What an intense relationship we would have as she grew older. How they would lionize me! I'm perfectly capable of bringing up a baby. I would arrive back in Paris a tragic, romantic figure, thought Jean-Pierre a widower with a baby daughter, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He pictured Ellis captured, alone Jane's body found a mile or two back, dead of the cold, with the baby still miraculously alive in her arms. His mind turned, as it often did nowadays, to the question of what would happen if Jane died and Chantal survived. His rage at what his wife was doing did not extend to his daughter, yet the baby was suffering, he felt sure: trekking all day, crossing passes above the snow line, blasted by icy winds. Jean-Pierre felt a stab of guilt every time he thought of ChantaJ. However, the soldiers would certainly move faster than Jane, especially as she was carrying Chantal. Jean-Pierre did not expect any further news in the morning, for the fugitives had a full day's start. So all the search parties went on foot, some with commandeered horses to carry their baggage. Furthermore, none of the guides had ever been in an aircraft before and the new experience was totally disorienting. The trails were rather difficult to follow from the ground impossible from the air. One of the search parties tried to follow its assigned trail from the air, but the experiment was a failure. It doesn't take long to find a volunteer.' 'That was quick,' said Jean-Pierre after the sixth reported in. They landed their helicopters at six different villages in the Valley, and half an hour later all six parties had reported that they had found local guides. Each of the parties included at least one Dari-speaking officer from the Afghan regular army. There were six of them at the start: one for each of the five main side valleys leading east from the Five Lions, and one to follow the Five Lions River north to its source and beyond. The search parties had left before dawn - again. Jean-Pierre and Anatoly sat on hard wooden chairs in a spartan, windowless office at the Bagram air base, monitoring the reports as they came in over the radio network.

ALL THE first day, the search parties found no trace of Ellis and Jane.

Lie down with lions book