Chapter Xx
Before the knock which he was nervously expecting sounded sharply on the door, Ahmed ben Lulla had carefully arranged the little automatic in its tiny holster under his armpit. It seemed to him a little academic; he couldn't seriously imagine using it, hoped it wouldn't be necessary.
He opened the door as calmly as he could and confronted the three grim figures outside.
Mohammed Arab grinned in at him and Ahmed wondered if he ever had a pleasant, non-vicious thought. The man was like some black devil; his very arrival anywhere seemed to bring the possibility, the aura of death and torture into that place.
Mohammed Arab made a slight sign with his head, without speaking, and Ahmed pulled a coat over his shirt and went out, locking the door behind him.
Nobody spoke as they marched down the stairs together, one of them in front of him, the other two behind. It was like the last silent walk from the prison cell to the gallows.
He hung up the key on the hook in the office, a thing he had done so many times without a tremor of emotion.
He noticed that his hand was trembling slightly although he hadn't thought about it before.
They went out into the street, all three of them. It was broad daylight, a little before noon, not at all the sort of time for such desperate things to be happening, he thought.
"Which way?"
Mohammed Arab took his arm and guided him to the right.
"Just friends together," he said. "Follow our friend in front."
As they walked from the street to the crowded boulevard, Ahmed tried to see the watchers from the corner of his eyes. They were there all around. They must be there. The recognition of how completely he counted on that little ambush of police turned his stomach cold. Supposing they had mistaken the day, the place, anything. A chill iced his stomach. It was always such a mistake to rely on other people. And his life was at stake. But they must be there. It was as big a thing for them as for him.
But there was no sign of anybody, no hint of the scores of police in whose hands his life lay.
Along the boulevard the traffic was rumbling as usuallittle Citroens, humped like frogs, sleek American cars, mobs of scooters. The sun was shining and the trees along the central walk of the boulevard dappled a pattern on the dust surface.
Even at this time of the day the whores were out in droves and tourists jostled everywhere. A few GIs were poring over the lurid covers of books called "Myra by Night" and "Ladies Alone" in the window of a shop; the newspaper booths were doing a brisk trade in papers in several languages. The dull neon signs reflected the sun every so often. A few pigeons were strutting under the trees and a small girl with white ribbons in her hair was feeding them crumbs. Everything was bright and peaceful and normally it would be good to be alive. But there was no sign of the police network which should be in operation and Ahmed became more and. more apprehensive.
They walked at an even pace through the crowds which flowed along the narrow pavement under the six-storey buildings. Other Algerians were strolling to and fro; one was selling apricots from a car in the kerbside, selling in haste, undercutting everybody else.
Later they turned off the main boulevard and off again into narrower streets. Ahmed saw no sign of police. He couldn't think where they could be hiding if in fact they were there.
So it was that they came to the striptease club. An advertisement outside, with the silhouette of an almost naked girl, said that stripteases took place from 3 p.m. onwards, admission 350 francs. This was the "innocent" striptease. Those in which Mohammed Arab participated went unpublicized.
Ahmed controlled with the utmost difficulty his desire to give a last glance out into the street in the hope that there might be some clue to the non-appearance of any sign of Raimond and the forces he had at his disposal. It occurred to him that it might be the last time he'd ever see the street.
They went into the club, through a couple of rooms, a couple of doors and then up a staircase. There were guards posted at the doors and one at each end of the stairs. Ahmed felt a flush of hopelessness steal over him. Even if the police were watching, what hope had they of reaching him before he would be shot down?
"Up there," a voice said and they began to climb the stairs. At the top was a short corridor and they opened a door off it and went in.
Inside was a round, polished wooden table. Mahmoud Taluffah occupied the central place and on either side of him, all facing or half-facing the door, were several of his lieutenants. They all looked towards the new entrants with a sort of grim satisfaction. They rather enjoyed this little farce.
Ahmed felt panic-stricken. He wished more than anything at this moment that he'd never had anything to do with this crazy idea. Right now he could be lying on his bed. Perhaps he and Francoise would have found some way to outwit these people anyway and see each other. Now escape was cut off. He'd walked willingly into a noose-and all to help some damned flic that he'd never even seen before a few days back.
Mahmoud Taluffah motioned for the group to approach. When they were within a few yards of the table, his bodyguard formed up in a short line behind him and Ahmed found himself alone before his judges like an officer standing in the van of his regiment.
Mahmoud Taluffah looked up at him and grinned, a nasty grin which was not unlike the specialty which Mohammed Arab had made his own.
"So you have been giving us trouble again," he said.
Ahmed tried desperately to think of something. He had to give them some story. Or perhaps he could simply say it had all been a mistake and that he'd pay his contribution immediately.
"We are very busy men," Mahmoud Taluffah went on. "And we really have no time to occupy ourselves with someone who counts as little as you. There are far more important things to be done."
"What can be more important than the individual who makes up the important things?" Ahmed heard himself saying.
Mahmoud Taluffah stared at him as if he hadn't heard aright. A mock pained look crossed his features.
"You are very naive," he said, "and very young, or you would not ask such stupid questions. The individual counts for nothing. What counts is that our country becomes ours. Nothing else matters."
"And who cares that much?" Ahmed heard himself persist. "How many really want to go through this sort of ritual, killing and hating, just to have their country?"
Mahmoud Taluffah scowled.
"You deserve to die," he said. "Only patriots will benefit from the Algeria which we shall win and make."
"You have no feeling for human beings at all," Ahmed said. "How can you create a country in which people will want to live. You're just cut-throats. You won't know how to begin to run a country."
Mahmoud Taluffah made a sign to one of the men behind Ahmed who had been about to strike him.
"Leave the pitiful creature," he said. "We have yet to sentence him."
He looked at Ahmed with a grim dislike in his eyes.. It was a long time since anyone had spoken to him in this way. Only the police who visited him occasionally were allowed to get away with it. Amongst the Algerians of the Metropole he was top dog.
"You are a very misguided youth," he sneered. "You are the sort whose guts we hate, who have no courage, who would be of no use to the country we shall build. You would like to remain here in France living like a dog or perhaps stay in Algeria living like a pig while the fat colons beat you down and down and make their profits to build their great white houses and ride in their big blue Cadillacs. We do not like your type of person and we intend to exterminate it, just as surely as we shall exterminate the French in Algeria until they have been forced back across the Mediterranean and our country is ours as it rightfully should be."
Since he bad begun to talk, to answer back, to attack these men, Ahmed found that his fear had evaporated. He seemed to have gone beyond fear, as if it had frozen up somewhere in some part of him and he'd gone on beyond it. His mind was clear and his hand had stopped trembling. He'd forgotten the police. He felt that he was seeing these men in perspective for perhaps the first time.
"It is up to each man to decide whether he wants to build something through hate and violence or whether he simply will accept the world as he finds it and live as peaceful a life as he wants," he said. "I would like to sec an independent Algeria. I would love the country that might become ours alone. But I could not hate men so much that I am prepared to hate and kill to make that country. There are things which are more important than the particular piece of land on which one lives, or whether one has a car or a house. There are things which are more important."
"You talk like a fool," Mahmoud Taluffah said. "I will not waste my time with you."
He paused, scowling still and then said:
"As there can be no reason for you not paying your contribution. I condemn you to die."
"You could not even give me the chance of giving you any reason for my not being able to pay?"
"There is no ... "
Faces froze in the room and Ahmed's heart jumped.
Down below and very close was the sound of a scuffle. Not a shot had been fired. There was just the unmistakable sound of fighting and then a voice cried out in Arabic that the police were there.