Lie Down With Lions (34 page)

“It’s a good wage, to an Afghan, but hardly worth killing for—although they do say a Nuristani will murder you for your sandals if they’re new.”

“Ask them if they know where Mohammed is.”

Jean-Pierre asked. There was some discussion. Most of the villagers were shaking their heads, but one man raised his voice above the others and pointed insistently to the north. Eventually the one-eyed man said to Jean-Pierre: “He left the village early this morning. Abdul saw him go north.”

“Did he leave before or after this body was brought here?”

“Before.”

Jean-Pierre told Anatoly, and added: “I wonder why he went away, then?”

“He’s acting like a man guilty of
something
.”

“He must have left immediately after he spoke to you this morning. It’s almost as if he went because I had arrived.”

Anatoly nodded thoughtfully. “Whatever the explanation is, I think he knows something we don’t. We’d better go after him. If we lose a little time, too bad—we can afford it anyway.”

“How long ago was it that you spoke to him?”

Anatoly looked at his watch. “A little over an hour.”

“Then he can’t have got far.”

“Right.” Anatoly turned away and gave a rapid series of orders. The soldiers were suddenly galvanized. Two of them got hold of the one-eyed man and marched him down toward the field. Another ran to the helicopters. Anatoly took Jean-Pierre’s arm and they walked briskly after the soldiers. “We will take the one-eyed man, in case we need an interpreter,” Anatoly said.

By the time they reached the field the two helicopters were cranking. Anatoly and Jean-Pierre boarded one of them. The one-eyed man was already inside, looking at once thrilled and terrified. He’ll be telling the story of this day for the rest of his life, thought Jean-Pierre.

A few minutes later they were in the air. Both Anatoly and Jean-Pierre stood near the open door and looked down. A well-beaten path, clearly visible, led from the village to the top of the hill, then disappeared into the trees. Anatoly spoke into the pilot’s radio, then explained to Jean-Pierre: “I have sent some troopers to beat those woods, just in case he decided to hide.”

The runaway had almost certainly gone farther than this, Jean-Pierre thought, but Anatoly was being cautious—as usual.

They flew parallel with the river for a mile or so, then reached the mouth of the Linar. Had Mohammed continued up the valley, into the cold heart of Nuristan, or had he turned east, into the Linar Valley, heading for Five Lions?

Jean-Pierre said to the one-eyed man: “Where did Mohammed come from?”

“I don’t know,” said the man. “But he was a Tajik.”

That meant he was more likely to be from the Linar Valley than the Nuristan. Jean-Pierre explained this to Anatoly, and Anatoly directed the pilot to turn left and follow the Linar.

This was a telling illustration, Jean-Pierre thought, of why the search for Ellis and Jane could not be conducted by helicopter. Mohammed had only an hour’s start, and already they might have lost track of him. When the fugitives were a whole day ahead, as Ellis and Jane were, there were very many more alternative routes and places to hide.

If there was a track along the Linar Valley, it was not visible from the air. The helicopter pilot simply followed the river. The hillsides were bare of vegetation, but not yet snow-covered, so that if the fugitive were here, he would have nowhere to hide.

They spotted him a few minutes later.

His white robes and turban stood out clearly against the gray-brown ground. He was striding out along the clifftop with the steady, tireless pace of Afghan travelers, his possessions in a bag slung over his shoulder. When he heard the noise of the helicopters he stopped and looked back at them, then continued walking.

“Is that him?” said Jean-Pierre.

“I think so,” said Anatoly. “We’ll soon find out.” He took the pilot’s headset and spoke to the other helicopter. It went on ahead, passing over the figure on the ground, and landed a hundred meters or so in front of him. He walked toward it unconcernedly.

“Why don’t we land, too?” Jean-Pierre asked Anatoly.

“Just a precaution.”

The side door of the other helicopter opened and six troopers got out. The man in white walked toward them, unslinging his bag. It was a long bag, like a military kit bag, and the sight of it rang a bell in Jean-Pierre’s memory; but before he could figure out what it reminded him of, Mohammed hefted the bag and pointed it at the troopers, and Jean-Pierre realized what he was about to do and opened his mouth to shout a useless warning.

It was like trying to shout in a dream, or run under water: events moved slowly, but he moved even slower. Before words could come he saw the snout of a machine gun emerge from the bag.

The sound of shooting was drowned by the noise of the helicopters, which gave the weird impression that it all took place in dead silence. One of the Russian troops clutched his belly and fell forward; another threw up his arms and fell back; and the face of a third exploded in blood and flesh. The other three got their weapons raised. One died before he could pull the trigger, but the other two unleashed a storm of bullets, and even as Anatoly was yelling,
“Niet! Niet! Niet! Niet!”
into the radio, the body of Mohammed was lifted off the ground and thrown backward to land in a bloody heap on the cold ground.

Anatoly was still shouting furiously into the radio. The helicopter went down fast. Jean-Pierre found himself trembling with excitement. The sight of battle had given him a high like cocaine, making him feel as if he wanted to laugh, or fuck, or run, or dance. The thought flashed across his mind: I used to want to
heal
people.

The helicopter touched down. Anatoly pulled off the headset, saying disgustedly: “Now we’ll never know why that guide got his throat cut.” He jumped out, and Jean-Pierre followed him.

They walked over to the dead Afghan. The front of his body was a mass of torn flesh, and most of his face had gone, but Anatoly said: “It’s that guide, I’m sure. The build is right, the coloring is right, and I recognize the bag.” He bent down and carefully picked up the machine gun. “But why is he carrying a machine gun?”

A piece of paper had fallen out of the bag and fluttered to the ground. Jean-Pierre picked it up and looked at it. It was a Polaroid photograph of Mousa. “Oh, my God,” he said. “I think I understand this.”

“What is it?” said Anatoly. “What do you understand?”

“The dead man is from the Five Lions Valley,” Jean-Pierre said. “He is one of Masud’s top lieutenants. This is a photograph of his son, Mousa. The photograph was taken by Jane. I also recognize the bag in which he concealed his gun: it used to belong to Ellis.”

“So what?” said Anatoly impatiently. “What do you conclude from that?”

Jean-Pierre’s brain was in overdrive, working things out faster than he could explain them. “Mohammed killed your guide in order to take his place,” he began. “You had no way of knowing he was not what he claimed to be. The Nuristanis knew that he was not one of them, of course, but that didn’t matter, because (a) they didn’t know he was pretending to be a local and (b) even if they had they couldn’t have told you because he was also your interpreter. In fact there was only one person who could possibly find him out. . . .”

“You,” said Anatoly. “Because you knew him.”

“He was aware of that danger and he was on the lookout for me. That’s why this morning he asked you who it was that arrived after dark yesterday. You told him my name. He left immediately.” Jean-Pierre frowned: something was not quite right. “But why did he stay out in the open? He could have concealed himself in the woods, or hidden in a cave: it would have taken us much longer to find him. It’s as if he didn’t expect to be pursued.”

“Why should he?” said Anatoly. “When the first guide disappeared, we didn’t send a search party after
him
—we just got another guide and carried on: no investigation, no pursuit. What was different this time—what went wrong for Mohammed—was that the local people found the body and accused us of murder. That made us suspicious of Mohammed. Even so, we considered forgetting about him and just pressing on. He was unlucky.”

“He didn’t know what a cautious man he was dealing with,” said Jean-Pierre. “Next question: What was his motive in all this? Why did he go to so much trouble to substitute himself for the original guide?”

“Presumably to mislead us. Presumably, everything he told us was a lie. He did
not
see Ellis and Jane yesterday afternoon at the mouth of the Linar Valley. They did
not
turn south into the Nuristan. The villagers of Mundol did
not
confirm that two foreigners with a baby passed through yesterday heading south—Mohammed never even asked them the question. He
knew
where the fugitives were—”

“And he led us in the opposite direction, of course!” Jean-Pierre felt elated again. “The old guide disappeared just after the search party left the village of Linar, didn’t he?”

“Yes. So we can assume that reports
up to
that point are true—therefore Ellis and Jane
did
pass through that village. Afterward, Mohammed took over and led us
south
—”

“Because Ellis and Jane went north!” said Jean-Pierre triumphantly.

Anatoly nodded grimly. “Mohammed gained them a day, at most,” he said thoughtfully. “For that he gave his life. Was it worth it?”

Jean-Pierre looked again at the Polaroid photograph of Mousa. The cold wind made it flutter in his hand. “You know,” he said, “I think Mohammed would answer: Yes, it was worth it.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
hey left Gadwal in the deep darkness before dawn, hoping to steal a march on the Russians by setting out so early. Ellis knew how difficult it was for even the most capable officer to get a squad of soldiers moving before dawn: the cook had to make breakfast, the quartermaster had to strike camp, the radio operator had to check in with headquarters, and the men had to eat; and all those things took time. The one advantage Ellis had over the Russian commander was that he had no more to do than load the mare while Jane fed Chantal, then shake Halam awake.

Ahead of them was a long, slow climb up the Nuristan Valley for eight or nine miles and then up a side valley. The first part, in the Nuristan, should not be too difficult, Ellis thought, even in the dark, for there was a road of sorts. If only Jane could keep going, they should be able to get into the side valley during the afternoon and travel a few miles up it by nightfall. Once they were out of the Nuristan Valley it would be much more difficult to trail them, for the Russians would not know which side valley they had taken.

Halam led the way, wearing Mohammed’s clothes, including his Chitrali cap. Jane followed, carrying Chantal, and Ellis brought up the rear, leading Maggie. The horse was now carrying one bag fewer: Mohammed had taken the kit bag and Ellis had not found a suitable container to replace it. He had been forced to leave most of his blasting equipment in Gadwal. However, he had kept some TNT, a length of Primacord, a few blasting caps and the pull-ring firing device, and had them stowed in the roomy pockets of his down coat.

Jane was cheerful and energetic. The rest yesterday afternoon had renewed her reserves of strength. She was marvelously tough, and Ellis felt proud of her, although when he thought about it he did not see why
he
should be entitled to feel proud of
her
strength.

Halam was carrying a candle lantern, which threw grotesque shadows on the cliff walls. He seemed disgruntled. Yesterday he had been all smiles, apparently pleased to be part of this bizarre expedition; but this morning he was grim-faced and taciturn. Ellis blamed the early start.

The path, such as it was, snaked along the cliffside, founding promontories that jutted out into the stream, sometimes hugging the water’s edge and sometimes ascending to the clifftop. After less than a mile they came to a place where the track simply vanished: there was a cliff on the left and the river on the right. Halam said the path had been washed away in a rainstorm, and they would have to wait until light to find a way around.

Ellis was unwilling to lose any time. He took off his boots and trousers and waded into the ice-cold water. At its deepest it was only up to his waist, and he gained the far bank easily. He returned and led Maggie across, then came back for Jane and Chantal. Halam followed at last, but modesty prevented him from undressing, even in the dark, so he had to walk on with soaking-wet trousers, which made his mood worse.

They passed through a village in darkness, followed briefly by a couple of mangy dogs that barked at them from a safe distance. Soon after that, dawn cracked the eastern sky, and Halam snuffed the candle.

They had to ford the river several more times in places where the path was washed away or blocked by a landslide. Halam gave in and rolled his baggy trousers up over his knees. At one of these crossings they met a traveler coming from the opposite direction, a small, skeletal man leading a fat-tailed sheep which he carried across the river in his arms. Halam had a long conversation with him in some Nuristani language, and Ellis suspected, from the way they waved their arms, that they were talking about routes across the mountains.

After they parted from the traveler, Ellis said to Halam in Dari: “Don’t tell people where we are going.”

Halam pretended not to understand.

Jane repeated what Ellis had said. She spoke more fluently, and used emphatic gestures and nods as the Afghan men did. “The Russians will question all travelers,” she explained.

Halam appeared to understand, but he did exactly the same thing with the next traveler they met, a dangerous-looking young man carrying a venerable Lee-Enfield rifle. During the conversation, Ellis thought he heard Halam say, “Kantiwar,” the name of the pass for which they were heading; and a moment later the traveler repeated the word. Ellis was angered: Halam was fooling around with their lives. But the damage was done, so he suppressed the urge to interfere, and waited patiently until they moved on again.

As soon as the young man with the rifle was out of sight, Ellis said: “I said you are not to tell people where we are going.”

This time Halam did not pretend incomprehension. “I told him nothing,” he said indignantly.

“You did,” said Ellis emphatically. “From now on you will not speak to other travelers.”

Halam said nothing.

Jane said: “You will not talk to other travelers, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Halam admitted reluctantly.

Ellis felt it was important to shut him up. He could guess why Halam wanted to discuss routes with other people: they might know of factors such as landslides, snowfalls or floods in the mountains that might block one valley and make another approach preferable. He had not really grasped the fact that Ellis and Jane were
running away
from the Russians. The existence of alternative routes was about the only factor in the fugitives’ favor, for the Russians had to check every possible route. They would be working quite hard to eliminate some of those routes by interrogating people, especially travelers. The less information they could garner that way, the more difficult and lengthy their search would be, and the better the chances Ellis and Jane would evade them.

A little later they met a white-robed mullah with a red-dyed beard, and to Ellis’s frustration Halam immediately opened a conversation with the man in exactly the same way as he had with the previous two travelers.

Ellis hesitated only for a moment. He went up to Halam, grabbed him in a painful double-arm lock and marched him off.

Halam struggled briefly, but soon stopped because it hurt. He called out something, but the mullah simply watched openmouthed, doing nothing. Looking back, Ellis saw that Jane had taken the reins and was following with Maggie.

After a hundred yards or so, Ellis released Halam saying: “If the Russians find me, they will kill me. This is why you must not talk to anyone.”

Halam said nothing but went into a sulk.

After they had walked on awhile, Jane said: “I fear he’ll make us suffer for that.”

“I suppose he will,” said Ellis. “But I had to shut him up somehow.”

“I just think there may have been a better way to handle him.”

Ellis suppressed a spasm of irritation. He wanted to say
So why didn’t you do it, smart-ass?
but this was not the time to quarrel. Halam passed the next traveler with only the briefest of formal greetings, and Ellis thought: At least my technique was effective.

At first their progress was a lot slower than Ellis had anticipated. The meandering path, the uneven ground, the uphill gradient and the continual diversions meant that by midmorning they had covered only four or five miles as the crow flies, he estimated. Then, however, the way became easier, passing through the woods high above the river.

There was still a village or hamlet every mile or so, but now, instead of ramshackle wooden houses piled up the hillsides like collapsible chairs thrown haphazardly into a heap, there were box-shaped dwellings made of the same stone as the cliffs on whose sides they perched precariously, like seagulls’ nests.

At midday they stopped in a village, and Halam got them invited into a house and given tea. It was a two-story building, the ground floor apparently being a storeroom, just like the medieval English houses Ellis remembered from ninth-grade history lessons. Jane gave the woman of the house a small bottle of pink medicine for her children’s intestinal worms, and in return got pan-baked bread and delicious goat’s-milk cheese. They sat on rugs on the mud floor around the open fire, with the poplar beams and willow laths of the roof visible above them. There was no chimney, so the smoke from the fire drifted up to the rafters and eventually seeped through the roof: that, Ellis surmised, was why the houses had no ceilings.

He would have liked to let Jane rest after eating, but he dared not risk it, for he did not know how close behind them the Russians might be. She looked tired but all right. Leaving immediately had the additional advantage that it prevented Halam getting into conversation with the villagers.

However, Ellis watched Jane carefully as they walked on up the valley. He asked her to lead the horse while he took Chantal, judging that carrying the baby was more tiring.

Each time they came upon an eastward-leading side valley, Halam would stop and study it carefully, then shake his head and walk on. Clearly he was not sure of the way, although he denied this hotly when Jane asked him. It was infuriating, especially when Ellis was so impatient to get out of the Nuristan Valley; but he consoled himself with the thought that if Halam was not sure which valley to take, then the Russians would not know which way the fugitives had gone.

He was beginning to wonder whether Halam might have gone past the turning when, at last, Halam stopped where a chattering stream flowed into the Nuristan River, and announced that their route lay up this valley. He seemed to want to stop for a rest, as if he was reluctant to leave familiar territory, but Ellis hurried them along.

Soon they were climbing through a forest of silver birch, and the main valley was lost to view behind them. Ahead of them they could see the mountain range they had to cross, an immense snow-covered wall filling a quarter of the sky, and Ellis kept thinking: even if we escape from the Russians, how can we possibly climb that? Jane stumbled once or twice and cursed, which Ellis took as a sign she was tiring rapidly, although she did not complain.

At dusk they emerged from the forest into a bare, bleak, uninhabited landscape. It seemed to Ellis that they might not find shelter in such territory, so he suggested they spend the night in an empty stone hut they had passed half an hour or so earlier. Jane and Halam agreed, and they turned back.

Ellis insisted that Halam build the fire inside the hut, not outside, so that the flame could not be seen from the air and there would be no telltale column of smoke. His caution was vindicated later, when they heard a helicopter drone overhead. That meant, he supposed, that the Russians were not far away; but in this country, what was a short distance for a helicopter could be an impossible journey on foot. The Russians might be just the other side of an impassable mountain—or only a mile down the track. It was fortunate that the landscape was too wild, and the path too difficult to discern from the air, for a helicopter search to be viable.

Ellis gave the horse some grain. Jane fed and changed Chantal, then fell asleep immediately. Ellis roused her to zip her into the sleeping bag; then he took Chantal’s diaper down to the stream, washed it out and put it by the fire to dry. He lay beside Jane for a while, looking at her face in the flickering firelight while Halam snored on the other side of the hut. She looked absolutely drained, her face thin and taut, her hair dirty, her cheeks smudged with earth. She slept restlessly, wincing and grimacing and moving her mouth in silent speech. He wondered how much longer she could go on. It was the pace that was killing her. If they could move more slowly, she would be all right. If only the Russians would give up, or be recalled for some major battle in another part of this wretched country . . .

He wondered about the helicopter he had heard. Perhaps it was on a mission unconnected with Ellis. That seemed unlikely. If it had been part of a search party, then Mohammed’s attempt to divert the Russians must have had very limited success.

He allowed himself to think about what would happen if they were captured. For him there would be a show trial, at which the Russians would prove to skeptical nonaligned countries that the Afghan rebels were no more than CIA stooges. The agreement between Masud, Kamil and Azizi would collapse. There would be no American arms for the rebels. Dispirited, the Resistance would weaken and might not last another summer.

After the trial Ellis would be interrogated by the KGB. He would make an initial show of resisting the torture, then pretend to break down and tell them everything; but what he told them would be all lies. They were prepared for that, of course, and they would torture him further; and this time he would act a more convincing breakdown, and tell them a mixture of fact and fiction that would be difficult for them to check out. That way he hoped to survive. If he did, he would be sent to Siberia. After a few years, he might hope to be exchanged for a Soviet spy captured in the States. If not, he would die in the camps.

What would grieve him most would be to be parted from Jane. He had found her, and lost her, and found her again—a piece of luck that still made him reel when he thought of it. To lose her a second time would be unbearable, unbearable. He lay staring at her for a long time trying not to go to sleep for fear she might not be there when he woke up.

Jane dreamed she was in the George V Hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan. The George V was in Paris, of course, but in her dream she did not notice this oddity. She called room service and ordered a fillet steak, medium rare, with mashed potatoes, and a bottle of Château Ausone 1971. She was terribly hungry, but she could not remember why she had waited so long before ordering. She decided to take a bath while they were preparing her dinner. The bathroom was warm and carpeted. She turned on the water and poured in some bath salts, and the room filled with scented steam. She could not understand how she had let herself get this dirty: it was a miracle they had admitted her into the hotel! She was about to step into the hot water when she heard someone calling her name. It must be room service, she thought, how annoying—now she would have to eat while she was still dirty, or let the food get cold. She was tempted to lie down in the hot water and ignore the voice—it was rude of them to call her “Jane” anyway; they should call her “Madame”—but it was a very persistent voice, and somehow familiar. In fact it was not room service, but Ellis, and he was shaking her shoulder, and with the most tragic sense of disappointment, she realized that the George V was a dream, and in reality she was in a cold stone hut in Nuristan, a million miles from a hot bath.