivers outside the terminal, as if he were a man for whom a limousine and chauffeur waited. Barney followed. When he was not required to lead, he was happy enough to follow. Through the noise, through the bodies, through the shouting. oming home in a way, a sort of home, a home that had once been in his family's history. His grandfather had been here, married his grandmother here, his father had been born in some fly-blown cantonment up the road in Raj days. There had been photographs in a drawer in England, old, dog-eared and sepia. His grandfather had died here, further up the road. That made it a sort of homecoming, somewhere that his family had trod before.

  It was not a limousine but a paint-scraped land-rover.

  You'l lbe- dying to know what it's all about. I'm sorry, you'll have to wait till we get to the hotel.'

  Barney raised his eyebrows. He didn't join in the game. He gave no hint of disappointment. Rossiter would be suffering because he couldn't yet play the big briefing man. Barney threw his bag into the open back of the land-rover.

  There was hazard enough on the road without distracting the driver with small talk.

  They weaved amongst the curtains of white-robed cyclists. They stuttered over the no-give-way cross roads. They swerved onto the verge to avoid the lorries blundering down the crown. Rossiter was hunched over the wheel, grinding his gears, intent on the traffic as if engaged in combat. They had turned off the main road after half an hour.

  Now they were flanked by rich green undergrowth and by the white-walled bungalows of Islamabad's diplomatic community. The blue jacaranda blooms were failing on the trees. Quite pretty, Barney thought. Not a bloody flower in sight in Muscat, and no rain to grow them. Just the sun and the wind and the sun and the mountains.

  'They didn't tell you anything?'

  'Nothing.'

  'So you haven't been asked whether you want the job?'

  'I don't expect to be asked,' Barney said.

  'Well, it's a bit out of the ordinary, but not at all hair- raising. In fact I expect you will think it's pretty straightforward.' Barney didn't prompt him and Rossiter volunteered no more, so they drove to the hotel in silence.

  Barney knocked on the door.

  'Come.' Muffled and peremptory, like he was a bloody headmaster. But, of course, Barney had to wait for Rossiter to remember that the door couldn't be opened except by himself. He was laughing when he went into the room and Rossiter looked at him with i
rritation.

  'I've ordered some coffee.'

  'Good.'

  'Please sit down, Barney.'

  Barney sat down. He was close to the window and near to him was a table with a briefcase on it. He clasped his hands, rested his chin on them. He waited. Rossiter ignored him, paced until the soft tap at the door. Rossiter let in the waiter, signed the chit with a flourish, took the tray to the table, heard the door close behind his back.

  'Milk?'

  'No.'

  'Sugar?'

  'No.'

  Rossiter poured thin black coffee, pushed the cup and saucer towards Barney.

  Rossiter was walking again, head up, as if counting flies on the ceiling, drawing his thoughts together. Abruptly he stopped, turned and faced Barney from the centre of the room. Barney stared back at him.

  'This is to be a highly secure operation . . .'

  Barney inclined his head. God, what crap.

  '. . . Would you read this, please?'

  From an inside pocket of his jacket, Rossiter took an envelope, passed it to Barney.

  Barney opened it. Ministry of Defence paper, a Brigadier's signature. Captain Barnaby Crispin was to work while in Pakistan under the direction of Mr Howard Rossiter, FCO. Harney tore up the envelope and the letter and flaked the pieces into the table's ashtray and set light to them.

  Rossitei coughed, poised himself, rose twice on the balls of his feet, and started to speak.

  Through the helicopter, the Soviets have achieved a quite critical of superiority over the mujahidin. The helicopter in question is the Mi-24, armoured undercarriage, armoured cockpit, big bastard . . . They're virtually in- vulnerable, they soak up the small arms fire, ignore it, spit at it. They're hard, the Alghan tribesmen, but the Mi-24

  makes them run, makes them shit themselves. Another couple of years of the helicopters and there's the prospect of the mujahiden losing serious effectiveness. We don't want that. We like it the way it is at the moment, we like a dozen Soviet divisions getting bitten, we like the Soviets getting kicked around the Third World scene for aggression against a small country. We think the chaps up in the hills need a small shot in the arm, and we have the opportunity to provide it.'