‘It might have gone wrong,’ said Neil.
Guérin was not listening; he too sat watching the fields swing past the windows.
‘One has to take risks,’ said Le Hir cheerfully, ‘but why should it have gone wrong? After all, they trusted us!’
CHAPTER 9
The driver had hidden the machine-pistols in a rug under the front seat. They were driving again at more than one hundred miles an hour, heading for the bridge across the Oued Zain and the highway south into the mountains to the town of El Mansour.
It was twelve minutes since they had left the road up to the farm. The second Citroën, with the two legionnaires, was fifty yards behind, as the road began to spread out like a slender hand into three, four, five lanes, sweeping into the clover leaf or flyovers just before the Oued Zain Bridge. White arrows flashed out across the tarmac, south to El Mansour, to the mountains and the desert, and west, back towards the capital.
The Citroën slowed with a sigh, as they came in sight of the bridge: a single span of concrete like a white bone reaching across the parched bed of the Oued Zain. The sun peered through the mists, a silvery yellow shining on the stony channels that forked towards the sea.
There were several cars approaching them in the oncoming lane, as they swooped into the booming darkness of the underpass and rose into the steep bend that looped up to the head of the bridge.
The driver braked hard. They had not been able to see the road block from below the clover leaf. There were squat concrete pillboxes at either end of the bridge, and a convoy of Army trucks was lined up on the far side. A couple of jeeps and a mixed unit of three soldiers and three CRS was guarding the entrance to the bridge, turning back the traffic.
A queue of cars stood in front of them. A young NCO was examining papers, and a couple of CRS men strolled round the cars, looking at number plates and poking about in the boots.
The Citroën slowed to a halt before the last car. Le Hir turned to Neil: ‘The police will be looking for the Jaguar. The General has papers made out in the name of Maurice Girard, an inspector of waterworks and hygiene in El Mansour. My name is Jean Dubuis; I am a schoolmaster from El Mansour. You, as a journalist, are visiting us to examine social conditions in the town. You understand?’
The first car in the queue was being waved across into the oncoming lane and returning towards the capital. The Citroën crawled forward. Neil looked back and saw the second Citroën about twenty yards behind. Le Hir said, ‘Don’t worry about them. They have nothing to do with us. Just remember Monsieur Girard and Monsieur Dubuis of El Mansour.’
General Guérin’s face was stiff and immobile; he kept his eyes averted from the windows, on a point somewhere on the floor.
The driver of the car ahead was shouting furiously at the young NCO and waving towards the bridge. The NCO shrugged apologetically and beckoned to a CRS officer who sat in one of the jeeps. The boy was young and callow, probably a newly-arrived conscript from France. He left his colleague to deal with the incensed motorist, and turned towards the Citroën. He had the flat red-cheeked face of a Norman peasant boy, with a smudged shaving cut on his upper lip. He came round to the driver’s window and said, ‘The bridge is closed. You have to go back.’
‘What’s wrong?’ said the driver.
‘They’re moving troops up to the city. There’s something big happening.’ He shrugged: ‘They’ve got tanks the other side — but they never tell us anything.’
General Guérin’s eyes flickered and met those of the NCO. The boy looked at him, then back at the driver and said, ‘Can I see your papers?’
Ahead, the motorist was waving his arms like a bookie laying bets, shouting, ‘Malheur pour moi! Malheur pour le France!’ A door slammed and the car drove off with a grinding of gears. The CRS officer came towards the Citroën.
The young NCO had begun examining their identity cards; he looked at Le Hir’s, then at Guérin’s, and passed them both back while the CRS officer went round and opened the boot.
Neil handed his passport to the NCO. The boy leafed carefully through it as though he had never seen a British passport before, compared the photograph with Neil’s face, then walked suddenly back to the CRS officer. Le Hir cursed: ‘Is something wrong with your passport?’
‘Nothing.’
The CRS man closed the boot and came round to the driver’s window. He had a tough intelligent face with very fine eyes, almond-shaped with a bright hazel light in them, and thick eyebrows with a black sheen like horses’ hair. He looked round the car and said: ‘Are you all going to El Mansour?’
The driver nodded.
‘You too?’ He looked at Neil.
‘That’s right.’ Neil felt General Guérin sitting very still beside him. Le Hir looked tense, with a taut little muscle working under his cheek just below the white scar.
The CRS man handed Neil’s passport back and turned again to the driver: ‘Have you got your licence?’
The other two CRS men were now checking the second Citroën. Another car had pulled up behind and was hooting furiously. The CRS officer began studying the driver’s licence with exasperating care.
One of the soldiers came over and spoke to the young NCO who went back to the leading jeep. Neil saw him clip on the earphones of a walkie-talkie.
The CRS officer looked at the driver and said, ‘You’re Michel Rios?’
The driver nodded, and Neil watched
