Free The Reluctant Hero by Michael Dobbs Page B

chair was removed. One of the servant girls – Harry wanted to use the term waitress, but there had been a feudal touch about the entire proceeding – took Beg’s chair and put it in the President’s empty place. Harry couldn’t help but feel there was something symbolic in the act; it was as though Beg was staking a claim. And as though in proof of his independence, another nod of his head brought alcohol. Beer and vodka. From Kazakhstan and Finland.
    ‘Bit of a miracle,’ Proffit declared jovially, wobbling his whiskers. ‘Fruit juice into wine. Whatever next?’
    ‘I thought it was forbidden,’ Bobby Malik said.
    ‘Not at all,’ Beg replied, draining his glass of vodka and holding it out in his crooked hand to be refilled. ‘It’s simply that the President has a gastric complaint which is inflamed by alcohol.’ He looked around the table and smiled. ‘I don’t.’ He seemed entirely at ease standing in for the President, and for another hour the dinner continued as those present broke up into groups around the table and Beg talked with animation and considerable informality one by one to his guests.
    It was near the end of the evening before Beg joined Harry, who was standing admiring one of the displays, a figurine of beaten gold, a mountain goat whose right leg had gone missing somewhere along the centuries. Yet the damage couldn’t detract from the elegance of the craftsmanship. Karabayev had been right. Nothing like this could have been produced in Britain at that time, not for another thousand years.
    ‘Beautiful, is it not?’ Beg enquired.
    ‘I find it stunning. The rest of the artefacts, too.’
    ‘They were uncovered almost ten years ago in burial
    grounds in the south of our country. Yale University gave a grant to help us preserve the collection.’
    ‘More aid.’
    ‘A necessity of life in a country such as ours.’
    As Harry turned to face Beg, he realized the Ta’argi was smaller than he had realized, a good seven inches shorter than himself, forcing him to lean down to make sure he caught everything that was said. It made their conversation almost conspiratorial. It was the chance he had been looking for.
    ‘Mr Jones, you are most welcome in my country. I know very little about you – you haven’t visited us before. You have kept very quiet this evening – and you are not drinking.’
    ‘Don’t worry, nothing religious. Just pacing myself.’
    ‘I hope we haven’t bored you. I would like us to become good friends.’
    Harry was trying to judge the moment, and this was too soon, but it wasn’t a situation he controlled and his time was short. The other man had given him an opening, so he felt obliged to gamble. ‘We have a lot in common, Mr Beg.’
    ‘Really?’ Beg smiled, as if the thought gave him pleasure.
    ‘Yes. Like you I spent much of my professional life at war with the Soviets. Although not perhaps at such close quarters as yourself.’
    ‘Then you have been fortunate.’
    ‘I tried to help some of the resistance groups.’ He made it sound like charitable work, which was deliberately misleading. What Harry had done, during his time as a member of the SAS, was to help train the mujahedin in Afghanistan.
    ‘I hope you and your colleagues will be as keen to assist us now the Soviets have gone.’
    Harry offered no immediate reply. He’d been sent into Afghanistan not to deliver aid but to show the rebels how to use their Stinger missiles and blast Soviet helicopters out of the sky, in mountains not three hundred miles from where they were standing.
    ‘It’s that work which brought you here?’ Beg pressed.
    ‘Let me say that my work has given me a wide range of interests,’ Harry responded.
    ‘Indeed?’ Beg raised his glass to his lips and sipped; he had to use both hands, gripping the glass with difficulty, he couldn’t fully unbend his fingers. ‘And may I ask what your interests are in Ta’argistan?’
    Harry admired the way in which Beg seemed to