Lie Down With Lions (38 page)

“Well done,” Ellis said to Jane. “He might have ruined everything. Now make them all lie down.”

A minute later they were all lying facedown on the ground.

“You have to shoot off my handcuffs,” he said to Jane.

He put down his rifle and stood with his arms outstretched toward the doorway. Jane pulled back the slide of the pistol, then placed its muzzle against the chain. They positioned themselves so that the spent bullet would go through the doorway.

“I hope this doesn’t break my fucking wrist,” said Ellis.

Jane closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

Ellis roared: “Ow, fuck!” At first his wrists hurt like hell. Then, after a moment, he realized they were not broken—the chain was.

He picked up his rifle. “Now I want their radio,” he said.

On Anatoly’s order, the captain began to unstrap a large box from the horse’s back.

Ellis wondered whether the helicopter would fly again. Its undercarriage would be destroyed, of course, and there might be all sorts of other damage underneath; but the engine and the main control lines were on top. He recalled how, during the battle of Darg, he had seen a Hind just like this one crash twenty or thirty feet, then lift off again. This bastard ought to fly if that one did, he thought. If not . . .

He did not know what he would do otherwise.

The captain brought the radio and put it into the helicopter, then walked away again.

Ellis allowed himself a moment of relief. As long as he had the radio, the Russians could not contact their base. That meant they could not get reinforcements, nor could they alert anybody to what had happened. If Ellis could get the helicopter into the air, he would be safe from pursuit.

“Keep your gun aimed at Anatoly,” he said to Jane. “I’m going to see whether this thing will fly.”

Jane found the gun surprisingly heavy. Aiming at Anatoly, she kept her arm outstretched, for a while, but soon had to lower her arm to rest it. With her left hand she patted Chantal’s back. Chantal had cried, off and on, during the last few minutes, but now she had stopped.

The helicopter’s engine turned over, kicked and hesitated. Oh, please start, she prayed, please go.

The engine roared into life, and she saw the blades turn.

Jean-Pierre looked up.

Don’t you dare, she thought. Don’t move!

Jean-Pierre sat upright, looked at her, then got painfully to his feet. Jane pointed the pistol at him.

He started to walk toward the helicopter.

“Don’t make me shoot you!” she screamed, but her voice was drowned by the increasing roar of the engines.

Anatoly must have seen Jean-Pierre, for he rolled over and sat up. Jane pointed the gun at him. He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. Jane swung the gun back toward Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre kept coming.

Jane felt the helicopter shudder and try to lift.

Jean-Pierre was close now. She could see his face clearly. His hands were spread wide in a gesture of appeal, but there was a mad light in his eyes. He’s lost his mind, she thought; but perhaps that happened a long time ago.

“I will do it!” she yelled, although she knew he could not hear. “I will shoot you!”

The helicopter lifted off the ground.

Jean-Pierre broke into a run.

As the aircraft went up he jumped and landed on the deck. Jane hoped he would fall out again, but he steadied himself. He looked at her with hate in his eyes, and gathered himself to spring.

She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

The gun crashed and bucked in her hand.

She opened her eyes again. Jean-Pierre was still standing upright, with an expression of astonishment on his face. There was a spreading dark stain on the breast of his coat. Panicking, Jane pulled the trigger again, and again, and a third time. She missed with the first two, but the third seemed to hit his shoulder. He spun around, facing out, and fell forward through the doorway.

Then he was gone.

I killed him, she thought.

At first she felt a kind of wild elation. He had tried to capture her and imprison her and make her a slave. He had hunted her like an animal. He had betrayed her and beaten her. Now she had killed him.

Then she was overcome by grief. She sat on the deck and sobbed. Chantal began to cry too, and Jane rocked her baby as they wept together.

She did not know how long she stayed there. Eventually she got to her feet and went forward to stand beside the pilot’s seat.

“Are you all right?” Ellis shouted.

She nodded and tried a weak smile.

Ellis smiled back, pointed to a gauge and yelled: “Look—full tanks!”

She kissed his cheek. One day she would tell him she had shot Jean-Pierre, but not now. “How far to the border?” she asked.

“Less than an hour. And they can’t send anybody after us because we have their radio.”

Jane looked through the windscreen. Directly ahead, she could see the white-peaked mountains she would have had to climb. I don’t think I could have done it, she said to herself. I think I would have lain down in the snow and died.

Ellis had a wistful expression on his face.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“I was thinking how much I’d like a roast beef sandwich with lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise on whole wheat bread,” he said, and Jane smiled.

Chantal stirred and cried. Ellis took a hand off the controls and touched her pink cheek. “She’s hungry,” he said.

“I’ll go back and take care of her,” said Jane. She returned to the passenger cabin and sat on the bench. She unbuttoned her coat and her shirt, and fed her baby as the helicopter flew on into the rising sun.

PART III

1983

CHAPTER TWENTY

J
ane felt pleased as she walked down the suburban driveway and climbed into the passenger seat of Ellis’s car. It had been a successful afternoon. The pizzas had been good, and Petal had loved
Flashdance.
Ellis had been very tense about introducing his daughter to his girlfriend, but Petal had been thrilled by eight-month-old Chantal, and everything had been easy. Ellis had felt so good about it that he had suggested, when they dropped Petal off, that Jane walk up the drive with him and say hello to Gill. Gill had invited them in, and had cooed over Chantal, so Jane had got to know his ex-wife as well as his daughter, and all in one afternoon.

Ellis—Jane could not get used to the fact that his name was John, and she had decided always to call him Ellis—put Chantal on the backseat and got into the car beside Jane. “Well, what do you think?” he asked as they pulled away.

“You didn’t tell me she was pretty,” Jane said.

“Petal is pretty?”

“I meant Gill,” said Jane with a laugh.

“Yes, she’s pretty.”

“They’re fine people and they don’t deserve to be mixed up with someone like you.”

She was joking, but Ellis nodded somberly.

Jane leaned over and touched his thigh. “I didn’t mean it,” she said.

“It’s true, though.”

They drove on in silence for a while. It was six months to the day since they had escaped from Afghanistan. Now and again Jane would burst into tears for no apparent reason, but she no longer had nightmares in which she shot Jean-Pierre again and again. Nobody but she and Ellis knew what had happened—Ellis had even lied to his superiors about how Jean-Pierre died—and Jane had decided she would tell Chantal that her daddy died in Afghanistan in the war: no more than that.

Instead of heading back to the city, Ellis took a series of backstreets and eventually parked next to a vacant lot overlooking the water.

“What are we going to do here?” said Jane. “Neck?”

“If you like. But I want to talk.”

“Okay.”

“It was a good day.”

“Yes.”

“Petal was more relaxed with me today than she has ever been.”

“I wonder why.”

“I have a theory,” said Ellis. “It’s because of you and Chantal. Now that I’m part of a family, I’m no longer a threat to her home and her stability. I think that’s it, anyway.”

“It makes sense to me. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“No.” He hesitated. “I’m leaving the Agency.”

Jane nodded. “I’m very glad,” she said fervently. She had been waiting for something like this. He was settling his accounts and closing the books.

“The Afghan assignment is over, basically,” he went on. “Masud’s training program is under way and they’ve taken delivery of their first shipment. Masud is so strong now that he has negotiated a winter truce with the Russians.”

“Good!” said Jane. “I’m in favor of anything that leads to a cease-fire.”

“While I was in Washington, and you were in London, I was offered another job. It’s something I really want to do, plus it pays well.”

“What is it?” said Jane, intrigued.

“Working with a new presidential task force on organized crime.”

Fear stabbed Jane’s heart. “Is it dangerous?”

“Not for me. I’m too old for undercover work now. It’ll be my job to direct the undercover men.”

Jane could tell he was not being completely honest with her. “Tell me the truth, you bastard,” she said.

“Well, it’s a lot less dangerous than what I’ve been doing. But it’s not as safe as teaching kindergarten.”

She smiled at him. She knew what this was leading to now, and it made her happy.

He said: “Also, I’ll be based here in New York.”

That took her by surprise. “Really?”

“Why are you so astonished?”

“Because I’ve applied for a job with the United Nations. Here in New York.”

“You didn’t tell me you were going to do that!” he said, sounding hurt.

“You didn’t tell me about
your
plans,” she said indignantly.

“I’m telling you now.”

“And I’m telling
you
now.”

“But . . . would you have left me?”

“Why should we live where you work? Why shouldn’t we live where I work?”

“In the month we’ve been apart I completely forgot how goddamn touchy you are,” he said.

“Right.”

There was a silence.

Eventually Ellis said: “Well, anyway, as we’re both going to be living in New York . . .”

“We could share housekeeping?”

“Yes,” he said hesitantly.

Suddenly she regretted flying off the handle. He wasn’t really inconsiderate, just dumb. She had almost lost him, back there in Afghanistan, and now she could never be mad at him for very long because she would always remember how frightened she had been that they would be parted forever, and how inexpressibly glad she had been that they had stayed together and survived. “Okay,” she said in a softer voice. “Let’s share the housekeeping.”

“Actually . . . I was thinking of making it official. If you want.”

This was what she had been waiting for. “Official,” she said, as if she did not understand.

“Yes,” he said awkwardly. “I mean we could get married. If you want.”

She laughed with pleasure. “Do it right, Ellis!” she said. “Propose!”

He took her hand. “Jane, my dear, I love you. Will you marry me?”

“Yes! Yes!” she said. “As soon as possible! Tomorrow! Today!”

“Thank you,” he said.

She leaned over and kissed him. “I love you, too.”

They sat in silence then, holding hands and watching the sun go down. It was funny, Jane thought, but Afghanistan seemed unreal now, like a bad dream, vivid but no longer frightening. She remembered the people well enough—Abdullah the mullah and Rabia the midwife, handsome Mohammed and sensual Zahara and loyal Fara—but the bombs and the helicopters, the fear and the hardship, were fading from her memory. This was the real adventure, she felt: getting married and bringing up Chantal and making the world a better place for her to live in.

“Shall we go?” said Ellis.

“Yes.” She gave his hand a final squeeze, then let it go. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

He started the car and they drove back into the city.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following are books about Afghanistan by writers who have visited the country since the Soviet invasion of 1979:

Chaliand, Gérard:
Report from Afghanistan
(New York: Penguin, 1982).

Fullerton, John:
The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan
(London: Methuen, 1984).

Gall, Sandy:
Behind Russian Lines
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983).

Martin, Mike:
Afghanistan: Inside a Rebel Stronghold
(Poole, England: Blandford Press, 1984).

Ryan, Nigel:
A Hitch or Two in Afghanistan
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983).

Van Dyk, Jere:
In Afghanistan
(New York: Coward-McCann, 1983).

The standard reference book on Afghanistan is: Dupree, Louis:
Afghanistan
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).

On women and children I recommend the following: Bailleau Lajoinie, Simone:
Conditions de Femmes en Afghanistan
(Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1980). Hunte, Pamela Anne:
The Sociocultural Context of Perinatality in Afghanistan
(Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1984). Van Oudenhoven, Nico J. A.:
Common Afghan Street Games
(Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1979).

The classic travel book on the Panisher Valley and Nuristan is: Newby, Eric: A
Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
(London: Secker & War-burg, 1958).