That Devil's Madness (28 page)

‘What's that?'

‘Small groups to make sure no one knows everyone in the organisation. They used it here during the war of independence. One man picks two others to work under him.
They
, in turn, each pick two more. No one knows who the other has picked, so no one knows more than three other people at the one time – the one who chose him, and the two he picked.'

‘Clever. Kinda like honeycomb in a beehive.'

‘Exactly. Of course, when you get right down the bottom of the ladder – down to your rebel groups that go around doing the actual dirty work – well of course they know their own little group, but they've no idea who their group leader gets
his
orders from.'

Nicolette nodded. She understood now what Steven had meant when he'd said she wasn't going to find out who was responsible for the arms deal in Constantine in just a day. ‘So get back to the weapons.'

‘It's the smaller countries – or the ones without the necessary resources to manufacture their own weapons – that have to buy ready-mades from the countries that manufacture. Now there's this law that says that any country that buys arms has to sign a document guaranteeing it won't pass the weapons on to another country or group, without the permission of the country it bought it from. But you can imagine how often
that
gets done legally, when there's huge sums of money involved.'

He reached behind him for his cigarettes on the bed, and offered one to Nicolette. She showed him the ones Steven had given her.

‘Nice.'

‘Yeah, it is… You said earlier that a lot of the stuff nowadays comes from Vietnam?'

Jean-Paul nodded. ‘You get places like ‘Nam, where the country's dead broke anyway after the war, and there's all this stuff lying around – it doesn't take much figuring to see that someone's going to be on the ball and start moving the stuff to where there's a ready market. They'd make a lot of money out of it.'

‘So the stuff from places like Vietnam – does that get sold directly to the little guy?'

‘No, that's what I'm trying to tell you – even the little guys are part of a huge network. Look, let's start at the bottom and work up. You have these revolutionaries who need guns. Now there's always someone at the head of these groups. This guy negotiates with someone who's like a go-between. The go-between gets word to the bigger fish – the negotiator – who has contacts with suppliers, who buy off the governments or whoever has access to a supply. Get it?'

‘I think so. Listen, I need to get some food into me – this wine's going to my head.'

‘Yeah, I could do with something too. Want me to get you a plate?'

Nicolette nodded, looking towards the three food trolleys that had been brought up from the hotel kitchens only a short while ago.

‘Something gutsy to mop up the wine,' she said.

Jean-Paul was soon back carrying three plates. Two were laden with a variety of
tagines
– rich meaty stews on a bed of steamed couscous, with a couple of kebabs on top for good measure. The third plate held a variety of sweetmeats –
m'hencha
, almond filled and coiled like serpents;
kab-el-ghazel
, crimped and crescent-shaped to represent gazelle horns, and semolina cakes filled with dates and lightly flavoured with orange flower water, called
bradj.

‘
Lasa jiyid mer rehturban,'
Jean-Paul said as he handed her one of the savoury plates and put the one with the sweetmeats between them on the floor.

‘I don't understand.'

‘
A good meal is known by its odour
– some North African proverb I picked up. It's about the only thing I can say.'

‘I use to know a heap of them; my grandmother was always coming up with them. The only one I can remember now is
a lucky year is that in which the fruits of the earth are without worms.
'

Jean-Paul laughed. ‘Makes sense.'

Nicolette picked up a kebab and took a bite. ‘You were telling me about the little guy. He doesn't get to be the negotiator?'

‘Never. To be able to negotiate deals and not get caught, you'd have to be someone who can travel around without arousing suspicion. And you'd have to have contacts at the other end too. You'd also have to know the countries you were dealing with pretty well.'

‘Fair enough. So let me get this straight. This negotiator – he gets told someone wants some guns. He goes off to whatever country has them, buys the guns, gets them back without arousing suspicion, and sells them down the line to get to the little guy. To do that, he'd need a boat, or a plane.'

‘Yeah, he would, if that was how it works, but it's not. The negotiator never gets his hands dirty – he just organises things. He gets others to do the actual work. He's there, in the background, but he never does anything that'll give him away. It's how he survives.'

‘And how do they get it all into the country? There's border security, customs. You said something about an end user certificate?'

‘You only need that if you're dealing with the major countries, to make it all look legal. So customs are no problem if you've got that. For the less official stuff, there's an awful lot of space, an awful lot of sea and sky. It can be done.'

‘Okay. So, getting back to what's going on here?'

‘Word is whoever's doing the negotiating is in Constantine at the moment. And he's not Algerian – one of my sources reckons English.'

‘So how do we find out about this guy?'

‘Very carefully, I'd say. And not “we”. As soon as Boumedienne's funeral's over, I'm giving up this racket.'

‘But why? This is big. Don't you want to get to the bottom of it? What are you going to do, anyway?'

‘I've bought myself a nice little place just outside this little village in Provence. I'm going to grow grapes, make wine…'

‘Can't you do that after we crack this? It's worth chasing up, Jean-Paul. Certainly more interesting than sitting around waiting for Boumedienne to die.'

‘Sorry, Nicolette, but I've made up my mind. Boumedienne, and that's it.'

‘What are you two up to?' Steven asked, picking up the plate of sweetmeats and sitting on the floor between them. ‘You look like you're planning to take over the world.'

‘Not quite,' Nicolette answered.

Across the room DJ and a Scottish correspondent broke into a drunken rendition of
I'll be home for Christmas.
Mike Davies decided to join them for a minute, but changed his mind and went to refill his glass instead. Steven popped a
bradj
into his mouth and chewed.

22

January 1957 was particularly cold in Constantine. Nicolette, rugged up in a coat with a little fur collar and matching fur hat, walked along beside Louis, playing hopscotch with the pavement squares as they walked.

‘Are those boots polished?' Louis asked, pointing to her feet. Nicolette looked at her boots. She stopped skipping. She knew how strict her grandfather was about clean shoes. Every night he would spread newspaper on the kitchen table, and choose the right coloured polish and the right brushes from a box he kept under the sink. With one brush he would carefully work the polish into the leather of the shoes he had worn that day, then leave the shoes for a while so the polish could penetrate the leather. When he judged enough time had passed, he'd pick up the other brush and shine the shoes. Then he would get a piece of woollen cloth he kept just for that purpose, and buff the shoes even more until they shone like new.

For the past year or so, since Grandma Therèse had died after being so long in hospital, Grandpa Louis expected Nicolette to polish her own shoes.

There's no shame in having old shoes
, he often said to her,
but there is shame in having shoes that never see polish.

‘Well?' Louis asked again. ‘Are they polished?'

Nicolette shook her head, ashamed.

‘Well, I guess you'll have to walk by yourself then. I certainly don't want to be seen with a girl whose boots look like that.' He took a step backward. Nicolette's face was red with shame and embarrassment. She walked on ahead, head bent, unaware of the smile that played on Louis' lips. They turned a corner and painted on a high wall Louis notice some new graffiti, painted in blood red paint:
The screams of the tortured have become the anthem of Algeria.

He called to Nicolette.

‘I'll walk with you,' he said ‘if you promise to shine them well tonight.' Nicolette nodded. Regaining her grandfather's approval was more important to her than her dislike for polishing shoes. ‘All right then, let's go find Imez.'

#

Imez was sitting on a park bench. Beside him Jamilah was feeding bread to the pigeons. Nearby Rafiq was skipping stones across a lake. When Louis and Nicolette came into view, Jamilah ran to Nicolette, and together they joined Rafiq by the lake.

‘How bad is it?' Louis asked as he sat beside Imez.

‘It gets worse every day. Since Yacef's girls set off those bombs in Algiers last September, your General Massu's been having a field day.'

‘Those bombs killed innocent people. Most of those in the
Cafétéria
were teenagers – kids listening to the jukebox. And at the
Milk Bar
, mothers and children stopped there on the way home from the beach. No matter how hard I try, I can't condone the reasons for those bombs.'

‘And the children in my village? In all the other villages that were bombed? Are still being bombed? You were there. You saw. Can you condone those?'

Louis shook his head. Who knew who was right or wrong anymore? Since All Saint's Day that November 1
^st
three years ago, when the
Front de Liberation National
– or the FLN, as they were more commonly known – declared war on the French through simultaneous attacks on buildings, police stations and even communication facilities, the whole country had disintegrated into an arena of atrocities and counter-atrocities, where both the French and the Algerians sacrificed their youths and their hopes. The next year, near Phillipeville, the FLN massacred one hundred-and-twenty-three men, women and children in one day. In an orgy of bloodletting, the French army, police and civilian gangs retaliated by slaughtering more than ten times that many Muslims.

Since then, the killing had continued. The FLN used the hit-and-run tactics of guerrilla warfare, as well as kidnapping and ritual mutilation to terrorise the French. The French responded by applying the principles of collective responsibility – whole villages were bombed, large segments of the Muslim population were kept in camps where, under the supervision of the military, torture was an everyday occurrence. Then, on the 30
^th
of September 1956, just four months ago, three women of the FLN placed bombs in the downtown Air France office, the
Milk Bar
and the
Cafétéria
, starting the Battle of Algiers. By the end of the year, violence reached an unprecedented climax. When a bomb exploded at Mayor Froger's funeral, any Muslim seen on the street was set upon by thugs, dragged out of their cars and lynched, and veiled women had their heads bashed in with iron bars. And so the carnage continued.

‘You know,' Louis said at last, ‘there are times when I could easily hate every Muslim – even you…'

Imez nodded. He too had experienced these conflicting feelings – there were times when he questioned whether his friendship with Louis was a form of betrayal to his own people. But on the other hand, denying the close bond they both shared would also be a betrayal, not only to Louis, but also to himself, to everything he believed in. He had tried, but in the end he'd known he had to follow what he believed in.

The two men sat together, each lost in thought.

Anyone passing the two old gentlemen sitting on the park bench would have assumed they were just two friends resting while their grandchildren played. But there was an undercurrent of tension surrounding them – both knew they were taking a tremendous risk meeting like this, even though Imez and his grandchildren were wearing Western clothes. But a lifetime of friendship could not be easily forsaken.

‘I came to warn you,' Imez finally said. ‘There's going to be a general strike. In Algiers. Next week, on the twenty-eighth, the day of the opening of the United Nation session in New York. We have to make our struggle known – show them that the whole Algerian population supports the FLN. So for eight days, every Algerian worker will strike. Essential services will not be able to continue. Shops will be closed. Algerian children will be kept from school. For eight days, Algeria will be at a standstill.'

‘Here? In Constantine?'

Imez shrugged. ‘You'd better be prepared…'

Louis nodded. ‘Have you thought of the repercussions?'

‘If the United Nations hears us, we'll have succeeded.'

The two men looked at the children feeding the ducks with the bread that had been intended for the pigeons.

‘She doesn't take after her mother,' Imez noted, indicating Nicolette.

‘No. I've got that to be grateful for. I love her dearly, but I'm strict with her. I call her my little shadow – since Therèse died, she hasn't left my side.'

‘And her mother?'

‘Odette's found work – personal assistant to the director of a multi-national company here in Constantine. When she came back from Algiers, I bought her an apartment in the next street; she's out of my hair, but close enough that I can look after Nicolette when needed. She's happy.'

‘The father?'

Louis shook his head. ‘She's never named him. I've heard rumours, but… We don't mention it anymore.'

Imez nodded – some things were better left alone. Rafiq came back to his grandfather and stood beside him, frowning at Louis. Louis smiled at him.