Two Crosses (41 page)

She thought of another she might meet in France. Somewhere, she was sure, there was a brilliant young American who had once loved an adolescent pied-noir. She shivered to think of meeting David again. The man who had given up a career in the States to help her launch a desperate mission. What would she see in his eyes?

The kitchen door opened, and Moustafa walked inside. He was thin and haggard, his curly black hair tousled by the wind. “It seems everything is working as planned,” he said, grinning wearily at Anne-Marie. “This is good.”

“Moustafa,” Anne-Marie said. She came to his side and put her arms around his neck. “Moustafa, I must tell you something.”

His brow wrinkled as he held her close. “What is it, my
habibti
?”

She saw in his eyes that he knew, even before she spoke the words. “I’m going with them tonight. I have to see Ophélie.” She held his unshaven face in her hands, tracing his three-day-old beard with her fingers. “Come with me, Moustafa. We can make a life there. We’ll have rescued all of the families that Ali knows about. We’ve done our best. Please.”

“Do not beg me, Anne-Marie. I have already deserted my people once.”

“But you’re not deserting. You’re helping. You have saved lives. I’m sure there will be work to do in France. David will know—” As she pronounced David’s name, she stopped short. Moustafa released her. “I’m sorry. But you know, Moustafa, that he is somewhere helping.”

“Of course I know. We set it up this way two years ago. It’s only that I’m afraid of losing you to the father of your child.”

“Then come with me, Moustafa! David Hoffmann is not the man I love. It is you. Please come with me tonight.”

He held her again and kissed her softly, ran his fingers through her thick hair, and sighed. “You will go tonight, Anne-Marie. You are right to go.”

A light-skinned young Arab man slipped out of the Casbah at nine p.m. He was well built, muscular, with close-cropped black hair. In his right arm he carried a machine gun.

Ali’s instructions had been explicit. Midnight on the docks. Children boarding a boat. Get there at least two hours ahead. There are many docks, so watch well and wait. And kill. Ali wanted nothing left. Nothing but bloodstains for the mourners, if they dared turn out to mourn in this city of creeping death.

No one roamed the streets of Algiers at this hour. No one except men on a mission, like himself. He was not afraid. He had killed before. The FLN called him their little terrorist. He was good. With bombs, plastiques, and especially a machine gun.

By the time he reached the port, the moon was high. The sound of the sea lapping against the body of the boats lulled his racing heart. The smell of fish hung pungent in the air. Nothing moved. The young Arab crouched beside a long sailboat and waited.

In a narrow alley of Bab el-Oued, huddling behind heaping barrels of trash, three children clung to their Arab mother. It had started to drizzle. Another woman, a pied-noir, drew a dingy raincoat over her graying hair and held on to two of her grandchildren.

Anne-Marie whispered, “It’s time.”

Silently the buxom Arab mother pulled three small boys to her breast and wept. The pied-noir woman crossed herself and kissed a young girl on the forehead and then embraced the smaller brother. Anne-Marie took the women’s hands and squeezed them. She read the fear in their eyes.

For a moment she thought it was unfair that she should leave with these women’s children. She remembered her last sight of Ophélie, running through the streets of Paris. She prayed a silent prayer to an unknown god and left the two women weeping and clinging to each other.

Moustafa crept out of Marcus Cirou’s apartment at eleven o’clock. He had to have one last glimpse of Anne-Marie. Her kisses were still fresh on his lips; he could still smell the fragrance of her hair and soft olive skin. She had cried for two hours before leaving to meet the children. He wouldn’t let her see him, but he must have one last look. He must know that she was safe with the children.

He made his way through the empty streets of Bab el-Oued until he came out onto the wide boulevard in front of the sea. All was black. He hid himself behind several fishing tugs and waited.

A light breeze blew in the frigid air as the children crawled along the dock on their bellies. The boards creaked under the movement of the tide. Anne-Marie’s heart raced. She crouched in the shadow of a yacht, watching the five children slithering ahead of her like a procession of snakes. Cautiously they made their way to the small sailboat that floated unobtrusively between several larger vessels. One by one they crawled toward the outstretched shadow of a man aboard the
Capitaine
. As Anne-Marie observed their progress, she glanced behind her to make sure no one else was there. It had become a habit. But no one had followed them.

Suddenly, from behind a tug, a man sprang out onto the dock across from her, pointing a heavy machine gun in the direction of the crawling children. Anne-Marie jumped to her feet and screamed, throwing her weight into the man and knocking him off balance. With a curse, the young man swung the gun at her head. It crashed on her skull, the force of the blow sending her into the sea. She hit the ice-cold water, still conscious, but sunk down, deeper down. She heard the ricochet of bullets popping through the water as she scrambled helplessly to pull herself up for air. Her legs stung with pain. All was dark.

She bumped her head against the hull of a ship and swam, panicked, to the side, desperate for air. Her legs felt like dead weight, dragging her down. She fought to maintain consciousness, grabbing frantically for something, anything. A ladder! Under the dock she pulled herself up the rungs of a mussel-covered ladder until her head was above water. She tried to control her gasping lungs as she intertwined her arms between two rungs, wedging herself against them. In the water below, her legs dangled with no feeling at all, and then she fainted.

It all happened so fast that Moustafa hadn’t had time to think.
React!
his senses told him as Anne-Marie fell in the water. The shadowed man turned his gun to the waters and sprayed the surface with bullets. He rose to aim again at the children, and Moustafa drew the gun he always carried inside his belt. Rachid’s gun. He fired once, then twice as the man cried out and turned. Another shot rang out. The machine gun spat a round of bullets into the air, and the man fell with a crash and lay silent.

In the distance Moustafa watched panicked children diving into the boat as it cast off from shore without a sound. He threw himself into the water where Anne-Marie had fallen. “Anne-Marie! Anne-Marie!” he cried in a hoarse whisper. “It’s me! It’s Moustafa.” A thick dread stabbed at his heart in the icy black waters. He swam around boats, underneath them, and back to the docks. When he resurfaced, panting, he listened. A dripping somewhere. He swam toward the faint noise. Anne-Marie’s arms were pinned through the bars of a ladder. She hung there in shock.

Carefully he pulled her limp body to him and lifted her rung by rung up the ladder. Two feet, four feet, six … until her upper torso collapsed on the dock. Moustafa shimmied up beside her. He pulled off his sopping coat and wrapped it around her. Then he left her side and ran to where the young Arab man lay lifeless on the dock. Quickly Moustafa dragged the body to the edge of the pier and shoved it into the water. Picking up Anne-Marie, he carried her across the dock, stopping only to retrieve the machine gun that sat beside a puddle of wet blood.

Jean-Louis gulped down a last pastis as he waited for a sailboat to dock in the port of Marseille. A foghorn sounded, and a light drizzle fell outside. The café-bar was crowded and smoky. He glanced at his watch. It was seven a.m. on January 27. The boat should be here by now. He pulled his casquette over his head and left the bar, an umbrella in his hand.