Ken Follett - Lie down with lions

Mohammed said: "It's the will of Allah."

Jean-Pierre nodded. Mohammed took out a pack of Pakistani cigarettes and lit one. Jean-Pierre began to gather up his instruments and put them into his bag. Without looking at Mohammed he said: "What will you do now?"

"Send another convoy immediately," Mohammed said. "We must have ammunition."

Jean-Pierre was suddenly alert, despite his fatigue. "Do you want to look at the maps?"

"Yes."

Jean-Pierre closed his bag, and the two men walked away from the mosque. The stars illuminated their way through the village to the shopkeeper's house. In the living room, Fara was asleep on a rug beside Chantal's cradle.

She awoke instantly and stood up. "You can go home now," Jean-Pierre told her. She left without speaking.

Jean-Pierre put his bag down on the floor, then picked up the cradle gently and carried it into the bedroom. Chantal stayed asleep until he put the cradle down, then she began to cry. "Now what is it?" he murmured to her. He looked at his wristwatch and realized she probably wanted feeding. "Mama's coming soon," he told her. This had no effect. He lifted her out of the cradle and began to rock her. She became quiet. He carried her back into the living room.

Mohammed was standing waiting. Jean-Pierre said: "You know where they are."

Mohammed nodded and opened a painted wooden chest. He took out a thick bundle of folded maps, selected several and spread them on the floor. Jean-Pierre rocked Chantal and looked over Mohammed's shoulder. "Where was the ambush?" he asked.

Mohammed pointed to a spot near the city of Jalalabad.

The trails followed by Mohammed's convoys were not shown on these or any other maps. However, Jean-Pierre's maps showed some of the valleys, plateaus and seasonal streams where there might be trails. Sometimes Mohammed knew from memory what was there. Sometimes he had to guess, and he would discuss with Jean-Pierre the precise interpretation of contour lines or the more obscure terrain features such as moraines.

Jean-Pierre suggested: "You could swing more to the north around Jalalabad." Above the plain in which the city stood, there was a maze of valleys like a cobweb stretched between the Konar and Nuristan rivers.

Mohammed lit another cigarette—like most of the guerrillas, he was a heavy smoker—and shook his head dubiously as he exhaled. "There have been too many ambushes in that area," he said. "If they are not betraying us already they soon will. No; the next convoy will swing south of Jalalabad."

Jean-Pierre frowned. "I don't see how that's possible.

To the south, there's nothing but open country all the way from the Khyber Pass. You'd be spotted."

"We won't use the Khyber Pass," said Mohammed. He put his finger on the map, then traced the Afghanistan-Pakistan border southward. "We will cross the border at Teremengal." His finger reached the town he had named, then traced a route from there to the Five Lions Valley.

Jean-Pierre nodded, hiding his jubilation. "It makes a lot of sense. When will the new convoy leave here?"

Mohammed began to fold up the charts. "The day after tomorrow. There is no time to lose." He replaced the maps in the painted chest, then went to the door.

Jane came in just as he was leaving. He said "Goodnight" to her in an absent-minded way. Jean-Pierre was glad the handsome guerrilla no longer had the hots for Jane since her pregnancy. She was definitely oversexed, in Jean-Pierre's opinion, and quite capable of letting herself be seduced; and for her to have an affair with an Afghan would have caused endless trouble.

Jean-Pierre's medical bag was on the floor where he had left it, and Jane bent down to pick it up. His heart missed a beat. He took the bag from her quickly. She gave him a mildly surprised look. "I'll put this away," he said. "You see to Chantal. She needs feeding." He gave the baby to her.

He carried the bag and a lamp into the front room as Jane settled down to feed Chantal. Cartons of medical supplies were stacked on me dirt floor. Already-opened boxes were arranged on the shopkeeper's crude wooden shelves. Jean-Pierre put his medical bag on the blue-tiled counter and took out a black plastic object about the size and shape of a portable telephone. This he put in his pocket.

He emptied his bag, putting the instruments for sterilization to one side and stowing the unused items on the shelves.

He returned to the living room. "I'm going down to the river to bathe," he said to Jane. "I'm too dirty to go to bed."

She gave him the dreamy, contented smile she often wore when feeding the baby. "Be quick," she said.

He went out.

The village was going to sleep, at last. Lamps still burned in a few houses, and he heard from one window the sound of a woman weeping bitterly, but most places were quiet and dark. Passing the last house in the village, he heard a woman's voice raised in a high, mournful song of bereavement, and for a moment he felt the crushing weight of the deaths he had caused; then he put the thought out of his mind.

He followed a stony path between two barley fields, looking around constantly and listening carefully: the men of the village would now be at work. In one field he heard the hiss of scythes, and on a narrow terrace he saw two men weeding by lamplight. He did not speak to them.

He reached the river, crossed the ford and climbed the winding path up the opposite cliff. He knew he was quite safe, yet he felt increasingly tense as he ascended the steep path in the faint light.

After ten minutes he reached the high point he was seeking. He took the radio from his pocket and extended its telescopic antenna. It was the latest and most sophisticated small transmitter the KGB had, but even so the terrain here was so inimical to radio transmission that the Russians had built a special relay station, on a hilltop just inside the territory they controlled, to pick up his signals and pass them on.

He pressed the talk button and spoke in English and in code. "This is Simplex. Come in, please."

He waited, then called again.

After the third try he got a crackly, accented reply. "Here is Butler. Go ahead, Simplex."

"Your party was a big success."

"I repeat: The party was a big success," came the reply.

"Twenty-seven people attended and one more came later."

"I repeat: Twenty-seven attended and one came later.''

"In preparation for the next one, I need three camels." In code that meant "Meet me three days from today."

"I repeat: You need three camels.''

"I will see you at the mosque." That, too, was code: "the mosque" was a place some miles away where three valleys met.

"I repeat: At the mosque."

"Today is Sunday." That was not code: it was a precaution against the possibility that the dullard who was taking all this down might not realize it was after midnight, with the consequence that Jean-Pierre's contact would arrive a day early at the rendezvous.

"I repeat: Today is Sunday.''

"Over and out."

Jean-Pierre collapsed the antenna and returned the radio to his pocket, then he made his way down the cliff to the riverside.

He stripped off his clothes quickly. From the pocket of the shirt he took a nailbrush and a small piece of soap. Soap was a scarce commodity, but he as doctor had priority.

He stepped gingerly into the Five Lions River, knelt down, and splashed icy water all over himself. He soaped his skin and his hair, then picked up the brush and began to scrub himself: his legs, his belly, his chest, his face, his arms and his hands. He worked especially hard on his hands, soaping them again and again. Kneeling in the shallows, naked and shivering beneath the stars, he scrubbed and scrubbed as if he would never stop.

"THE CHILD has measles, gastroenteritis and ringworm," said Jean-Pierre. "It is also dirty and undernourished."