Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [60]
“God be with you, Mohammed Khan,” she said when she caught up with him.
“And with you, Jane Debout,” he said politely.
She paused, catching her breath. He watched her, wearing an expression of amused tolerance. “How is Mousa?” she said.
“He is well and happy, and learning to use his left hand. He will kill Russians with it one day.”
This was a little joke: the left hand was traditionally used for “dirty” jobs, the right for eating. Jane smiled in acknowledgment of his wit, then said: “I’m so glad we were able to save his life.”
If he thought her ungracious he did not show it. “I am forever in your debt,” he said.
That was what she had been angling for. “There is something you could do for me,” she said.
His expression was unreadable. “If it is within my power . . .”
She looked around for somewhere to sit. They were standing near a bombed house. Stones and earth from the front wall had spilled across the pathway, and they could see inside the building, where the only furnishings left were a cracked pot and, absurdly, a color picture of a Cadillac pinned to a wall. Jane sat on the rubble and, after a moment’s hesitation, Mohammed sat beside her.
“It is within your power,” she said. “But it will cause you some small trouble.”
“What is it?”
“You may think it the whim of a foolish woman.”
“Perhaps.”
“You’ll be tempted to deceive me, by agreeing to my request and then ‘forgetting’ to carry it out.”
“No.”
“I ask you to deal truthfully with me, whether you refuse or not.”
“I shall.”
Enough of that, she thought. “I want you to send a runner to the convoy and order them to change their homeward route.”
He was quite taken aback—he had probably been expecting some trivial, domestic request. “But why?” he said.
“Do you believe in dreams, Mohammed Khan?”
He shrugged. “Dreams are dreams,” he said evasively.
Perhaps that was the wrong approach, she thought, a vision might be better. “While I lay alone in my cave, in the heat of the day, I thought I saw a white pigeon.”
He was suddenly attentive, and she knew she had said the right thing: Afghans believed that white pigeons were sometimes inhabited by spirits.
Jane went on: “But I must have been dreaming, for the bird tried to speak to me.”
“Ah!”
He took that as a sign that she had had a vision, not a dream, Jane thought. She went on: “I couldn’t understand what it was saying, although I listened as hard as I could. I think it was speaking Pashto.”
Mohammed was wide-eyed. “A messenger from Pushtun territory . . .”
“Then I saw Ismael Gul, the son of Rabia, the father of Fara, standing behind the pigeon.” She put her hand on Mohammed’s arm and looked into his eyes, thinking: I could turn you on like an electric light, you vain, foolish man. “There was a knife in his heart, and he was weeping tears of blood. He pointed to the handle of the knife, as if he wanted me to pull it out of his chest. The handle was encrusted with jewels.” Somewhere in the back of her mind she was thinking: Where did I get this stuff? “I got up from my bed and walked to him. I was afraid, but I had to save his life. Then, as I reached out to grasp the knife . . .”
“What?”
“He vanished. I think I woke up.”
Mohammed closed his wide-open mouth, recovered his poise and frowned importantly, as if carefully considering the interpretation of the dream. Now, Jane thought, it is time to pander to him a little bit.
“It may be all foolishness,” she said, arranging her face into a little-girl expression, all ready to defer to his superior masculine judgment. “That’s why I ask you to do this for me, for the person who saved your son’s life, to give me peace of mind.”
He immediately looked a little haughty. “There is no need to invoke