Cable From Kabul

by Nigel Tranter

Genres: Action & Adventure

Synopsis

MACREADY BELIEVED DEAD STOP PROJECT IN BALANCE STOP PLEASE COME STOP said the cable which reached the respectable Fenchurch Street office of Cranstoun and Macready, Importers and Exporters. Plain words, but enough to baffle David Cranstoun, since his partner, Jim MacReady, was not supposed to be anywhere near Kabul, the project was a complete mystery, and the signature, "Coldstrom", rang no bells. Impulsively, David gets on the next plane to Afghanistan - and finds himself in the midst of an intrigue that involves the three nations that surround Afghanistan - China, Russia and Pakistan - and a beautiful woman. It will also lead to a terrifying trek through some of the most unforgiving mountains on the planet. Cranstoun learns a lot about himself, about the murky ruthlessness of international politics and about the sheer savagery of the great ice mountains of the Hindu Kush. 'One of Scotland's most prolific and respected writers' The Times

Release date: February 14, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

AS a partner, Jim MacReady wouldn’t have been everyone’s cup of tea. I admit that. Sometimes he wasn’t even mine. We ran an import-export business, Cranstoun and MacReady Ltd. Or, at least, I ran the business and Jim merely ran, most of the time – ran riot, into trouble, into debt. Inevitably I had to spend too much of my more precious time running after him.

Yet I had an affection for Jim, in an exasperated sort of way. More than that, a kind of wry, reluctant admiration that a man has for another who can do the things, the crazy, full-blooded, damn-your-eyes sort of things, that he himself would never do. Admittedly most of the near-disasters that had hit Cranstoun and MacReady had been of Jim’s making – but then, so had all the really big deals which had put us on our feet. Like the Turkish Army tyres concession, and the Beihan bulk whisky contract. My own contribution to the firm’s fortunes was apt to be less spectacular, the humdrum day-to-day running of affairs, and an occasional headlong dash to Leipzig World Fair, or something like that.

Jim and I had been to school together – George Heriot’s, in Edinburgh – with nothing in common but a mutual enthusiasm for the Mountaineering Club. He hadn’t been the type for university, and we had lost touch with each other for more than ten years. Then we met up again, of all places, in one of those ridiculous cable-railway contraptions that take you up the lower slopes of the Tyrolean mountains. The thing stuck, half-way up, and there we were, just the two of us, sitting back to back on something like a wheel-less Irish jaunting-car hanging on a string high above the pine forests. By the time they got the thing going again, Jim had half talked me into Cranstoun and MacReady. When we got down, after climbing the Nockspitz, I was lost – or found. I had been tiring of my painfully correct and damned dull job with Grünwalds, the merchant bankers, anyway; and my father’s death had left me with a little money to invest.

That was nine years ago. If I hadn’t actually acquired a fortune in those years, I was at least a lot better off. Though it would be safe to say that I was also a lot more than nine years older.

And now this. The cablegram on my desk, however much it lacked in definition, was definite enough. It said baldly: MACREADY BELIEVED DEAD STOP PROJECT IN BALANCE STOP PLEASE COME STOP COLDSTROM. It was addressed to me personally at this office in Fenchurch Street, London, and dated from Kabul two days previously.

MacReady believed dead. Just like that! No details. I could no more take it in than I could accept it. Jim, whatever else he was, was the most alive person I had ever known. Jim MacReady and being dead just didn’t go together. I could accept that almost anybody else could die suddenly, myself included. But not Jim. Believed dead. Not died, or killed. Believed dead . . .

There was a lot more than just that to mystify me about this cable. It’s source, for one thing. Jim was supposed to be touring the oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf, allegedly on business – though the last I had heard of him had been from the Yemen, which was unscheduled enough. Admittedly Jim was like that. The world was very much his oyster – even if the Middle East was his favourite stamping ground – and he was liable to turn up anywhere, usually urgently wiring me for money, credit backing or strange data all too seldom obviously commercial in character. But surprisingly frequently commercial advantage did follow – though sometimes quite the reverse. These turn-ups, I had to agree, were very apt to be in trouble-spots of one sort or another; but then, Jim had a strongly-held conviction that trouble and money went together. “Trade follows the gun!” he used to say. Mind you, he was no gun-runner. I would never have stood for that. I don’t think Jim himself would, either. But sometimes there were undoubted opportunities for business enterprise in areas which conventional and respectable traders were apt to avoid – traders rather like myself.

Used to say . . .! Was that me beginning to accept this thing as being true, what the cable said? When there was so much that was queer about the thing?

Admitting that Jim might have jumped the fifteen hundred odd miles from the Persian Gulf – or even the Yemen – to Kabul, what was he likely to be doing in Afghanistan? As far as my information went, it was a far from tradeful area. And, for that matter, no longer a trouble-spot, whatever it had been in the old North-West Frontier days. And who was Coldstrom? I’d never heard the name in my life.

Project in balance? That was a strange way of referring to any order or deal. Immediately after the word dead. It seemed to imply an importance even above the possible death of my partner. Either Coldstrom, whoever he was, was a cold-blooded insensitive ox – or there was something here more than the usual business project.

I doubted whether Coldstrom was all that ox-like. The use of the word “please”, in that cablegram, struck me as odd. “Please come.” A strange note, somehow. It could be just urgency. Or a certain unfamiliarity with the language. Coldstrom sounded Scandinavian, of course; probably Swedish.

I nibbled at my pen in a state of indecision. I hate to be undecided about what to do next. I like my route mapped out before me. A known climb, a clearly-defined ascent pegged out for me, and however steep, Difficult, V. Diff. or even Severe, Tortoise David Cranstoun will make the top, sooner or later. But none of this route-finding stuff, no trail-laying. That’s for the Jim MacReadys of this world.

I flicked on the intercomm. “Miss Lucas,” I said, “I’m going out for a bit. Won’t be very long, I expect.”

“Yes, Mr. Cranstoun,” my secretary said. “Anywhere I can ring you, if you’re wanted?”

“Shouldn’t think so. I’m going for a walk, actually.”

“You’re . . . you’re going for a walk . . .!”

“That’s right.” I switched the contraption off, and pushed back my chair. The bowler hat was inevitable – but I made one of my decisions and left the neatly furled umbrella on its hook. I slipped out by my private door, and down the stairs.

I like walking. I think best when I’m walking, in fact. E.C.4 isn’t quite the best place for it perhaps, at 11.30 in the forenoon. But it isn’t very far down to the river from Fenchurch Street, and there at least I could get away from the traffic and stretch my legs. The smell of the river, too, is something of a help – to me, at any rate. It’s not exactly ozone, but it does smell of more than city, exhaust-fumes and jaded humanity.

At 12.15, and telling myself that I was a fool, I rang Miss Lucas from a call-box.

“I don’t know how often there are flights to Afghanistan,” I told her. “Or even whether there are direct flights, at all. Probably not. Probably you have to go to Teheran, or somewhere like that, and get a local plane. Anyway, find out. Then book me a berth on the next plane out after, say, six this evening. That should give me time enough.”

I distinctly heard the swallow at the other end of the line. “You did say . . . Afghanistan, Mr. Cranstoun?”

“Yes. Try the B.O.A.C. Karachi run. Or Pan-Am. I think they go Istanbul – Teheran – New Delhi. Or Quantas, to Bahrein and Dubai – that’s the way Mr. MacReady usually goes . . .”

“But, Mr. Cranstoun – you can’t do this!” Miss Lucas’s voice, which had gone unnaturally weak, was regaining something of its normal efficient crispness. “I mean, not right away, like that. You have engagements. A meeting tomorrow forenoon, at Montague and Kohn Brothers. And you’re lunching with Sir Peter Bryce tomorrow.”

“You’ll have to postpone all that.”

“But . . . look, Mr. Cranstoun. This Montague and Kohn meeting is important. You’ve been working it up for . . .”

“Damn Montague and Kohn and all their brothers! Likewise that pompous ass, Bryce. This is important, too – much more important. See to it, Miss Lucas.”

There was an obvious pause at the other end. Miss Lucas knew that Jim MacReady acted in this sort of fashion, but not the responsible senior partner, Mr. David Cranstoun.

“Better check up on the visas situation. Entry permits – that sort of thing. At the Embassy . . .”

“Quite, Mr. Cranstoun. I am aware of the procedure.”

“Fine, then. I’ll be in in mid-afternoon. I can sign anything urgent then. Now – I’ve got things to do.”

I slammed down the receiver, feeling vaguely pleased with myself. I had never spoken to Miss Lucas like that, in six years. Why being rude in a rather juvenile way can give a man a sense of satisfaction, I don’t know. But it was something after the way in which Jim might have behaved, if that counted for anything.

Afghanistan remained a remote and improbable sort of place, from the plush inside of a B.O.A.C. jet V.C.10, all the way out via Paris, Geneva, Istanbul and into Asia Minor. Even when the nice swivel-bottomed hostess brought round fruit salad and ice-cream and announced that we were now over Mount Ararat – where the Ark went aground, you know – and that there would be time for coffee before Teheran, I still had no more sense of the unusual than I would have had on the Night Scot to Edinburgh. But, hit by the blast of heat when stepping out at Teheran Airport, and waiting seemingly endlessly for the connecting flight to Kabul, I began to realise that conditions were changing. And later, in the small Iranair plane, in company with five other curiously garbed passengers, two of them armed to the teeth and presumably militarists of some sort, it was increasingly borne in on me that I had left E.C.4 well behind. This plane didn’t mount to the stratosphere, but bumped and lurched its way amongst the dramatic thermals above the Great Persian Desert like a yo-yo on a string, with the most intimidating of the soldiers muttering prayers to Allah. Long before darkness descended on us like a dropped curtain, and we began to climb steeply to clear the mountains that were the first, lowermost eaves of the roof of the world, I was prepared to accept that Afghanistan was still probably other than suburban, that Samarkand might well be the stop after next, and that I was almost certainly an even bigger fool for coming than I had guessed in that Thames-side call-box.

Some time in the middle of the night I tottered down on to the tarmac at Kabul, shivering. It was unexpectedly cold – but then, though it was flat hereabouts, we were six thousand feet above sea-level. There were a lot of big stars about, which made the naked electric lights of the airport seem tawdry, but there was no prospect, no activity, no sense of a city nearby – just thin cold air, a smell of dust, and a sort of all-pervading emptiness. I’m afraid I rather cursed Jim MacReady.

By the time I had registered as a visitor through the Tourist Bureau, with instructions to contact the police in the morning, and had an argument with a crumpled, sleepy-eyed individual who I thought wanted to sell me something but turned out to be a doctor wishing to examine me for vaccinations for cholera and smallpox, my fellow passengers had disappeared. Only a single car remained in the car-park. It was a surprisingly large, modern and expensive-looking American Dodge sedan, shining with a lot of chromium. I was wondering whether the British Embassy had sent this for me, when what looked like a bundle of rags on the back seat bestirred itself and came to accost me. This proved to be a murderous-looking character in a peculiar pancake-like flat cap, a ragged multi-coloured robe and bare feet, who spilled words at me in a flood, gestured fiercely and smelled strongly. It took me a little time to grasp that it was the local currency called afghans and not a tribe of cut-throat fellow clansmen that he was threatening me with, and that he was in fact a taximan negotiating a price for running me into the city. I think I almost disappointed him by capitulating weakly to his first high-level negotiating price.

I got little impression of Kabul that night—just tall flat-faced shuttered buildings, mixed with shacks, more naked electric lightbulbs, dark alleys, and open sewers running down the streets. The smells made London river at its most potent seem like an English rose.

I had asked to be taken to the British Embassy, but now changed my mind. It was hardly the hour to confront that almost certainly daunting establishment. Anyway, it occurred to me, now that Afghanistan was a reality, that it might be wise to delay putting myself into the care of Her Britannic Majesty’s Foreign Service until I had made some private enquiries.

I wasn’t an expert on Afghan hotels, needless to say, and in this Miss Lucas had failed me. I tapped the brigand at the wheel on the shoulder, and said loudly, “Hotel! Hotel!” And just to make the matter crystal clear, added, “Good! Good! Good!” with a hearty laugh. I had no idea what three-star would sound like in Pushtu or Farsi or whatever these people spoke.

The driver looked at me with an access of interest. He beamed in dawning understanding, delight, indeed apparently admiration. Bobbing his head cheerfully in undoubted congratulation, he wrenched the wheel hard round, bare toes curling over the accelerator, and sent his lordly, swaying vehicle lurching right across the street in a screeching U-turn, scattering a train of donkeys which seemed to have parked itself there for the night. A bundle of off-white rags lying on the sidewalk stirred itself to scream invective and shake a bony dark fist. We sped back whence we had come.

Clearly we were heading back into the centre of the city; presumably we had gone some way out on the other side. My escort favoured me with chuckling confidences of some sort now. The reason for this change in attitude was not clear. Probably he got commission from some hotel for producing clients. I could only hope that his idea of a good hotel was not too different from mine.

Without any diminution of speed we swung into a narrow side street, dimly lit, the off-wheels actually kerbing the open sewer. My confidence began to ebb – though this might be only a short-cut.

The next lurching turn plunged us into an even narrower street, really only a lane. But, oddly enough, this was well lighted. Garish with lights, in fact, and much vivid coloured paintwork. I didn’t know whether they went in for one-way streets in Kabul – but if they didn’t, and another car came along here, or was even parked, there was going to be a clash of interests, for the big Dodge practically filled the carriageway, if it could be called that, its comprehensive chromium-plating reflecting the rainbow-lighting from all around. There was nobody actually moving about, in sight – but at the same time, somehow, no feeling that the street was asleep.

I wouldn’t say that there was actually a preponderance of red about all that lighting, but figuratively speaking it all added up to a very dusky carmine.

I suppose red-light districts are pretty much alike the world over. Or, at least, they’re always recognisable. The establishment we stopped at may have been a hotel of a sort. But if so, its bed-and-breakfast facilities were by no means its major attractions, obviously. This being a Muslim country, the enticements within were not so blatantly and specifically placarded as in the enlightened West – but the message got through pretty well, just the same.

My jehu was opening the car door in smiling pride and satisfaction at his own perspicacity and my understandable requirements. The sound of faint strange music came from within – indeed seemed to permeate the street.

“No!” I said, shaking my head. “No good. Thanks, all the same. But . . . no! Not this.”

The man’s cheerfully villainous face fell. Doubt, disbelief, near offence followed each other across his swarthy features. He got the no good, at least.

“Sorry!” I shouted. Strange how one assumes that a raised voice will help the unlettered foreigner to understand good English. “Very nice. But – not just now. Other kind of hotel. Quiet. No women. You understand? Don’t feel that way. Good hotel – but different.”

He looked me up and down – and more down than up. There might have been pity in his face now. Probably he thought me one of those people. He climbed heavily into the car again, started up, and moved off along the narrow street with a disdainful jerk. I have seldom felt so thoroughly declassed.

We went back into the main streets. In what might be called a square, he drew up before the only lit-up building there, the Kanzar Hotel. I couldn’t tell whether this one was good, good, good, but at least it had an air of somewhat seedy respectability. The driver didn’t open the door for me this time. He got out, threaded his way between sundry bodies lying asleep on the side-walk, and dumped my single bag unceremoniously on the hotel threshold and turning round held out his hand, palm open.

I seemed to remember Miss Lucas saying that there were about 200 afghans to the pound. We had bargained, I think, for 100 for the trip. I thrust 200 at him, waving away any suggestion of change – which indeed was not proffered. My bandit eyed me more with pity rather than any gratitude, and swaggered back to his car.

The Kanzar Hotel was not palatial, and smelt of strange cooking and other things perhaps best left unanalysed. But it did open its doors to me in the middle of the night, and I was shown to a reasonably clean room by what I later discovered was the proprieto. . .