the door of the helicopter, a shot glanced off the hard perspex in front of the pilot. Chambers had just scrambled in behind Norquist when the helicopter rose, tipped forward and roared away.
They climbed to 1,000 feet before the co-pilot turned round to check that his passengers were strapped in and saw blood was coming from a wound in Norquist’s neck.
He was already unconscious.
CHAPTER TWO
On a grassy bank running down to a swollen stream about ten miles from the Albanian border, a man dozed in the morning light. The sun had not yet risen above the hill in front of him so the ground and his bedding were still wet. For some time he had been aware of his travelling companions moving around him, packing and rolling up the sheets which they’d hung between the bushes to give shelter. They coughed and grumbled to each other, mostly in languages he didn’t understand. But the sounds of the camp breaking in the early morning were familiar – men stiff from a night in the open, wondering how they found themselves without bed, food or a good woman.
Someone was prodding the campfire into life. At first he didn’t understand why: they’d eaten the last of the food the night before – dried lamb and a broth made from chicken bones – and he knew there was no coffee or tea. Then he smelled the mint and remembered they’d gathered it in a ditch the night before. They’d made mint tea and now one of them was beside him, nudging the back of his hand with a warm tin cup. He opened an eye to see a grin of chipped teeth, spreading in an unwashed, slightly pock-marked face: the youngest of the three Kurds, an amiable character who was always jollying the others on. He said in English, ‘Drink, mister, for your health.’
The party began to move off down the bank towards the track, but he still couldn’t bring himself to jump up and follow. The delicious memory of his dream was still fresh and part of him didn’t want to leave it behind. He watched shafts of light moving over the hill to catch the top of a tree nearby. A tiny bird, one that he had never seen before, was flitting to and from a vine that had become detached from the tree. Each time it arrived to perch on the twig, it bobbed up and down, checking the area for predators before diving into the shade of the vine to feed its young. He realised the bird must have been there all night, within a few yards of the fire and the men under the shelters, and he marvelled at its nerve and discretion.
At length the sunlight fell on the ground above him and he shook himself from his reverie, stood up and stretched. He had only a few possessions and it didn’t take long for him to bundle them up and tie them together with the belt that he’d kept with him these past six years. As he made his way down the bank, slipping on the damp grass, the men’s voices were brought to him on a soft, warm wind. It would be a good day, he thought. Yes, they were due some luck after all that had happened to them. Maybe they would find a way of crossing the border into Greece without being arrested and treated like dirt.
In the past he might have prayed to Allah. Now it did not even occur to him. After so long in the holy war the Western part of him was reasserting itself. He was leaving the wilderness and the barbarity behind and he was taking back his old name – Karim Khan – and with it the hope of finding the young medical student, who drank alcohol and loved and charmed but who was no less in awe of the Prophet because of these activities. Belief had not deserted him, but faith in sacrifice had gone, along with the nomme de guerre – Mujahad, or soldier of Islam – and just now he would rely on himself and not God’s will.
He climbed down on to the track and noticed the bunches of twigs that had collected in the ruts along the road, borne there by the rainwater of the day before. Beetles were feeding on insects drowned in the storm. The pulverised rock in the road’s surface sparkled with chips of quartz. Everything seemed beautiful and in its place that morning, and he felt a surge of optimism. He shuddered at the words that had taken him to war: ‘Allah has conferred on those who fight with their wealth and their lives a higher rank than those who stay at home.’
No more of that. No more slaughter. No more chaos.
But whatever he thought, he was still the veteran campaigner and his ability to march on an empty stomach was undiminished. Soon the stragglers of the group ahead came into view. As always it was his two fellow Pakistanis at the rear. Both were very thin and clearly at the end of their resources. Nine months the two had been on the road. Having started from a mountain village in Northern Pakistan they had crossed to Iran and walked to the Turkish border. Most of their money had gone when a con man promised them flights and a visa to Greece, but they kept enough to get them to Bulgaria. Ahead of them went the Turk, Mehmet, and the Arabs, a Jordanian called Mumim, and a Palestinian from Lebanon who gave his name as Jasur. Out in front were the three Kurds – the young man who had given him mint tea, his uncle and a friend from his uncle’s village. They had the promise of work in Athens and had only been travelling for a matter of weeks. They were the freshest of the party and it was clear they felt themselves out of place in this group of migrants, harried from one country to another and sometimes reduced to eating leaves and grubs to survive.
High in the pastures above them Khan noticed one or two locals moving about with their beasts. Cow-bells sounded with an unmusical clank across the valley. He was glad his party was not walking bunched up together because that always made people suspicious. In this country, where Muslims were so feared, they had to keep their wits about them. The men with dark skin – the two Pakistanis and the Jordanian, who had African blood in him – had to be especially careful. Not for the first time, he was grateful for his own light colouring, which family tradition held came from Alexander the Great’s soldiers. Some part of him registered that he should feel at home here in Macedonia.
As he was having these thoughts he noticed the Kurds hesitate. He stopped and put his hand up to the sun and tried to see through the shimmer of heat already coming off the road. They had seen something in front of them. One had dropped his bed-roll and knapsack and spread his arms in surrender. He was showing that they weren’t carrying weapons. His companions turned round to consult the others, or maybe to warn them.
Khan saw a figure moving in the clump of bushes on the left of the road. He was wearing a uniform that was exactly the same colour and tone as the shaded vegetation. A wisp of smoke came from behind him – a campfire – and beyond that tarpaulins had been stretched across the lower boughs of the trees. On the other side of the road, parked up in a cutting, were a truck and two covered jeeps.
The Kurds didn’t seem to know what to do. One of them began to retrace his steps. He was gesticulating, shooing the rest of the party back up the way they had come. More soldiers moved from the shade onto the yellow strip of road; they swaggered and almost dragged their weapons along the ground. Khan recognised the type – soft, untested, conscript bullies. He had seen them before in the Balkans and he knew exactly what was going to happen next.
One of the soldiers, probably the first man to move from cover, raised his gun waist high, fired and brought down the retreating man. The other two Kurds turned back in disbelief to the soldiers, raising their hands. They dropped to their knees to beg for their lives but were killed the instant they touched the ground. One slumped forward; the other keeled over in slow motion.
With the first shot the remainder of the party had taken to their heels. The two Arabs and the Turk ran straight up towards Khan, but the Pakistanis had thrown away their possessions and dived for the bushes. The soldiers were galvanised. They ran across the road, climbed into their jeeps and, with great swirls of dust, turned the vehicles and tore up the valley towards the three men still on the road. Unlike the first shots that had killed the Kurds, the fusillade of gunfire that came from the lead jeep echoed around the hills. The Turk was hit in the leg but limped on. One of the Arabs stopped and tried to drag him to safety, but the soldiers were upon them in a second and both men were mown down. Khan moved to the side of the road into shade. He watched the jeep pull up and the soldiers unleash a volley of shots into the corpses. The other jeep had stopped a little further back so that the Pakistanis could be hunted down. Shortly afterwards Khan heard another crackle of shots. A man cried out. Then a lone shot – the coup de grace – snapped through the woods.
Khan shouted at the Palestinian who was now about a hundred yards away. He knew their only chance was to head off into the trees above them. He yelled and yelled at the man as if willing him to win a race. Khan had been in such situations before and, judging by the way Jasur was bent double and zigzagging the final few yards towards him, it wasn’t the first time he’d been under fire either. Together they slipped through a gap in the bushes and began to climb. The undergrowth was still wet from the storm and the soil gave way easily under their feet, but in a few minutes they got above the road and saw that both jeeps had pulled up below them. They heard shouting and a few shots were loosed off into the trees, but it was obvious the soldiers were unwilling to go in after them
