CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
All the first day, the search parties found no trace of Ellis and Jane. Jean-Pierre and Anatoly sat on hard wooden chairs in a spartan, windowless office at the Bagram air base, monitoring the reports as they came in over the radio network. The search parties had left before dawn—again. There were six of them at the start: one for each of the five main side valleys leading east from the Five Lions, and one to follow the Five Lions River north to its source and beyond. Each of the parties included at least one Dari-speaking officer from the Afghan regular army. They landed their helicopters at six different villages in the Valley, and half an hour later all six parties had reported that they had found local guides.
“That was quick,” said Jean-Pierre after the sixth reported in. “How did they do it?”
“Simple,” said Anatoly. “They ask someone to be a guide. He says no. They shoot him. They ask someone else. It doesn’t take long to find a volunteer.”
One of the search parties tried to follow its assigned trail from the air, but the experiment was a failure. The trails were rather difficult to follow from the ground, impossible from the air. Furthermore, none of the guides had ever been in an aircraft before and the new experience was totally disorienting. So all the search parties went on foot, some with commandeered horses to carry their baggage.
Jean-Pierre did not expect any further news in the morning, for the fugitives had a full day’s start. However, the soldiers would certainly move faster than Jane, especially as she was carrying Chantal—
Jean-Pierre felt a stab of guilt every time he thought of Chantal. His rage at what his wife was doing did not extend to his daughter, yet the baby was suffering, he felt sure: trekking all day, crossing passes above the snow line, blasted by icy winds. . . .
His mind turned, as it often did nowadays, to the question of what would happen if Jane died and Chantal survived. He pictured Ellis captured, alone, Jane’s body found a mile or two back, dead of the cold, with the baby still miraculously alive in her arms. I would arrive back in Paris a tragic, romantic figure, thought Jean-Pierre, a widower with a baby daughter, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. . . . How they would lionize me! I’m perfectly capable of bringing up a baby. What an intense relationship we would have as she grew older. I’d have to hire a nanny, of course, but I’d make sure she did not take the place of a mother in the child’s affections. No, I would be both father and mother to her.
The more he thought about it, the more outraged he felt that Jane was risking Chantal’s life. Surely she had forfeited all her parental rights by taking her baby on such an escapade. He thought he could probably get legal custody of the child in a European court on this basis. . . .
As the afternoon wore on, Anatoly grew bored and Jean-Pierre became tense. They were both tetchy. Anatoly held long conversations in Russian with other officers who came into the windowless little room, and their interminable jabbering got on Jean-Pierre’s nerves. At first Anatoly had translated all the radio reports of the search parties, but now he would just say, “Nothing.” Jean-Pierre had been plotting the routes of the parties on a set of maps, marking their locations with red pins, but by the end of the afternoon they were following trails or dried-up riverbeds which were not on the maps, and if their radio reports gave clues to their whereabouts, Anatoly was not passing them on.
The parties made camp at nightfall without reporting any signs of the fugitives. The searchers had been instructed to question the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed. The villagers were saying they had seen no foreigners. This was not surprising, for the searchers were still on the Five Lions side of the great passes leading to Nuristan. The people they were questioning were generally loyal to Masud: to them, helping the Russians was treason. Tomorrow, when the search parties passed into Nuristan, the people would be more cooperative.
Nevertheless, Jean-Pierre felt dispirited as he and Anatoly left the office at nightfall and walked across the concrete to the canteen. They ate a vile dinner of canned sausages and reconstituted mashed potatoes; then Anatoly went off moodily to drink vodka with some brother officers, leaving Jean-Pierre in the care of a sergeant who spoke only Russian. They played chess once, but—to Jean-Pierre’s chagrin—the sergeant was far too good. Jean-Pierre retired early and lay awake on a hard army mattress, visualizing Jane and Ellis in bed together.
Next morning he was awakened by Anatoly, his Oriental face wreathed in smiles, all irritation gone, and Jean-Pierre felt like a bad child who has been forgiven, although as far as he knew he had done nothing wrong. They ate their breakfast porridge together in the canteen. Anatoly had already talked to each of the search parties, all of which had struck camp and set off again at dawn. “Today we will catch your wife, my friend,” said Anatoly cheerfully, and Jean-Pierre felt a surge of happy optimism.
As soon as they reached the office, Anatoly radioed to the searchers again. He asked them to describe what they could see all around them, and Jean-Pierre used their descriptions of streams, lakes, depressions and moraines to guess their locations. They seemed to be moving terribly slowly in terms of kilometers per hour, but of course they were going uphill on difficult terrain, and the same factors would slow Ellis and Jane.
Each search party had a guide, and when they came to a place where the trail forked and both ways led to Nuristan, they would conscript an additional guide from the nearest village and split into two groups. By noon Jean-Pierre’s map was spotted with little red pinheads like a case of measles.
In the middle of the afternoon there was an unexpected distraction. A bespectacled general on a five-day fact-finding tour of Afghanistan landed at Bagram and decided to find out how Anatoly was spending the Russian taxpayer’s money. This Jean-Pierre learned in a few words from Anatoly seconds before the general burst into the little office, followed by anxious officers like ducklings hurrying after the mother duck.
Jean-Pierre was fascinated to see how masterfully Anatoly handled the visitor. He sprang to his feet, looking energetic but unruffled; shook the general’s hand and gave him a chair; barked a series of orders through the open door; spoke rapidly but deferentially to the general for a minute or so; excused himself and spoke into the radio; translated for Jean-Pierre’s benefit the reply that came crackling through the atmosphere from Nuristan; and introduced the general to Jean-Pierre in French.
The general began to ask questions, and Anatoly pointed to the pinheads on Jean-Pierre’s map as he replied. Then, in the middle of it all, one of the search parties called in unbidden, an excited voice jabbering in Russian, and Anatoly shushed the general in midsentence to listen.
Jean-Pierre sat on the edge of his hard seat and longed for a translation.
The voice stopped. Anatoly asked a question and got a reply.
“What did he see?” blurted Jean-Pierre, unable to keep silent any longer.
Anatoly ignored him for a moment and spoke to the general. At last he turned to Jean-Pierre. “They have found two Americans at a village called Atati in the Nuristan valley.”
“Wonderful!” said Jean-Pierre. “It’s them!”
“I suppose so,” said Anatoly.
Jean-Pierre could not understand his lack of enthusiasm. “Of course it is! Your troops don’t know the difference between American and English.”
“Probably not. But they say there is no baby.”
“No baby!” Jean-Pierre frowned. How could that be? Had Jane left Chantal behind in the Five Lions Valley, to be brought up by Rabia or Zahara or Fara? It seemed impossible. Had she hidden the baby with a family in this village—Atati—just a few seconds before being caught by the search party? That, too, seemed unlikely: Jane’s instinct would be to keep the baby close to her in times of danger.
Was Chantal dead?
It was probably a mistake, he decided: some error of communication, atmospheric interference on the radio link, or even a purblind officer in the search party who simply had not seen the tiny baby.
“Let’s not speculate,” he said to Anatoly. “Let’s go and see.”
“I want you to go with the pickup squad,” said Anatoly.
“Of course,” said Jean-Pierre; then he was struck by Anatoly’s phrasing. “Do you mean to say you’re not coming?”
“Correct.”
“Why not?”
“I’m needed here.” Anatoly shot a glance at the general.
“All right.” There were power games within the military bureaucracy, no doubt: Anatoly was afraid to leave the base while the general was still prowling around in case some rival should get a chance to slander him behind
