Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [140]
Jean-Pierre did not expect any further news in the morning, for the fugitives had a full day’s start. However, the soldiers would certainly move faster than Jane, especially as she was carrying Chantal—
Jean-Pierre felt a stab of guilt every time he thought of Chantal. His rage at what his wife was doing did not extend to his daughter, yet the baby was suffering, he felt sure: trekking all day, crossing passes above the snow line, blasted by icy winds. . . .
His mind turned, as it often did nowadays, to the question of what would happen if Jane died and Chantal survived. He pictured Ellis captured, alone, Jane’s body found a mile or two back, dead of the cold, with the baby still miraculously alive in her arms. I would arrive back in Paris a tragic, romantic figure, thought Jean-Pierre, a widower with a baby daughter, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. . . . How they would lionize me! I’m perfectly capable of bringing up a baby. What an intense relationship we would have as she grew older. I’d have to hire a nanny, of course, but I’d make sure she did not take the place of a mother in the child’s affections. No, I would be both father and mother to her.
The more he thought about it, the more outraged he felt that Jane was risking Chantal’s life. Surely she had forfeited all her parental rights by taking her baby on such an escapade. He thought he could probably get legal custody of the child in a European court on this basis. . . .
As the afternoon wore on, Anatoly grew bored and Jean-Pierre became tense. They were both tetchy. Anatoly held long conversations in Russian with other officers who came into the windowless little room, and their interminable jabbering got on Jean-Pierre’s nerves. At first Anatoly had translated all the radio reports of the search parties, but now he would just say, “Nothing.” Jean-Pierre had been plotting the routes of the parties on a set of maps, marking their locations with red pins, but by the end of the afternoon they were following trails or dried-up riverbeds which were not on the maps, and if their radio reports gave clues to their whereabouts, Anatoly was not passing them on.
The parties made camp at nightfall without reporting any signs of the fugitives. The searchers had been instructed to question the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed. The villagers were saying they had seen no foreigners. This was not surprising, for the searchers were still on the Five Lions side of the great passes leading to Nuristan. The people they were questioning were generally loyal to Masud: to them, helping the Russians was treason. Tomorrow, when the search parties passed into Nuristan, the people would be more cooperative.
Nevertheless, Jean-Pierre felt dispirited as he and Anatoly left the office at nightfall and walked across the concrete to the canteen. They ate a vile dinner of canned sausages and reconstituted mashed potatoes; then Anatoly went off moodily to drink vodka with some brother officers, leaving Jean-Pierre in the care of a sergeant who spoke only Russian. They played chess once, but—to Jean-Pierre’s chagrin—the sergeant was far too good. Jean-Pierre retired early and lay awake on a hard army mattress, visualizing Jane and Ellis in bed together.
Next morning he was awakened by Anatoly, his Oriental face wreathed in smiles, all irritation gone, and Jean-Pierre felt like a bad child who has been forgiven, although as far as he knew he had done nothing wrong. They ate their breakfast porridge together in the canteen. Anatoly had already talked to each of the search parties, all of which had struck camp and set off again at dawn. “Today we will catch your wife, my friend,” said Anatoly cheerfully, and Jean-Pierre felt a surge of happy optimism.
As soon as they reached the office, Anatoly radioed to the searchers again.