The Last Kestrel. Jill McGivering

is only a loaning,’ he said. ‘I will pay back everything. More than everything. Interests as well.’ He spoke carefully into the still heat of the garden, his voice stilted as if he’d practised his speech many times. ‘We will make a proper agreement. I will pay you this much in this year and this much in the next. Like this. Very proper.’

      He had the offer of a place at Pennsylvania State University to study engineering, he said. He’d applied there because the distant cousin of a friend of the family lived nearby.

      ‘All the living is no problem for me,’ he said. ‘I can sleep anywhere. They have some bedroom with their sons. That’s enough for me. And I can eat with them at night-time. Cheap food. Afghan food.’ He twisted and untwisted his fingers in his lap, still unable to look her in the face.

      Once he had his degree, he could get a good job, he said. Then he would have enough money to support his mother and sister and pay for his little brother to attend a good school.

      ‘Everything I will pay back,’ he said again. ‘This loaning is for the fees.’ A hint of pleading had entered his voice. ‘The fees are very costly in United States. So much of money.’ He tailed off. The quietness rushed in and smothered them both.

      She tried to think how to phrase a reply. As she was finally about to open her mouth to try, he spoke again.

      ‘Some of this money’, he said, ‘my relatives can give me. And from friends of my mother. Men who knew my father also. But not all.’

      He hesitated. ‘I need still more money. Maybe two, three thousand US dollars.’ He was staring at his feet, his long toes, flecked with dark hairs, at the edge of his sandals. ‘It is so much of money. I know. It dishonours me to ask. But it is just…’ He broke off as if his English were failing him. ‘This is a very difficult matter…’

      He left the phrase hanging. A cat, its pregnant belly hanging low, ran across the grass in front of them. It was a mangy thing, flea-bitten and feral. They watched together as it crouched in the flowerbed, hunting.

      She had been asked for money several times in her career by people she had grown to know well. People from developing countries who had no one else to ask. It was always for something significant. For a major operation for an elderly parent or for schooling for a child. She was a journalist, she told herself. An outsider who travelled, observed, reported and then moved on. She had to stay separate, to be objective. Don’t interfere. Don’t cross the line.

      ‘I’d love to,’ she said. She too was staring at his toes, at the neat square cut of his nails. ‘Really. But I just can’t. I am sorry. Perhaps I could—’

      ‘Of course.’ He interrupted her at once, nodding and waving his hand as if to bat away the awkwardness between them. ‘I’m sorry. Please. Forgive me.’

      Suddenly they were both on their feet, making hasty, nervous movements and hiding their shame with a flurry of meaningless arrangements, confirming what time the car would take her to the airport the next morning and discussing the final settlement of the driver’s bill.

      Afterwards she had gone back to her room, ordered a fresh pot of chai sabz and a plate of Afghan bread and jam and immersed herself in her story. It was only later, when her friend at The New York Times emailed to tell her about his death in Helmand, that she stopped, shaken, and really thought back. By giving up work with journalists and instead signing a contract to go into conflict zones and translate for the military, he was risking his life. Suddenly it became clear to her why he’d done it. He’d been desperate for the money so he could escape.

      ‘Ellen Thomas?’ Someone was hissing her name into the darkness, through the lifted tent flap. The tone was more accusation than question. When she emerged, a young soldier was pacing outside, looking impatient. ‘The Major sent me. Follow me.’

      He led her across the camp, then turned sharply right into a dim narrow corridor between hessian sandbag walls. Engineers corps, she thought. Build anything. He pushed open a plywood door and ushered her inside, down a hallway and into an office.

      It had the dead smell of an underground bunker, ripe with dust and recycled air. It was poorly lit by low-wattage bulbs, strung on wires that were pinned in loops along the wood ceiling struts like Christmas decorations. An old air-conditioning unit was panting against one wall, making memos and notices on the board above it flutter and crack.

      ‘Ellen?’

      A short, compact man rose from behind a desk and came forward to greet her. His gaze was direct, his eyes a surprising blue. Intense, she thought at once. Intelligent. He was muscular but the creases round his eyes suggested he must be about her age, forty something. His hair was blond and clearly thinning, the dome of his head glowing warmly in the mellow light, offset by arches of thicker growth above his ears.

      ‘Major McKay,’ he said. ‘But call me Mack. Everyone does.’

      He pumped her hand, his fingers hard in hers.

      ‘Thought we’d lost you,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’

      He nodded to the young soldier who bustled about at a water heater with polystyrene cups and powdered milk and handed them drinks.

      ‘Well.’ He folded himself onto a chair and gestured to her to sit too. ‘The famous Ellen Thomas. I’m honoured.’

      ‘I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.’ The coffee smelt strong and stale.

      He smiled, showing even teeth. Somewhere behind him, a clock was ticking. Civilizing the desert, she thought. War was surreal.

      ‘Read a lot of your stuff,’ he said. ‘Brave woman. Hope we’re going to pass the Thomas test here.’

      She smiled back. ‘Not brave,’ she said. ‘I just report.’

      His manner was confident. Yes, she thought, in a crisis, this was a man you’d trust.

      ‘Not sure I always agree with you, though.’ He tutted. ‘That piece on Basra.’

      Oh no, she thought. A man with opinions on my work. She lowered her lips to her polystyrene cup and watched his face as he took issue with her argument on Iraq. His look was sharp. He was articulate, clearly. A good adversary. But a debate on Basra wasn’t what she needed right now. Iraq already seemed a long time ago.

      She pretended to listen, nodding in increments and scanning the room. A war room. Shared and impersonal. Desks piled with folders and papers. Behind him, a flip chart with notes written across it in marker pen in a loopy, sloping hand. ‘What are we fighting for?’ read the heading, underlined. Then a list: Cathedrals. Real cider. Bangers and mash. Small cottages. Little old ladies in teashops. She wondered which young wags had brainstormed that and from which part of rural England they’d been plucked. She became aware again of the clock’s tick. Mack had stopped talking.

      ‘So what’s the plan?’ she said. ‘What’s this offensive?’

      He paused, watching her, then got to his feet. ‘We’re about to take new ground.’ He drew her across to an area map tacked to the wall and used his pen as a pointer. ‘Here’s the camp, where we are now. Early tomorrow morning, B and C Company will move into position in this area of desert here.’ He pointed to a white space some distance north into the desert. No tracks were marked. The only roads snaked from the camp in different directions, to the south and west. ‘The Danes will provide backup here. The Estonians here. Once they’re in place, B and C Company will launch a fresh attack here. Crossing the river at this point. Into this area of the green belt.’

      She nodded, taking in the distances, the contours. There were several villages marked in the target area, clusters of squares and dots.

      ‘How well fortified is it?’

      He shrugged. ‘Pretty well. The enemy’s been dug in there for more than two years.’

      They’ll have an established underground bunker system then, she thought. Carefully constructed traps.

      ‘Mines?’