Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [93]
“Wait,” Ellis said. “There’s been a new development.”
Jane thought: Oh, God, Mohammed will kill somebody when he hears this—
“There has been a leak.”
“What do you mean?” Mohammed said dangerously.
Ellis hesitated, as if reluctant to spill the beans; and then he seemed to decide that he had no alternative. “The Russians may know about the conference—”
“Who?” Mohammed demanded. “Who is the traitor?”
“Possibly the doctor, but—”
Mohammed rounded on Jane. “How long have you known this?”
“You’ll speak to me politely or not at all,” she snapped back.
“Hold it,” said Ellis.
Jane was not going to let Mohammed get away with his accusatory tone of voice. “I warned you, didn’t I?” she said. “I told you to change the route of the convoy. I saved your damn life, so don’t point your finger at me.”
Mohammed’s anger evaporated, and he looked a little sheepish.
Ellis said: “So that’s why the route was changed.” He looked at Jane with something like admiration.
Mohammed said: “Where is he now?”
“We’re not sure,” Ellis replied.
“When he comes back he must be killed.”
“No!” said Jane.
Ellis put a restraining hand on her shoulder and said to Mohammed: “Would you kill a man who has saved the lives of so many of your comrades?”
“He must face justice,” Mohammed insisted.
Mohammed had talked about if he comes back, and Jane realized she had been assuming that he would return. Surely he would not abandon her and their baby?
Ellis was saying: “If he is a traitor, and if he has succeeded in contacting the Russians, then he has told them about tomorrow’s meeting. They will surely attack and try to take Masud.”
“This is very bad,” said Mohammed. “Masud must leave immediately. The conference will have to be called off—”
“Not necessarily,” Ellis said. “Think. We could turn this to advantage.”
“How?”
Ellis said: “In fact the more I think about it, the more I like it. This may turn out to have been the best thing that could possibly happen. . . .”
CHAPTER TWELVE
They evacuated the village of Darg at dawn. Masud’s men went from house to house, gently waking the occupants and telling them that their village was to be attacked by the Russians today and they must go up the Valley to Banda, taking with them their more precious possessions. By sunrise a ragged line of women, children, old people and livestock was wending its way out of the village along the dirt road that ran beside the river.
Darg was different in shape from Banda. At Banda the houses were clustered at the eastern end of the plain, where the Valley narrowed and the ground was rocky. In Darg all the houses were crammed together on a thin shelf between the foot of the cliff and the bank of the river. There was a bridge just in front of the mosque, and the fields were on the other side of the river.
It was a good place for an ambush.
Masud had devised his plan during the night, and now Mohammed and Alishan made the dispositions. They moved around with quiet efficiency, Mohammed tall and handsome and gracious, Alishan short and mean-looking, both of them giving instructions in soft voices, imitating their leader’s low-key style.
Ellis wondered, as he laid his charges, whether the Russians would come. Jean-Pierre had not reappeared, so it seemed certain that he had succeeded in contacting his masters; and it was almost inconceivable that they should resist the temptation to capture or kill Masud. But that was all circumstantial. And if they did not come, Ellis would look foolish, having caused Masud to set an elaborate trap for a no-show victim. The guerrillas would not make a pact with a fool. But if the Russians do come, Ellis thought, and if the ambush works, the boost to my prestige and Masud’s might be enough to clinch the whole deal.
He was trying not to think about Jane. When he had put his arms around her and her baby, and she had wet his shirt with her tears, his passion for her had flared up anew. It was like throwing gasoline on a bonfire. He had wanted to stand there forever, with her narrow shoulders shaking under