Stalin's Final Sting by Andrew Turpin

Author:Andrew Turpin [Turpin, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788750080
Publisher: The Write Direction Publishing
Published: 2019-01-14T22:00:00+00:00

Monday, June 3, 2013

Kabul

The razor wire that topped the ten-foot-high walls surrounding the building in Kabul looked new to Johnson. There was no chance of getting through it, even if he managed to scale the walls, which were possibly rough enough to allow some hand- and footholds. And the black metal gate was also topped with razor wire.

But in the daylight, during the ten minutes that Vasily allowed him out in the yard for exercise at gunpoint, Johnson was at least able to work out where he was. The intermittent roar of jet passenger aircraft passing low overhead and the orientation of the mountaintops—the only things visible over the wall apart from the top half of a nearby block of apartments—gave him enough clues.

This building, which seemed more like a business unit or workshop than a house, was in northeastern Kabul, maybe a couple of miles southeast of the airport. Not that knowing his location was going to help much, he thought.

The yard looked considerably larger in the daylight than in the faint glow of night. The plot was perhaps fifty yards long and maybe forty wide, with the building, made from concrete pillars infilled with brick, positioned in the northeastern corner. There was not one scrap of green vegetation to be seen, only gray dust and piles of sand, cement, and gravel. The hum of traffic told him that he might be near the Kabul-Nangarhar highway. His mind went back to the RPG attack on the highway he had witnessed from his aircraft window the previous week.

Johnson also realized that the property was only a mile or so from the giant US Army base, Camp Phoenix. From the yard, he could hear the frequent sound of helicopters descending and ascending as they came into and out of the base. That was doubly frustrating: there, almost within reach, were the men who could extricate him from this mess.

“That is enough, get back inside,” Vasily ordered, waving his Makarov in now familiar fashion. He ushered Johnson through the door, where Severinov stood waiting.

Johnson stopped and stared at the Russian. “What is the point in keeping me here? What do you want?” he asked Severinov. “Let me know and I’ll see if I can help.”

“There’s a lot of point,” he said, a faint smirk on his face. “For the time being, you’re out of action, you can’t do any damage. And you’ll have other uses in the future. You might even get to go home, if your government plays ball. You might become the spy who came in from the cold, as they say—the CIA spy.”

His face now straight, Severinov added, “But if they don’t, well . . . ” His voice tailed off and he shrugged.

“What do you mean?” Johnson asked. “And if they don’t play ball?”

“Never mind,” Severinov said. “But I’ll tell you this much: people think the Cold War is finished but it isn’t. It has never been over and probably never will be. There’s just been a lull in hostilities.

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