Barbouze

by Alan Williams

  The Citroën slowed to a halt before the last car. Le Hir turned to Neil: ‘The police will be looking for the Jaguar. The General has papers made out in the name of Maurice Girard, an inspector of waterworks and hygiene in El Mansour. My name is Jean Dubuis; I am a schoolmaster from El Mansour. You, as a journalist, are visiting us to examine social conditions in the town. You understand?’

  The first car in the queue was being waved across into the oncoming lane and returning towards the capital. The Citroën crawled forward. Neil looked back and saw the second Citroën about twenty yards behind. Le Hir said, ‘Don’t worry about them. They have nothing to do with us. Just remember Monsieur Girard and Monsieur Dubuis of El Mansour.’

  General Guérin’s face was stiff and immobile; he kept his eyes averted from the windows, on a point somewhere on the floor.

  The driver of the car ahead was shouting furiously at the young NCO and waving towards the bridge. The NCO shrugged apologetically and beckoned to a CRS officer who sat in one of the jeeps. The boy was young and callow, probably a newly-arrived conscript from France. He left his colleague to deal with the incensed motorist, and turned towards the Citroën. He had the flat red-cheeked face of a Norman peasant boy, with a smudged shaving cut on his upper lip. He came round to the driver’s window and said, ‘The bridge is closed. You have to go back.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said the driver.

  ‘They’re moving troops up to the city. There’s something big happening.’ He shrugged: ‘They’ve got tanks the other side — but they never tell us anything.’

  General Guérin’s eyes flickered and met those of the NCO. The boy looked at him, then back at the driver and said, ‘Can I see your papers?’

  Ahead, the motorist was waving his arms like a bookie laying bets, shouting, ‘Malheur pour moi! Malheur pour le France!’ A door slammed and the car drove off with a grinding of gears. The CRS officer came towards the Citroën.

  The young NCO had begun examining their identity cards; he looked at Le Hir’s, then at Guérin’s, and passed them both back while the CRS officer went round and opened the boot.

  Neil handed his passport to the NCO. The boy leafed carefully through it as though he had never seen a British passport before, compared the photograph with Neil’s face, then walked suddenly back to the CRS officer. Le Hir cursed: ‘Is something wrong with your passport?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The CRS man closed the boot and came round to the driver’s window. He had a tough intelligent face with very fine eyes, almond-shaped with a bright hazel light in them, and thick eyebrows with a black sheen like horses’ hair. He looked round the car and said: ‘Are you all going to El Mansour?’

  The driver nodded.

  ‘You too?’ He looked at Neil.

  ‘That’s right.’ Neil felt General Guérin sitting very still beside him. Le Hir looked tense, with a taut little muscle working under his cheek just below the white scar.

  The CRS man handed Neil’s passport back and turned again to the driver: ‘Have you got your licence?’

  The other two CRS men were now checking the second Citroën. Another car had pulled up behind and was hooting furiously. The CRS officer began studying the driver’s licence with exasperating care.

  One of the soldiers came over and spoke to the young NCO who went back to the leading jeep. Neil saw him clip on the earphones of a walkie-talkie.

  The CRS officer looked at the driver and said, ‘You’re Michel Rios?’

  The driver nodded, and Neil watched the skin on his scarred neck stretch like pitted rubber.

  The officer leaned forward, tapping the licence-holder against the door: ‘Monsieur Rios, this licence is not signed.’

  The driver grinned: ‘I never remember to sign anything!’ He took out a pen.

  Neil looked up and saw the young NCO thrust the earphones at one of the soldiers and start back towards the Citroën. The driver signed the licence, and Neil watched the NCO talking excitedly to the officer, glancing at the Citroën, then at the jeep.

  The officer turned, put his head through the window and said to Neil: ‘Would you please get out for a moment, monsieur?’ He opened the rear door. Nobody in the car moved. Neil looked at General Guérin, then at Le Hir, and their expressions betrayed nothing. The officer held the door open and said again, ‘Will you please get out?’

  Neil climbed from the car and stood up, feeling the morning sun warm through the mist, and the officer said quietly, ‘Follow me, please.’

  They began to walk towards the two jeeps. ‘You’re the English journalist, Ingleby?’ said the officer.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Those men in the car — you know who they are?’

  Neil said nothing.

  ‘Stand behind the jeep, please,’ said the officer, ‘don’t move.’ For a moment his eyes met Neil’s and their brilliant hazel light held a dangerous glitter. Neil nodded and stood behind the back of the jeep. He could just see the two Citroëns. Still nobody had moved in either of them.

  The officer walked back towards the first car. He went round the bonnet until he was on the side where General Guérin sat, then shouted something and raised his machine-pistol. The two CRS men who were checking the second Citroën turned and ran forward, and the three of them, joined by the NCO, closed round the first car. Doors were pulled open and there were two bursts of gunfire.

  The CRS officer slid forward against the rear door of the car and went down on to his knees, his machine-pistol crashing on to the road. The young German legionnaire was coming round the side of the second Citroën, his gun jumping in his hand, and Neil saw the little spurts of flame as the NCO shivered and grabbed at his stomach, then sat down and began to scream and vomit on to the tarmac.

  The CRS officer was on his knees, groping for the door handle of the first car, when the driver came out with one of the guns from under the rug and slammed the steel butt across the back of his head.

  Le Hir had sprung out of the car with the second gun from under the rug, and was crouching down with the two legionnaires, firing steady bursts from behind the open doors. General Guérin was still inside the car, kneeling on the floor against the front seat.

  Neil sat huddled behind the back wheel of the jeep, listening to the shriek and whine of bullets, glass shattering and empty shells rattling on to the tarmac. The young NCO was still sitting in the road, holding his stomach and letting out a horrible panting shriek like an animal. Near him one of the soldiers was lying on his face, trying to crawl back behind the jeeps; and the other soldier was frantically fitting a new clip into his gun, edging back towards the pillbox. The remaining two CRS men had taken cover close to Neil, firing at the tyres of both Citroëns.

  Neil heard doors slamming and an engine trying to start with a loose clatter. A bullet whined somewhere very near, and when he looked out again he saw Le Hir sinking on to the road. The second Citroën suddenly roared out from behind the first, its doors open, and swung round in the road with a squeal of rubber, both guns firing in a wide arc as the car reached the opposite lane, steadying a dry skid, and began to accelerate. Then the Douze-Sept opened up across the bridge.

  Neil watched the blue flashes spitting up along the road as the armoured shell casing peeled off like a banana skin, with lead splashing out across the tarmac; then came the long thundering roar, and the car shook and split and cracked open, pieces flying off it like something seen in an old jerky film.

  A column of men began to advance across the bridge. The firing stopped. All Neil could hear now was the steady crash of boots and whistles and words of command.

  Le Hir sat against the wing of the first Citroën white-faced and bleeding from the legs. His gun was empty. The driver had laid down his own gun and came round the side of the car, hands above his head, waiting for the troops across the bridge. He had given up when the Douze-Sept started.

  The rear door of the Citroën now opened and General Guérin stepped out. He moved slowly, closing the do
or behind him as though it might break in his hand, then walked to the side of the road and stopped only a few yards from Neil.

  He looked neither at Neil nor at the advancing troops, but stood gazing out across the bridge, down the flat bed of the Oued Zain to where it trickled into the sea. He was stooped and old and broken. He did not answer when the officer came to arrest him. They took him to a jeep and sat him up between four armed CRS men, and the officer who arrested him was very respectful, addressing him as ‘mon Général’ as he helped him up, although he did not salute.

  Le Hir was still sitting against the wing of the Citroën. They had carried the young NCO to the side of the road. His screams had stopped and he was dying. Neil was put in another jeep bound for the High Command Headquarters above the city. The lieutenant in charge of him smiled grimly: ‘Une jolie fin de partie!’

  Neil glanced at what was left of the first Citroën. The big blond legionnaire was sitting upright with the top of his head sliced off like a boiled egg, bone and brain spattered over the seats. The body of the young one was lying broken behind the buckled door.

  ‘At least five dead,’ said the lieutenant, ‘and Guérin and Le Hir arrested. The Secret Army isn’t going to like you for this!’

  ‘I had nothing to do with it.’

  The lieutenant shrugged: ‘You were in the car. That was the only reason they caught them. They got a tip off that there was an Englishman travelling with them. At least, that’s what I heard.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with it,’ Neil repeated, quietly this time as though talking to himself.

  The NCO did not pursue the matter. He only wondered how they had managed to get an Englishman to do the job for them.

  PART 6: THE FUGITIVE

  CHAPTER 1

  ‘Ah, we’re both in the soup, my dear Ingleby,’ Pol muttered, as his great wounded body was born aloft, straddled like some modern Buddha across the arms of four soldiers who were now sweating past the seventh floor of the High Command headquarters. Neil followed, listening despondently as Pol continued between groans of discomfort: ‘All three of them dead — Marouf and Boussid blown to pieces, and Ali La Joconde dying before the ambulances got there. Most of the barbouzes dead too — ah, merde!’ Pol’s sweating face, streaked with dust and dried blood, creased up with agony, and the soldiers stopped.

  ‘How did you get away?’ asked Neil, pausing while the soldiers hoisted Pol into a less awkward position. He had two cuts above the eye, a lump on the crown of his head, and the mauve hibiscus was wilting rapidly in his lapel.

  ‘I was in the shed outside,’ he gasped; ‘Le petit endroit. Those rich colons still have the habits of peasants. A little stone shed with a filthy sand-hole. Too much mint tea with Boussid — went through me like a drain — and there I was, squatting down with my ankles caught in my trousers when the heavens are blown open and I’m bounced up to the roof and down again on to my arse, then up again and down again, four times before they stopped. They must have used thirty-six-millimetre shells. It was like a knacker’s yard outside.’

  ‘Are you badly hurt?’ said Neil, as they rounded the ninth floor.

  ‘Damaged my coccyx. Hit my head too, three or four times — but as I told you, I’ve got a hard head. It’s my spine, close to the arse.’ He tried to grin but gave a small scream instead, as one short fat leg began slipping again to the floor.

  Neil had waited two hours in a room downstairs before they had brought Pol in from the ambulance. ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not so sure. These damned policemen, they don’t love me for this! I’ve spoilt the Government’s precious relations with the Arab Front. They don’t love either of us. We’re both very unpopular, my dear Ingleby!’

  ‘But they got Guérin and Le Hir. Aren’t they satisfied with that?’

  Pol shook his head: ‘Not the Sûreté, nor the Deuxième. Guérin and his lot were taken by the CRS — on a tip from me, as a matter of fact. But there’s a lot of jealousy between the departments. The Sûreté and the Deuxième won’t get any credit for catching Guérin, although they’ll have a lot of trouble over the Arab Front killings. That’s why I can’t stand working for policemen. They have the pettiness of children — only less charm!’

  They reached the eleventh floor and Pol was laid to rest on his camp bed, a tumbler of whisky placed between his fingers by one of the soldiers.

  ‘So what happens now?’ said Neil. The room was stark and fetid; it smelt of excrement and cement dust and police bureaucracy.

  Pol said, ‘Have a big whisky.’

  Neil helped himself from the bottle on the desk and sat down in front of the camp bed.

  ‘Ah, we’re in the soup!’ said Pol again. ‘Dans la purée noire!’ He rolled his eyes at Neil and grinned: ‘You have to get out of this country quick, Monsieur Ingleby. They’ll all try to get you now — both sides, after what happened this morning.’

  Neil felt a cold lump harden in his stomach, and his fingertips were minutely corrugated like lizard’s skin. He said, ‘Both sides?’

  Pol nodded glumly.

  The door opened and a square man with a large head of reddish-blond hair walked in, smoking a leather-bound pipe. He glanced contemptuously down at Pol, then at Neil and said, ‘You’re the English journalist, Ingleby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am Commandant Duxelles, Sûreté Nationale.’ He pulled up a chair and sat down facing Neil. He wore a tweed suit with an open-necked white shirt, and his forehead and the backs of his hands were mottled with large pale-brown freckles like tea stains. He studied Neil with shrewd yellow eyes, pulling at his pipe. At last he said, ‘You were responsible this morning for the death of almost a dozen men, Monsieur Ingleby. That does not include the incident at the Oued Zain Bridge. Do you consider this part of your duties as a journalist?’

  Neil opened his mouth to speak, but Commandant Duxelles jabbed his pipe at him like a pistol and said, ‘You have behaved with criminal irresponsibility. You deliberately conspired with the Secret Army to assassinate the leaders of the Arab Front. This, as you know well, will gravely endanger all our efforts to obtain a ceasefire with the Moslem rebels.’

  Neil felt his blood rise, the cold dry feeling melt away, and he shouted, ‘I acted on the instructions of the Arab Front to try and stop the terrorism! Both sides betrayed me!’ He glanced furiously at Pol, reclining Roman-style on one elbow with the whisky in his hand, ‘I did what I did in order to stop this endless, meaningless killing!’

  He paused, shaking a little, while Duxelles scowled into the bowl of his pipe. The Frenchman lifted his head and his lips turned down into a mean little smile: ‘You must be a very stupid man, Monsieur Ingleby.’

  Neil flushed and stiffened: epitaph on a bright young pundit who, at the tap of a typewriter, could make politicians writhe over their Sunday breakfasts or snigger in the bar of the House of Commons. He had done what he believed to be right, in keeping with his liberal principles, only to be insulted in a hot stinking room by a member of the French secret police.

  ‘You should leave that sort of work to the professionals,’ Duxelles added, taking out Neil’s passport and a typewritten document. ‘This is your expulsion order. You have until midnight tonight to get out of the country.’

  Neil looked at the document. It was stamped by the Department for External Affairs, the Department for Internal Security, the Bureau for the Ministry of the Interior, and bore the seal of the Garde Républicaine de Sécurité. Neil decided it would look rather impressive framed in his flat. He said to Duxelles, ‘How do I get out of the country?’

  ‘The airport should be reopening later today.’

  ‘Do you guarantee that?’

  ‘I guarantee nothing,’ said Duxelles. ‘It is up to the airport authorities. What I can guarantee is that if you’re still in the country after midnight you will live to regret it. That is, if you live at all!’ He gave Neil a sharp narrow look over his pipe, which he sucked slowly with a cra
ckling of spittle.

  ‘Will you give me an escort to the airport?’ said Neil.

  Duxelles shrugged: ‘I don’t have any men to spare. One of our cars will take you back to the hotel. You can get a taxi from there to the airport. And I advise you to spend as little time in the hotel as possible.’ He stood up, nodded to both of them, stuck his pipe back in his mouth and strutted out.

  Neil turned to Pol: ‘You’ve got to help me. That man has no interest whatever in whether I get killed or not.’

  ‘He’d prefer you killed,’ said Pol evenly. ‘You’re a very dangerous witness to what happened this morning — and a journalist on top of it.’

  ‘Will he try to get me killed?’ The cold lumpy feeling came back; and Neil stood there with a sense of nightmarish unreality: he under sentence of death and Pol with his damaged coccyx, drinking whisky together surrounded by the stink of lavatories and memories of white telephones and green figs in Athens. And Neil heard Pol saying, ‘Commandant Duxelles is too subtle to have you killed. He relies on someone of the Arab Front or the Secret Army doing it for him.’

  ‘Then you must help me,’ said Neil again, now desperate. ‘You got me into all this — now get me out of it! I want an escort to the airport and a safe-conduct on to a plane.’

  ‘The airport’s still closed,’ Pol muttered. ‘My dear Ingleby, I can do nothing. I am in a very bad odour here.’

  ‘Can’t you persuade them to give me protection in this place?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you heard what Duxelles said. They want you out of the country.’

  ‘But supposing I can’t get out of the country!’

  Pol’s eyes closed with pain. ‘Give me another whisky,’ he murmured.

  Neil splashed some more into his glass and said, ‘I helped you in Athens — you must help me now.’

  ‘Things have changed. My own position’ — he waved his hand round the grim concrete room — ‘has become very delicate. I haven’t any influence left.’