"They have left the Valley."
"But where did they go?"
"To Pakistan."
To Pakistan! What was the old fool talking about? "The routes are closed!" Jean-Pierre yelled in exasperation.
"Not the Butter Trail."
' 'Mon Dieu,'' Jean-Pierre whispered in his native tongue. "The Butter Trail." He was awestruck by their courage, and at the same time bitterly disappointed, for it would be impossible to find them now. "Did they take the baby?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll never see my daughter again."
"They will all die in Nuristan," Abdullah said with satisfaction. "A Western woman with a baby will never survive those high passes, and the American will die trying to save her. Thus God punishes those who escape man's justice."
Jean-Pierre realized he should get back to the helicopter as quickly as possible. "Go back to your house now," he told Abdullah.
"The treaty will die with them, for Ellis has the paper," Abdullah added. "This is a good thing. Although we need the American weapons, it is dangerous to make pacts with infidels."
"Go!" said Jean-Pierre. "If you don't want your family to see me, make them stay inside for a few minutes."
Abdullah looked momentarily indignant at being given orders, but he seemed to realize he was at the wrong end of the gun for protests, and he hurried away.
Jean-Pierre wondered whether they would all die in Nuristan, as Abdullah had gloatingly predicted. That was not what he wanted. It would not give him revenge or satisfaction. He wanted his daughter back. He wanted Jane alive and in his power. He wanted Ellis to suffer pain and humiliation.
He gave Abdullah time to get inside his house, then drew the hood over his face and set off disconsolately up the hill. He kept his face averted as he passed the house in case one of the children should look out.
Anatoly was waiting for him in the clearing in front of the caves. He held out his hand for the pistol and said: "Well?"
Jean-Pierre gave him back his gun. "They've escaped us," he said. "They've left the Valley."
"They can't have escaped us," said Anatoly angrily. "Where have they gone?"
"To Nuristan." Jean-Pierre pointed in the direction of the helicopters. "Shouldn't we leave?"
"We can't talk in the helicopter."
"But if the villagers come—"
"To hell with the villagers! Stop acting defeated! What are they doing in Nuristan?"
"They're heading for Pakistan by a route known as the Butter Trail."
"If we know their route we can find them."
"I don't think so. There is one route, but it has variations."
"We'll overfly them all."
"You can't follow these paths from the air. You can hardly follow them from the ground without a native guide."
"We can use maps—"
"What maps?" said Jean-Pierre. "I've seen your maps, and they're no better than my American ones, which are the best available—and they do not show these trails and passes. Don't you know there are regions of the world that have never been properly charted? You're in one of them now!"
"I know—I'm in Intelligence, remember?" Anatoly lowered his voice. "You're too easily discouraged, my friend. Think. If Ellis can find a native guide to show him the route, then I can do the same."
Was it possible? Jean-Pierre wondered. "But there is more than one way to go."
"Suppose there are ten variations. We need ten native guides to lead ten search parties."
Jean-Pierre's enthusiasm rose rapidly as he realized that he might yet get Jane and Chantal back and see Ellis captured. "It might not be that bad," he said enthusiastically. "We can simply inquire along the way. Once we are out of this godforsaken Valley, people may be less tight-lipped. The Nuristanis aren't as involved in the war as these people."
"Good," said Anatoly abruptly. "It is getting dark. We've got a lot to do tonight. We start early in the morning. Let's go!"
CHAPTER 17
JANE WOKE UP frightened. She did not know where she was or who she was with or whether the Russians had caught her. For a second she stared up at the exposed underside of a wattle roof, thinking Is this a prison? Then she sat up abruptly, her heart hammering, and saw Ellis in his sleeping bag, slumbering with his mouth open, and she remembered We're out of the Valley. We escaped. The Russians don't know where we are and they can't find us.
She lay down again and waited for her heartbeat to return to normal.
They were not following the route Ellis had originally planned. Instead of going north to Comar and then east along the Comar Valley into Nuristan, they had turned back south from Saniz and gone east along the Aryu Valley. Mohammed had suggested this because it got them out of the Five Lions Valley much more quickly, and Ellis had agreed.
They had left before dawn and walked uphill all day, Ellis and Jane taking turns to carry Chantal, Mohammed leading Maggie. At midday they had stopped in the mud-hut village of Aryu and bought bread from a suspicious old man with a snapping dog. Aryu village had been the limit of civilization: after that there had been nothing for miles but the boulder-strewn river and the great bare ivory-colored mountains on either side, until they had reached this place at the weary end of the afternoon.
Jane sat up again. Chantal lay beside her, breathing evenly and radiating heat like a hot-water bottle. Ellis was in his own sleeping bag: they could have zipped the two bags together to make one, but Jane had been afraid that Ellis might roll onto Chantal in the night, so they had slept separately and contented themselves with lying close together and reaching out to touch one another now and again. Mohammed was in the adjoining room.
Jane got up carefully, trying not to disturb Chantal. As she put on her shirt and stepped into her trousers, she felt twinges of pain in her back and her legs: she was hardened to walking, but not all day, climbing without respite, on such rough terrain.
She put on her boots without tying the laces and went outside. She blinked against the bright cold light of the mountains. She was in an upland meadow, a vast green field with a stream winding through it. To one side of the meadow the mountain rose steeply, and sheltered here at the foot of the slope was a handful of stone houses and some cattle pens. The houses were empty and the cattle had gone: this was a summer pasture, and the cowherds had left for their winter quarters. It was still summer in the Five Lions Valley, but at this altitude autumn came in September.
Jane walked over to the stream. It was sufficiently far from the stone houses for her to slip out of her clothes without fear of offending Mohammed. She ran into the stream and quickly immersed herself in the water. It was searingly cold. She got out again immediately, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. "To hell with this," she said aloud. She would stay dirty until she got back to civilization, she resolved.
She put her clothes back on—there was only one towel, and that was reserved for Chantal—and ran back to the house, picking up a few sticks on the way. She laid the sticks over the remains of last night's fire and blew on the embers until the wood caught. She held her frozen hands to the flames until they felt normal again.
She put a pan of water on the fire for washing Chantal. While she was waiting for it to warm up, the others woke, one by one: first Mohammed, who went outside to wash; then Ellis, who complained that he ached all over; and finally Chantal, who demanded to be fed and was satisfied.
Jane felt oddly euphoric. She should have been anxious, she thought, about taking her two-month-old baby into one of the world's wild places; but somehow that anxiety was swamped by her happiness. Why am I happy? she asked herself, and the answer came out of the back of her mind: because I'm with Ellis.