Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [73]
Masud came up to him, smiling broadly. “That was well done, the bridge,” he said in his heavily accented French. “Magnificent!”
“Thanks,” said Ellis. “But I didn’t come here to blow up bridges.” He felt weak and a little dizzy, but now was the time to state his business. “I came to make a deal.”
Masud looked at him curiously. “Where are you from?”
“Washington. The White House. I represent the President of the United States.”
Masud nodded, unsurprised. “Good. I’m glad.”
It was at that moment that Ellis fainted.
He made his pitch to Masud that night.
The guerrillas rigged up a stretcher and carried him up the Valley to Astana, where they stopped at dusk. Masud had already sent a runner on to Banda to fetch Jean-Pierre, who would arrive sometime tomorrow to take the bullet out of Ellis’s backside. Meanwhile they all settled down in the courtyard of a farmhouse. Ellis’s pain had dulled, but the journey had made him weaker. The guerrillas had put primitive dressings on his wounds.
An hour or so after arrival he was given hot, sweet green tea, which revived him somewhat, and a little later they all had mulberries and yogurt for supper. It was usually like that with the guerrillas, Ellis had observed while traveling with the convoy from Pakistan to the Valley: an hour or two after they arrived somewhere, food would appear. Ellis did not know whether they bought it, commandeered it, or received it as a gift, but he guessed that it was given to them free, sometimes willingly and sometimes reluctantly.
When they had eaten, Masud sat near Ellis, and in the next few minutes most of the other guerrillas casually moved off, leaving Masud and two of his lieutenants alone with Ellis. Ellis knew he had to talk to Masud now, for there might not be another chance for a week. Yet he felt too feeble and exhausted for this subtle and difficult task.
Masud said: “Many years ago, a foreign country asked the King of Afghanistan for five hundred warriors to help in a war. The Afghan king sent five men from our Valley, with a message saying that it is better to have five lions than five hundred foxes. This is how our Valley came to be called the Valley of the Five Lions.” He smiled. “You were a lion today.”
Ellis said, “I heard a legend saying there used to be five great warriors, known as the Five Lions, each of whom guarded one of the five ways into the Valley. And I heard that this is why they call you the Sixth Lion.”
“Enough of legends,” Masud said with a smile. “What do you have to tell me?”
Ellis had rehearsed this conversation, and in his script it did not begin so abruptly. Clearly, Oriental indirection was not Masud’s style. Ellis said: “I have first to ask you for your assessment of the war.”
Masud nodded, thought for a few seconds and said: “The Russians have twelve thousand troops in the town of Rokha, the gateway to the Valley. Their dispositions are as always: first minefields, then Afghan troops, then Russian troops to stop the Afghans running away. They are expecting another twelve hundred men as reinforcements. They plan to launch a major offensive up the Valley within two weeks. Their aim is to destroy our forces.”
Ellis wondered how Masud got such precise intelligence, but he was not so tactless as to ask. Instead he said: “And will the offensive succeed?”
“No,” said Masud with quiet confidence. “When they attack, we melt into the hills, so there is no one here for them to fight. When they stop, we harass them from the high ground and cut their lines of communication. Gradually we wear them down. They find themselves spending vast resources to hold territory which gives them no military advantage. Finally they retreat. It is always so.”
It was a textbook account of guerrilla war, Ellis reflected. There was no question that Masud could teach the other tribal leaders a lot. “How long do you think the Russians can go on making such futile attacks?”
Masud shrugged. “It is in God’s hands.”
“Will you ever be able to drive them out of your country?”