Pol took out a plastic disc with a red and blue stripe. The officer saw it and saluted at once: ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.’ He turned and signalled to his men. ‘You’ve chosen a nice time to visit us!’ he added, leading the way up the steps.
‘It is very bad?’ said Pol.
The officer pulled a wry face: ‘There’s been a lot of effervescence — fighting all last night. They’ve been killing the Arabs off like flies. And it’s going to get worse! How far are you going?’ he added, when they reached the Front de Mer.
‘The Hotel Miramar,’ said Pol, ‘is it clear?’
‘It’s all right till the Place Lyautey, but after that there are Gardes Mobiles. Some of them are shooting on sight — they lost a lot of men yesterday. Are you walking?’
Pol grinned: ‘How else?’
‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you any transport,’ said the officer, ‘all our vehicles are commandeered.’ He saluted and moved away.
The three of them began to walk down the Front de Mer, under the tiers of rococo balconies on one side, the palm trees hanging limp and wet on the other; and all round there was a hush as though they were walking in snow. Somewhere ahead a jeep squealed round a corner and drove away into the fog. The streets that climbed from the Front de Mer were choked with garbage, and the only things that moved were furtive, springing cats.
Suddenly a shot rang out, its echo cracking off the walls like a whip. Neil jumped sideways and Pol laughed. The silence folded back, and they came to the last of the CRS troops and started out across a square with the blackened carcasses of two cars lying beside a statue of General Lyautey. The air was thick and clammy with the smell of salt and orange-blossom. Neil was beginning to sweat. ‘How much further?’ he asked.
‘Five hundred metres,’ said Pol.
A car passed in one of the back streets, crashing gears. The walls round the square were scrawled with huge slogans where the paint had trickled to the pavement. Neil read, ‘Vive Guérin!’ ‘Aux Armes Citoyens!’ ‘The True France is Divided Only by the Mediterranean!’
From here on, the Front de Mer became an uneasy stretch of No-Man’s-Land where the Secret Army commandos played a deadly game of hide-and-seek with the Gardes Mobiles. Pol was leading the way down the centre of the boulevard when they heard the armoured car. It came grinding out of a side-street about fifty yards away, swerved round and stopped. They could just make out the white pineapple, emblem of the Gardes Mobiles, painted on the armoured plating above the wheels. There was a heavy machinegun at the rear: a Douze-Sept, known locally as La Doucette (‘the Sweet One’). Every twelfth round was an explosive shell, and its bullets could pierce eight inches of masonry and still kill a man.
Pol cried, ‘Get back!’
They ducked under the arcades facing the sea. Neil crouched against a shop window, keeping his face turned from the boulevard, listening to the chugging of the armoured car engine. He pressed his face to the steel grating across the window. It was a women’s clothes shop. He stared at a slim wax effigy of a girl’s torso in nylon brassiere and briefs. Beside him Pol puffed hard, getting his breath back. Van Loon was calm, motionless. On the floor of the shop window lay a pair of scarlet pants with a triangle of lacework over the crotch. Neil glanced back up the boulevard: the armoured car had not moved. He closed his eyes, imagined the noise and pain and death.
They waited under the arcades for ten minutes, before the motor roared and the armoured car began to move off into the fog. Pol grinned: ‘If they’d decided to come this way, we might have had some fun!’ They kept under the arcades for the rest of the way to the hotel.
The Miramar stood behind a grove of palm trees. Candles were burning in the gloomy foyer, with its mirrors and mock-Moorish arches of brown marble. It was five o’clock and already growing dark. All electricity had been cut off. An Army officer sat alone among the armchairs, staring across the empty floor.
The receptionists, those suave custodians of the international high life, performed their duties now with resigned boredom. There were no more fat tips from the money-men weekending from Paris by Caravelle with their girls and golf clubs. Now there was just a scattering of journalists and military personnel.
Pol made no attempt to avoid these hotel officials, who eyed him suspiciously as he stood with Neil and Van Loon at the desk.
‘You are not taking a room?’ inquired the head receptionist, a silver-haired man with cool mandarin eyes.
‘I’m just seeing my friends in,’ said Pol smiling, and walked up with Neil and Van Loon to the two rooms they had taken on the third floor, each with a green-tiled bathroom and a balcony over the sea. Pol had agreed to settle Van Loon’s bill as payment for his services on the ‘Serafina’. To Neil’s mind it was cheap at the price.
‘So you’re not staying here?’ Neil said, as Pol followed him into his room and closed the door.
‘Here? My dear Ingleby, I wouldn’t last the night. The hotel’s full of Secret Army informers.’ He stood sweating, loosening his collar: ‘Do you mind if I have a shower?’
‘Go ahead. I’ll ring for something to drink.’
‘The phones aren’t working,’ said Pol.
‘I’ll see if I can find a floor waiter,’ said Neil. At the door he paused: ‘You didn’t make much effort to keep out of sight downstairs. Do the hotel people know who you are?’
Pol chuckled, unbuttoning his shirt: ‘Ah, I’m a very notorious fellow!’
