blow. At last there was a longer pause, and Jean-Pierre began to babble, not knowing whether they could understand him or not: "Oh, please, don't hit me, please, don't hit me again, sir, I'll do anything, what is it you want, please don't hit me no don't hit me—"
"Enough!" said a voice in French.
Jean-Pierre opened his eyes and tried to peer through the blood streaming down his face at this savior who had said Enough. It was Anatoly.
The two soldiers slowly let Jean-Pierre sink to the ground. His body felt as if it was on fire. Every move was agony.
Every bone felt broken, his balls felt crushed, his face seemed to have swollen enormously. He opened his mouth, and blood came out. He swallowed, and spoke through smashed lips. "Why . . . why have they done this?"
"You know why," said Anatoly.
Jean-Pierre shook his head from side to side slowly and tried to keep from descending into utter madness. "I risked my life for you ... I gave everything . . . why?"
"You set a trap," Anatoly said. "Eighty-one men died today because of you."
The raid must have gone wrong, Jean-Pierre realized, and somehow he was being blamed. "No," he said, "not I—"
"You expected to be miles away when the trap was sprung," Anatoly went on. "But I surprised you by making you get into the helicopter and come with me. So you are here to take your punishment—which will be painful and very, very prolonged." He turned away.
"No," said Jean-Pierre. "Wait!"
Anatoly turned back.
Jean-Pierre fought to think despite the pain. "I came here ... I risked my life ... I gave you information on the convoys . . . you attacked the convoys ... did far more damage than the loss of eighty men ... not logical, it's not logical." He gathered his strength for one coherent sentence. "If I had known of a trap I could have warned you yesterday and begged for mercy."
"Then how did they know we would attack the village?" Anatoly demanded.
"They must have guessed. ..."
"How?"
Jean-Pierre racked his confused brains. "Was Skabun bombed?"
"I think not."
That was it, Jean-Pierre realized; someone had found out mat there had been no bombing at Skabun, "You should have bombed it," he said.
Anatoly looked thoughtful. "Somebody there is very good at making connections."
It was Jane, thought Jean-Pierre, and for a second he hated her.
Anatoty said: "Has Ellis Thaler got any distinguishing marks?"
Jean-Pierre wanted to pass out, but he was afraid they would hit him again. "Yes," he said miserably. "A big scar on his back shaped like a cross."
"Then it is him," said Anatoly in a near-whisper.
"Who?"
"John Michael Raleigh, age thirty-four, born in New Jersey, eldest son of a builder. He was a dropout from the University of California at Berkeley and a captain in the U.S. Marines. He has been a CIA agent since 1972. Marital status: divorced once, one child, whereabouts of the family a closely guarded secret." He waved his hand as if to brush such details aside. "There's no doubt it was he who outguessed me at Darg today. He's brilliant and very dangerous. If I could have my pick of all the agents of the Western imperialist nations to catch I would choose him. In the last ten years he has done us irreparable damage on at least three occasions. Last year in Paris he destroyed a network that had taken seven or eight years of patient work to develop, The year before that he found an agent we had planted in the Secret Service in nineteen sixty-five—a man who could have assassinated a president one day. And now—now we have him here."
Jean-Pierre, kneeling on the floor and hugging his battered body, let his head fall forward and closed his eyes in despair. All along he had been far out of his depth, blithely pitting himself against the grand masters of this merciless game, a naked child in a den of lions.
He had had such high hopes. Working alone, he was to have dealt the Afghan Resistance a blow from which it would never recover. He would have changed the course of history in this area of the globe. And he would have taken his revenge on the smug rulers of the West; he would have deceived and dismayed the establishment that had betrayed and killed his father. But instead of that triumph, he had been defeated. It had all been snatched from him at the last moment—by Ellis.
He heard Anatoly's voice like a background murmur. "We can be sure he achieved what he wanted with the rebels. We don't know the details, but the outline is enough: a unity pact among the bandit leaders in exchange for American arms. That kind of thing could keep the rebellion going for years. We've got to stop it before it gets started."
Jean-Pierre opened his eyes and looked up. "How?"
"We have to catch this man before he can return to the United States. That way nobody will know that he agreed the treaty, the rebels will never get their arms, and the whole thing will fizzle out.''
Jean-Pierre listened, fascinated despite the pain. Could it be that there was still a chance of wreaking his revenge?
"Catching him would almost make up for losing Masud," Anatoly went on, and Jean-Pierre's heart leaped with new hope. "Not only would we have neutralized the single most dangerous agent the imperialists have. Think of it: a real live CIA man caught here in Afghanistan. . . . For three years the American propaganda machine has been saying that the Afghan bandits are freedom fighters waging a heroic David-and-Goliath struggle against the might of the Soviet Union. Now we have proof of what we have been saying all along—that Masud and the others are mere lackeys of American imperialism. We can put Ellis on trial. ..."
"But the Western newspapers will deny everything," said Jean-Pierre. "The capitalist press—"
"Who cares about the West? It is the nonaligned countries, the Third World waverers, and the Muslim nations in particular whom we want to impress."
It was possible, Jean-Pierre realized, to turn this into a triumph; and it would still be a triumph for him personally, because it was he who had alerted the Russians to the presence of a CIA agent in the Five Lions Valley.
"Now," said Anatoly, "where is Ellis tonight?"
"He moves around with Masud," said Jean-Pierre. Catching Ellis was easier said than done: it had taken Jean-Pierre a whole year to pin down Masud.
"I don't see why he should continue to be with Masud," said Anatoly. "Did he have a base?"
"Yes—he lived with a family in Banda, theoretically. But he was rarely there."
"Nevertheless, that is obviously the place to begin."
Yes, of course, thought Jean-Pierre. If Ellis is not at Banda, somebody there may know where he has gone. . . . Somebody like Jane. If Anatoly went to Banda looking for Ellis, he might at the same time find Jane. Jean-Pierre's pain seemed to ease as he realized that he might get his revenge on the establishment, capture Ellis, who had stolen his triumph, and get Jane and Chantal back. "Will I go with you to Banda?" he asked.
Anatoly considered. "I think so. You know the village and the people—it may be useful to have you on hand."
Jean-Pierre struggled to his feet, gritting his teeth against the agony in his groin. "When do we go?"
"Now," said Anatoly.
CHAPTER 14
ELLIS WAS HURRYING to catch a train, and he was panicking even though he knew he was dreaming. First he could not park his car—he was driving Gill's Honda—then he could not find the ticket window. Having decided to
