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Chapter 102.
Chapter 103.
Chapter 104.
Chapter 105.
Chapter 106.
Chapter 107.
Chapter 108.
Chapter 109.
Chapter 110.
Chapter 111.
Chapter 112.
Chapter 113.
Chapter 114.
Chapter 115.
Chapter 116.
Chapter 117.
Chapter 118.
EPILOGUE 1
EPILOGUE 2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About the Publisher
THE TWO MEN knew each other of old, having fought as brothers-in-arms in various places over many years, but they had not seen each other in person for a long time.
Life for men like them had become a good deal more challenging and dangerous since September 11, 2001, so their contact was restricted to darknet chatrooms, snatched conversations on encoded VOIP systems, and, once in a blue moon, cryptic notes passed via trusted intermediaries.
Their secret conversations through these unorthodox channels were often surprisingly banal. One would grumble about the filthy weather in the grubby little town in which he was currently hiding, and the other would counter with complaints about the terrible food in his present, miserable location.
On the rare occasions when the mood was lighter, they talked of happier times, and of their families. Each had a wife and children back home, but neither expected ever again to kiss his wife nor hold his children; the path they walked was a path of shadows and sorrow, and it led in one direction only.
Their lives were full of uncertainty, and privation, and fear, and precious few comforts and the wise man cut his ties, of friendship and of blood, permanently.
Death stalked them daily, and, being only human, they sometimes wondered how it was that they, who had given so much, had ended up living like rats, while others, who had given so little, lived like kings.
Why were their days all stone and no fruit, all grit and no pearl?
Of course, each tried hard to cast this unworthy thought from his mind; it was dangerous to harbour such ideas – and not merely in the spiritual sense.
That had been the way of their lives for so long that they had almost – almost – forgotten what it was like to live normally.
And then, one day, the younger of the two men contacted his older friend via a mobile telephony app with secure, end-to-end encryption.
After the usual small talk, the younger man – a giant Chechen called Khasmohmad Kadyrov, who was presently living in a cramped room in a safe house in Cairo – made a tentative suggestion.
Very tentative.
What, he asked, if there were a way in which they might both strike the enemy and – and he tried hard not to be vulgar about this – achieve a more… earthly reward for themselves?
At first, the older man – a Yemeni called Saeed al-Shafra – was sceptical, and even hostile.
But this was something of an act.
Al-Shafra was nearly sixty, now, and he had grown tired, and listless, and, as he looked around the spartan room, in his modest, baked-mud home, in the compound on the edge of the dusty village in the dreary Balochi outpost of Nushki, it occurred to him that he was perhaps even a little bitter about the turns his life had taken.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘I have a friend,’ said Kadyrov, hesitantly. ‘A good friend, from the old days. I mean, a long way back – he’s from Vedeno, fought with the 055 at Mazar-e Sharif.’
‘I missed that party,’ said the Yemeni. ‘So many men, slaughtered like goats.’
‘Indeed,’ said Kadyrov. ‘But my friend was lucky. He got injured, some shrapnel took a chunk out of his right calf, so he got taken away before the massacre.’
‘In that sense,’ said the older man, ‘he was fortunate.’
‘I saw him last in Now Zad,’ said the Chechen. ‘Or perhaps the Korengal. I can’t remember, exactly. He’s a fighter, but lucky again, because the Americans’ – he almost spat the word – ‘they don’t know him. This is the beauty of it. Two years ago, he’s in Islamabad, he flies to Turkey, then travels to Germany. Nobody says a word to him, nobody even looks at him. For the last year, he is in England, in London. There he has made a very good contact, with someone who has a very interesting situation. Very interesting indeed. But we need funding and I know that you can find money for us.’
Khasmohmad Kadyrov talked some more, and the Yemeni called al-Shafra listened, and he smiled.
And the more he listened, the more he smiled.
And when Kadyrov had finished talking, Saeed al-Shafra looked out of his window, across the empty, sun-baked Balochi desert, which lay between his humble home and Afghanistan’s distant Helmand River, and he chuckled.
‘Oh, Khasmohmad,’ he said. ‘Khasmohmad, Khasmohmad. Truly, this is a gift from Allah.’
AT SEVEN-THIRTY, half an hour before unlocking, the prison came banging and rattling and echoing to life.
But Zeff Mahsoud and his cellmate had been up since well before sunrise, in order to perform their fajr.
Now they sat facing each other, Mahsoud on a tubular chair pushed hard against the cream-painted wall, the other man on his steel-framed bed.
‘I have a good feeling about today, brother,’ said the cellmate. ‘I think it will be good news.’
‘Inshallah, Hamid,’ said Mahsoud. ‘Time will tell.’
‘Be confident. Tonight you will be in your wife’s arms. Tomorrow…’ Hamid paused, and lowered his voice. HMP Belmarsh was not a place which rewarded the incautious. ‘Tomorrow, who knows?’
Mahsoud smiled. ‘Who knows indeed?’ he said.
Lazily, he got up and walked to the cell door, bending down to pick up the breakfast tray which had been handed over the previous night.
A plastic bowl of own-brand cornflakes, a carton of UHT milk, and a bread roll: he curled up his lip.
‘You’ll visit my friend?’ said Hamid. ‘Like I said?’
‘If I am released…’
‘You will be.’
‘If I am released, then yes, I will visit your friend.’
‘He will be most interested to meet you. I think he will have very interesting proposals for you.’
‘I