Lie Down With Lions (31 page)

The figure came closer. His gait seemed familiar to Jane. Suddenly Mohammed gave a grunt and lowered the knife. “Ali Ghanim,” he said.

Jane now recognized the distinctive stride of Ali, who ran that way because his back was slightly twisted. “But why?” she whispered.

Mohammed stepped forward and waved. Ali saw him, waved back and ran to the hut where the three of them stood. He and Mohammed embraced.

Jane waited impatiently for Ali to catch his breath. At last he said: “The Russians are on your trail.”

Jane’s heart sank. She had thought they had escaped. What had gone wrong?

Ali breathed hard for a few seconds longer, then went on: “Masud has sent me to warn you. The day you left, they searched the whole Five Lions Valley for you, with hundreds of helicopters and thousands of men. Today, having failed to find you, they sent search parties to follow each valley leading to Nuristan.”

“What’s he saying?” Ellis interrupted.

Jane held up a hand to stop Ali while she translated for Ellis, who could not follow Ali’s rapid, breathless speech.

Ellis said: “How did they know we had gone to Nuristan? We might have decided to hide out anywhere in the damn country.”

Jane asked Ali. He did not know.

“Is there a search party in this valley?” Jane asked Ali.

“Yes. I overtook them just before the Aryu Pass. They may have reached the last village by nightfall.”

“Oh, no,” said Jane despairingly. She translated for Ellis. “How can they move so much faster than us?” she said. Ellis shrugged, and she answered the question herself: “Because they’re not slowed down by a woman with a baby. Oh, shit.”

Ellis said: “If they start early in the morning they’ll catch us tomorrow.”

“What can we do?”

“Leave now.”

Jane felt the weariness in her bones, and she was filled with an irrational resentment against Ellis. “Can’t we hide somewhere?” she said irritably.

“Where?” said Ellis. “There’s only one road here. The Russians have enough men to search all the houses—there aren’t many. Besides, the local people aren’t necessarily on our side. They might easily tell the Russians where we’re hiding. No, our only hope is to stay ahead of the searchers.”

Jane looked at her watch. It was two a.m. She felt ready to give up.

“I’ll load the horse,” Ellis said. “You feed Chantal.” He switched to Dari and said to Mohammed: “Will you make some tea? And give Ali something to eat.”

Jane went back into the house, finished dressing, then fed Chantal. While she was doing that, Ellis brought her sweet green tea in a pottery bowl. She drank it gratefully.

As Chantal sucked, Jane wondered how much Jean-Pierre had to do with this relentless pursuit of her and Ellis. She knew he had helped with the raid on Banda, for she had seen him. When they searched the Five Lions Valley, his local knowledge would be invaluable. He must know they were hunting down his wife and baby like dogs chasing rats. How could he bring himself to help them? His love must have been changed to hatred by his seething resentment and jealousy.

Chantal had had enough. How pleasant it must be, Jane thought, to know nothing of passion or jealousy or betrayal, to have no feelings but warm or cold and full or empty. “Enjoy it while you may, little girl,” she said.

Hurriedly, she buttoned her shirt and pulled her heavy oiled sweater down over her head. She put the sling around her neck, made Chantal comfortable inside it, then shrugged into her coat and went outside.

Ellis and Mohammed were studying the map by the light of a lantern. Ellis showed Jane their route. “We follow the Linar down to where it empties into the Nuristan River. Then we turn uphill again, following the Nuristan north. Then we take one of these side valleys—Mohammed won’t be sure which one until he gets there—and head for the Kantiwar Pass. I’d like to get out of the Nuristan Valley today—that will make it more difficult for the Russians to follow us, for they won’t be sure which side valley we’ve taken.”

“How far is it?” said Jane.

“It’s only fifteen miles—but whether that’s easy or tough depends on the terrain, of course.”

Jane nodded. “Let’s get going,” she said. She was proud of herself for sounding more cheerful than she felt.

They set off in the moonlight. Mohammed set a fast pace, and whipped the horse mercilessly with a leather strap when she hung back. Jane had a slight headache and an empty, nauseous feeling in her stomach. However, she was not sleepy, but rather nervously tense and bone-weary.

She found the track scary by night. Sometimes they walked in the sparse grass beside the river, which was all right; but then the trail would hairpin up the mountainside to continue on the cliff edge hundreds of feet above, where the ground was covered with snow, and Jane was terrified of slipping and falling to her death with her baby in her arms.

Sometimes there was a choice: the path forked, one way going up and the other down. Since none of them knew which route to take, they let Mohammed guess. The first time, he stayed low and turned out to be right: the track led them across a little beach, where they had to wade through a foot of water, but it saved them a long diversion. However, the second time they had to choose they again took the riverbank, but this time they regretted it: after a mile or so the path led straight into a sheer rock face, and the only way around it would have been to swim. Wearily they retraced their steps to the fork and then climbed the cliff path.

At the next opportunity they descended to the riverbank again. This time the path led them to a ledge which ran along the face of the cliff about a hundred feet above the river. The horse became nervous, probably because the path was so narrow. Jane was frightened, too. The starlight was not enough to illuminate the river below, so the gorge seemed like a bottomless black pit beside her. Maggie kept stopping, and Mohammed would have to pull on the reins to make her go again.

When the path turned blindly around an abutment in the cliff, Maggie refused to go around the corner and became skittish. Jane backed away, wary of the horse’s shuffling rear feet. Chantal began to cry, either because she sensed the moment of tension or because she had not gone back to sleep after her two a.m. feed. Ellis gave Chantal to Jane and went forward to help Mohammed with the horse.

Ellis offered to take the reins, but Mohammed refused ungraciously: the tension was getting to him. Ellis contented himself with pushing the beast from behind and yelling
hup
and
git
at it. Jane was just thinking that it was almost funny when Maggie reared, Mohammed dropped the reins and stumbled, and the mare backed into Ellis and knocked him off his feet and kept coming.

Fortunately Ellis fell to the left, against the cliff wall. When the horse backed into Jane she was on the wrong side of it, with her feet at the edge of the path as it pushed past her. She grabbed hold of a bag that was lashed to its harness, holding on like grim death in case it should nudge her sideways over the precipice. “You stupid beast!” she screamed. Chantal, squashed between Jane and the horse, screamed, too. Jane was carried along for several feet, afraid to loose her hold. Then, taking her life in her hands, she let go of the bag, reached out with her right hand and grabbed the bridle, got a firm footing, pushed past the horse’s forequarter to stand beside her head, tugged hard on the bridle and said, “Stop!” in a loud voice.

Somewhat to Jane’s surprise, Maggie stopped.

Jane turned around. Ellis and Mohammed were getting to their feet. “Are you all right?” she asked them in French.

“Just about,” said Ellis.

“I lost the lantern,” said Mohammed.

Ellis said in English: “I just hope the fucking Russians have the same problems.”

Jane realized that they had not seen how the horse had almost pushed her over the edge. She decided not to tell them. She found the leading rein and gave it to Ellis. “Let’s keep going,” she said. “We can lick our wounds later.” She walked past Ellis and said to Mohammed: “Lead the way.”

Mohammed cheered up after a few minutes without Maggie. Jane wondered whether they really needed a horse, but she decided they did: there was too much baggage for them to carry, and all of it was essential—indeed they probably should have brought more food.

They hurried through a silent, sleeping hamlet, just a handful of houses and a waterfall. In one of the cottages a dog barked hysterically until someone silenced it with a curse. Then they were in the wilderness again.

The sky was turning from black to gray, and the stars had gone: it was getting light. Jane wondered what the Russians were doing. Perhaps the officers would now be rousing the men, shouting to wake them and kicking those who were slow to climb out of their sleeping bags. A cook would be making coffee while the commanding officer studied his map. Or perhaps they had got up early, an hour ago, while it was still dark, and had set out within minutes, marching in single file alongside the river Linar; perhaps they had already passed through the village of Linar; perhaps they had taken all the right forks and were even now just a mile or so behind their quarry.

Jane walked a little faster.

The ledge meandered along the cliff and then dropped down to the riverbank. There were no signs of agriculture, but the mountain slopes on either side were thickly wooded, and as the light brightened, Jane identified the trees as holly oak. She pointed them out to Ellis, saying: “Why can’t we hide in the woods?”

“As a last resort, we could,” he said. “But the Russians would soon realize we had stopped, because they would question villagers and be told we had not passed through; so they would turn back and start searching intensively.”

Jane nodded resignedly. She was just looking for excuses to stop.

Just before sunrise they rounded a bend and stopped short: a landslide had filled the gorge with earth and loose rock, blocking it completely.

Jane felt like bursting into tears. They had walked two or three miles along the bank and that narrow ledge: to turn back meant an extra five miles, including the section that had frightened Maggie so.

The three of them stood for a moment looking at the blockage. “Could we climb it?” said Jane.

“The horse can’t,” said Ellis.

Jane was angry at him for stating the obvious. “One of us could go back with the horse,” she said impatiently. “The other two could rest while waiting for the horse to catch up.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to get separated.”

Jane resented his my-decision-is-final tone of voice. “Don’t assume we’ll all do what
you
happen to think is wise,” she snapped.

He looked startled. “All right. But I also think that mound of earth and stones might shift if someone tried to climb it. In fact I might as well say that I’m not going to try it, regardless of what you two might decide.”

“So you won’t even discuss it. I see.” Furious, Jane turned around and started back along the track, leaving the two men to follow her. Why was it, she wondered, that men slipped into that bossy, know-it-all mode whenever there was a physical or mechanical problem?

Ellis was not without his faults, she reflected. He could be woolly-minded: for all his talk about being an antiterrorist expert, still he worked for the CIA, which was probably the largest group of terrorists in the world. There was undeniably a side of him that liked danger, violence and deceit. Don’t pick a macho romantic, she thought, if you want a man to respect you.

One thing that could be said for Jean-Pierre was that he never patronized women. He might neglect you, deceive you or ignore you, but he would never condescend to you. Perhaps it was because he was younger.

She passed the place where Maggie had reared. She did not wait for the men: they could cope with the damn horse themselves this time.

Chantal was complaining, but Jane made her wait. She strode on until she reached a point where there seemed to be a pathway up to the clifftop. There she sat down and unilaterally declared a rest. Ellis and Mohammed caught up with her a minute or two later. Mohammed got some mulberry-and-walnut cake out of the baggage and handed it around. Ellis did not speak to Jane.

After the break they climbed the hillside. When they reached the top they emerged into sunshine, and Jane began to feel a little less angry. After a while Ellis put his arm around her and said: “I apologize for assuming command.”

“Thank you,” Jane said stiffly.

“Do you think that maybe you might have overreacted a little bit?”

“No doubt I did. Sorry.”

“You bet. Let me take Chantal.”

Jane handed the baby over. As the weight was lifted, she realized that her back was aching. Chantal had never
seemed
heavy, but the burden told over a long distance. It was like carrying a full shopping bag for ten miles.

The air became milder as the sun climbed the morning sky. Jane opened her coat and Ellis took his off. Mohammed retained his Russian uniform greatcoat, with characteristic Afghan indifference to all but the most severe changes in the weather.

Toward noon they emerged from the narrow gorge of the Linar into the broad Nuristan Valley. Here the way was once again quite clearly marked, the path being almost as good as the cart track which ran up the Five Lions Valley. They turned north, going upstream and uphill.

Jane felt terribly tired and discouraged. After getting up at two a.m. she had walked for ten hours—but they had only covered four or five miles. Ellis wanted to do another ten miles today. It was Jane’s third consecutive day on the march, and she knew she could not continue until nightfall. Even Ellis was wearing the bad-tempered expression which, Jane knew, was a sign he was weary. Only Mohammed seemed tireless.

In the Linar Valley they had seen no one outside the villages, but here there were a few travelers, most of them wearing white robes and white turbans. The Nuristanis looked with curiosity at the two pale, exhausted Westerners, but greeted Mohammed with wary respect, no doubt because of the Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder.

As they trudged uphill beside the Nuristan River, they were overtaken by a black-bearded, bright-eyed young man carrying ten fresh fish speared on a pole. He spoke to Mohammed in a mixture of languages—Jane recognized some Dari and the occasional Pashto word—and they understood one another well enough for Mohammed to buy three of the fish.