Autumn, All the Cats Return

by Philippe Georget

  Gilles wasn’t very interested in the history lesson, and he was beginning to feel the coolness of the autumn evening. He’d long since turned around and was now in front of the door to his house.

  “Money has always been at the heart of war,” he said, to give the impression that he’d been following.

  “Whatever the period or conflict, there are always certain constants.”

  Sebag saw the curtain on the picture window pushed aside. Claire’s worried face appeared. He reassured her with a brief smile and then concluded his conversation with Ménard.

  “O.K., François, it’s not that I’m bored but I was outside and I’m freezing. I’m in a hurry to warm up by getting into bed with my wife.”

  “Lucky bastard . . . ”

  Sebag went inside and plugged his telephone into the charger.

  “Work . . . ” he explained to Claire, feeling that he was only half lying.

  She came up to him.

  “Oh, but you’ve been smoking?” she said, surprised. “Has this investigation worried you that much? Are you sure it’s only work?”

  Claire’s blue-green eyes looked deeply into his. Once again, she was throwing him a line. But once again he withdrew when faced with the obstacle. He didn’t want to think about that.

  “Of course . . . ”

  When he was a child, Gilles had fallen off his bike and broken his wrist. When they examined him, the doctors had divided into two camps, those who wanted to operate on him right away to insert a pin and those who said that they should first try to repair the wrist with a simple cast, and that they could always think about operating later on if that didn’t work. The cast had been enough. With his wife, he was determined not to operate unless there was no other choice.

  “Hello! Are you still there?” Claire cried, waving her hand in front of his eyes.

  Gilles came back:

  “Excuse me. Really, this case . . . We’re on the home stretch, we can’t mess up. We already have two dead men on our hands and I’m afraid we’re soon going to have a third.”

  Claire decided to talk shop.

  “And there’s nothing you can do to prevent that?”

  Sebag smiled. Without knowing it, with one sentence Claire had swept away all his personal annoyances. Now he was going to think only about work. Work, all the work and nothing but the work. He knew that there would no longer be any room for sleep that night. How could he think about sleeping when a third crime was probably being prepared on the other side of the border?

  CHAPTER 34

  The road had one curve after another. Sebag didn’t like driving at night, and the descent into Cadaqués seemed to him interminable. At the same time that he was following attentively the narrow strip of asphalt, he was looking at the orange and yellow lights of the village down below. They made the silhouettes of the roofs and antennas stand out against the dark mass of the sea and served as beacons on his route.

  Sebag slowed down as he entered the village. The bell of the church of Santa Maria tolled twelve sinister strokes. He drove through streets as deserted as those of Saint-Estève. At midnight during the off-season, Cadaqués once again became the isolated village it used to be. The statue of Salvador Dalí greeted him on the main square just in front of the beach. One of the Catalan painter’s hands was in the pocket of his suit, the other pointed down with the index finger, as if to say to him: “Yes, it’s here. You’re in the right place.” Sebag obeyed and found a parking place nearby.

  A semblance of activity remained on the square, which was protected by an immense parasol pine. A group of drunken young people were carrying on a lively discussion. It was probably about the latest match between Barça16 and Real, because soccer is now the only sport that people are still really passionate about. Sebag knew that the second clásico of the season—the summit match between Real de Madrid and Barça—had taken place that evening. The score had been announced on the radio, but he didn’t remember what it was. He recalled only having received the information as he was crossing the border. He’d said to himself that he was leaving the country of rugby and entering that of soccer. Sport remained an immaterial border between the Catalans of the north and those of the south.

  Sebag walked over to a map of the village painted on a wall. He used the flame of his lighter to illuminate it, and easily located himself. He had only to follow the street that ran along the beach. Before putting away his lighter, he lit another cigarette. He had a bit of trouble because of the cold, damp breeze blowing off the sea.

  What the hell am I doing here?, he wondered, pulling up the collar of his raincoat as he walked along. At this hour of the night, he could have been nice and warm in bed, next to his wife’s delicious body. But he’d preferred to give up cozy comfort to walk all alone through the streets of a foreign town. Here, he was nothing, he couldn’t do anything. He’d brought along his gun, even though it was completely illegal to do that. He hoped he wouldn’t run into the local police on night patrol.

  He was soon approaching Georges Lloret’s home. A police car was already parked in front of the property. He kept his distance, looking at the light that still burned in a large picture window on the upper floor. Maybe Lloret suffered from insomnia as well. From the immense terrace the view over the village, the bay, and the sea must be magnificent. Sebag thought again about his discussion with Llach and Molina. Yes, some Pieds-Noirs had done very well in their exile, but who could blame them for that?

  The light soon went out, and it seemed to Sebag that he felt the cold more. He shivered. It looked like it was going to be a long night. He told himself that his presence was useless, but that since he’d come this far, he might as well stay. He spotted some parking places in a side street that ran alongside Lloret’s house and decided to go get his car. It would be more comfortable to wait inside it. And less conspicuous. He didn’t want to be noticed by a possible murderer, and even less by his South Catalonia colleagues.

  So he spent a large part of the night in the driver’s seat, alternating between periods of dozing and others of incredible lucidity. He reviewed both his family life and his professional life and realized that everything wasn’t necessarily as bad as he sometimes thought it was. In the end, the vagaries of life were as important as you made them. A little will and determination sufficed to sweep away all his problems. That seemed absolutely clear. But he felt just as intensely that in a few hours, it would no longer seem so clear.

  Around 4 A.M., he had a sudden and brief fright. He was half asleep when he saw a bent-over figure moving toward the Lloret residence. The figure passed under a streetlight and became an old man leaning on a cane. Sebag reached into the glove compartment and took out his gun. The old man passed the property without even looking at it. He was dragging along behind him a skinny little dog, a kind of anorexic dachshund, as old and lame as his master. Sebag put his gun away.

  Around 5 A.M. he saw that nothing was going to happen that night, and decided to go home. He had a hard day ahead of him. He drove up the winding road that led to the pass. On the way, thoughts, images, and words collided in his tired brain. The luxury of the property, Lloret’s enigmatic answers on the telephone, Molina’s and Llach’s criticisms, Ménard’s history lesson . . . All that mixed, tangled, collided in his head, he was no longer in control of anything. He let the collisions go on. A regular chain reaction. When he crossed the pass above Cadaqués and started the steep descent toward Figueres, the explosion occurred. Then a calm. As sudden as the explosion.

  He’d seen the light. A simple glimmer at this point, but one that might suffice to guide him toward the solution.

  He got home an hour and a half later, bringing fresh bread and croissants with him. Sévérine and Léo received him as if he were the Messiah. Claire greeted him more circumspectly, worried by the mixture of exhaustion and exaltation that she saw on his face. She gave him a long kiss, pressi
ng herself against him sensuously. Claire knew her husband, she knew better than he did that he was finally approaching the goal.

  CHAPTER 35

  Algiers, May 22, 1962

  Sigma no longer understands anything. Unless perhaps that the French have lost Algeria. It’s too late, there’s nothing left to do.

  Two months since the ceasefire was signed, and the war continues. The OAS no longer has any leaders. Lieutenant Degueldre? Arrested on April 7 and taken back to France that same evening. General Salan? Arrested two weeks later, and also immediately taken to the other side of the Mediterranean. The OAS continues to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. Everyday it kills more. Seven Arab housekeepers killed with a bullet to the back of the neck the same day in the center of Algiers. Sixty-two people killed at the port on May 2 when a car stuffed with dynamite, bolts, and scrap iron exploded. Men, women, and even children melted into a terrible mush of flesh and blood.

  The European neighborhoods are emptying a little more every day. The French are rushing to get on ships and planes. They are “returning” to France, that country many of them have never known and that has just betrayed them. Despite the OAS’s repeated prohibitions, whole families are fleeing. The organization is striking them every time it can. The OAS is no longer an organization of combatants but a band of desperados whose objective is to leave behind them a scorched earth and as many corpses as possible.

  Sigma signed up for the battle for the honor of French Algeria, not for this nameless, endless horror.

  And yet, he, too, continues to kill.

  He gets out of the Dauphine, following Babelo and Bizerte. Omega remains at the wheel, ready to take off. The three men move toward the entrance to the branch of the Bank of Algeria.

  Sigma doesn’t want to desert. He doesn’t want to run away from the fighting. He feels bound to his group, to his companions, to his last friends in this land of Algeria. But he has nonetheless secretly prepared everything to put his grandmother out of harm’s way. A ticket on a ship is waiting, hidden between two books in the cabinet in the living room of their apartment. Or rather two tickets, because Henriette would never have agreed to leave the country alone.

  The two sentinels guarding the bank lay down their arms when they see the commando coming into the building. One of them even gives them a military salute. Sigma, holding a submachine gun, remains in position near the door while Babelo and Bizerte approach the teller’s window. Three customers, including a woman, are waiting in line. They move aside without saying a word.

  The teller has already opened the safe built into the wall behind his seat. He grabs a large canvas bag and starts filling it with one bundle of bills after another. The operation takes no more than a minute. The employee closes the safe and passes the bag, which has the bank’s logo on it, over the counter. Sigma sees his superior put down his gun near the counter before plunging his hand into the bag. He pulls out a bunch of bills that he casually throws down.

  “That’s for the trouble.”

  Then he picks up his weapon and turns away, followed by Bizerte. Just as all three of them are about to leave, the sound of glass breaking makes them jump.

  On their right, three armchairs grouped around a small coffee table form a lounge where the employees of the bank sometimes receive customers. On the table, there is an intact goblet, and alongside it, shards of glass. Two naked feet, dirty and tanned, stick out from behind an armchair.

  “Come out of there!” Babelo shouts.

  The two feet start trembling but don’t move. Babelo fires a bullet that shatters the second goblet.

  “I said, come out of there.”

  The terrified face of an elderly Arab timidly appears behind the chair.

  “Stand up,” Babelo orders.

  The man, resigned, obeys and begins mumbling a prayer. He knows what’s coming. Sigma does, too, and goes out of the bank. He hasn’t taken three steps before a shot rings out. Soon followed by a second one. More muted. A coup de grâce fired point-blank.

  The three militants get back into the Dauphine. The leader sits alongside the driver, Bizerte and Sigma in the backseat. An odor of gunpowder fills the car. Omega calmly starts the engine. Babelo puts both hands on the bag that he’s set between his legs.

  “Too easy . . . John Ford wouldn’t make good westerns with bank robberies like that one.”

  CHAPTER 36

  He woke up with mixed feelings of torment and joy, impatience and profound weariness. The day before he’d listened to the evening news on the local radio station and learned that he was responsible for the death of a fourteen-year-old kid.

  Damned old avenger. Because of him, the war had another innocent victim.

  Damned panic, too.

  He hardly recalled what had happened after his “conversation” with Omega. He’d left the apartment to go back to his car and it was in the stairway that he’d felt the fear coming. He’d even almost fallen down a couple of times. He was no longer used to death. He’d reached his car as quickly as his arthritis allowed. He’d stupidly made the tires squeal when he drove off. Then he remembered having run a stop sign and forced a van to swerve. He didn’t remember anything else. According to the radio, when the driver of the van swerved he hit the scooter. And the kid on it.

  Damned bum luck.

  Damned old avenger.

  He ran the razor over his rough cheeks. The whiskers had lost their vigor as he grew older. They no longer grew as fast, as thick, or as dark, but he still shaved every morning. Precisely because their hirsute, disorderly appearance immediately gave his old face a neglected look.

  He dressed painfully, trying to think about what remained for him to do. His mission had to take precedence over his scruples. The boy’s death would be even more sordid if he didn’t accomplish the task he’d set himself.

  However, he was having trouble recovering the meaning of this mission. He forced himself to think about those long-ago atrocities. The bodies in the streets. The smell of gunpowder and human flesh that was masked by the iodine fragrance of the sea. All that had to have a meaning.

  Damned war. Damned hatred.

  Damned asshole.

  Damned OAS.

  Sebag stared at the pavement of the autoroute. Llach was driving a hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. He passed two trucks—one Lithuanian and one Bulgarian; the latter, in violation of the most elementary safety rules, was tailgating the former.

  When he’d arrived at headquarters around 9 A.M., Sebag had run into Llach. Joan was nervously pacing up and down the corridor, his cell phone glued to his right ear. He was talking in Catalan in a worried and tense voice. He’d signaled to Gilles to wait beside him.

  “That was my cousin in the Mossos,” he explained after hanging up. “Lloret gave the patrol that was keeping an eye on him the slip. He parked his car in the underground parking garage of his real estate agency in Rosas, but instead of going into the agency, he went out through a door that gave onto another street where a taxi was waiting for him. Our colleagues couldn’t do anything. By the time they got back to their car in the parking garage, it was too late. They have the taxi driver’s number, and they’re trying to reach the company he works for.”

  “I suppose they asked the agency’s employees if they knew where their boss was likely to go?”

  “Apparently no one knows.”

  “Or they don’t want to say anything.”

  “According to my cousin, they’re sincere. He explained to them that Lloret was in grave danger and that they themselves were risking big problems if they hid anything. Lloret’s secretary gave them her boss’s appointment book, but the page for today had been torn out. All she remembers is that Lloret had an appointment with a major Argentine customer. In Girona or Figueres, she doesn’t quite remember.”

  Llach slowed down as he approached the Boulou toll plaz
a, the last stop before the Spanish border.

  “My cousin is waiting for us at the La Jonquera toll plaza. The patrols in Figueres and Girona are on alert; they’ve got the taxi’s number. All we can do now is cross our fingers.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’m going to do it for both of us. At the speed you’re driving, I’d prefer you to use both your hands in the usual way.”

  Algiers, June 12, 1962

  “Jean . . . I smell trouble.”

  Standing behind the bar, Charles, the owner of the bistro, is watching the action in the street. Jean Servant goes over to the window. About thirty gendarmes are taking up a position behind parked cars.

  He turns his head and sees that the end of the Rue Michelet is blocked by tanks.

  “Do you think it’s for me?”

  Charles shrugs his broad, former wrestler’s shoulders. Apart from a sleeping drunk, Jean is the only customer in the bistro. Out on the street, a bullhorn is conveying orders to them.

  “In the name of the high commissioner, we ask all customers of this café to come out holding their identity papers in their hands and keeping their hands high.”

  Jean moves away from the window but continues to watch the street from a distance. All the gendarmes have aimed their rifles toward the bar, their fingers on the trigger. Even if Le Populo has long been known to be a lair of OAS activists, this is not an ordinary papers check. The gendarmes don’t act at random. They have precise information. They’re looking for someone. Something. Sigma. Money. Weapons.

  “Do you have your papers, Charles?”

  The owner opens a drawer at the other end of the bar. He takes out an old, tattered ID card and shows it to Jean.

  “Good. You’d better leave, then.”

  Charles comes around the bar and stops in front of the drunk sleeping off his anisette. He points to him.