risen through the ranks with admirable speed. Reading his file, Leo noted that the soldier had no experience of living abroad and very little combat experience. He was a career soldier and Leo did not find it difficult to imagine the shock of his arrival in Afghanistan, so far from his familiar world. Nara said:
– I don’t understand why we’re coming here. We know he’s in Kabul. They’ve already searched his room here and found nothing. What do you expect to find?
Leo shrugged an answer.
– They might have missed something.
Nara pressed her point.
– Such as what?
– A room tells us a lot about a person.
Nara scrunched her face up in earnest concentration, trying to figure out how this might be true. Failing, she observed:
– Searching a suspect’s apartment might make sense in the Soviet Union. There are very few possessions in most Afghan homes, some clothes, basic furniture and cooking utensils. A room tells us nothing about the people. Is this not also true for Soviet soldiers too? They are issued with standard kit. What would be different from one room to another?
– There are always differences, even if two people own exactly the same objects, how they lay them out would still be of interest. And there are plenty of things that are not standardized. What about money, cigarettes, bottles of alcohol, letters, papers, a diary…
Nara pondered this.
– A diary? Do many Russians keep a diary?
– More women than men, but soldiers often find it helpful to make note of the day’s events.
– I would be surprised if there were fifty diaries in the whole of Kabul, maybe in the whole of Afghanistan. Do you expect this soldier to keep a diary?
– We’ll find out.
Fyodor Mazurov had been appointed a small bedroom on the top floor. It was peculiar accommodation for an officer managing a bloody occupation. Instead of a steel bunk of the kind that the military typically slept in, Fyodor Mazurov had slept in an elaborate four-poster bed, for no other reason than it was there to be used. The room was furnished with a chandelier, entirely smashed, like a collection of splintered teeth, and a walnut writing cabinet, one of the few items of furniture in the palace that remained unscathed. Lenin’s portrait stared out from over the bed, nailed up in haste and too small for the space it occupied, the shadow on the wallpaper from the previous portrait dwarfing his image.
Leo walked to the far corner of the room, taking in the sight before him. A man had been given this small space to make his own – his character would surely have made some mark on it. Nara remained by the door, apprehensive of disturbing his process, a sceptical observer. Leo asked her:
– What can you see?
She looked about the room without a great degree of confidence, doubting that she would see anything of interest. Leo ushered her over.
– Stand with me.
She joined him, regarding the room from the same position. She said:
– I see a bed.
Leo moved forward, peering under the bed. There was a pair of boots. He examined the soles: they were heavy duty, standard-issue black leather boots, too hot for Afghanistan, abandoned because they were impractical. He stood up, sliding his hand under the mattress, flipping it over. There was nothing underneath. Moving to the cabinet, he found it had been cleared. There were no papers. He peered into the bin. No rubbish had been thrown away. Leo said to Nara:
– Finding nothing can be a useful discovery. We know this much. It wasn’t a spontaneous or impulsive decision to run. He’s thought about it carefully. He tidied the room. He expected us to search it.
Leo opened the drawer, surprised to see his own reflection staring back up at him. It was an ornate mirror, larger than the portrait of Lenin, a wall mirror. He held it up, examining it. The mirror was heavy, an antique, backed with silver, a pattern engraved around the edge. He looked around the room.
– Where did this come from?
Nara pointed to the image of Lenin:
– Hasn’t he swapped the mirror for Lenin?
– No, this is much smaller than the picture that previously hung here.
Leo peered at the surface: the edges were covered with fingerprints.
– The mirror has been handled a lot.
Switching into Russian, he addressed the guard standing at the door.
– Do you know where this mirror came from?
The guard shook his head. Leo asked:
– Where’s the bathroom?
Carrying the mirror under his arm, Leo and Nara followed the guard to the bathroom, a gloomy room badly damaged by fighting: the windows were broken, and replaced with temporary boards. The mirrors had been shattered.
– There’s no mirror here.
Leo addressed the guard again.
– How do you shave?
– I don’t live here.
Leo hurried out of the room, back into the hall, examining the different shadows on the walls. He found a likely one. He hung the mirror: it was the same size, returned to its original place. He glanced at Nara.
– He took one of the few undamaged mirrors in the building and kept it in his room.
Nara moved closer, slowly understanding the process she was witnessing, excited by the significance of the discovery.
– The officer was concerned about his appearance?
– And what does that mean?
– He was vain?
– He met a woman.
Greater Province of Kabul Murad Khani District
Nara proved invaluable in assessing the lists of women that the deserting officer had come into contact with. She knew most of the names either personally or by reputation and was quick to rule out those who would never have allowed themselves to become embroiled in the scandal of a romance. Leo was not convinced that his young protegee understood that love could make even the most reliable of characters behave unpredictably, doubting that Nara had ever fallen in love. But he decided to go along with her initial observations, having very little knowledge of the women on the list himself.
Despite Fyodor Mazurov having spent three months in the country very few opportunities for romance would have presented themselves. Unlike many war zones and capital cities, there were no brothels in Kabul, though Leo had heard mention from several senior military figures of a desire to create one for the influx of soldiers. The women would be brought in from abroad, from Communist allies in the east perhaps, flown in like crates of bullets or artillery shells with the brothels run not as a commercial venture but as part of the military infrastructure, kept secret to ensure that the pious sensibilities of the local population were not offended. This project, no doubt appointed a lewd code name of some sort, had not yet been implemented and so the young officer must have fallen in love with an Afghan woman. The status of women in the country meant that there were no female shopkeepers, no women at leisure in the teashops, and little likelihood of chance encounters on the street. Nara was adamant
