Barbouze

by Alan Williams

  At first the thing that worried him most was his being unable to contact his office in London. It was one of Broussard’s conditions that not a hint of the proposed peace talks should reach the Press. Neil had been allowed merely to cable Winston St. Leger at the Miramar to say that he was leaving the city for a trip into the Bled for a few days. He had missed the Saturday night deadline and could send Foster no final report on how the crisis had looked at the weekend.

  The situation in the city remained ominously stagnant. On the Friday evening a cruiser had sailed into the harbour and anchored. By next morning it had been joined by two destroyers, and there were now rumours of a naval blockade. The frontiers and the airport stayed closed during the whole weekend; and reinforcements, rushed from the French zone of Germany, had continued to pour in until Saturday night. On Sunday afternoon helicopters had droned over the barricades, dropping leaflets which appealed to the rebels to surrender honourably and not to obey ‘dissident, treacherous officers whose names are a disgrace to the French nation’.

  For these four days Neil was kept virtually under house-arrest. He was brought excellent meals prepared by Nadia, but was allowed to leave the flat only to make his visits to the Casbah. His relations with Le Hir were remote and formal. They met only to discuss the progress of his discussions with Boussid. The flat was used as a permanent headquarters for Le Hir’s operations in the capital, and a continuous host of visitors — most of them ex-Army officers and Legion deserters — filled the large salon, often for hours on end. Neil’s presence in the flat was never mentioned; nor was he allowed to meet any of Le Hir’s callers.

  Anne-Marie had come to see him on the first evening and they had dined together in his room. She had been quiet and reticent, refusing to discuss her presence that afternoon in the flat with Colonel Broussard, and had left early, kissing him quickly on the lips and promising to call again some time the next day. He had resisted the temptation to ask her to stay the night, knowing by her manner that she would refuse.

  The intervals between her visits and his own trips into the Casbah began to hang heavily, making him nervous and irritable.

  He had too much time to ponder the many possibilities and perils of the venture. The worst moments were always just before entering and leaving the Casbah, with the walk through the narrow alleys, the tall dark walls and the memory of the pale man in the Aronde with his throat gaping open. Le Hir promised that he would not be harmed by any member of the Secret Army; and Boussid supplied a regular escort inside the Casbah. But there was always the chance that someone — a pistol-touting European teenager or a Moslem fanatic — might decide to take a shot at him from one of a thousand black corners. He would return from each trip exhausted, the back of his neck itching with an overdeveloped instinct for danger, and try to distract himself with Le Hir’s meagre selection of reading matter: cheap magazines and romans policiers, and a few popular novels. He slogged through Angelique et le Sultan, fighting away the thought of Caroline which stabbed at him systematically with a physical wrenching of his stomach.

  Occasionally Nadia would wander in and sit on his bed, smoking and chatting in a desultory way to pass the long hours she herself spent cooped up in the flat. Neil decided to forget that she had volunteered her opinion that he should be killed. She had a sulky, sluttish charm, but she was not a bad girl. One afternoon she began to tell him that she was fed up with the revolt: she wanted to get out of the city and travel, to go to Paris and New York. He ventured to ask her, as tactfully as possible, about her relations with Le Hir. She shrugged: ‘Perhaps we get married one day — when his divorce comes through. He has an Italian wife, you see. She’s gone back to Rome, and there are terrible troubles with the Church.’

  He nodded. She stared glumly at her cigarette and said, ‘It’s not much fun being kept in this flat all day long. Just serving drinks for his men when they come up. I’ve had no fun since all this trouble started. I never go out — never go dancing.’

  ‘Do you love him?’ he asked, with sudden curiosity.

  ‘Ah, moi je n’sais pas!’ She pulled a sad ugly face: ‘It would be all right if I could get out of here. We have terrible rows stuck in this place. Sometimes he beats me. Last night he really whipped me! I think he enjoys it. I told him that if he does it again I’ll leave him. Only I haven’t anywhere to go.’

  CHAPTER 5

  On the last evening — Tuesday — Le Hir gave a party. The final details for the truce talks had been agreed in the afternoon: Paul Guérin was to meet the three leaders of the Arab Front in the farmhouse soon after dawn tomorrow.

  The afternoon had grown heavy, with sullen purplish clouds rolling down from the mountains; and a thundery light filled the city, setting up an electric tension, a sense of malaise and impending crisis. Brown-bellied helicopters chugged overhead like fat dragonflies; shops began to close early; troops roamed the streets, slowly, purposefully, as though responding to the gathering storm. In an outlying European suburb a car full of Moslems had driven past a cinema queue and machine-gunned eight men and three girls before tossing a grenade into a flower stall and killing an old woman.

  Up in his flat, ten floors above the city, Le Hir was in high spirits. He had laid on pink champagne and Beluga caviar, and Neil was called in to enjoy the festivities. Anne-Marie was there, with the two German legionnaires and half-a-dozen ex-Army officers, and a couple of polished middle-aged civilians who looked like well-to-do businessmen. One of them was the proprietor of an extreme right-wing newspaper in the city which had been suspended by the authorities.

  They drank champagne and laughed and talked cheerfully; and Neil had a long academic conversation with the newspaper proprietor who spoke English and had the studied good manners of the French commercial classes who have entered the ranks of society. Neil imagined him playing golf at Le Touquet and skiing above Marrakesh. As though by conspiracy they did not mention the crisis, let alone the plans for the peace talks tomorrow; instead, the man boasted to Neil of how he had met Lord Beaverbrook several times at Cap d’Ail.

  Nadia served the drinks, while across the room Anne-Marie sat morosely sipping her champagne, taking nearly half-an-hour to finish one glass. Neil was now not only puzzled by her behaviour — the radical change from the wild lithe creature he had met at Le Berry, to this solemn girl who sat at the right-hand of Le Hir and Broussard — but was now also worried by her. He managed at last to extricate himself from the company of the newspaper proprietor and went over to where she sat alone by the windows.

  As soon as she saw him she stood up and finished her champagne. ‘I must go,’ she said, ‘I have an appointment at nine.’ She refused to stay for the buffet supper prepared by Nadia. He saw her to the door, bewildered and a little angry: ‘Anne-Marie, what’s the matter? What’s happened?’

  She looked unhappily past him to where Le Hir stood joking with a couple of handsome young officers attached to the ‘Gamma’ murder squad.

  ‘That night at the hotel,’ she said, not looking at him, ‘it was exceptional — it was after the bombing. I was alone — I wanted someone. Anybody. I was a little mad that night.’ She turned her dark eyes to him: ‘I’m sorry, but things change. There are many things here — things happening now — that I cannot tell you about. Goodbye.’ She did not kiss him, but turned quickly and he watched her go with a small twinge of longing, a sense of wounded pride. Behind him Le Hir was laughing lustily, feeling none of the tension and malaise.

  Tomorrow was another day, Neil thought. His head was aching, and he went over to Nadia to have his glass refilled.

  CHAPTER 6

  Dawn broke yellow out to sea, with the city lying dim under a tropical rain. Neil was called by Nadia at half past five with a pot of black coffee, croissants and fresh orange juice.

  He shaved carefully, like an actor before the first night. This was to be his day of triumph. In the salon Le Hir was already waiting in a belted khaki raincoat, carrying a briefcase. He was to head the escort
of six armed men responsible for General Guérin’s safety. He nodded to Neil: ‘Would you like a glass of aquavit before we leave?’

  Neil accepted, and they drank a stiff toast to each other, swallowing the thimbles of firewater in a gulp.

  At five to six the two German legionnaires arrived. They also drank an aquavit; and at exactly six o’clock the four of them went down the street.

  They crossed the ring of the barricades through the back of the same building that Neil and Anne-Marie had used on that first morning five days ago. The street below the barricade was almost deserted, with an oily grey shine in the morning drizzle… There was a mobile canteen parked by the kerb and two paras in camouflaged capes sat smoking inside the machinegun nests.

  The black Peugeot 403 was waiting outside; the driver was the same big man in a denim shirt they had had on the first morning. In spite of the rain, he still wore his sunglasses.

  It was 6.11 when they drove away. Timing was now of crucial importance. Neil had worked out and memorized the schedule to the nearest minute, aware that if either party reached the appointed place too early or too late the whole scheme could collapse. He now experienced the concentrated anxiety of a film director who has sweated long hours on a hazardous production and now watches the result begin to unfold, detail by detail. It gave him a satisfaction that was two-fold: the sight of men like Le Hir and the two legionnaires behaving under what were virtually his own orders helped restore his ego, badly mauled by Caroline, and also gave him a vainglorious sensation that he was positively helping the cause of humanity.

  The driver took them on a route carefully prepared by Le Hir, in Neil’s presence, to avoid the concentration of Gardes Mobiles and CRS troops in the centre of the city. They drove for seventeen minutes, turning into a long drab street with wilted palms growing crookedly down the pavements, and stopped outside a bistro with a bead curtain and a couple of iron chairs standing out in the rain.

  No one spoke inside the car. The time was 6.28. At precisely 6.30 two Citroën DS’s turned into the street with a sizzle of tyres and drew up at either end of the Peugeot. The timing impressed Neil. He nodded to Le Hir: ‘I hope the Arab Front are as punctual as this.’

  Le Hir made no reply. The legionnaires opened the doors and they climbed out into the drizzle. There was only the driver in each of the Citroëns. Together with Le Hir and the two legionnaires they made up five of the armed escort of six. Neil and Le Hir got into the first Citroën, the legionnaires into the second. On the floor lay a couple of machine-pistols and a pair of new number plates. The doors snapped shut and the two cars drove away simultaneously, leaving the Peugeot still outside the bistro.

  Neil watched the speedometer needle creep round the dial and pass the 100-kilometre mark. By the feel of the car he guessed that it must be supercharged. He noticed that the back of the driver’s neck was pitted with tiny slit-like scars.

  There was little traffic. Once they passed a line of Army trucks driving into the city with motorcycle escorts; then they turned into a broad dual-carriageway that curved away into the rolling mists, with the suburbs giving way to white farms scattered across flat brown tobacco fields. There were no roadblocks.

  Neil relaxed into the soft-sprung seat and said conversationally, ‘The weather seems to have changed for the worst. It’s like England.’

  Le Hir stared stonily ahead, gripping the briefcase in his lap. ‘The weather’s fine,’ he murmured.

  Neil said no more. Le Hir was obviously not in the mood for small talk.

  The speedometer needle now wavered on the 180-kilometre mark, the air passing in a long high scream; and Neil watched nervously for some lone Moslem with donkey and cart to loom up suddenly in their path. But the road was empty, sweeping out of the mists like the mouth of a smooth white tunnel; and they drove on at more than a hundred miles an hour, keeping well within Neil’s careful schedule.

  After fifteen kilometres of dual-carriageway the two cars drifted out of the right-hand lane on to a side road leading up towards the mountains. Neil had studied the road plan round the farmhouse from contour maps. The ground was open, rising slightly, but the mist was closing in, hiding almost completely the dark slopes of mountain ahead. He remembered that the spot had been chosen because it was exposed and free from ambush. He now began to wonder how much the weather would affect security arrangements. He looked at Le Hir, who sat grim-faced and quiet.

  Neil said, ‘I don’t much like this mist. Is it going to make things more difficult?’

  ‘Never mind the mist,’ said Le Hir, still staring ahead, ‘the plan will proceed as before. You will be protected.’

  As he spoke, the Citroën pulled off the road into a layby. Ahead of them stood a sand-coloured Mk 10 Jaguar.

  The Citroën crunched up beside it and stopped. The driver leapt out and held the rear door open, and Neil and Le Hir stepped out. The second Citroën, with the two legionnaires, had drawn up behind the Jaguar.

  Neil had heard about this car. Yellow Venetian blinds were pulled down over the side and rear windows, which were of bullet-proof glass. The coachwork had been reinforced with armoured plating and the tyres were self-sealing. It had been built specially for Guérin while he was Commander-in-Chief in the Protectorate, as a safeguard against assassination attempts by Arab Front terrorists. It was one of the General’s conceits that he still dared use it as his personal car, although it was well known to all the security forces.

  Le Hir opened the rear door of the Jaguar, saluted and spoke to someone in the back, then stood aside. Neil stooped down and climbed into the sudden darkness of the car which had a brittle smell of pinewood. The driver had turned to watch; he sat behind a glass partition, holding a machine-pistol in his lap. He made up the full escort of six.

  Neil looked along the wide leather seat at the man in the corner. He looked smaller and older than in his photographs. His hair was thin with a transparent silvery shine, combed straight back from his tall brow, making him look almost bald. He had a strong jaw and a good profile, but there were pouches of chicken skin sagging under the eyes which had the jaundiced look of a man who does not sleep well. He sat with one elbow on the padded armrest between them, peering at Neil in the dim striped light from the Venetian blinds. ‘So you are Monsieur Ingleby?’ he said at last, in a slow pleasant voice.

  Neil replied, with a natural reverence of which he was rather ashamed afterwards, ‘I am honoured to make your acquaintance, mon General!’

  Paul Guérin looked at his watch. The time was 6.44. ‘We are a minute in advance,’ he said, and stirred forward in his seat, adding, ‘I am pleased with the way you have handled the negotiations in the last four days, Monsieur Ingleby. You have shown tenacity and intelligence. My opinion of journalism as a profession’ — he slid back a pane in the glass partition — ‘has risen considerably. Drive on!’ he snapped at the driver.

  The engine hummed with quiet force, and the great car moved out into the road between the two Citroëns. They drove fast, with the mist growing thicker, the road beginning to climb, turning and heading into the brown darkness that was the mountains. Neil tried to recall the details of the contour map. He remembered the two straight roads that led up to the farm, and the octagonal design of the outer walls: sheds and barns along three sides, the farmhouse and courtyard in the middle, with the gate leading out to where the two roads met. The mountains began to rise about a quarter of a mile behind; and towards the sea the land was flat for more than three miles of rank maize fields.

  General Guérin did not speak again during the drive; and Neil, tense and watchful, did not attempt to break the silence.

  At 6.57 the leading Citroën slowed suddenly. Neil saw the rear lights of the car in front flash on and off three times. He thought they were the brake lights. He did not know that the driver was flashing the yellow high beam at a point somewhere in the mountains.

  The leading Citroën now turned off the road on to a rutted dirt track. Neil presumed that this was
one of the two roads to the farm. After less than twenty yards the convoy stopped. Le Hir came round and opened the Jaguar door. Guérin said quietly, ‘Monsieur Ingleby, you will now verify that the enemy has honoured their agreement. We shall wait here until you return.’ As he spoke, his eyes were old and worried, one slender grey hand stroking the seam of his immaculate dark flannel trousers.

  Neil got out. Le Hir closed the door after him, standing there in his khaki raincoat, huge and menacing, with the briefcase grasped to his chest, and said, ‘It is less than a kilometre up the track. When you get inside make sure that all three of them are there, and that they have brought no more than six men.’

  The engines of the three cars had been switched off. Le Hir looked at his watch: ‘Right! It should not take you more than thirty minutes at the most.’

  Neil turned and began to walk up the track into the swirling mist. The air was damp and close. He began to sweat. After a few minutes he stopped to take off his jacket. Behind him the shapes of the three cars grew dim and vanished. Ahead he could now see the white outline of the farm, with a watchtower jutting up like a tooth from the blur of walls and outhouses.

  Around him the silence was total, with a deceptive whining in his ears that strangely unnerved him. He quickened his step over the rough track, keeping his eyes on the wall of mountains and on the growing shape of the farm. He thought he could just make out the blob of a man’s head above the wall of the crenelated watchtower.

  It was hard to calculate distances in the mist, and the building rose suddenly over the last fifty yards. It was designed like an old-fashioned fort. The walls formed a stockade round the farmhouse and courtyard, with low embrasures like the mouths of a pillbox. The only entrance was through the heavy wooden gates overlooked by the tower. To have abandoned such a formidable stronghold, Neil thought, the colon who had owned the place must have been sure the end was coming.