‘Thank you. Pink gin.’
‘Poor old Ingleby,’ Mallory went on, ‘he’ll just have to miss his oats this time.’ He passed the letter to St. Leger, who glanced at it with a hint of distaste. ‘A little birdie he had up in his room the other night,’ Mallory explained, ‘the one somebody said was old Broussard’s stepdaughter.’
St. Leger nodded and passed the letter back. ‘Whoever started that rumour is a malicious fool. I admit that Ingleby’s made a pretty big ass of himself out here, but that story’s going too far!’
Close by, a despondent BBC man was prowling about with a tape-recorder, fretting over his transmission to London. Mallory heard him say, ‘I wanted to get gunfire fading into the sound of grasshoppers for Radio Newsreel. Well, I got plenty of gunfire all right, but the damned grasshoppers wouldn’t make a bleep.’
Mallory laughed: ‘And old Ingleby’s sitting out there worrying about the best scoop of the year.’
‘I hope he gets away,’ St. Leger said gravely, sipping his gin. ‘You think he’s in real danger?’
Mallory shrugged: ‘Could be.’
‘How was he when you left him?’
‘Pissed. Kept on babbling about girls. I don’t think his nerves are too good.’
CHAPTER 6
Neil watched the rim of fire die out in the green sky, as the sun went down behind the mountains and a swift submarine darkness fell that made the mountains look very close and the airfield no wider than a boulevard. The sabotaged Caravelle still glowed on the tarmac, a frail black wreck like burnt paper in a grate.
He stayed at the bar till it grew dark. He drank only coffee, feeling cold and shivering, although outside the desert wind boomed against the walls and the air in the main hall became stale, stifling, full of the wailing of terrified children.
A CRS officer had told him that it was now hoped that special crews would be arriving from Paris to fly the planes out. But he did not know when. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps later.
Since the destruction of the Caravelle, Neil had made three telephone calls. The first had been to the British Consulate, where he had spoken to a fruity-voiced young man called Wynne-Catlin who had listened to his troubles and said, ‘Oh, sounds a bit tricky to me — better stay at the airport and get on the first plane out.’ Neil had said, ‘Thanks!’ between gritted teeth, and the fruity voice had added, ‘Right, I’ll look into it. All the best!’
The next call had been to Pol. There had been the three familiar pips, then the woman’s voice reciting the number back to him. When he had asked for Pol he had been put through to a M. Julien, who told him that Pol had been moved to another department. After a lot of explanations he had been at last transferred, and the resonant voice, slightly subdued now, came on the line: ‘Comment ça va, Monsieur Ingleby?’
Neil had described his plight, and the answer had had a lyrical sadness to it: ‘Ah, there are good days, my dear Ingleby, and there are bad days. This is a bad day. But you ought to get on a plane tomorrow. There’s nothing more I can do.’
They had said goodbye, and Pol had promised to look him up at his newspaper offices if he came to London. It was the last he ever heard of Pol. It had not been one of the most satisfactory relationships, Neil reflected.
His final call had been to Mallory, put through to the upstairs bar of the hotel. His voice had come over in a piercing electronic hiss, largely unintelligible, wishing him ‘Good luck, old boy, have lots o’ drinks on me! Send my love to the airhostesses!’ Then he added, ‘We fixed about you in the hotel. You stick there. Should be all right.’
Neil hung up and walked back to his stool at the bar, feeling alone and vulnerable, dreading the approach of night when the CRS would be growing tired and might even be withdrawn. Then the commandos would come in, pretending to be refugees, and prowl round among the crowds until they found him, and empty a couple of machine-pistol clips into him while he slept. Or maybe they would do it more silently — with a knife, perhaps. And pin a notice on him: ‘JE SUIS UNE BARBOUZE’.
Darkness fell, and the lozenge lamps along the ceiling came on with a sombre orange glow; while outside, down the highway into the city, special arc-lights had been set up to illuminate the column of cars that now stretched for more than a mile, under a heavy CRS guard.
In the main hall they tried to sleep, nerves inflamed by the hot howling wind and the claustrophobic longing for escape. Neil had bought a série noire edition of Simenon at the bookstall and started to read, sitting propped against the wall; but the print crawled in front of his eyes like slabs of insects. He felt tired, sick, trembling after six cups of sour black coffee. Later he sought relief in the toilet which was splashed and choked, without water or towels or paper.
He slept at last, hunched up with his face against the skirting, dreaming that he was in the Dorchester Hotel with Colonel Le Hir and the two German legionnaires who were somehow improperly dressed, and there was a row with the management; and then Caroline had appeared in her wedding dress, but her face somehow indistinct, and Neil had made some appeal to Le Hir who had taken him outside and called a taxi.
He woke staring at the distant ceiling, listening to the wind and whimpering of children, then remembered with a pang of relief that Caroline was not yet married, and that perhaps he had
