and black leather jackets they could only have been from the Balkans. My money was on them being Serbs.
They had been taking afternoon tea. A wicker table was set with china. Ducks waddled round their legs scavenging scraps of sandwiches.
Neither looked the afternoon-tea type. One's head was shaved bald, and reflected the light like he'd been having a go with the Mr Sheen. The other had greasy brown hair down to his shoulders and a top lip like John Major's. He was talking into a mobile.
I moved closer to the window. He wanted to know why they hadn't got the equipment they'd asked for. If it didn't come soon, someone was going to pay. That would have had the person at the other end sitting up and taking notice. To a Serb, payment didn't necessarily mean cash.
A young lad in a white shirt appeared behind me. He was all smiles.
'Hello, mate – where's the pub?'
'The Hare and Hound? Downstairs, sir. I'll show you.'
He led me out of the restaurant, past the weapon racks and back outside towards a flight of steps down to the basement.
'Is my mate staying here? Tall Polish guy, irritatingly good-looking? His name's Dom, Dominik Condratowicz. Might have left a couple of days ago, I'm not sure.'
He thought for a while. It couldn't be that hard. The card had said there were only fifteen rooms. 'I do not think so, sir.'
'Could you find out, mate? Maybe at the desk?'
He nodded and gave a smile as five dollars found their way into his hand.
I carried on down a couple of stone steps to a large wooden door. I took off my Bergen as I went through. It was like walking into an olde-worlde pub, right down to the low-beamed ceiling. The only giveaway that we were still in Kabul was the two hundred years of rifle and machine-gun history stuck on the wall.
It wasn't busy. There were a couple of guys at one of the tables in a corner, and a couple of women at another. An overly Western-dressed local nursed a Coke at the bar. Bob Marley was on the speakers. Was it the anniversary of his death or something?
The young barman wore jeans, a tight T-shirt and had long, centre-parted hair. I asked for a Coke. All the drink was in bottles or cans. Löwenbräu was the only stuff on tap.
I took my cold can and glass and headed past the dartboard to one of the vacant tables.
The two huddled in the corner were big lads, maybe in their late twenties. They'd obviously been hitting the weights before slapping on the hair gel and heading out for the night. They hadn't been working on their lower bodies, though. They'd just been hitting the chest and arms so they looked good in their spray-on T-shirts.
Sundance and Trainers wouldn't have approved.
54
They had holsters and mag-carriers on their belts but nothing inside them. Maybe it was different rules downstairs: not even side-arms allowed in case things got out of hand after a few Löwenbräus.
They cracked into their cans of Guinness and cast an eye over the other table. The girls sounded as though they were from London. Both were wearing red and white Arab shemags, slung fashionably round their shoulders. Not only wrong country but wrong ethnic group. They checked their Thuriya sat phones for messages. I doubted they'd have many: Thuriyas are the dog's bollocks of the mobile world, but even they aren't too clever in basements.
It was the local guy at the bar I was interested in. Maybe mid-thirties and clean-shaven, he was trying too hard to do the Western thing. His shirt had the little polo-player motif; his jeans had a sharp crease down the middle. His navy ball cap had KBR embossed across the front. Kellogg, Brown and Root were a military contractor and Halliburton subsidiary. He wanted everyone to know he was in with the in-crowd. He just had to be a fixer.
He finished his Coke and started to say his goodbyes to the barman. I powered up the mobile, left some cash from my sock on the table, and followed, dragging my Bergen by one of its straps.
He'd got to the top of the stairs.
'Hello, mate – I was told you're the fixer. You working for anyone this week?'
He adjusted his baseball cap so it covered his eyes. 'I have work, but maybe if you need someone I could . . .'