Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [82]
He checked his bag quickly: morphine for the pain, penicillin to prevent wound infections, needles and surgical thread, plenty of dressings. He put a cap on his head and a blanket over his shoulders.
“I won’t take Maggie,” he said to Jane. “Skabun is not far and the trail is very bad.” He kissed her again, then turned to the two messengers. “Let’s go,” he said.
They walked down to the village, then forded the river and climbed the steep steps on the far side. Jean-Pierre was thinking about kissing Jane. If he succeeded in his plan, and the Russians killed Masud, how would she react? She would know he had been behind it. But she would not betray him, he was sure. Would she still love him? He wanted her. Since they had been together he had suffered less and less from the black depressions which used to assault him regularly. Just by loving him she made him feel that he was all right. He wanted that. But he also wanted to succeed in this mission. He thought: I suppose I must want success more than happiness, and that is why I’m prepared to risk losing her for the sake of killing Masud.
The three of them walked southwest along the clifftop footpath with the rushing river loud in their ears. Jean-Pierre asked: “How many people dead?”
“Many people,” said one of the messengers.
Jean-Pierre was used to this sort of thing. Patiently he said: “Five? Ten? Twenty? Forty?”
“A hundred.”
Jean-Pierre did not believe him: there were not a hundred inhabitants in Skabun. “How many wounded?”
“Two hundred.”
That was ludicrous. Did the man not know? Jean-Pierre wondered. Or was he exaggerating for fear that if he gave small numbers the doctor would turn around and go back? Perhaps it was just that he could not count beyond ten. “What kind of wounds?” Jean-Pierre asked him.
“Holes and cuts and bleeding.”
Those sounded more like battle injuries. Bombing produced concussion, burns and compression damage from falling buildings. This man was obviously a poor witness. There was no point in questioning him further.
A couple of miles outside Banda they turned off the cliff path and headed north on a track unfamiliar to Jean-Pierre. “Is this the way to Skabun?” he asked.
“Yes.”
It was obviously a shortcut he had never discovered. They were certainly heading in the right general direction.
A few minutes later they saw one of the little stone huts in which travelers could rest or spend the night. To Jean-Pierre’s surprise, the messengers headed for its doorless entrance. “We haven’t time to rest,” he told them irritably. “Sick people are waiting for me.”
Then Anatoly stepped out of the hut.
Jean-Pierre was dumbfounded. He did not know whether to be exultant because now he could tell Anatoly about the conference, or terrified that the Afghans would kill Anatoly.
“Don’t worry,” Anatoly said, reading his expression. “They’re soldiers of the Afghan regular army. I sent them to fetch you.”
“My God!” It was brilliant. There had been no bombing at Skabun—that had been a ruse, dreamed up by Anatoly for getting Jean-Pierre to come. “Tomorrow,” Jean-Pierre said excitedly, “tomorrow something terribly important is happening—”
“I know, I know—I got your message. That’s why I’m here.”
“So you will get Masud . . . ?”
Anatoly smiled mirthlessly, showing his tobacco-stained teeth. “We will get Masud. Calm down.”
Jean-Pierre realized he was behaving like an excited child at Christmas-time. He suppressed his enthusiasm with an effort. “When the malang failed to come back, I thought . . .”
“He arrived in Charikar yesterday,” said Anatoly. “God knows what happened to him on the way. Why didn’t you use your radio?”
“It broke,” said Jean-Pierre. He did not want to explain about Jane right now. “The malang will do anything for me because I supply him with heroin, to which he is addicted.”
Anatoly looked hard at Jean-Pierre for a moment, and in his eyes there was something like admiration. “I’m glad you’re on my side,” he said.
Jean-Pierre smiled.
“I want to know more,” said Anatoly. He put an arm around Jean-Pierre’s shoulders and led him