Read Online The Afghan by Frederick Forsyth - Free Book Online

after all. Seven days after the remark in the back of the limousine he rang his brother.
    Mike Martin was lifting the last clutch of unbroken tiles off his precious roof. At last he could start on the laying of the roofing felt and the battens to keep it down. Within a week he could be waterproof. He heard the tinkling of Lillibulero from his mobile phone. It was in the pocket of his jerkin which was hanging from a nail nearby. He inched across the now dangerously frail rafters to reach it. The screen said it was his brother in Washington.
    ‘Hi, Terry.’
    ‘Mike, it’s me.’ He could still not work out how people he was ringing already knew who he was. ‘I’ve done something stupid and I want to ask your pardon. About a week ago I shot my mouth off.’
    ‘Great. What did you say?’
    ‘Never mind. Look, if ever you get a visitation from any men in suits – you know who I mean – you are to tell them to piss off. What I said was stupid. If anyone visits—’
    From his eagle’s nest Mike Martin could see the charcoal-grey Jaguar nosing slowly up the track that led from the lane to the barn.
    ‘It’s OK, bro,’ he said gently, ‘I think they’re here.’
    The two spymasters sat on folding camp chairs and Mike Martin on the bole of a tree that was about to be chainsawed into bits for camp-fire timber. Martin listened to the ‘pitch’ from the American and cocked an eyebrow at Steve Hill.
    ‘Your call, Mike. Our government has pledged the White House total cooperation on whatever they want or need, but that stops short of pressuring anyone to go on a no-return mission.’
    ‘And would this one fit that category?’
    ‘We don’t think so,’ Marek Gumienny interjected. ‘If we could even discover the name and whereabouts of one single AQ operative who would know what is going down here, we’d pull you out and do the rest. Just listening to the scuttlebutt might do the trick.’
    ‘But, passing off . . . I don’t think I could pass for an Arab any more. In Baghdad fifteen years ago I made myself invisible by being a humble gardener living in a shack. There was no question of surviving an interrogation by the Mukhabarat. This time you’d be looking at intensive questioning. Why would someone who has been in American hands for five years not have become a turncoat?’
    ‘Sure, we figure they would question you. But with luck the questioner would be a high-ranker brought in for the job. At which point you break out and finger the man for us. We’ll be standing right by, barely yards away.’
    ‘This’ – Martin tapped the file on the man in the Guantanamo cell – ‘is an Afghan. Ex-Taliban. That means Pashtun. I never got to be fluent in Pashto. I’d be spotted by the first Afghan on the plot.’
    ‘There would be months of tutorials, Mike,’ said Steve Hill. ‘No way you go until you feel you are ready. Not even then if you don’t think it will work. And you would be staying well away from Afghanistan. The good news about Afghan fundos is that they hardly ever appear outside their own manor. Do you think you could talk poor Arabic with the accent of a Pashtun of limited education?’
    Mike Martin nodded.
    ‘Possibly. And if the towelheads bring in an Afghan who really knew this guy?’
    There was silence from the other two men. If that happened, everyone round the fire knew it would be the end.
    As the two spymasters stared at their feet rather than explain what would happen to an agent unmasked at the heart of Al-Qaeda, Martin flipped open the file on his lap. What he saw caused him to freeze.
    The face was five years older, lined by suffering and looking ten years more than his calendar age. But it was still the boy from the mountains, the near-corpse at Qala-i-Jangi.
    ‘I know this man,’ he said quietly. ‘His name is Izmat Khan.’
    The American stared at him open-mouthed.
    ‘How the hell can you know him? He’s been cooped up at Gitmo since he was captured five years