Chamonix poured the hot water into the ration wrapper and stirred it into the freeze-dried contents. The aroma of pork and rice filled the tent. He remained quiet for a time but I sensed he wasn’t through.
“It’s more than that. Funny, no? How some things can set you thinking. This useless little burner reminds me of my wife and Algeria.”
“Wife? I didn’t know you had a wife.” I knew very little about his private life. He’d revealed only the barest minimum of personal background to apply for the assignment.
“A wife and child, both dead.”
He became silent again. I knew not to prod him.
“She used to cook over a small burner for me, not a gas one, though. She was Moslem, you know. Very pretty…big, liquid brown eyes. The French army discouraged such marriages, especially when officers were involved. Our marriage was totally against regulations, but my colonel understood. Unlike many, he knew you can’t fight for long in a country without becoming involved with it. ‘You can do far worse in La Légion,’ he used to say.”
He handed me the steaming ration.
“It had all started after I had graduated from St. Cyr and requested posting to the First Foreign Parachute Regiment in Algeria. Rumor had it they were fighters and knew something about this new phenomenon, guerrilla warfare.
“The rumor was right on both counts. Many of the legion’s paratroop officers were Indochina veterans who, as prisoners of war, had been indoctrinated in Viet Minh ways. They had abandoned the quantitative approach of the rear-echelon generals to warfare. That view was that any insurrection could be stopped by pouring immense numbers of men and munitions over a problem. These Indochina vets had formulated a new doctrine, la guerre révolutionnaire. That doctrine worked by offering a revolution of its own.
“You must see the stage on which this drama was played. Sector Q of Algeria—where I was stationed—contained several small towns, numerous vineyards, and many cork plantations. Beneath the lazy Mediterranean sun, Moslems cut settlers’ throats, and settlers cut Moslems’ throats. Yet in reality, each group needed the other. Corruption riddled many local governments, more perhaps than usual for metropolitan France, less than usual for North Africa. Algeria was something worth saving. It had grown productive through the settlers’ efforts since the nineteenth century. The Moslems had demonstrated a belief in common ideals with France and proven their courage and loyalty alongside French troops in World War One and World War Two.
“The fellaghas, the communist-backed insurgents of the FLN, promised a new order—one perfect and glorious order. This new order would redistribute wealth, integrate the society, and put incorruptible men in power. The points that the fellaghas made were valid, their promises knowing lies. But it was a wonderful banner to fight under, this dream.
“Enough of politics,” said the legionnaire, dismissing the concepts with a flick of his mitten.
“You can’t fight a dream with the tarnished status quo. La guerre révolutionnaire offered a revolution of its own, which aimed to set straight the wrongs of old Algeria. We recruited from the captured fellaghas. They were the fighters and idealists. Many fellaghas weren’t interested in communism, just a new Algeria with political rights equal to Frenchmen. I recruited a Moslem commando company. It wasn’t easy to win them over but I did. We did.
“‘Put your faith in me, lads,’ I promised them wholeheartedly. ‘I won’t leave you in the lurch. I’ll shed my blood right along with yours. Together we will fight for one country from Dunkirk to Tamanrasset. I give you my word.’
“The Moslem commando company worked far more effectively than our troops did. After all, it was their home ground. Hassim, their elected commanding officer, grew from a comrade in arms to a brother. Lean, with the chiseled features of a born leader, he had studied to be a doctor before the FLN had sent him to Prague for training. We spent months in the field setting ambushes in the wadis for FLN kattibas—companies—and fending FLN bullyboy tax collectors from the small settlements. Through Hassim I met and eventually married, with his blessing, Fatima, his sister.
“My colonel managed to clean up the governmental corruption in the sector. Settlers and wealthy Arabs alike had been lining their pockets at Algeria’s expense. Hassim and I attended to the fellaghas. Within three months, FLN activity had become a mere trickle where it had been a torrent.
“My daughter, Odette Aicha, was born at the end of my first year in Sector Q.”
He looked up at the top of the tent. I knew the light well-being had gone from Chamonix as quickly as it had come.
“The FLN, which had always spiced its dream with terrorism, turned to it full scale. The carnage sickened my most hardened NCOs. It was a sort of tantrum, I guess. They couldn’t win by vote or military action so they showed they’d be grisly spoilers of anyone else’s dream. A tantrum can wear some people into submission, too.
“They’d go into cafés with machine guns and mow down everyone—Europeans, Arabs, anyone, it didn’t matter. Fatima and baby Odette were in an outdoor café one day. Cafés were an Algerian institution, everyone patronized them. Fatima was sipping mint tea one moment, she and the baby were bloody lumps of meat the next.”
He gave a short sob, then regained control.
“I could have understood, though not justified, it being some perverse form of revenge against me. But it wasn’t revenge. They were just people in a café. Hassim and I hunted down these particular FLN terrorists ourselves. After capture, they laughed at our revulsion at their act. “That is the way to win, Frenchmen, in these times,’ one had said. Hassim had them executed fellagha fashion. They died very painfully, very slowly. I felt no remorse; the punishment fit the crime.
“The terrorists were right. La guerre révolutionnaire required the courage and insight of those in Algeria, and the resigned conviction of those at home. My country betrayed me and the Moslems that believed in me. All I could ever promise the Moslem company was that the French army would fight until a conclusive victory…or defeat. But self-indulgent France did not have the resolve of its soldiers. France, I learned, talked high principles and sought the luxury of world adulation. It was willing to conduct crusades as long as they didn’t prove too inconvenient. Terrorism put the soldier’s burden of courage on all civilians—and worse, it threatened to spread to France. In other words, France could be high minded as long as the going didn’t get too distasteful. Sordid situations required emotional commitments. The average Frenchman didn’t want the front page of his evening paper upsetting his digestion. Crusades were fine at a distance, but all-consuming conflicts were a bother.
“Eventually the French government caved in and virtually offered to hand Algeria over to the FLN—not the loyal Moslems who had stood by us—the FLN whose mindless terrorism had been decried throughout the world.
“The Moslem commando company deserted to a man. That day I found Hassim staked to a cork tree with bayonets. He cursed me with his dying breath. Painted in blood across his chest was the message: ‘This is what happens to fools who trust the two-faced Europeans.’
“I couldn’t begrudge the company. ‘Trust me,’ I had told them. ‘Trust me.’ But the country behind me had said, ‘Well, so long, have to be going now. Take care.’
“My regiment, the Premier Regiment Etranger Parachutiste did the honorable thing. It mutinied. Now it is no more—sort of institutional suicide on the grand scale. Matsuma would understand. As for me, I resigned my commission.
“In subsequent years, I have served as un mercenaire with the Sixth Commando of Katanga and for many other causes, but never as an officer. I lost any right to be an officer when as a stupid patriotic junior officer I asked to be trusted and couldn’t be trusted. I am now Sergeant d’Epinuriaux. As un mercenaire I put my faith in no one but my comrades and gauge the sincerity of a cause by the money they’ll pay. And when they betray me it will be with a bullet, not sweet-tasting poison in my mint tea.”
His face flushed.
; “I have had my fill of clever-tongued types who can find grand reasons to begin fighting for a cause and as quickly gather splendid reasons to abandon it.
“All we have here are ourselves, and I’m glad of it.”
The steam rose from his ration and curled defiantly around him.
The temperature climbed slowly through the day and next night until by the following morning it was safe to travel. Clouds seized more and more of the available sky. We glided on. Kick, slide.
The gradient, too, was increasing and we were compelled to traverse more often. Finally I had each man affix mohair climbers to the bottom of his skis. Surprisingly, we were covering ground quickly now.
About midday I spotted a musk deer trotting along parallel to us. Perhaps curiosity had overcome its fear of these clumsy green-and-white walking bundles. As my eye followed him, it caught an irregularity. I pulled my binoculars from my jacket.
“Matsuma, have a look. What do you make of that?”
He focused them on a frozen river and then scanned left and right. “Dogsled tracks, a day or two old. Probably Evenki. But maybe we should keep away from them, just the same.”
As if this new development weren’t enough, a disturbing new thought plagued me. Since we’d left the submarine, there hadn’t been a single act of treachery. We’d lost Lutjens and left Dravit. Could Dravit have been the turncoat? The thought stuck in my mind and put a hollow feeling in my chest. There was no man on earth I trusted more than Dravit. We’d been through much together. But hadn’t every man his price? He wasn’t getting any younger and it was time to think of retirement. It would be easy. Dravit was our representative on the submarine. On his say-so they could abandon us with a clear conscience. A large part of our fate rested in his hands.
No, it was all wrong. Men like Dravit never thought of retirement. They slipped into it unconsciously or went out in a blaze of glory. I mulled the situation over and over in my mind. If the little Englishman left us to die, was there any point in fighting it? No, that was wrong, too; the cold must be warping my mind. I wanted to live, to survive. Yet if we did live, and Dravit had betrayed us, life would be marred by one very large void.
We made good progress during the next day, too. All indications were that we were very close to the camp. We seemed beyond exhaustion now, but had to keep moving. The ahkio drained away our strength, but we could not afford to abandon it or its contents. With the closing proximity of the camp, I reminded the point men and rear security people to stay alert.
During one water stop, Puckins deftly pulled a rubber ball from Alvarez’s ear, causing Gurung to laugh uproariously. Puckins had been working on the trick since we’d left the kayaks. Gurung had seen it many times before. Still it was a tough stunt to do with shooting mittens on. Chamonix was clapping his hands together to maintain the circulation when Puckins snatched a sponge cube from the Frenchman’s hawklike nose.
“Enough,” Chamonix barked with mock severity as he motioned everyone up off their packs.
“March or die,” he growled in parody of the well-known legion order. He skied off whistling “Je Ne Regrette Rien” in wavering notes, which mimicked Piaf’s mournful rendition. A significantly haunting tune to hear from one of the Premier Regiment Etranger Parachutiste, it generally foreshadowed bloodletting with a vengeance.
By now fatigue and stress had made everyone giddy. It was our fifth day of sub-zero weather.
CHAPTER 22
The railroad line cut through the tree-covered contours like a child’s finger through cake icing. The absence of drifts over the individual rails meant a train had been by recently. I dead-reckoned we were somewhere southwest of the camp. We paralleled the tracks, staying behind the tree line until twilight, then pitched camp. I didn’t want to stumble onto the camp in the dark.
At about noon of the sixth day, we found the camp in a broad open valley ringed by spruce-covered ridges. Caution required that we study the camp’s routine for at least a full day. The size of the garrison necessitated a night attack. Since it was already noon, that meant we should reconnoiter the camp for the rest of the day and attack during the evening of the following day. We burrowed well back into the tree line and in pairs took turns watching the camp through binoculars.
The camp had been erected in the shape of a large isosceles triangle, with its base parallel to the railroad line. On the opposite side of the line lay large pyramids of logs. Between the camp and the logs, the line split into two spurs. A string of half-loaded flatcars, together with a wood-burning locomotive, rested on the outer spur. The sides of the triangle stretched roughly 250 yards on each side and 150 yards at the base. The triangle had been truncated with internal fences into three bandlike sections. An empty parade ground, scarred by half-track treadmarks formed the base section. Four prison barracks, a mess hall, and some other buildings composed the waist section. We had no trouble identifying each of the commandant’s, officers’, and guards’ quarters in the apex section. A magazine; the radio shack; its electrical generator; and a tall, well-maintained antenna were also located in the apex section.
Near dusk, four gangs of prisoners marched out of the taiga toward the camp. “March” was the charitable term; they stumbled in unison before four half-track trucks. As we watched, a woman near the rear of one formation faltered and collapsed. The half-track behind her didn’t swerve an inch. It continued on, leaving a red stamp at even intervals, from the spot where it had crushed her under its treads.
As the gangs approached the railroad gate, they began to stumble for lead position. Intuitively I knew that the first gang through the gate ate first, and the last gang through ate last…what was left. Like scarecrows trying to fly, they seemed to gain speed by flapping the black rags that covered them. Many dropped out of formation, lacking the energy to continue the race. One man from one gang was the first to reach the gate, barely cutting off a second gang. Two gray-coated VOKhk guards beat back the second gang, swinging their rifles like clubs. At the inner gate, one at a time, the prisoners were searched by two more VOKhk guards. Then they were allowed to enter the section that contained the prison barracks and mess hall. My breath kept fogging up the binoculars. After dark, I switched to the Starlight sniper scope. The scope didn’t work at first so I had to rush back to our bivouac to warm up the batteries while Alvarez covered for me with the binoculars. Using the scope, I studied the three sentry towers at the corners of the camp and recorded significant movement within the camp. Each relieving pair did the same. I noted there were lights on the perimeter but the towers stayed dark.
Reveille for the camp came about two hours before dawn. Men lined up at the mess hall and at another building, which must have been the sick bay. Apparently if a zek claimed to be sick, he lost his chance to eat. Then the men lined up at the inner gate and were frisked as they entered the parade ground. Any extra clothing was confiscated and the zek had to strip it off right there in the fifteen-below open air. When concealed food was discovered, it was ground beneath a guard’s boot.
“Look at that.” Wickersham, who shared my watch, pointed to the gate. Something shiny glittered in the snow near a prisoner held by two guards. A sergeant with three yellow stripes across his sky blue shoulder boards was lashing the zek across the face with a quirt.
“Must have tried to smuggle a knife out with him,” Wickersham offered as he watched the scene intently.
The VOKhk sergeant was built like a beer barrel. He had to look up at the prisoner—until after the savage, methodical working-over, the prisoner sagged to the ground. Another guard, a major, walked over to the squat sergeant. At first I thought he was going to put a stop to it, but he just put his hands on his hips and watched. When the prisoner passed out, the major had two other prisoners carry the unconscious zek to a building within the triangular apex section of the camp. It was probably the punishment block or “cooler.”
Wickersham watched the beer-barrel sergeant strut away. “Fellow sure likes his work. I think he�
�s got it in for that work gang now.”
Then, as if to prove his words, six of the guards hustled back to the guardroom and came out with crowbars. They walked to one barracks and pried out the window frames. The effect on the gang was visible. They slumped dejectedly. No windows on a barracks in sub-zero weather was a virtual death sentence.
Wickersham shook his head. He pointed to the punishment block. “That may be the cooler”—he swung his quivering mitten toward the windowless barracks—“but it’ll be no cooler than that one.”
It was a play on words, but no joke.
I sketched the camp with a ski pole in the snow. “That’s the camp generator. That, we think, is the camp magazine. That building is the guardroom and guards’ quarters. Does everyone understand what he has to do?”
Each man nodded as I caught his eye. Matsuma had a distant look. I guessed he was meditating his way through some samurai purification ritual on his feet.
“Matsuma, let’s keep a clear head through this. Your responsibilities to the living of this group take precedence over revenge for the dead.”
“I will do duty to all.” He bowed his head slightly.
I studied the camp through the Starlight scope, carefully avoiding the perimeter lights, whose brightness could burn out the scope’s delicate sensors. The whole valley seemed agonizingly still. Occasionally the moon poked through the clouds, but its effect was fleeting. Once or twice a door slammed in the officers’ quarters or the guardroom. The valley was so quiet that each door slam seemed only yards away.
Puckins and Gurung crawled down to the barbed-wire fence. They advanced, sliding their skis under them, with their hands in the toe straps and their rifles around their necks. Puckins cut the lower five strands between two posts on the apex section’s perimeter. He left the top electrified strands alone. Puckins’s cut breached an opening about four feet wide and three and one half feet high. He then cut through the second perimeter fence. He bowed with a flourish, gestured Gurung through, and then handed him the wire cutters.
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