For a moment Pol did not speak. The two of them drank in silence.
‘Very well,’ said Pol at last, ‘I will do what I can for you. I can talk to a couple of CRS I know here — they may be able to arrange to get you on to a plane. Or perhaps send an escort to your hotel. I can’t promise much, but it may help you.’
At that moment a man came in to tell Neil that the car was waiting outside. He went without another word to Pol, down the eleven flights and past the three lines of CRS guards and the sandbags in the courtyard, with more troops and mounted machineguns, and down the steps to where the armoured cars waited facing the road into the capital.
In the distance he could hear gunfire: not the sporadic crackle of small-arms, but a continuous rumble, slow and heavy, rolling through the humid air like thunder.
The car was a small Renault and the driver a nervous-looking corporal who saluted as Neil got in and muttered, ‘It’s a bad time — they’ve started attacking the barricades.’
‘When?’
‘About half-an-hour ago.’
Neil looked at his watch. It was 10.35. They had told him nothing about it at High Command headquarters. At nine o’clock, the corporal said, the radio had announced that General Guérin had been arrested and was on his way by military Caravelle to Paris. The rebels had been given one hour in which to surrender. They had stood firm; now 5,000 Gardes Mobiles, supported by fresh troops from France, were moving in to break the barricade.
The corporal shook his head with dismal ferocity: ‘Ah, that it should come to this — French against French!’
They passed long lines of troops in battle order and armoured vehicles along the road out of the hills into the city. There were roadblocks now at every corner and the troops grew thicker, colour of mud and olives, with guns on tripods up the boulevards, shutters down and cafés empty, jeeps sprouting radio antennae like squat brown insects.
The streets up from the sea cracked and popped and stuttered with obscure echoes; then came the tearing crash of heavy artillery that made windows rattle, and the corporal cried, ‘That’s a cannon Trente-Six — they must be murdering them in there!’
They turned into the wide curving boulevard towards the Front de Mer and looked down on the truckloads of troops below, helmeted, like wedges of green caviar. The corporal was pale and began crashing his gears, and Neil thought: perhaps this is how Duxelles wants it done. One Englishman, and one French corporal to spare, shot in action.
There was a tank in the middle of the street outside the Miramar and a line of troops stretched away under the arcades opposite. The corporal pulled up in front of the hotel and cried, ‘Hurry! I want to get out of here!’
‘Could you take me to the airport?’ said Neil. ‘I’ve just got to pick up my luggage.’
The corporal smacked the wheel with both hands: ‘You think I’m mad? — risk getting shot down by my own countrymen? No! I’m getting out of here!’
Neil sat and said, ‘I’ll give you money. Plenty, just take me to the airport. The road there’ll be as safe as the one we’ve just come on.’
The corporal pointed up the street: ‘That’s where the shooting is! Up there — the way to the airport! Go on, get out of here!’
Neil got out and said, ‘Go to hell!’ slamming the door, and the little car bolted away like a frightened colt.
At the desk the silver-haired receptionist gave him an odd, dead-eyed look as he handed him his key and a couple of telegrams. Neil said, ‘Can you call a taxi?’
The receptionist shook his head: ‘You won’t get a taxi on a day like this, sir.’
Neil went through into the downstairs bar. It was empty except for the sleek-haired boy who was putting out salted nuts on the tables. He could hear Hudson’s muffled voice bawling from one of the nearby telephone booths: ‘Yeah, it’s started — tanks, bazookas! No jets — yes. O.K.!’
The first telegram he opened read ‘No reply explanation absence must assume serious situation Foster.’ It was dated the day before. The second telegram had been sent three days ago, late on Saturday night. ‘No copy or follow-up stop other correspondents filing stop where the devil are you reply immediately Foster!’
He screwed the cables into little blue balls and bowled them across the bar at a spittoon against the wall. Both missed. Hudson’s voice bellowed out, ‘Yeah for Christ’s sake — G for George — U for Uncle — E for Edward — yeah, the big boy! — arrested this morning…’
Neil went through and said: ‘Hudson, I’ve got to talk to you!’
A hand waved angrily, head into the mouthpiece: ‘“After fierce gun battle” — not now, for Christ’s sake!’
There was something about the way that receptionist looked at me, Neil thought. He would go up and pack, then find one of the other reporters. He started down the passage and met Tom Mallory coming from the lifts.
‘What a bloody din!’ Mallory’s hair rose like flames round a dark sun.
‘Have you been outside?’ said Neil.
‘Hell, I was trying to get a bit of kip! Woken up by those bloody guns. Let’s have a drink.’
‘You’re not going out to have a look at the fighting?’ Neil said, following him into the bar.
‘What’s the point? You can’t get
