sank to the ground, and everything went dark.
When she opened her eyes she saw a circle of anxious faces above her: Ellis, Mohammed, Halam and the woman. Ellis said: “How do you feel?”
“Foolish,” she said. “What happened?”
“You fainted.”
She sat upright. “I’ll be all right.”
“No, you won’t,” said Ellis. “You can’t go any farther today.”
Jane’s head was clearing. She knew he was right. Her body would not take any more, and no effort of will would change that. She started to speak French so that Mohammed could understand. “But the Russians are sure to reach here today.”
“We’ll have to hide,” said Ellis.
Mohammed said: “Look at these people. Do you think they could keep a secret?”
Jane looked at Halam and the woman. They were watching, riveted by the conversation even though they could not understand a word of it. The arrival of the foreigners was probably the most exciting event of the year. In a few minutes the whole of the village would be here. She studied Halam. Telling him not to gossip would be like telling a dog not to bark. The location of their hideout would be known all over Nuristan by nightfall. Was it possible to get away from these people, and sneak off up a side valley unobserved? Perhaps. But they could not live indefinitely without help from the local people—at some point their food would run out, and that would be about the time the Russians realized they had stopped and began searching the woods and canyons. Ellis had been right, earlier in the day, when he said their only hope was to stay ahead of their pursuers.
Mohammed drew heavily on his cigarette, looking thoughtful. He spoke to Ellis. “You and I will have to go on, and leave Jane behind.”
“No,” said Ellis.
Mohammed said: “The piece of paper you have, which bears the signatures of Masud, Kamil and Azizi, is more important than the life of any one of us. It represents the future of Afghanistan—the freedom for which my son died.”
Ellis would have to go on alone, Jane realized. At least he could be saved. She was ashamed of herself for the terrible despair she felt at the thought of losing him. She should be trying to figure out how to help him, not wondering how she could keep him with her. Suddenly she had an idea. “I could divert the Russians,” she said. “I could let myself be captured. Then, after a show of reluctance, I could give Jean-Pierre all sorts of false information about which way you were headed and how you were traveling. . . . If I sent them off completely the wrong way, you might gain several days’ lead—enough to get you safely out of the country!” She became enthusiastic about the idea even while in her heart she was thinking, Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.
Mohammed looked at Ellis. “It’s the only way, Ellis,” he said.
“Forget it,” said Ellis. “It isn’t going to happen.”
“But, Ellis—”
“It isn’t going to happen,” Ellis repeated. “Forget it.”
Mohammed shut up.
Jane said: “But what are we going to do?”
“The Russians won’t catch up with us today,” Ellis said. “We still have a lead—we got up so early this morning. We’ll stay here tonight and start early again tomorrow. Remember, it isn’t over until it’s over. Anything could happen. Somebody back in Moscow could decide that Anatoly is out of his mind and order the search called off.”
“Bullshit,” said Jane in English, but secretly she was glad, against all reason, that he had refused to go on alone.
“I have an alternative suggestion,” said Mohammed. “I will go back and divert the Russians.”
Jane’s heart leaped. Was it possible?
Ellis said: “How?”
“I will offer to be their guide and interpreter, and I will lead them south down the Nuristan Valley, away from you, to Lake Mundol.”
Jane thought of a snag, and her heart sank again. “But they must have a guide already,” she said.
“He may be a good man from the Five Lions Valley who has been forced to help the Russians against his will. In that case I will speak with him and arrange things.”
“What if he won’t help?”
Mohammed considered. “Then he is not a good man who has been forced to help them, but a traitor who willingly collaborates with the enemy for personal gain, in which case I will kill him.”
“I don’t want anyone killed for my sake,” she said quickly.
“It’s not for you,” Ellis said harshly. “It’s for me—I refused to go on alone.”
Jane shut up.
Ellis was thinking about practicalities. He said to Mohammed: “You’re not dressed like a Nuristani.”
“I will change clothes with Halam.”
“You don’t speak the local language well.”
“There are many languages in Nuristan. I will pretend to come from a district where they use a different tongue. The Russians speak none of these languages anyway, so they will never know.”
“What will you do with your gun?”
Mohammed thought for a moment. “Will you give me your bag?”
“It’s too small.”
“My Kalashnikov is the type that has a folding butt.”
“Sure,” said Ellis. “You can have the bag.”
Jane wondered whether it would attract suspicion, but decided not: Afghans’ bags were as strange and varied as their clothes. All the same, Mohammed would surely arouse suspicion sooner or later. She said: “What will happen when they finally realize they are on the wrong trail?”
“Before that happens I will run away in the night, leaving them in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s terribly dangerous,” said Jane.
Mohammed tried to look heroically unconcerned. Like most of the guerrillas, he was genuinely brave but also ludicrously vain.
Ellis said: “If you time this wrong, and they suspect you before you’ve decided to leave them, they will torture you to find out which way we went.”
“They will never take me alive,” said Mohammed.
Jane believed him.
Ellis said: “But we will have no guide.”
“I shall find you another one.” Mohammed turned to Halam and began a rapid multilingual conversation. Jane gathered that Mohammed was proposing to hire Halam as a guide. She did not like Halam much—he was too good a salesman to be entirely trustworthy—but he was obviously a traveling man, so he was a natural choice. Most of the local people had probably never ventured outside their own valley.
“He says he knows the way,” said Mohammed, reverting to French. Jane suffered a twinge of anxiety about the words
Ellis said: “It sounds like a fair price, but how many more guides will we have to hire at that rate before we reach Chitral?”
“Maybe five or six,” said Mohammed.
Ellis shook his head. “We don’t have thirty thousand afghanis. And we have to buy food.”
“You will have to get food by holding clinics,” Mohammed said. “And the way becomes easier once you are in Pakistan. Perhaps you will not need guides at the end.”
Ellis looked dubious. “What do you think?” he asked Jane.
“There’s an alternative,” she said. “You could go on without me.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not an alternative. We’ll go on together.”
