He walked down to the meadow, used the latrine, washed in the river, and got a cup of coffee from a group of soldiers standing around a cooking fire.
The search party was ready to leave. Anatoly had decided last night that he would direct the search from here, remaining in constant radio contact with the searchers. The helicopters would stay ready to take him and Jean-Pierre to join the searchers as soon as they sighted their quarry.
While Jean-Pierre was sipping his coffee, Anatoly came across the field from the village. “Have you seen that damn guide?” he asked abruptly.
“No.”
“He seems to have disappeared.”
Jean-Pierre raised his eyebrows. “Just like the last one.”
“These people are impossible. I’ll have to ask the villagers. Come and translate.”
“I don’t speak their language.”
“Maybe they’ll understand your Dari.”
Jean-Pierre walked with Anatoly back across the meadow to the village. As they climbed the narrow dirt path between the rickety houses, somebody called to Anatoly in Russian. They stopped and looked to the side. Ten or twelve men, some Nuristanis in white and some Russians in uniform, were crowded together on a veranda looking at something on the ground. They parted to let Anatoly and Jean-Pierre through. The thing on the floor was a dead man.
The villagers were jabbering in outraged tones and pointing to the body. The man’s throat had been cut: the wound gaped horribly and the head hung loose. The blood had dried—he had probably been killed yesterday.
“Is this Mohammed, the guide?” Jean-Pierre asked.
“No,” said Anatoly. He questioned one of the soldiers, then said: “This is the
Jean-Pierre addressed the villagers slowly in Dari. “What is going on?”
After a pause, a wrinkled old man with a bad occlusion in his right eye replied in the same language. “He has been murdered!” he said accusingly.
Jean-Pierre began to question him and, bit by bit, the story emerged. The dead man was a villager from the Linar Valley who had been conscripted as a guide by the Russians. His body, hastily concealed in a clump of bushes, had been found by a goatherd’s dog. The man’s family thought the Russians had murdered him, and they had brought the body here this morning in a dramatic attempt to find out why.
Jean-Pierre explained to Anatoly. “They’re outraged because they think your men killed him,” he finished.
“Outraged?” said Anatoly. “Don’t they know there’s a war on? People are getting killed every day—that’s the whole idea.”
“Obviously they don’t see much action here.
“I’ll find out.” Anatoly spoke to the soldiers. Several of them answered together in animated tones. “We didn’t kill him,” Anatoly translated to Jean-Pierre.
“So who did? I wonder. Could the locals be murdering our guides for collaborating with the enemy?”
“No,” said Anatoly. “If they hated collaborators they wouldn’t be making this fuss about one who got killed. Tell them we’re innocent—calm them down.”
Jean-Pierre spoke to the one-eyed man. “The foreigners did not kill this man. They want to know who murdered their guide.”
The one-eyed man translated this, and the villagers reacted with consternation.
Anatoly looked thoughtful. “Perhaps the disappearing Mohammed killed this man in order to get the job of guide.”
“Are you paying much?” Jean-Pierre asked.
“I doubt it.” Anatoly asked a sergeant and translated the answer. “Five hundred afghanis a day.”
“It’s a good wage, to an Afghan, but hardly worth killing for—although they do say a Nuristani will murder you for your sandals if they’re new.”
“Ask them if they know where Mohammed is.”
Jean-Pierre asked. There was some discussion. Most of the villagers were shaking their heads, but one man raised his voice above the others and pointed insistently to the north. Eventually the one-eyed man said to Jean- Pierre: “He left the village early this morning. Abdul saw him go north.”
“Did he leave before or after this body was brought here?”
“Before.”
Jean-Pierre told Anatoly, and added: “I wonder why he went away, then?”
“He’s acting like a man guilty of
“He must have left immediately after he spoke to you this morning. It’s almost as if he went because I had arrived.”
Anatoly nodded thoughtfully. “Whatever the explanation is, I think he knows something we don’t. We’d better go after him. If we lose a little time, too bad—we can afford it anyway.”
“How long ago was it that you spoke to him?”
Anatoly looked at his watch. “A little over an hour.”
“Then he can’t have got far.”
“Right.” Anatoly turned away and gave a rapid series of orders. The soldiers were suddenly galvanized. Two of them got hold of the one-eyed man and marched him down toward the field. Another ran to the helicopters. Anatoly took Jean-Pierre’s arm and they walked briskly after the soldiers. “We will take the one-eyed man, in case we need an interpreter,” Anatoly said.
By the time they reached the field the two helicopters were cranking. Anatoly and Jean-Pierre boarded one of them. The one-eyed man was already inside, looking at once thrilled and terrified. He’ll be telling the story of this day for the rest of his life, thought Jean-Pierre.
A few minutes later they were in the air. Both Anatoly and Jean-Pierre stood near the open door and looked down. A well-beaten path, clearly visible, led from the village to the top of the hill, then disappeared into the trees. Anatoly spoke into the pilot’s radio, then explained to Jean-Pierre: “I have sent some troopers to beat those woods, just in case he decided to hide.”
The runaway had almost certainly gone farther than this, Jean-Pierre thought, but Anatoly was being cautious—as usual.
They flew parallel with the river for a mile or so, then reached the mouth of the Linar. Had Mohammed continued up the valley, into the cold heart of Nuristan, or had he turned east, into the Linar Valley, heading for Five Lions?
Jean-Pierre said to the one-eyed man: “Where did Mohammed come from?”
“I don’t know,” said the man. “But he was a Tajik.”
That meant he was more likely to be from the Linar Valley than the Nuristan. Jean-Pierre explained this to Anatoly, and Anatoly directed the pilot to turn left and follow the Linar.
This was a telling illustration, Jean-Pierre thought, of why the search for Ellis and Jane could not be conducted by helicopter. Mohammed had only an hour’s start, and already they might have lost track of him. When the fugitives were a whole day ahead, as Ellis and Jane were, there were very many more alternative routes and places to hide.
If there was a track along the Linar Valley, it was not visible from the air. The helicopter pilot simply followed the river. The hillsides were bare of vegetation, but not yet snow-covered, so that if the fugitive were here, he would have nowhere to hide.
They spotted him a few minutes later.
His white robes and turban stood out clearly against the gray-brown ground. He was striding out along the clifftop with the steady, tireless pace of Afghan travelers, his possessions in a bag slung over his shoulder. When he heard the noise of the helicopters he stopped and looked back at them, then continued walking.
“Is that him?” said Jean-Pierre.
“I think so,” said Anatoly. “We’ll soon find out.” He took the pilot’s headset and spoke to the other helicopter. It went on ahead, passing over the figure on the ground, and landed a hundred meters or so in front of him. He walked toward it unconcernedly.
