Neil glanced at what was left of the first Citroën. The big blond legionnaire was sitting upright with the top of his head sliced off like a boiled egg, bone and brain spattered over the seats. The body of the young one was lying broken behind the buckled door.
‘At least five dead,’ said the lieutenant, ‘and Guérin and Le Hir arrested. The Secret Army isn’t going to like you for this!’
‘I had nothing to do with it.’
The lieutenant shrugged: ‘You were in the car. That was the only reason they caught them. They got a tip off that there was an Englishman travelling with them. At least, that’s what I heard.’
‘I had nothing to do with it,’ Neil repeated, quietly this time as though talking to himself.
The NCO did not pursue the matter. He only wondered how they had managed to get an Englishman to do the job for them.
PART 6: THE FUGITIVE
CHAPTER 1
‘Ah, we’re both in the soup, my dear Ingleby,’ Pol muttered, as his great wounded body was born aloft, straddled like some modern Buddha across the arms of four soldiers who were now sweating past the seventh floor of the High Command headquarters. Neil followed, listening despondently as Pol continued between groans of discomfort: ‘All three of them dead — Marouf and Boussid blown to pieces, and Ali La Joconde dying before the ambulances got there. Most of the barbouzes dead too — ah, merde!’ Pol’s sweating face, streaked with dust and dried blood, creased up with agony, and the soldiers stopped.
‘How did you get away?’ asked Neil, pausing while the soldiers hoisted Pol into a less awkward position. He had two cuts above the eye, a lump on the crown of his head, and the mauve hibiscus was wilting rapidly in his lapel.
‘I was in the shed outside,’ he gasped; ‘Le petit endroit. Those rich colons still have the habits of peasants. A little stone shed with a filthy sand-hole. Too much mint tea with Boussid — went through me like a drain — and there I was, squatting down with my ankles caught in my trousers when the heavens are blown open and I’m bounced up to the roof and down again on to my arse, then up again and down again, four times before they stopped. They must have used thirty-six-millimetre shells. It was like a knacker’s yard outside.’
‘Are you badly hurt?’ said Neil, as they rounded the ninth floor.
‘Damaged my coccyx. Hit my head too, three or four times — but as I told you, I’ve got a hard head. It’s my spine, close to the arse.’ He tried to grin but gave a small scream instead, as one short fat leg began slipping again to the floor.
Neil had waited two hours in a room downstairs before they had brought Pol in from the ambulance. ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ he said.
‘I’m not so sure. These damned policemen, they don’t love me for this! I’ve spoilt the Government’s precious relations with the Arab Front. They don’t love either of us. We’re both very unpopular, my dear Ingleby!’
‘But they got Guérin and Le Hir. Aren’t they satisfied with that?’
Pol shook his head: ‘Not the Sûreté, nor the Deuxième. Guérin and his lot were taken by the CRS — on a tip from me, as a matter of fact. But there’s a lot of jealousy between the departments. The Sûreté and the Deuxième won’t get any credit for catching Guérin, although they’ll have a lot of trouble over the Arab Front killings. That’s why I can’t stand working for policemen. They have the pettiness of children — only less charm!’
They reached the eleventh floor and Pol was laid to rest on his camp bed, a tumbler of whisky placed between his fingers by one of the soldiers.
‘So what happens now?’ said Neil. The room was stark and fetid; it smelt of excrement and cement dust and police bureaucracy.
Pol said, ‘Have a big whisky.’
Neil helped himself from the bottle on the desk and sat down in front of the camp bed.
‘Ah, we’re in the soup!’ said Pol again. ‘Dans la purée noire!’ He rolled his eyes at Neil and grinned: ‘You have to get out of this country quick, Monsieur Ingleby. They’ll all try to get you now — both sides, after what happened this morning.’
Neil felt a cold lump harden in his stomach, and his fingertips were minutely corrugated like lizard’s skin. He said, ‘Both sides?’
Pol nodded glumly.
The door opened and a square man with a large head of reddish-blond hair walked in, smoking a leather-bound pipe. He glanced contemptuously down at Pol, then at Neil and said, ‘You’re the English journalist, Ingleby?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am Commandant Duxelles, Sûreté Nationale.’ He pulled up a chair and sat down facing Neil. He wore a tweed suit with an open-necked white shirt, and his forehead and the backs of his hands were mottled with large pale-brown freckles like tea stains. He studied Neil with shrewd yellow eyes, pulling at his pipe. At last he said, ‘You were responsible this morning for the death of almost a dozen men, Monsieur Ingleby. That does not include the incident at the Oued Zain Bridge. Do you consider this part of your duties as a journalist?’
Neil opened his mouth to speak, but Commandant Duxelles jabbed his pipe at him like a pistol and said, ‘You have behaved with criminal irresponsibility. You deliberately conspired with the Secret Army to assassinate the leaders of the Arab Front. This, as you know well, will gravely endanger all our efforts to obtain a ceasefire with the Moslem rebels.’
Neil felt his blood rise, the cold dry feeling melt away, and he shouted, ‘I acted on the instructions of the Arab Front to try and
