Lie Down With Lions (30 page)

“That’s easy,” said Anatoly. He shouted something in Russian, and three of the soldiers jumped to their feet. They disappeared into the houses and emerged a few seconds later with the old horse dealer. “You can take his clothes,” said Anatoly.

“Good,” said Jean-Pierre. “The hood will hide my face.” He switched to Dari and shouted at the old man: “Take off your clothes.”

The man began to protest: nakedness was terribly shameful to Afghans. Anatoly shouted an abrupt command in Russian, and the soldiers threw the man on the ground and pulled off his shirt. They all laughed uproariously to see his stick-thin legs poking out of his ragged shorts. They let him go and he scuttled away with his hands over his genitals, which made them laugh all the more.

Jean-Pierre was too nervous to find it funny. He took off his European-style shirt and trousers and donned the old man’s hooded shirt.

“You smell of horse piss,” said Anatoly.

“It’s even worse from inside,” Jean-Pierre replied.

They climbed into their helicopter. Anatoly took the pilot’s headset and spoke into the radio microphone at length in Russian. Jean-Pierre was very uneasy about what he was about to do. Suppose three guerrillas were to come over the mountain and catch him threatening Abdullah with the gun? He was known by literally everyone in the Valley. The news that he had visited Banda with the Russians would have spread rapidly. Without doubt most people now knew that he had been a spy. He must be Public Enemy Number One. They would tear him apart.

Perhaps we’re being too clever, he thought. Maybe we should just land and pull Abdullah in and beat the truth out of him.

No, we tried that yesterday and it didn’t work. This is the only way.

Anatoly gave the headset back to the pilot, who took his seat and began to warm up the helicopter. While they were waiting, Anatoly took out his gun and showed it to Jean-Pierre. “This is a nine-millimeter Makarov,” he said over the noise of the rotors. He flipped a catch in the heel of the grip and drew out the magazine. It contained eight rounds. He pushed the magazine back in. He pointed to another catch on the left-hand side of the pistol. “This is the safety catch. When the red dot is covered, the catch is in the ‘safe’ position.” Holding the gun in his left hand, he used his right hand to pull back the slide above the grip. “This is how the pistol is cocked.” He released it and it sprang back into position. “When you fire, give a long pull on the trigger to recock the gun.” He handed the weapon to Jean-Pierre.

He really trusts me, Jean-Pierre thought, and for a moment a glow of pleasure took the chill off his fear.

The helicopters took off. They followed the Five Lions River southwest, going down the Valley. Jean-Pierre was thinking that he and Anatoly made a good team. Anatoly reminded him of his father: a clever, determined, brave man with an unshakable commitment to world communism. If we succeed here, Jean-Pierre thought, we will probably be able to work together again, on some other battlefield. The thought pleased him inordinately.

At Dasht-i-Rewat, where the lower Valley began, the helicopter turned southeast, following the tributary Rewat upstream into the hills, in order to approach Banda from behind the mountain.

Anatoly used the pilot’s headset again, then came over to shout in Jean-Pierre’s ear. “They are all in the mosque already. How long will it take the wife to reach the mullah’s house?”

“Five or ten minutes,” Jean-Pierre yelled back.

“Where do you want to be dropped off?”

Jean-Pierre considered. “
All
the villagers are in the mosque, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did they check the caves?”

Anatoly went back to the radio and asked. He returned and said: “They checked the caves.”

“Okay. Drop me there.”

“How long will it take you to reach your hiding place?”

“Give me ten minutes; then release the women and children, then wait another ten minutes and release the men.”

“Right.”

The helicopter descended into the shadow of the mountain. The afternoon was waning, but there was still an hour or so before nightfall. They landed behind the ridge, a few yards from the caves. Anatoly said to Jean-Pierre: “Don’t go yet. Let us check the caves again.”

Through the open door, Jean-Pierre saw another Hind land. Six men got out and ran over the ridge.

“How will I signal you to come down and pick me up afterward?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“We’ll wait for you here.”

“What will you do if some of the villagers come up here before I return?”

“Shoot them.”

That was something else Anatoly had in common with Jean-Pierre’s father: ruthlessness.

The reconnaissance party came back over the ridge and one of the men waved an all-clear sign.

“Go,” said Anatoly.

Jean-Pierre opened the door and jumped out of the helicopter, still holding Anatoly’s pistol in his hand. He hurried away from its beating blades with his head bent. When he reached the ridge he looked back: both aircraft were still there.

He crossed the familiar clearing in front of his old cave clinic and looked down into the village. He could just see into the courtyard of the mosque. He was unable to identify any of the figures he saw there, but it was just possible that one of them might glance up at the wrong moment and see him—their eyesight might be better than his—so he pulled the hood forward to obscure his face.

His heart beat faster as he got farther away from the safety of the Russian helicopters. He hurried down the hill and past the mullah’s house. The Valley seemed oddly quiet despite the ever-present noise of the river and the distant whisper of helicopter blades. It was the absence of children’s voices, he realized.

He turned a corner and found that he was out of sight of the mullah’s house. Beside the footpath was a clump of camel grass and juniper bushes. He went behind it and crouched down. He was well hidden, but he had a clear view of the path. He settled down to wait.

He considered what he would say to Abdullah. The mullah was a hysterical woman hater: maybe he could use that.

A sudden burst of high voices from far down in the village told him that Anatoly had given instructions for the women and children to be released from the mosque. The villagers would wonder what the whole exercise had been for, but they would attribute it to the notorious craziness of armies everywhere.

A few minutes later the mullah’s wife came up the footpath, carrying her baby and followed by three older children. Jean-Pierre tensed: was he really well hidden here? Would the children run off the path and stumble into his bush? What a humiliation that would be—to be foiled by children. He remembered the gun in his hand. Could I shoot children? he wondered.

They went past and turned the corner toward their house.

Soon afterward the Russian helicopters began to take off from the wheatfield: that meant the men had been released. Right on schedule, Abdullah came puffing up the hill, a tubby figure in a turban and a pin-striped English jacket. There must be a huge trade in used clothes between Europe and the East, Jean-Pierre had decided, for so many of these people wore clothes which had undoubtedly been made in Paris or London and had been discarded, perhaps because they became unfashionable, long before they were worn out. This is it, thought Jean-Pierre, as the comical figure drew level; this clown in a stockbroker’s jacket could hold the key to my future. He got to his feet and stepped out from the bushes.

The mullah started and gave a cry of shock. He looked at Jean-Pierre and recognized him. “You!” he said. His hand went to his belt. Jean-Pierre showed him the gun. Abdullah looked frightened.

“Don’t be afraid,” Jean-Pierre said in Dari. The unsteadiness of his voice betrayed his jumpiness, and he made an effort to bring it under control. “No one knows I am here. Your wife and children passed without seeing me. They are safe.”

Abdullah looked suspicious. “What do you want?”

“My wife is an adulteress,” said Jean-Pierre, and although he was deliberately playing on the mullah’s prejudices, his anger was not entirely faked. “She has taken my child and left me. She has gone whoring after the American.”

“I know,” said Abdullah, and Jean-Pierre could see him beginning to swell with righteous indignation.

“I have been searching for her, in order to bring her back and punish her.”

Abdullah nodded enthusiastically, and malice showed in his eyes: he liked the idea of punishing adulteresses.

“But the wicked couple have gone into hiding.” Jean-Pierre spoke slowly and carefully: at this point every nuance counted. “You are a man of God. Tell me where they are. No one will ever know how I found out, except you and me and God.”

“They have gone away,” Abdullah spat, and saliva wetted his red-dyed beard.

“Where?” Jean-Pierre held his breath.

“They have left the Valley.”

“But where did they go?”

“To Pakistan.”

To Pakistan! What was the old fool talking about? “The routes are closed!” Jean-Pierre yelled in exasperation.

“Not the Butter Trail.”

“Mon Dieu,”
Jean-Pierre whispered in his native tongue. “The Butter Trail.” He was awestruck by their courage, and at the same time bitterly disappointed, for it would be impossible to find them now. “Did they take the baby?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll never see my daughter again.”

“They will all die in Nuristan,” Abdullah said with satisfaction. “A Western woman with a baby will never survive those high passes, and the American will die trying to save her. Thus God punishes those who escape man’s justice.”

Jean-Pierre realized he should get back to the helicopter as quickly as possible. “Go back to your house now,” he told Abdullah.

“The treaty will die with them, for Ellis has the paper,” Abdullah added. “This is a good thing. Although we need the American weapons, it is dangerous to make pacts with infidels.”

“Go!” said Jean-Pierre. “If you don’t want your family to see me, make them stay inside for a few minutes.”

Abdullah looked momentarily indignant at being given orders, but he seemed to realize he was at the wrong end of the gun for protests, and he hurried away.

Jean-Pierre wondered whether they would all die in Nuristan, as Abdullah had gloatingly predicted. That was not what he wanted. It would not give him revenge or satisfaction. He wanted his daughter back. He wanted Jane alive and in his power. He wanted Ellis to suffer pain and humiliation.

He gave Abdullah time to get inside his house, then drew the hood over his face and set off disconsolately up the hill. He kept his face averted as he passed the house in case one of the children should look out.

Anatoly was waiting for him in the clearing in front of the caves. He held out his hand for the pistol and said: “Well?”

Jean-Pierre gave him back his gun. “They’ve escaped us,” he said. “They’ve left the Valley.”

“They can’t have
escaped
us,” said Anatoly angrily. “Where have they gone?”

“To Nuristan.” Jean-Pierre pointed in the direction of the helicopters. “Shouldn’t we leave?”

“We can’t talk in the helicopter.”

“But if the villagers come—”

“To hell with the villagers! Stop acting defeated! What are they doing in Nuristan?”

“They’re heading for Pakistan by a route known as the Butter Trail.”

“If we know their route we can find them.”

“I don’t think so. There is one route, but it has variations.”

“We’ll overfly them all.”

“You can’t follow these paths from the air. You can hardly follow them from the
ground
without a native guide.”

“We can use maps—”

“What maps?” said Jean-Pierre. “I’ve seen your maps, and they’re no better than my American ones, which are the best available—and they do not show these trails and passes. Don’t you know there are regions of the world that have never been properly charted? You’re in one of them now!”

“I know—I’m in Intelligence, remember?” Anatoly lowered his voice. “You’re too easily discouraged, my friend. Think. If Ellis can find a native guide to show him the route, then I can do the same.”

Was it possible? Jean-Pierre wondered. “But there is more than one way to go.”

“Suppose there are ten variations. We need ten native guides to lead ten search parties.”

Jean-Pierre’s enthusiasm rose rapidly as he realized that he might yet get Jane and Chantal back and see Ellis captured. “It might not be that bad,” he said enthusiastically. “We can simply inquire along the way. Once we are out of this godforsaken Valley, people may be less tight-lipped. The Nuristanis aren’t as involved in the war as these people.”

“Good,” said Anatoly abruptly. “It is getting dark. We’ve got a lot to do tonight. We start early in the morning. Let’s go!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

J
ane woke up frightened. She did not know where she was or who she was with or whether the Russians had caught her. For a second she stared up at the exposed underside of a wattle roof, thinking, Is this a prison? Then she sat up abruptly, her heart hammering, and saw Ellis in his sleeping bag, slumbering with his mouth open, and she remembered, We’re out of the Valley. We escaped. The Russians don’t know where we are and they can’t find us.

She lay down again and waited for her heartbeat to return to normal.

They were not following the route Ellis had originally planned. Instead of going north to Comar and then east along the Comar Valley into Nuristan, they had turned back south from Saniz and gone east along the Aryu Valley. Mohammed had suggested this because it got them out of the Five Lions Valley much more quickly, and Ellis had agreed.

They had left before dawn and walked uphill all day, Ellis and Jane taking turns carrying Chantal, Mohammed leading Maggie. At midday they had stopped in the mud-hut village of Aryu and bought bread from a suspicious old man with a snapping dog. Aryu village had been the limit of civilization: after that, there had been nothing for miles but the boulder-strewn river and the great bare ivory-colored mountains on either side, until they had reached this place at the weary end of the afternoon.

Jane sat up again. Chantal lay beside her, breathing evenly and radiating heat like a hot-water bottle. Ellis was in his own sleeping bag: they could have zipped the two bags together to make one, but Jane had been afraid that Ellis might roll onto Chantal in the night, so they had slept separately and contented themselves with lying close together and reaching out to touch one another now and again. Mohammed was in the adjoining room.

Jane got up carefully, trying not to disturb Chantal. As she put on her shirt and stepped into her trousers, she felt twinges of pain in her back and her legs: she was hardened to walking, but not all day, climbing without respite, on such rough terrain.

She put on her boots without tying the laces and went outside. She blinked against the bright cold light of the mountains. She was in an upland meadow, a vast green field with a stream winding through it. To one side of the meadow the mountain rose steeply, and sheltered here at the foot of the slope was a handful of stone houses and some cattle pens. The houses were empty and the cattle had gone: this was a summer pasture, and the cowherds had left for their winter quarters. It was still summer in the Five Lions Valley, but at this altitude autumn came in September.

Jane walked over to the stream. It was sufficiently far from the stone houses for her to slip out of her clothes without fear of offending Mohammed. She ran into the stream and quickly immersed herself in the water. It was searingly cold. She got out again immediately, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. “To hell with
this,
” she said aloud. She would stay dirty until she got back to civilization, she resolved.

She put her clothes back on—there was only one towel, and that was reserved for Chantal—and ran back to the house, picking up a few sticks on the way. She laid the sticks over the remains of last night’s fire and blew on the embers until the wood caught. She held her frozen hands to the flames until they felt normal again.

She put a pan of water on the fire for washing Chantal. While she was waiting for it to warm up, the others woke, one by one: first Mohammed, who went outside to wash; then Ellis, who complained that he ached all over; and finally Chantal, who demanded to be fed and was satisfied.

Jane felt oddly euphoric. She should have been anxious, she thought, about taking her two-month-old baby into one of the world’s wild places; but somehow that anxiety was swamped by her happiness. Why am I happy? she asked herself, and the answer came out of the back of her mind: because I’m with Ellis.

Chantal also seemed happy, as if she were imbibing contentment with her mother’s milk. They had been unable to buy food last night, because the cowherds had left and there was nobody else from whom to buy it. However, they had some rice and salt, which they had boiled—not without difficulty because it took forever to boil water at this altitude. Now for breakfast there was cold leftover rice. That brought Jane’s spirits down a little.

She ate while Chantal fed, then washed and changed her. The spare diaper, washed in the stream yesterday, had dried by the fire overnight. Jane put it on Chantal and took the dirty diaper to the stream. She would attach it to the baggage and hope that the wind and the heat of the horse’s body would dry it. What would Mummy say about her granddaughter wearing one diaper all day? She would be horrified. Never mind. . . .

Ellis and Mohammed loaded the horse and got her pointed in the right direction. Today would be harder than yesterday. They had to cross the mountain range that for centuries had kept Nuristan more or less isolated from the rest of the world. They would climb the Aryu Pass, fourteen thousand feet high. Much of the way they would have to struggle through snow and ice. They hoped to reach the Nuristan village of Linar: it was only ten miles away as the crow flies, but they would be doing well to get there by late afternoon.

The sunlight was bright when they set off, but the air was cold. Jane was wearing heavy socks and mittens and an oiled sweater under her fur-lined coat. She carried Chantal in the sling between her sweater and her coat, with the top buttons of the coat undone to let air in.

They left the meadow, following the Aryu River upstream, and immediately the landscape became harsh and hostile again. The cold cliffs were bare of vegetation. Once Jane saw, far in the distance, a huddle of nomads’ tents on a bleak slope: she did not know whether to be glad there were other humans around or frightened of them. The only other living thing she saw was a bearded vulture floating in the bitter wind.

There was no visible pathway. Jane was immeasurably glad that Mohammed was with them. At first he followed the river, but when it narrowed and petered out, he carried on with undiminished confidence. Jane asked him how he knew the way, and he told her that the route was marked by piles of stones at intervals. She had not noticed them until he pointed them out.

Soon there was a thin layer of snow on the ground, and Jane’s feet got cold despite her heavy socks and her boots.

Amazingly, Chantal slept much of the time. Every couple of hours they stopped for a few minutes’ rest, and Jane took the opportunity to feed her, wincing as she exposed her tender breasts to the freezing air. She told Ellis that she thought Chantal was being remarkably good, and he said: “Unbelievably. Unbelievably.”

At midday they stopped within sight of the Aryu Pass for a welcome half-hour rest. Jane was already tired, and her back hurt. She was also starvingly hungry—she wolfed the mulberry-and-walnut cake they had for lunch.

The approach to the pass was terribly daunting. Looking at that steep climb, Jane lost heart. I think I’ll sit here a little longer, she thought; but it was cold, and she began to shiver, and Ellis noticed and stood up. “Let’s go, before we’re frozen to the spot,” he said brightly, and Jane thought: I wish you wouldn’t be so bloody cheerful.

She stood up with an effort of will.

Ellis said: “Let me carry Chantal.”

Jane handed the baby over gratefully. Mohammed led the way, heaving on Maggie’s reins. Wearily, Jane forced herself to follow. Ellis brought up the rear.

The slope was steep and the ground slippery with snow. After a few minutes Jane was more tired than she had been before they stopped to rest. As she stumbled along, panting and aching, she recalled saying to Ellis
I suppose I have a better chance of escaping from here with you than of escaping from Siberia alone.
Perhaps I can’t manage either, she thought now. I didn’t know it was going to be like this. Then she caught herself. Of course you knew, she said to herself; and you know it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Snap out of it, you pathetic creature. At that moment she slipped on an icy rock and fell sideways. Ellis, just behind her, caught her arm and held her upright. She realized that he was watching her carefully, and she felt a surge of love for him. Ellis cherished her in a way Jean-Pierre never had. Jean-Pierre would have walked on ahead, assuming that if she needed help she would ask for it; and if she had complained about that attitude, he would have asked whether she wanted to be treated as an equal or not.

They were almost at the summit. Jane leaned forward to take the incline, thinking: Just a little more, just a little more. She felt dizzy. In front of her, Maggie skidded on the loose rocks and then scampered up the last few feet, forcing Mohammed to run alongside. Jane plodded after her, counting the steps. At last she reached the level ground. She stopped. Her head was spinning. Ellis’s arm went around her, and she closed her eyes and leaned on him.

“From now on it’s downhill all day,” he said.

She opened her eyes. She could never have imagined such a cruel landscape: nothing but snow, wind, mountains and loneliness forever and ever. “What a godforsaken place this is,” she said.

They looked at the view for a minute; then Ellis said: “We must keep going.”

They walked on. The way down was steeper. Mohammed, who had been heaving on Maggie’s reins all the way up, now hung on to her tail to act as a brake and prevent the horse slithering out of control down the slippery slope. The cairns were hard to distinguish among the litter of loose snow-covered rocks, but Mohammed showed no hesitation about which way to go. Jane thought she should offer to take Chantal, to give Ellis a reprieve, but she knew she could not carry her.

As they descended, the snow thinned and then cleared, and the track was visible. Jane kept hearing an odd whistling sound, and eventually found the energy to ask Mohammed what it was. In reply he used a Dari word she did not know. He did not know the French equivalent. In the end he pointed, and Jane saw a small squirrellike animal scuttling out of the way: a marmot. Afterward she saw several more, and wondered what they found to eat up here.

Soon they were walking alongside another brook, heading downstream now, and the endless gray-and-white rock was relieved by a little coarse grass and a few low bushes on the banks of the stream; but still the wind hurtled up the gorge and penetrated Jane’s clothing like needles of ice.

Just as the climb had become relentlessly worse, so the descent got easier and easier: the path growing smoother, the air warmer, and the landscape friendlier. Jane was still exhausted but she no longer felt oppressed and downcast. After a couple of miles they reached the first village in Nuristan. The men there wore thick sleeveless sweaters with a striking black-and-white pattern, and spoke a language of their own which Mohammed could barely understand. However, he managed to buy bread with some of Ellis’s Afghan money.

Jane was tempted to plead with Ellis that they stop here for the night, for she felt desperately weary; but there were still several hours of daylight left, and they had agreed they would try to reach Linar today, so she bit her tongue and forced her aching legs to walk on.

To her immense relief the remaining four or five miles were easier, and they arrived well before nightfall. Jane sank to the ground underneath an enormous mulberry tree and simply sat still for a while. Mohammed lit a fire and began to make tea.

Mohammed somehow let it be known that Jane was a Western nurse, and later, while she was feeding and changing Chantal, a little group of patients gathered, waiting at a respectful distance. Jane summoned her energy and saw them. There were the usual infected wounds, intestinal parasites and bronchial complaints, but there were fewer malnourished children here than in the Five Lions Valley, presumably because the war had not much affected this remote wilderness.

As a result of the impromptu clinic, Mohammed got a chicken, which he boiled in their saucepan. Jane would have preferred to go to sleep, but she made herself wait for the food and ate ravenously when it came. It was stringy and tasteless, but she was hungrier than she had ever been in her life.

Ellis and Jane were given a room in one of the village houses. There was a mattress for them and a crude wooden crib for Chantal. They joined their sleeping bags together and made love with weary tenderness. Jane enjoyed the warmth and the lying down almost as much as the sex. Afterward, Ellis fell asleep instantly. Jane lay awake for a few minutes. Her muscles seemed to hurt more now that she was relaxing. She thought about lying on a real bed in an ordinary bedroom, with streetlights shining through the curtains and car doors slamming outside, and a bathroom with a flush toilet and a hot-water tap, and a shop on the corner where you could buy cotton balls and Pampers and Johnson’s No More Tears baby shampoo. We escaped from the Russians, she thought, as she drifted off to sleep; maybe we really will make it home. Maybe we really will.

Jane woke when Ellis did, sensing his sudden tension. He lay rigid beside her for a moment, not breathing, listening to the sound of two dogs barking. Then he slipped out of bed fast.

The room was pitch-dark. She heard a match scrape; then a candle flickered in the corner. She looked at Chantal: the baby was sleeping peacefully. “What is it?” she said to Ellis.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. He pulled on his jeans, stepped into his boots, and put on his coat; then he went out.

Jane threw on some clothes and followed him. In the next room, moonlight coming through the open door revealed four children in a row in a bed, all staring wide-eyed over the edge of their shared blanket. Their parents were asleep in another room. Ellis was in the doorway, looking out.

Jane stood beside him. Up on the hill she could see, by the moonlight, a lone figure, running toward them.

“The dogs heard him,” Ellis whispered.

“But who is he?” said Jane.

Suddenly there was another figure beside them. Jane gave a start, then recognized Mohammed. The blade of a knife glinted in his hand.