Cold, filthy and exhausted, they’d reached Dara, a small town in the northern tribal region of Pakistan that existed like the capital city of an unofficial nation. Misunderstood as a lawless buffer state, it was instead governed by the laws of survival and commerce. While Leo had expected the sight of a Soviet civilian, a woman, a badly burnt young girl and a mujahedin fighter to attract attention, this was a town entirely without convention, dominated not by religious stricture or government policy but by brazen material needs – a trading bazaar for three of the world’s top commodities: drugs, weapons and information. They were concerned with the questions of what you wanted to buy and what you wanted to sell. There were cottage heroin factories dotted through the town like teashops, bags of unprocessed opium sold for dollars, packed on the backs of mules. Weapons were tested and inspected, taken out of town and fired at tree stumps. Crates of bullets were examined as if they were treasure chests of rubies and emeralds. War funds were raised. War funds were stolen. Allegiances were bought and broken. Intelligence was sold. Victories were invented and defeats denied. From the north there was an influx of Afghan refugees, many with terrible injuries, legs sliced with shrapnel, fleeing the conflict. From the south came a trickle of Western journalists and travellers, some dressed in traditional loose-fitting clothes, others in designer khaki trousers, with sophisticated gadgets. Judging from the small number of journalists, even though this was the closest point of access to Afghanistan, Leo surmised that the war had so far failed to capture the West’s imagination. Such an absence of interest did not bode well for his defection.

Though no longer in Afghanistan, they were still in danger. The Soviets were active in the tribal region, crossing the border with a frequency that showed blatant disregard for Pakistani sovereignty. Leo had heard discussion of a series of covert operations intended to destabilize the area and bring pressure on Pakistan to patrol the full length of the border, closing it down. Extreme acts of provocation were being planned as punishment for helping the mujahedin even if Pakistan’s stated policy was neutrality. These Communist agents would be Afghan, perhaps disguised as refugees. Some were even corrupt mujahedin. Fahad found it implausible that any mujahedin fighter could be bought by the Soviets. Leo told him that he had seen lists of men who were on the Soviet payroll, identified by code names, arguing that on any side there were always men who could be bought, characters with weaknesses that could be exploited. Fahad had shaken his head in disgust, saying Leo spoke like a Westerner, rotten with compromise and ambiguity.