Lie Down with Lions (1985)

his back.

Anatoly picked up the desk phone and gave a series of orders in Russian. While he was still speaking, an orderly came into the room and beckoned Jean-Pierre. Anatoly put his hand over the mouthpiece and said: “They’ll give you a warm coat—it’s already winter in Nuristan. A bientot.”

Jean-Pierre went out with the orderly. They walked across the concrete apron. Two helicopters were waiting, rotors spinning: a bug-eyed Hind with rocket pods slung under its stubby wings, and a Hip, rather bigger, with a row of portholes along its fuselage. Jean-Pierre wondered what the Hip was for, then realized it was to bring back the search party. Just before they reached the machines, a soldier ran up to them with a uniform greatcoat and gave it to Jean-Pierre. He slung it over his arm and boarded the Hind.

They took off immediately. Jean-Pierre was in a fever of anticipation. He sat on the bench in the passenger cabin with half a dozen troops. They headed northeast.

When they were clear of the air base, the pilot beckoned Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre went forward and stood on the step so that the pilot could speak to him. “I will be your translator,” the man said in hesitant French.

“Thank you. You know where we’re headed?”

“Yes, sir. We have the coordinates, and I can speak by radio with the leader of the search party.”

“Fine.” Jean-Pierre was surprised to be treated with such deference. It seemed he had acquired honorary rank by association with a KGB colonel.

He wondered, as he returned to his seat, how Jane would look when he walked in. Would she be relieved? Defiant? Or just exhausted? Ellis would be angry and humiliated, of course. How should I act? wondered Jean- Pierre. I want to make them squirm, but I must remain dignified. What should I say?

He tried to visualize the scene. Ellis and Jane would be in the courtyard of some mosque, or sitting on the earth floor of a stone hut, possibly tied up, guarded by soldiers with Kalashnikovs. They would probably be cold, hungry and miserable. Jean-Pierre would stride in, wearing his Russian greatcoat, looking confident and commanding, followed by deferential junior officers. He would give them a long, penetrating look and say—

What would he say? We meet again sounded terribly melodramatic. Did you really think you could escape from us? was too rhetorical. You never stood a chance was better, but a little anticlimactic.

The temperature dropped fast as they headed into the mountains. Jean-Pierre put on his coat and stood by the open door, looking down. Below him was a valley something like the Five Lions, with a river at its center flowing in the shadows of the mountains. There was snow on the peaks and ridges to either side, but none in the valley itself.

Jean-Pierre went forward to the flight deck and spoke into the pilot’s ear. “Where are we?”

“This is called the Sakardara Valley,” the man replied. “As we go north its name changes to the Nuristan Valley. It takes us all the way to Atati.”

“How much longer?”

“Twenty minutes.”

It sounded like forever. Controlling his impatience with an effort, Jean-Pierre went back to sit on the bench among the troops. They sat still and quiet, watching him. They seemed afraid of him. Perhaps they thought he was in the KGB.

I am in the KGB, he thought suddenly.

He wondered what the troops were thinking about. Girlfriends and wives back home, perhaps? Their home would be his home, from now on. He would have an apartment in Moscow. He wondered whether he could possibly have a happy married life with Jane now. He wanted to install her and Chantal in his apartment while he, like these soldiers, would fight the good fight in foreign countries and look forward to going home on leave, to sleep with his wife again and see how his daughter had grown. I betrayed Jane and she betrayed me, he thought; perhaps we can forgive one another, if only for the sake of Chantal.

What had happened to Chantal?

He was about to find out. The helicopter lost height. They were almost there. Jean-Pierre stood up to look out of the door again. They were coming down to a meadow where a tributary joined the main river. It was a pretty spot with just a few houses sprawling up the hillside, each overlapping the one beneath in the Nuristani manner: Jean-Pierre remembered seeing photographs of such villages in coffee-table books about the Himalayas.

The helicopter touched down.

Jean-Pierre jumped to the ground. On the other side of the meadow, a group of Russian soldiers—the search party, undoubtedly—emerged from the lowest of a mound of wooden houses. Jean-Pierre waited impatiently for the pilot, his interpreter. Finally the man got out of the helicopter. “Let’s go!” said Jean-Pierre, and started off across the field.

He restrained himself from breaking into a run. Ellis and Jane were probably in the house from which the search party was emerging, he thought, and he headed that way at a fast walk. He began to feel angry: long- suppressed rage was churning up inside him. To hell with being dignified, he thought; I’m going to tell this loathsome couple just what I think of them.

As he neared the search party, the officer at the head of the group began speaking. Ignoring him, Jean-Pierre turned to his pilot and said: “Ask him where they are.”

The pilot asked, and the officer pointed to the wooden house. Without further ado Jean-Pierre went past the soldiers to the house.

His anger was at the boiling point as he stormed into the crude building. Several more of the search party stood in a group in one corner. They looked at Jean-Pierre, then made way for him.

In the corner were two people tied to a bench.

Jean-Pierre stared at them, shocked. His mouth fell open and the blood drained from his face. There was a thin, anemic-looking boy of eighteen or nineteen with long, dirty hair and a droopy mustache; and a large-bosomed blond girl with flowers in her hair. The boy looked at Jean-Pierre with relief and said in English: “Hey, man, will you help us? We are in deep shit.”

Jean-Pierre felt as if he would explode. They were just a couple of hippies on the Katmandu trail, a species of tourist which had not quite died out despite the war. What a disappointment! Why did they have to be here just when the whole world was looking for a runaway Western couple?

Jean-Pierre certainly was not going to help a pair of drug-taking degenerates. He turned around and went out.

The pilot was just coming in. He saw the expression on Jean-Pierre’s face and said: “What’s the matter?”

“It’s the wrong couple. Come with me.”

The man hurried after Jean-Pierre. “The wrong people? These are not the Americans?”

“They’re Americans, but they’re not the people we’re looking for.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to speak to Anatoly, and I need you to get him on the radio for me.”

They crossed the field and climbed into the helicopter. Jean-Pierre sat in the gunner’s seat and put on the headphones. He tapped his foot impatiently on the metal floor as the pilot talked interminably over the radio in Russian. At last Anatoly’s voice came on, sounding very distant and punctuated by atmospheric crackling.

“Jean-Pierre, my friend, here is Anatoly. Where are you?”

“I’m at Atati. The two Americans they have captured are not Ellis and Jane. Repeat, they are not Ellis and Jane. They’re just a couple of foolish kids looking for nirvana. Over.”

“This does not surprise me, Jean-Pierre,” Anatoly’s voice came back.

“What?” Jean-Pierre interrupted, forgetting that communication was one-way.

“—have received a series of reports that Ellis and Jane have been seen in the Linar Valley. The search party has not made contact with them but we are hot on their trail. Over.”

Jean-Pierre’s anger about the hippies evaporated and some of his eagerness came back. “The Linar Valley— where is that? Over.”

“Near where you are now. It runs into the Nuristan Valley fifteen or twenty miles south of Atati. Over.”

So close! “Are you sure? Over.”

“The search party got several reports in the villages they passed through. The descriptions fit Ellis and Jane. And they mention a baby. Over.”