The Reluctant Hero by Michael Dobbs

pick up on every nuance. He wasn’t a man to be underrated, and that made him entirely the right man for Harry’s purpose.
    ‘I have heard a story that an old acquaintance of mine is here. You know how stories fly around.’
    ‘Indeed.’
    ‘An American. By the name of Zac Kravitz. The suggestion is that he’s found himself in difficulty and is having trouble getting home. That causes great pain to his many friends and family.’
    ‘Indeed,’ Beg said for the third time, in the manner of a professor listening to a student’s dissertation and unwilling to commit himself.
    ‘May I be blunt?’
    ‘It seems you already are, Mr Jones.’
    ‘I don’t want to follow the path Mrs Riley seems intent on treading, making wild public protests about injustices. In truth, Mr Beg, I don’t know whether any injustice has been done. I neither know the facts nor care much about them. But I and his friends would be exceedingly grateful to get him home. Exceedingly grateful.’ The words were repeated slowly, as though dragging a great weight.
    Beg’s eyes bored into Harry from above his spectacles, unblinking, assessing, until finally he used his knuckle to move his glasses back up his nose. ‘Then I think what you are suggesting mirrors Mrs Riley’s path precisely. Financial aid in return for – certain considerations.’
    ‘But entirely privately.’
    One of the servants came to replenish Beg’s glass but he waved her away impatiently. She scuttled to a safe distance.
    ‘I would ensure that a substantial sum of aid was made available without strings,’ Harry continued, ‘and directed through whatever channels were deemed appropriate to prevent it becoming a matter of public controversy.’
    He was offering a bribe. Beg took no offence. Such things were accepted practice along most stretches of the Silk Road. Harry knew what the next question would be. He would be asked to state how much, then they would haggle – which raised the question, how much was Zac worth to him? How do you place a value on a friend’ consider-able means, his father had been a swashbuckling pirate and had died in the arms of a disgracefully young mistress, leaving behind a fair fortune, and even though the stock-market chaos and Harry’s short-lived marriage to his predatory second wife had kicked painful chunks out of it, still there was enough. Life in this part of the world was valued pretty cheaply, although Harry suspected Beg’s appetites might be larger than most. Somewhere in the middle there would be a compromise, a figure that would satisfy them both. Yet what Beg said next took Harry by surprise.
    ‘It is a very interesting proposition you make, Mr Jones. But it suffers from one small flaw.’
    They were like two men facing each other on a tightrope, each waiting for the other to make his move.
    ‘We have no American prisoners,’ Beg said quietly. ‘Goodnight, Mr Jones. Take great care.’ He moved away and the evening was at its end.
    Harry had gambled. He had failed. He had no fall-back plan. And in the process, he had made himself a marked man.
    Tiny spaceships of snow hovered inquisitively around them as they climbed back into their minibus for the journey back to the hotel. The roads were still crowded with night traffic – a surprisingly large number of German and Japanese cars, Harry noticed, all old, mostly imported second-hand from Western Europe, and some almost certainly stolen. For a while they followed a Mercedes van that still bore the fading logo of a German haulage company. Nothing here was quite what it seemed. Through the darkness and the snow, the people of Ashkek scurried about their business.
    The bus swayed and bounced along the darkened road and over substantial ruts, although whether these were caused by poor maintenance or uncleared ice it was difficult to tell. As they had seated themselves, Roddy Bowles and Martha had what in diplomatic circles would have been termed a frank exchange. He had