Lie Down with Lions (1985)

as the route to Pakistan is open and the convoys begin again, I’ll go home. What about you?”

“The same. My work here is over. The agreement will have to be supervised, of course, but the Agency has people in Pakistan who can do that.”

Fara brought the tea. Jane wondered what Ellis’s next job would be: plotting a coup in Nicaragua, or blackmailing a Soviet diplomat in Washington, or perhaps assassinating an African Communist? She had questioned him, when they were lovers, about going to Vietnam, and he had told her that everybody had expected him to dodge the draft, but he was a contrary son of a bitch and so he did the opposite. She was not sure she believed that, but even if it was true it did not explain why he had remained in this violent line of work even after he got out of the army. “So what will you do when you get home?” she asked. “Go back to devising cute ways of killing Castro?”

“The Agency is not supposed to do assassinations,” he said.

“But it does.”

“There’s a lunatic element that gives us a bad name. Unfortunately, presidents can’t resist the temptation to play secret-agent games, and that encourages the nutcase faction.”

“Why don’t you turn your back on them all and join the human race?”

“Look. America is full of people who believe that other countries as well as their own have a right to be free —but they’re the type of people who turn their backs and join the human race. In consequence, the Agency employs too many psychopaths and too few decent, compassionate citizens. Then, when the Agency brings down a foreign government at the whim of a president, they all ask how this kind of thing can possibly happen. The answer is because they let it. My country is a democracy, so there’s nobody to blame but me when things are wrong; and if things are to be put right, I have to do it, because it’s my responsibility.”

Jane was unconvinced. “Would you say that the way to reform the KGB is to join it?”

“No, because the KGB is not ultimately controlled by the people. The Agency is.”

“Control isn’t that simple,” said Jane. “The CIA tells lies to the people. You can’t control them if you have no way of knowing what they’re doing.”

“But in the end it’s our Agency and our responsibility.”

“You could work to abolish it instead of joining it.”

“But we need a central intelligence agency. We live in a hostile world and we need information about our enemies.”

Jane sighed. “But look what it leads to,” she said. “You’re planning to send more and bigger guns to Masud so that he can kill more people faster. And that’s what you people always end up doing.”

“It’s not just so that he can kill more people faster,” Ellis protested. “The Afghans are fighting for their freedom—and they’re fighting against a bunch of murderers—”

“They’re all fighting for their freedom,” Jane interrupted. “The PLO, the Cuban exiles, the Weathermen, the IRA, the white South Africans and the Free Wales Army.”

“Some are right and some aren’t.”

“And the CIA knows the difference?”

“It ought to—”

“But it doesn’t. Whose freedom is Masud fighting for?”

“The freedom of all Afghans.”

“Bullshit,” Jane said fiercely. “He’s a Muslim fundamentalist, and if he ever takes power the first thing he’ll do is clamp down on women. He will never give them the vote—he wants to take away what few rights they have. And how do you think he will treat his opponents, given that his political hero is the Ayatollah Khomeini? Will scientists and teachers have academic freedom? Will gay men and women have sexual freedom? What will happen to the Hindus, the Buddhists, the atheists and the Plymouth Brethren?”

Ellis said: “Do you seriously think Masud’s regime would be worse than that of the Russians?”

Jane thought for a moment. “I don’t know. The only thing that’s certain is that Masud’s regime will be an Afghan tyranny instead of a Russian tyranny. And it’s not worth killing people to exchange a local dictator for a foreigner.”

“The Afghans seem to think it is.”

“Most of them have never been asked.”

“I think it’s obvious. However, I don’t normally do this sort of work anyway. Usually I’m more of a detective type.”

This was something about which Jane had been curious for a year. “What exactly was your mission in Paris?”

“When I spied on all our friends?” He smiled thinly. “Didn’t Jean-Pierre tell you?”

“He said he didn’t really know.”

“Perhaps he didn’t. I was hunting terrorists.”

“Among our friends?”

“That’s where they are usually to be found—among dissidents, dropouts and criminals.”

“Was Rahmi Coskun a terrorist?” Jean-Pierre had said that Rahmi got arrested because of Ellis.

“Yes. He was responsible for the Turkish Airlines firebombing in the Avenue Felix Faure.”

“Rahmi? How do you know?”

“He told me. And when I had him arrested he was planning another bombing.”

“He told you that, too?”

“He asked me to help him with the bomb.”

“My God.” Handsome Rahmi, with the smoldering eyes and passionate hatred of his wretched country’s government . . .

Ellis had not finished. “Remember Pepe Gozzi?”

Jane frowned. “Do you mean the funny little Corsican who had a Rolls-Royce?”

“Yes. He supplied guns and explosives to every nutcase in Paris. He’d sell to anyone who could afford his prices, but he specialized in ‘political’ customers.”

Jane was flabbergasted. She had assumed that Pepe was somewhat disreputable, purely on the grounds that he was both rich and Corsican; but she had supposed that at worst he was involved in some everyday crime such as smuggling or dope dealing. To think that he sold guns to murderers! Jane was beginning to feel as if she had been living in a dream, while intrigue and violence went on in the real world all around her. Am I so naive? she thought.

Ellis plowed on. “I also pulled in a Russian who had financed a lot of assassinations and kidnappings. Then Pepe was interrogated and spilled the beans on half the terrorists in Europe.”

“That’s what you were doing, all the time we were lovers,” Jane said dreamily. She recalled the parties, the rock concerts, the demonstrations, the political arguments in cafes, the endless bottles of vin rouge ordinaire in attic studios. . . . Since their breakup she had assumed vaguely that he had been writing little reports on all the radicals, saying who was influential, who was extreme, who had money, who had the largest following among students, who had Communist Party connections, and so on. It was hard now to accept the idea that he had been after real criminals, and that he had actually found some among their friends. “I can’t believe it,” she said in amazement.

“It was a great triumph, if you want to know the truth.”

“You probably shouldn’t be telling me.”

“I shouldn’t. But when I’ve lied to you in the past, I have regretted doing so—to put it mildly.”

Jane felt awkward and did not know what to say. She shifted Chantal to her left breast, then, catching Ellis’s eye, covered her right breast with her shirt. The conversation was becoming uncomfortably personal, but she was intensely curious to know more. She could see now how he justified himself—although she did not agree with his reasoning—but still she wondered about his motivation. If I don’t find out now, she thought, I may never get another chance. She said: “I don’t understand what makes a man decide to spend his life doing this sort of thing.”

He glanced away. “I’m good at it and it’s worth doing and the pay’s terrific.”

“And I expect you liked the pension plan and the canteen menu. It’s all right—you don’t have to explain