The minibus ride to the Taxila ruins was notable for the friendly patter from the driver and his expert commentaries on farm sizes, agricultural production and the role of irrigation in the Islamic Republic. The driver’s music selections leaned heavily on Helen Reddy, Dionne Warwick and Demis Roussos—none of them known for their piety, thought de Payns, but perhaps they were on an approved list for tourism operators.
They walked around the ancient compound of settlements, the oldest of which had been inhabited in 1000 BC. De Payns fell in with an American couple who had been in Israel, Turkey and Jordan and were now doing the Peshawar Valley. They were funny, and the wife—Amy—even had some French. The husband, Quentin, showed de Payns a flyer he’d picked up at the souk. In jumpy English it advertised ‘American Karaoke’, which, according to his new friends, was code for ‘serves alcohol’.
De Payns laughed. ‘So they gave this to an American who thought a Frenchman could use it more?’
He was dropped back at the hotel as the sun went down, and after a meal de Payns walked to the elevators, noticing that the follower’s chair in the lobby was no longer occupied. Within only two days they were bored with him and had been unable to find anything of interest in his room or his travels. Operationally, he felt good.
Having showered, he realised he wasn’t tired. In fact, he was wound up. He felt like a glass of beer and fished the American Karaoke flyer out of his jeans. Looking over the map of Islamabad in his room, he realised the place was two blocks away. It wasn’t even 9 p.m., so he dressed again and stepped out.
The karaoke bar was in the basement level of a small hotel off the main boulevard. He showed the flyer to a doorman and was allowed inside. It looked like a Paris student bar, with rock music playing and a long bar overlooking twenty-five round tables. He looked around, adjusting to the gloom, and saw people of European background, in Western clothing, drinking beer and wine—an activity usually confined to foreign hotels in Pakistan. If de Payns took a wild guess, it looked as though the Islamabad police didn’t care about foreigners drinking alcohol, so long as locals weren’t doing it. Especially not local women.
De Payns sat on a stool at the far end of the bar, from where he could see the door. Old habit. They served Budweiser and Heineken, and he went for a cold Heineken as a song by Richard Marx started. He sipped and consciously brought down his emotional brain. It wasn’t healthy to be on the verge of ruining a person’s life and to start worrying about it. He’d had to deal with those misgivings when he flew over Kosovo, and he had to get on top of it now. The mission was to access the MERC through Timberwolf. He had to stay focused on Raven as the channel for a successful operation, not as an individual with a life in jeopardy. He went over lists in his head—the following actions, the tourniquet and the exfil. He sipped at the beer and thought of all the cas non conformes, the ‘what-ifs’. What if they arrest me when I go into the flat? What if they arrest Anoush and ask me to talk while they torture her? What if I make it through the dinner but they’re waiting for me in my hotel room when I return? What if one of my support team has already been arrested? And the biggest cas non conforme: What if I rushed this? What if we needed three weeks more for recon and planning?
This, thought de Payns, could be my last beer … So he finished the Heineken, raised his finger at the barman and got another.
As the barman took his euros, Roxette’s ‘Listen to Your Heart’ started pumping out of the speakers.
‘Never worked out what year this was from,’ said a voice, very close to him. ‘Was it eighties, nineties, noughts? Could be any of them, know what I mean?’
De Payns snapped out of his reverie. There was a man in his early forties—American by the sound of him—standing at the bar, a fifty-euro note held between his fingertips. ‘I’ll have what he’s having,’ said the man.
The barman opened a Heineken and took the money. The American continued. ‘I think it’s nineties, but is this Berlin or Roxette?’
De Payns laughed. He also confused the two bands occasionally, and the timeless nature of the song made it very hard to nail down to a year.
‘Definitely Roxette,’ said de Payns. ‘But I don’t know what decade it’s from.’
The barman slapped down the American’s change. ‘Narek,’ said the American, ‘what year is this song from?’
The barman gave a quick nod of thanks as the American pushed his tip towards him. ‘I don’t know,’ said Narek, who was maybe twenty-five. ‘It’s, like, classic rock. It’s, like, old.’
The American turned, and for a second de Payns saw a flash of himself. The same professional openness, the practised ease of meeting new people, the conservation of movement in public that makes a person less conspicuous. He was slightly shorter than de Payns, and he wore a pair of chinos and a dark blue polo shirt. He was groomed to be forgettable, right down to the suburban haircut and fresh shaving. Like de Payns, here was a man who shaved twice a day so he was always unremarkable, always in the background. De Payns would bet his pension on this American having no tattoos, no jewellery and no piercings. De Payns couldn’t even smell him—there was no aftershave or cologne, and unlike most Americans, his polo shirt was logo-free.
‘Peter, from the US,’ said the man. ‘Sales.’
‘Sébastien, from Paris,’ said de Payns. ‘Consulting.’
They raised beers in the direction of each other but didn’t touch.
‘Roxette are strange,’ said de Payns. ‘They wrote and sang in English, even though they’re Swedish.’
‘Like ABBA,’ said Peter.
‘Yeah, but ABBA recorded in Swedish. I think Roxette only recorded in English and Spanish …’
‘And Portuguese,’ said Peter. ‘I heard them once in a taxi in Rio. Least, I think it was them. Could have been Berlin.’
‘Ha!’ said de Payns, liking this guy’s humour. ‘Rio? Nice down there.’
‘I sold a bunch of data switches to a Brazilian company and they comped me for a few days in Rio during the Olympics. Saw some boxing and high jump. A bit of javelin. It’s a very cool city.’
‘I’ve never been to Brazil,’ said de Payns.
‘First time in Pakistan?’ asked Peter.
‘Fourth or fifth,’ said de Payns, actually relaxing. ‘But the first time I’ve drunk a beer outside my hotel.’
Peter chuckled. ‘The owner is Narek’s dad. The police leave him alone if he’s only selling to Westerners.’
‘American Karaoke?’ added de Payns. ‘That’s a bit harsh. I thought it was the French who were labelled as drunks?’
‘He wanted to call this place The Speakeasy, but he thought he’d better not invite the cops to his door. So, the Yanks get tarred as drinkers. We’ve been called worse.’
‘You sell telecoms gear?’ asked de Payns, assuming it wasn’t true.
‘Yep. Boring as bat shit, and you?’
‘I’m a consultant in the pharma and chemicals industries, currently working on translations,’ said de Payns, sure that Peter didn’t believe him.
‘Translations for their brochures?’
‘For everything,’ said de Payns. ‘If you’re a French or American chemicals maker and you want to be selling in the Stans, you want your websites and your marketing materials to be in Farsi or Urdu or Pashto, or whatever your customers are fluent in.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Peter, raising two fingers at the barman. ‘How’s business?’
‘Busy.’
‘I get exhausted,’ said the American, looking at the pile of money in front of him.
‘They overworking you?’
The American shrugged. ‘It’s the constant travelling, always meeting people but never really knowing them.’
‘It gets tiring,’ said de Payns, now convinced they were talking about the same thing. ‘Getting close to someone, but always for an ulterior motive.’
The beers landed and the barman took a note from Peter’s pile of cash, obviously used to American bar etiquette. De Payns remembered the first time he’d sat at an American bar, in New York, and the barmaid’s hand reached out to his friend’s pile of money and his first reaction was to stop her.
‘Lonely too,’ said Peter. ‘You might have loved ones back home, but you’re putting all this energy into people you don’t know.’
‘And it’s false energy,’ said de Payns, sipping. ‘But your loved ones back home aren’t getting any of your attention.’
They looked at one another. Were they going to discuss family? Tell each other lies about their loved ones?
Peter’s face closed. ‘Hear that?’ he asked, raising a finger, as ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ started playing. ‘That’s Duran Duran. Genuine eighties.’