Maybe it was death-Prabaker's death, and Abdullah's, and the death I secretly feared was waiting for me in Afghanistan.

Whatever the reason, it was stupid and pointless and even cruel, and I couldn't stop wanting it.

"If you say that you love me," I said again.

"I don't," she murmured, at last. I tried to stop her, with my fingertips on her mouth, but she turned her head to face me, and her voice was clearer and strong. "I don't. I can't. I won't."

When Nazeer returned from the beach, coughing and clearing his voice loudly to announce his arrival, we were already showered and dressed. He smiled-such a rare thing, that smile-as he looked from me, to her, and back again. But the cold sorrow in our eyes drove the downward curves of his face into willow wreaths of disappointment, and he looked away.

We watched her leave in a taxi on that long and lonely night before we went to Khader's war, and when Nazeer finally met my eyes he nodded, slowly and solemnly. I held the stare for a few moments, but then it was my turn to look away. I didn't want to face the strange mix of grief and elation I'd seen in his eyes because I knew what it was telling me. Karla was gone, yes, but it was the whole world of love and beauty that we'd lost that night. As soldiers in Khader's cause we had to leave it all behind. And the other world, the once unlimited world of what we might yet be, was shrinking, hour by hour, to a bullet's blood red full stop.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Nazeer woke me before dawn, and we left the house as the first yawning rays of light stretched into the fading night. When we climbed from our taxi at the airport we saw Khaderbhai and Khaled Ansari near the entrance to the domestic terminal, but we didn't acknowledge them. Khader had laid out a complex itinerary that would take us, with four major changes of transport, from Bombay to Quetta, in Pakistan, near the Afghan border. His instructions were that we should appear at all times to be individual travellers, and that the travellers shouldn't acknowledge one another in any way. We were setting out with him to commit a score of crimes across three international boundaries, and to interfere in a war between Afghanistan's mujaheddin freedom fighters and the mighty Goliath of the Soviet Union. He was planning to succeed in his mission, but he was also allowing for failure. He was ensuring that if any of us were killed or captured at any stage, the trail of connections back to Bombay would be as cold as a mountain climber's axe.

It was a long journey, and it began as a silent one. Nazeer, scrupulous as ever in his conformity with Khaderbhai's instructions, never uttered a single word on the first leg from Bombay to Karachi. An hour after we'd checked into our separate rooms in the Chandni Hotel, however, I heard a soft tap on the door. Before the door was halfway open he slipped inside and pressed it shut behind him. His eyes were wide with nervous excitement and his manner was agitated, almost frantic. I was unsettled and a little disgusted by the conspicuousness of his fear, and I reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

"Take it easy, Nazeer. You're freaking me out, brother, with all this cloak-and-dagger shit."

He saw the condescension behind my smile, even if he didn't understand the full meaning of the words. His jaw locked around some inscrutable resolve, and he frowned at me fiercely. We'd become friends, Nazeer and I. He'd opened his heart to me. But friendship, for him, was measured by what men do and endure for one another, not by what they share and enjoy. It puzzled and even tormented him that I almost always met his earnest gravity with facetiousness and triviality. The irony was that we were, in fact, similarly dour and serious men, but his grim severity was so stark that it roused me from my own solemnity, and provoked a childish, prankish desire to mock him.

"Russian... everywhere," he said, speaking quietly, but with a hard, breathy intensity. "Russian... know everything... know every man... pay money for know everything."

"Russian spies?" I asked. "In Karachi..."

"Everywhere Pakistan," he nodded, turning his head aside to spit on the floor. I wasn't sure if the gesture was in contempt or for luck. "Too much danger! Not speak anyone! You go... Faloodah House... Bohri bazaar... today... saade char baje."

"Half past four," I repeated. "You want me to meet someone at the Faloodah House, in the Bohri bazaar, at half past four? Is that it? Who do you want me to meet?"

He allowed me a grim little smile and then opened the door.

Glancing briefly along the corridor, he slipped out again as swiftly and silently as he'd entered. I looked at my watch. One o'clock. I had three hours to kill. For my passport-smuggling missions, Abdel Ghani had given me a money belt that was his uniquely original design. The belt was made from a tough, waterproof vinyl and was several times wider than the standard money belt. Worn flat against the stomach, the belt could hold up to ten passports and a quantity of cash. On that first day in Karachi it held four of my own books. The first of them was the British book that I'd used to purchase plane and train tickets, and register at the hotel. The second book was the clean American passport that Khaderbhai required me to use for the mission into Afghanistan. The two others, a Swiss book and a Canadian book, were spares for emergency use. There was also a ten thousand dollar contingency fund, paid in advance, as part of my fee for accepting the hazardous mission. I wrapped the thick belt around my waist, beneath my shirt, slipped my switchblade into the scabbard at the back of my trousers, and left the hotel to explore the city.

It was hot, hotter than usual for the mild month of November, and a light, unseasonable rain had left the streets hazy with a thickened, steamy air. Karachi was a tense and dangerous city then. For several years the military junta that had seized power in Pakistan and executed the democratically elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had ruled the nation by dividing it. They'd exploited genuine grievances between ethnic and religious communities by inciting violent conflicts. They'd pitted the indigenous ethnic groups-particularly the Sindis, the Pashtuns, and the Punjabis-against the immigrants, known as Mohajirs, who'd streamed into the newly founded nation of Pakistan when it was partitioned from India. The army secretly supported extremists from the rival groups with weapons, money, and the judicious application of favours. When the riots that they'd provoked and fomented finally erupted, the generals ordered their police to open fire. Rage against the police violence was then contained by the deployment of army troops. In that way the army, whose covert operations had created the bloody conflicts, were seen to be the only force capable of preserving order and the rule of law.

As massacres and revenge killings tumbled over one another with escalating brutishness, kidnappings and torture became routine events. Fanatics from one group seized supporters from another group, and inflicted sadistic torments on them. Many of those who were abducted died in that fearsome captivity. Some vanished, and their bodies were never found. And when one group or another became powerful enough to threaten the balance of the deadly game, the generals incited violent conflict within their group to weaken it. The fanatics then began to feed on themselves, killing and maiming rivals from their own ethnic communities.

Each new cycle of violence and vengeance ensured, of course, that no matter what form of government emerged or dissolved in the nation, only the army would grow stronger, and only the army could exercise real power.