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 ago.’
‘I know, but many years before that we fought the Russians in the Tora Bora.’
The men from London and Washington recalled the Martin file. Of course, that year in Afghanistan helping the Mujahidin in their struggle against Soviet occupation. It was a long shot, but not unfeasible that the men had met. For ten minutes they asked him about Izmat Khan to see what else he could add. Martin handed the file back.
‘What is he like now, Izmat Khan? How has he changed in five years with your people at Camp Delta?’
The American from Langley shrugged.
‘He’s tough, Mike. Very, very hard. He arrived with a bad head wound and double concussion. Injured during capture. At first our medics thought he was maybe . . . well . . . a bit simple. Backward. Turned out he was just totally disoriented. The concussion and the journey. This was early December two thousand and one, just after Nine/Eleven. Treatment was . . . how shall I put it . . . not gentle. Then it seemed nature took its course and he recovered enough for questioning.’
‘And what did he tell you?’
‘Not very much. Just his résumé. Resisted all third degree and all offers. Just stares at us and what the grunts see in those black eyes is not brotherly love. That is why he is in lock-down. But from others we understand he has passable Arabic, learned inside Afghanistan and before that from years in a madrassah rote-learning the Koran. And two British-born AQ volunteers who were in there with him and have been released say he now has some halting English which they taught him.’
Martin glanced sharply at Steve Hill.
‘They’d have to be picked up and kept in quarantine,’ he said. Hill nodded.
‘Of course. It can be arranged.’
Marek Gumienny rose and wandered round the barn as Martin studied the file. Martin stared into the fire and deep in the embers saw a bleak and bare hillside far away. Two men, a cluster of rocks and the Soviet Hind helicopter gunship swinging to the attack. A whisper from the turbaned boy: ‘Are we going to die, Angleez?’ Gumienny came back, squatted on the ground and poked the fire. The image went up in a cloud of sparks.
‘Quite a project you have taken on here, Mike. I’d have thought this was a job for a crew of professionals. You doing it all yourself?’
‘As much as I can. For the first time in twenty-five years I have the time.’
‘But not the dough, eh?’
Martin shrugged. ‘There are scores of security companies out there if I want a job. Iraq alone has spawned more professional bodyguards than one can count, and still more are wanted. They make more in a week working for your guys in the Sunni Triangle than they made in half a year as soldiers.’
‘But that would mean back to the dust, the sand, the danger, the too-early death. Didn’t you retire from that?’
‘And what are you offering? A vacation with AQ in the Florida Keys?’
Marek Gumienny had the grace to laugh.
‘Americans are accused of many things, Mike, but not often of being ungenerous to those who have helped them. I am thinking of a consultancy at, say, two hundred thousand dollars a year for five years. Paid abroad, no need to disturb the taxman. No need actually to show up for work. No need to go into harm’s way ever again.’
Mike Martin’s thoughts flitted to a scene in his all-time favourite film. T. E. Lawrence has offered Auda Abu Tayi money to join him in the attack on Aqaba. He recalled the great reply: Auda will not ride to Aqaba for the British gold, he will ride to Aqaba because it pleases him. He stood up.
‘Steve, I want my home shrouded in tarpaulins from top to bottom. When I come back I want it just the way I left it.’
The Controller Middle East nodded. ‘Done,’ he said.
‘I’ll get my kit. There’s not much of it. Enough to fill the boot, no more.’
And so the western strike-back against Project Stingray was agreed under apple trees in a Hampshire orchard. Two days later a computer by random selection dubbed it Operation Crowbar.
If challenged, Mike Martin would never have been able to defend himself. But in all the briefings he later gave them about the Afghan who had once been his friend, there was one detail he kept to himself.