Insomvita. Oleksandr Dan

met in early 2007 in Afghanistan.

      A few days earlier, Trevor was captured by the Taliban in Musa Qala, Helmand Province. The abduction had been planned, even though he was on his way to meet one of their leaders for a special story.

      There was a young blonde woman and two men, tired by the heat and hunger, already in the house where the bound prisoners were brought. Trevor gathered from the conversations he overheard that they were all journalists and that they had been held there by the militants for over a month.

      A local driver and an Afghani reporter were captured together with Trevor. The next day, to intimidate others, two Afghanis were publicly executed in front of the prisoners. The Taliban were planning to demand a ransom for him and the other journalists.

      For three days Trevor was brutally beaten in an attempt to break his will, but on the fourth day Mullah Saddam, a prominent Taliban field commander, arrived at the camp.

Musa Qala, Helmand, Afghanistan. 22 February 2007 15:35

      “Well, well, well. The big infidel is on his knees before the little Afghani mujahedeen?” Mullah taunted in bad English as he approached Trevor, who was lying helplessly, tied up in the dust.

      “I am not a soldier; I am a journalist. And I am French,” replied Trevor, despite the agony of the ropes.

      “Press?” The militant said with unconcealed malice, grabbing Trevor by the shoulder with one hand and striking his face loudly with the other. “I not ask you, dog, who you are.”

      He took Trevor’s plastic ID card in his hands and inspected it with a satisfied smirk.

      “Press is good. We need press, very need.”

      “What do you want from me?”

      “Nothing from you. What can you? You are weak and sick. You can’t anything. Your master can! He pay me. Pay a lot.”

      “Nobody will pay you a dime for me. I'm not important,” Trevor said quietly. He spat blood.

      “Pay, pay a lot. You make video tomorrow. You ask him to pay,” hissed the Mullah, pressing his foot against Trevor’s face. “If not pay, you go home to Paris in pieces, we send to your office.”

      The Mullah gave some instructions in Pashto to some militants. Trevor was lifted and dragged not to the pit, where he was held earlier, but to a clay shed, where the other prisoners were now being kept. It was at least dry there. He was thrown into a small room, separated from the rest of the prisoners by a double plank wall. They put shackles on his wrists and ankles, chained him to a wooden beam and gave him some food and a mug of water. To the militants, Trevor seemed broken and not dangerous.

      And that was the opportunity he was waiting for. The Taliban were convinced that a chained, starved, exhausted, beaten prisoner would only dream about getting some sleep, so they carelessly left only one armed mujahedeen near the shed, who as soon as it turned dark smoked some local weed and fell asleep against the wall.

      Trevor had learned how to escape from any restraints during his service in the Legion. When he was sure that the camp was settled for the night, he easily freed himself from the shackles and climbed outside through a hole in the roof.

      After taking out the guard and grabbing his assault rifle and grenade pouch, Trevor opened the other door of the shed and quietly ordered: “Come on out! Quick!”

      However, only the girl rose and resolutely headed towards the exit.

      From the darkness of the stuffy room came a coarse voice of a man: “Kate, think about it, you will be caught and executed. Don’t do it.”

      But Kate confidently took a step towards the opened door and took Trevor firmly by the arm.

      “Can you drive?” Trevor asked as they left the shed. He pointed to a white pickup truck and whispered, “Usually they leave the keys in the armrest. Turn on the engine and wait for me. If something goes wrong, the road to freedom is just behind that wall.”

      Kate ran to the truck while Trevor poured gasoline over the other two vehicles and ammunition boxes stacked near a small tent. Alerted by the sound of the running engine, two militants rushed from a building only to be met with the blast of a grenade Trevor had thrown at their feet. Chaotic shooting burst from the building's windows. Trevor lobbed two grenades at the building and fired at the gasoline. In an instant, everything around him lit up. After unloading a full clip at the building, Trevor threw another grenade towards the ammo boxes, jumped into the open car door and shouted: “Go!”

      “Where to?” Kate asked. Her hands were shaking as she grabbed the steering wheel.

      “There!” Trevor yelled. He grabbed the wheel with one hand and pressed gas pedal with his left foot together with Kate’s foot, directing the vehicle at the clay fence. “Hold on tight!”

      The vehicle tore through the wall and flew onto the sandy road to the deafening roar of detonating ammunition. A bright glow of fire rose over the village, lighting the way for the escapees.

      “Now you can turn on the headlights,” Trevor said quietly after some time. The burning building disappeared behind the hill. “Sangin is maybe twenty-five kilometers from here, not more. Just drive to the river without stopping. There is a British base somewhere there… A patrol should see us.”

      Trevor was slurring his words. Only then did Kate notice that he was pressing his hand to the left side of his chest. Blood was dripping through his fingers.

      “Are you wounded? What’s wrong?” Kate asked.

      But Trevor remained silent. He lost consciousness and his body went limp.

      “Please, keep talking!” Kate shouted frantically, but she received no answer. Realizing that she was now essentially alone, Kate pressed her hand against Trevor's wound and stepped on the gas pedal.

      Trevor woke up in a bed of a military hospital. Kate was sitting next to him in a white coat draped over a military uniform, with an open book in her hands, dozing.

      “Where am I?” asked Trevor faintly.

      “We are in Kandahar, on the US base,” Kate answered sleepily. She smiled.

      “How long was I out for?”

      “Almost three days. You had to have surgery, but it’s all over now.”

      Trevor looked around, then glanced at Kate with a barely noticeable smile:

      “I believe we haven’t had the chance to be introduced. I am Trevor Blanche.”

      “I’m Kate, Kate Larsen. From Australia. I wanted to thank you for saving me.”

      “No need, Kate. I am here thanks to you, so we are even.”

      The next day, Trevor and Kate were transported from Afghanistan to Switzerland. In Zurich, Trevor continued to undergo treatment and spent all his free time with Kate. Trevor even tried to romance her, but after a few nights spent together Kate made it clear that she had no intention of starting a serious relationship with him, to avoid disappointment, she said, and thought it best to keep what they had uncomplicated. In truth, Kate was testing Trevor. She liked him a lot, but her female intuition told her he wasn’t into committed relationships, so she tried to instill a keeper’s instinct in him.

      Trevor, however, easily accepted her terms and continued to regard Kate only as a colleague.

      Initially, this irritated Kate, but she hid it well and always seemed happy to see him whenever they were set to work together.

      In fact, this kind of relationship between a man and a woman should have ended once and for all after some time, but they were doing the same job. So, after two-, three-week trips, they would part and return to their respective homes, friends and families – to their own worlds.

      Trevor had known Etienne, a cameraman, for more than a decade, ever since he worked in Sierra Leone. Etienne was French, but with some Scottish blood flowing in his veins, from this mother. He spent most of his childhood and adolescence at the foot of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland, on the shore of Loch Linnhe, in the town of Fort William,