“Impossible.”
“I suppose so.”
“Why don’t you just ask him?” It was not like Anatoly to be diffident, Jean-Pierre thought.
“There is no point in asking a man a question until you have established whether he has any reason to lie to you.” With that, Anatoly went out.
Jean-Pierre got up. He had slept in his shirt and underwear. He pulled on his trousers and boots, then draped the greatcoat over his shoulders and stepped outside.
He found himself on a rough wooden veranda overlooking the whole valley. Down below, the river coiled between the fields, broad and sluggish. Some way to the south it entered a long, narrow lake rimmed with mountains. The sun had not yet risen. A mist over the water obscured the far end of the lake. It was a pleasant scene. Of course, Jean-Pierre remembered, this was the most fertile and populous part of Nuristan: most of the rest was wilderness.
The Russians had dug a field latrine, Jean-Pierre noted with approval. The Afghan practice of using the streams from which they took their drinking water was the reason they all had worms. The Russians will really knock this country into shape once they get control of it, he thought.
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 previous guide, the one who disappeared.”
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. Did you kill him?”
“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 something.”
“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.