Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [143]
He restrained himself from breaking into a run. Ellis and Jane were probably in the house from which the search party was emerging, he thought, and he headed that way at a fast walk. He began to feel angry: long-suppressed rage was churning up inside him. To hell with being dignified, he thought; I’m going to tell this loathsome couple just what I think of them.
As he neared the search party, the officer at the head of the group began speaking. Ignoring him, Jean-Pierre turned to his pilot and said: “Ask him where they are.”
The pilot asked, and the officer pointed to the wooden house. Without further ado Jean-Pierre went past the soldiers to the house.
His anger was at the boiling point as he stormed into the crude building. Several more of the search party stood in a group in one corner. They looked at Jean-Pierre, then made way for him.
In the corner were two people tied to a bench.
Jean-Pierre stared at them, shocked. His mouth fell open and the blood drained from his face. There was a thin, anemic-looking boy of eighteen or nineteen with long, dirty hair and a droopy mustache; and a large-bosomed blond girl with flowers in her hair. The boy looked at Jean-Pierre with relief and said in English: “Hey, man, will you help us? We are in deep shit.”
Jean-Pierre felt as if he would explode. They were just a couple of hippies on the Katmandu trail, a species of tourist which had not quite died out despite the war. What a disappointment! Why did they have to be here just when the whole world was looking for a runaway Western couple?
Jean-Pierre certainly was not going to help a pair of drug-taking degenerates. He turned around and went out.
The pilot was just coming in. He saw the expression on Jean-Pierre’s face and said: “What’s the matter?”
“It’s the wrong couple. Come with me.”
The man hurried after Jean-Pierre. “The wrong people? These are not the Americans?”
“They’re Americans, but they’re not the people we’re looking for.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to speak to Anatoly, and I need you to get him on the radio for me.”
They crossed the field and climbed into the helicopter. Jean-Pierre sat in the gunner’s seat and put on the headphones. He tapped his foot impatiently on the metal floor as the pilot talked interminably over the radio in Russian. At last Anatoly’s voice came on, sounding very distant and punctuated by atmospheric crackling.
“Jean-Pierre, my friend, here is Anatoly. Where are you?”
“I’m at Atati. The two Americans they have captured are not Ellis and Jane. Repeat, they are not Ellis and Jane. They’re just a couple of foolish kids looking for nirvana. Over.”
“This does not surprise me, Jean-Pierre,” Anatoly’s voice came back.
“What?” Jean-Pierre interrupted, forgetting that communication was one-way.
“—have received a series of reports that Ellis and Jane have been seen in the Linar Valley. The search party has not made contact with them but we are hot on their trail. Over.”
Jean-Pierre’s anger about the hippies evaporated and some of his eagerness came back. “The Linar Valley—where is that? Over.”
“Near where you are now. It runs into the Nuristan Valley fifteen or twenty miles south of Atati. Over.”
So close! “Are you sure? Over.”
“The search party got several reports in the villages they passed through. The descriptions fit Ellis and Jane. And they mention a baby. Over.”
Then it was them. “Can we figure out where they are now? Over.”
“Not yet. I’m on my way to join the search party. Then I’ll get more details. Over.”
“You mean you’re not at Bagram? What happened to your, uh . . . visitor? Over.”
“He left,” Anatoly said briskly. “I’m in the air now and about to meet the team at a village called Mundol. It’s in the Nuristan Valley, downstream of the point where the Linar joins the Nuristan, and it’s near a big lake which is also called