Lie Down With Lions (27 page)

“Oh!” Jane cried out.

“Now what the hell is going on?” muttered Ellis.

“I thought I’d never see him again,” said Jane. Ellis looked at her. Her face wore an odd expression. After a moment he realized it was a look of remorse.

He returned his attention to the scene in the village. Jean-Pierre was speaking to the Russian officer and gesticulating, pointing up the mountainside.

“He’s standing oddly,” said Jane. “I think he’s hurt himself.”

“Is he pointing toward us?” Ellis asked.

“He doesn’t know about this place—nobody does. Can he see us?”

“No.”

“We can see him,” she said dubiously.

“But he’s standing upright against a plain background. We’re lying flat, peeping out from under a blanket, against a mottled hillside. He couldn’t spot us unless he knew where to look.”

“Then he must be pointing toward the caves.”

“Yes.”

“He must be telling the Russians to look there.”

“Yes.”

“But that’s
awful.
How could he . . .” Her voice tailed off, and after a pause she said: “But of course that’s what he’s been doing ever since he got here—betraying people to the Russians.”

Ellis noticed that Anatoly appeared to be speaking into a walkie-talkie. A moment later one of the circling Hinds roared over Ellis and Jane’s hooded heads to land, audible but out of sight, on the hilltop.

Jean-Pierre and Anatoly were walking away from the mosque. Jean-Pierre was limping. “He
is
hurt,” said Ellis.

“I wonder what happened.”

It looked to Ellis as if Jean-Pierre had been beaten up, but he did not say so. He was wondering what was going on in Jane’s mind. There was her husband, walking with a KGB officer—a colonel, Ellis thought, from the uniform. Here she was, in a makeshift bed with another man. Did she feel guilty? Ashamed? Disloyal? Or unrepentant? Did she hate Jean-Pierre, or was she merely disappointed in him? She had been in love with him: was there any love left? He said: “How do you
feel
about him?”

She gave Ellis a long, hard look, and for a moment he thought she was going to get mad, but it was only that she was taking his question very seriously. Finally she said: “Sad.” She turned her gaze back to the village.

Jean-Pierre and Anatoly were heading for Jane’s house, where Chantal lay concealed on the roof.

Jane said: “I think they’re looking for me.”

Her expression was drawn and scared as she stared at the two men down below. Ellis did not think the Russians had come all this way with so many men and machines just for Jane, but he did not say so.

Jean-Pierre and Anatoly walked through the courtyard of the shopkeeper’s house and entered the building.

“Don’t cry, little girl,” whispered Jane.

It was a miracle the baby was still asleep, Ellis thought. Perhaps she was not: perhaps she was awake and crying, but her cries were drowned by the noise of the helicopters. Perhaps the soldier had not heard her because there had been a chopper directly overhead at that moment. Perhaps the more sensitive ears of her father would hear sounds which had failed to catch the attention of an uninterested stranger. Perhaps—

The two men came out of the house.

They stood in the courtyard for a moment, talking intently. Jean-Pierre limped across to the wooden staircase which led to the roof. He mounted the first step with evident difficulty, then got down again. There was another short exchange of words, and the Russian mounted the stairs.

Ellis held his breath.

Anatoly reached the top of the stair and stepped onto the roof. Like the soldier before him, he glanced at the scattered bedding, looked around at other house and then returned his attention to this one. Like the soldier, he poked at Fara’s mattress with the toe of his boot. Then he knelt down beside Chantal.

Gently, he drew back the sheet.

Jane gave an inarticulate cry as Chantal’s pink face came into view.

If they’re after Jane, Ellis thought, they will take Chantal, for they know she would give herself up in order to be reunited with her baby.

Anatoly stared at the tiny bundle for several seconds.

“Oh, God, I can’t stand this. I can’t stand it,” Jane groaned.

Ellis held her tight and said: “Wait, wait and see.”

He strained his eyes to make out the expression on the baby’s face, but the distance was too great.

The Russian appeared to be thinking.

Suddenly he seemed to make up his mind.

He dropped the sheet, tucked it in around the baby, stood up and walked away.

Jane burst into tears.

From the roof Anatoly spoke to Jean-Pierre, shaking his head in negation. Then he descended into the courtyard.

“Now why did he do that?” Ellis mused, thinking aloud. The shake of the head meant that Anatoly was lying to Jean-Pierre, saying
There is nobody on the roof.
The implication was that Jean-Pierre would have wanted to take the baby, but Anatoly did not. That meant that Jean-Pierre wanted to find Jane, but the Russian was not interested in her.

So what
was
he interested in?

It was obvious. He was after Ellis.

“I believe I may have fucked up,” Ellis said, mainly to himself. Jean-Pierre wanted Jane and Chantal, but Anatoly was looking for him. Anatoly wanted revenge for yesterday’s humiliation; he wanted to prevent Ellis returning to the West with the treaty the rebel commanders had signed; and he wanted to put Ellis on trial to prove to the world that the CIA was behind the Afghan rebellion. I should have thought of all this yesterday, Ellis reflected bitterly, but I was flushed with success and thinking only about Jane. Besides, Anatoly could not
know
I was here—I might have been in Darg, or Astana, or hiding out in the hills with Masud—so it must have been a long shot. But it had almost worked. Anatoly had good instincts. He was a formidable opponent—and the battle was not yet over.

Jane was weeping. Ellis stroked her hair and made soothing noises while he watched Jean-Pierre and Anatoly walk back toward the helicopters, which were still standing in the fields with their rotors churning the air.

The Hind that had landed on the hilltop near the caves took off again and rose over Ellis’s and Jane’s heads. Ellis wondered whether the seven wounded guerrillas in the cave clinic had been interrogated or taken prisoner or both.

It ended very quickly. The soldiers came out of the mosque at the double and piled into the Hip as fast as they had emerged. Jean-Pierre and Anatoly boarded one of the Hinds. The ugly aircraft took off, one by one, lifting giddily until they were higher than the hill and then speeding southward in a straight line.

Ellis, knowing what was in Jane’s mind, said: “Just wait a few more seconds, until all the choppers have gone—don’t spoil everything now.”

She nodded tearful acquiescence.

The villagers began to trickle out of the mosque, looking scared. The last helicopter took off and headed south. Jane scrambled out of the sleeping bag, pulled on her trousers, shrugged into her shirt and ran off down the hillside, slipping and stumbling and buttoning her shirt as she went. Ellis watched her go, feeling that somehow she had spurned him, knowing that the feeling was irrational, unable nevertheless to shake it. He would not follow her yet, he decided. He would leave her alone for her reunion with Chantal.

She went out of sight beyond the mullah’s house. Ellis looked down at the village. It was beginning to return to normal. He could hear voices raised in excited cries. The children were running around playing helicopters or pointing imaginary guns and herding chickens into courtyards to be interrogated. Most of the adults were walking slowly back to their homes, looking cowed.

Ellis remembered the seven wounded guerrillas and the boy with one hand in the cave clinic. He decided he would check on them. He pulled on his clothes, rolled up his sleeping bag and set off up the mountain path.

He recalled Allen Winderman, in his gray suit and his striped tie, picking over a salad in a Washington restaurant and saying: “What are the chances that the Russians would catch our man?”
Slender,
Ellis had said.
If they can’t catch Masud, why would they be able to catch an undercover agent sent to meet Masud?
Now he knew the answer to that question: Because of Jean-Pierre. “Goddam Jean-Pierre,” said Ellis aloud.

He reached the clearing. There was no noise coming from the cave clinic. He hoped the Russians had not taken the child, Mousa, as well as the wounded guerrillas—Mohammed would be inconsolable.

He went into the cave. The sun was up now and he could see quite clearly. They were all there, lying still and quiet. “Are you all right?” Ellis asked in Dari.

There was no reply. None of them moved.

“Oh, God,” Ellis whispered.

He knelt beside the nearest guerrilla and touched the bearded face. The man was lying in a pool of blood. He had been shot in the head at point-blank range.

Moving quickly, Ellis checked each of them.

They were all dead.

And so was the child.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

J
ane dashed through the village in a blind panic, pushing people aside, cannoning into walls, stumbling and falling and getting up again, sobbing and panting and moaning all at the same time. “She must be all right,” she told herself, repeating it like a litany; but just the same her brain kept asking
Why didn’t Chantal wake up?
and
What did Anatoly do?
and
Is my baby hurt?

She stumbled into the courtyard of the shopkeeper’s house and climbed the steps two at a time to the roof. She fell on her knees and pulled the sheet off the little mattress. Chantal’s eyes were closed. Jane thought: Is she breathing? Is she breathing? Then the baby’s eyes opened, she looked at her mother, and—for the first time ever—she smiled.

Jane snatched her up and hugged her fiercely, feeling as if her heart would burst. Chantal cried at the sudden squeeze, and Jane cried, too, awash with joy and relief because her little girl was still here, still alive and warm and squalling, and because she had just smiled her first smile.

After a while Jane calmed down, and Chantal, sensing the change, became quiet. Jane rocked her, patting her back rhythmically and kissing the top of her soft bald head. Eventually Jane remembered that there were other people in the world, and she wondered what had happened to the villagers in the mosque, and whether they were all right. She went down into her courtyard, and there she met Fara.

Jane looked at the girl for a moment—silent, anxious Fara, timid and so easily shocked: where had she found the courage and presence of mind and sheer nerve to conceal Chantal under a rumpled sheet while the Russians were landing their helicopters and firing their rifles a few yards away? “You saved her,” Jane said.

Fara looked frightened, as if it had been an accusation.

Jane shifted Chantal to her left hip and put her right arm around Fara, hugging her. “You saved my baby!” she said. “Thank you! Thank you!”

Fara beamed with pleasure for a moment, then burst into tears.

Jane soothed her, patting her back as she had patted Chantal’s. As soon as Fara was quiet Jane said: “What happened in the mosque? What did they do? Is anyone hurt?”

“Yes,” said Fara dazedly.

Jane smiled: you couldn’t ask Fara three questions one after another and expect a sensible answer. “What happened when you went into the mosque?”

“They asked where the American was.”

“Whom did they ask?”

“Everyone. But nobody knew. The doctor asked me where you and the baby were, and I said I didn’t know. Then they picked out three of the men: first my uncle Shahazai, then the mullah, then Alishan Karim, the mullah’s brother. They asked them again, but it was no use, for the men did not know where the American had gone. So they beat them.”

“Are they badly hurt?”

“Just beaten.”

“I’ll take a look at them.” Alishan had a heart condition, Jane recalled anxiously. “Where are they now?”

“Still in the mosque.”

“Come with me.” Jane went into the house and Fara followed. In the front room Jane found her nursing bag on the old shopkeeper’s counter. She added some nitroglycerin pills to her regular kit and went out again. As she headed for the mosque, still clutching Chantal tightly, she said to Fara: “Did they hurt you?”

“No. The doctor seemed very angry, but they didn’t beat me.”

Jane wondered whether Jean-Pierre had been angry because he guessed that she was spending the night with Ellis. It occurred to her that the whole village was guessing the same thing. She wondered how they would react. This might be the final proof that she was the Whore of Babylon.

Still, they would not shun her yet, not while there were injured people to be attended to. She reached the mosque and entered the courtyard. Abdullah’s wife saw her, bustled over importantly, and led her to where he lay on the ground. At first glance he looked all right, and Jane was worried about Alishan’s heart, so she left the mullah—ignoring his wife’s indignant protests—and went to Alishan, who was lying nearby.

He was gray-faced and breathing with difficulty, and he had one hand on his chest: as Jane had feared, the beating had brought on an attack of angina. She gave him a tablet, saying: “Chew, don’t swallow it.”

She handed Chantal to Fara and examined Alishan quickly. He was badly bruised, but no bones were broken. “How did they beat you?” she asked him.

“With their rifles,” he answered hoarsely.

She nodded. He was lucky: the only real damage they had done was to subject him to the stress that was so bad for his heart, and he was already recovering from that. She dabbed iodine on his cuts and told him to lie where he was for an hour.

She returned to Abdullah. However, when the mullah saw her approach he waved her away with an angry roar. She knew what had infuriated him: he thought he was entitled to priority treatment, and he was insulted that she had seen Alishan first. Jane was not going to make excuses. She had told him before that she treated people in order of urgency, not status. Now she turned away. There was no point in insisting on examining the old fool. If he was well enough to yell at her, he would live.

She went to Shahazai, the scarred old fighter. He had already been examined by his sister Rabia, the midwife, who was bathing his cuts. Rabia’s herbal ointments were not quite as antiseptic as they should be, but Jane thought they probably did more good than harm on balance, so she contented herself with making him wiggle his fingers and toes. He was all right.

We were lucky, Jane thought. The Russians came, but we escaped with minor injuries. Thank God. Perhaps now we can hope they will leave us alone for a while—maybe until the route to the Khyber Pass is open again. . . .

“Is the doctor a Russian?” Rabia asked abruptly.

“No.” For the first time, Jane wondered just exactly what had been in Jean-Pierre’s mind. If he had found me, she thought, what would he have said to me? “No, Rabia, he’s not a Russian. But he seems to have joined their side.”

“So he is a traitor.”

“Yes, I suppose he is.” Now Jane wondered what was in old Rabia’s mind.

“Can a Christian divorce her husband for being a traitor?”

In Europe she can divorce him for a good deal less, thought Jane, so she said: “Yes.”

“Is this why you have now married the American?”

Jane saw how Rabia was thinking. Spending the night on the mountainside with Ellis had, indeed, confirmed Abdullah’s accusation that she was a Western whore. Rabia, who had long been Jane’s leading supporter in the village, was planning to counter that accusation with an alternative interpretation, according to which Jane had been rapidly divorced from the traitor under strange Christian laws unknown to True Believers and was now married to Ellis under those same laws. So be it, Jane thought. “Yes,” she said, “that is why I have married the American.”

Rabia nodded, satisfied.

Jane almost felt as if there were an element of truth in the mullah’s epithet. She had, after all, moved from one man’s bed to another’s with indecent rapidity. She felt a little ashamed, then caught herself: she had never let her behavior be ruled by other people’s expectations. Let them think what they like, she said to herself.

She did not consider herself married to Ellis. Do I feel divorced from Jean-Pierre? she asked herself. The answer was no. However, she
did
feel that her obligations to him had ended. After what he’s done, she thought, I don’t owe him anything. It should have come as some kind of relief to her, but in fact she just felt sad.

Her musings were interrupted. There was a flurry of activity over at the mosque entrance, and Jane turned around to see Ellis walk in carrying something in his arms. As he came nearer she could see that his face was a mask of rage, and it flashed through her mind that she had seen him like that once before: when a careless taxi driver had made a sudden U-turn and knocked down a young man on a motorcycle, injuring him quite badly. Ellis and Jane had witnessed the whole thing and called the ambulance—in those days she had known nothing of medicine—and Ellis had said over and over again: “So unnecessary, it was so unnecessary.”

She made out the shape of the bundle in his arms: it was a child, and she realized that his expression meant that the child was dead. Her first, shameful reaction was to think, Thank God it’s not my baby; then, when she looked closely, she saw that it was the one child in the village who sometimes seemed like her own—one-handed Mousa, the boy whose life she had saved. She felt the dreadful sense of disappointment and loss that came when a patient died after she and Jean-Pierre had fought long and hard for his life. But this was especially painful, for Mousa had been brave and determined in coping with his disability; and his father was so proud of him. Why him? thought Jane as the tears came to her eyes. Why him?

The villagers clustered around Ellis, but he looked at Jane.

“They are all dead,” he said, speaking Dari so that the others could understand. Some of the women began to weep.

“How?” Jane said.

“Shot by the Russians, each one.”

“Oh, my God.” Only last night she had said
None of them will die
—of their wounds, she had meant, but nonetheless she had foreseen each of them getting better, quickly or slowly, and returning to full health and strength under her care. Now—all dead. “But why did they kill the child?” she cried.

“I think he annoyed them.”

Jane frowned, puzzled.

Ellis shifted his burden slightly so that Mousa’s hand came into view. The small fingers were rigidly grasping the handle of the knife his father had given him. There was blood on the blade.

Suddenly a great wail was heard, and Halima pushed through the crowd. She took the body of her son from Ellis and sank to the ground with the dead child in her arms, screaming his name. The women gathered around her. Jane turned away.

Beckoning Fara to follow her with Chantal, Jane left the mosque and walked slowly home. Just a few minutes ago she had been thinking that the village had had a lucky escape. Now seven men and a boy were dead. Jane had no tears left, for she had cried too much: she just felt weak with grief.

She went into the house and sat down to feed Chantal. “How patient you have been, little one,” she said as she put the baby to her breast.

A minute or two later Ellis came in. He leaned over her and kissed her. He looked at her for a moment, then said: “You seem angry with me.”

Jane realized that she was. “Men are so bloody,” she said bitterly. “That child obviously tried to attack armed Russian troops with his hunting knife—who taught him to be foolhardy? Who told him it was his role in life to kill Russians? When he threw himself at the man with the Kalashnikov, who was his role model? Not his mother. It’s his father; it’s Mohammed’s fault that he died; Mohammed’s fault and yours.”

Ellis looked astonished. “Why mine?”

She knew she was being harsh, but she could not stop. “They beat Abdullah, Alishan and Shahazai in an attempt to make them tell where you were,” she said. “They were looking for you. That was the object of the exercise.”

“I know. Does that make it my fault that they shot the little boy?”

“It happened because you’re here, where you don’t belong.”

“Perhaps. Anyway, I have the solution to
that
problem. I’m leaving. My presence brings violence and bloodshed, as you are so quick to point out. If I stay, not only am I liable to get caught—for we were very lucky last night—but my fragile little scheme to start these tribes working together against their common enemy will fall apart. It’s worse than that, in fact. The Russians would put me on public trial for the maximum propaganda. ‘See how the CIA attempts to exploit the internal problems of a Third World country.’ That sort of thing.”

“You really are a big cheese, aren’t you?” It seemed odd that what happened here in the Valley, among this small group of people, should have such great global consequences. “But you can’t go. The route to the Khyber Pass is blocked.”

“There’s another way: the Butter Trail.”

“Oh, Ellis . . . it’s very hard—and dangerous.” She thought of him climbing those high passes in the bitter winds. He might lose his way and freeze to death in the snow, or be robbed and murdered by the bandits. “Please don’t do that.”

“If I had another choice I’d take it.”

So she would lose him again, and she would be alone. The thought made her miserable. That was surprising. She had only spent one night with him. What had she expected? She was not sure. More, anyway, than this abrupt parting. “I didn’t think I’d lose you again so soon,” she said. She moved Chantal to the other breast.

He knelt in front of her and took her hand. “You haven’t thought this situation through,” he said. “Think about Jean-Pierre. Don’t you know he wants you back?”

Jane considered that. Ellis was right, she realized. Jean-Pierre would now be feeling humiliated and emasculated: the only thing that would heal his wounds would be to have her back, in his bed and in his power. “But what would he do with me?” she said.

“He will want you and Chantal to live out the rest of your lives in some mining town in Siberia, while he spies in Europe and visits you every two or three years for a holiday between assignments.”

“What could he do if I were to refuse?”

“He could make you. Or he could kill you.”

Jane remembered Jean-Pierre punching her. She felt nauseous. “Will the Russians help him to find me?” she said.

“Yes.”

“But why? Why should they care about me?”

“First because they owe him. Second because they figure you will keep him happy. Third because you know too much. You know Jean-Pierre intimately and you’ve seen Anatoly: you could provide good descriptions of both of them for the CIA’s computer, if you were able to get back to Europe.”

So there would be more bloodshed, Jane thought; the Russians would raid villages, interrogate people, and beat and torture them to find out where she was. “That Russian officer . . . Anatoly, his name is. He saw Chantal.” Jane hugged her baby tighter for a moment as she remembered those dreadful seconds. “I thought he was going to pick her up. Didn’t he realize that, if he had taken her, I would have given myself up just to be with her?”