—We leave first thing tomorrow morning. I need people to negotiate, people I trust, which is why I want Nara Mir to come with us. She’s proved herself to be a promising agent. It would be good to have at least one Afghan, for the sake of appearances.

Departing as abruptly as he arrived, he stopped by the door, looking back at the two of them.

—You will translate everything I said for her, won’t you?

The captain shut the door, leaving the two of them alone together.

The Road from Kabul to Jalalabad

100 Kilometres East of Kabul - 25 Kilometres West of Jalalabad

Next Day

Leo sat in the back seat of the armoured UAZ beside Nara, the pair of them looking in opposite directions, their bodies angled away from each other. They’d been in this position for most of the long, uncomfortable journey, remaining silent and avoiding eye contact, staring at the view as their convoy had left Kabul, setting out along one of the most dangerous roads in the world, en route to Jalalabad. Forced into taking a diversion around the mountains, humbled before the Afghan landscape, the road passed through the Surobi Gorge where it twisted around sheer drops of several hundred metres, hillsides spotted with burnt-out carcasses of crashed vehicles. This was ambush territory, as lethal as the exit from the Salang Pass where insurgents hid in the mountains, picking off fuel convoys. A military officer was driving with the captain in the front beside him. There was a second vehicle in support with four more Soviet soldiers, a modest military convoy with radios ready to call for air support should it be required. Upon occasion the captain turned around and addressed some comment to Leo, his inscrutable, angular features providing no clue as to whether he guessed what had happened last night. It would be entirely consistent with Soviet protocol if the newly constructed apartment blocks were bugged.