John Robb - I Shall Avenge!

Let the Europeans be massacred?

Equally unthinkable. Every decent human instinct revoked at the thought of several hundred soldiers cowering in a barracks while civilians were being killed a few hundred yards away. And, since many of the civilians were foreign nationals visiting Sadazi with tourist permits, the result would be widespread international complications.

Somehow, in some way, the Europeans had to be rescued before they could be harmed.

But how?

In God’s name how, when the first move out of the barracks would be a signal for the Touaregs to knife their hostages…?

She had moved towards the door, her Arab escort behind her. But Zatov was barring the way. He gestured to Zatov, and the big Russian moved clear with obvious reluctance.

At the open door, Annice Tovak turned. She was beautiful again. As a malignant growth can have repellant beauty.

She said: “You will be hoping to find an answer between now and midnight, capitaine . Hope, if you wish, but you will be wasting time. You will have to leave Sadazi. And in return, the lives of the Europeans will be spared… Remember, no help can reach you in time. And your garrison is captive in their own barracks—until they decide to go for good. Bonsoir , capitaine …”

She was gone.

He was alone again.

And her last words had been the most cruel of all. She had said that help could not reach him in time. That was true. It would be useless to wireless for assistance. The nearest reinforcements were two hundred miles away. But it would have made no difference if they had been at the gates of the town. Those twenty-two people would die before anything could be done for them.

And she had said the garrison was captive m its own barracks. True again! In the whole long story of the world’s soldiers, had there ever been one who had found himself in such a ghastly impasse as this?

Never, Monclaire decided. Never.

He stood up. Through the window he saw her and the two Touaregs walking out of the gates. The mob was cheering them.

The sound of a bugle mixed with the cheers. He looked towards the flag mast. The bugle was playing as the Tricolour came down at the end of the day.

He wondered if it would ascend the mast at dawn.

Suddenly Monclaire’s face hardened. His fist closed involuntarily round the butt of his pistol.

He spoke aloud, but he spoke to himself. And he was looking at the now bare mast as he said: “I swear before all the glories of France that the Tricolour shall rise again—and these people shall not die…”

Clong !

The hour has struck. Which hour? Look up and see. For the clock at Sadazi warns, but it does not tell.

Six hours to midnight.

Why not say six o’clock?

Because it is only midnight that matters. It is at midnight when the satanic ultimatum expires…

Twenty-two Europeans heard it. The sullen stroke came faintly to them through the roof of the hotel cellar that was their prison. The small and now stifling cellar into which—bewildered, protesting, frightened and unbelieving, according to character—they had been herded.

The men looked at their watches.

Then suddenly they resumed their talk, all speaking but none heeding.

“…two hours in this place. It’s an outrage…”

“…of course, they’ll be shot for this. The French have pretty sound ideas about colonial government…”

“…always suffered from asthma, and this is making it worse. I’ll certainly put in a claim for damages…”

“…if I had my way…”

The women were less vocal. They sat on the stone floor.

And from that unlikely position, some tried to assume attitudes of feminine elegance. Others—the more mature—had fallen asleep, propped against the unyielding walls. Only the children were happy. They, with vividly puerile imaginations, saw in their situation only a great and unexpected adventure. They invented boisterous games accordingly.

But all of them—yes, even the children—shared one common emotion. They were confident that soon they would be released from this place. How could it be otherwise? Just as soon as the soldiers heard of what had happened, the doors would be flung open…

Ignorance was at least offering comparative

And Annice Tovak had been wise to insist upon that ignorance. She knew that the prisoners would have been far less docile and confident if they had been told that their lives were being used as the currency to force a bargain.

Colonel Jeux heard it. But only subconsciously. He slept uneasily upon his bunk. He was fully dressed, even to his boots. And one hand grasped an empty bottle of Dubouche , ’65.

Rex and Pete heard it. They, with more than a hundred others of their company, were in their barrack room listening to an excited and fulminating Sergeant Zatov.

Zatov was breaking a military code. Zatov was describing the interview between Monclaire and Annice Tovak. And since he had witnessed that while in a privileged position, he ought to have kept very quiet about it. But the thought—if it occurred to him—did not worry Zatov in the least. He was being borne upon a crest of irresistible indignation. And since he had to talk to somebody, who better than the men of his company, who were compelled to give him a respectful hearing?

But even if he had been without his rank, Sergeant Zatov would still have had a fascinated audience.

The legionnaires listened to the report with wonder and horror. Like all soldiers of all nations, they often proclaimed their contempt for the army in which they served. But they would not tolerate such opinions from others. They had many times announced that Dini Sadazi was a flea-packed oven and there was no reason to keep a garrison there. If the Arabs wanted the place, well, they were welcome to it. But they felt hard fury when they heard that they might be forced out of the place.

And they had frequently expressed contempt for the handful of over-prosperous and flabby civilians who strutted about the European quarter. They were useless fools who sometimes bought a legionnaire a drink in exchange for some impossible story of military adventure. Or even paid a few francs for the extraordinary privilege of having their photograph taken with one of them, so that the badly developed pictures could in due course be shown to other flabby and slack-mouthed civilians when they got back home.

But the threat to massacre them…

That put the civilians on a new and lofty level. Even the most brutalised of the legionnaires—and quite a few of them were that—felt that this ultimatum was an insult to a basic instinct. And a challenge to them, as soldiers.

Because Zatov’s command of French was fluent, if grammatically imperfect, all were able to follow at least the outline of his story.

He stood at one end of the barrack room like some gigantic apostle, his beard and his eyes glittering in the fading light.

And when he had at last finished, there was an uneasy stir among the legionnaires. Zatov embraced them all in his malevolent gaze, as though, having taken the trouble to describe an impossible problem, he now had a right to expect an immediate solution.

“Is there nothing you can say?” he demanded after a few moments. “Have you all lost your tongues as well as your brains?”

Rex was sitting on the comer of his bunk. A newly issued Lebel was across his knees and he had removed the bolt preparatory to drawing a pull-through down the barrel. The cleaning process had been interrupted by Zatov and was entirely forgotten now. He put the encumbrances aside and got to his feet.