Masud came up to him, smiling broadly. "That was well done, the bridge," he said in his heavily accented French. "Magnificent!"
"Thanks," said Ellis. "But I didn't come here to blow up bridges." He felt weak and a little dizzy, but now was the time to state his business. "I came to make a deal."
Masud looked at him curiously. "Where are you from?"
"Washington. The White House. I represent the President of the United States."
Masud nodded, unsurprised. "Good. I'm glad."
It was at that moment that Ellis fainted.
He made his pitch to Masud that night.
The guerrillas rigged up a stretcher and carried him up the Valley to Astana, where they stopped at dusk. Masud had already sent a runner on to Banda to fetch Jean-Pierre, who would arrive sometime tomorrow to take the bullet out of Ellis's backside. Meanwhile they all settled down in the courtyard of a farmhouse. Ellis's pain had dulled, but the journey had made him weaker. The guerrillas had put primitive dressings on his wounds.
An hour or so after arrival he was given hot, sweet green tea, which revived him somewhat, and a little later they all had mulberries and yogurt for supper. It was usually like mat with the guerrillas, Ellis had observed while traveling with the convoy from Pakistan to the Valley: an hour or two after they arrived somewhere, food would appear. Ellis did not know whether they bought it, commandeered it, or received it as a gift, but he guessed that it was given to them free, sometimes willingly and sometimes reluctantly.
When they had eaten, Masud sat near Ellis, and in the next few minutes most of the other guerrillas casually moved off, leaving Masud and two of his lieutenants alone with Ellis. Ellis knew he had to talk to Masud now, for there might not be another chance for a week. Yet he felt too feeble and exhausted for this subtle and difficult task.
Masud said: "Many years ago, a foreign country asked the King of Afghanistan for five hundred warriors to help
in a war. The Afghan king sent five men from our Valley, with a message saying that it is better to have five lions than five hundred foxes. This is how our Valley came to be called the Valley of the Five Lions." He smiled. "You were a lion today."
Ellis said. "I heard a legend saying there used to be five great warriors, known as the Five Lions, each of whom guarded one of the five ways into the Valley. And I heard that this is why they call you the Sixth Lion."
"Enough of legends," Masud said with a smile. "What do you have to tell me?"
Ellis had rehearsed this conversation, and in his script it did not begin so abruptly. Clearly, Oriental indirection was not Masud's style. Ellis said: "I have first to ask you for your assessment of the war.''
Masud nodded, thought for a few seconds and said: ''The Russians have twelve thousand troops in the town of Rokha, the gateway to the Valley. Their dispositions are as always: first minefields, then Afghan troops, then Russian troops to stop the Afghans running away. They are expecting another twelve hundred men as reinforcements. They plan to launch a major offensive up the Valley within two weeks. Their aim is to destroy our forces."
Ellis wondered how Masud got such precise intelligence, but he was not so tactless as to ask. Instead he said: "And will the offensive succeed?"
"No," said Masud with quiet confidence. "When they attack, we melt into the hills, so there is no one here for them to fight. When they stop, we harass them from the high ground and cut their lines of communication. Gradually we wear them down. They find themselves spending vast resources to hold territory which gives them no military advantage. Finally they retreat. It is always so."
It was a textbook account of guerrilla war, Ellis reflected. There was no question that Masud could teach the other tribal leaders a lot. "How long do you think the Russians can go on making such futile attacks?"
Masud shrugged. "It is in God's hands."
"Will you ever be able to drive them out of your country?"
"The Vietnamese drove the Americans out," Masud said with a smile.
"I know—I was there," said Ellis. "Do you know how they did it?"
"One important factor, in my opinion, is that the Vietnamese were receiving from the Russians supplies of the most modern weapons, especially portable surface-to-air missiles. This is the only way guerrilla forces can fight back against aircraft and helicopters."
"I agree," said Ellis. "More important, the United States government agrees. We would like to help you get hold of better weapons. But we would need to see you make real progress against your enemy with those weapons. The American people like to see what they're getting for their money. How soon do you think the Afghan resistance will be able to launch unified, countrywide assaults on the Russians, the way the Vietnamese did toward the end of the war?"
Masud shook his head dubiously. "The unification of the Resistance is at a very early stage."
"What are the main obstacles?" Ellis held his breath, praying that Masud would give the expected answer.
"Mistrust between different fighting groups is the main obstacle."
Ellis breathed a clandestine sigh of relief.
Masud went on: "We are different tribes, different nations, and we have different commanders. Other guerrilla groups ambush my convoys and steal my supplies."
"Mistrust," Ellis repeated. "What else?"
"Communications. We need a regular network of messengers. Eventually we must have radio contact, but that is far in the future."
"Mistrust, and inadequate communications." This was what Ellis had hoped to hear. "Let's talk about something else." He felt terribly tired: he had lost quite a lot of blood. He fought off a powerful desire to close his eyes. "You here in the Valley have developed the art of guer-
rilla warfare more successfully than they have anywhere else in Afghanistan. Other leaders still waste their resources defending lowland territory and attacking strong positions. We would like you to train men from other parts of the country in modern guerrilla tactics. Would you consider that?"
"Yes—and I think I see where you're heading," said Masud. "After a year or so there would be in each zone of the Resistance a small cadre of men who had been trained in the Five Lions Valley. They could form a communications net. They would understand one another, they would trust me. ..." His voice tailed off, but Ellis could see from his face that he was still unwinding the implications in his head.
"All right," said Ellis. He had run out of energy, but he was almost done. "Here's the deal. If you can get the agreement of other commanders and set up that training program, the U.S. will supply you with RPG-7 rocket launchers, ground-to-air missiles and radio equipment. But there are two other commanders in particular who must be part of the agreement. They are Jahan Kamil, in the Pich Valley, and Amal Azizi, the commander of Faizabad."
Masud grinned ruefully. "You picked the toughest."
"I know," said Ellis. "Can you do it?"
"Let me think about it," said Masud.
"All right." Exhausted, Ellis lay back on the cold ground and shut his eyes. A moment later he was asleep.
CHAPTER 10
JEAN-PIERRE walked aimlessly through the moonlit fields in the depths of a black depression. A week ago he had been fulfilled and happy, master of the situation, doing useful work while he waited for his big chance. Now it was all over, and he felt worthless, a failure, a might-have-been.
There was no way out. He ran over the possibilities again and again, but he always ended up with the same conclusion: he had to leave Afghanistan.
His usefulness as a spy was over. He had no means of contacting Anatoly; and, even if Jane had not smashed the radio, he was unable to leave the village to meet Anatoly, for Jane would immediately know what he was doing and would tell Ellis. He might have been able to silence Jane somehow (Don't think about it, don't even think about it) but if anything happened to her Ellis would want to know why. It all came down to Ellis. I'd like to kill Ellis, he thought, if I had the nerve. But how? I have no gun. What would I do, cut his throat with a scalpel? He's much stronger than I am—I could never overcome him.