Lie Down With Lions (25 page)

She slumped, lying beside him on the sleeping bag with her head on his thigh. His prick was still stiff. She leaned over weakly and kissed it. She could taste a trace of salty semen on the end. She felt his face nuzzle between her thighs in response.

For a while they were quiet. The only sounds were their breathing and the rushing river on the far side of the Valley. Jane looked at the stars. They were very bright, and there were no clouds. The night air was becoming cooler. We’ll have to get inside this sleeping bag before too long, she thought. She looked forward to falling asleep close to him.

“Are we weird?” said Ellis.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

His prick had fallen sideways and lay on his belly. She teased the red-gold hair of his groin with her fingertips. She had almost forgotten what it was like to make love to Ellis. He was so different from Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre liked a lot of preparation: bath oil, scent, candlelight, wine, violins. He was a fastidious lover. He liked her to wash before making love, and he always hurried to the bathroom afterward. He would never touch her while she had her period, and he certainly would not have sucked her breasts and swallowed the milk as Ellis had. Ellis would do
anything,
she thought, and the more unhygienic the better. She grinned in the dark. It occurred to her that she had never been completely convinced that Jean-Pierre actually
liked
performing oral sex, good at it though he was. With Ellis there was no doubt.

The thought made her want him to do it. She opened her thighs invitingly. She felt him kiss her, his lips brushing the wiry hair; then his tongue started to probe lasciviously between the folds of her lips. After a while he rolled her onto her back, knelt between her thighs, and lifted her legs over his shoulders. She felt utterly naked, terribly open and vulnerable and yet greatly cherished. His tongue moved in a long, slow curve, starting at the base of her spine—Oh, God, she thought, I remember how he does this—licking along the cleft of her buttocks, pausing to push deep into her vagina, then lifting to tease the sensitive skin where the lips met and the tingling clitoris between them. After seven or eight long licks she held his head over her clitoris, making him concentrate on that, and she began to lift and lower her hips, telling him by the pressure of her fingertips on his temples to lick harder or more lightly, higher or lower, left or right. She felt his hand on her cunt, pushing into the moist interior, and guessed what he was going to do: a moment later he withdrew his hand, and then pushed a wet finger slowly into her anus. She remembered how shocked she had been the first time he did that, and how quickly she had grown to like it. Jean-Pierre would never do that in a million years. As the muscles of her body began to tense for the climax, the thought came to her that she had missed Ellis more than she had ever admitted to herself; indeed, the reason she had been so angry with him for so long was that she had continued to love him all along, and she loved him still; and as she admitted it, a terrible weight lifted from her mind and she started to come, shaking like a tree in a gale, and Ellis, knowing what she liked, thrust his tongue deep inside her while she ground her sex frantically against his face.

It seemed it would go on forever. Each time the sensations eased, he would thrust his finger deeper into her ass, or lick her clitoris, or bite the lips of her cunt, and it would start all over again; until, out of sheer exhaustion, she pleaded: “Stop, stop, I’ve no energy left—it will kill me,” and at last he lifted his face from her cunt and lowered her legs to the ground.

He leaned over her, resting his weight on his hands, and kissed her mouth. The smell of her cunt was in his beard. She lay prone, too tired to open her eyes, too tired even to kiss him back. She felt his hand on her cunt, opening it, then his prick nosing in, and she thought, He got hard again quickly, and then, It’s been so long oh God it feels good.

He began to move in and out, slowly at first and then faster. She opened her eyes. His face was above hers and he was gazing at her. Then he bent his neck and looked down to where their bodies were joined. His eyes widened and his mouth opened as he watched his prick going in and out of her cunt, and the sight so inflamed him that she wished she could see it, too. Suddenly he slowed his pace, thrusting deeper, and she remembered that he did this before the climax. He looked into her eyes. “Kiss me while I come,” he said, and he lowered his cunt-smelling lips to hers. She thrust her tongue into his mouth. She loved it when he came. His back arched and his head lifted, and he gave a cry like a wild animal, and she felt him spurt inside her.

When it was over he lowered his head to her shoulder and moved his lips gently against the soft skin of her neck, whispering words which she could not make out. After a minute or two he gave a deep sigh of contentment, kissed her mouth, then raised himself to his knees and kissed each of her breasts in turn. Finally he kissed her cunt. Her body responded instantly, and she moved her hips to push against his lips. Knowing that she was getting turned on yet again, he began to lick; and, as always, the thought of him licking her cunt while it was still dripping with his semen almost drove her mad, and she came immediately, crying his name until the spasm passed.

He slumped beside her at last. Automatically they moved into the position they had always lain in after making love: his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, her thigh lying across his hips. He yawned hugely, and she giggled at him. They touched one another lethargically, she reaching down to toy with his limp penis, he moving his fingers in and out of her sopping cunt. She licked his chest and tasted salt perspiration on his skin. She looked at his neck. The moon highlighted the lines and furrows, betraying his age. He’s ten years older than me, Jane thought. Maybe that’s why he’s such a great fuck, because he’s older. “Why are you such a great fuck?” she said aloud. He did not reply; he was asleep. So she said: “I love you, dear, sleep well,” and then she closed her eyes.

After a year in the Valley, Jean-Pierre found the city of Kabul bewildering and frightening. The buildings were too tall, the cars went too fast and there were too many people. He had to cover his ears as enormous Russian trucks roared by in convoy. Everything assaulted him with the shock of the new: apartment blocks, schoolgirls in uniform, streetlights, elevators, table-cloths, and the taste of wine. After twenty-four hours he was still jumpy. It was ironic: he was a Parisian!

He had been given a room in the unmarried officers’ quarters. They had promised him that he would get an apartment as soon as Jane arrived with Chantal. Meanwhile he felt as if he were living in a cheap hotel. The building probably had been a hotel before the Russians came. If Jane were to arrive now—she was due at any time—the three of them would have to make the best of it here for the rest of the night. I can’t complain, thought Jean-Pierre; I’m not a hero—yet.

He stood at his window, looking over Kabul at night. For a couple of hours the power had been out all over the city, due presumably to the urban counterparts of Masud and his guerrillas, but a few minutes ago it had come back on again, and there was a faint glow over the city center, which had street lighting. The only noise was the howl of engines as army cars, trucks and tanks hurtled through the city, hurrying to their mysterious destinations. What was so urgent, at midnight in Kabul? Jean-Pierre had done military service, and he thought that if the Russian Army was anything like the French, the kind of task done on the double in the middle of the night was something like moving five hundred chairs from a barracks to a hall on the other side of town in preparation for a concert that was to take place in two weeks’ time and would probably get canceled.

He could not smell the night air, for his window was nailed shut. His door was not locked, but there was a Russian sergeant with a pistol sitting blank-faced on a straight-backed chair at the end of the corridor, next to the toilet, and Jean-Pierre felt that if he wanted to leave, the sergeant would probably prevent him.

Where was Jane? The raid on Darg must have been over by nightfall. For a helicopter to go from Darg to Banda and pick up Jane and Chantal would be the work of a few minutes. The helicopter could get from Banda to Kabul in under an hour. But perhaps the attacking force was returning to Bagram, the air base near the mouth of the Valley, in which case Jane might have had to come from Bagram to Kabul by road, no doubt accompanied by Anatoly.

She would be so glad to see her husband that she would be ready to forgive his deceit, see his point of view about Masud, and let bygones be bygones, Jean-Pierre thought. For a moment he wondered whether that was wishful thinking. No, he decided; he knew her quite well, and she was basically under his thumb.

And she would
know.
Only a few people would share the secret and comprehend the magnitude of what he had achieved: he was glad she would be one of them.

He hoped Masud had been captured, rather than killed. If he had been captured, the Russians could put him on trial, so that all the rebels would know for sure he was finished. Death was almost as good, provided they had the body. If there were no body, or an unrecognizable corpse, the rebels’ propagandists in Peshawar would put out press releases claiming that Masud was still alive. Of course, it would become clear in the end that he was dead, but the impact would be softened a little. Jean-Pierre hoped they had the body.

He heard footsteps in the corridor. Would it be Anatoly, or Jane—or both? It sounded like a masculine tread. He opened the door and saw two rather large Russian soldiers and a third, smaller man in an officer’s uniform. No doubt they had come to take him to wherever Anatoly and Jane were. He was disappointed. He looked inquiringly at the officer, who made a gesture with his hand. The two soldiers stepped through the door rudely. Jean-Pierre went back a pace, a protest rising to his lips, but before he could speak, the nearer of the two grabbed him by the shirt and smashed a huge fist into his face.

Jean-Pierre let out a howl of pain and fear. The other soldier kicked him in the groin with a heavy boot. The pain was excruciating, and Jean-Pierre sank to his knees, knowing that the most terrible moment of his life had arrived.

The two soldiers pulled him upright and held him standing, one at each arm, and the officer came in. Through a haze of tears Jean-Pierre saw a short, thickset young man with some kind of deformity which made one side of his face appear flushed and swollen and gave him a permanent sneer. He carried a truncheon in his gloved hand.

For the next five minutes the two soldiers held Jean-Pierre’s squirming, shuddering body while the officer smashed the wooden truncheon repeatedly into his face, his shoulders, his knees, his shins, his belly and his groin—always his groin. Every blow was carefully placed and viciously delivered, and there was always a pause between blows, so that the agony of the last could fade just enough to allow Jean-Pierre to dread the next for a second before it came. Every blow made him scream in pain, and every pause made him scream in anticipation of the next blow. At last there was a longer pause, and Jean-Pierre began to babble, not knowing whether they could understand him or not: “Oh, please, don’t hit me, please, don’t hit me again, sir, I’ll do anything, what is it you want, please don’t hit me no don’t hit me—”

“Enough!” said a voice in French.

Jean-Pierre opened his eyes and tried to peer through the blood streaming down his face at this savior who had said
Enough.
It was Anatoly.

The two soldiers slowly let Jean-Pierre sink to the ground. His body felt as if it was on fire. Every move was agony. Every bone felt broken, his balls felt crushed, his face seemed to have swollen enormously. He opened his mouth, and blood came out. He swallowed, and spoke through smashed lips. “Why . . . why have they done this?”

“You know why,” said Anatoly.

Jean-Pierre shook his head from side to side slowly and tried to keep from descending into utter madness. “I risked my life for you . . . I gave everything . . . why?”

“You set a trap,” Anatoly said. “Eighty-one men died today because of you.”

The raid must have gone wrong, Jean-Pierre realized, and somehow he was being blamed. “No,” he said, “not I—”

“You expected to be miles away when the trap was sprung,” Anatoly went on. “But I surprised you by making you get into the helicopter and come with me. So you are here to take your punishment—which will be painful and very, very prolonged.” He turned away.

“No,” said Jean-Pierre. “Wait!”

Anatoly turned back.

Jean-Pierre fought to think despite the pain. “I came here . . . I risked my life . . . I gave you information on the convoys . . . you attacked the convoys . . . did far more damage than the loss of eighty men . . . not logical, it’s not logical.” He gathered his strength for one coherent sentence. “If I had known of a trap I could have warned you yesterday and begged for mercy.”

“Then how did they know we would attack the village?” Anatoly demanded.

“They must have guessed. . . .”

“How?”

Jean-Pierre racked his confused brains. “Was Skabun bombed?”

“I think not.”

That was it, Jean-Pierre realized; someone had found out that there had been no bombing at Skabun. “You should have bombed it,” he said.

Anatoly looked thoughtful. “Somebody there is very good at making connections.”

It was Jane, thought Jean-Pierre, and for a second he hated her.

Anatoly said: “Has Ellis Thaler got any distinguishing marks?”

Jean-Pierre wanted to pass out, but he was afraid they would hit him again. “Yes,” he said miserably. “A big scar on his back shaped like a cross.”

“Then it
is
him,” said Anatoly in a near-whisper.

“Who?”

“John Michael Raleigh, age thirty-four, born in New Jersey, eldest son of a builder. He was a dropout from the University of California at Berkeley and a captain in the U.S. Marines. He has been a CIA agent since 1972. Marital status: divorced once, one child, whereabouts of the family a closely guarded secret.” He waved his hand as if to brush such details aside. “There’s no doubt it was he who outguessed me at Darg today. He’s brilliant and very dangerous. If I could have my pick of all the agents of the Western imperialist nations to catch I would choose him. In the last ten years he has done us irreparable damage on at least three occasions. Last year in Paris he destroyed a network that had taken seven or eight years of patient work to develop. The year before that he found an agent we had planted in the Secret Service in
nineteen sixty-five
—a man who could have assassinated a president one day. And now—now we have him here.”