Praise for Lie Down with Lions
“An exciting and complex tale.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“MASTERFUL . . . plot and counterplot, treachery, cunning and killing . . . keep you on edge every moment.”
—The Associated Press
“Combines modern warfare, international espionage, and a love story while also, in typical Follett fashion, playing out the fate of his characters amid thrilling escapes and shattering revelations.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“There is an incredible sex scene and desperate trek across ice-covered mountains . . . an exotic setting, a strong, courageous heroine, a strong, courageous hero, good guys, bad guys, and a supporting cast of thousands . . . A ROARING GOOD READ.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“SOLID SUSPENSE FICTION . . . romance, adventure, exotic settings with a healthy dash of intrigue. . . . When it comes to reliable entertainment, few authors deliver as consistently as Follett.”
—Pittsburgh Press
“Follett’s great strength is his female characters—they are smart, strong, independent, and when they love a man, by golly, he knows the game is up.”
—People
“Harrowing escapes . . . larger-than-life characters performing larger-than-life deeds. . . . It shouldn’t work but it does.”
—Booklist
“BEAUTIFUL IN CONCEPTION AND EXECUTION . . . full of adventure and love blended as only a master such as Follett can do . . . a most provocative tale.”
—Ocala Star-Banner (FL)
“KEN FOLLETT SCORES AGAIN . . . an enthralling web of suspense . . . a well-crafted love story . . . unrelieved page-to-page tension . . . a wonderfully clean and simple writing style . . . holds constant interest.”
—The Anniston Star
“EXCITING . . . ROMANCE, ADVENTURE, INTRIGUE. . . . Ken Follett can hold his own with the best.”
—The Indianapolis Star
“LIONS ROARS . . . highly entertaining, quickly paced . . . skillfully crafted . . . and a nicely detailed quartet of characters that makes the novel click.”
—Los Angeles Herald Examiner
“Deftly built tension . . . the thrills of a chase . . . well-developed characters and atmosphere . . . keep the action going and have the credibility of a true tale.”
—The Orlando Sentinel
To Barbara
There are several real organizations that send volunteer doctors to Afghanistan but Médecins pour la Liberté is fictional. All the locations described in this book are real except for the villages of Banda and Darg, which are fictional. All the characters are fictional except Masud.
Although I have tried to make the background authentic, this is a work of the imagination, and should not be treated as a source of infallible information about Afghanistan or anything else. Readers who would like to know more will find a reading list at the end of this book.
PART I
1981
CHAPTER ONE
The men who wanted to kill Ahmet Yilmaz were serious people. They were exiled Turkish students living in Paris, and they had already murdered an attaché at the Turkish Embassy and fire-bombed the home of a senior executive of Turkish Airlines. They chose Yilmaz as their next target because he was a wealthy supporter of the military dictatorship and because he lived, conveniently, in Paris.
His home and office were well guarded and his Mercedes limousine was armored, but every man has a weakness, the students believed, and that weakness is usually sex. In the case of Yilmaz they were right. A couple of weeks of casual surveillance revealed that Yilmaz would leave his house, on two or three evenings each week, driving the Renault station wagon his servants used for shopping, and go to a side street in the Fifteenth District to visit a beautiful young Turkish woman who was in love with him.
The students decided to put a bomb in the Renault while Yilmaz was getting laid.
They knew where to get the explosives: from Pepe Gozzi, one of the many sons of the Corsican godfather Mémé Gozzi. Pepe was a weapons dealer. He would sell to anyone, but he preferred political customers, for—as he cheerfully admitted—“Idealists pay higher prices.” He had helped the Turkish students with both their previous outrages.
There was a snag in the car-bomb plan. Usually Yilmaz would leave the girl’s place alone in the Renault—but not always. Sometimes he took her out to dinner. Often she went off in the car and returned half an hour later laden with bread, fruit, cheese and wine, evidently for a cozy feast. Occasionally Yilmaz would go home in a taxi, and the girl would borrow the car for a day or two. The students were romantic, like all terrorists, and they were reluctant to risk killing a beautiful woman whose only crime was the readily pardonable one of loving a man unworthy of her.
They discussed this problem in a democratic fashion. They made all decisions by vote and acknowledged no leaders; but all the same there was one among them whose strength of personality made him dominant. His name was Rahmi Coskun, and he was a handsome, passionate young man with a bushy mustache and a certain bound-for-glory light in his eyes. It was his energy and determination which had pushed through the previous two projects despite the problems and the risks. Rahmi proposed consulting a bomb expert.
At first the others did not like this idea. Whom could they trust? they asked. Rahmi suggested Ellis Thaler. An American who called himself a poet but in fact made a living giving English lessons, he had learned about explosives as a conscript in Vietnam. Rahmi had known him for a year or so: they had both worked on a short-lived revolutionary newspaper called Chaos, and together they had organized a poetry reading to raise funds for the Palestine Liberation Organization. He seemed to understand Rahmi’s rage at what was being done to Turkey and his hatred of the barbarians who were doing it. Some of the other students also knew Ellis slightly: he had been seen at several demonstrations, and they had assumed he was a graduate student or a young professor. Still, they were reluctant to bring in a non-Turk; but Rahmi was insistent and in the end they consented.
Ellis came up with the solution to their problem immediately. The bomb should have a radio-controlled arming device, he said. Rahmi would sit at a window opposite the girl’s apartment, or in a parked car along the street, watching the Renault. In his hand he would have a small radio transmitter the size of a pack of cigarettes—the kind of thing one used to open automatic garage doors. If Yilmaz got into the car alone, as he most often did, then Rahmi would press the button on the transmitter, and a radio signal would activate a switch in the bomb, which would then be armed and would explode as soon as Yilmaz started the engine. But if it should be the girl who got into the car, Rahmi would not press the button, and she could drive away in blissful ignorance. The bomb would be quite safe until it was armed. No button, no bang, said Ellis.