‘I’m a democrat, Mr President. You want my friendship, I want more openness. Human rights. Free elections. I hope you’ll forgive me speaking candidly’ – her lips were working as though chewing a large wad of tobacco – ‘but I keep hearing claims that the last election was rigged.’
An uncomfortable silence settled upon them all. While he considered his answer, Karabayev threw morsels of meat to the two dogs, whose jaws snapped hungrily. Then he sniffed, pretended a smile, showing a set of perfect white teeth that Harry suspected might even be his own.
‘Yes, democracy. A delicate flower, Mrs Riley, too easily trampled by . . . careless criticism.’ He threw more meat to the dogs before wiping his hands and turning his full attention to her. ‘You shouldn’t listen to lies peddled by the disappointed. And might I suggest you take care when you offer lectures about democracy? After all, your own government was elected by barely a quarter of the voters while your head of state isn’t elected at all. And as for your House of Lords . . .’ He turned to Sid Proffit, a.k.a. Lord Proffit of Chipping Sodbury. ‘I hope you will not take this personally, but the entire world sits back in bewilderment at a house of Parliament filled with nothing but placemen and hereditary aristocrats. It is . . .’ – he searched for the appropriate term – ‘quaint. But scarcely democratic.’ He held up his hand to stall the imminent outpouring of rebuttal from Martha. ‘Yes, yes, I know, you have your own way of doing things, but so do we. In Ta’argistan we like to work in harmony with the people. The government and governed are as one. All in step.’
Harry could almost hear the tramp of marching boots echoing through the streets.
‘It is an ideal more easily aspired to than achieved, I know,’ the President continued, ‘but that’s why the foremost task of my loyal lieutenant here –’ he placed his hand on Amir Beg’s shoulder – ‘is to ensure that it becomes a reality.’ He made it sound as if Beg was a spin doctor. Beg smiled, nodded his head to acknowledge the recognition, although his knuckles showed white. They usually did, Harry had noticed. They were remarkably uneven, like a mountain range, as if at some point they had been badly broken. Perhaps that was why he didn’t shake hands.
‘If you want more aid, we need to see progress on human rights,’ Martha persisted.
‘We have nothing to hide.’
‘Really? That’s not what I hear.’
‘And what is it, precisely, that you hear, Mrs Riley?’ Karabayev sniffed.
‘All nature of things. Domestic violence on women being the norm. Bride kidnapping. Harassment of the gay community. And I can give you a list of opponents who seem to have disappeared inside your prisons.’ As she was speaking she reached out to stroke one of the dogs that was prowling around the table in search of more treats. In return what she got was a deep, glottal growl and a curled lip that revealed large yellow teeth.
‘I’d advise against that, Mrs Riley,’ the President warned. ‘They’re not pets.’ His voice had grown quiet, almost soft, but he was no longer even pretending to smile. ‘As for lists, I can offer you lists, too, if that’s what you want. About your own country. Unless I am very much mistaken, Britain has the highest prison population in Europe. Isn’t that so? And the highest levels of crime, the highest levels of homelessness. And what did your Leader of the Opposition say just last week? I seem to remember he talked about cities littered with drug addicts where the streets are patrolled by pimps and prostitutes.’ He brushed a piece of imaginary lint from the front of his jacket. ‘We can all play games with statistics, Mrs Riley, but I find it a fruitless exercise. In Ta’argistan, we do our best, in difficult circumstances.’
Beg joined the battle. His accent was less fluent than his President’s, yet his voice conveyed remarkable passion. ‘Twenty years ago, there was no freedom in our country. The half that wasn’t used as a training ground by Soviet special forces was used as a dumping ground for its nuclear industry. And we need no lectures about prisons, Mrs Riley. Both the President and I had the pleasure of spending several years as guests of our Soviet masters. If our hands aren’t yet as clean as you might like, it’s only because we haven’t finished washing them of foreign dirt.’
Karabayev took up the reins once more. ‘Please don’t mistake us for barbarians, Mrs Riley. Look around you. These beautiful artefacts were being fashioned at a time when in your own country I believe the natives wore animal skins and daubed their bodies in coloured mud.’
She was about to protest that she had been born an American, but held her tongue. Somehow, she doubted that waving the Stars and Stripes would help.
‘This place was the crossroads of many ancient civilizations. We are a proud people, an ancient race. We ask for nothing other than respect.’
‘And a little aid,’ she reminded him.
Karabayev was on his feet, his face stiff. ‘I’m sure we could swap stories all night, but you will have to continue without me, I fear. Affairs of state, you understand. I shall leave you in Amir Beg’s capable hands. Goodnight.’
With a final snuffle, he was gone, pursued by the dogs. Bowles glared at Martha, she fixed her gaze on her mare’s milk, and Sid Proffit took another, and longer, exploratory sip. Meanwhile, Harry’s heart sank. The President had disappeared, and with him had vanished any chance Harry might have had of simply asking for Zac’s release, as an act of friendship. Martha had really mucked that one up. Blown it to pieces. It had always been a long shot, he knew, but so much less painful for him than any of the alternatives. His eyes were drawn once more to Beg’s obliterated knuckles. Something about this man told Harry that nothing would ever be achieved here without very considerable pain.
Bowles’ eyes continued to glow red with anger, as if with a little more focus they might encourage Martha into an act of spontaneous combustion. There would be words later, yet the hole in the evening was quickly filled as Beg nodded towards Sydykov and the President’s chair was removed. One of the servant girls – Harry wanted to use the term waitress, but there had been a feudal touch about the entire proceeding – took Beg’s chair and put it in the President’s empty place. Harry couldn’t help but feel there was something symbolic in the act; it was as though Beg was staking a claim. And as though in proof of his independence, another nod of his head brought alcohol. Beer and vodka. From Kazakhstan and Finland.
‘Bit of a miracle,’ Proffit declared jovially, wobbling his whiskers. ‘Fruit juice into wine. Whatever next?’
‘I thought it was forbidden,’ Bobby Malik said.
‘Not at all,’ Beg replied, draining his glass of vodka and holding it out in his crooked hand to be refilled. ‘It’s simply that the President has a gastric complaint which is inflamed by alcohol.’ He looked around the table and smiled. ‘I don’t.’ He seemed entirely at ease standing in for the President, and for another hour the dinner continued as those present broke up into groups around the table and Beg talked with animation and considerable informality one by one to his guests.
It was near the end of the evening before Beg joined Harry, who was standing admiring one of the displays, a figurine of beaten gold, a mountain goat whose right leg had gone missing somewhere along the centuries. Yet the damage couldn’t detract from the elegance of the craftsmanship. Karabayev had been right. Nothing like this could have been produced in Britain at that time, not for another thousand years.
‘Beautiful, is it not?’ Beg enquired.
‘I find it stunning. The rest of the artefacts, too.’
‘They were uncovered almost ten years ago in burial
grounds in the south of our country. Yale University gave a grant to help us preserve the collection.’
‘More aid.’
‘A necessity of life in a country such as ours.’
As Harry turned to face Beg, he realized the Ta’argi was smaller than he had realized, a good seven inches shorter than himself, forcing him to lean down to make sure he caught everything that was said. It made their conversation almost conspiratorial. It was the chance he had been looking for.
‘Mr Jones, you are most welcome in my country. I know very little about you – you haven’t visited us before. You have kept very quiet this evening – and you are not drinking.’
‘Don’t worry, nothing religious. Just pacing myself.’
‘I hope we haven’t bored you. I would like us to become good friends.’
Harry was trying to judge the moment, and this was too soon, but it wasn’t a situation he controlled and his time was short. The other man had given him an opening, so he felt obliged to gamble. ‘We have a lot in common, Mr Beg.’
‘Really?’ Beg smiled, as if the thought gave him pleasure.
‘Yes. Like you I spent much of my professional life at war with the Soviets. Although not perhaps at such close quarters as yourself.’
‘Then you have been fortunate.’
‘I tried to help some of the resistance groups.’ He made it sound like charitable work, which was deliberately misleading. What Harry had done, during his time as a member of the SAS, was to help train the mujahedin in Afghanistan.
‘I hope you and your colleagues will be as keen to assist us now the Soviets have gone.’
Harry offered no immediate reply. He’d been sent into Afghanistan not to deliver aid but to show the rebels how to use their Stinger missiles and blast Soviet helicopters out of the sky, in mountains not three hundred miles from where they were standing.
‘It’s that work which brought you here?’ Beg pressed.
‘Let me say that my work has given me a wide range of interests,’ Harry responded.
‘Indeed?’ Beg raised his glass to his lips and sipped; he had to use both hands, gripping the glass with difficulty, he couldn’t fully unbend his fingers. ‘And may I ask what your interests are in Ta’argistan?’
Harry admired the way in which Beg seemed to pick up on every nuance. He wasn’t a man to be underrated, and that made him entirely the right man for Harry’s purpose.
‘I have heard a story that an old acquaintance of mine is here. You know how stories fly around.’
‘Indeed.’
‘An American. By the name of Zac Kravitz. The suggestion is that he’s found himself in difficulty and is having trouble getting home. That causes great pain to his many friends and family.’
‘Indeed,’ Beg said for the third time, in the manner of a professor listening to a student’s dissertation and unwilling to commit himself.
‘May I be blunt?’
‘It seems you already are, Mr Jones.’
‘I don’t want to follow the path Mrs Riley seems intent on treading, making wild public protests about injustices. In truth, Mr Beg, I don’t know whether any injustice has been done. I neither know the facts nor care much about them. But I and his friends would be exceedingly grateful to get him home. Exceedingly grateful.’ The words were repeated slowly, as though dragging a great weight.
Beg’s eyes bored into Harry from above his spectacles, unblinking, assessing, until finally he used his knuckle to move his glasses back up his nose. ‘Then I think what you are suggesting mirrors Mrs Riley’s path precisely. Financial aid in return for – certain considerations.’
‘But entirely privately.’
One of the servants came to replenish Beg’s glass but he waved her away impatiently. She scuttled to a safe distance.
‘I would ensure that a substantial sum of aid was made available without strings,’ Harry continued, ‘and directed through whatever channels were deemed appropriate to prevent it becoming a matter of public controversy.’
He was offering a bribe. Beg took no offence. Such things were accepted practice along most stretches of the Silk Road. Harry knew what the next question would be. He would be asked to state how much, then they would haggle – which raised the question, how much was Zac worth to him? How do you place a value on a friend’ consider-able means, his father had been a swashbuckling pirate and had died in the arms of a disgracefully young mistress, leaving behind a fair fortune, and even though the stock-market chaos and Harry’s short-lived marriage to his predatory second wife had kicked painful chunks out of it, still there was enough. Life in this part of the world was valued pretty cheaply, although Harry suspected Beg’s appetites might be larger than most. Somewhere in the middle there would be a compromise, a figure that would satisfy them both. Yet what Beg said next took Harry by surprise.
‘It is a very interesting proposition you make, Mr Jones. But it suffers from one small flaw.’
They were like two men facing each other on a tightrope, each waiting for the other to make his move.
‘We have no American prisoners,’ Beg said quietly. ‘Goodnight, Mr Jones. Take great care.’ He moved away and the evening was at its end.
Harry had gambled. He had failed. He had no fall-back plan. And in the process, he had made himself a marked man.
Tiny spaceships of snow hovered inquisitively around them as they climbed back into their minibus for the journey back to the hotel. The roads were still crowded with night traffic – a surprisingly large number of German and Japanese cars, Harry noticed, all old, mostly imported second-hand from Western Europe, and some almost certainly stolen. For a while they followed a Mercedes van that still bore the fading logo of a German haulage company. Nothing here was quite what it seemed. Through the darkness and the snow, the people of Ashkek scurried about their business.
The bus swayed and bounced along the darkened road and over substantial ruts, although whether these were caused by poor maintenance or uncleared ice it was difficult to tell. As they had seated themselves, Roddy Bowles and Martha had what in diplomatic circles would have been termed a frank exchange. He had challenged what he called her unpardonable rudeness to the President. She had countered that it would have been difficult for him to hear let alone understand what was being said with his head stuck halfway up the President’s arse. He had accused her of flagrant discourtesy. She had replied, in earshot of all, that she would have taken his advice about manners more seriously if he hadn’t spent so much of the dinner with his hand creeping up her thigh. After that they decided to suspend hostilities until another day, and found seats at opposite ends of the bus.