Chapter Thirty-three

THAT NIGHT THE Saracen set up his makeshift clinic on the verandah of the guest house, and it was while standing there two days later, tending to a child with a shattered leg, that he saw Lord Khan and his bodyguards ride out.

The story in the fortress and town was that the warlord had decided to visit the far-flung graves of his five younger brothers, all killed in various conflicts, but in truth he was riding hard for the Iranian border.

Three weeks later he returned, exhausted and complaining of a sharp pain down his left arm, which was purely an excuse to rouse the visiting doctor from his bed. They sat alone in the guest house, once more drinking tea, the Saracen listening intently as Lord Khan told him to be ready to leave immediately after dawn prayers.

Pulling out a US Army survey map and tracing the route, Khan said the Saracen had four hundred miles of hard travelling ahead of him. Avoiding villages, sticking to old muj supply trails, he would travel alone through some of the harshest and most remote territory on earth. At eight thousand feet, halfway up a mountain which had never been named, only numbered, he would find a Soviet forward observation post which had been left in ruins years ago.

There, he would rendezvous with a group of men and, in the solitude of the high peaks, far from any form of civilization, his prayers would be answered.

‘Have the prisoners been taken yet? ’ the Saracen asked, heart soaring.

‘Tonight. They have been watched and chosen – two men and a woman. The woman is pregnant. ’