Lie Down With Lions (16 page)

The thought gave Jane courage. “I want you to take me home,” she said abruptly.

At first he misunderstood her. “We’ve only just got here,” he said irritably; then he looked at her and his frown cleared. “Oh,” he said.

There was a note of imperturbability in his voice which Jane found ominous, and she realized that she might not get her way without a struggle. “Yes,” she said firmly. “Home.”

He put his arm around her. “This country gets one down at times,” he said. He was not looking at her but at the rushing river far below their feet. “You’re especially vulnerable to depression at the moment, just after the birth. In a few weeks’ time, you’ll find—”

“Don’t patronize me!” she snapped. She was not going to let him get away with that kind of nonsense. “Save your bedside manner for your patients.”

“All right.” He took his arm away. “We decided, before we came, that we would stay here for two years. Short tours are inefficient, we agreed, because of the time and money wasted in training, traveling and settling down. We were determined to make a real impact, so we
committed
ourselves to a two-year stint—”

“And then we had a baby.”

“It wasn’t my idea!”

“Anyway, I’ve changed my mind.”

“You’re not
entitled
to change your mind.”

“You don’t own me!” she said angrily.

“It’s out of the question. Let us stop discussing it.”

“We’ve only just begun,” she said. His attitude infuriated her. The conversation had turned into an argument about her rights as an individual, and somehow she did not want to win by telling him that she knew about his spying, not yet anyway; she wanted him to admit that she was free to make her own decisions. “You have no right to ignore me or override my wishes,” she said. “I want to leave this summer.”

“The answer is no.”

She decided to try reasoning with him. “We’ve been here a year. We
have
made an impact. We’ve also made considerable sacrifices, more than we anticipated. Haven’t we done enough?”

“We agreed on two years,” he said stubbornly.

“That was a long time ago, and before we had Chantal.”

“Then the two of you should go, and leave me here.”

For a moment Jane considered that. To travel on a convoy to Pakistan carrying a baby was difficult and dangerous. Without a husband it would be a nightmare. But it was not impossible. However, it would mean leaving Jean-Pierre behind. He would be able to continue betraying the convoys, and every few weeks more husbands and sons from the Valley would die. And there was another reason why she could not leave him behind: it would destroy their marriage. “No,” she said. “I can’t go alone. You must come, too.”

“I will not,” he said angrily. “I will not!”

Now she
had
to confront him with what she knew. She took a deep breath. “You’ll just have to,” she began.

“I don’t have to,” he interrupted. He pointed his forefinger at her, and she looked into his eyes and saw something there that frightened her. “You can’t force me to. Don’t try.”

“But I
can
—”

“I advise you not to,” he said, and his voice was terribly cold.

Suddenly he seemed a stranger to her, a man she did not know. She was silent for a moment, thinking. She watched a pigeon rise up from the village and fly toward her. It homed in on the cliff face a little way below her feet. I don’t know this man! she thought in a panic. After a whole year I still don’t know who he is! “Do you love me?” she asked him.

“Loving you doesn’t mean I have to do everything you want.”

“Is that a yes?”

He stared at her. She met his gaze unflinchingly. Slowly the hard, manic light went out of his eyes, and he relaxed. At last he smiled. “It’s a yes,” he said. She leaned toward him, and he put his arm around her again. “Yes, I love you,” he said softly. He kissed the top of her head.

She rested her cheek on his chest and looked down. The pigeon she had watched flew off again. It was a white pigeon, like the one in her invented vision. It floated away, gliding effortlessly down toward the far bank of the river. Jane thought: Oh, God, what do I do now?

It was Mohammed’s son, Mousa—now known as Left Hand—who was the first to spot the convoy when it returned. He came racing into the clearing in front of the caves, yelling at the top of his voice: “They’re back! They’re back!” Nobody needed to ask who
they
were.

It was midmorning, and Jane and Jean-Pierre were in the cave clinic. Jane looked at Jean-Pierre. The faintest hint of a puzzled frown crossed his face: he was wondering why the Russians had not acted on his intelligence and ambushed the convoy. Jane turned away from him so that he should not see the triumph she felt. She had saved their lives! Yussuf would sing tonight, and Sher Kador would count his goats, and Ali Ghanim would kiss each of his fourteen children. Yussuf was one of Rabia’s sons: saving his life repaid Rabia for helping to bring Chantal into the world. All the mothers and daughters who would have been in mourning could now rejoice.

She wondered how Jean-Pierre felt. Was he angry, or frustrated, or disappointed? It was hard to imagine someone being disappointed because people had
not
been killed. She stole a glance at him, but his face was blank. I wish I knew what’s going on in his mind, she thought.

Their patients melted away within minutes: everybody was going down to the village to welcome the travelers home. “Shall we go down?” Jane said.

“You go,” Jean-Pierre said. “I’ll finish up here, then follow you.”

“All right,” said Jane. He wanted some time to compose himself, she guessed, so that he could pretend to be delighted at their safe return when he saw them.

She picked up Chantal and took the steep footpath toward the village. She could feel the heat of the rock through the thin soles of her sandals.

She still had not confronted Jean-Pierre. However, this could not go on indefinitely. Sooner or later he would learn that Mohammed had sent a runner to divert the convoy from its prearranged route. Naturally he would then ask Mohammed why this had been done, and Mohammed would tell him about Jane’s “vision.” But Jean-Pierre knew Jane did not believe in visions. . . .

Why am I afraid? she asked herself. I’m not the guilty one—he is. Yet I feel as if his secret is something I must be ashamed of. I should have spoken to him about it immediately, that evening we walked up to the top of the cliff. By nursing it to myself for so long, I, too, have become a deceiver. Perhaps that’s it. Or perhaps it’s the peculiar look in his eyes sometimes. . . .

She had not given up her determination to go home, but so far she had failed to think of a way to persuade Jean-Pierre to go. She had dreamed up a dozen bizarre schemes, from faking a message to say that his mother was dying, to poisoning his yogurt with something that would give him the symptoms of an illness which would force him to return to Europe for treatment. The simplest, and least far-fetched, of her ideas was to threaten to tell Mohammed that Jean-Pierre was a spy. She would never do it, of course, for to unmask him would be as good as killing him. But would Jean-Pierre
think
she might carry out the threat? Probably not. It would take a hard, pitiless, stone-hearted man to believe her capable of virtually killing her husband—and if Jean-Pierre were that hard and pitiless and stone-hearted, he might kill Jane.

She shivered despite the heat. This talk of killing was grotesque. When two people take such delight in one another’s bodies as we do, she thought, how can they possibly do each other violence?

As she reached the village she began to hear the random, exuberant gunfire that signified an Afghan celebration. She made her way to the mosque—everything happened at the mosque. The convoy was in the courtyard, men and horses and baggage surrounded by smiling women and squealing children. Jane stood at the edge of the crowd, watching. It was worth it, she thought. It was worth the worry and the fear, and it was worth manipulating Mohammed in that undignified way, in order to see this, the men safely reunited with their wives and mothers and sons and daughters.

What happened next was probably the greatest shock of her life.

There in the crowd, among the caps and turbans, appeared a head of curly blond hair. At first she did not recognize it, even though its familiarity tugged at her heartstrings. Then it emerged from the crowd, and she saw, hiding behind an incredibly bushy blond beard, the face of Ellis Thaler.

Jane’s knees suddenly felt weak. Ellis? Here? It was impossible.

He walked toward her. He was wearing the loose pajamalike cotton clothes of the Afghans, and a dirty blanket around his broad shoulders. The little of his face that was still visible above the beard was deeply tanned, so that his sky blue eyes were even more striking than usual, like cornflowers in a field of ripe wheat.

Jane was struck dumb.

Ellis stood in front of her, his face solemn. “Hello, Jane.”

She realized she no longer hated him. A month ago she would have cursed him for deceiving her and spying on her friends; but now her anger had gone. She would never like him, but she could tolerate him. And it was nice to hear English spoken for the first time in more than a year.

“Ellis,” she said weakly. “What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

“The same as you,” he said.

What did that mean? Spying? No, Ellis did not know what Jean-Pierre was.

Ellis saw Jane’s confused expression and said: “I mean I’m here to help the rebels.”

Would he find out about Jean-Pierre? Jane was suddenly afraid for her husband. Ellis might kill him—

“Who does the baby belong to?” Ellis said.

“Me. And Jean-Pierre. Her name is Chantal.” Jane saw that Ellis suddenly looked terribly sad. She realized he had been hoping to find her unhappy with her husband. Oh, God, I think he’s still in love with me, she thought. She tried to change the subject. “But how will you help the rebels?”

He hefted his bag. It was a large, sausage-shaped thing of khaki canvas, like an old-fashioned soldier’s kit bag. “I’m going to teach them how to blow up roads and bridges,” he said. “So, you see, in this war I’m on the same side as you.”

But not the same side as Jean-Pierre, she thought. What will happen now? The Afghans did not for one moment suspect Jean-Pierre, but Ellis was trained in the ways of deception. Sooner or later he would guess what was going on. “How long are you going to be here?” she asked him. If it was a short stay he might not have time to develop suspicions.

“For the summer,” he said imprecisely.

Perhaps he would not spend much time around Jean-Pierre. “Where will you live?” she asked him.

“In this village.”

“Oh.”

He heard the disappointment in her voice and gave a wry smile. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to be
glad
to see me. . . .”

Jane’s mind was racing ahead. If she could make Jean-Pierre quit, he would be in no further danger. Suddenly she felt able to confront him. Why is that? she wondered. It’s because I’m not afraid of him anymore. Why am I not afraid of him? Because Ellis is here.

I hadn’t realized I was afraid of my husband.

“On the contrary,” she said to Ellis, thinking: how cool I am! “I’m happy you’re here.”

There was a silence. Ellis clearly did not know what to make of Jane’s reaction. After a moment he said: “Uh, I have a lot of explosives and stuff somewhere in this zoo. I’d better get to it.”

Jane nodded. “Okay.”

Ellis turned away and disappeared into the melee. Jane walked slowly out of the courtyard, feeling a little stunned. Ellis was
here,
in the Five Lions Valley, and apparently still in love with her.

As she reached the shopkeeper’s house, Jean-Pierre came out. He had stopped there on his way to the mosque, probably to put away his medical bag. Jane was not sure what to say to him. “The convoy brought someone you know,” she began.

“A European?”

“Yes.”

“Well, who?”

“Go and see. You’ll be surprised.”

He hurried off. Jane went inside. What would Jean-Pierre do about Ellis? she wondered. Well, he would want to tell the Russians. And the Russians would want to kill Ellis.

The thought made her angry. “There is to be no more killing!” she said aloud. “I will not permit it!” Her voice made Chantal cry. Jane rocked her and she became quiet.

What am I going to do about it? thought Jane.

I have to stop him getting in touch with the Russians.

How?

His contact can’t meet him here in the village. So all I have to do is keep Jean-Pierre here.

I’ll say to him: You must promise not to leave the village. If you refuse I’ll tell Ellis that you’re a spy and
he
will make sure you don’t leave the village.

Suppose Jean-Pierre makes the promise, then breaks it?

Well, I would
know
he had gone out of the village, and I would
know
he was meeting his contact, and I could then warn Ellis.

Has he any other way of communicating with the Russians?

He must have some means of getting in touch with them in an emergency.

But there are no phones here, no mail, no courier service, no carrier pigeons—

He must have a radio.

If he has a radio there’s no way I can stop him.

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that he had a radio. He needed to arrange those meetings in stone huts. In theory they might have all been scheduled before he left Paris, but in practice that was almost impossible: what would happen when he had to break an appointment, or when he was late, or when he needed to meet his contact urgently?

He
must
have a radio.

What can I do if he has a radio?

I can take it away from him.

She put Chantal down in her cradle and looked around the house. She went into the front room. There on the tiled counter in the middle of what had been the shop was Jean-Pierre’s medical bag.