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The general’s expression clouded. This response wasn’t in keeping with the accepted mythology of the regiment. More, he took it as a subtle challenge to his authority. He leaned back in his oversized leather armchair, big as a throne and as gaudy, done up with shiny brass upholstery tacs and red leather cushions. Big as it was, it still creaked beneath the general’s ungainly bulk.
“I am intimately familiar with your personnel file,” he said coldly. “Did you know that?”
“Oui, mon general.”
“I find your history—to say the least—distasteful. Your involvement with hard drugs, your incarceration as a juvenile, the fact that you are”—he pronounced the word with unnecessary emphasis—“a Canadian. Not to mention your stupid devotion to—what is that foolish instrument you play?”
“The oboe, sir.”
“Well, it’s a miracle that you are now a junior officer in this regiment. Reçu, Pinard?”
“Reçu, mon general.”
“At times I regret supporting your application for officer training. Without my recommendation you would not have been accepted at Saint-Cyr.”
“Yes, sir,” Pinard said. “Thank you, sir.” But he knew the general was lying. The officer truly responsible for his elevation was now probably dismembered, dead. Or worse, one of the two unknown miserables suffering hourly tortures as a prisoner of the Marabouts far away.
The general picked a stray bit of tobacco off his tongue. His huge seaweed-smelling Venezuelan cigar lay smoldering in the ceramic ashtray on his desk. He paused and took several long puffs off this foul log, smoke rising in a thick blue plume, like truck exhaust. He was known for his long, strategic pauses, an interrogation technique learned from the Jesuitical interrogators of the Deuxième Bureau.
Pinard waited, stifling a yawn. The rain had stopped after a three-day deluge. The usually bright skies above Aubagne were bright again. Beyond the tall window behind the general’s desk, Pinard could see a trio of Legionnaires at work wearing the gray overalls of punishment duty, their heads shaved boule à zéro. Backs bent, they raked with tiny plastic toy rakes the island of sand around the Monument aux Morts, which according to Legion tradition must never show the blemish of a single footprint, bird dropping, or stray leaf. Of course it was a highly trafficked area, constantly marched over by many boots. The Legionnaires would slave away at this absurd task all day long and far into the night; another example of Legion sketch.
A large framed portrait of Charles de Gaulle in presidential garb hung on the wall to the right of the window. More than his custom-made uniforms, Venezuelan cigars, and unmilitary girth, this portrait marked General le Breton out as a dangerous iconoclast, an officer, no matter how much he pretended to be the regiment, fundamentally at odds with it. For de Gaulle had hated the Legion and had sought to disband it after the failed putsch d’Alger coup d’état of April 1961. It was one of the most dramatic episodes of modern French history. Rebellious French generals—among them many from the Legion—outraged over what they saw as de Gaulle’s cynical abandonment of French Algeria, formed a secret army, the OAS, whose purpose it was to overthrow the elected government of France. They drew up plans to drop Legion paratroopers on Paris, intending to occupy the Invalides, the Élysée Palace, the Chamber of Deputies, the major department stores. The French public might have supported such a coup—a majority of the population favored keeping Algeria French. But the generals, riven by internal dissent, hesitated, fatally, for a few days. Meanwhile, de Gaulle acted. He gave a memorable, hyperbolic speech on French television imploring the nation not to support the putschistes, and public opinion, ever fickle, swayed in his favor. Ringleaders were quickly rounded up, imprisoned, a few guillotined following secret trials; the coup fizzled out. After that, de Gaulle punished the Legion severely for its role, court-martialing its officers, reducing its strength by 70 percent, and divesting it of its most effective weaponry.
General le Breton, at the time an undistinguished young cadet, quickly became an ardent Gaulliste, and was one of those opportunists who rose to power in the years following the coup. He hated the Legion as much as de Gaulle had hated the Legion and the Legion hated him as much as they still hated the memory of de Gaulle. To remind himself of this mutual antipathy, the general kept de Gaulle’s portrait on his wall in the spot where every other staff officer hung a photograph of brave old General Rollet, bewhiskered and quaint, his chest covered with medals earned with the Legion in Morocco and the trenches of the First World War; or Maréchal Lyautey, who had died in its service. Both men had loved the Legion more than their own lives, their own families.
Presently, General le Breton laid aside his Venezuelan log and pushed a thick dossier across the glossy surface of the desk.
“Bon, mon petit Pinard,” he said. “Retournons à nos moutons.” A ridiculous expression, favored by provincial schoolteachers, literally let’s return to our sheep, meaning the business at hand. “The information I am about to share with you is top secret”—still keeping a proprietary hold on the dossier—“compiled by our friends in the Deuxième Bureau. Dental records and a process of elimination have finally given us the identities of the missing Legion personnel. Both are problematic individuals with records of instability. Allons-y, see for yourself.”
He released the dossier, leaned back, and took up his cigar again. Pinard lifted the thick cardboard cover. Two identity card mug shots were stapled to the first page; one showed a seasoned officer, the other a common Legionnaire on his first overseas assignment.
“You’re going back, you know.”
Pinard nodded, a clenching in his guts, careful not to show any emotion.
“I mean Western Sahara.” It clearly pleased the general to deliver this terrible news.
“Yes, sir.” The whole base knew already. Even La Mogador had known last night. He was going back to hell.
“But this time, you will not be attached to MINURSO. Those miserable UN cowards have been frightened off by the Marabouts and so are drawing down their mission to the region. Apparently General van Snetters has become some sort of Buddhist monk. Doesn’t believe in violence, he says, doesn’t solve anything. No doubt he intends to pacify the Marabouts through the burning of incense and the use of prayer wheels. You will be acting in complete secrecy, a covert Legion mission, code name SCORPIO. You will report directly to me and only to me. Once in country, you will quickly establish the whereabouts of these two missing men. If they are dead, you will find their bodies and retrieve them. If they are alive and being held hostage, you will liberate them and bring them back to Aubagne to a hero’s welcome.” Here the general paused to puff on his cigar. “If they are alive and deserters . . .”
Pinard opened his mouth to deny this possibility, but the general silenced him with a gesture.
“You will bring them back to Aubagne so they may feel the lash of Legion justice. If they are alive and actively allied with the Marabouts, you will kill them on the spot and cut off their balls and send them to me in a box. These are your orders. Any questions?”
“Assuming they are hostages—will I be authorized to make ransom payments?”
The general stared at him. “The Legion does not pay ransoms.”
“Am I to be alone on this mission?”
The general laughed uproariously at this. “Who do you suppose you are, Asterix with his little bottle of magic potion? Even Asterix has his Obelix! You will take your musical comrade Legionnaire Szbeszdogy—”
Szbeszdogy’s going to shit, Pinard thought.
“—and you will be accompanied by a squad of commandos from the 4e RE. So your ass will be covered, but good.”
Pinard shuddered. He knew all about the dreadful commando squads of the fourth foreign regiment based out of Fort St. Jean in Marseilles. They were notorious, hard-core assassins, murderers for hire in their spare time. These were the same guys who had blown up the Greenpeace harassment ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985 in New Zealand. In those days the tie-dyed Gre
enpeacers had been interfering with French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. The 4e RE’s secret mission to sink the Rainbow Warrior—another one of General le Breton’s unfortunate schemes and a breach of international law—ignited a terrible scandal that nearly brought down the Mitterrand government.
Mission: SCORPIO would be a similar breach, an unauthorized invasion of UN-administered territory. Pinard could refuse to go, of course. But he wouldn’t refuse. The Legion rallying cry—à moi la Légion! Legionnaires, to me!—was tattooed on the walls of his heart. A Legionnaire in trouble could expect his comrades to fly to his aid, anywhere in the world, or else what were they but a bunch of murderers? In the end, they didn’t fight for France, but for one another, for the sake of all the stupid choices they’d made to end up here, at the bottom. This was the final distillation, the essence of their sacred honor; the only honor available to an army of mercenaries.
6.
A sweet cacophony, a kind of cloud of musical notes, muddled but pure, emanated from the practice room of the Salle des Musicians of the Musique Principale. Pinard, carrying his oboe in its velvet-lined case, approached this arcaded building from the rue Bir-Hakim along an allée of gnarled plane trees and silver beech grown from cuttings clipped from parent trees once planted at the old Legion home at Sidi, back in Algeria. The Monument aux Morts stood out in dark relief in the distance against these pale trees. Clear, peaceful light flooded the landscape. The buildings, the statues, the parade ground, everything, seen sharply as if for the first time, as if enhanced by a theatrical lighting technician from a perch in the sky. On the horizon, the mottled summit of the Col du St. Baume. It was one of those common, extraordinary afternoons of Southern France.
Pinard found Szbeszdogy at his music stand playing scales on his French horn in the auditorium, surrounded by a couple of dozen other musicians doing more or less the same thing. The Hungarian dropped the horn when Pinard stepped up.
“My lungs still aren’t too good,” he said, coughing. “I don’t have the breath I used to before the desert. Dites-moi, what’s a horn player without breath?”
“You might try the harmonica,” Pinard said.
“Go to hell, Sous-lieutenant,” Szbeszdogy said.
Pinard sighed. “You’ve heard, I assume.”
A “Of course,” Szbeszdogy said glumly. “The whole damned base has heard, just because it’s so damned secret. Volunteers are lined up from here to Marseilles to avenge the honor of the Legion. And they pick us.”
“Not that. I mean the identity of the”—he paused, searching for the right words—“missing heads.”
Szbeszdogy raised an eyebrow. “Who are they?”
“Commandant de Noyer for one.”
“Keh said that would be the case. That night at the block house. Remember?”
“The other one is Legionnaire Milquetoast. An American.”
“An American?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t seem right, Americans in the Legion.” Szbeszdogy shook his head. “What do they want with this torture? Don’t they have their Cadillac cars and their beefsteaks? This Milquetoast must be insane. Or a complete idiot!”
There had been a lull in the music, which just then started up again, the melodic, discordant cloud rising, each man playing his own tune. Somewhere in the cloud could be heard the deep boom of the gros tambour, the thunderous bass drum favored by the Musique Principale; also the melancholy tinkling of the Cochin chimes. This unusual, portable xylophone was the last remaining souvenir of the Legion’s years in Indochina, their most enduring trophy brought back from the Orient.
“I don’t suppose I could refuse to go?” Szbeszdogy said over the musical racket.
“I already thought of that,” Pinard said. “You might as well put a bullet in your brain for the kind of treatment you’d get around here after that.”
“What if I desert?”
“Now you’re talking like an idiot. Anyway, it’s not going to be so bad. We’ll have a unit of 4e RE commandos with us to handle the hard stuff.”
“Those assassins!”
“Yes, hopefully.”
“A dozen assassins backed up by a couple of musicians. Who needs an army?”
“There’s only going to be four assassins. That’s all the 4e RE can spare.”
“Four! We’re dead men!”
“Apparently we’re going to join Keh after all.”
“Old Keh. Here’s something for him.” Szbeszdogy handed over the sheaf of paper covered by musical notes he’d attempted to pass the day before, after Pinard’s interrogation. Its title: Nocturne Pour Hautbois et Coronet Français.
“You wrote this?” Pinard said, surprised.
Szbeszdogy nodded. “That Mongolian salopard died in the dark, right before dawn, so I thought a nocturne. Can you scan it?”
Pinard set up his music stand and began to assemble his oboe—as carefully as he would his FAMAS 5.56. He scraped the double reed with a small blade, sharp as a scalpel—oboists are very particular about the shape of their reeds, it is a serious fetish with them, and they will only use a special kind of cane grown on the east coast of Spain for that purpose. And of course the oboe’s three-part body must be hand-turned from grenadaille, a rare wood that comes only from the gloomy, bloodstained forests of the Congo. Reed well scraped, Pinard screwed the body of the oboe to the base and the base to the bell, fixed his reed in the slot, tootled for a moment to be sure everything was set properly and nodded at Szbeszdogy. The Hungarian climbed onto a chair and called for silence.
“Écoutez! Camarades! I have written a little piece to remember Caporal Keh, who didn’t make it back from Africa! Silence, un peut de silence, s’il vous plaît!”
Gradually the cloud of music settled, like dust from a sandstorm, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. Musicians hate to be interrupted when they are practicing.
“What, you wrote a song for that masturbator?” one of the musicians shouted.
“Yeah, didn’t they catch Keh jerking off all over the Monument aux Morts?” another one said.
“Shut up!” Szbeszdogy shouted. “Since you want to know, I asked Keh about”—he hesitated—“that incident when we were out in Western Sahara, before the Marabout butchers got his head.”
Suddenly, silence.
“And what do you think the Mongolian said?” Szbeszdogy continued. “ ‘I was drunk out of my skull,’ that was the first thing he said! Now I suppose the rest of you bastards don’t drink, but I can tell you Keh occasionally tied one on!”
At this, hooting.
“Then he told me this—‘I dreamed I was making love to my mother the earth,’ he said, ‘and she was beautiful.’ That’s what Caporal Keh said!”
“Merde!” another musician called. “On top of everything else, the man was a motherfucker!” And everyone laughed, but at an irritated gesture from Pinard quieted down again.
“So I have written this little piece in his honor,” Szbeszdogy continued, “for a comrade whose headless bones are lost beneath the sands of the Western Sahara. A brave man who saved my life and the life of the sous-lieutenant here with a couple of beautifully placed rounds from an 89mm rocket!”
At this, loud cheering.
Szbeszdogy jumped down from the chair and stepped up to his music stand. He cleared his throat, drew a breath, put the mouthpiece of his French horn to his lips, and blew the first sonorous note. The music blossomed from this simple beginning, richly complex, yet utterly natural, like a tangle of swamp grass waving in the wind, yellow and green and deep blue in the shadows of the tamarisks; like flocks of flamingos rising fantastically pink into the sky above the lagoons at Noadhibou. Then the oboe joined its plaintive tenor to the bleating horn. Pinard, surprised to find himself a better musician than he thought he was, managed to follow along very well, after scanning the notations only once. The oboe and the horn dueled with each other for a quick movement, evoking the sound of the departing Peugots, then softened into the v
ast night of the desert, the trackless wastes of sand, and three men, a lost patrol, small as ants, wandering hopelessly over endless dunes. Then came abrupt bleats from the horn, the sound of battle and the rocket blast, and the oboe joining in again, stridently, to evoke Hehu Keh’s brave rush over the top in a flutter of notes at the uppermost portion of its range—then, all at once, nine minutes after it had begun, the nocturne was over, abruptly, as if decapitated. The music came to a dead stop in a single shrill note joined by both instruments, meant to denote the fatal blow from a flat-bladed Marabout sword.
Szbeszdogy dropped the horn from his lips. Pinard put his oboe down, a look of astonishment on his face, as if startled by the appearance of a strange creature in a wilderness where no creatures are known to exist. A moment of stunned silence, then a loud outburst of applause.
“Bravo!” shouted the assembled musicians. “Magnifique!” and “Encore! Encore!” though the experience could not be repeated, not exactly like the first time, not ever. The musicians seized Szbeszdogy and hoisted him to their shoulders and paraded him around the auditorium, then someone kicked a side door open and they carried him out along the rue Bir-Hakim, tears in their eyes.
Now it was dusk. The C 160 Transall that would fly Szbeszdogy, Pinard, and the assassins of the 4e RE under cover of night to a secret location deep in the Western Sahara, a territory now shadowed by the darkest violence, utterly beyond the rule of law, was just then undergoing routine maintenance on the airstrip of the Legion base at Calvi in Corsica. Pinard disassembled his oboe as carefully as he had assembled it, unscrewing the body from the base, the base from the bell, plucking out the carefully sharpened double reed, and repacked it in all in its velvet-lined case.
10
CAP’N CRUNCH
1.
Blackness drew like a curtain across the sky in the minutes after sunset. Cold wind from the mountain sent snowflakes whirling on the open threshold. The prisoners lay in their hovel naked and freezing, wrapped only in their chains. Enforced nakedness, an ancient trick, is one of the simplest ways to control prisoners. Psychologically speaking, the naked man is always at the mercy of the man wearing clothes.