The Centurions (57 page)

Amédée Froger's funeral gave rise to several incidents of violence, in the course of which a number of Moslems, who had nothing to do with the killing or with the F.L.N., were clubbed to death, knifed or shot by a raving mob. This sort of pogrom was commonly referred to as a “rat hunt.”

At seven in the evening Pasfeuro was standing outside the Aletti with Parston, one of his American colleagues, when the mob emerged from the Rue de la Liberté and the Rue Colonna d'Ornano, and swept up the little lanes and stairways towards the Rue d'Isly.

By the tobacconist's stall on the other side of the street, an old Arab stood watching this milling crowd in amazement, wondering what mysterious reason there could possibly be behind it. Pasfeuro distinctly saw a man run up to the Arab and brain him with a heavy iron bar.

He dashed across the street, forcing a way through the crowd with his elbows, and began to pick the old man up. He was already dead, his skull bashed in, and the journalist withdrew his hands which were now covered in blood. But he could see a policeman who had witnessed the murder taking to his heels.

Pasfeuro straightened up slowly and his rage was so intense that he was trembling from head to foot.

“Some day I'm going to do in one of those bastards,” he said to the American who had come across and joined him.

Parston was an old hand who had been in every war and every revolution. He took Pasfeuro by the arm.

“It wasn't a man who killed the Arab,” he said, “it was the mob. The mob's a strange sort of beast which lashes out at random and then doesn't remember a thing; it has a taste for murder, arson and plunder. The man who struck him down was probably a nice young chap who loves his mother and looks after his cats. I've studied the mob for a long time . . . Leave well alone . . . and come and wash your hands.”

“I hate the beast, I'd like to shoot it dead . . .”

“Everyone hates the mob, but everyone belongs to it.”

They went back to the Cintra and spent the rest of the night drinking. To calm Pasfeuro down, Parston treated him to a description of all the horrors he had witnessed in the last twenty years. He now talked about the mob as though it was some monstrous, mythical hydra, like the one whose heads and arms were chopped off by Hercules only to sprout anew immediately afterwards.

Pasfeuro then remembered the policeman he had seen taking to his heels; there was no more law and order, the hydra was prowling about Algiers in complete freedom. The F.L.N. would soon be able to put its men into the streets and launch the Kasbah against the European quarters.

Day by day armed commandos coming from the Wilaya IV were infiltrating in small groups into the Kasbah or going to ground in the suburbs of Algiers.

On their side, the Europeans were buying weapons and grenades regardless of the cost. Mr. Arcinade suddenly assumed great importance; one day all the walls appeared daubed with his emblem: a red heart surmounted by a cross.

The first meeting of the anti-terrorist commando he had created was held on the very evening of Amédée Froger's gory funeral, at Telemmi, in a rented flat occupied by Puydebois, a little settler from Blida. Puydebois, a violent, tough, outspoken man with a thickset, powerful frame, close-cropped hair and a blue chin which he had to shave several times a day, kept saying over and over again:

“We've got to choose between a suitcase and a coffin. My choice is a coffin, but it had better be a big one because I plan to take quite a number with me.”

Paul Pélissier had come accompanied by Bert. He had been driven to action by a variety of sentiments. The desire to surprise his wife and win her back from Esclavier was mingled with the need “to do something,” and not feel so isolated and therefore so unhappy in the midst of this town which was collapsing in anarchy and bloodshed. Now that he carried a weapon he had the sensation of being at last the man of exception born in revolution and conspiracy.

Bert followed Paul as he had always done. He was a placid, handsome, rich young man, but there was no life in those
176
lb. of healthy flesh, in that beautiful statuesque head, no desire, not even the most commonplace envy, nothing but Paul to whom he had belonged since his childhood.

The medical orderly Maleski had been brought by Malavielle, a Government House employee recruited by Arcinade.

There was only one thing in the world that Malavielle feared: not being “in the thick of things.” He loved mystery as other men love sport, gambling or women, with passion, and suffered for the very reason that there was no mystery in the sort of life he led: the life of an exemplary minor official who boarded in a H.L.M. with his unassuming little wife and three over-well behaved little children.

Maleski could not dismiss from his mind the vision of the cafeteria, the ambulance and the injured child. He had haunting nightmares and hallucinations; women filled him with horror; he could no longer stomach a mouthful of meat or a single glass of wine. His hatred of the “rats” was akin to that of a teetotaller bent on preserving his chastity; it was cold and implacable, it manifested itself neither in word nor gesture, it verged on madness.

The student Adruguez was not quite sure how he came to be there. One falls into conversation with a stranger in a café one evening, one drinks a few anisettes, one accepts an invitation to dinner and one finds oneself involved in a plot. Since it was not the first time this sort of thing had happened to him, he was not unduly impressed.

Arcinade took up his position in front of a table on which lay a Bible and a revolver. He was in shirt-sleeves, with his collar open at the neck, chubby and glistening with high-quality sweat.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we are on the brink of defeat. Tomorrow Algeria will cease to be French . . . unless we act promptly and decisively! Our organization already numbers hundreds of adherents, there is no lack of volunteers for printing pamphlets, bill-sticking, and collecting information; but that's not enough; we now need men for killing.”

“As usual,” Adruguez said to himself, “we've got to kill, but whom? No one seems to agree on that score . . . there's nothing but a lot of talk about rat-hunts and submachine-guns. If you're not in the thick of things, there's not a chance of getting a girl. Nowadays you've got to pack a pistol before you're entitled to give them a smack on the behind.”

“Terror,” Arcinade went on, “must be answered by terror, outrage by outrage. That's what you all think, isn't it, Puydebois, isn't it, Maleski?”

He raised his voice and thumped the table.

“Well, that's not the solution! First and foremost, we've got to be efficient. It's not enough to throw a few bombs of our own, what we've got to find out is who is throwing them. We've got to do the work which the police are incapable of doing and the army isn't allowed to do: counter-terrorism.

“You, whom I've chosen for your devotion to the country, for your high moral qualities, your courage and self-denial, this evening I bring you . . .”

He thumped the table again.

“. . . the support of several important leaders of our army. We're going to act in conjunction with the Secret G.H.Q.”

Adruguez sat up in his seat. This time things looked rather more serious than usual.

Arcinade believed implicitly in this Secret G.H.Q., a myth he had fondly cherished ever since he had been in touch with one of the countless clandestine organizations that flourished at Vichy during the occupation, for this deceiver of others succeeded also in deceiving himself.

He had met Colonel Puysange on three separate occasions and had spoken to him in guarded terms of “certain steps he was planning to take.” The least the colonel had been able to do was to “lend him the support of G.H.Q.”

Nothing more had been needed for Arcinade, who was always inclined to read between the lines, to imagine some vast collusion between his own organization and this great G.H.Q. of which Puysange could be none other than the Algiers representative.

“Before going any further, my friends, I'm going to ask you to take an oath on this Bible, as I shall now do in front of you.”

Arcinade squared his shoulders and, with a great show of emotion and sincerity, pledged himself as follows:

“In the name of Christ, in the name of France, so that Algeria shall remain French, I swear to fight to the death, to keep my activity secret, to carry out every order I am given, no matter what it may be. If I betray my oath, I shall expect to be executed like a traitor.”

The new adherents repeated the oath one after another, Puydebois quivering with emotion, Bert without understanding a word, Malavielle with delight, Maleski with the sombre conviction of someone possessed reciting a formula of exorcism, and Paul Pélissier with such deep anxiety that he stuttered from the effort.

Eugène Adruguez spoke in a strong, clear voice which impressed everyone; he did not believe in the oath for a moment.

“Now as far as action is concerned,” said Arcinade, “our friend Malavielle has a most important announcement to make.”

“It's like this,” said Malavielle. “I've been keeping him under observation for the last three weeks and I now know that he's one of the main leaders of the rebellion.”

“Who?” Puydebois asked.

“Ben Chihani, the cloth merchant in the Boulevard Laferrière.”

“Let's be serious about this,” said Adruguez, who was twenty years old. “All Chihani thinks about is money; no doubt he contributes a little to the rebellion, like any other Moslem merchant . . .”

“I'm certain of what I'm saying,” said Malavielle. “I've got information.”

He was not certain of anything at all, but since he went past Chihani's shop every day, the idea occurred to him to suspect this self-satisfied little fellow who was doing good business and stood in his doorway rubbing his hands together with pleasure.

“Then off we go,” said Puydebois. “We'll take him to some quiet spot, beat him up and make him talk. That little bastard earns all his money from European customers.”

Arcinade chipped in.

“This first operation must be organized with great care and I must first of all refer it to . . . you know who. Any volunteers?”

“Me,” said Puydebois, “and besides, I've got a car.”

“Me too,” said Maleski.

Malavielle could not do otherwise than volunteer as well.

Adruguez, who had not taken this expedition against the cloth merchant seriously for a single moment, did not even see fit to warn him.

He was indebted to him. Chihani had lent some money to his mother when she became a widow.

Four days later, as Adruguez walked past Chihani's shop, he did not see him in his doorway. He went inside; his son Lucien was at the cashier's desk and he looked rather odd.

“Where's your father?” Adruguez inquired, “there's something I want to ask him.”

The young man came up to the student and, after glancing round the shop, whispered in his ear:

“He's disappeared, he hasn't been seen for the last two days. We know it's neither the F.L.N. nor the French police.”

“Who can it be, then?”

“He received a telephone call about some business or other. This was the day before yesterday, at ten o'clock in the morning; that's the last we heard of him. If you could possibly find out . . .”

“But how do you know it's not the F.L.N.?”

Lucien Chihani suddenly looked extremely ill at ease.

“Because . . . because there's nothing they could hold against us on any score whatsoever.”

It was not until the evening that Adruguez learnt the truth, when he managed to get hold of Arcinade. The little man was quite beside himself. Fate had willed that Chihani should be the treasurer of the whole of the autonomous zone of Algiers, entrusted by the rebels with the handling of funds exceeding a hundred and fifty million francs. Chihani knew most of the F.L.N. leaders and even the whereabouts of some of their hideouts, not to mention the whole politic-administrative organization.

After being dipped head first in a water tank by Puydebois, he had confessed everything.

“We must hand him over to the police at once,” Adruguez exclaimed.

Arcinade threw his little arms up in the air:

“Too late. He had a weak heart. Maybe we held him under too long and his heart gave out during the night. Maleski did all he could to revive him.”

“Couldn't the information have been invented by the others?”

“No, Chihani told us about an arms dump in his villa in the Parc de Galland. We found twelve submachine-guns there and twenty million francs.”

“Twenty million!”

“Yes,” said Arcinade, modestly lowering his eyes. “Puydebois took the body off in his car and pitched it into a disused well near his farm.”

“I'm going out of my mind,” Adruguez said to himself, “I'm living in an absolute mad-house . . . What are you going to do now, Mr. Arcinade?”

“I've seen Colonel Puysange. The paratroops are moving into Algiers in two days' time. He has advised me to have a word with the Intelligence officer of one of the regiments, a certain Captain Boisfeuras. I've arranged to meet him tonight.”

 • • • 

The decision to throw a parachute division of four regiments, which in fact amounted to four big battalions—five thousand men at the most—into Algiers had been discussed on
15
January at a dramatic meeting held in the big council chamber at Government House and attended by the members of the civil and military cabinets, the chiefs of police and the representatives of the commander-in-chief and of the Prefect of Algiers.

The Resident Minister was in Paris at the time. He was notified by telephone of the outcome of the meeting and that evening he obtained the President's permission to adopt the measure “with all the risks it might entail.” The general commanding the division was forthwith invested “for the duration of the emergency” with full civil and military powers.