“Jean-Pierre didn’t come back,” Ellis said.
“No.” The sucking eased as Jane’s breast emptied. She gently pulled her nipple from Chantal’s mouth and lifted the baby to her shoulder, patting the narrow back to make her burp.
“Masud would like to borrow his maps,” Ellis said.
“Of course. You know where they are.” Chantal belched loudly. “Good girl,” Jane said. She put the baby to her left breast. Hungry again after burping, Chantal began to suck. Giving in to an impulse, Jane said: “Why don’t you see your child?”
He took the maps from the chest, closed its lid and straightened up. “I do,” he said. “But not often.”
Jane was shocked. I almost lived with him for six months, she thought, and I never really knew him. “A boy or a girl?”
“Girl.”
“She must be . . .”
“Thirteen.”
“My God.” That was practically grown-up. Jane was suddenly intensely curious. Why had she never questioned him about all this? Perhaps she had not been interested before she had a child of her own. “Where does she live?”
He hesitated.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. She could read his face. “You were about to lie to me.”
“You’re right,” he said. “But do you understand why I have to lie about it?”
She thought for a moment. “Are you afraid that your enemies will attack you through the child?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a good reason.”
“Thank you. And thanks for these.” He waved the maps at her, then went out.
Chantal had gone to sleep with Jane’s nipple in her mouth. Jane disengaged her gently and lifted her to shoulder level. She burped without waking. The child could sleep through anything.
Jane wished Jean-Pierre had come back. She was sure he could do no harm, but all the same she would have felt easier if he had been under her eye. He could not contact the Russians because she had smashed his radio. There was no other means of communication between Banda and Russian territory. Masud could send messengers by runner, of course; but Jean-Pierre had no runners, and anyway if he sent someone the whole village would know about it. The only thing he could possibly do was to walk all the way to Rokha, and he had not had time for that.
As well as being anxious, she hated to sleep alone. In Europe she had not minded, but here she was frightened of the brutal, unpredictable tribesmen who thought it as normal for a man to beat his wife as for a mother to smack her child. And Jane was no ordinary woman in their eyes: with her liberated views and her direct gaze and her says-who attitude she was a symbol of forbidden sexual delights. She had not followed the conventions of sexual behavior, and the only other women they knew like that were whores.
When Jean-Pierre was there she always reached out to touch him just before falling asleep. He always slept curled up, facing away from her, and although he moved a lot in his sleep he never reached out for her. The only other man she had shared a bed with for a long period was Ellis, and he had been just the opposite: all night long he was touching her, hugging her and kissing her, sometimes while half-awake and sometimes when fast asleep. Twice or three times he had tried to make love to her, roughly, in his sleep: she would giggle and try to accommodate him, but after a few seconds he would roll off and start snoring, and in the morning he had no recollection of what he had done. How different he was from Jean-Pierre. Ellis touched her with clumsy affection, like a child playing with a beloved pet; Jean-Pierre touched her the way a violinist might handle a Stradivarius. They had loved her differently, but they had betrayed her the same way.
Chantal gurgled. She was awake. Jane laid her in her lap, supporting her head so that they could look directly at one another, and began to talk to her, partly in nonsense syllables and partly in real words. Chantal liked this. After a while Jane ran out of small talk and began to sing. She was in the middle of “Daddy’s Gone to London in a Puffer Train” when she was interrupted by a voice from outside. “Come in,” she called. She said to Chantaclass="underline" “We have visitors all the time, don’t we? It’s like living in the National Gallery, isn’t it?” She pulled the front of her shirt together to hide her cleavage.
Mohammed walked in and said in Dari: “Where is Jean-Pierre?”
“Gone to Skabun. Anything I can do?”
“When will he be back?”
“In the morning, I expect. Do you want to tell me what the problem is, or do you plan to continue talking like a Kabul policeman?”
He grinned at her. When she spoke disrespectfully to him he found her sexy, which was not the effect she intended. He said: “Alishan has arrived with Masud. He wants more pills.”
“Ah, yes.” Alishan Karim was the brother of the mullah, and he suffered from angina. Of course, he would not give up his guerrilla activities, so Jean-Pierre gave him trinitrin to take immediately before battle or other exertion. “I’ll give you some pills,” she said. She stood up and handed Chantal to Mohammed.
Mohammed took the baby automatically and then looked embarrassed.
Jane grinned at him and went into the front room. She found the tablets on a shelf beneath the shopkeeper’s counter. She poured about a hundred into a container and returned to the living room. Chantal was staring, fascinated, at Mohammed. Jane took the baby and handed over the pills. “Tell Alishan to rest more,” she said.
Mohammed shook his head. “He’s not frightened of me,” he said. “You tell him.”
Jane laughed. Coming from an Afghan, that joke was almost feminist.
Mohammed said: “Why did Jean-Pierre go to Skabun?”
“There was a bombing there this morning.”
“No, there wasn’t.”
“Of course there wa—” Jane stopped suddenly.
Mohammed shrugged. “I was there all day with Masud. You must be mistaken.”
She tried to keep her face composed. “Yes. I must have misheard.”
“Thank you for the pills.” He went out.
Jane sat down heavily on a stool. There had been no bombing at Skabun. Jean-Pierre had gone to meet his contact. She did not see quite how he had arranged it, but she had no doubt whatsoever.
What was she to do?
If Jean-Pierre knew about the gathering tomorrow, and could tell the Russians about it, then the Russians would be able to attack—
They could wipe out the entire leadership of the Afghan Resistance in a single day.
She had to see Ellis.
She wrapped a shawl around Chantal—the air would be a little cooler now—and left the house, heading for the mosque. Ellis was in the courtyard with the rest of the men, poring over Jean-Pierre’s maps with Masud and Mohammed and the man with the eye patch. Some guerrillas were passing around a hookah; others were eating. They stared in surprise as she walked in with her baby on her hip. “Ellis,” she said. He looked up. “I need to talk to you. Would you come outside?”
He got up, and they went out through the arch and stood in front of the mosque.
“What is it?” he said.
“Does Jean-Pierre know about this gathering you have arranged, of all the Resistance leaders?”
“Yes—when Masud and I first talked about it, he was right there, taking the slug out of my ass. Why?”
Jane’s heart sank. Her last hope had been that Jean-Pierre might not know. Now she had no choice. She looked around. There was no one else within earshot, and anyway they were speaking English. “I have something to tell you,” she said, “but I want your promise that no harm will come to him.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Oh, shit,” he said fervently. “Oh fuck, oh shit. He works for them. Of course! Why didn’t I guess? In Paris he must have led those motherfuckers to my apartment! He’s been telling them about the convoys—that’s why they’ve been losing so many! The bastard—” He stopped suddenly, and spoke more gently. “It must have been terrible for you.”