The Centurions (56 page)

“Eden has been forced to give in, Guy Mollet tried to save the situation but without much conviction. We haven't won, we've lost. An ultimatum from the Russians, threats from the Americans. I don't know what's happening with the Russians, but it seems Hungary is up in arms.”

“I don't give a damn about Hungary. Supposing we hadn't received this order, we'd now be advancing on Cairo . . .”

“Do you think that hasn't crossed my mind as well? But we'd have to be covered, anyway as far as the French command is concerned.”

“That could be done.”

“I'm afraid not. Our commander-in-chief is a graduate of the staff college, unlike you or me. He wages war with maps, statistics and sand-tables. He can't believe that four parachute regiments on their own can send a whole tin-pot army packing . . .

“So get this into your head, Raspéguy: I forbid you to move an inch. But if you want to get drunk with your officers . . . I can send you a truck-load of whisky. There's no shortage.”

“What's in store for us after this?”

“Algeria again, though the solution to Algeria is probably to be found here . . .”

“Algeria, that shit-house!”

“Yes, we're condemned to that shit-house again. Do you know the garrison of Port Said has just surrendered?”

“It's a bad business, sir, giving up like this when victory was within our grasp . . . and we badly need a victory. It's specially bad for our men. They thought they had escaped from prison. Now they're going to be taken back to their cells under police escort . . .”

The paratroops of the
10
th Regiment embarked on
14
November, a few hours before the arrival of the U.N. police, ninety Danish soldiers in blue caps. They had skin and hair the colour of butter, weapons which they had never used except on exercises, and complexions as clear as their consciences.

On
20
November the Regiment disembarked at Algiers in the dark. Colonel Raspéguy had arranged for them to be sent off at once into the mountains for he felt he had to take his men in hand again. A
fellagha
band had just been reported in the Blidian Atlas. On the very next day the lizards set off in pursuit of it.

 • • • 

On Saturday,
30
September, at five o'clock in the afternoon, while the streets were swarming with people, a bomb exploded in the milk bar on the corner of the Rue d'Isly and the Place Bugeaud, just opposite the flat which the commander-in-chief occupied in the headquarters building of Number Ten Area.

At the same time, in the cafeteria in the Rue Michelet, a second bomb went off. This one was made of the same primitive explosive as the first: “schneiderite,” manufactured from potassium chloride. The two bombs killed three people and injured forty-six. The casualties included a number of children who had their legs blown off.

At the cafeteria some medical orderlies had just laid a child, screaming with pain, on a stretcher; they were about to close the doors of the ambulance when one of them noticed he had left the child's foot and shoe on the pavement. He threw both under the stretcher and, leaning against a tree, promptly vomited. He was called Maleski. Regularly once a week, at the Swiss Restaurant, he used to take a nurse, with whom he occasionally spent the night, out to dinner. He was a happy man and until that day had never been assailed by any political, moral or sentimental problem.

The fuse of another bomb placed in the main hall of the air terminal failed to function. It consisted of an alarm-clock connected to an electric battery, and contained the same explosive as the cafeteria and milk bar bombs: schneiderite.

On
5
October yet another bomb exploded in the Algiers-Tablat bus, killing nine Moslem passengers . . .

Horror reigned in Algiers, to the sound of wailing ambulance sirens and in the midst of shattered shop windows and pools of blood hastily sprinkled with sawdust.

Stretched to breaking-point, the nerves of the Algerines quivered at every rumour, at the most improbable report. But sometimes these very same men appeared to be unaffected by the most atrocious sights and, as they drank their anisette, would raise their glass to the next grenade of which they themselves might be the victims. Then they would work themselves into a frenzy over a conversation about football.

Horror was succeeded by fear and hatred. Moslems began to be beaten up without rhyme or reason, simply because they had a parcel in their hands or because they had “a nasty expression on their face.” Europeans got rid of their old Arab servants and
fatmahs
who had been part of the family for twenty years.

“You can't trust any of them,” they would say. “One fine day we'll wake up to find our throats cut and our children poisoned.”

Then they would quote the story of the baker who had been murdered by his assistant. The two men had worked together every night for over ten years; they had become close friends and were to be seen every morning emerging covered in flour from their bake-house. They would go and have lunch in a bistro on the other side of the street, taking their newly baked bread with them and ordering some ham to go with it.

Within a few days Bab-el-Oued witnessed a distinct rift between the Moslems on the one hand and the Jews and Europeans on the other. This was exactly what the F.L.N. wanted: to divide that ill-defined zone and split up its inhabitants who tended to resemble one another more and more, for they had so many things in common: a certain nonchalance, love of gossip, contempt for women, jealousy, irresponsibility and inclination to day-dream.

Villèle and Pasfeuro spent every night at the
Écho d'Alger
offices, where there was a W.T. tuned in on the police transmitter's wave-length. They listened in to the calls and were thus able to ascertain the number of the outrages and the place where they had occurred. In November they averaged more than five a day and accounted for two hundred deaths.

In the early days the journalists would rush to the spot at once, by car, motor-cycle or taxi. There they would see a few bodies lying on the pavement and covered in an old blanket, some wounded being taken off to the Maillot Hospital, or the impotent rage of a man with a face distorted by hatred and misery; there they would hear a woman screaming as she went for the police or ambulance men with her claws. The Jewesses and Spanish women were the most uncontrolled of the lot.

Very soon the journalists could no longer bear to photograph these horrors, listen to these screams, and be taken to task as though it was they who were arming the terrorists.

Pasfeuro and Villèle had again attended a Government House Press conference. The spokesman had given a garbled version of the outrages and minimized the number of casualties; more often than not the outrages were modestly referred to as “incidents.” He had announced the arrest of several terrorists “whose identity could not be revealed,” promised that measures would be taken against them and reported the annihilation of a sizeable
fellagha
band in the Collo Peninsula, where a considerable amount of weapons had been seized.

Villèle had given a knowing smile and Pasfeuro had shrugged his shoulders in despair, which had succeeded in unleashing the spokesman's anger:

“Are you again questioning the accuracy of my information?”

“Naturally,” Villèle calmly replied, rising to his feet.

“Come and see me in my office with Pasfeuro. We must thrash this out together once and for all.”

Their colleagues on the local Press watched the two bad boys enter the headmaster's study with the satisfaction of goody-goodies who were beyond reproach.

As soon as he was alone with the two special correspondents, the spokesman changed his tune. He sank back into an arm-chair, his head lolling limply against the head-rest.

“Out with it,” he said wearily.

“To begin with,” said Villèle, “the outrages have caused seventeen victims and not six, not one arrest has been made, and the Government has no disciplinary measures in view . . .”

“Secondly,” Pasfeuro chipped in, “we got the worst of it in the Collo skirmish: fifteen dead and twenty-two wounded. The arms that were seized amounted to two sporting rifles. But what about the arms that were lost? They haven't been mentioned in any report.”

The spokesman rose to his feet and started pacing up and down the thick office carpet, peering at the two confederates through his eyelashes, which were as curved and long as a woman's; he had confused and tricked them so often that he was now reduced to treating them with a certain amount of frankness and honesty.

A minor civil servant who had embarked on his career in the wake of the Resident Minister, the spokesman had allowed himself to be carried away by the Algerian tragedy and, with all the resources of a nimble mind, with all the unscrupulousness of a pupil of Machiavelli who has pledged himself to a cause, he had set about defending Algeria inch by inch.

“All right,” he said, “there's no point in deceiving you; your information's quite correct. But what good would it do to make it public at this stage? It would only add to the general alarm. We're on the brink of a catastrophe; anything could happen within the next few days. The crowd may get completely out of hand, Europeans and Moslems may start killing each other. But we can't do a thing, our hands are tied by your friends, Villèle: they need the loss of Algeria in order to seize power . . . no matter if the whole of Algiers goes up in flames.”

“You're exaggerating, Mr. Spokesman, we only want to save what can still be saved, by coming to terms with certain valid elements of the F.L.N.”

The telephone started ringing.

“What the hell does this bastard want, I wonder?”

Since living in the company of army men he had assumed a coarse manner of speech which he felt was demanded of him.

He lifted the receiver.

“Hallo? Oh, it's you, Vivier . . . What's that? Froger has just been killed? Where? On the steps of the Main Post Office . . . Serious? I should damn well think so. We're in for it now, Vivier. No, it's up to you to notify the chief. You're the head of security, after all . . .”

Without waiting a moment longer, the two journalists dashed out of the room and raced down the marble stairs of Government House.

Amédée Froger, the President of the Interfederation of the Mayors of Algeria, had by virtue of his qualities and shortcomings become the standard-bearer of all the settlers. The F.L.N. had struck the Europeans right between the eyes. The repercussions were bound to be violent.

At eleven o'clock that night Pasfeuro, who had just filed his copy, joined Villèle in the Press Club, the only place that kept open after curfew. This tunnel, obscured by cigarette smoke, was a seething mass of journalists, police officials, pimps and informers, drug-pedlars, secret service agents, professional prostitutes and amateur tarts, the latter, like the former, on the look-out for a greenhorn who was drunk enough to see them home.

“Well,” Villèle inquired, “what's the latest?”

“The funeral's fixed for tomorrow,
28
December. The New Year's getting off to a good start!”

“It will see the independence of Algeria, that's inevitable. History, like a river, always flows in the same direction.”

“Balls!” said Pasfeuro. “Utter and complete balls, this irreversibility of history . . . Your little Commie chums were clever to appropriate destiny for themselves. What strength it gives them!”

“Do you think Algeria can be saved? Can't you see that it's rotten to the core? It appears sound enough, but that's merely a façade which is going to be blown down in the gale of the general strike which Cairo and Tunis are threatening before the U.N.O. debate.

“We've got the same number of officials at Government House, rather more than last year in fact, and they all keep sending one another memoranda and publishing reports; but the machine's working in a void, no one reads the things, no one acts on them. Meanwhile four hundred thousand soldiers are standing by, waiting to be able to go home.”

“You're exaggerating, the army holds the hinterland.”

“Perhaps, but it doesn't control a single town; its sphere of action ceases at the gates. And in the towns, what do you find? A few old flatfoots entangled in their peacetime regulations, who have got no information and are only too anxious to save their skins. The rebellion, like a worm, has insinuated itself into this defenceless fruit and devoured it from the inside.

“The F.L.N. is master of the towns, starting with Algiers itself: it has therefore won. Remember Morocco; the revolt there started in the
medinas
, after which the hinterland followed suit.”

“Why not put the army into the towns?”

“Out of the question, it's illegal.”

“But legality now merely serves to protect a band of terrorists and assassins. The whole of Algiers is controlled by a few hundred killers, as you know perfectly well.”

“Those who are in favour of withdrawing from Algeria are very keen on the legal aspect. Legality is only interesting when it's useful to us and is on our side.”

“You talk like Louis Veuillot, my dear Villèle: ‘The liberty which you demand from us in the name of your principles, we deny you in the name of ours.'”

A tart came and sat down at their table; her fair hair fell over her face, her breasts drooped and she smelt of drink.

Villèle gave her a smack on the behind with the palm of his hand:

“You see, Pasfeuro, I'm going off to sleep with her. More often than not one sleeps with whatever comes to hand.”

He rose to his feet and rested both fists on the wine-stained table-cloth:

“And perhaps it's for the same reason that I sleep with the flow of history.”

 • • •