One of the barbouzes followed him: a slouching oaf of a man who had been thrown out of the national gendarmerie after a prisoner in his charge had died of a brain haemorrhage. Pol felt dejected and ashamed at having to deal with such men.
‘So what happens now?’ asked the barbouze.
‘We wait,’ said Pol, ‘the Englishman is going to tell them it’s all clear.’
‘Supposing he warns them? He’s under their orders, not ours.’
‘If he warns them, it’ll be just too bad!’ Pol growled, switching on the transmitter.
‘We could still shoot the cars up.’
‘They’re out of range.’
‘For the bazooka, perhaps, but we might get them with the Douze-Sept.’
Pol shook his head: ‘The car’s got armoured plating. Anyway, even if he does warn them and they try to get away, they won’t get far.’
The radio came on with a high swooping moan.
CHAPTER 8
Neil walked away from the farm at a brisk but controlled pace, resisting the urge to run. He knew he had not convinced Pol; but he also knew that Pol would have to take a chance on him. He would not dare shoot him now. Nevertheless, as Neil walked on, he was conscious of that over-sensitive itching at the back of his neck, just below the cranium. He felt more at ease when he was a few hundred yards away, out of range of the Moslem guards’ burp-guns.
The mist was beginning to lift, and he could see the three cars standing just as he had left them — the pale slender Jaguar as impressive here as in its showroom in Piccadilly.
He slogged over the last stretch of dirt track, and the silence was again total. He remembered that in four days and about four hours, Caroline would be a married woman. He now noticed that the number plates on the two Citroëns had been changed. It was Le Hir who appeared first, slamming the car door. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he yelled. ‘You were in there nearly twenty minutes!’
Neil took his time before answering. He walked almost past Le Hir, towards the Jaguar, and said, ‘I had to make sure everything was in order.’
‘Well, was it? Are the three of them there?’
‘Yes, they’re there,’ said Neil.
‘And their escort? How many men have they got?’
‘Six men,’ said Neil, ‘they’re armed with machineguns — as we agreed.’
‘Are they waiting?’
‘Yes, they’re waiting. They told me they don’t want to waste any time. They want to get on with the talks.’
Le Hir nodded, with a curious secret smile; and Neil opened the door of the Jaguar.
General Guérin sat with his hands folded in his lap, his face strained and grey, preserving a deceptive calm. He looked eagerly at Neil, but Le Hir thrust his head in first and said something that Neil did not catch. Guérin leant forward and rapped on the glass partition. Neil saw the driver flick down the headlamp switch twice, dipping the beam with each flash with his foot.
Three seconds later there came a series of quick rasping sounds far off through the fog, like iron scraping on iron, followed by a thudding echo. Neil looked in the direction that General Guérin was looking towards the farm.
The mist was rising swiftly now, and he could see the white outline of the walls, which shimmered and seemed to break up like a smudge of smoke across the fields. At the same time there came a rapid clonk! clonk! clonk! CLONK! — and as he stood by the car door, the sound waves bounced through the mist and seemed to touch him like lapping water.
He heard the rasping WANG! WANG! from the direction of the mountains, and the shape of the farm now collapsed visibly, like a card-house going down, the speck of the watchtower suddenly gone.
Guérin was out of the Jaguar, getting into the second of the Citroëns, its engine roaring, and Le Hir was pushing Neil through the other door, climbing in afterwards, as the car, began to turn off the track, followed by the other Citroën, with the Jaguar behind.
The explosions now followed fast: the rasping of the mortar fire and the bombs exploding with thick clonking bursts, in a field of fire measured to a couple of feet.
Le Hir was giving orders to the driver. At the turning into the dual-carriageway, Neil saw the Jaguar streak off towards the city. The two Citroëns bumped over the centre verge and screeched round, facing down the coast. In the first car Guérin, Le Hir and Neil were thrown back as the driver accelerated, foot flat on the floor, with the lead-grey road climbing towards them, as the hydraulic springs lowered the chassis to within a few inches of the shrieking tarmac.
Le Hir began to laugh. He turned to Neil: ‘They weren’t expecting that! Where were they, by the way? In the farmhouse?’
‘They were in the courtyard,’ said Neil, ‘they had a green baize table out, with a carafe of water, glasses, everything.’
Le Hir shook his head, still laughing: ‘Ah, c’était vraiment trop facile.’
Neil stared out at the maize and tobacco fields, watching the mist rise into the pale sun, experiencing an odd, abstracted sensation, like the weightlessness that follows a night of heavy drinking. He no longer cared about Guérin or Pol or Ali La Joconde. What had happened back in the farmhouse seemed suddenly unreal, unimportant. He wondered where Caroline would go for her honeymoon. He said to Le Hir: ‘I suppose you consider it a pretty good operation?’
‘Five mortars,’ said Le Hir, ‘four for each
