This was a telling illustration, Jean-Pierre thought, of why the search for Ellis and Jane could not be conducted by helicopter. Mohammed had only an hour’s start, and already they might have lost track of him. When the fugitives were a whole day ahead, as Ellis and Jane were, there were very many more alternative routes and places to hide.
If there was a track along the Linar Valley, it was not visible from the air. The helicopter pilot simply followed the river. The hillsides were bare of vegetation, but not yet snow-covered, so that if the fugitive were here, he would have nowhere to hide.
They spotted him a few minutes later.
His white robes and turban stood out clearly against the gray-brown ground. He was striding out along the clifftop with the steady, tireless pace of Afghan travelers, his possessions in a bag slung over his shoulder. When he heard the noise of the helicopters he stopped and looked back at them, then continued walking.
“Is that him?” said Jean-Pierre.
“I think so,” said Anatoly. “We’ll soon find out.” He took the pilot’s headset and spoke to the other helicopter. It went on ahead, passing over the figure on the ground, and landed a hundred meters or so in front of him. He walked toward it unconcernedly.
“Why don’t we land, too?” Jean-Pierre asked Anatoly.
“Just a precaution.”
The side door of the other helicopter opened and six troopers got out. The man in white walked toward them, unslinging his bag. It was a long bag, like a military kit bag, and the sight of it rang a bell in Jean-Pierre’s memory; but before he could figure out what it reminded him of, Mohammed hefted the bag and pointed it at the troopers, and Jean-Pierre realized what he was about to do and opened his mouth to shout a useless warning.
It was like trying to shout in a dream, or run under water: events moved slowly, but he moved even slower. Before words could come he saw the snout of a machine gun emerge from the bag.
The sound of shooting was drowned by the noise of the helicopters, which gave the weird impression that it all took place in dead silence. One of the Russian troops clutched his belly and fell forward; another threw up his arms and fell back; and the face of a third exploded in blood and flesh. The other three got their weapons raised. One died before he could pull the trigger, but the other two unleashed a storm of bullets, and even as Anatoly was yelling, “Niet! Niet! Niet! Niet!” into the radio, the body of Mohammed was lifted off the ground and thrown backward to land in a bloody heap on the cold ground.
Anatoly was still shouting furiously into the radio. The helicopter went down fast. Jean-Pierre found himself trembling with excitement. The sight of battle had given him a high like cocaine, making him feel as if he wanted to laugh, or fuck, or run, or dance. The thought flashed across his mind: I used to want to heal people.
The helicopter touched down. Anatoly pulled off the headset, saying disgustedly: “Now we’ll never know why that guide got his throat cut.” He jumped out, and Jean-Pierre followed him.
They walked over to the dead Afghan. The front of his body was a mass of torn flesh, and most of his face had gone, but Anatoly said: “It’s that guide, I’m sure. The build is right, the coloring is right, and I recognize the bag.” He bent down and carefully picked up the machine gun. “But why is he carrying a machine gun?”
A piece of paper had fallen out of the bag and fluttered to the ground. Jean-Pierre picked it up and looked at it. It was a Polaroid photograph of Mousa. “Oh, my God,” he said. “I think I understand this.”
“What is it?” said Anatoly. “What do you understand?”
“The dead man is from the Five Lions Valley,” Jean-Pierre said. “He is one of Masud’s top lieutenants. This is a photograph of his son, Mousa. The photograph was taken by Jane. I also recognize the bag in which he concealed his gun: it used to belong to Ellis.”
“So what?” said Anatoly impatiently. “What do you conclude from that?”
Jean-Pierre’s brain was in overdrive, working things out faster than he could explain them. “Mohammed killed your guide in order to take his place,” he began. “You had no way of knowing he was not what he claimed to be. The Nuristanis knew that he was not one of them, of course, but that didn’t matter, because (a) they didn’t know he was pretending to be a local and (b) even if they had they couldn’t have told you because he was also your interpreter. In fact there was only one person who could possibly find him out. . . .”
“You,” said Anatoly. “Because you knew him.”
“He was aware of that danger and he was on the lookout for me. That’s why this morning he asked you who it was that arrived after dark yesterday. You told him my name. He left immediately.” Jean-Pierre frowned: something was not quite right. “But why did he stay out in the open? He could have concealed himself in the woods, or hidden in a cave: it would have taken us much longer to find him. It’s as if he didn’t expect to be pursued.”
“Why should he?” said Anatoly. “When the first guide disappeared, we didn’t send a search party after him—we just got another guide and carried on: no investigation, no pursuit. What was different this time—what went wrong for Mohammed—was that the local people found the body and accused us of murder. That made us suspicious of Mohammed. Even so, we considered forgetting about him and just pressing on. He was unlucky.”
“He didn’t know what a cautious man he was dealing with,” said Jean-Pierre. “Next question: What was his motive in all this? Why did he go to so much trouble to substitute himself for the original guide?”
“Presumably to mislead us. Presumably, everything he told us was a lie. He did not see Ellis and Jane yesterday afternoon at the mouth of the Linar Valley. They did not turn south into the Nuristan. The villagers of Mundol did not confirm that two foreigners with a baby passed through yesterday heading south—Mohammed never even asked them the question. He knew where the fugitives were—”
“And he led us in the opposite direction, of course!” Jean-Pierre felt elated again. “The old guide disappeared just after the search party left the village of Linar, didn’t he?”
“Yes. So we can assume that reports up to that point are true—therefore Ellis and Jane did pass through that village. Afterward, Mohammed took over and led us south—”
“Because Ellis and Jane went north!” said Jean-Pierre triumphantly.
Anatoly nodded grimly. “Mohammed gained them a day, at most,” he said thoughtfully. “For that he gave his life. Was it worth it?”
Jean-Pierre looked again at the Polaroid photograph of Mousa. The cold wind made it flutter in his hand. “You know,” he said, “I think Mohammed would answer: Yes, it was worth it.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They left Gadwal in the deep darkness before dawn, hoping to steal a march on the Russians by setting out so early. Ellis knew how difficult it was for even the most capable officer to get a squad of soldiers moving before dawn: the cook had to make breakfast, the quartermaster had to strike camp, the radio operator had to check in with headquarters, and the men had to eat; and all those things took time. The one advantage Ellis had over the Russian commander was that he had no more to do than load the mare while Jane fed Chantal, then shake Halam awake.
Ahead of them was a long, slow climb up the Nuristan Valley for eight or nine miles and then up a side valley. The first part, in the Nuristan, should not be too difficult, Ellis thought, even in the dark, for there was a road of sorts. If only Jane could keep going, they should be able to get into the side valley during the afternoon and travel a few miles up it by nightfall. Once they were out of the Nuristan Valley it would be much more difficult to trail them, for the Russians would not know which side valley they had taken.