“Yes,” she said. Irresistibly her face crumpled, tears rushed to her eyes and she began to sob. She felt weak and foolish and ashamed of herself for crying, but she also felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from her.
Ellis put his arms around her and Chantal. “You poor thing,” he said.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “It was awful.”
“How long have you known?”
“A few weeks.”
“You didn’t know when you married him.”
“No.”
“Both of us,” he said. “We both did it to you.”
“Yes.”
“You mixed with the wrong crowd.”
“Yes.”
She buried her face in his shirt and cried without restraint, for all the lies and betrayals and spent time and wasted love. Chantal cried, too. Ellis held Jane close and stroked her hair until eventually she stopped shaking, began to calm down and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I broke his radio, you see,” she said, “and then I thought he had no way of getting in touch with them; but today he was called to Skabun to see to the bomb-wounded, but there was no bombing at Skabun today. . . .”
Mohammed came out of the mosque. Ellis let go of Jane and looked embarrassed. “What’s happening?” he said to Mohammed in French.
“They’re arguing,” he said. “Some say this is a good plan and it will help us defeat the Russians. Others ask why Masud is considered the only good commander, and who is Ellis Thaler that he should judge Afghan leaders? You must come back and talk to them some more.”
“Wait,” Ellis said. “There’s been a new development.”
Jane thought: Oh, God, Mohammed will kill somebody when he hears this—
“There has been a leak.”
“What do you mean?” Mohammed said dangerously.
Ellis hesitated, as if reluctant to spill the beans; and then he seemed to decide that he had no alternative. “The Russians may know about the conference—”
“Who?” Mohammed demanded. “Who is the traitor?”
“Possibly the doctor, but—”
Mohammed rounded on Jane. “How long have you known this?”
“You’ll speak to me politely or not at all,” she snapped back.
“Hold it,” said Ellis.
Jane was not going to let Mohammed get away with his accusatory tone of voice. “I warned you, didn’t I?” she said. “I told you to change the route of the convoy. I saved your damn life, so don’t point your finger at me.”
Mohammed’s anger evaporated, and he looked a little sheepish.
Ellis said: “So that’s why the route was changed.” He looked at Jane with something like admiration.
Mohammed said: “Where is he now?”
“We’re not sure,” Ellis replied.
“When he comes back he must be killed.”
“No!” said Jane.
Ellis put a restraining hand on her shoulder and said to Mohammed: “Would you kill a man who has saved the lives of so many of your comrades?”
“He must face justice,” Mohammed insisted.
Mohammed had talked about if he comes back, and Jane realized she had been assuming that he would return. Surely he would not abandon her and their baby?
Ellis was saying: “If he is a traitor, and if he has succeeded in contacting the Russians, then he has told them about tomorrow’s meeting. They will surely attack and try to take Masud.”
“This is very bad,” said Mohammed. “Masud must leave immediately. The conference will have to be called off—”
“Not necessarily,” Ellis said. “Think. We could turn this to advantage.”
“How?”
Ellis said: “In fact the more I think about it, the more I like it. This may turn out to have been the best thing that could possibly happen. . . .”
CHAPTER TWELVE
They evacuated the village of Darg at dawn. Masud’s men went from house to house, gently waking the occupants and telling them that their village was to be attacked by the Russians today and they must go up the Valley to Banda, taking with them their more precious possessions. By sunrise a ragged line of women, children, old people and livestock was wending its way out of the village along the dirt road that ran beside the river.
Darg was different in shape from Banda. At Banda the houses were clustered at the eastern end of the plain, where the Valley narrowed and the ground was rocky. In Darg all the houses were crammed together on a thin shelf between the foot of the cliff and the bank of the river. There was a bridge just in front of the mosque, and the fields were on the other side of the river.
It was a good place for an ambush.
Masud had devised his plan during the night, and now Mohammed and Alishan made the dispositions. They moved around with quiet efficiency, Mohammed tall and handsome and gracious, Alishan short and mean-looking, both of them giving instructions in soft voices, imitating their leader’s low-key style.
Ellis wondered, as he laid his charges, whether the Russians would come. Jean-Pierre had not reappeared, so it seemed certain that he had succeeded in contacting his masters; and it was almost inconceivable that they should resist the temptation to capture or kill Masud. But that was all circumstantial. And if they did not come, Ellis would look foolish, having caused Masud to set an elaborate trap for a no-show victim. The guerrillas would not make a pact with a fool. But if the Russians do come, Ellis thought, and if the ambush works, the boost to my prestige and Masud’s might be enough to clinch the whole deal.
He was trying not to think about Jane. When he had put his arms around her and her baby, and she had wet his shirt with her tears, his passion for her had flared up anew. It was like throwing gasoline on a bonfire. He had wanted to stand there forever, with her narrow shoulders shaking under his arm and her head against his chest. Poor Jane. She was so honest, and her men were so treacherous.
He trailed his detonating cord in the river and brought its end out at his position, which was in a tiny one-room house on the riverbank a couple of hundred yards upstream of the mosque. He used his crimper to attach a blasting cap to the cord, then finished the assembly with a simple army-issue pull-ring firing device.
He approved of Masud’s plan. Ellis had taught ambush and counterambush at Fort Bragg for a year between his two tours in Asia, and he would have given Masud’s setup nine out of ten. The lost point was due to Masud’s failure to provide an exit route for his troops in case the fight should go against them. Of course Masud might not consider that a mistake.
By nine o’clock everything was ready, and the guerrillas made breakfast. Even that was part of the ambush: they could all get into position in minutes, if not seconds, and then the village seen from the air would look more natural, as if the villagers had all rushed to hide from the helicopters, leaving behind their bowls and rugs and cooking fires; so that the commander of the Russian force would have no reason to suspect a trap.
Ellis ate some bread and drank several cups of green tea, then settled down to wait as the sun rose high over the Valley. There was always a lot of waiting. He remembered it in Asia. In those days he had often been high, on marijuana or speed or cocaine, and then the waiting hardly seemed to matter because he enjoyed it. It was funny, he thought, how he had lost interest in drugs after the war.
Ellis expected the attack either this afternoon or at dawn tomorrow. If he were the Russian commander he would reason that the rebel leaders had assembled yesterday and would leave tomorrow, and he would want to attack late enough to catch any latecomers, but not so late that some of them might have left already.