A Dying Breed Read online

  Advance praise for A Dying Breed

  ‘A tremendous novel – shot-through with great authenticity and insider knowledge – wholly compelling and shrewdly wise’

  William Boyd

  ‘A tremendously good debut with characters who leap to life. I was particularly struck by the vivid detail and intensity of it: I have not read anything that has taken me anywhere near as close to Afghanistan as a place. I look forward to more of Hanington’s work with great expectations’

  Melvyn Bragg

  ‘A Dying Breed is a deeply insightful, humane, funny and furious novel. This is both a timely reflection on how Britain does business and a belting good read’

  A.L. Kennedy, author of Day

  ‘Peter is that rare commodity in the journalistic fraternity … a natural storyteller. You really want to turn the pages. And that’s what matters’

  John Humphrys, Today presenter

  ‘A deeply intelligent, beautifully constructed story’

  Will Gompertz, BBC Arts Editor

  ‘A compelling read, and a great insider’s view of life in broadcast journalism. I’m disappointed I am not to feature in the book: it is a brilliant read’

  Evan Davis, Newsnight presenter

  ‘Urgent, compelling, new bright light on the dark dilemmas of broadcast news’

  Gillian Reynolds, Daily Telegraph journalist and broadcaster

  ‘Buy this book. Find a quiet place. Switch off your phone and devour it. Hanington’s ability to wrap a story around the ghosts of truth is superb. He spins his tale with a true writer’s gift. I loved every minute in this book’s company’

  Fi Glover, BBC Radio 4 presenter

  ‘Peter Hanington has crafted a gripping and wonderfully well-paced thriller replete with rollercoaster dips and turns and a cavalcade of villains and deliciously fallible anti-heroes. A Dying Breed is delightfully assured and unputdownable’

  Andrew Hosken author of Empire of Fear: Inside the Islamic State and Today programme reporter

  ‘All journalists seem to think they can write great novels about journalism and 99% of those who try make a hash of it. Hanington is in the 1%. Having created believable characters caught up in the hell that is Afghanistan, he weaves a story that manages to excite, appal and instruct in equal measure’

  Roy Greenslade, Guardian and Evening Standard columnist and commentator

  ‘A gripping, fast-moving tale of shifting loyalties and creeping betrayal … written with an effortless, liquidly-drinkable prose style. A page turner from the first line’

  Allan Little, former BBC foreign correspondent and chair of the Edinburgh International Book Festival

  ‘A gripping story… Peter Hanington’s clear, assured voice shines out from every page’

  Mishal Husain, BBC broadcaster and Today presenter

  www.tworoadsbooks.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Two Roads

  An imprint of John Murray Press

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Peter Hanington 2016

  The right of Peter Hanington to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 473 62544 0

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For my mother, my father and for Vic. Obviously.

  Contents

  Advance Praise

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  1 The Wedding Party

  2 London Calling

  3 The Leather-bound Book

  4 A Little Story

  5 Arses and Elbows

  6 The Prawn Curry Contract

  7 Administrators and Adventurers

  8 The Summer Party

  9 The Missing Man

  10 A Fortuitous Killing

  11 The Watchers and the Watched

  12 Crippled but Unconquered

  PART TWO

  13 A Long Way from Home

  14 The Wedding Video

  15 On the Bagram Road

  16 Vaffanculo!

  17 Captivity

  18 Next of Kin

  19 Two Plus Two Equals Five

  20 Ships and Towers and Temples

  21 Expenses

  22 Singing Sands

  23 A Clean Slate

  PART THREE

  24 A Single Shot

  25 Meeting Mr Roydon

  26 One Hundred Kilometres, One Hundred Years

  27 Hog Heaven

  28 Telling the Truth

  29 Bomb

  30 Diplomatic vs Kinetic

  31 Harvard

  32 Dying Breeds

  33 Proof of Life

  34 Hotel Bagram

  35 The Rendezvous

  36 Release

  37 Debrief

  38 Breakfast at Baba’s

  39 The Nightmares

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Prologue

  DATELINE: All Souls Church, Langham Place, London, W1, June 14th

  Crossing the threshold of All Souls Church, Carver raised a hand to cross himself, then stopped. He muttered something that was not a prayer and jammed the offending hand back into his blazer pocket. He looked around. Tall Corinthian columns and sun-washed Bath stone were at his back, but inside it was a rather uninspiring 1970s sort of arrangement, designed to accommodate the maximum number of worshippers with the minimum fuss. Up in the balcony, the church rector stopped what he was doing and watched the visitor. He saw a bespectacled man somewhere around sixty, thinning on top and heavy in the middle; in his right hand he held a well-worn yellow plastic carrier bag. Not a church regular, nor a tourist by the looks of him. The rector went back to work, checking the hymnals for blasphemous graffiti and general wear and tear.

  William Carver wandered down the central aisle. He took a look at the old Hunter church organ, in its fine mahogany case, and at a stained-glass tableau featuring an earnest-looking shepherd and several cross-eyed sheep. Carver checked his watch and turned to leave; he was really only killing time. On the way back out, his eye caught sight of a single flickering light in an otherwise inky corner of All Souls. William sighed and walked in that direction. The pound coin he dropped into the empty black tin collection box hit the bottom with a loud rattle. He took a votive candle from the cardboard box, unpicked the wick, and, using the flame of the only other slim white candle in the sand-filled tray, lit his offering. He held it for a moment, staring into the flame and enjoying the sweet smell of burning wax, before planting it front and centre in the sand. He remembered how his mother would always congratulate him on picking the best spot for his candle and how, after the seemingly endless Sunday service, as they filed out, she would observe that his flame appeared to be burning a little brighter than all the others. Ridiculous, of course – all the candles burnt more or less the same.

  He thought about his mother and then, inevitably, about his father. But there would be no one pound candle for him.

  Outside the church, Carver’s eyes took time to adjust to the bright
morning light; once they did, he checked his watch again. He had a meeting with the head of BBC personnel at ten. It was not quite quarter to, he was still early, but then he was always early, even for appointments that he had no interest in keeping, like this one. His editor had described it as a formality, a ten-minute sit-down with one of the big BBC bosses, something that all the veteran journalists were having to endure. He ambled across the part-pedestrianised road and in through the high, handsome doors of Broadcasting House. How many times had he walked into this building? Thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of times, he guessed. Nevertheless William found it impossible not to feel a swell of pride, glancing up at the sculptures of Prospero and Ariel in all their art deco glory. Inside, he sat down on a worn leather bench in the corner of reception and watched as a tour party assembled. The guide was an enthusiastic young woman with a south London accent and an infectious laugh. She had a group of sweatshirt-wearing schoolchildren rapt.

  ‘Nation shall speak peace unto nation. Give me a better motto than that and I’ll give you a fiver. Go on!’ The children laughed. William had always meant to take the tour and he was tempted to attach himself to the back of the group now, but the receptionist was waving him over.

  ‘Mr Drice is ready for you now, sir. He’s up on the sixth floor.Do you know it?’

  He knew it. The sixth was where the bosses lived and the story was that BBC management had recently had the old oak panelling, which had been stripped out twenty years ago, reinstated at considerable cost. William was interested to see it. He rode the juddery antique lift to the sixth floor and when the doors opened, there was Drice, standing, waiting for him with a thin smile and an outstretched hand. The management man wore a tailored blue suit and steel-rimmed glasses. He gave William a hot and overly firm handshake before leading him into the refurbished office. The oak did look good, William thought, gave the place an air of authority. The desk was top quality too, an old antique affair, leather-topped, broad and deep; a little too big, in fact, for the number of items Drice had to place upon it. He had a phone, a small pile of papers and an expensive fountain pen, but that was it. William wondered where his computer was. Stowed away in one of the drawers, he guessed, so as not to spoil the look, although that was already slightly spoilt by the strange black moulded chair the man was now bobbing backwards and forwards in.

  ‘Thanks so much for coming to see me, William.’

  ‘I wasn’t given much choice.’

  Carver sat in the high-backed wooden seat opposite Drice and glanced around. The office was at the very front of Broadcasting House, with windows on all sides, and as a result, sitting there felt rather like sitting in the prow of a ship.

  ‘You’ve a good view up here.’

  Drice nodded. ‘Yes, it’s terrific on a clear day. Not so good on a dreary day, a bit—’

  William waited while the man tried to locate an adjective.

  ‘—well, dreary.’

  Carver placed his plastic bag down at the side of his chair and pointed at the wall. ‘How much did the oak panelling cost?’

  Drice hoisted both eyebrows in a look of mock horror. ‘Ha. That’s what I love about you old hacks, no messing about. Straight to the nub, right to the tricky question.’

  Carver said nothing. He just waited.

  ‘Well, let’s see. I think I can safely say that it didn’t cost half as much as you think it did.’

  ‘A hundred quid?’

  ‘Ha. Good one. No, no, a bit more than that.’ Drice paused. ‘I would tell you, William, but you wouldn’t believe how quickly a thing like that can end up in the newspapers. I tell you in confidence, you tell someone else in confidence, the next thing you know, I’m reading about it in the Daily Wotsit.’

  He waved a hand above his head and smiled. ‘This place leaks like a sieve.’

  William nodded but did not smile back. ‘It might have something to do with that big antenna on the roof.’

  ‘Ha. It might do, might well do. So, can I get you anything? A tea, coffee, mineral water? Something like that, before we get down to business?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Good. Good, you’re busy, I’m busy …’ Drice put his hands down flat either side of the pile of papers. ‘So William, tell me, what are your plans?’

  ‘My plans?’

  ‘Yes. Medium term, I mean?’

  Carver shrugged, uncertain what ‘medium term’ might mean. ‘Well, I’ve got a couple of stories I’m working on here, investigative stuff, domestic, but I’m heading back to Afghanistan the day after tomorrow.’

  Drice nodded. He glanced briefly out of one of the many windows and then back at Carver. ‘Afghanistan, yes, of course. Excellent.’

  William shifted in his seat. It seemed this conversation was going to be an even bigger waste of time than he had feared. He broke eye contact with Drice and looked past him, out towards the Langham Hotel across the road. The wind was getting up and a bright Union flag on the hotel roof had unfurled itself from its pole and was fluttering keenly in the breeze. William watched it and his mind was beginning to wander when a tight little cough summoned him back to the room.

  ‘I wonder, have you thought about VR?’

  William was confused. He frowned. ‘Via? I’m flying via Delhi. British Airways: Heathrow, Delhi, Kabul. That’s the cheapest decent flight I could get.’

  Drice smiled. ‘Sorry. My fault, talking in jargon. Not via; VR, voluntary redundancy. I wondered whether you’d given that some thought recently?’

  Now Carver laughed. ‘Redundancy? You want rid of me? Is that what this meeting’s about?’ He sat and waited for the denial, the embarrassed apology. Neither came.

  Instead Drice leant back in his ergonomic chair. ‘Well, as you know, things are pretty tough for the Beeb right now. Licence fee settlements not what they used to be, Foreign Office funding for the World Service gone, free licences for the oldies and all that. We’re having to tighten our belts …’

  William glanced again at the oak panelling.

  ‘Explore all the possibilities. And what this meeting is about, part of my job, is to look at the wage bill and talk to the senior fellows – veterans like you – see whether they’ve considered all the options.’

  ‘Option one being that I sack myself and save you the trouble?’

  ‘Not at all. There are lots of options, I’m sure.’ Drice did not look sure. ‘But, as you know, times are changing. The chaps running news, your bosses, they want their people multi-platform these days. You know, versatile, radio-friendly but telegenic too. Journalists who can write the online piece, file the radio bulletin, do the TV two-way and be Tweeting and Facebooking as they go. Makes a lot of sense, given that’s how the commentariat are getting their news these days.’

  William looked at the man; he had understood about half of what Drice had just said.

  ‘An example for you … Last week, John Brandon. You know? The Ten O’Clock News man?’

  William conceded that he knew him.

  ‘John wrote this piece … Pretty personal it was, rather controversial. All about the price you pay for being a war corr. That piece set the Twittersphere alight.’

  Drice beamed with happiness at the very memory of it.

  William hadn’t seen it. He glanced down at the plastic bag by his feet; inside were his tape recorder and notepads. ‘I’m good at what I do.’

  But as he said this, his face shaped itself into a scowl; he hated how weak it sounded, how apologetic.

  Drice moved in, leaning across the large desk. ‘Of course you are, William, of course. But you’ve been doing it a long time and—’

  ‘And that’s why I’m good at it.’

  This was said with more confidence, but having said it, William stopped, suddenly filled with doubt. Was the statement still true? Was he still good at what he did? What if Drice was right? That things had changed and he had not. The management man pressed his advantage.

  ‘All we’re asking is tha
t you have a think about it. I had my team do a few sums and they’ve come back with this …’ Drice pulled a letter with Carver’s name and staff number on it from the foot of his pile of papers and pushed it slowly, ceremonially across the desk. ‘That’s what you could expect to get if you took redundancy any time in the next few months.’

  William ignored the piece of paper and looked out over Drice’s shoulder. The flag was struggling to find its rhythm, snapping backwards and forwards in the wind.

  ‘Take a look, it’s a tidy sum.’

  The management man licked his lips. Eventually Carver retrieved the letter, folded it in half and placed it in his jacket pocket, unread. This unsettled Drice, and he shuffled awkwardly in his seat and stared at the man opposite him. He’d conducted dozens of these sorts of conversations and this hadn’t happened before. Usually the person he was talking to looked carefully at the numbers on the piece of paper, was pleasantly surprised, said thank you and so on. But not this man. He stumbled on:

  ‘Good. Well then, yes, take it with you, read it later, give it some thought.’

  Drice picked up his neat pile of papers, tapped it together once more, then put it back down.

  ‘So, you’re off to Afghanistan, you said? Part of the big election jamboree, I suppose?’

  William was still lost in thought. ‘What? No, no, I was going back anyway.’

  ‘Oh. Well, good timing I suppose … an exciting time? What do you think’s going to happen?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In Afghanistan. With the election. What do you think will happen?’

  William picked up his plastic bag. ‘Dying. Dying is going to happen.’

  PART ONE

  1 The Wedding Party

  DATELINE: Central Kabul, Afghanistan, June 21st

  If Baba had been asked to count his blessings, then number one, ahead of his wife, four children and robust health, would be the stone fountain in his front garden. He fussed over it the way other men in Kabul attended to their cars or their mistresses and he fussed most on the day of a wedding, which was why he was up early this morning, preparing to coax the most he could from the fountain’s fickle pump. The night before, while climbing into bed, he had slowly and deliberately knocked his head five times against the wooden headboard, thereby informing his famous body clock that he needed to rise at five sharp. At ten past five his wife, Soraya, had gently pinched his nose to stifle the snores and, when that failed, pulled her husband’s share of the sheets and blankets over to her side of the bed. Before long, Baba woke, checked his watch and rose to a sitting position with a satisfied growl. He pushed himself up from the bed, stretched and began to dress as quietly as he knew how. Soraya watched in silence as he struggled out of his vest and long johns and into his work clothes: a grease-stained white T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops. Baba tiptoed from the room but quickly came back again and went over to his bedside table. Groping around, he found the American-made workman’s torch that his son had given him for his last birthday. He pulled the elastic strap over his bald head and positioned the torch front and centre before departing again, his flip-flops slapping on the ceramic tiles. Still Soraya lay motionless, her dark eyes open, and a minute later she was rewarded as her husband returned, standing in the doorway, the torch switched on – a huge human lighthouse. The yellow beam swept the room, carefully avoiding Soraya’s side of the bed, before settling on a tool belt that was hanging over the back of her dressing chair. Baba took the belt, strapped it beneath his large stomach and left again, closing the door gently behind him. Only now did Soraya move, shuffling over to her husband’s side of the bed. She slid easily into the indentation he had left in the old mattress, sighed deeply and closed her eyes.