Charley lifted his head and looked at him from under coarse, black brows. 'Are you going to let these gooks kill me, Durell?”
“Why not?” You hold life cheap, don’t you?”
“Look, take me back to Paris with you, huh?”
“It’s not up to me anymore.”
“You know what el-Abri will do to me? These gooks are worse than the wild Indians ever used to be. They've got ways of torture—”
Durell turned his back on the man’s rising terror and walked away. .
It was only a short distance to where el-Abri’s trucks were hidden. The night was cold, and the wind blew sand viciously in their faces. Two of el-Abri’s men made an improvised litter and put Chet Larkin on it. The doctor walked on one side of the litter and Jane walked on the other. Jane seemed unaware of anything that was happening except in the immediate circle of her husband, and Durell did not interfere with her.
He spoke only briefly to the doctor. “Will the young man live?”
“It is in the hands of Allah. But he should be in a hospital.”
“Can we do anything for him now?”
“I have given him morphine for his pain and sulfa for infection. It is the best I can do with what we have.”
“just keep him alive,” Durell said. He looked at Jane and spoke to her. “Chet will be all right. Don’t worry.”
She didn’t pay any attention to him.
There were two trucks hidden in a narrow fold of the low hills. Durell could see the highway to Baroumi where they got into the trucks. On one side of the road was a vineyard, trampled and destroyed, the vines cut down to the ground. He looked at his watch to see what time it was, but his watch had stopped. He only knew it must be some hours after midnight. It didn’t
matter, he decided.
El-Abri had a scout car of World War II vintage with the troop trucks. A radio antenna whipped in the rear, and the driver looked no more than sixteen. The Kabyle motioned Durell into the hard back seat and joined him, lifted his arm in a signal, and the small convoy moved off, bouncing across, the mined vineyard toward the highway. They used no lights. In the deserted hills, enough radiance came from the wilderness of starlit sky to let them guide their way.
“You’re going to Baroumi?” Durell asked suddenly.
“Do you remember it, Durell?”
“From the old days, yes, when you and I hid there, with your people, from the Vichy police.”
“I have a few things to do there. And I must pick up Talek at my father’s house.”
Durell looked at the Kabyle. “Haven't you been to Baroumi tonight?”
"Not yet. I will satisfy myself there with Charles L’Heureux’ death. Then I will let you go, Durell, you and your American friends, the Larkins. I will see to it that you are found quickly by the French, before the sun gets too high. You will be in Algiers in time for lunch. I think that is fair enough, my friend.”
Durell started to speak, then was silent.
“Is something wrong?” el-Abri asked.
“You won’t find Talek in Baroumi. Talek is dead.”
“Dead? You killed—”
“Not I. Not L’Heureux, either, although his bullet was the last to enter Talek’s body. It was the rebels.” Durell spoke bluntly, his voice harsh. “The extremists raided Baroumi yesterday afternoon. I thought you would know.”
“I have been far to the south. You are sure of what you say? You do not try to confuse me—” The Kabyle’s lean face was like stone. “What happened there? You were in the village tonight?”
“We were there. That is where L’Heureux hid the money box you now have. We saw the end of the extremists’ raid, and waited until dark before we dared to go in.” Durell paused. “You know how the extremists operate, especially the terrorists. They are as bad as those of the French who lean toward fascist terror in a hope to end this war. They are equally evil.”
“You use words to prepare me for what I am afraid to hear.” The Kabyle’s face was still, his whisper almost inaudible. “Did you see my parents there, Durell?”
“I saw what the extremists did to them,” Durell said gently. “They are dead. I am sorry, old friend.”
The Kabyle sat without moving in the back of the jouncing scout car. They were rolling swiftly along the road, curving up into the hills again, retracing the long, exhausting walk they had made during the day. The barley fields came into sight. The wind whipped el-Abri’s short khaki jacket. No sound came to him for a long minute.
“I am sorry,” Durell said again.
“But they were innocent," el-Abri whispered. “They were old and they were innocent.”
“Yes.”
“Was it—was it had for them?”
“Very bad,” Durell said.
"You do not spare me anything, do you?”
“You will see for yourself.”
Nothing was changed in the douar. What had taken Durell half a day to cover on foot was only a matter of minutes in el-Abri’s convoy. The village looked the same. There were only thirty men in el-Abri’s patrol, and they fell silent as they looked at the death and destruction around them. El-Abri stopped the young driver of the scout car at the narrow street where his father’s mechta loomed beyond the garden wall. He said nothing more to Durell. He went ahead alone.
Durell got out of the car. Nobody stopped him. He walked back to the truck where the Larkins were. Chet was on his stretcher on the floor of the truck, and Jane sat beside him, her eyes anxious.
“How is he?” Durell asked.
“I don’t know. He’s still unconscious.”
“El-Abri promised to deliver you both to Algiers in a few hours. Chet will be all right, I’m sure,” Durell said.
Jane made a swallowing sound. “Can’t we go there right away?"
“I’m afraid not. There’s still some unfinished business to take care of.”
She lifted her head. “L’Heureux?”
“El-Abri is going to execute him—the hard way.”
She shuddered. “I don’t want to see it.”
“Then stay in the truck with Chet.”
He walked to the next vehicle where Charley was held under the guns of half a dozen of el-Abri’s guerrillas. L’Heureux was tied hand and foot in a sitting position on one of the benches under the truck canvas. The sergeant in charge of the guard would not allow Durell to get too near the prisoner.
“He is a coward, this one,” the guard said quietly.
“He shakes and sweats with tear.”
Durell nodded. “Charley?”
“Durell, get me out of this,” L’Heureux whispered from the darkness in the truck. “He’s going to kill me when he gets back.”
“It will only be what you asked for.”
“For God’s sake, Durell—!”
“You knew the risks you were taking,” Durell said.
“Look, I’m an American, you can’t let these gooks do anything they want with me! I got a right to a fair trial, don’t I? Look, I’ll tell you and the French authorities everything you want to know. You’ve got the money back, right? What you want is the names of the Frenchmen who organized this deal to make propaganda and get a grip on the Paris government through it, right?”
“Do you know their names?”
“Sure, I know who they are.”
“Do you have proof?”
”I’ve got proof,” L’Heureux said eagerly. His big frame looked crushed, sunken in on itself. His face was haggard in the shadows within the truck. “I’ve got letters they wrote, some of their operational plans. They’ve got some big men in the French Parliament, in the Anny, big businessmen in Paris and Algiers, too. They want the war to go on until they get a good grip on the government, see, and run things their way.”
“Where are these documents?”
L’Heureux hesitated. “Can you help me?”
“Where are they?”
“You’ve got to get me out of this first.”
“I can’
t promise anything,” Durell said. “And I won’t make any bargains with you.”
L’Heureux said desperately, “But it’s all I got left to make you help me.”
“You don't have anything left, Charley. Not even your life."
“How can I trust you, then?” he whispered.
Durell started to walk away. One of the guards laughed.
“Durell, wait!”
Durell turned, but he did not go back to the truck.
“Look, I gave the documents, all of them, to Madeleine,” L’Heureux said quickly. “She kept them in her apartment in Paris. We hid them behind a painting, some picture of the Seine, in her living room. They’re still there."
“All right,” Durell said.
“What are you going to do now?” L’Heureux asked, after a pause.
“I’m not sure what I can do,” Durell said.
He turned and walked into the garden of el-Abri’s house.
He found the Kabyle in the walled area behind the mechta. It was quiet here, secure from the whining wind that blew sand and the smell of death throughout the village. The old olive tree stood like a twisted skeleton against the starlit sky. Durell did not see el-Abri at once. He looked first at the tree, and saw that the mutilated bodies of the old people had been cut down. Then he saw their mute forms on the flower beds under the tree, beneath a blanket. He didn’t see el-Abri until he turned toward the house, and then he saw the Kabyle standing in the doorway with a knife in his hand.
“Old friend, listen to me,” Durell said.
“Stay where you are. Do not come near me.”
“I ask you to think twice of what you’re going to do.”
“Do not ask me anything. Do not speak to me now.”
“I will,” Durell said. “I’ve got to.” He drew a deep breath. He knew that what he was going to say meant success or failure, perhaps life or death. He could not remember a time when so much had depended on the words he chose and the care with which he spoke them.
El-Abri was almost deranged with grief. His anger was as wide in sweep and cruelty as the desert that had bred him. He looked like a stranger to Durell, a man he did not know any more.
“Listen to me,” he said gently. “You said yourself that they were innocent, these old people.”
“Be quiet, Durell. I warn you.”
“It would be wrong to hold my tongue now. You believe in an eye for an eye, in vengeance, one death to avenge other deaths. But when does this end, Hadji, and what will be gained?”
The Kabyle turned his head slowly. His eyes flashed white. “You would have me spare L’Heureux?”
“Yes. Give him back to me.”
“How can you ask that now, after what my eyes have seen here in this house of peace?”
“There are thousands of houses in this land where peace once lived, but they are peaceful no more. Like your house, death and grief has come to stay forever. You are not alone.”
“You ask too much!” el-Abri suddenly shouted.
“I ask only for reason and justice.”
There was silence. Then the Arab said quietly, “Those are the words Orrin Boston used, when he first persuaded me to surrender.”
“Were those words wrong?”
“You ask me to think of words now?”
“I ask you to think of what you gain and what you lose by killing L’Heureux now, in the heat of your anger, in the ice of your grief.”
“You talk too much, Durell. You weigh our friendship with words that mean nothing. You think I cannot kill you, too, if you anger me?”
“I am not your enemy. And L’Heureux is only the little finger of one hand of the enemy who killed your parents.”
“What are you saying?”
“Chop off a finger, and does your enemy die? Killing L’Heureux will end nothing. Think about it, and you will see it is the truth. But if you keep him alive, like a fatal poison, you will kill them. Keep him alive and talking, to poison them. He has already talked to me. Alive, L’Heureux is your weapon of vengeance. Kill him, and you do only what your enemies would want you to do, what they would do themselves if they had him.”
The Kabyle came out of the doorway and crossed the garden. His tall, thin figure moved stiffly and mechanically. He kept the knife in his hand. He stood before Durell and his face in the starlight was a face of stone, ravaged by wind and sand. He put the knife at Durell’s throat. Durell did not step back. He felt the sharp pricking of the point as it cut into his skin.
“My way is clear. Do not confuse me!”
“I will talk until you cut my throat,” Durell said.
The pressure of the knife increased momentarily.
Durell felt a thin, warm trickle of blood run down his neck. He stood still. He heard the ragged breathing of the Kabyle. El-Abri’s eyes glistened unnaturally in the dim light.
“I swore to my dead father and mother—”
“You swore vengeance. But L’Heureux did not kill them."
“He was one of those who did.”
“Only a small man, a tool, an agent of others.”
El-Abri hesitated. “That much I know to be true.”
“There is more truth in the rest of what I will say.”
The Kabyle trembled. “You are a brave man, Durell.”
“It is only that I know I am right.”
The knife was taken away from his throat.
Durell did not dare let his relief show in any relaxation of his face, his body, or his voice.
“Sit down,” he said. “There is time yet. Once you were willing to surrender to the French because you found yourself out of sympathy with certain factions who seemed to be gaining control of the Algerian independence movement. You disapproved of their terror methods, of their implacable refusal to negotiate and compromise. You thought it was wrong for the extremists to murder Moslem Algerians here and in France simply because they saw some reason in the French side, too. Now their terror has visited you personally, giving you a grievous loss. You see with your own eyes what this war has done, turning men into savages, killing the innocent, bathing the land in senseless blood.”
“The French have been equally guilty,” el-Abri said.
“There is still a majority of Frenchmen who seek a reasonable solution. All it requires is for passion to be controlled and rightful claims to be weighed in justice. No problem is beyond solution by compromise and calm judgment. You saw that once, when you were willing to surrender. You see it now.”
“No.”
“Baroumi can be made into a trap for those who push this war to excess for their own selfish ends. There are men who are greedy for power on both sides. In either case, be it one kind of dictatorship or another, your people will lose, and the entire free world will lose.”
“What can one do?” the Kabyle said quietly. He had stopped trembling. He put the knife away. “You offer no solution.”
“You can lay down our arms on honorable terms, as Orrin Boston suggested. You agreed once, and you were betrayed by L’Heureux. But you can turn L’Heureux over to the proper authorities. If you torture and kill him, you accomplish only what your enemies wish—to stop his mouth and wipe him from the earth. But if he names the names of our true enemies—yours and mine, Hadji—and lives to charge them with his own tongue, then the most good will be accomplished. I want to expose the cunning, greedy men on both sides who fatten on violence and terror, wherever it is. You and I are not enemies. We fight for the same ends. For peace, for the right of a man to walk the world in secure dignity.”
“And if these men are exposed by what L’Heureux knows?”
“You said yourself that it may only be a straw. A small thing, perhaps. But can we say which straw will tip the scales toward a better world?”
El-Abri walked to the olive tree near the garden wall and looked down at the two bodies under the blanket by the flower bed. He stood with his back to Durell for a long time. The village was silent. There was only the endless wind in the
upper fronds of the date palms nearby. Durell said nothing more. He waited.
El-Abri spoke in a strangled voice. “No.”
He turned and walked to the garden gate. His figure was tall and stiff. He carried himself strangely in his angry grief. “Your talk is not for me, Durell. The burdens of the world are not my world. My people are dead and I have in my hands the man who helped to kill them."
“Your people are dead and the burden is yours,” Durell said. “If you refuse it, you are also responsible, and they died for nothing.”
El-Abri was at the gate. Durell felt the exhaustion of defeat move over him like a great, engulfing wave. He looked down at his wounded hand. It was bleeding again, and the pain was severe. He watched a drop of his blood fall upon the dry soil of the garden. It didn’t matter. He had fought many battles. If he lost this one, it would not bring the world down in crashing flames.
El-Abri halted. His tall figure seemed to sway. He took the knife and held it in both hands, looking at it. The starlight winked on the cold steel blade.
He turned to Durell. Durell waited.
Suddenly the Kabyle drove the knife against the stone garden wall. The blade shattered and broke with a high, clear, ringing sound. The point fell to the earth. El-Abri dropped the hilt after it and turned back to Durell.
"You can have your prisoner. And you can take me and my men with you.”
Chapter Twenty-one
ALGIERS sparkled in the evening sun like a handful of jewels dropped by a careless giant between the sea and the Sahel Hills. It did not look like a city at war. The Rue Michelet was crowded, the narrow streets were clogged With noisy traffic of Renaults and motorbikes; the terraced stairways angling between the villas that hung between sea and sky were thronged with people hurrying home from work or shopping. The only evidence of war was in a roll of barbed wire guarding a bank entrance near the terrace café where Durell sat, and the colorful uniforms and green berets of the French elite paratroopers.
He was waiting for Monsieur Brumont, due from Paris. He had checked into the St. George shortly after noon, consulted with various officials in the sprawling complex of the Governor-General's building. The surrender of el-Abri, the recovery of a quarter of a million American dollars in rebel territory, and the capture of Charles L’Heureux had combined to send officers and politicians there into a state of excitement that had kept the wires to Paris sizzling hot.
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