Among the crucial target areas, the article listed the Panisher Valley.
Ellis remembered Jean-Pierre talking about the Five Lions Valley. The article also mentioned Masud, the rebel leader: Ellis recalled Jean-Pierre speaking of him, too.
He looked out of the window, watching the sun set. There was no doubt, he thought with a pang of dread, that Jane was going to be in grave danger this summer.
But it was none of his business. She was married to someone else now. Anyway, there was nothing Ellis could do about it.
He looked down at his magazine, turned the page, and started reading about El Salvador. The plane roared on toward Washington. In the west the sun went down, and darkness fell.
Allen Winderman took Ellis Thaler to lunch at a seafood restaurant overlooking the Potomac River. Winderman arrived a half-hour late. He was a typical Washington operator: dark-gray suit, white shirt, striped tie; as smooth as a shark. As the White House was paying, Ellis ordered lobster and a glass of white wine. Winderman asked for Perrier and a salad. Everything about Winderman was too tight: his tie, his shoes, his schedule and his self-control.
Ellis was on his guard. He could not refuse such an invitation from a presidential aide, but he did not like discreet, unofficial lunches, and he did not like Allen Winderman.
Winderman got right down to business. "I want your advice," he began.
Ellis stopped him. "First of all, I need to know whether you told the Agency about our meeting." If the White House wanted to plan covert action without telling the CIA, Ellis would have nothing to do with it.
"Of course," Winderman said. "What do you know about Afghanistan?"
Ellis felt suddenly cold. Sooner or later, this is going to involve Jane, he thought. They know about her, of course: I made no secret of it. I told Bill in Paris I was going to ask her to marry me. I called Bill subsequently to find out whether she really did go to Afghanistan. All that went down on my file. Now this bastard knows about her, and he's going to use his knowledge. "I know a little about it," he said cautiously, and then he recalled a verse of Kipling, and recited it:
When you're wounded an' left on Afghanistan's plains,
An' the women come out to cut up your remains,
Just roll to your rifle an' blow out your brains,
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Winderman looked ill at ease for the first time. "After two years of posing as a poet you must know a lot of that stuff."
"So do the Afghans," said Ellis. "They're all poets, the way all Frenchmen are gourmets and all Welshmen are singers."
"Is that so?"
"It's because they can't read or write. Poetry is a spoken art form." Winderman was getting visibly impatient: his schedule did not allow for poetry. Ellis went on: "The Afghans are wild, ragged, fierce mountain tribesmen, hardly out of the Middle Ages. They're said to be elaborately polite, brave as lions and pitilessly cruel. Their country is harsh and arid and barren. What do you know about them?"
"There's no such thing as an Afghan," Winderman said. "There are six million Pushtuns in the south, three million Tajiks in the west, a million Uzbaks in the north, and another dozen or so nationalities with fewer than a million. Modern borders mean little to them: there are Tajiks in the Soviet Union and Pushtuns in Pakistan. Some of them are divided into tribes. They're like the Red Indians, who never thought of themselves as American, but Apache or Crow or Sioux. And they would just as soon fight one another as fight the Russians. Our problem is to get the Apache and the Sioux to unite against the palefaces."
"I see." Ellis nodded. He was wondering: When does Jane come into all this? He said: "So the main question is: Who will be the Big Chief?"
"That's easy. The most promising of the guerrilla leaders, by far, is Ahmed Shah Masud, in the Panisher Valley."
The Five Lions Valley. What are you up to, you slimy bastard? Ellis studied Winderman's smooth-shaven face. The man was imperturbable. Ellis asked: "What makes Masud so special?"
"Most of the rebel leaders are content to control their tribes, collect taxes and deny the government access to their territory. Masud does more than that. He comes out of his mountain stronghold and attacks. He's within striking distance of three strategic targets: the capital city, Kabul; the Salang tunnel, on the only highway from Kabul to the Soviet Union; and Bagram, the principal military air base. He's in a position to inflict major damage, and he does. He has studied the art of guerrilla warfare. He's read Mao. He's easily the best military brain in the country. And he has finance. Emeralds are mined in his valley and sold in Pakistan: Masud takes a ten percent tax on all sales and uses the money to fund his army. He's twenty-eight years old, and charismatic—the people worship him. Finally, he's a Tajik. The largest group is the Pushtuns, and all the others hate them, so the leader can't be a Pushtun. Tajiks are the next biggest nation. There's a chance they might unite under a Tajik."
"And we want to facilitate this?"
"That's right. The stronger the rebels are, the more damage they do to the Russians. Furthermore, a triumph for the U.S. intelligence community would be very useful this year.''
It was of no consequence to Winderman and his kind that the Afghans were fighting for their freedom against a brutal invader, Ellis thought. Morality was out of fashion in Washington: the power game was all that mattered. If Winderman had been born in Leningrad instead of Los Angeles, he would have been just as happy, just as successful and just as powerful, and he would have used just the same tactics fighting for the other side. "What do you want from me?" Ellis asked him.
"I want to pick your brains. Is there any way an undercover agent could promote an alliance between the different Afghan tribes?"
"I expect so," said Ellis. The food came, interrupting him and giving him a few moments to think. When the waiter had gone away, he said: "It should be possible, provided there is something they want from us—and I imagine that would be weapons."
"Right." Winderman started to eat, hesitantly, like a man who has an ulcer. Between small mouthfuls he said: "At the moment they buy their weapons across the border in Pakistan. All they can get there is copies of Victorian British rifles—or, if not copies, the genuine damned article, a hundred years old and still firing. They also steal Kalashnikovs from dead Russian soldiers. But they're desperate for small artillery—anti-aircraft guns and hand-launched ground-to-air missiles—so they can shoot down planes and helicopters."
"Are we willing to give them these weapons?"
"Yes. Not directly—we would want to conceal our involvement by sending them through intermediaries. But that's no problem. We could use the Saudis."
"Okay." Ellis swallowed some lobster. It was good. "Let me say what I think is the first step. In each guerrilla group you need a nucleus of men who know, understand and trust Masud. That nucleus then becomes the liaison group for communications with Masud. They build their role gradually: exchange of information first, then mutual cooperation, and finally coordinated battle plans."
"Sounds good," said Winderman. "How might that be setup?"
"I'd have Masud run a training scheme in the Five Lions Valley. Each rebel group would send a few young men to fight alongside Masud for a while and learn the methods that make him so successful. They would also learn to respect him and trust him, if he is as good a leader as you say."
Winderman nodded thoughtfully. "That's the kind of proposal that might be acceptable to tribal leaders who would reject any plan mat committed them to take orders from Masud."
"Is there one rival leader in particular whose cooperation is essential to any alliance?"