The Praetorians (36 page)

On the death of his father he had come back to Tiradent and had donned the long blue-and-white robe and the black turban. He taught his own version of the Koran and, mingling the magic secrets of his ancestors with a few prescriptions of modern medicine, had started curing the sick.

He was accused of poisoning another great marabout belonging to the rival Tidjiana sect, whose influence clashed with his own. But since Sidi Ahmou had straight away shown himself to be extremely amenable in relation to the French authorities, he was never bothered and one day even received the Légion d'Honneur from the hands of a Minister who was passing through.

Twenty thousand followers rallied in his name, all of whom
wore his amulet in leather bags hung round their necks. They were mainly nomads who roamed periodically as far as Spanish Rio de Oro, where arms are to be found at a reasonable price provided the retailers are assured that they will forthwith be exported into the French zone. A year earlier a man had come from Algiers with greetings from one of the sheik's former friends in France, old Maieri, who was now in Tunis as one of the leaders of the rebellion. The man had stayed on. He was known by the name of One-eyed Abdallah, because he had lost an eye in the war.

Being gifted as an organizer, he had rapidly become the sheik's adviser and secretary.

To inspect the
zaouia'
s followers and collect their subscriptions he roamed all over the French and Spanish Sahara.

One evening, when One-eyed Abdallah had just come back from one of these long journeys, he had said to the sheik:

“Ahmou, the time has come to stir the south up against the French. But first the organization must be put on a sound basis, and for that we'll have to cut off a few tongues that are wagging a bit too freely.”

Two rich merchants of M'Zil were seized with vomiting fits and died within a few days of each other, in the same way as the old Tidjiana marabout. The caid of the Imeraden tribe was killed in mysterious circumstances. A quarrel over money or some woman, the investigating officers concluded. A week earlier they had received complaints from some men of his tribe, some of them accusing him of having raped a young girl, others of having demanded substantial sums of money from them “so as to go and drink wine from Paris.” It was One-eyed Abdallah who had drawn up the list of these complaints.

At Milsa two
harratins
, two Negroes who were regarded as the gossips of the palm-grove, were found hanging upside down. Since the oil men had arrived they had been earning a great deal of money and used to go drinking in the Café de France, a sort of hole in the wall frequented by the wireless N.C.O.s of the
bordj
. The captain in charge explained in his report that their former masters had wanted to punish them
and thereby make an example of them for the benefit of anyone who wanted to leave the palm-grove to go to work on the drills.

Secret dumps were arranged all over the place, arms began to arrive and also men, who were transported in the big trucks coming from Oran.

Caravans assembled at certain points in the desert, away from the wells, the water points and
guerbas
, and buried them out of sight in the rocks or sand.

One night One-eyed Abdallah brought Staff-Sergeant Hocène of the Camel Corps company to see Sidi Ahmou. The staff sergeant had to leave again next morning to take the camels to their pastures where they would stay for three months.

The marabout gave him his blessing. Hocène knew that at the other end of the Sahara, at Metlili—near Ghardaia, where the mosques are adorned with horns—his wife, his children, his father and his mother would have their throats slit if he did not prove amenable. He therefore had a personal reason for resenting his lieutenant to the point of plucking up the courage to kill him.

Yet One-eyed Abdallah himself had once been guilty of talking too much. Chancing to be in the Dra with a couple of leaders of the Moroccan Independence Army who were preparing an attack on a post in Mauretania, he had said to them:

“How can free, warlike men like you agree to being commanded by that pig in Rabat? The days of the sultans and caids are over. Follow our example and elect your leaders!”

One of the two Moroccans was an agent of the Sultan's. He sent in his report and did away with his comrade who had lent a somewhat over-attentive ear to the conversation of the F.L.N. agent.

Thus it was that Lahouène one day received a visit from one of his cousins in Fez, a dealer in dates, and a carrier like himself. Then the Adrar Camel Corps company mutinied and disappeared, the oil men were massacred, because, it was claimed, they dug up the cemeteries to defile the bones of the faithful; and finally the paratroops arrived.

One-eye came to see the marabout after the evening prayer,
which Sidi Ahmou celebrated among his followers in the little white mosque of Tiradent.

He sat down beside him, knees crossed, and accepted a glass of cloudy tea with a sprig of fresh mint dipped in it.

“Brother Ahmou,” he said, “they're pleased with us in Tunis, and Maieri asked me to remember him to you. The lies of the
13
th of May unsettled our
moujahedines
for a moment, but the fight is being resumed everywhere with greater strength. The French, who know they've been beaten, want to detach the Sahara from Algeria to save it from their collapse. It's up to us to show that the desert and its oil belong to the Algerian Republic.”

“What about the paratroops?” Ahmou asked in an off-hand manner, playing with his big amber beads.

“They know how to make the people they catch talk . . . you know, electric shocks . . . ‘the treatment,' as they call it. But after torturing them they let them go instead of killing them. They must be mad. The paratroops that have just arrived, so I was told by our friend Meskri who's dealing with them, don't go in for the treatment, but they do kill.”

“So what?”

“You know what the general is like. He's a Christian and goes to church with a big book. In a few days' time you'll go and see him and tell him that the paratroops have tortured some of your followers and have stolen money from them and raped a young girl.

“You'll also tell Father Roger about this and ask him to go with you. When the general comes to Tiradent he always stays at his mission. If all goes well,
Insh' Allah
, the paratroops will be recalled to Algiers before they do us too much harm.”

But two days later, during the night, as he was leaving Foum el Zoar, where he had come to see Staff-Sergeant Hocène who was hiding out in a grocer's shop, One-eyed Abdallah disappeared without leaving a trace.

 * * * * 

In the big hall of the
ksar
, with its flaking walls and dim flickering light provided by a portable power plant, Captain Marindelle was interrogating One-eyed Abdallah, who was tied to an iron chair.

Boisfeuras sat back with his feet on a table, casually smoking a cigarette.

On the wall facing Abdallah was a large chart on which, in thick black lines, intersected here and there by small white squares, was traced a sort of pyramid. At the apex of the pyramid was a photograph of Sidi Ahmou. Beneath it, that of Abdallah. On the left other spaces were occupied by the photographs of Hocène and the five Moslem warrant officers of the Camel Corps company.

“You see,” said Marindelle, “when all these spaces are filled, when they've been crossed out in red pencil, then we shall have finished our job and we'll leave. This is what's known as an organigram. You figure on it as the leader of the politico-administrative rebel organization, but under the orders of the marabout, in the same way as Staff-Sergeant Hocène is the military leader.”

Abdallah gave a faint shudder, which Marindelle noticed. In actual fact the marabout was merely a convenient screen, and Hocène nothing at all. The military chief was Meskri, who had come by way of Morocco.

“Now you're going to help us.”

“I don't know anything,” said Abdallah.

He had been vainly trying to co-ordinate his thoughts ever since the four paratroopers—this was two hours or five hours ago, he wasn't sure—had pounced on him, tied him up and bundled him into a jeep.

All he remembered was the strangled cry of his bodyguard Aziz as his throat was cut and, from the direction of the dunes, the laughing cry of a hyena.

“We've got all the time in the world,” Marindelle went on quietly, “and, besides, we know how to make even the most obstinate fellows talk. . . .”

“The treatment,” Abdallah sneered.

“Oh, no . . . we consider that a brutal, vulgar method. On the other hand, we're in no way obliged to give you anything to drink. . . .”

“I don't know anything; I'm merely Sidi Ahmou's secretary.”

“One of my men has gone off to Algiers with your photograph
and fingerprints. Tomorrow he'll contact us by wireless. We've also asked for an enquiry to be undertaken into the fifteen years that Sidi Ahmou spent outside North Africa.”

Marindelle called out to a young paratroop sergeant with a pink-and-white choirboy complexion:

“Don't let the prisoner out of your sight. You're not to hit him even if he insults you. But don't give him anything to drink.

“We'll be back in an hour. Come along, Boisfeuras. Let's get a little fresh air out on the balcony and open a box of rations.”

The two captains left the room.

“Have you been up to no good?” the sergeant asked the prisoner in a gentle voice. “You know, if you take my advice you'll do better to come clean. The little captain with his feet on the table, that's Boisfeuras. When his Chinaman goes into action it's not so pleasant! It was Captain Boisfeuras who liquidated Si Mellial. You've heard of Si Mellial? I wasn't there myself, but they still talk about it in the regiment.”

Abdallah closed his eyes. It was Si Mellial who had made him join the F.L.N. after he had broken with Messali-Hadj and his party, and now he was in the hands of his executioner!

“So you knew Si Mellial, did you?” the sergeant went on. “Everyone knows everyone else in the rebellion, like us in the parachute regiments. You don't come from here? It won't do you any good to conceal it. Tomorrow we'll have all the information. I say, it seems that sheik of yours makes an absolute packet with his blessings. I've heard he charges three thousand a go! Couldn't he have let you have one on tick?

“You're going to need it. . . . But perhaps you don't believe in all that old-fashioned nonsense.”

The sergeant drew out his water-bottle, which he carried in a holder on his belt, and took a deep gulp.

“I put powdered coffee in it,” he explained, still in the same gentle tone. “It doesn't taste too bad and it's nice and refreshing. Where did you meet Si Mellial?”

Out on the terrace Marindelle turned to Boisfeuras:

“You don't look very happy. It's a fascinating business, this, yet it doesn't seem to interest you at all.”

Boisfeuras tossed aside his empty sardine tin which clattered on to the uneven flagstones.

“Can you tell me what's the use of all this? If this chap Abdallah talks we may be able to follow up the thread. We'll put some chaps in clink, bump off a few others, destroy one or two bands, go through the place with a fine tooth-comb . . . and then move off. In a few weeks, or months, the rebellion will be in full swing again . . . you know, like scum which always comes back in a fishpond. . . .

“Then we'll start all over again, and then one day we won't come back any more, it will all be over. We've already lost this war, back in Algiers, on the
13
th of May. We shan't be able to win it out here.

“We've made three unforgivable mistakes: we never saw the thing through to the end; we brought de Gaulle back to power; we never managed to unite together round one idea and purpose.”

Three rifle-shots rang out, followed by two rapid bursts of a sub-machine-gun and the muffled explosion of a grenade. Some truck headlights went on in the palm-groves. The dogs started barking.

“This is it,” said Marindelle. “Let's go and have a closer look.”

In the light of an electric torch, Staff-Sergeant Hocène of the Adrar Camel Corps company lay writhing in a pool of blood. Next to him was his musket and, already covered in a tarpaulin, the body of the paratrooper he had shot dead.

“It's Hocène all right,” said a big sergeant-major of the guard-post. “And to think he was hiding out only a few yards away!”

“Put him on a stretcher and take him to the
ksar
at once,” Boisfeuras ordered. “Then send for the medical orderly to dress his wounds; Dia's at Ilghérem, he won't be able to get here till tomorrow morning.”

“What are you going to do with him?” asked Marindelle. “Interrogate him?”

“No, simply talk to him. Did you see his face? He's done for; his nostrils are already pinched. A burst in the kidneys and in the stomach.”

A little later in the
ksar
:

“Shall I give him some morphine?” asked the medical orderly, a reservist who was serving his time.

“No,” said Boisfeuras, “it's pointless.”

Hocène was looking anxiously at the captain, whose face reminded him of Indo-China. A breakdown in the power plant plunged them into darkness and by shifting his head slightly the staff sergeant could see the vast darkness of the Sahara through the window. He remembered the little bonfires they used to build on the march, made of roots which they dragged up from the sand, and the cauldron in which the water was boiled for the tea, and Lieutenant Ardes, who used to crouch over the flames dreaming of the girl he loved back in France and whose photograph he had once shown him.

The captain's voice rose in the darkness:

“Why did you come out of your hide-out, and with your musket, your uniform and red cartridge-cases, as though you were about to surrender?”