Lie Down With Lions (20 page)

He was bandaging a small boy from the next valley who had burned his hand on a cooking fire, when there came from outside the flurry of footsteps and greetings which meant someone had arrived. Jean-Pierre contained his eagerness and continued wrapping the boy’s hand. When he heard Jane speak he looked around, and to his intense disappointment saw that it was not the
malang
but two strangers.

The first of them said: “God be with you, Doctor.”

“And with you,” said Jean-Pierre. In order to preempt a lengthy exchange of civilities he said: “What is the matter?”

“There has been a terrible bombing at Skabun. Many people are dead and many wounded.”

Jean-Pierre looked at Jane. He still could not leave Banda without her permission, for she was afraid he would get in touch with the Russians somehow. But clearly he could not have contrived this summons. “Shall I go?” he said to her in French. “Or will you?” He really did not want to go, for it would mean an overnight stay in all probability, and he was desperate to see the
malang.

Jane hesitated. Jean-Pierre knew she was thinking that if she went she would have to take Chantal. Besides, she knew she could not deal with major traumatic wounds.

“It’s up to you,” Jean-Pierre said.

“You go,” she said.

“All right.” Skabun was a couple of hours away. If he worked quickly and if there were not too many wounded, he might just get away at dusk, Jean-Pierre thought. He said: “I’ll try to get back tonight.”

She came over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

He checked his bag quickly: morphine for the pain, penicillin to prevent wound infections, needles and surgical thread, plenty of dressings. He put a cap on his head and a blanket over his shoulders.

“I won’t take Maggie,” he said to Jane. “Skabun is not far and the trail is very bad.” He kissed her again, then turned to the two messengers. “Let’s go,” he said.

They walked down to the village, then forded the river and climbed the steep steps on the far side. Jean-Pierre was thinking about kissing Jane. If he succeeded in his plan, and the Russians killed Masud, how would she react? She would know he had been behind it. But she would not betray him, he was sure. Would she still love him? He wanted her. Since they had been together he had suffered less and less from the black depressions which used to assault him regularly. Just by loving him she made him feel that he was all right. He wanted that. But he also wanted to succeed in this mission. He thought: I suppose I must want success more than happiness, and that is why I’m prepared to risk losing her for the sake of killing Masud.

The three of them walked southwest along the clifftop footpath with the rushing river loud in their ears. Jean-Pierre asked: “How many people dead?”

“Many people,” said one of the messengers.

Jean-Pierre was used to this sort of thing. Patiently he said: “Five? Ten? Twenty? Forty?”

“A hundred.”

Jean-Pierre did not believe him: there were not a hundred inhabitants in Skabun. “How many wounded?”

“Two hundred.”

That was ludicrous. Did the man not know? Jean-Pierre wondered. Or was he exaggerating for fear that if he gave small numbers the doctor would turn around and go back? Perhaps it was just that he could not count beyond ten. “What kind of wounds?” Jean-Pierre asked him.

“Holes and cuts and bleeding.”

Those sounded more like battle injuries. Bombing produced concussion, burns and compression damage from falling buildings. This man was obviously a poor witness. There was no point in questioning him further.

A couple of miles outside Banda they turned off the cliff path and headed north on a track unfamiliar to Jean-Pierre. “Is this the way to Skabun?” he asked.

“Yes.”

It was obviously a shortcut he had never discovered. They were certainly heading in the right general direction.

A few minutes later they saw one of the little stone huts in which travelers could rest or spend the night. To Jean-Pierre’s surprise, the messengers headed for its doorless entrance. “We haven’t time to rest,” he told them irritably. “Sick people are waiting for me.”

Then Anatoly stepped out of the hut.

Jean-Pierre was dumbfounded. He did not know whether to be exultant because now he could tell Anatoly about the conference, or terrified that the Afghans would kill Anatoly.

“Don’t worry,” Anatoly said, reading his expression. “They’re soldiers of the Afghan regular army. I sent them to fetch you.”

“My God!” It was brilliant. There had been no bombing at Skabun—that had been a ruse, dreamed up by Anatoly for getting Jean-Pierre to come. “Tomorrow,” Jean-Pierre said excitedly, “tomorrow something terribly important is happening—”

“I know, I know—I got your message. That’s why I’m here.”

“So you will get Masud . . . ?”

Anatoly smiled mirthlessly, showing his tobacco-stained teeth. “We will get Masud. Calm down.”

Jean-Pierre realized he was behaving like an excited child at Christmas-time. He suppressed his enthusiasm with an effort. “When the
malang
failed to come back, I thought . . .”

“He arrived in Charikar yesterday,” said Anatoly. “God knows what happened to him on the way. Why didn’t you use your radio?”

“It broke,” said Jean-Pierre. He did not want to explain about Jane right now. “The
malang
will do anything for me because I supply him with heroin, to which he is addicted.”

Anatoly looked hard at Jean-Pierre for a moment, and in his eyes there was something like admiration. “I’m glad you’re on my side,” he said.

Jean-Pierre smiled.

“I want to know more,” said Anatoly. He put an arm around Jean-Pierre’s shoulders and led him into the hut. They sat on the earth floor and Anatoly lit a cigarette. “How do you know about this conference?” he began.

Jean-Pierre told him about Ellis, about the bullet wound, about Masud talking to Ellis when Jean-Pierre was about to inject him, about the bars of gold and the training scheme and the promised weapons.

“This is fantastic,” said Anatoly. “Where is Masud now?”

“I don’t know. But he will arrive in Darg today, probably. Tomorrow at the latest.”

“How do you know?”

“He called the meeting—how can he fail to come?”

Anatoly nodded. “Describe the CIA man.”

“Well, five foot ten, a hundred and fifty pounds, blond hair and blue eyes, age thirty-four but looks a little older, college-educated.”

“I’ll put all that through the computer.” Anatoly stood up. He went outside and Jean-Pierre followed him.

Anatoly took from his pocket a small radio transmitter. He extended its telescopic aerial, pressed a button and muttered into it in Russian. Then he turned back to Jean-Pierre. “My friend, you have succeeded in your mission,” he said.

It’s true, Jean-Pierre thought. I succeeded.

He said: “When will you strike?”

“Tomorrow, of course.”

Tomorrow. Jean-Pierre felt a wave of savage glee. Tomorrow.

The others were looking up. He followed their gaze and saw a helicopter descending: Anatoly had presumably summoned it with his transmitter. The Russian was throwing caution to the wind now: the game was almost over, this was the last hand, and stealth and disguise were to be replaced by boldness and speed. The machine came down and landed, with difficulty, on a small patch of level ground a hundred yards away.

Jean-Pierre walked over to the helicopter with the other three men. He wondered where to go when they had departed. There was nothing for him to do at Skabun, but he could not return to Banda immediately without revealing that there had been no bombing victims for him to take care of. He decided he had better sit in the stone hut for a few hours, then return home.

He held out his hand to shake with Anatoly.
“Au revoir.”

Anatoly did not take his hand. “Get in.”

“What?”

“Get in the helicopter.”

Jean-Pierre was flabbergasted. “Why?”

“You’re coming with us.”

“Where? To Bagram? To Russian territory?”

“Yes.”

“But I can’t—”

“Stop blustering and listen,” Anatoly said patiently. “Firstly, your work is done. Your assignment in Afghanistan is over. You have achieved your goal. Tomorrow we will capture Masud. You can go home. Secondly, you are now a security risk. You know what we plan to do tomorrow. So for the sake of secrecy you cannot remain in rebel territory.”

“But I wouldn’t tell anyone!”

“Suppose they tortured you? Suppose they tortured your wife in front of your eyes? Suppose they were to tear your baby daughter limb from limb in front of your wife?”

“But what will happen to them if I go with you?”

“Tomorrow, in the raid, we will capture them and bring them to you.”

“I can’t believe this.” Jean-Pierre knew that Anatoly was right, but the idea of not returning to Banda was so unexpected that it disoriented him. Would Jane and Chantal be safe? Would the Russians really pick them up? Would Anatoly let the three of them go back to Paris? How soon could they leave?

“Get in,” Anatoly repeated.

The two Afghan messengers were standing on either side of Jean-Pierre, and he realized that he had no choice: if he refused to get in they would pick him up and put him in.

He climbed into the helicopter.

Anatoly and the Afghans jumped in after him, and the chopper lifted. Nobody closed the door.

As the helicopter rose, Jean-Pierre got his first aerial view of the Five Lions Valley. The white river zigzagging through the dun-colored land reminded him of the scar of an old knife wound on the brown forehead of Shahazai Gul, the brother of the midwife. He could see the village of Banda with its yellow-and-green patchwork fields. He looked hard at the hilltop where the caves were, but he saw no signs of occupation: the villagers had chosen their hiding place well. The helicopter went higher and turned, and he could no longer see Banda. He looked for other landmarks. I spent a year of my life there, he thought, and now I’ll never see it again. He identified the village of Darg, with its doomed mosque. This Valley was the stronghold of the Resistance, he thought. By tomorrow it will be a memorial to a failed rebellion. And all because of me.

Suddenly the helicopter veered south and crossed the mountain, and within seconds the Valley was lost from view.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

W
hen Fara learned that Jane and Jean-Pierre would be leaving with the next convoy, she cried for a whole day. She had developed a strong attachment to Jane and a great fondness for Chantal. Jane was pleased, but embarrassed: sometimes it seemed as if Fara preferred Jane to her own mother. However, Fara seemed to get used to the idea that Jane was leaving, and the next day she was her usual self, devoted as ever but no longer heartbroken.

Jane herself became anxious about the journey home. From the Valley to the Khyber Pass was a 150-mile trek. Coming in, it had taken fourteen days. She had suffered from blisters and diarrhea as well as the inevitable aches and pains. Now she had to do the return journey carrying a two-month-old baby. There would be horses, but for much of the way it would not be safe to ride them, for the convoys traveled by the smallest and steepest of mountain paths, often at night.

She made a sort of hammock of cotton, to be slung around her neck, for carrying Chantal. Jean-Pierre would have to carry whatever supplies they needed during the day, for—as Jane had learned on the journey in—horses and men walked at different speeds, the horses going faster than the men uphill and slower downhill, so that people got separated from the baggage for long periods.

Deciding
what
supplies to take was the problem that occupied her this afternoon, while Jean-Pierre was at Skabun. There would be a basic medical kit—antibiotics, wound dressings, morphine—which Jean-Pierre would put together. They would have to take some food. Coming in, they had had a lot of high-energy Western rations: chocolate and packet soups and the explorers’ perennial favorite, Kendal Mint Cake. Going out, they would have only what they could find in the Valley: rice, dried fruit, dried cheese, hard bread and anything they could buy on the road. It was a good thing they did not have to worry about food for Chantal.

However, there were other difficulties with the baby. Mothers here did not use diapers, but left the baby’s lower half uncovered, and washed the towel on which it lay. Jane thought it was a much healthier arrangement than the Western system, but it was no good for traveling. Jane had made three diapers out of towels, and had improvised a pair of waterproof underpants for Chantal out of the polythene wrappings from Jean-Pierre’s medical supplies. She would have to wash a diaper every evening—in cold water, of course—and try to dry it overnight. If it did not dry, there was a spare one; and if both were damp, Chantal would get sore. No baby ever died of diaper rash, she told herself. The convoy certainly would not stop for a baby to sleep or be fed and changed, so Chantal would have to feed and doze in motion and be changed whenever the opportunity arose.

In some ways Jane was tougher than she had been a year ago. The skin of her feet was hard and her stomach was resistant to the commoner local bacteria. Her legs, which had hurt so badly on the incoming journey, were now used to walking many miles. But the pregnancy seemed to have made her prone to backache, and she was worried about carrying a baby all day. Her body seemed to have recovered from the trauma of childbirth. She felt she would be able to make love, although she had not told Jean-Pierre this—she was not sure why.

She had taken a lot of photographs, when she first arrived, with her Polaroid camera. She would leave the camera behind—it was a cheap one—but of course she wanted to take most of the photographs. She looked through them, wondering which to throw away. She had pictures of most of the villagers. Here were the guerrillas, Mohammed and Alishan and Kahmir and Matullah, striking ludicrously heroic poses and looking fierce. Here were the women, the voluptuous Zahara, wrinkled old Rabia, and dark-eyed Halima, all giggling like schoolgirls. Here were the children: Mohammed’s three girls; his boy, Mousa; Sahara’s toddlers, aged two, three, four and five; and the mullah’s four children. She could not throw away any; she would have to take them all with her.

She was packing clothes into a bag while Fara swept the floor and Chantal slept in the next room. They had come down from the caves early to get the work done. However, there was not much to pack: apart from Chantal’s diapers, just one clean pair of knickers for herself and one for Jean-Pierre and a spare pair of socks for each of them. None of them would have a change of outer clothing. Chantal had no clothes anyway—she lived in a shawl, or nothing at all. For Jane and Jean-Pierre, one pair of trousers, a shirt, a scarf and a
pattu
-type blanket would suffice for the whole trip, and would probably be burned in a hotel in Peshawar in celebration of their return to civilization.

That thought would give her strength for the journey. She vaguely remembered thinking that Dean’s Hotel in Peshawar was primitive, but it was difficult to recall what had been wrong with it. Was it
possible
she had complained that the air conditioner was noisy? The place had
showers,
for God’s sake!

“Civilization,” she said aloud, and Fara looked at her inquiringly. Jane smiled and said in Dari: “I’m happy because I’m going back to the big town.”

“I like the big town,” Fara said. “I went to Rokha once.” She carried on sweeping. “My brother has gone to Jalalabad,” she added in a tone of envy.

“When will he be back?” Jane asked, but Fara had become dumb and embarrassed, and after a moment Jane realized why: the sounds of whistling and a man’s footsteps came from the courtyard, there was a tap on the door, and Ellis Thaler’s voice said: “Anyone at home?”

“Come in,” Jane called. He walked in, limping. Although she was no longer romantically interested in him, she had been concerned about his injury. He had remained in Astana to recover. He must have come back today. “How do you feel?” she asked him.

“Foolish,” he said with a rueful grin. “It’s an embarrassing place to get shot in.”

“If embarrassed is all you feel, it must be getting better.”

He nodded. “Is the doctor in?”

“He’s gone to Skabun,” Jane said. “There was a bad bombing raid and they sent for him. Anything I can do?”

“I just wanted to tell him that my convalescence is over.”

“He’ll be back tonight or tomorrow morning.” She was observing Ellis’s appearance: with his mane of blond hair and curly golden beard he looked like a lion. “Why don’t you cut your hair?”

“The guerrillas told me to grow it, and not to shave.”

“They always say that. The object of the exercise is to make Westerners less conspicuous. In your case it has the opposite effect.”

“I’m going to look conspicuous in this country regardless of my haircut.”

“That’s true.” It occurred to Jane that this was the first time she and Ellis had been together without Jean-Pierre. They had slipped very easily into their old conversational style. It was hard to remember how terribly angry she had been with him.

He was looking curiously at her packing. “What’s that for?”

“For the journey home.”

“How will you travel?”

“With a convoy, as we came.”

“The Russians have taken a lot of territory during the last few days,” he said. “Didn’t you know?”

Jane felt a chill of apprehension. “What are you telling me?”

“The Russians have launched their summer offensive. They’ve advanced over big stretches of country through which the convoys ordinarily pass.”

“Are you saying the route to Pakistan is closed?”

“The
regular
route is closed. You can’t get from here to the Khyber Pass. There may be other routes—”

Jane saw her dream of returning home fade. “Nobody
told
me!” she said angrily.

“I guess Jean-Pierre didn’t know. I’ve been with Masud a lot, so I’m right up-to-date.”

“Yes,” Jane said, not looking at him. Perhaps Jean-Pierre really did not know this. Or perhaps he knew but had not told her about it because he did not want to go back to Europe anyway. Whichever it was, she was not going to accept the situation. First, she would find out for certain whether Ellis was right. Then she would look at ways of solving the problem.

She went to Jean-Pierre’s chest and took out his American maps of Afghanistan. They were rolled into a cylinder and fastened with an elastic band. Impatiently, she snapped the band and dropped the maps on the floor. Somewhere in the back of her mind a voice said: That may have been the only rubber band within a hundred-mile radius.

Calm down, she told herself.

She knelt on the floor and began to shuffle through the maps. They were on a very large scale, so she had to put several of them together to show all of the territory between the Valley and the Khyber Pass. Ellis looked over her shoulder. “These are good maps!” he said. “Where did you get them?”

“Jean-Pierre brought them from Paris.”

“They’re better than what Masud has.”

“I know. Mohammed always uses these to plan the convoys. Right. Show me how far the Russians have advanced.”

Ellis knelt on the rug beside her and traced a line across the map with his finger.

Jane felt a surge of hope. “It doesn’t look to me as if the Khyber Pass is cut off,” she said. “Why can’t we go this way?” She drew an imaginary line across the map a little to the north of the Russian front.

“I don’t know whether that’s a route,” Ellis said. “It may be impassable—you’d have to ask the guerrillas. But the other thing is that Masud’s information is at least a day or two old, and the Russians are still advancing. A valley or pass might be open one day and closed the next.”

“Damn!” She was
not
going to be defeated. She leaned over the map and peered closely at the border zone. “Look, the Khyber Pass isn’t the only way across.”

“A river valley runs all along the border, with mountains on the Afghan side. It may be that you can only reach those other passes from the south—which means from Russian-occupied territory.”

“There’s no point in speculating,” Jane said. She put the maps together and rolled them up. “Someone must
know
.”

“I guess so.”

She stood up. “There’s got to be more than one way out of this bloody country,” she said. She tucked the maps under her arm and went out, leaving Ellis kneeling on the rug.

The women and children had returned from the caves and the village had come to life. The smoke of cooking fires drifted over courtyard walls. In front of the mosque, five children were sitting in a circle playing a game called (for no apparent reason) Melon. It was a storytelling game, in which the teller stopped before the end and the next child had to carry on. Jane spotted Mousa, the son of Mohammed, sitting in the circle, wearing at his belt the rather wicked-looking knife his father had given him after the accident with the mine. Mousa was telling the story. Jane heard: “. . . and the bear tried to bite the boy’s hand off, but the boy drew his knife . . .”

She headed for Mohammed’s house. Mohammed himself might not be there—she had not seen him for a long time—but he lived with his brothers, in the usual Afghan extended family, and they, too, were guerrillas—all the fit young men were—so if they were there they might be able to give her some information.

She hesitated outside the house. By custom she should stop in the courtyard and speak to the women, who would be there preparing the evening meal; and then, after an exchange of courtesies, the most senior woman might go into the house to inquire whether the menfolk would condescend to speak to Jane. She heard her mother’s voice say: “Don’t make an exhibition of yourself!” Jane said aloud: “Go to hell, Mother.” She walked in, ignoring the women in the courtyard, and marched straight into the front room of the house—the men’s parlor.

There were three men there: Mohammed’s eighteen-year-old brother, Kahmir Khan, with a handsome face and a wispy beard; his brother-in-law, Matullah; and Mohammed himself. It was unusual for so many guerrillas to be at home. They all looked up at her, startled.

“God be with you, Mohammed Khan,” Jane said. Without pausing to let him reply, she went on: “When did you get back?”

“Today,” he replied automatically.

She squatted on her haunches like them. They were too astonished to say anything. She spread out her maps on the floor. The three men leaned forward reflexively to look at them: already they were forgetting Jane’s breach of etiquette. “Look,” she said. “The Russians have advanced this far—am I right?” She retraced the line Ellis had shown her.

Mohammed nodded agreement.

“So the regular convoy route is blocked.”

Mohammed nodded again.

“What is the best way out now?”

They all looked dubious and shook their heads. This was normal: when talking of difficulties, they liked to make a meal of it. Jane thought it was because their local knowledge was the only power they had over foreigners such as she. Usually she was tolerant, but today she had no patience. “Why not this way?” she asked peremptorily, drawing a line parallel with the Russian front.

“Too close to the Russians,” said Mohammed.

“Here, then.” She traced a more careful route, following the contours of the land.

“No,” he said again.

“Why not?”

“Here—” He pointed to a place on the map, between the heads of two valleys, where Jane had blithely run her finger over a mountain range. “Here there is no saddle.” A saddle was a pass.

Jane outlined a more northerly route. “This way?”

“Worse still.”

“There
must
be another way out!” Jane cried. She had a feeling they were enjoying her frustration. She decided to say something mildly offensive, to liven them up a bit. “Is this country a house with one door, cut off from the rest of the world just because you cannot get to the Khyber Pass?” The phrase
the house with one door
was a euphemism for the privy.

“Of course not,” said Mohammed stiffly. “In summer there is the Butter Trail.”

“Show me.”

Mohammed’s finger traced a complex route which began due east of the Valley, proceeding through a series of high passes and dried-up rivers, then turned north into the Himalayas, and finally crossed the border near the entrance to the uninhabited Waikhan Corridor before swinging southeast to the Pakistani town of Chitral. “This is how the people of Nuristan take their butter and yogurt and cheese to market in Pakistan.” He smiled and touched his round cap. “That is where we get the hats.” Jane recalled that they were called Chitrali caps.