Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [52]
The difficulty was that Masud moved about quickly and silently, like a deer in a forest, suddenly emerging from the undergrowth and then disappearing again just as abruptly. But Jean-Pierre was patient, and so were the Russians: there would come a time, sooner or later, when Jean-Pierre would know for certain exactly where Masud was going to be for the next twenty-four hours—perhaps if he were wounded, or planning to attend a funeral—and then Jean-Pierre would use his radio to transmit a special code, and the hawk would strike.
He wished that he could tell Jane what he was really doing here. He might even convince her that it was right. He would point out that their medical work was useless, for helping the rebels served only to perpetuate the misery of poverty and ignorance in which the people lived, and to delay the moment when the Soviet Union would be able to grab this country by the scruff of the neck, as it were, and drag it kicking and screaming into the twentieth century. She might well understand that. However, he knew instinctively that she would not forgive him for deceiving her as he had. In fact she would be enraged. He could imagine her, remorseless, implacable, proud. She would leave him immediately, the way she had left Ellis Thaler. She would be doubly furious at having been deceived in exactly the same way by two successive men.
So, in his terror of losing her, he continued to deceive her, like a man on a precipice paralyzed by fright.
She knew something was wrong, of course; he could tell by the way she looked at him sometimes. But she felt it was a problem in their relationship, he was sure—it did not occur to her that his whole life was a monumental pretense.
Complete safety was not possible, but he took every precaution against discovery by her or by anyone else. When using the radio he spoke in code, not because the rebels might be listening in—they had no radios—but because the Afghan Army might, and it was so riddled with traitors that it had no secrets from Masud. Jean-Pierre’s radio was small enough to be concealed in the false bottom of his medical bag, or in the pocket of his shirt or waistcoat when he was not carrying the bag. Its disadvantage was that it was powerful enough only for very short conversations. It would have taken a very long broadcast to dictate full details of the routes and timing of the convoys—especially in code—and would have required a radio and battery pack a great deal larger. Jean-Pierre and Monsieur Leblond had decided against that. In consequence, Jean-Pierre had to meet with his contact to pass on his information.
He crested a rise and looked down. He was at the head of a small valley. The trail he was on led down to another valley, running at right angles to this one and bifurcated by a tumbling mountain stream that glittered in the afternoon sun. On the far side of the stream another valley led up into the mountains toward Cobak, his ultimate destination. Where the three valleys met, on the near side of the river, was a little stone hut. The region was dotted with such primitive buildings. Jean-Pierre imagined they had been put up by the nomads and traveling merchants who used them at night.
He set off down the hill, leading Maggie. Anatoly was probably there already. Jean-Pierre did not know his real name or rank, but assumed he was in the KGB and guessed, from something he had once said about generals, that he was a colonel. Whatever his rank, he was no desk man. Between here and Bagram were fifty miles of mountain country, and Anatoly walked it, alone, taking a day and a half. He was an Oriental Russian with high cheekbones and yellow skin, and in Afghan clothes he passed as an Uzbak, a member of the Mongoloid ethnic group of north Afghanistan. This explained his hesitant Dari—the Uzbaks had their own language. Anatoly was brave: he did not speak the Uzbak tongue, of course, so there was a chance he might