He jabbed a finger at them and repeated himself, but they ignored him and carried on laughing and drinking.
The whole lot were probably freelancers, bounty-hunters drawn here from all over the world like gold prospectors to the Klondike. Only here the prize was Osama, al-Qaeda and any of the Taliban leadership. There was still a price of something like fifty million dollars on bin Laden's head, but most of these guys wouldn't have a clue where to start.
I'd played with the idea of coming here myself for a while, until I did a little digging. It soon became clear I'd be hanging around like this lot. Some had resorted to séances in one of Osama's old houses in the city, the one he'd used to accommodate wives number one and two. They'd legged it when the Americans started bombing, leaving behind just an old bra and a kettle.
Their landlord, the next-door neighbour, wasn't happy. Bin Laden owed him five hundred dollars in rent so he had to make up the cash somehow. He came up with the ingenious idea of installing a few local Mystic Megs, lighting a couple of candles and charging bounty-hunters through the nose to come and get guidance from the other side.
Nobody challenged me. In a place like this nobody asks you your business, and nobody gives you eye-to-eye. Not that most of the guys there tonight could have focused that well anyway.
A couple of monkeys sat and licked at puddles of beer. Maybe they'd had their cans confiscated.
Pictures ripped from magazines were stuck to the wall. The Tora Bora caves getting the good news from a squadron of B52s. Members of the Northern Alliance grinning as they propped up dead Taliban. A double-page spread from a porn mag of two guys and a girl, with Bush's and Musharraf's heads stuck over the men's at either end, and Blair as the meat in the sandwich.
The bar was built entirely from old steel mortar-round containers. They were a bit rusty, but the Cyrillic writing was still visible. The top was a couple of beer-soaked planks.
A couple of girls in laddered fishnets took drinks away on trays. My eyes stung from the smoke. The wizard behind the bar took a long look at my Bergen. 'You planning to stay the weekend, man?' The shelf behind him was packed with whisky bottles. A monkey, either drugged or drunk, lay flat out on his back, an arm and a leg dangling into space. The bottles had been relabelled with pictures from magazines. Hitler stood in the Bavarian mountains. Mussolini looked dead hard with his helmet on. Bin Laden, in his robes and combat jacket, nursed his AK beneath the CNN logo.
'No, mate.' I had to lean across the bar and meet him half-way to make sure I could be heard. 'I was told I could buy protection here. I'm heading south and I need at least a short.'
He certainly had enough protection at his feet. Parked on the lowest shelf was an HK53, a sort of 5.56 version of the MP5. It was loaded with a thirty-round mag and two more, taped together, head-to-toe, sat within easy reach.
61
'You on Osama watch?'
'Nah, just fishing about for work.'
The look on his face said he'd heard that one too many times before. 'You're going the wrong way, man. He's up north.'
I smiled and waited for a yes or no. If he didn't have a weapon, I'd try my luck in the car park. But it would be risky with the guards out there, and I had no time to fuck about.
He pointed through an open doorway that led to the back of the house. The door had been removed – or pulled off its hinges. 'Up the stairs, look for Stu.'
Justin finally shut up and some Indian music came on. A couple of girls in saris got up and began gyrating. The wizard gripped my arm. 'I'm telling you, he's with those Pakistani bitches way up north, getting high and laughing at us all, man.'
The flat-out monkey awoke with a jolt, maybe startled by the change of music. He rolled right off the shelf and landed in a puddle of beer on the floor. He got to his feet and staggered away to war, leaving his hat behind. But, like a good soldier, he kept his weapon with him.
The corridor took me to a set of stairs. A naked bulb burnt on the landing. The noise filtering down was a mix of drunken