Spy Game by John Fullerton

Author:John Fullerton [Fullerton, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

The French medics didn’t turn up that evening: neither the fresh quartet of replacements from Paris, nor the exhausted foursome from deep inside Afghan territory. There was supposed to be a handover in two or three days, but something had gone wrong. Or maybe Brodick hadn’t been told of a change in plans. To them he was wasn’t anyone important, he knew that. He was a housekeeper, the provider of free beds-and-breakfasts. Perhaps the Air France flight to Islamabad had been cancelled. Perhaps it was something to do with whatever was happening in Afghanistan itself. The charity’s young doctors were working with Jamiat-i-Islami and given the time of year and the onset of summer and the fighting season, it was possible that Soviet and PDPA military operations had disrupted the medics’ withdrawal as well as their replacements’ deployment.

There was general talk in Peshawar of an imminent Soviet assault on the Panjshir Valley, and it was in the valley that the medical teams concentrated their work.

Omar had the visitors’ rooms prepared. Whenever it was that the two teams did finally meet up, they’d have to share rooms and one bathroom. It would be the second roulement that Brodick had hosted and, based on the first, he wasn’t looking forward to the second at all. The French—the males in particular—seemed as arrogant as they were ignorant. They seemed to think they were an elite, superior to other mortals, having recently qualified as doctors. They were also phenomenally messy, dropping food on the table and floor, leaving cigarette ends everywhere, never emptying the ashtrays. It never seemed to occur to them to remove their boots at the front door, to help out by carrying food from the kitchen to the table or remove their plates and to wash up. All that domestic stuff was beneath their dignity. Or maybe they hadn’t been house trained. They didn’t smile, say ‘thank you’, and they pointedly refused to speak English. They were rude, contemptuous. Some of the females weren’t any better. They didn’t tip Omar for all his extra work cleaning up after them, laundering their clothes and scrubbing the bathroom which they left in a disgusting state. So much for the beating heart of European civilisation.

Brodick decided that if this next lot—when they eventually did turn up, if they did so—proved to be no better than their predecessors, then he’d scrap the project and tell the charity he couldn’t cope and they’d have to look elsewhere. He sent Omar home. There was no point in keeping him at the house, making him wait around all night.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.