Around him the silence was total, with a deceptive whining in his ears that strangely unnerved him. He quickened his step over the rough track, keeping his eyes on the wall of mountains and on the growing shape of the farm. He thought he could just make out the blob of a man’s head above the wall of the crenelated watchtower.
It was hard to calculate distances in the mist, and the building rose suddenly over the last fifty yards. It was designed like an old-fashioned fort. The walls formed a stockade round the farmhouse and courtyard, with low embrasures like the mouths of a pillbox. The only entrance was through the heavy wooden gates overlooked by the tower. To have abandoned such a formidable stronghold, Neil thought, the colon who had owned the place must have been sure the end was coming.
Neil breathed slowly, deeply, trying to keep his heart steady, as he walked over the last few yards to the gates. He could now clearly see the man in the watchtower, with two others peering at him through the embrasures on either side. They had small dark faces under khaki forage caps, and the muzzles of their burp-guns were trained on his head.
The gate was of broad timbers clamped together with rusted bolts. He pushed, and it swung inwards with a wooden creak, showing a whitewashed passage leading into the courtyard. He stepped inside, past a couple of bald tyres propped against the wall. There was a dead silence in the building that made him want to shout and run and show himself, like a child playing hide-and-seek who longs to precipitate the inevitable shock of discovery.
For this was no ordinary silence; not the silence of solitude, of no sound, but of a crowd, of sounds suppressed, of silent breathing and watching and waiting: a fearful, furtive hush, as he walked almost on tiptoe, through the passage, out into the yard.
They were there by the wall, sitting in the open behind a green baize table laid with notepaper, carafe of water and upturned tumblers, like three people waiting to make up a bridge party.
Dr. Marouf rose and bowed; beside him Abdel Boussid gave his pouting, fish-eyed smile, while Ali La Joconde simpered frozenly at the table.
Three Moslems in grubby, makeshift uniforms and forage caps stood beside the table holding their burp-guns at the ready. Neil looked carefully to make sure they were not also carrying pistols or grenades. Three on the walls, he thought, three down in the yard. Dr. Marouf said, ‘We welcome you, Monsieur Ingleby, and trust everything is in order?’
Neil looked round the yard. ‘You have only these six men?’
‘That is correct,’ said Marouf.
‘I should like to look round for a moment,’ said Neil, taking a sudden officious pride in his task, determined not to skimp any final detail. Marouf’s face remained pleasantly inscrutable; he said, ‘You have our word, Monsieur Ingleby.’
The dull light of the yard shone on Boussid’s upturned pebble-glasses. He said gently, ‘There is not much time, m’sieur. We cannot wait here all morning. You have seen our escort — they are armed as we agreed. There are no more of them. So if General Guérin’s delegation is ready, let them come in and we can begin our discussion.’
Neil hesitated. There was something that worried him about the silence of the place. He remembered Colonel Broussard’s words: ‘They are brilliant liars.’ And what were they doing sitting outside as well as at the preposterous green baize table? Why weren’t they inside? He looked round at the windows of the farmhouse. They were opaque with dust, and several panes were cracked and boarded up with newspaper. There was an outside staircase up to the rampart round the walls. Both the Moslem guards in the embrasures, as well as the one in the watchtower, were still covering him with their guns.
He turned to Boussid: ‘If I am to trust you, tell your men to take their guns off me.’
Boussid gave a guttural order, and the three men moved back to their places overlooking the plain.
Neil began to walk over to one of the ground-floor windows. Behind him Dr. Marouf called, ‘I must warn you, monsieur, that you are wasting our time!’
Neil peered through the window and saw a bare room with an iron stove against the wall. He moved on to the next window, ignoring Marouf. A few inches beyond the grimy panes he found himself looking down the funnel-shaped barrel of a Douze-Sept machinegun. The room behind was full of men.
He stepped back and dodged sideways, flattening himself against the wall by the window. The Douze-Sept did not fire. Across the yard both Boussid and Dr. Marouf were on their feet, and the three guards by the table were coming forward with their guns up, pointing at Neil’s stomach. Only Ali La Joconde seemed unaware of what was happening, crouched forward staring at the green baize.
Neil drew in his breath and yelled in English, ‘You damned traitors! You bloody little —!’
Marouf snapped an order in Arabic and the three guards stopped. Neil, in fury and confusion, went on swearing at them in English.
A door opened beside him and someone laughed, shrill and lilting like a woman’s laugh.
CHAPTER 7
Pol stood there in the doorway swaying on the balls of his tiny feet, smiling his cherry-lipped smile, with the kiss curl pasted down in an elegant loop across his shining brow and an outrageous mauve hibiscus flopping from the lapel of his rumpled suit, with tie askew.
He thrust out his short little arms and walked up to Neil, clucking like a hen: ‘Ah, you look surprised, my dear Ingleby!
