Lie Down With Lions (32 page)

Ellis counted out the money, and said to Jane: “Five hundred afghanis per fish—how much is that?”

“Five hundred afghanis is fifty French francs—five pounds.”

“Ten bucks,” said Ellis. “Expensive fish.”

Jane wished he would stop jabbering: it was as much as she could do to put one foot in front of the other, and he was talking about the price of fish.

The young man, whose name was Halam, said he had caught the fish in Lake Mundol, farther down the valley, although he had probably bought them, for he did not look like a fisherman. He slowed his pace to walk with them, talking volubly, apparently not much concerned about whether they understood him or not.

Like the Five Lions Valley, the Nuristan was a rocky canyon which broadened, every few miles, into small cultivated plains with terraced fields. The most noticeable difference was the forest of holly oak which covered the mountainsides like the wool on a sheep’s back, and which Jane thought of as her hiding place should all else fail.

They were making better time now. There were no infuriating diversions up the mountain, for which Jane was deeply thankful. In one place the road was blocked by a landfall, but this time Ellis and Jane were able to climb over it, and Mohammed and the horse forded the river and came back across a few yards upstream. A little later, when an abutment jutted into the stream, the road continued around the cliff face on a shaky wooden trestle which the horse refused to tread on, and once again Mohammed solved the problem by crossing in the water.

By this time Jane was near to collapse. When Mohammed came back across the river, she said: “I need to stop and rest.”

Mohammed said: “We are almost at Gadwal.”

“How far is it?”

Mohammed conferred with Halam in Dari and French, then said: “One half hour.”

It seemed like forever to Jane. Of
course
I can walk for another half hour, she told herself, and tried to think of something other than the ache in her back and the need to lie down.

But then, when they turned the next bend, they saw the village.

It was a startling sight as well as a welcome one: the wooden houses scrambled up the steep mountainside like children clambering on one another’s backs, giving the impression that if one house at the bottom were to collapse, the whole village would come tumbling down the hill and fall into the water.

As soon as they drew alongside the first house, Jane simply stopped and sat down on the riverbank. Every muscle in her body ached, and she hardly had the strength to take Chantal from Ellis, who sat beside her with a readiness that suggested he, too, was wiped out. A curious face looked out from the house, and Halam immediately began to talk to the woman, presumably telling her what he knew about Jane and Ellis. Mohammed tethered Maggie where she could graze the coarse grass on the riverbank, then squatted beside Ellis.

“We must buy bread and tea,” Mohammed said.

Jane thought they all needed something more substantial. “What about the fish?” she said.

Ellis said: “It would take too long to clean and cook it. We’ll have that for tonight. I don’t want to spend more than half an hour here.”

“All right,” said Jane, although she was not sure she would be able to carry on after only half an hour. Perhaps some food would revive her, she thought.

Halam called to them. Jane looked up and saw him beckoning. The woman did the same: she was inviting them into her house. Ellis and Mohammed got to their feet. Jane put Chantal down on the ground, stood up, then bent down to pick up the baby. Suddenly her vision blurred at the edges and she seemed to lose her balance. For a moment she fought it, seeing only Chantal’s tiny face surrounded by a haze; then her knees became weak and she sank to the ground, and everything went dark.

When she opened her eyes she saw a circle of anxious faces above her: Ellis, Mohammed, Halam and the woman. Ellis said: “How do you feel?”

“Foolish,” she said. “What happened?”

“You fainted.”

She sat upright. “I’ll be all right.”

“No, you won’t,” said Ellis. “You can’t go any farther today.”

Jane’s head was clearing. She knew he was right. Her body would not take any more, and no effort of will would change that. She started to speak French so that Mohammed could understand. “But the Russians are sure to reach here today.”

“We’ll have to hide,” said Ellis.

Mohammed said: “Look at these people. Do you think they could keep a secret?”

Jane looked at Halam and the woman. They were watching, riveted by the conversation even though they could not understand a word of it. The arrival of the foreigners was probably the most exciting event of the year. In a few minutes the whole of the village would be here. She studied Halam. Telling him not to gossip would be like telling a dog not to bark. The location of their hideout would be known all over Nuristan by nightfall. Was it possible to get away from these people, and sneak off up a side valley unobserved? Perhaps. But they could not live indefinitely without help from the local people—at some point their food would run out, and that would be about the time the Russians realized they had stopped and began searching the woods and canyons. Ellis had been right, earlier in the day, when he said their only hope was to stay ahead of their pursuers.

Mohammed drew heavily on his cigarette, looking thoughtful. He spoke to Ellis. “You and I will have to go on, and leave Jane behind.”

“No,” said Ellis.

Mohammed said: “The piece of paper you have, which bears the signatures of Masud, Kamil and Azizi, is more important than the life of any one of us. It represents the future of Afghanistan—the freedom for which my son died.”

Ellis would have to go on alone, Jane realized. At least he could be saved. She was ashamed of herself for the terrible despair she felt at the thought of losing him. She should be trying to figure out how to help him, not wondering how she could keep him with her. Suddenly she had an idea. “I could divert the Russians,” she said. “I could let myself be captured. Then, after a show of reluctance, I could give Jean-Pierre all sorts of false information about which way you were headed and how you were traveling. . . . If I sent them off completely the wrong way, you might gain several days’ lead—enough to get you safely out of the country!” She became enthusiastic about the idea even while in her heart she was thinking, Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.

Mohammed looked at Ellis. “It’s the only way, Ellis,” he said.

“Forget it,” said Ellis. “It isn’t going to happen.”

“But, Ellis—”

“It isn’t going to happen,” Ellis repeated. “Forget it.”

Mohammed shut up.

Jane said: “But what are we going to do?”

“The Russians won’t catch up with us today,” Ellis said. “We still have a lead—we got up so early this morning. We’ll stay here tonight and start early again tomorrow. Remember, it isn’t over until it’s over. Anything could happen. Somebody back in Moscow could decide that Anatoly is out of his mind and order the search called off.”

“Bullshit,” said Jane in English, but secretly she was glad, against all reason, that he had refused to go on alone.

“I have an alternative suggestion,” said Mohammed. “I will go back and divert the Russians.”

Jane’s heart leaped. Was it possible?

Ellis said: “How?”

“I will offer to be their guide and interpreter, and I will lead them south down the Nuristan Valley, away from you, to Lake Mundol.”

Jane thought of a snag, and her heart sank again. “But they must have a guide already,” she said.

“He may be a good man from the Five Lions Valley who has been forced to help the Russians against his will. In that case I will speak with him and arrange things.”

“What if he won’t help?”

Mohammed considered. “Then he is not a good man who has been forced to help them, but a traitor who willingly collaborates with the enemy for personal gain, in which case I will kill him.”

“I don’t want anyone killed for my sake,” she said quickly.

“It’s not for you,” Ellis said harshly. “It’s for me—I refused to go on alone.”

Jane shut up.

Ellis was thinking about practicalities. He said to Mohammed: “You’re not dressed like a Nuristani.”

“I will change clothes with Halam.”

“You don’t speak the local language well.”

“There are many languages in Nuristan. I will pretend to come from a district where they use a different tongue. The Russians speak none of these languages anyway, so they will never know.”

“What will you do with your gun?”

Mohammed thought for a moment. “Will you give me your bag?”

“It’s too small.”

“My Kalashnikov is the type that has a folding butt.”

“Sure,” said Ellis. “You can have the bag.”

Jane wondered whether it would attract suspicion, but decided not: Afghans’ bags were as strange and varied as their clothes. All the same, Mohammed would surely arouse suspicion sooner or later. She said: “What will happen when they finally realize they are on the wrong trail?”

“Before that happens I will run away in the night, leaving them in the middle of nowhere.”

“It’s terribly dangerous,” said Jane.

Mohammed tried to look heroically unconcerned. Like most of the guerrillas, he was genuinely brave but also ludicrously vain.

Ellis said: “If you time this wrong, and they suspect you before you’ve decided to leave them, they will torture you to find out which way we went.”

“They will never take me alive,” said Mohammed.

Jane believed him.

Ellis said: “But we will have no guide.”

“I shall find you another one.” Mohammed turned to Halam and began a rapid multilingual conversation. Jane gathered that Mohammed was proposing to hire Halam as a guide. She did not like Halam much—he was too good a salesman to be entirely trustworthy—but he was obviously a traveling man, so he was a natural choice. Most of the local people had probably never ventured outside their own valley.

“He says he knows the way,” said Mohammed, reverting to French. Jane suffered a twinge of anxiety about the words
He says.
Mohammed went on: “He will take you to Kantiwar, and there he will find another guide to take you across the next pass, and in this way you will proceed to Pakistan. He will charge five thousand afghanis.”

Ellis said: “It sounds like a fair price, but how many more guides will we have to hire at that rate before we reach Chitral?”

“Maybe five or six,” said Mohammed.

Ellis shook his head. “We don’t have thirty thousand afghanis. And we have to buy food.”

“You will have to get food by holding clinics,” Mohammed said. “And the way becomes easier once you are in Pakistan. Perhaps you will not need guides at the end.”

Ellis looked dubious. “What do you think?” he asked Jane.

“There’s an alternative,” she said. “You could go on without me.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not an alternative. We’ll go on together.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
ll the first day, the search parties found no trace of Ellis and Jane. Jean-Pierre and Anatoly sat on hard wooden chairs in a spartan, windowless office at the Bagram air base, monitoring the reports as they came in over the radio network. The search parties had left before dawn—again. There were six of them at the start: one for each of the five main side valleys leading east from the Five Lions, and one to follow the Five Lions River north to its source and beyond. Each of the parties included at least one Dari-speaking officer from the Afghan regular army. They landed their helicopters at six different villages in the Valley, and half an hour later all six parties had reported that they had found local guides.

“That was quick,” said Jean-Pierre after the sixth reported in. “How did they do it?”

“Simple,” said Anatoly. “They ask someone to be a guide. He says no. They shoot him. They ask someone else. It doesn’t take long to find a volunteer.”

One of the search parties tried to follow its assigned trail from the air, but the experiment was a failure. The trails were rather difficult to follow from the ground, impossible from the air. Furthermore, none of the guides had ever been in an aircraft before and the new experience was totally disorienting. So all the search parties went on foot, some with commandeered horses to carry their baggage.

Jean-Pierre did not expect any further news in the morning, for the fugitives had a full day’s start. However, the soldiers would certainly move faster than Jane, especially as she was carrying Chantal—

Jean-Pierre felt a stab of guilt every time he thought of Chantal. His rage at what his wife was doing did not extend to his daughter, yet the baby was suffering, he felt sure: trekking all day, crossing passes above the snow line, blasted by icy winds. . . .

His mind turned, as it often did nowadays, to the question of what would happen if Jane died and Chantal survived. He pictured Ellis captured, alone, Jane’s body found a mile or two back, dead of the cold, with the baby still miraculously alive in her arms. I would arrive back in Paris a tragic, romantic figure, thought Jean-Pierre, a widower with a baby daughter, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. . . . How they would lionize me! I’m perfectly capable of bringing up a baby. What an intense relationship we would have as she grew older. I’d have to hire a nanny, of course, but I’d make sure she did not take the place of a mother in the child’s affections. No, I would be both father and mother to her.

The more he thought about it, the more outraged he felt that Jane was risking Chantal’s life. Surely she had forfeited all her parental rights by taking her baby on such an escapade. He thought he could probably get legal custody of the child in a European court on this basis. . . .

As the afternoon wore on, Anatoly grew bored and Jean-Pierre became tense. They were both tetchy. Anatoly held long conversations in Russian with other officers who came into the windowless little room, and their interminable jabbering got on Jean-Pierre’s nerves. At first Anatoly had translated all the radio reports of the search parties, but now he would just say, “Nothing.” Jean-Pierre had been plotting the routes of the parties on a set of maps, marking their locations with red pins, but by the end of the afternoon they were following trails or dried-up riverbeds which were not on the maps, and if their radio reports gave clues to their whereabouts, Anatoly was not passing them on.

The parties made camp at nightfall without reporting any signs of the fugitives. The searchers had been instructed to question the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed. The villagers were saying they had seen no foreigners. This was not surprising, for the searchers were still on the Five Lions side of the great passes leading to Nuristan. The people they were questioning were generally loyal to Masud: to them, helping the Russians was treason. Tomorrow, when the search parties passed into Nuristan, the people would be more cooperative.

Nevertheless, Jean-Pierre felt dispirited as he and Anatoly left the office at nightfall and walked across the concrete to the canteen. They ate a vile dinner of canned sausages and reconstituted mashed potatoes; then Anatoly went off moodily to drink vodka with some brother officers, leaving Jean-Pierre in the care of a sergeant who spoke only Russian. They played chess once, but—to Jean-Pierre’s chagrin—the sergeant was far too good. Jean-Pierre retired early and lay awake on a hard army mattress, visualizing Jane and Ellis in bed together.

Next morning he was awakened by Anatoly, his Oriental face wreathed in smiles, all irritation gone, and Jean-Pierre felt like a bad child who has been forgiven, although as far as he knew he had done nothing wrong. They ate their breakfast porridge together in the canteen. Anatoly had already talked to each of the search parties, all of which had struck camp and set off again at dawn. “Today we will catch your wife, my friend,” said Anatoly cheerfully, and Jean-Pierre felt a surge of happy optimism.

As soon as they reached the office, Anatoly radioed to the searchers again. He asked them to describe what they could see all around them, and Jean-Pierre used their descriptions of streams, lakes, depressions and moraines to guess their locations. They seemed to be moving terribly slowly in terms of kilometers per hour, but of course they were going uphill on difficult terrain, and the same factors would slow Ellis and Jane.

Each search party had a guide, and when they came to a place where the trail forked and both ways led to Nuristan, they would conscript an additional guide from the nearest village and split into two groups. By noon Jean-Pierre’s map was spotted with little red pinheads like a case of measles.

In the middle of the afternoon there was an unexpected distraction. A bespectacled general on a five-day fact-finding tour of Afghanistan landed at Bagram and decided to find out how Anatoly was spending the Russian taxpayer’s money. This Jean-Pierre learned in a few words from Anatoly seconds before the general burst into the little office, followed by anxious officers like ducklings hurrying after the mother duck.

Jean-Pierre was fascinated to see how masterfully Anatoly handled the visitor. He sprang to his feet, looking energetic but unruffled; shook the general’s hand and gave him a chair; barked a series of orders through the open door; spoke rapidly but deferentially to the general for a minute or so; excused himself and spoke into the radio; translated for Jean-Pierre’s benefit the reply that came crackling through the atmosphere from Nuristan; and introduced the general to Jean-Pierre in French.

The general began to ask questions, and Anatoly pointed to the pinheads on Jean-Pierre’s map as he replied. Then, in the middle of it all, one of the search parties called in unbidden, an excited voice jabbering in Russian, and Anatoly shushed the general in midsentence to listen.

Jean-Pierre sat on the edge of his hard seat and longed for a translation.

The voice stopped. Anatoly asked a question and got a reply.

“What did he see?” blurted Jean-Pierre, unable to keep silent any longer.

Anatoly ignored him for a moment and spoke to the general. At last he turned to Jean-Pierre. “They have found two Americans at a village called Atati in the Nuristan valley.”

“Wonderful!” said Jean-Pierre. “It’s them!”

“I suppose so,” said Anatoly.

Jean-Pierre could not understand his lack of enthusiasm. “Of course it is! Your troops don’t know the difference between American and English.”

“Probably not. But they say there is no baby.”

“No baby!” Jean-Pierre frowned. How could that be? Had Jane left Chantal behind in the Five Lions Valley, to be brought up by Rabia or Zahara or Fara? It seemed impossible. Had she hidden the baby with a family in this village—Atati—just a few seconds before being caught by the search party? That, too, seemed unlikely: Jane’s instinct would be to keep the baby close to her in times of danger.

Was Chantal dead?

It was probably a mistake, he decided: some error of communication, atmospheric interference on the radio link, or even a purblind officer in the search party who simply had not seen the tiny baby.

“Let’s not speculate,” he said to Anatoly. “Let’s go and see.”

“I want you to go with the pickup squad,” said Anatoly.

“Of course,” said Jean-Pierre; then he was struck by Anatoly’s phrasing. “Do you mean to say you’re not coming?”

“Correct.”

“Why not?”

“I’m needed here.” Anatoly shot a glance at the general.

“All right.” There were power games within the military bureaucracy, no doubt: Anatoly was afraid to leave the base while the general was still prowling around in case some rival should get a chance to slander him behind his back.

Anatoly picked up the desk phone and gave a series of orders in Russian. While he was still speaking, an orderly came into the room and beckoned Jean-Pierre. Anatoly put his hand over the mouthpiece and said: “They’ll give you a warm coat—it’s already winter in Nuristan.
À bientôt
.”

Jean-Pierre went out with the orderly. They walked across the concrete apron. Two helicopters were waiting, rotors spinning: a bug-eyed Hind with rocket pods slung under its stubby wings, and a Hip, rather bigger, with a row of portholes along its fuselage. Jean-Pierre wondered what the Hip was for, then realized it was to bring back the search party. Just before they reached the machines, a soldier ran up to them with a uniform greatcoat and gave it to Jean-Pierre. He slung it over his arm and boarded the Hind.

They took off immediately. Jean-Pierre was in a fever of anticipation. He sat on the bench in the passenger cabin with half a dozen troops. They headed northeast.

When they were clear of the air base, the pilot beckoned Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre went forward and stood on the step so that the pilot could speak to him. “I will be your translator,” the man said in hesitant French.

“Thank you. You know where we’re headed?”

“Yes, sir. We have the coordinates, and I can speak by radio with the leader of the search party.”

“Fine.” Jean-Pierre was surprised to be treated with such deference. It seemed he had acquired honorary rank by association with a KGB colonel.

He wondered, as he returned to his seat, how Jane would look when he walked in. Would she be relieved? Defiant? Or just exhausted? Ellis would be angry and humiliated, of course. How should I act? wondered Jean-Pierre. I want to make them squirm, but I must remain dignified. What should I say?

He tried to visualize the scene. Ellis and Jane would be in the courtyard of some mosque, or sitting on the earth floor of a stone hut, possibly tied up, guarded by soldiers with Kalashnikovs. They would probably be cold, hungry and miserable. Jean-Pierre would stride in, wearing his Russian greatcoat, looking confident and commanding, followed by deferential junior officers. He would give them a long, penetrating look and say—

What would he say?
We meet again
sounded terribly melodramatic.
Did you really think you could escape from us?
was too rhetorical.
You never stood a chance
was better, but a little anticlimactic.

The temperature dropped fast as they headed into the mountains. Jean-Pierre put on his coat and stood by the open door, looking down. Below him was a valley something like the Five Lions, with a river at its center flowing in the shadows of the mountains. There was snow on the peaks and ridges to either side, but none in the valley itself.

Jean-Pierre went forward to the flight deck and spoke into the pilot’s ear. “Where are we?”

“This is called the Sakardara Valley,” the man replied. “As we go north its name changes to the Nuristan Valley. It takes us all the way to Atati.”

“How much longer?”

“Twenty minutes.”

It sounded like forever. Controlling his impatience with an effort, Jean-Pierre went back to sit on the bench among the troops. They sat still and quiet, watching him. They seemed afraid of him. Perhaps they thought he was in the KGB.

I
am
in the KGB, he thought suddenly.

He wondered what the troops were thinking about. Girlfriends and wives back home, perhaps? Their home would be his home, from now on. He would have an apartment in Moscow. He wondered whether he could possibly have a happy married life with Jane now. He wanted to install her and Chantal in his apartment while he, like these soldiers, would fight the good fight in foreign countries and look forward to going home on leave, to sleep with his wife again and see how his daughter had grown. I betrayed Jane and she betrayed me, he thought; perhaps we can forgive one another, if only for the sake of Chantal.

What had happened to Chantal?

He was about to find out. The helicopter lost height. They were almost there. Jean-Pierre stood up to look out of the door again. They were coming down to a meadow where a tributary joined the main river. It was a pretty spot with just a few houses sprawling up the hillside, each overlapping the one beneath in the Nuristani manner: Jean-Pierre remembered seeing photographs of such villages in coffee-table books about the Himalayas.

The helicopter touched down.

Jean-Pierre jumped to the ground. On the other side of the meadow, a group of Russian soldiers—the search party, undoubtedly—emerged from the lowest of a mound of wooden houses. Jean-Pierre waited impatiently for the pilot, his interpreter. Finally the man got out of the helicopter. “Let’s go!” said Jean-Pierre, and started off across the field.

He restrained himself from breaking into a run. Ellis and Jane were probably in the house from which the search party was emerging, he thought, and he headed that way at a fast walk. He began to feel angry: long-suppressed rage was churning up inside him. To hell with being dignified, he thought; I’m going to tell this loathsome couple just what I think of them.

As he neared the search party, the officer at the head of the group began speaking. Ignoring him, Jean-Pierre turned to his pilot and said: “Ask him where they are.”

The pilot asked, and the officer pointed to the wooden house. Without further ado Jean-Pierre went past the soldiers to the house.