Autumn, All the Cats Return

by Philippe Georget

  “My job is to keep you from getting killed, and the threat is real. I have the feeling that you’re not telling me everything, Monsieur Lloret.”

  “Come now!”

  “If you want us to be able to protect you, you have to tell us everything. Even if the idea that occurred to you seems completely preposterous.”

  “No idea occurred to me, really.”

  His denials rang false.

  “According to our information, the murderer is already in Spain. The threat is not only real but imminent.”

  Lloret took time to think for a moment before asking:

  “How were Bernard and André killed?”

  “A bullet in the head for Martinez, one in the stomach and then in the heart for Roman.”

  “So they didn’t have time to suffer . . . Do you think they understood before they died?”

  “Understood what?”

  “Who was killing them and why?”

  “For Martinez, I’m sure of it. For Roman, I think so.”

  “What weapon was used to kill them?”

  His voice had changed slightly. A half-note higher with respect to its normal timbre. Lloret had asked the question casually, but Sebag sensed that he attached great importance to it. Nonetheless, he replied directly:

  “A 9 mm Beretta 34.”

  Lloret’s breathing stopped. A leaden silence followed.

  “You know . . . ” Sebag began. “You know who killed them!”

  “No… I don’t know anything.”

  “I don’t believe you, Monsieur Lloret.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you think, Lieutenant. With all respect, I don’t give a damn.”

  Sebag knew that he was wasting his time, but he had to insist.

  “We have to arrest this criminal before he strikes again. Before he kills you.”

  “At my age, you have to die of something. You know, I’ve had three passions in my life: Algeria, women, and business. Algeria—I don’t have to draw you a picture—I lost fifty years ago. I have now had to give up women as well. There, too, I don’t have to draw you a picture. As for business . . . my doctor keeps urging me to retire definitively. My heart, it seems. Eighty is a good age to bow out, don’t you think? And then dying by a bullet coming from such a marvelous and distant past—it seems to me that would have a certain style, no?”

  Sebag didn’t know what to say in response to this foul-mouthed millionaire. If he wanted to die, that was his business. Sebag’s problem was to arrest the criminal before he made it three in a row.

  “Think about the families of the other victims. They have a right to know who killed their relative.”

  Lloret snorted loudly.

  “Please, Lieutenant, don’t give me that. Not me. And then, stop thinking that I know the criminal. You’re mistaken about that, I assure you.”

  “You may not be sure, but you’ve got an idea.”

  His senses on the alert, Sebag had the feeling he’d heard Lloret smile.

  “No idea, Lieutenant, no idea at all. Just an old dream.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Algiers, March 24, 1962

  This time, it’s war. Since this morning, tanks have been moving through the streets of Bab-El-Oued. They’re firing without scruples on French people. The residents are holed up in their apartments and the few OAS combatants who weren’t able to leave the quarter in time hesitate to fire back because they have lost all hope.

  The ceasefire between the army and the FLN was signed six days ago. A peace agreement for the Arabs. A shame—worse than a betrayal—for the ordinary Europeans living in Algiers.

  Hidden behind the parapet of a terrace on the top of a building, Sigma is watching French soldiers walk down the streets of his quarter as if they owned it. A tank precedes them, followed by three half-tracks. About twenty soldiers are advancing on foot at the same speed as the armored vehicles, scrutinizing the windows and rooftops, moving from the shelter of a doorway to that of a palm or plane tree.

  This military violence is the sequel to a civil horror. Sigma has to acknowledge it: madness has seized the city over the past several weeks. The madness of the French of Algeria first of all. As soon as the first rumors of negotiations began, terrible violence broke out. The fun-loving, easygoing neighborhood of Bab-El-Oued became the scene of unspeakable butchery. Hordes of furious ordinary citizens turned the quarter into a bloodbath. Indiscriminate attacks. Peaceful husbands and loving fathers killed people. They killed other fathers, other husbands, and also women, old men, and sometimes even children. With their fists or their feet, with hammer blows or with knives. For the simple reason that they were Arabs. Their broken, bleeding bodies were left on the asphalt or in the gutters. One wouldn’t dare leave the bodies of dogs that way.

  As an OAS combatant, Sigma recognizes that he, too, has executed defenseless Arabs. He doesn’t feel ashamed of it. It was only justice. And eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The FLN has never bothered to make distinctions, killing both soldiers and civilians alike. But Sigma has acted on orders. Always.

  He is a soldier in a clandestine but legitimate army. His acts were not blind. They responded to what he is convinced is a rigorous organization. If he has not always understood the reasons, he is certain that his superiors know why they had to kill. And Sigma killed cleanly. With determination, without excessive violence, and almost without hate.

  That has nothing to do, in his opinion, with the savage acts of recent weeks.

  After the ceasefire was announced, the OAS went mad in turn. General Salan, its leader, issued a communiqué decreeing that the French army should now be considered an occupying force, a foreign army, and that they had to fire on its soldiers.

  Shoot to kill.

  And French soldiers died. Shot down by other Frenchmen.

  On March 22, grenades rained down on the French army’s first patrol. Eighteen men were killed. The next day, the crowd fired on the contingent’s draftees. Seven boys, most of them Sigma’s age, died.

  The madness can’t stop now. There’s no longer any way out.

  Sigma feels disgusted. Tears roll down his cheeks as he watches the soldiers advance. Tears that have little to do with the heady odor of gunpowder and the tear gas.

  How did they all get to this point? What went wrong? The army didn’t side with French Algeria. Why? Out of obedience to that aging clown in the Elysée Palace. And to whom does that former hero owe his current position as the leader of the nation? To them, to the French of Algeria who raised him to power, with joy and hope, in 1958.

  Yes. Something went wrong. That’s clear.

  Sigma hears footsteps behind him and whips around. It’s only a young woman neighbor who has come to join him on the terrace of their building. He wipes away his tears with his sleeve and goes back to watching the sad spectacle in the street. A delicate hand is laid on his shoulder. A gold-plated bracelet is on the wrist. The other hand points to his submachine gun resting on the parapet.

  “So what is your gun for, then?” the young woman asks with astonishment.

  “What would you like me to do with it, Françoise? Do you want me to fire a burst and have the army destroy our building in retaliation? I’m too alone, I can’t stop anything.”

  “Where are your friends?”

  “They’ve left the neighborhood.”

  “I thought it was completely surrounded?”

  “They managed to get out just two days before it was sealed off. They were helped by a colonel who sympathizes with our cause and who waited until they left before carrying out his orders.”

  “And where are they now, those brave men, when the neighborhood needs them?”

  “They’re in Oran. Don’t ask any more questions. It’s secret.”

  They received their orders just as the quarter was being surrounded. Sigma re
fused to follow them. He couldn’t imagine leaving his grandmother alone during these times of violence. Babelo accepted his refusal. That was lucky. Especially since he didn’t like the assignment. They were supposed to hold up a branch of the Bank of Algeria. The clandestine army needed money to continue its madness.

  Sigma and Françoise look up. Two helicopters with grenade launchers have taken off from a nearby base and are approaching Bab-El-Oued. When they arrive over the neighborhood, they are met with bursts of machine-gun fire from the roof of a nearby building. The helicopters immediately return the fire. A terrace explodes and the machine guns fall silent. Perhaps forever.

  Behind Sigma and Françoise, there are hysterical cries. They jump up. The young woman’s mother rushes at them like a fury, with her housecoat thrown over her shoulders and old curlers in her faded hair. She slaps Françoise on both her cheeks.

  “You’re crazy,” she screams. “You’re going to get yourself killed by these barbarians.”

  As she passes by him, she gives Sigma a look of hatred. She’d like to have slapped him, too. Henriette Servant’s grandson, she’s known him since he was a child. But he’s a man now and he’s got a gun.

  Algiers, March 28, 1962

  “You shouldn’t go out, Grandma.”

  “I don’t have a choice. We don’t have anything left to eat.”

  “Well then, I’m going with you.”

  Henriette Servant strokes her grandson’s hair, which has been cut short.

  “You know very well that you can’t do that. The army allows only women and old men to go out on the streets of Algiers.”

  She turns off the sewing machine and puts on her wool overcoat. Then she gets her shopping trolley out of the entry closet.

  “Wait, at least let me help you.”

  Jean Servant picks up the trolley and starts down the stairs. Four floors lower, he puts it down in the building’s little lobby. He opens the door. Henriette kisses him on the cheek before going outside.

  Jean goes back up the stairs two by two. From the window of their apartment, he watches his grandmother. He sees her waiting in front of a barbed-wire barrier. A military patrol has set up a checkpoint. A soldier examines pedestrians’ identity papers while an officer scans the roofs and terraces with the help of binoculars. The rest of the group keep their hands on their weapons, ready to fire at the slightest alert.

  Jean feels a shiver run down his spine.

  After she has waited for a few minutes, it’s Henriette’s turn. The soldier studies her papers. His eyes move from her face to the identity card and then from the card to her face. He nods, hands the documents back to her, and without a word signals to her that she can move to the other side of the barrier. Jean watches the slender, weary figure walk up the street and then disappear after having passed in front of a wall covered with a big splotch of white paint. That is where yesterday the three magic letters “OAS” were still displayed. Jean is in a good position to know: he’s the one who painted them there a few months earlier. His first act on behalf of the OAS.

  Algiers, March 30, 1962

  The army has finally lifted the blockade of Bab-El-Oued. For five days it has surrounded the quarter, searched hundreds of apartments, seized tons of weapons, and destroyed the residents’ last hopes.

  Jean Servant has met his companions in arms in front of a building pocked by the impact of bullets. Back from Oran, Babelo, Omega, and Bizerte have had to wait, hidden by an accomplice in a house in the suburbs of Algiers. The leader of the commando proves to be considerate with his young fighter:

  “So, Sigma, it wasn’t too hard? Did your grandma hold up all right?”

  “She’s clearly been affected. For her, everything is lost; she wants to go to France. She says a distant cousin has agreed to put us up temporarily somewhere near Bordeaux.”

  “Don’t let her do something that stupid. It’s still secret, but our next instructions from the organization will be categorical: Every French person who tries to leave the country will have to be executed.”

  Sigma sighs. After having killed Arabs and fired on French soldiers, the OAS is getting ready to execute civilians in its own camp.

  “It’s total war,” Babelo tells him. “Those who leave will be considered deserters.”

  Sigma prefers to change the subject.

  “What about you? Did things go as you hoped in Oran?”

  Babelo’s face lights up. Omega and Bizerte also smile.

  “If you’re talking about the holdup, it was a piece of cake, yes!” Babelo said, stroking his pencil mustache. “It was as if we’d stopped by to pick up the cashbox from an agency that belonged to us. When we went into the bank, the employees spontaneously handed over the money to us. They were all supporters of our cause.”

  Bizerte had a greedy look on his face.

  “There was more than two billion old francs, can you imagine?

  “And obviously you turned all that over to the proper authorities?”

  “Not yet,” Babelo said, grimacing. “We have to put it into Degueldre’s own hands. For a sum like that, it would be better to wait until the situation calms down a bit. But don’t worry, for the time being the dough is in a safe place.”

  Omega gives Sigma a friendly slap on the back.

  “I hope you’ll be with us the next time.”

  “The next time?”

  “War is expensive,” Babelo explains. “Our needs are increasing. With the ceasefire, the French army has chosen its camp: it’s for the fellaghas and against us. We’ve got to equip ourselves more seriously.”

  As if to prove his point, three T-6 airplanes fly over the city at low altitude, making the windows and people’s hearts tremble.

  CHAPTER 33

  Gilles Sebag had already thrown his jacket over his shoulders when Julie and Joan burst into the office. They were returning all excited from their mission to South Catalonia. They’d scoured the car rental agencies in Girona and then in Figueres. It was in the latter city that they’d found the “Holy Grail.”

  “Once again, Madame Irma has won,” Joan joked, adopting the nickname that Molina had kindly given his partner.

  “Your intuition turned out to be right, in fact,” Julie confirmed. “The killer and the reckless driver are one and the same person. There is now no possible doubt. Ten days before he rented a SEAT in Girona and turned it in the next day in Montpellier, Manuel Gonzales Esteban reserved a white Clio in another agency in Figueres. On exactly the day of Martinez’s murder and the accident that killed your daughter’s friend.”

  Joan continued:

  “The guy at the rental agency described an old man with a squarish face, a full head of white hair, dark, thick eyebrows, a big mouth, and a determined chin. His description is much more precise that the one given by Mercader, your witness from Moulin-à-Vent. Tomorrow the Mossos will have a real Identikit picture made of him.”

  Sebag savored the moment. He took several long, voluptuous breaths and felt the warm blood flowing through his dilated veins. He thought of Sévérine and was sorry that he’d announced the news to her too soon. If he’d kept the information to himself, he could have returned home as a triumphal hero.

  Then he thought about Estève Cardona. He was going to be able to tell the news all at once to his colleague in the Accidents unit. Slap it right in his face. A wicked smile immediately flickered on his lips.

  Joan pulled him out of his sweet reveries:

  “Jacques is waiting for us at the Carlit to celebrate. Are you coming with us?”

  Sebag didn’t hide his surprise and disapproval.

  “It’s a little early to celebrate anything. The murderer is still on the loose, I remind you.”

  “That’s what I told Jacques,” Julie broke in. “He admitted that there was still work to do but said that was no reason not to celebrate. I
think he’s one of those people who never miss an opportunity to have a drink.”

  “That’s right, you’ve got him pegged,” Sebag chuckled. “O.K., then, go ahead, I’ll join you in a few minutes, I’ve still got a couple of things to do here.”

  Llach already had his hand on the doorknob but he stopped and turned around toward Gilles.

  “By the way, did you talk to Lloret? My cousin in the Mossos wasn’t able to reach him.”

  “He finally called me back a few minutes ago, yes. I was planning to tell you about it at the Carlit.”

  “Tell me right now, I’m impatient.”

  “Not an easy guy to get along with . . . ”

  Sebag summed up the delicate conversation he’d had with the infamous Babelo.

  “I’m convinced that he didn’t tell me everything,” he added after he’d finished. “When I told him that Martinez and Roman had been killed with a Beretta 34, I sensed that he was startled. That gun reminded him of something, I’m sure of it. But he refused to say anything about it.”

  “We’d better meet with him tomorrow,” Julie suggested. “We can’t leave it at a simple phone call.”

  “He’ll refuse, that’s clear.”

  “We have to protect him, too,” she insisted.

  “I didn’t even have time to talk about that with him. The conversation was cut short. He hung up very fast. Right after I mentioned the Beretta.”

  “My cousin told me that he’d have a surveillance car park in front of Lloret’s house in Cadaqués tonight,” Llach said, “and that tomorrow officers would be assigned to follow him everywhere.”

  “He’s not going to like that,” Sebag commented.

  “Otherwise he’s going to die!” Llach replied, irritated.

  “Somehow I wonder if that’s not just what he wants . . . I have the impression that he’d prefer to settle this all by himself.”

  First, Sebag called Jean-Pierre Mercier to be sure that nothing bad had happened to him.