He took heart. For twenty months he had existed in a vacuum of time and information. That changed. The gate was guarded, which told him there was still the chance of hostile action on the fifty kilometres of road – through flat and featureless farming country – between the Bagram base and the capital city of Kabul. As the sentries raised the bar at the base gate, the machine-gun on the jeep was noisily cocked. They left the arc-lights and the perimeter wire behind them, and the driver switched on the radio, caught the forces programme and smiled toothily at the officer's discomfort.

It would take, as he remembered it, an hour at most to reach the outskirts of the city. His sole hope was in open country. They passed a village. The officer ignored the no-smoking sign in the cab and lit a cigarett. The driver grimaced.

If he were in the Pol-i-Charki, if he were interrogated by Afghan security – the hard bastards of the Northern Alliance – he would fail.

He would be dead. Memories of the road silted in his mind. A village, as he had known it more than twenty months before, flashed past in the headlights. Two ruined compounds, gutted in earlier lighting, wore on the right. There were open fields and scrub…

Then, if his memory held, there were trees beside the road, both sides. His fingers played with the sharp edge of the plastic bracelet on his wrist. He coughed, was ignored, and coughed again. The officer turned, irritated, and the cigarette smoke wreathed his face.

He looked pathetic and cringed, then pointed downwards. The officer's eyes followed where he pointed, to his groin. The driver, too, had turned back to look.

'Shit, man,' the driver whined. 'Not in here, not in my vehicle. I'm not having him piss in my vehicle.'

The driver didn't wait for the officer's agreement. He braked hard, swerved on to the gravel, stopped.

'I take one-star generals in this vehicle. I'm not having it pissed in.'