Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [133]
Ellis and Jane were given a room in one of the village houses. There was a mattress for them and a crude wooden crib for Chantal. They joined their sleeping bags together and made love with weary tenderness. Jane enjoyed the warmth and the lying down almost as much as the sex. Afterward, Ellis fell asleep instantly. Jane lay awake for a few minutes. Her muscles seemed to hurt more now that she was relaxing. She thought about lying on a real bed in an ordinary bedroom, with streetlights shining through the curtains and car doors slamming outside, and a bathroom with a flush toilet and a hot-water tap, and a shop on the corner where you could buy cotton balls and Pampers and Johnson’s No More Tears baby shampoo. We escaped from the Russians, she thought, as she drifted off to sleep; maybe we really will make it home. Maybe we really will.
Jane woke when Ellis did, sensing his sudden tension. He lay rigid beside her for a moment, not breathing, listening to the sound of two dogs barking. Then he slipped out of bed fast.
The room was pitch-dark. She heard a match scrape; then a candle flickered in the corner. She looked at Chantal: the baby was sleeping peacefully. “What is it?” she said to Ellis.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. He pulled on his jeans, stepped into his boots, and put on his coat; then he went out.
Jane threw on some clothes and followed him. In the next room, moonlight coming through the open door revealed four children in a row in a bed, all staring wide-eyed over the edge of their shared blanket. Their parents were asleep in another room. Ellis was in the doorway, looking out.
Jane stood beside him. Up on the hill she could see, by the moonlight, a lone figure, running toward them.
“The dogs heard him,” Ellis whispered.
“But who is he?” said Jane.
Suddenly there was another figure beside them. Jane gave a start, then recognized Mohammed. The blade of a knife glinted in his hand.
The figure came closer. His gait seemed familiar to Jane. Suddenly Mohammed gave a grunt and lowered the knife. “Ali Ghanim,” he said.
Jane now recognized the distinctive stride of Ali, who ran that way because his back was slightly twisted. “But why?” she whispered.
Mohammed stepped forward and waved. Ali saw him, waved back and ran to the hut where the three of them stood. He and Mohammed embraced.
Jane waited impatiently for Ali to catch his breath. At last he said: “The Russians are on your trail.”
Jane’s heart sank. She had thought they had escaped. What had gone wrong?
Ali breathed hard for a few seconds longer, then went on: “Masud has sent me to warn you. The day you left, they searched the whole Five Lions Valley for you, with hundreds of helicopters and thousands of men. Today, having failed to find you, they sent search parties to follow each valley leading to Nuristan.”
“What’s he saying?” Ellis interrupted.
Jane held up a hand to stop Ali while she translated for Ellis, who could not follow Ali’s rapid, breathless speech.
Ellis said: “How did they know we had gone to Nuristan? We might have decided to hide out anywhere in the damn country.”
Jane asked Ali. He did not know.
“Is there a search party in this valley?” Jane asked Ali.
“Yes. I overtook them just before the Aryu Pass. They may have reached the last village by nightfall.”
“Oh, no,” said Jane despairingly. She translated for Ellis. “How can they move so much faster than us?” she said. Ellis shrugged, and she answered the question herself: “Because they’re not slowed down by a woman with a baby. Oh, shit.”
Ellis said: “If they start early in the morning they’ll catch us tomorrow.”
“What can we do?”
“Leave now.”
Jane felt the weariness in her bones, and she was filled with an irrational resentment against Ellis. “Can’t we hide somewhere?” she said irritably.
“Where?” said