Ginger generally liked a man who could admit he’d made a mistake, but he didn’t like Lars Vinke. He knew it the moment he walked into the empty office which Vinke had borrowed for the purpose of interviewing a new chief of security for Well Diggers’ Helmand operations. Of course, he hadn’t expected a pat on the back for turning up, but Lars Vinke hadn’t stood up to greet him, or even looked up from the notes he was making on the CV of the previous candidate.
When he finally finished, he passed a comment which Ginger thought uncalled for.
‘That guy…’ He shook his head. ‘He’s not going to last out here.’
Ginger didn’t rise to the bait. He didn’t give a shit about the other blokes he was up against. All he cared about was whether he firstly wanted the job and secondly got it. And given he had few irons in the fire and a dwindling bank account, wanting it was a given. The prospect of dragging his sorry arse into the job centre back home in Gravesend was not appealing. Ten years in the Paras and two years in Afghanistan didn’t seem to carry the same currency in north Kent as it carried here in Kabul, but he was fast running out of options.
Vinke ran a hand through his white blond hair and stared up at Ginger with slate grey eyes. ‘And you are?’
‘Chris Jameson.’ He waited to be invited to sit.
Vinke rifled through the pile of CVs at his elbow, finally extracting one that Ginger recognised as his own. The Well Diggers project manager scanned the couple of sheets and then smoothed them on the desk in front of him with a bony hand.
Ginger sat down uninvited, assessing his potential new boss. Scrawny and skeletal, his Well Diggers polo shirt hung off his spare frame, and his arms were sinewy and corded, rather than muscular. He looked like a man with no appetite for life, someone who took no pleasure in what the world afforded. Ginger couldn’t picture his face with a smile on it.
At last, Vinke looked up. ‘Let me tell you a little about Well Diggers.’ His English was good, his Dutch accent hardly perceptible. ‘We are a small, Anglo-Dutch NGO and we have projects throughout Afghanistan, and also in several other countries in the region. I’m the team leader for our work in Helmand Province – we’re based in Lashkar Gah, where I employ a mixture of Dutch, English and local engineers to oversee a local workforce on the ground.’
‘What is it exactly that you do?’ said Ginger. Of course, he knew the answer to this – he’d done his homework – but he needed to appear interested.
‘We are financed by the generosity of private donors to create local jobs that will therefore relieve agrarian workers of the need to facilitate the cultivating and harvesting of opium poppies. Around Lashkar Gah, the fields are irrigated by a system of canals and karez. The karez system is a network of ancient underground aqueducts, channels constructed to bring water from the lakes and rivers to irrigate huge areas of arable land. We provide work for several thousand men engaged in clearing and repairing the karez tunnels to carry water to areas that have been afflicted by drought.’
Enabling the farmers in those districts to plant more fields of poppies. Ginger kept the thought to himself and let Vinke continue to paint a rosy picture of the organisation’s beneficent presence in Helmand.
‘You will know, of course, what happened to our last head of security?’
Ginger nodded. Everyone in Kabul knew by now. This was surely why he was in with a chance of securing the job. There weren’t a lot of men, even out here, who would relish the thought of stepping into a dead man’s shoes, and the last guy had been shot dead in inexplicable circumstances on the road between Lashkar Gah and Marja. At least according to what Logan had said.
‘I… We…’ – Ginger noted Vinke’s change of emphasis – ‘made some mistakes in our security policies.’ He sighed. ‘Our activities in Helmand help the local population, and we’d never experienced any animosity. I’d discouraged the routine carrying of weapons – I wanted us to set an example for the good. There was no reason for our team to be attacked. They were helping the farmers.’
What a naive idiot. There was always a reason for some faction or other to attack westerners meddling in Afghan affairs. But at least Vinke stopped short of blaming the guy who’d died.
‘So you have no idea who was responsible for it?’
‘Not the names of the perpetrators. But they stole a bag of cash. They were probably just opportunists, common thieves. We’ll never find them.’
‘And what about now? Have you changed your view about carrying weapons?’ said Ginger. He’d be damned if he’d venture out into the Helmand countryside without a full security detail, appropriately armed and fully under his control.
‘I’m looking for someone who’ll beef up our security and give my teams one hundred per cent protection.’ He glanced down at Ginger’s CV. ‘You look like you could be a suitable candidate. Talk me through what you’ve been doing for the last couple of years out here.’
This told Ginger enough. He’d got the job. He could relax. He recapped his CV for Vinke, and then again for the Well Diggers country manager, who joined them. The head honcho, a sweating, barrel-chested man called Stijn Anholts, seemed almost as clueless as Vinke, which explained why Vinke was still in his job after what had happened.
Well Diggers, do-gooders, whatever. Ginger had their measure. A high level of self-regard for the important work they were engaged in, with no understanding of the social and political complexities of a busted country that didn’t really want their help. It was exactly why they needed to hire someone like him to keep them safe in the big, bad world out there. Or at least in Helmand Province.
‘How soon can you start?’ said Vinke, straightening up the pile of CVs on the desk.
‘As soon as you can get me on a plane down to Lash.’