Adrian Magson - Death on the Pont Noir

There wasn’t much to it, culled, no doubt from an official release which would be going out sooner or later. What there was did not vary much from some of the other abortive attempts on the life of de Gaulle. One of the fleet of official Government cars had been heading south-east from Paris on the N19 near Guignes, some forty kilometres from the city centre, accompanied by two Garde Mobile outriders, when men with automatic weapons had opened fire from a belt of trees at the side of the road. The car had been slowing down for some roadworks — fake, as it had turned out — and the attackers had used the opportunity to hose it down with bullets. A classic ambush technique.

Fortunately, one of the outriders had been thrown from his bike into a culvert and, although wounded, had been able to draw his weapon and give covering fire. After several minutes, the gunmen had abandoned their attempt and driven away in a stolen Simca Ariane, later found abandoned. They had left behind one of their number dead, identified as a renegade former NCO dismissed from the French military some years before.

To Rocco, it was disturbingly familiar. In August 1962, in Le Petit-Clamart, a south-western suburb of Paris, an attempt had been made on de Gaulle’s life by men from the OAS — the Organisation Armee Secrete — a group opposed to any idea of Algerian independence and formed by a mix of military and civilians, colonists and students. The man said to be the driving force behind the attempt, Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, a former lieutenant colonel and weapons engineer, had since been convicted and executed just months ago, in March. It had become a landmark event, stirring up old hatreds and enmities and polarising further the extremes on all sides.

Rocco put the paper down. Nothing much had changed, then.

‘They’re still trying.’ And pretty desperate, he figured, to use a Simca Ariane as a getaway car. Hardly a powerful vehicle — unless they’d been trying to blend in to the background — it was never going to win any races pursued by vengeful security personnel.

‘It would seem so.’ Massin returned to his seat and steepled his fingers. ‘Fortunately, the attackers had been misinformed. The car was not carrying General de Gaulle, but a junior member of cabinet taking important documents out to the president’s residence in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises.’

Rocco let a few seconds go by while assessing the implications, during which he could hear a clock ticking on the wall behind him. ‘Misinformed?’ It was an odd choice of word to use. ‘Did they have someone on the inside?’

Massin waved a hand. ‘Clearly they knew about a car. But not the correct one.’

Rocco let it go. ‘It’s a long way to take important documents by car.’ Colombey was over two hundred kilometres from the centre of Paris. As far as he knew, the president normally flew down by helicopter. Clearly the same courtesy wasn’t extended to official documents… or to members of his staff.

‘I agree. But it is not our place to comment on that.’

‘What about the passenger?’

‘Dead. Although an official vehicle, the car was not armoured. The driver was seriously wounded and not expected to live. It was a salutary lesson that the President’s enemies have not given up.’

Rocco said nothing. Another one to add to the lengthening list of assassination attempts on the country’s leader. He was ambivalent about many things de Gaulle had achieved, but he didn’t discount the man’s utter commitment to his country. If it had been him in the hot seat, he’d have given up the job long ago and taken up knitting. Maybe de Gaulle hadn’t yet got the message that someone didn’t like him — although that wasn’t a thought he could share with Massin; the man had a broomstick up his back about anyone in power and lacked the ability to see the occasional absurdities in life.

‘Is that anything to do with why the colonel was here?’

Massin threw him a sharp look. ‘You know Saint-Cloud?’

‘Not personally. But I know what he does for a living.’

Massin looked slightly peeved, as if he had had his thunder stolen. ‘The colonel and his colleagues were here on a fact-finding visit. You should not read anything into that. As a region, we are no more important than any other for future itineraries. But it makes good sense to check that all is well here should the president decide to include us in any future tour.’

‘Does that mean he’s coming or not?’ Rocco felt a momentary impatience with Massin’s tortuous evasiveness. Either he knew de Gaulle was planning on coming to the region or he wasn’t; pretending otherwise was a waste of time.

‘I cannot say.’ Massin sniffed and stretched his neck against his shirt collar, as if the admission was being wrenched out of him. ‘All I can say is, you should be aware that increased security measures in light of this latest attempt will mean everyone will be expected to be in attendance. If we are given the green light, I don’t need to tell you that every potential hazard will be investigated in advance.’

‘By “hazard”, you mean threat.’

‘Yes. Colonel Saint-Cloud and his staff are checking a list of known agitators, and this will be circulated to all offices in the region. But I’m sure you know which groups they include.’

Rocco nodded. Take your pick. OAS. Resistance veterans. Military men. Communists. Government conspirators. Police. Students. Algerians. The CIA. The British. The favoured list among conspiracy nuts was endless. Even NATO had taken a crack, so rumour had it, a temper tantrum in response to de Gaulle’s decision to withdraw French military facilities from the organisation. Rocco didn’t believe that one, if only because it would have required a full council meeting and de Gaulle’s signature to assassinate himself. He doubted even Le Grand Charles was capable of that level of arrogance.

‘What do you want me to do?’ He still couldn’t figure out why Massin had told him all this. Somehow he doubted this was an occasion for covering his back.

‘You may need to assist in preventing anything happening. As you know, Saint-Cloud runs a very small group, albeit very effective in what it does do. But while he is away checking routes and itineraries, he cannot do his main job, which is to oversee closely the protection of the president.’ He rearranged the already immaculate pencil. ‘It would be a disaster if anything were to happen in this region.’

Rocco nearly laughed at the outrageousness of the build-up. So Massin was covering his back after all. He asked, ‘Why me?’

Massin hesitated before answering, a flicker of something approaching doubt on his face. Then he said, ‘Because Colonel Saint-Cloud suggested it. He asked for names and selected you. His own team is stretched very thin, so he is having to use whatever facilities he can. Meet him here tomorrow at nine for a briefing.’

‘I’ve never been called a facility before,’ Rocco murmured dryly. ‘But I’ll do what I can.’ Short, he thought, of deliberately throwing myself in the way of a bullet, anyway.

Massin’s eyes were hooded when he looked up. ‘I’m delighted to hear it. I trust you will not let me down. You hear me?’

Home in Poissons earlier than usual, Rocco called in at the co-op store for some meat for dinner. Mme Drolet, the owner, fluttered her eyelashes and hurried round the end of the counter on high heels to join him, bringing with her a rush of perfume and powder.

‘I’ve got some nice cutlets,’ she suggested breathlessly. ‘Very filling for a big man like you.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, wondering if she spoke to Delsaire, the plumber, this way. He’d met Madame Delsaire, who looked the sort to eat thistles for breakfast. ‘I’ll just take some minced beef.’