Love among the journalists

At the centre of James Meek’s new novel — a fine successor to The People’s Act of Love — there is a brilliant scene in which Adam Kellas, a war correspondent, is watching two Taliban lorries driving along a ridge. In the no-man’s-land between is an ancient Soviet tank occupied by Astrid, an American correspondent with whom Kellas has just spent the night, and an Afghan. She is not concerned with the lorries: she has just challenged the man to hit a tree stump in the distance. Kellas asks the Afghan commander beside him, who is infuriated by the tomfoolery, why he doesn’t instruct the tank to fire at the lorries. The commander replies that he doesn’t want to risk his men ‘when the Americans are going to win the war for us anyway’. Kellas criticises the inadequacy of this response and the commander angrily points out that the lorries may be carrying goods for the Taliban today, but tomorrow they will be ‘carrying goods for us. They’re only drivers.’ The moment seems to have passed, and Kellas dials his mother in Scotland on his satphone. But as they speak about the November leaves in her garden and a peace vigil, he realises with horror that the tank is firing on the lorries after all. The commander has suddenly chosen to interpret Kellas’s criticism as a command. As Kellas’s mother anxiously demands to know what is happening, he tells her ‘there was an accident’ and, later, ‘they were just poor people, Taliban, Mum, people who died just now, unfortunately.’

The scene is remarkable for its balancing of several themes in this dense, skilful book. Most obvious are the issues concerning individual responsibility. The war appears to be accessible — the phone link from the front line to a Dumfries sitting-room — and yet a fatal decision is triggered by an irrelevant local factor.