Autumn, All the Cats Return

by Philippe Georget

“What about him?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Not really. He’s some poor devil who moved into the neighborhood a few months ago. When he’s drunk, he tells everybody his story. He was a colonist in the interior. One day he found his house burned down. His wife and his children died inside it. Burned to a crisp by the FLN.”

  “Well, leave him alone then. They won’t do anything to him.”

  Jean has other plans for this unfortunate fortuitous companion, but he can’t say what they are. Not even to Charles.

  The old man has left his hotel in La Jonquera without regrets. Now he’s driving through the suburbs of Girona. As before each operation, he feels calm. He used to remain calm afterwards, too. Now he’s old. He has less control over what follows, his stomach that cramps and his hands that tremble. He feels terrible when he thinks about the kid on the scooter.

  Once his old accounts are settled, he’ll have to pay this new debt.

  He has no trouble finding a parking place in a shopping area in Girona. He parks his rental car. Again, he has chosen a small, common model. A white Fiat Uno. As a precaution, he has dropped his Spanish name. Even if the French police investigation doesn’t seem to be advancing very fast, he prefers to be careful. He made his appointment with Babelo under his Argentine name. Juan Antonio Guzman. He likes this name. And not only because he’s used to it. He finds it chic.

  His rheumatism makes getting his stiff carcass out of the car a torture. He has the feeling that the illness has gotten worse since his return to the Old World. A day will come when just breathing will make him wince with pain.

  He takes the bridge over the Onyar, the river that runs along the edge of the old quarter of Girona. The ancient buildings are huddled along its bank. Reassured by the lofty, protective presence of the Santa-Maria cathedral, their pastel-colored façades are bathed in the autumnal sun, shamelessly contemplating their reflections in the clear water of the river. The laundry hanging on the half-open windows reminds him of certain mornings in Bab-El-Oued.

  After crossing the town of Boulou on the Tech River, the A9 autoroute climbs the slopes of the Albères range toward the Le Perthus pass. Llach is still driving at the same speed. Speedometer steady at a hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. Sebag uncrosses his fingers and dials Gérard Mercier’s number. He has to act quickly. In a few minutes his call will pass through the Spanish telephone system, which will cost him extra. He dispenses with the usual polite chitchat.

  “You didn’t tell me everything about the Babelo commando’s actions during the last weeks of the Algerian War.”

  “ . . . ”

  “In addition to attacks on Arabs and operations against the barbouzes, they committed a few holdups.”

  “It didn’t occur to me that that might be important. All the clandestine armies resorted to that kind of thing to get the money necessary to continue the struggle. It was pretty common.”

  “It was also common, I assume, that some uncontrolled groups started showing a little too much zeal in that area?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That kind of operation sometimes leads to a career . . . ”

  “I still don’t see.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  After a long hesitation, Mercier finally replies:

  “That’s possible. During those last weeks, they wouldn’t have been the only ones who were quietly preparing for their . . . new lives, let’s say.”

  The puzzle that Sebag is trying to fit together is still far from complete but the main pieces are beginning to fall into place.

  The owner of Le Populo comes over to Jean Servant.

  “You do know that there’s a back door that opens onto the alley?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “The gendarmes are probably waiting for you at each end of the alley, but not necessarily behind the door. Or in front of the service entrance to the building next door . . . If you slip out on one side and in on the other, they won’t see you.”

  “The problem is that they must know my name and my address, and they’re probably already at my apartment.”

  Charles shrugs his broad shoulders. Then he holds out his hand.

  “I wish you luck, my friend.”

  “Thanks. Can you do me one last favor?”

  “Gladly.”

  He points to the drunk, who is still asleep.

  “Don’t tell them that there are still two of us in here.”

  “O.K.”

  Llach lowers his speed to below a hundred kilometers an hour to cross the border post at Le Perthus. Last year, you still had to drive through very slowly and show your papers to the customs officials. But the European Commission made it clear that it considered that kind of border crossing outdated. Within a year, the police huts and customs posts were shut down. As a result, traffic moves much more smoothly, especially in the summer.

  “Do you think we’ll get there in time?” Joan asks.

  “Get where in time?”

  That’s really the question . . .

  He contemplates the buildings of medieval Girona. He’s ahead of time and is taking the opportunity to enjoy the sun that is warming the bones of his old back. He has an appointment on the other side of the bridge, in the Barri Vell, the old quarter, which has now become the main attraction of Girona. Babelo must have made some fabulous deals there, he says to himself.

  It was not easy to get this appointment. He had to pass himself off as a rich Argentine who wanted to retire in the land of his Spanish ancestors. He even presented a false family tree going back to the eighteenth century. Thanks to a few accomplices in his adopted country, he added to his file a very impressive bank statement. Babelo couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a large profit.

  After all, it’s only fair.

  The owner of Le Populo shakes Sigma’s hand again and then goes out of the bar, his hands in the air. The three gendarmes immediately point their weapons at him and take him behind the shelter of the armored vehicles. Their leader takes his papers to examine them.

  Jean draws the gun he’s stuck under his belt. He’s had it on him ever since he joined the OAS. He even sleeps with it. It’s his mistress. He cocks the Beretta and aims it at a gendarme only half hidden behind a Chevrolet. He fires and hits his target.

  Intense gunfire immediately responds, but he is already lying on the floor. The windows explode, and the big mirror behind the bar does, too. The drunk opens one eye, snorts, and then goes back to sleep. Jean crawls to the back room. There he picks up the backpack he brought the day before in preparation for an operation planned for that afternoon. He hefts it and laughs. A good five pounds of dynamite; that will do the trick.

  Sheet metal rectangles, billboards, and trucks—that’s all you see of La Jonquera when you drive past it on the autoroute. Llach stops at the toll plaza. He pays, asks for a receipt, and then parks the car on the little lot located just beyond the empty police huts. A blue and white vehicle belonging to the Mossos d’Esquadra is waiting for them. A policeman in uniform is leaning on it.

  “That’s Jordi, my cousin,” Llach says.

  The two French inspectors get out and greet their colleague. Llach gives him a hug, Sebag shakes his hand.

  We have the address for the meeting,” Llach’s cousin tells them, signaling them to get into their car. He sits in the back.

  “You can follow our car, Joan. We’re going to Girona.”

  The cousin has spoken in Catalan. Short sentences and simple words, Sebag has understood. The Mossos’ car turns on its siren and gets on the autoroute. Llach stays right behind it.

  Jordi continues his explanations, but this time Joan is forced to translate:

  “The Girona police found the taxi parked in front of a bar. The driver was inside drinking coffee. Lloret had given him a hundred Euros not to pick up
his phone for at least an hour. But he didn’t hesitate to give them the address where he left Lloret. It‘s in the old quarter, a palatial house that’s for sale. It will take us half an hour to get there, but a Girona patrol is on its way and will get there before we do.”

  Then Sebag presents his own conclusions. In his view, the robberies allowed the Babelo commando to build up a considerable pile of loot and that is what made it possible for Lloret, Roman, and Martinez to make their investments after they left Algeria. Lloret became a very rich developer and Roman a prosperous auto salesman. Only Martinez had not succeeded in turning his nest egg to good account.

  “Do you really think this vengeance is just a matter of money?” Llach asks skeptically.

  “That’s not really what I mean, no.”

  Sebag hesitates to reveal more. He has pushed his reasoning further and the hypothesis he’s worked out seems persuasive to him. But for the moment it’s not based on anything tangible. What he’s convinced of is that the most ferocious and tenacious hatreds always arise within one’s own family. In one’s own camp.

  The explosion has made every wall in the area around the bar tremble. Sent flying by the force of the blast, one of the café’s tables has landed on the windshield of a car behind which a cluster of gendarmes is hiding. They remain prudently in its shelter until the smoke dissipates.

  Then the lieutenant commanding the group stands up. In the street, frightened faces appear at apartment windows whose glass has been blown out. Every time he meets someone’s eyes, the lieutenant sees the face immediately disappear behind the walls. A rapid reflex. Like those hairy insects that roll up in a ball as soon as you touch them. Millipedes, he seems to recall. The term often came up in the crossword puzzles his father used to like to do.

  The lieutenant signals to his troops that they should come out from behind their makeshift shelter. He assigns two men to move toward the café. Glass fragments crackle under their thick, tough soles. Le Populo is no more than a pile of iron and wood, from which a few wisps of smoke emerge here and there. The two men advance very slowly, their guns pointed toward the unknown. The lieutenant gives another sign and two more men start to follow them at a distance of three meters.

  They are crossing the city of Figueres and its barriers of buildings when Gilles’s cell phone vibrates in his hand. Ménard’s name is displayed on the screen. He hesitates. The conversation is likely to be long and expensive. Too bad!

  “I’ve got something new,” Ménard says, excitedly. “The journalist I was talking to you about last night has just called me back: now I know who Manuel Esteban is . . . ”

  Gilles doesn’t tell him that he thinks he knows, too. He’s not sure of anything. So why throw cold water on his colleague?

  “I’m listening.”

  “Manuel Esteban is a former OAS activist who fled Algeria during the final battles. He took refuge in Spain, but remained there only a few months. Then, along with other members of the OAS, he left for Argentina. He reappears in the 1960s. He has a new identity, and under the name of Juan Antonio Guzman, he is supposed to have been a member of the famous Death Squads, the nebulous, clandestine groups responsible for murdering dozens of left-wing opponents. But do you know the best thing about this Esteban-Guzman?”

  This time Sebag can’t resist revealing to Ménard the name that is haunting him. After a few seconds of silence, his colleague said, an aggravated voice:

  “One sometimes wonders what use it is to work with you . . . ”

  The old man has gotten a little lost in the streets of medieval Girona. He has had to ask directions twice, and this time he’s late. He doesn’t like that. Fortunately, he finally finds Ferran el Catòlic Street. The house he’s supposed to want to buy doesn’t flaunt ostentatious luxury on its street side. However, the façade of stones polished by time and wind conceals—he knows, because Georges has sent him numerous photos—a regular little palace. Ten rooms, each with a marble fireplace, are arranged around a patio carpeted with grass and flowers. He approaches the massive wooden door and rings the bell. He smiles at the cold eye of a surveillance camera. Even though he doesn’t hear a chime behind the thick walls, he doesn’t have to wait long. The metallic click of a latch resounds joyfully in his ear. Then he recognizes a voice coming from another age, another time, another life:

  “I’m here: come in, it’s open.”

  As if he needed to support himself on something, the old man rests a sclerotic elbow on the lens of the camera. He takes advantage of this to use his other hand to draw the old pistol he took with him when he left Algeria. His only souvenir of his country.

  Banging, screeching, belching, the café seems to be groaning with surprise and pain. It’s bleeding. The soldiers advance cautiously. The smoke is still thick. It clouds their vision, deforming lines already twisted by the explosion.

  A young gendarme stumbles over two soft legs lying on the ground. He crouches, puts his hand on a shoe and, in the persistent fog, moves his fingers carefully up the fabric of the pants. He follows the tibia, recognizes first the knee, then the thigh, then . . . nothing. His hand sinks into a red, gelatinous mass. He abruptly stands up and turns aside to vomit. A fellow gendarme calls out in a trembling voice:

  “Lieutenant . . . ”

  The officer is already behind him.

  “Is that him?”

  “Hard to say.”

  Despite their efforts, the gendarmes find no other part of the corpse. The body has been pulverized. The liquid dripping from the ceiling is a mixture of water from a broken pipe and sticky blood. A quick examination shows that the victim was wearing a belt full of dynamite. Behind the bar, the gendarmes find a backpack. It contains identity papers in the name of Jean Servant, born in Algiers in 1942. The investigation goes no further.

  A few weeks later, the last French soldier will leave independent Algeria.

  Georges Lloret is waiting in the middle of the patio, sitting on the edge of a little stone fountain.

  He smiles.

  He knows.

  Jean advances slowly and looks at the man facing him. Wrinkles have appeared on his face but haven’t altered its harmony. His mane of white, swept-back hair bares a rectangular forehead creased by furrows. His long, slender nose connects two eyes, sparkling with cunning and satisfaction, to his mouth, which is still greedy.

  “Hello, Sigma,” Lloret says.

  “Hello, Babelo.”

  “I’m surprised to see that you’re alive.”

  “You surprised me a lot, too.”

  “I suspected I would.”

  After Ménard’s call, Sebag tells Joan everything, and then Joan translates it for his cousin. Then no one speaks for a moment. His jaw set and his hands gripping the steering wheel, Joan stares at the road and the back of the car in front of him. For their part, Sebag and Jordi try not to think of anything.

  They know that they’ll arrive too late. The only thing they can still hope for is to receive a call informing them that the patrol of the Mossos of Girona has succeeded in preventing another murder. But the damned telephone refuses to ring. The cousin looks at his cell phone every ten seconds, but no call comes through, even though he has good reception.

  Lloret’s smile grows wider, making two dimples appear on his crumpled cheeks.

  “It’s been a long time . . . When did you finally understand?”

  Jean does not reply. He doesn’t want to tell him. He has no desire to talk here and now about his Gabriella. About how his granddaughter patiently taught him about computers and how one day he’d had the idea of Googling the names of his former associates. How he had discovered their current affluence and how, little by little, doubt had crept into him. A doubt that had ended up disturbing the tranquility of his old age.

  “I understood that you betrayed me, and worse than that, you betrayed our cause.”

 
Lloret’s mouth tenses.

  “We fought for French Algeria with passion and sincerity. Just as you did. No less. We just realized sooner than you did that it was all over and tried to prepare for our lives afterward. We gave the money from the first robberies to the Organization. And then we started keeping some of it. And then more and more.”

  “Without telling me.

  Lloret sniggers.

  “And if we had?”

  Jean’s dark eyes plunge deep into his former boss’s Mediterranean blue ones.

  “I’d have killed you,” he acknowledges.

  “You see: we had no choice.”

  “You didn’t have to finger me to the gendarmes.”

  “Maybe . . . ”

  Lloret seems to reflect for a few seconds. As if fifty years afterward he’s still weighing the pros and cons.

  “I knew that despite the anarchy that was raging in Algiers, the army was after us and that it was getting dangerously close. We weren’t ready yet to go back to France. We needed a little more time. We put the gendarmes on your trail and that was enough. I always had the feeling—from the moment I met you—that you had a taste for martyrdom. I gave you an opportunity to sacrifice yourself for French Algeria.”

  Lloret sniggers again.

  “I thought you’d taken advantage of that opportunity. It was a great explosion. A death worthy of a hero. Too bad . . . ”

  “Too bad for you: I’ve come here to kill you.”

  “As if I didn’t know that!”

  Lloret slowly gets to his feet. Despite his eighty years, he holds himself very erect. His hand moves his jacket aside and caresses the gun that he’s stuck under his belt.

  Jean’s eyes light up. He smiles.

  “I see you still like westerns.”

  “Still.”

  “There aren’t many of those these days.”

  “That’s true. But so many were made during the years of our youth. I watch one every Friday night. I have a special room in the house, a home cinema with Dolby stereo sound. It’s great.”