Wrath of the Lion sd-8

by Jack Higgins

  “A pity,” de Beaumont said. “Now I must move out rather sooner than I had intended. On the other hand, neither my immediate nor long-term plans will be affected in the slightest.” He stood up and smiled politely. “Under happier circumstances I should have enjoyed talking to you. We must have a great deal in common. I’m sure you’ll understand that my time is limited.”

  “Naturally,” Mallory said ironically and got to his feet.

  He had often wondered about this moment, how it would come and when. The strange thing was that he was not afraid. More curious than anything else. Jacaud moved restlessly behind him and Marcel came away from the wall, the gun still held against his leg.

  De Beaumont took a revolver from his pocket, crossed to Guyon and handed it to him. “Will you do the honours, Captain? A soldier’s end, I think.”

  Guymon’s hand tightened on the butt of the revolver and he looked across at Mallory, his face very white. Quite suddenly he grabbed de Beaumont by the front of his coat, pulling him forward, and rammed the barrel of the revolver against his throat.

  There was a moment of stillness and then de Beaumont laughed gently. “You know, our friends in Paris have been worried about you for some time now, Guyon. I can understand why. You’re slipping. I should have thought an officer of your experience would have been able to tell the difference in weight between a revolver loaded with blanks and one loaded with live ammunition.”

  He reached up and took the revolver from Guymon’s hand and Guyon looked across at Mallory and smiled wryly. “Sometimes we can be too clever, my friend.”

  “Nice to have you back,” Mallory said.

  De Beaumont opened the door and nodded to Marcel. “Take him below and watch him carefully. I’ll send Colonel Mallory down later.”

  He closed the door behind them, turned to Mallory and smiled. “And now that we all know exactly where we are we can perhaps relax for half an hour.” He took a bottle and two glasses from a cupboard in the corner and returned to his chair. “This is really quite an excellent cognac. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  Mallory sat in the opposite chair, aware of Jacaud at his back, and waited for what was to come. He accepted a glass of cognac, drank a little and leaned back. “I can’t understand what you hope to gain from all this. Murder and assassination will only lose you what little support you command.”

  “A matter of opinion,” de Beaumont said. “The only politics which seem to matter in this modern world are the politics of violence. Palestine, Cyprus and Algeria were all examples of victory achieved by a deliberate and carefully planned use of violence and assassination. We can do the same.”

  “The circumstances are completely different. In the cases you’ve quoted, nationalistic elements were opposed to a colonial power. In your own, Frenchmen are murdering Frenchmen.”

  “They are not worthy of the name, the swine we have dealt with so far. Loud-mouths, professional liberals and scheming politicians who feathered their own nests while I and men like me rotted in the Viet prison camps.” De Beaumont laughed bitterly. “I remember our homecoming only too well. Booed all the way into Marseilles by Communist dock workers.”

  “Ancient history,” Mallory said. “Nobody wants to know. In any case, unless they’d been through the same experience themselves they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “But you have1,” de Beaumont said. “Deep inside, I think you know what I mean. You learned a hard lesson from the Chinese. You put it down in cold print in that book of yours. What happened when you put it into practice?”

  He stared into the fire, a frown on his face. “It was going to be different in Algeria, we were certain of that. We fought the fells in the jebel of the Atlas Mountains, in the heat of the Sahara, in the alleys of Algiers, and we were beating them. In the end we had them by the throat.”

  He turned to Mallory. “I was in the army plot of the 13th May, 1958. They gave us no choice. They would have arrested my friends and me, tried us on trumped-up atrocity charges, designed to please the loud-mouths and fellow-travelers back home in Paris. We put de Gaulle in power because we believed in the ideal of a French Algeria, a greater France.”

  “And once he was in control he did exactly the opposite to what you had intended,” Mallory said. “One of the great ironies of post-war history.”

  De Beaumont swallowed some more cognac and continued. “Even more ironic that I, Phillipe de Beaumont, descendant of one of the greatest of French military families, should have helped place in power the man who has destroyed the greatness of his country.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Mallory said. “I’d say that Charles de Gaulle was moved by one thing only – deep patriotism. Whatever he’s done he’s done because he thought it best for France.”

  De Beaumont shrugged. “So we disagree? It’s of little moment. After his visit to St. Malo on the 3rd of next month he will no longer present a problem.”

  “I don’t know what you have in mind, but I wouldn’t count on anything. How many times have your people failed now? Eight, isn’t it?”

  “I flatter myself that my own organisation has been rather more successful. These affairs need the trained mind, Malory. Everything I handle is a military operation, planned to the last detail in conditions of the strictest security. L’Alouette affair, I have handled personally from the beginning. My colleagues in Paris know nothing about it. I work strictly on my own and use them as an information service only.”

  Mallory shook his head. "You can’t last much longer. You’re working on too big a scale. Already L’Alouette's become more of a liability than anything else.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong.” De Beaumont got to his feet, took a couple of charts from the cupboard beside his chair and crossed to a small table. “Come over here. You’ll find this interesting.”

  They were Admiralty charts of the area between Guernsey and the French coast and he joined them together quickly. “Here is He de Roc and St. Pierre, thirty miles south-west of Guernsey. The nearest French soil is Pointe du Chateau, only twenty miles away. You know the area?”

  Mallory shook his head. “The closest I’ve been is Brest.”

  “A dangerous coast of small islands and reefs, lonely and wild. You will notice lie de Monte only a quarter of a mile off the coast, the Gironde Marshes opposite. There is a small cottage on an island perhaps half a mile into the marsh on the main creek. Eight miles from a road and very lonely. Not even a telephone. There are only two people in residence at the moment.”

  “And you want them?”

  “Only the man. Henri Granville.”

  Mallory straightened, a frown on his face. “You mean Granville the judge, the Procureur General who retired last month?”

  “I congratulate you on your intimate knowledge of French affairs. He arrived there with his wife yesterday. They are quite alone. Of course, no one is supposed to know. He’s fond of solitude – solitude and birds. Unfortunately for him, a contact of mine in Paris got news of his movements last night and let me know at once. I’m sending Jacaud across in L’Alouette later today. His execution should cause quite a stir.”

  “You’re crazy,” Mallory said. “He must be eighty if he’s a day. On top of that, he’s one of the best-loved men in France. God in heaven, everybody loves Granville! Politics doesn’t enter into it.”

  “On three occasions now he has presided at tribunals which have condemned old comrades of mine to death,” de Beaumont said. “Now he must pay the consequences. By striking at Granville we prove once and for all that we are a force to be reckoned with. That no man, however powerful, no matter what his public standing, is safe from our vengeance.”

  “Henri Granville never condemned anyone in his life without good reason. Harm him in any way and you’ll bring the mountain in on you.” Mallory shook his head. “You’ll never get away with it.”

  De Beaumont smiled faintly, crossed to the fire and poured more cognac into his glass. “You think not?”
He swallowed a little of the cognac and sighed. “I will postpone your execution till this evening. By that time Jacaud will have returned. It will give me some satisfaction in sending you to your death with the knowledge that Henri Granville has preceded you.”

  “Which remains to be seen,” Mallory said.

  De Beaumont turned and indicated a tattered battle standard hanging above the fireplace. “An ancestor of mine carried that himself at Waterloo when his standard-bearer was shot. It was with me at Dien-Bien-Phu. I managed to hang on to it during all those bitter months of captivity. You will notice it bears the motto of the de Beaumonts.”

  "Who dares, wins",” Mallory said.

  “I would remember that if I were you.”

  “Something you seem to have forgotten,” Mallory said. “When that ancestor of yours picked up that standard at Waterloo he didn’t carry it forward on his own. There was a regiment of guards backing him up all the way and I seem to remember that at Dien-Bien-Phu you commanded a regiment of colonial paratroops. But, then, that’s France I’m speaking about. The real France. Something you wouldn’t know anything about.”

  For a moment something glowed in de Beaumont’s eyes, but he pushed back his anger and forced a smile. Take him below, Jacaud. He and Guyon can spend their last hours together trying to solve an impossible problem. The thought will amuse me.”

  Jacaud gave Mallory a push towards the door. As he opened it, de Beaumont said calmly: “And, Jacaud, when I next see Colonel Mallory I expect him to be in his present condition. You understand?”

  Jacaud turned sharply, a growl rising in his throat. For a moment he seemed about to defy de Beaumont and then he turned suddenly and pushed Mallory forward.

  They went down the spiral staircase, Mallory leading, all the time aware of the machine-gun at his back. The gallery was in half-darkness, the fire a heap of glowing ashes, as they crossed the hall and went through the door which led to the living-quarters and the cave.

  At the end of a long whitewashed corridor they found Marcel sitting on a chair outside a door, reading a newspaper, the revolver stuck in his belt.

  He looked up at Jacaud, eyes raised enquiringly. “When?”

  “This evening when I get back from the mainland.” Jacaud turned to Mallory and patted the sub-machine-gun. A red glow seemed to light up behind the cold eyes. “Personally, Colonel Mallory.”

  Mallory moved into the cell. As the door clanged behind him, Guyon swung his legs to the floor and sat looking at him.

  He grinned suddenly. “You wouldn’t by any chance have such a thing as a cigarette on you, would you?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  COUNCIL OF WAR

  “I had lost all belief or interest in right or wrong. In the end you believe only in your friends, the comrade who had his throat cut the previous night. That was what six years in Algeria had done for me.”

  Raoul Guyon stood by the small barred window gazing into the night. When he turned he looked tired.

  “And this is why you joined the O.A.S.?” Mallory said.

  Guyon shook his head. “I was in Algiers in 1958. So much blood that I was sickened by it. There was a young Moorish girl. For a little while we tried to shelter from the storm together. They found her on the beach one morning, stripped, mutilated. I had to identify the body. The following day I was badly wounded and sent back to France to convalesce. When I returned my comrades seemed to have the only solution. To bring back de Gaulle.”

  “You took part in the original plot?”

  Guyon shrugged. “I was on the fringe. Just one more junior officer. But to me de Gaulle stood for order out of chaos. Afterwards most of us were posted to other units. I spent five months on patrol with the Camel Corps in the Hoggar.”

  “And did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Almost,” Guyon said. “There was a day of heat and thirst when I almost had it, when the rocks shimmered and the mountains danced in a blue haze and I was a part of it. Almost, but not quite.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “I was posted back to Algeria to one of the worst districts. A place of barbed wire and fear, where violence erupted like a disease and life was no longer even an act of faith. I was wounded again last year just before General Chile’s abortive coup. Not seriously, but enough to give me a legitimate excuse to put in a request to be placed on unpaid leave. The night before I left, Legrande visited me in my hotel room. Offered me work with the Deuxieme Bureau.”

  “And you accepted?”

  “In a strange way it offered me some sort of escape. Later, in Paris, I was approached by O.A.S. agents. As an ex-paratroop officer and supporter of the original coup which had placed de Gaulle in power, I must have seemed an obvious choice.”

  “And you informed Legrande?”

  “As soon as I could get in touch with him. That was the funny thing. I didn’t even have to make a choice. It was almost as if it had been made for me. He told me to accept the offer. From his point of view an agent with contacts in that direction would obviously be valuable.”

  “And yet we were informed that the Deuxieme had no real suspicions about de Beaumont. Surely you must have had some sort of lead on him through your Paris connections with the other side?”

  “Not really. I was only on the edge of their organisation. De Beaumont’s name was mentioned as one sympathetic to their aims. On the other hand, his political opinions are well known in France. There was certainly never any hint that he might be an active worker.”

  “And all this time you were completely accepted?”

  “I certainly thought so. As a new recruit to the Deuxieme, it was obvious that my sources would be limited, but I passed on selected information of Legrande’s orders. I certainly never managed to get close to any of the really big men, but I was working towards it. On two occasions he even allowed me to warn some of the lesser fry when their arrest was imminent.”

  “What about L’Alouette?”

  “That was the thing which puzzled us from the beginning. The complete absence of information as to her whereabouts, even in O.A.S. circles. Because of that Legrande told me to inform my Paris contacts that I had been assigned to the Channel Islands merely to run a routine check on de Beaumont, just to make sure that he was behaving himself. Legrande felt that at least it would prove once and for all whether a definite link existed.”

  “Something he didn’t see fit to inform us at our end.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but Legrande never lives in the present – only the future. He envisaged a possible situation in which my other activities could prove useful. Under the circumstances it seemed wiser to present myself merely as Raoul Guyon, an accredited agent of the Bureau and nothing more.”

  “I see the old fox is still a believer in playing his cards as they fall,” Mallory said. “It shows in his poker game.”

  “A remark strangely similar to one he made about you just before I left.”

  Mallory grinned. “One thing at least has come out of all this. De Beaumont definitely does have a link with the O.A.S. in Paris because he was warned that you were coming. The one thing I don’t understand is why he didn’t think it strange that you hadn’t told them about L’Alouette affair.”

  “The first thing he asked me coming across on the boat. A difficult question to answer.”

  “And how did you?”

  “Told him the Bureau believed the whole business to be the work of an independent group. That this was confirmed for me personally by the obvious ignorance of the affair in O.A.S. circles. That as an ex-paratroop officer who had taken part in the coup of June “58, only to be betrayed by de Gaulle, I would much prefer to work with him.”

  “And he accepted that?”

  “He seemed to at the time.”

  “It all sounds pretty shaky to me.”

  “It obviously did to de Beaumont.” Guyon grinned wryly. “On the other hand, I didn’t have time to think up anything better and I did make my ow
n move against you just before they did, remember?”

  “That was quick thinking.”

  The young Frenchman shrugged. “When I saw what they had done to the radio telephone it seemed logical to assume they were still on board, that we were under observation. It seemed wise to establish my credentials while I still could and I remembered seeing you put the transmitter in the table drawer earlier in the afternoon.”

  “And you’d never met him previously?”

  Guyon shook his head. “As I told you before, only as one of a crowd. Naturally, I knew a great deal about him. He was one of the really great paratroop officers, you know.”

  “I’ve been going over everything he said to me upstairs,” Mallory said. “None of it really makes sense. In the end he must lose. The murder of a fine old man like Henri Granville on its own will be sufficient to lose him, and those who think like him, a great deal of sympathy, and yet he goes on. I wonder why?”

  “He was always a strange, ascetic man. A cross between religious fanatic and soldier. The surrender at Dien-Bien-Phu, the humiliation of the Viet camps and our subsequent withdrawal from Indo-China were a source of lasting shame to him. Like many of his kind, he swore it would never happen again.”

  “And in spite of everything he could do it did.” 140

  Guyon nodded. “De Beaumont is the last of one of our most noble families, his only heir a brother who is a professor of political history at the Sorbonne. A man with pronounced left-wing sympathies. One of his ancestors was one of the few nobles to give wholehearted support to the revolution in 1789, another was a general under Napoleon. For one hundred and fifty years the de Beaumonts have been one of the greatest of French families.”

  “Something of a national calamity if he had to be arrested.”

  “Exactly. The government was more than happy when he chose to reside in the Channel Islands. At the time it seemed to dispose of him as an immediate problem.”