As a master of erotic realism, Marcus Van Heller may justly be ranked along with Jean Genet and the other vanguard writers of the modern French school. TERROR, however, is much more than an erotic novel; in it, while still displaying his genius for delving deeply into individual character, Van Heller expands his canvass to paint a memorable picture of "underground" life in Paris, specifically of its swarming night-life, during the Algerian troubles that plagued the French capital a decade ago. In dealing with this broader aspect while still focusing his insight on the individual dramatis personae, Van Heller's tour de force is reminiscent of the works of that modern master of French realism, Georges Simenon.
TERROR tells the story of Ahmed ben Lulla, a young Algerian much more interested in making love than in political agitation, and his French prostitute girl friend Francoise. Both are caught up in the slimy toils of the Algerian underground organization in Paris a cutthroat group calling itself representative of the National Liberation Front, but actually fattening on the profits of terrorism, extortion, procuring, and other assorted criminal activities. The "organization", headed by the sinister, lecherous Mahmoud Taluffah, hounds Ahmed for the "political contributions" he and all other "Loyal" Algerians in Paris are required to make to "the cause", under threat of torture or death; and they similarly hound Francoise for their cut of her pitiful earnings as a whore around the Pigalle dives.
When Francoise is viciously raped, beaten and abused by Mahmoud's agents, Ahmed finally finds the guts to rebel; he allies himself with Police Inspector Pierre Raimond, who is out to get the Algerian assassins of a police superintendent. Raimond's own wife is brutally raped and abused by Mahmoud and his gang, before the final climatic scene in which Ahmed is put on "trial" by the NLF for "treason" to the Algerian rebel cause.
In the political aspects of its plot and action, TERROR inevitably calls to mind Liam O'Flaherty's Irish classic "The Informer", with the roles reversed: the rebel organization the vallain, rather than the individual turncoat.
An outstanding feature of Van Heller's TERROR is the fact that the erotic passages, which are plentiful, are not forced, nor dragged in artificially for their own sake. This is true erotic realism, the New Wave in literature, of which Drs. Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen have pointedly written.
"It (erotic realism) is nothing modern or futuristic. It has along tradition in the arts and literature. Wherever and whenever society has saddled the poet and artist with artificiality, sham, and pretense, there have been those disciples of the Muse who refused to go along with the trend. If they were painters and sculptors, they did the human figure without fig-leaves, showing pubic hair and genitals with the same taken-for-grantedness as they painted faces with mouths, noses, and head hair. If they were writers and poets, they described, treated, and discussed the sex lives of men and women with the same naturalness with which they spoke of other, nonsexual, affairs. Erotic realism is not an isolated phenomenon. It represents a realistic orientation in art and literature, and is part of a greater whole, just as one cannot be a Zen Buddhist without being a Buddhist, or a Lutheran without embracing Christianity."
Such realism is the essence of this book by Van Heller, originally published in Paris and presented here in its first American printing. In some of his other published works, notably in ADAM AND EVE (Collectors Publications, 1967), Van Heller has ventured afield into the considerably more rarefied realm of erotic surrealism the creation of bizarre fantasies which are to be understood symbolically on many more levels than one. In TERROR, on the other hand, he adheres to simple realism, and does a superb job of it. Especially notable is his economy of style; at all times he hews closely to the main theme, the main line of action; his work is uncluttered with pointless digressions.
Nevertheless, if one cares to probe deeper, Van Heller even in this tale of fast-moving action, cannot help but display his intuitive grasp of dynamic psychology. In addition to being a story of Algerians fighting the French authorities and fighting among themselves, TERROR is also a masterly study in sadomasochism, of which Freud has written:
"The roots of active algolagnia, or sadism, can be readily demonstrable in the normal individual.
The sexuality of most men shows an admixture of aggression, of a desire to subdue, the biological significance of which lies the necessity for overcoming the resistance of the sexual object by actions other than mere courting. Sadism would then correspond to an aggressive component of the sexual instinct, which has become independent and exaggerated, and has been brought to the foreground by displacement.
". . .That cruelty and the sexual instinct are most intimately connected is beyond doubt taught by the history of civilization, but in the explanation of this connection, no one has gone beyond the accentuation of the aggressive factors of the libido. The aggression which is mixed with the sexual instinct is, according to some authors, a remnant of cannibalistic lust. ... It has also been claimed that even pain contains in itself the possibility of a pleasurable sensation. Let us be satisfied with the impression that the explanation given concerning this perversion is by no means satisfactory, and that it is possible that many psychic strivings unite herein, into one effect."
The eroticism of the characters in Van Heller's TERROR is almost entirely on the sadomasochistic side; as such, it reflects a much more universal trend in our high-pressure civilization, than the comparatively limited milieu of the Algerian colony in Paris; Van Heller is writing not only about Algerians, but about men and women, and his characters are valid reflections of men and women everywhere and of their frequently tortured and distorted relations with each other.
Edward S. Sullivan
CHAPTER I
The room was not terribly small but there was about it an overwhelming air of constriction as if once inside its walls one would never escape. Its walls were a dull buff color streaked in places with cracks and smudges which through long existence had become indelible like the lines on a man's face. The ceiling was not low-a dozen feet above the floor-but it, too, was patterned with cracks meandering like little streams, erupting in places into a veritable lake of dull color where a whole patch of whitewash had flaked off leaving to view the older hue of previous ceilings. There was one small window, cloudy with dust over most of its expanse, grimy round its edges where a dirty blue putty was breaking off. The window looked out onto an air shaft more constricting than the room itself, dark and dirty with pieces of newspaper from ten years back on its floor and strange vegetable messes like mixtures of decomposed potatoes and cabbages. This was the only window to the room and, even when the sun was shining, the shaft was so dark that the light had to be kept on in most of the rooms that looked onto it. The light in the room was a single 25-watt bulb, suspended naked from the ceiling. It seemed unwilling to reach the corners, as if it were exploring unknown territory and did not trust itself to move beyond the central circle of its glow. There was a bare wooden table against the wall under the light with a broken, chipped enamel bowl on it and a stool pushed under it. There was a single cupboard with an uneven door which enabled a visitor to see a portion of shabby clothes hung inside. Apart from that the room was bare but for a narrow bed in the gloom of a far corner. On that bed a man lay staring at the shabby ceiling, unmoving, his arms inert at his sides. There was about him an air of hopelessness which immediately gave the clue to the constriction of the room. It might easily have been a prison room; in fact it was difficult to believe that in fact it was a hotel room for which guests paid and in which they lived of their own free will-more or less of their own free will.
After several minutes of complete stillness, the man on the bed rolled over onto his side and changed his unseeing stare from the ceiling to the opposite wall. His body was slim, rather small and his face flatly handsome and dark. His name was Ahmed ben Lulla, his home-if it was still there-was in Algeria. He couldn't be sure that it still existed. His people were unable to write and he had stopped sending them letters some years ago when the hopelessness had begun to set in.
After several minutes more he swung his feet heavily off the bed and sat up. He wore a pair of jeans and a dark brown shirt that looked as if it had seen several campaigns with an active army. He rubbed his hands slowly along his eyelids and blinked slowly. His hands fell back to his sides and then he stood up, pulling himself up as if each limb, each joint fought a separate, losing battle to prevent him. He crossed to the cupboard and opened it. He felt inside without looking, staring still, without seeing anything.
He pulled out a leather jacket which zipped up the front-one of the few solid possessions he had. When he had half zipped it and it clung neatly to his slim frame he went to the door of the room, turned off the switch without looking at the bulb and went out.
From the tiny, uncarpeted landing with the water tap which dripped into a fixed basin he walked heavily down the narrow, bare-boarded staircase which wound round and down, passing several other landings with three or four doors on each.
At the bottom of the staircase two prostitutes were sitting on a stair. They made way for him to pass without a word and he stepped over the threadbare mat, didn't look into the dismal office where mail, for those who ever had any, was kept in little boxes. The door at the end of the short, bare vestibule was open and in the moonlit street beyond an occasional face glanced in and eyes ran over the two prostitutes as someone passed.
He stepped out into the street with a faint feeling of relief which was only momentary and instinctive. It was a narrow street. There were two other shabby hotels in it, with signs in which some of the letters were missing; there were several more prostitutes chatting in doorways. They looked up at him and then immediately resumed their bored conversations.
The street was slightly inclined and he walked down it with a rapidity which was automatic, a reflex which had nothing to do with his mood. He passed through another street, dark and bare, with a few shuttered shops and high, shabby apartment buildings and then he was in the big boulevard where it was still dark and bare but where there were more people and a few lights and a glow some distance off which was the neon-land of Pigalle.
He began to walk towards Pigalle, passing the tiny bars where he would normally have drunk a black coffee and chatted with acquaintances. Tonight he didn't want to see anybody, but he wanted to be surrounded by humanity, a humanity which had no relation to him, to which he was a complete stranger, a humanity that by its own, recognizable, agonized existence would, perhaps, make him feel less afraid and self-concerned.
The boulevard began to light up, as if he'd been walking through a forest getting nearer and nearer to a glade where the sun was brightest.
The bars became bigger and more frequent, throwing their brash light out across the road; neon signs had sprung up on both sides, shop windows were ablaze for night window shoppers, crowds thronged around the foyers of bigger and bigger cinemas, the traffic grew thicker and thicker, gliding along a dual carriageway; on the broad stretch of pavement and trees which separated the two roadways, people were buying the last edition of France Soir from the gaudy booths; he began to hear English and German mixed with the French and the Arabic which formed the background.
In Pigalle the lights flickered in a fluid pattern like colored fountains, distracting the eye with unexpected explosions. The bars were filled with tight-skirted, jut-buttocked whores, their low-cut blouses revealing the lack of brassieres beneath as they leaned over pinball machines and tried to pick up American GIs on leave from Fontainebleau and elsewhere. Commissionaires invited the passing crowd to see "the most daring nudes in the world" and dark doorways offered "genuine strip-teases every two hours from 3 till midnight."
Ahmed ben Lulla paused beside a bright charcuterie in which the multi-colored dishes seemed almost to be alive. He studied the price tags: "macedoine de legumes, 600 jr. le \ilo."
"cervelas, 800 fr.. "
"champignons grecs, I,100 jr." He felt saliva gather in his mouth and his throat constricted in a small torment of frustration. He hated these expensive little shops which stayed open late for the tourist and charged prices which only tourists would pay. He walked on and, at a small, steaming counter which jutted onto the pavement from the cafe behind, he bought a small carton of chips for 60 francs and continued to walk, eating ravenously until there was nothing left and he could roll up the greasy little carton and throw it in the kerb. He wiped his hands on his jeans and turned up a side street which ran steeply off the boulevard, up toward the Butte Montmartre.
He turned into a little bar and sat down at a small table beside the window that looked out onto the street. He was going to order a coffee but changed his mind and asked for beer instead. Then he asked himself what good a single beer would do. What good would a single anything do?
When the beer was brought and placed before him on a little cork mat, he sat watching the foam slowly disintegrate until the golden liquid beneath was shadowing darkly through the last white-veined bubbles.
Tonight they had come to his hotel. He had known they would come, it had been inevitable. He had, of course, made his excuses and they had, as he'd known they would, rejected them. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some coins-534 francs that was all. Of course he would have a little more in a few days' time, his assistance, for he'd been unable to find a job for several months. But he could hardly live on that and he owed a month's rent. And now, when at last he'd refused to pay his contribution because he didn't want to starve and he wasn't interested in politics anyway, they'd come and told him that" he must pay or be killed. He had two days.
It wasn't a big sum, but for him it was a lot and he wasn't interested in them. That was what hurt. He wasn't interested in them. Nor their murders, their "Algirie pour les Algeriens." He wasn't interested in politics, in revolution, in violence. He wanted a quiet, simple life with enough to eat and drink and a place to live. He'd been mistaken to come to France-all those promises of work-but now he couldn't get back and all he wanted was a quiet life with a chance of improving his lot.
So, after paying for so long, after going without food for three days in order to pay, after not being able to buy the cheap shoes he needed, to pay, after lying and begging to keep his hotel room in spite of arrears, to pay. After all that he'd decided to hell with them and he hadn't paid. And so they had come, four of them. It was hardly surprising. They had been stern but not brutal. They had simply made it clear he had to pay and it was not their concern how he found the money to pay. The National Liberation Front was bigger and more important than any individual with his petty little problems of eating and finding a roof and clothing.
Then they had gone, saying they would be back. And he had lain on his bed for three hours, dulled with hopelessness because he knew he couldn't pay and wasn't going to pay.
He sipped the beer and looked abstractedly out of the window. Opposite, a young prostitute with large, firm breasts was encouraging passers-by to take her upstairs in the hotel by the door of which she stood. Farther along a couple of older whores stood in an apparently blase unconcern at the proximity of their more attractive neighbor. Ahmed looked back at his beer. All the bubbles had gone-lost, dead, finished. There was no hope anywhere.
CHAPTER II
Within a few streets of the cafe where Ahmed ben Lulla sat drinking his beer was another room also with its air of constriction. But this air of constriction was of a type that was much sought after by the small crowd which filled the room.
Lights were low, half-concealed in the walls. At one end of the room was a small platform on which a little, dark girl was slowly undressing to the soft, sexy rhythm of a mamba.
In the gloomy body of the room, sitting on hard wooden chairs on the pain parquet-floor, were a crowd of individuals. Some were clearly French, others had the air of knowing tourists. They all looked rich and they were all straining forward watching the girl disrobing. There were no windows and beside the heavy, red velvet curtain which hid the single door a dark man was standing, smoking and indifferently glancing from the girl to the audience.
There were women amongst the audience as well as men. Most of them were middle-aged but there were also a few young people. They were watching one of Pigalle's clandestine exhibitions.
When the preliminary striptease had started a little while before, the girl, who had small features and short, dark hair, had been wearing a long evening gown. Now she was dressed in a sort of petticoat which swathed her slim, muscular body in quick, tentative embraces as she moved gently to the music which seemed, itself, to be a solid presence in the confining space.
The lights adorning the walls around the small dais were more numerous than those in the other parts of the room and some were so arranged that as the girl moved in front of them they shone through the thin material of her garment and outlined the dark shape of the body and limbs beneath. Every so often the girl, whose face was normally without expression, would flash a deep smile into the audience. At such times it seemed to every man there that she was looking at and smiling just for him-the way women claim that Frank Sinatra seems to be singing just for them individually.
She moved in a gentle dance rhythm which sometimes merged into the music, sometimes came out of it as if sometimes the beat dominated her and sometimes she dominated it. Swaying her hips a little, she turned her back to the audience and pulled the petticoat slowly up and over her head. The old-fashioned garment gone, she was all modern underneath-a pair of undersized briefs and the slim string of a brassiere. The briefs were not big enough to cover her buttocks fully and the audience could see where the slim, supple back with its central hollow ran into the rising mounds of her bottom. Below, the briefs arched up half-revealing each buttock where it joined the thigh. She continued to sway gently and moved along the stage with her back towards the room. Her buttocks hollowed gently as she moved and there were dimples just above them which came and went. Her bottom, surprisingly full now that it was more or less uncovered, seemed to be on the point of bursting through the light cloth which covered it. The rounding of her buttocks was a rolling mamba of its own.
As the audience watched, flushed and desireful, she turned slowly and the brassiere which covered half her breasts seemed about to peel off. Through its flimsiness, her large, pointed nipples poked, scorching embossments, crowning points to a full weight of firm, caressable flesh.
Below the breasts which wobbled very slightly, more of a sensitive quiver, her waist was small and wiry. There was a little black hair just below her navel which ran in a thin line down over the slightly raised abdomen and disappeared under the briefs-disappeared in its detail but left its trace in the spongy protrusion at the junction of her thighs where the dark muff of hair made a dark bump. Her hips wavered back and forth to the music, inviting cool fingers to draw down over them the tiny material and slip it-reluctantly though it would leave-down over the warmth of flesh which would tremor slightly at the touch and the anticipation of what was to come.
The smile came, meaningful and inviting, and responsive bumps grew behind the fly buttons of the male watchers. Reaching up with her hands, keeping her deep, shining eyes still on the outside room, the girl snapped open the brassiere and let it fall to the floor. Freed now, her breasts swayed heavily from side to side as she moved. A hand under them could have lifted them slightly, just enough to feel their full, voluptuous weight; apart from that they were taut and high. It was as if the flesh were held in a glossy, transparent bag.
Slowly, languorously, half closing her dark eyes, the girl ran her slender hands up her body, letting them flow lovingly over her hot flesh until they reached her breasts and held them out, nipples jutting, to the spectators. "Take them, take them," she seemed to say. "These nipples are longing for the cool relief of a mouth."
For a few minutes more she danced, turning her body completely round a couple of times while the audience watched almost without taking breath, fascinated, and then she reached down and undid a small catch on her briefs.
Mouths went dry as the little white garment fluttered away in a trembling flight which seemed to symbolize abandon. But no. A g-string still circled her hips in which the indentations of her movement were clearly marked, and a tiny cache-sex covered the smallest of triangular areas down where her thighs merged and rubbed in each other's heat.
A flowering of dark hair surrounded the clinging morsel and the full roundness of the abdomen below the small, flat belly offered itself to the gaze of the audience. Just that one crucial spot remained protected, that one point which it was so necessary to denude for the abandon to be complete.
Slowly, rotating on her toes, the girl turned, allowed herself to be seen in profile-a lovely swansneck shape with the beauty of breast lifting before and the voluptuousness of buttock hollowing out behind-and then edged round showing first the half-moon protrusion of another buttock beyond the first and then the whole of her naked behind, wobbling and tensing at the audience, a full, bursting smoothness of flesh which moved and wiggled as if it searched for something, some pressure which would make it squirm in a complete, cooperative delight.
Gradually, she bent her slim back forward, leaning away from the audience, which watched breathlessly, until the breadth of her buttocks was jutting towards them and rotating gently as if in obscene invitation. Her thighs tensed and rippled in slim strength as she giffled on her feet and then she reached back with her dark, slender arms and gently pulled apart her buttocks with her fingers, disclosing in an even more obscene gesture the little dark hole between as if she were inviting a sharp, sodomising attack.
Around the little, revealed anus, which seemed so raw and vulnerable, a few stray, black hairs fringed. The girl's bottom rotated as if on its own axis, as if it were involved in some strange sexual intercourse with the surrounding air, rather like a cat brushing itself against a wall, except that there was no wall and no male member.
Slowly, in time with the music which continued to pulsate like blood through the room, the girl moved her hands away from her ass-hole and back over her ice-smooth buttocks and into her waist. She straightened, with her hands on that slim waist, and turned back gradually to face the audience again.
There was an atmosphere of slight relief in the room as if the bending offer had been too much to bear.
But now, with another flashing smile, she unclasped the g-string and let it slither down between her thighs until she was able to trample on it with rhythm-flipping feet. Where the dark moss of hair made a V with her thighs, there was a pink weight of flesh, a mound of promise and strength, a sight of which was not to be denied the spectators. Opening her legs wide, spreading her feet firmly on the wooden stage, the girl lowered herself backwards in a lithe, double-jointed posture until her hands reached the floor behind her head and her vaginal lips were presented head on to the audience. With a rubber-like dexterity, she moved her head forward between her legs until she was practically looking her audience in the face. She seemed to concentrate, stretched her thighs farther apart, concentrating, concentrating ... and then the lips opened and her vagina was wide and wedy grinning at a crowd whose eyes bulged and remained transfixed.
In a small back room above the striptease a group of Algerians were sitting, talking quietly. It was a quiet room, but the notes of the mamba came in very faintly as if from the depths of a lake. The music gave an aura of harmlessness to the men and their talk. But it was just an aura.
Sitting at the polished round table, with his listeners rounding in semicircles on either side of him, the chief of the National Liberation Front in Paris was talking. His name was Mahmoud Taluffah and his apparent and legitimate business was running a fairly large bar a little distance off in the Boulevard de Clichy. His bar was sufficiently profitable to cover the ostensible signs of his wealth which were numerous. But it was merely a cover for his political activities and his operation of a ring of prostitutes and "striptease clubs" in the hard, vice-ridden centre north of the Seine.
In front of him now he had a map of one of the Paris arrondissements. It had been drawn in pencil and was covered with figures, dotted lines and times. Each of the dozen men in the room had a copy and had made various notes at the side on the blank notes at the side on the blank portion of the paper.
"Now," Mahmoud Taluffah was saying, "you each know your role. Once he has been shot there must be sufficient confusion created for certain escape. Escape should not be difficult if everyone plays his part; it is really a secondary matter. What is important is that no mistake be made with the killing. It will not be enough to wound. He must be filled-even if it involves the death of the killer." He looked slowly at a thin man on his right, a man with vicious eyes and a small, suave moustache. "Even if it involves the death of the killer," he repeated.
"I am not afraid to die," said the man in a toneless voice which belied the fanaticism of his eyes.
"You are a good servant of the cause," Mahmoud Taluffah said without warmth, as if there were no other possibility.
"Now," he continued, "that we know our roles, we must destroy these plans."
The papers were passed to him and he burned them slowly over a large ashtray while tie continued to talk quietly.
"We will meet here on the afternoon of Wednesday and I will distribute arms. After the victim has been dealt with, the arms must be returned here to avoid their loss in the search which will follow." He paused. "This time," he said, "Let us hope the job will be clean and successful. Remember that we are striking terror into the cringing heart of the metropolis, we are turning the metropolis into a coward fearful for its life in a way that we are not. We are bringing a free Algeria nearer with every blow we strike."
There were murmurs of agreement and approval. The mamba wafted into the room in the short silence which followed.
"I think that is all," Mahmoud Taluffah concluded. "Until Wednesday." He turned again to the man he had addressed earlier. "Mohammed Arab, it is time for your participation below," he said. "Enjoy her to the full. There may be little time."
Mohammed Arab, who was to kill Police Superintendent Jacques Lamotte in two days' time, stood up smiling, a smile that did not remove the viciousness from his eyes. The viciousness was ineradicable.
"I shall treat her to knife practice," he said, "with my prick."
Mahmoud Taluffah guffawed and the other permitted himself a slight grunt as, alert and tense as he always was, he moved towards the door in the wake of the others.
In the room below, the tourists continued to stare goggle-eyed as the girl swung back onto her feet and began a full-swinging dance to the mamba, revolving in front of them so that her buttocks waved and swayed and quivered and her breasts jumped and jogged and thin tremors of muscle moved down her legs like ripples on a lake. She would punctuate stages of the dance with a thrust of her abdomen, thighs widespread towards the audience, giving them a full view of her vagina. She had the Arab loose-jointedness which enabled her to manipulate her hips in an astonishing dance of their own. Their mobility gave rise to many a thought of how those hips would squirm and muscularly wriggle under a man's body when she was impaled with a stiff, searching penis.
At a point in the music where a crescendo had been reached and there was a slight lowering of pressure, Mohammed Arab came quickly through the door and onto the stage where he began to dance around the woman in a way that was charged with a sexual menace. He was naked from the waist, his legs enclosed in black, silk trousers which clung to them down to his ankles. His torso was slim, with every muscle in it developed to a pitch of near-perfection, and his arms were hard and wiry. This was what the elderly women in the audience had come to see. and there was a ruffle of excitement amongst them as they watched him circling his naked prey.
He and the girl danced in unison. She revolved round to face him, leaning backwards from her hips as if offering him the lower part of her body. He curved his hips in towards her as they mambaed together.
As they danced Mohammed Arab ran his eyes over the girl with a vicious eagerness. They had so often gone through this act, but although he had her so often on the stage in front of this audience, he hardly knew her well. They both did it as a job and were paid well for it. Neither had bothered to take their relationship beyond this strange, pulsating union in public. He knew nothing of what she did or how she lived. He was too busy to care. He had all he could want of her here in this room once a week. The rest of the time she, did normal strip-teases. As far as he could tell, she loved being impaled by him. She was, perhaps, an exhibitionistic nymphomaniac. She usually went wild when he subjected her body to his own.
He permitted his eyes to rise beyond the girl's dark head to get a glimpse of the gloom-surrounded audience and the reassuring presence of Akbar Halin by the door. He could see women in the audience, well-preserved, attractive 40-50-year-old women.
He wondered how many of them he'd had, if there were any new beauties there tonight who would seek him out. That was often what they came for. After the exhibition they would approach Akbar Halim and a meeting would be arranged at their luxurious flats or in some discreet hotel. There he would fuck the life from them while they sobbed their helpless ecstasy. Sobbed, sobbed, sobbed from their mouths, sobbed from their cunts, sobbed, sobbed. Sometimes they wanted him to split their asses, sometimes they wanted to be whipped, all sorts of things they wanted and he was always pleased to oblige, to viciously subject them to anything he cared to do to them-these rich, sexy cunts who paid him well. And how he punished them for being French cunts, for being rich, for having everything, for being able to indulge themselves while he had had to rise from the bidonvilles, while he had starved and been spurned. Not that he thought of these things in so many words. It was an abstract emotion firmly embedded in his mind. It showed in his eyes how he hated everybody. It showed in his gestures of contempt, in the way he treated the rich French cunt he got, the way he made them squirm, humiliated them in the way they wanted him to and hated themselves and him for doing.
He let his eyes fall back on the girl while the music and the tingling anticipation coursed through his veins. She was different, but in many ways she was the same. She was a proud-looking beauty and she.-was a stranger to him. He liked to feel his power over her, too, as she groaned and squirmed on the end of his prick.
He undid the catch at the waist of his trousers and felt from the distance the rustle of strained interest out there in the gloom. Yes, there was fresh cunt out there tonight. He'd have offers later. He'd charge them an outrageous figure and then he'd punish them for daring to pay it.
He wriggled with great dexterity from the silk trousers. Underneath he wore a small pair of pants which enclosed his genitals closely, a large, heavy bulge between his legs, hot in the confinement, wanting freedom, thick and fighting to escape from the constriction.
His legs were slim and muscular in the way that the rest of his body was muscular, perfect muscles, not over-large, which bespoke hours of development. He appeared to be in complete control of every muscle in his body as if he could give an individual order and immediately a small strip of hard flesh in his back or his belly or his thigh would start to twitch in answer.
His penis had risen up taut under the pants, but was held down by the material, forming, nonetheless, a tower-like point protruding from the general bulge. In the audience the women's eyes were magnetized on that point while the men still ogled the curves and rotundities of the girl's voluptuous flesh.
Mohammed Arab danced around the girl, who let her eyes fall to the point of his knob. She moved in towards him and their hips joined, while their back-leaning torsos remained apart. He felt her hot belly pressing hard against the heat of his loins, quivering against the mound of his penis. She raised her eyes to his and they were deep and gleaming.
He reached down and slipped out of the pants and his prick swung up massively, cleaving the air, and he heard quick intakes of breath in the room.
Watching with supreme concentration, the spectators could see his prick, which was large, almost too heavy for his body, reaching out against the girl as he moved slightly away from her. He, too, revolved now in a dance of his own and they saw his balls swinging against his thighs, the muscles rippling and balancing beautifully all over his body, the small buttocks hollowing and tensing. His penis had a flat bludgeon of a head. Its first entry would be delicious shock. The longing in the women of the audience gathered in a torment at their loins, making them rub thighs together in agitation on their hard seats, feeling the wetness in their briefs between their legs.
Mohammed Arab turned back to the girl and the audience watched him in profile, his great boom reaching out far ahead of the rest of his body. Slowly the girl swiveled round until her back was towards him and he could look down on those juicy, inviting, moving buttocks. He moved up behind her and they saw her slowly bend over in front of him, her legs wide apart, until her hands reached the floor and rested there supporting her.
Moving into her he saw that there was moisture on the tops of her smooth thighs. Her vagina which was loose and wet was waiting for him beneath the little disclosed anal aperture. Her buttocks were warm and roundly stretched. She was a lovely piece of flesh and he felt his teeth grit in vicious, joyous anticipation.
From the body of the room they saw him hovering over her bending, prostrate body like a bird of prey ready to swoop. They saw him move in with his great penis swooping out at her behind. They saw him mamba a little, arranging his prick against her vagina without touching her or himself. Then they watched while he reached down and grasped her little waist with his hands. They gave a long, choking gasp in harmony with hers as they saw him sink, at last, into her cunt with an agonizingly slow entry, like a great ship moving carefully along a narrow canal.
From their vantage point they had a perfect view of his entry as he slid in and out of her vagina, his body inclined back from her, reaching towards her at his loins, his buttocks hollowing as he pushed in until his prick was out of sight, buried deep in her cunt so that there was simply his body flush against hers.
The girl remained in her bent-over position, her mouth had opened and the audience could hear her low continuous murmuring. She began to rotate her behind, pushing back at him so that she was almost lifted from her feet and left dangling in the air on the length of his rigid staff.
Mohammed Arab's fingers tightened on the taut waist so that the flesh cringed in under his pressure, leaving red marks on the skin whenever he shifted his grip. He shuffled in towards the girl so that his legs were in the arch made by her widespread thighs and all the weight of his body which focused in his loins was forced against the soft, yielding roundness of her rump as he forced his thick prick deep, deep into her moist, contracting channel.
In and in he rubbed, bursting into her as if she were some ripe fruit, with her cunt widely relaxing before his entry and then swallowing his rod, holding it fast in a hot clutch.
There were hot faces in the audience; there were overwhelming itches and urges. A smartly dressed woman moved out her hand almost involuntarily and clasped the covered mound of penis of the strange man next to her as if she were in a trance. A man gripped a woman's knee and ran his fingers up under her skirt, finding her wet and totally naked underneath. Akbar Halim at the door discreetly doused the lights around the audience and smoked indifferently.
The dark bodies on the stage gleamed and writhed. Slim muscles tensed in the arms of the girl as she supported her weight with her hands on the floor. She was groaning helplessly and Mohammed Arab had his teeth gritted, his lips pulled back in a sadistic joy which sent shivers of fascinated horror through the women who watched and who would vie for similar treatment that night.
His prick stabbing in and out was swollen and white and each time he thrust it into the girl, pulling her back to meet the spear as he did, she gave a sobbing groan which sent cold chills coursing up the spines of the watchers. Her breasts hung down slightly and quivered like jellies with every in-thrust he gave. Her eyes closed and then opened in a lost glaze of passion. She spread her thighs wider, moving her feet apart with difficulty, sinking lower, forcing him slightly to alter his position behind her.
Surging into her, he watched her back, slimly twitching beneath him. He knew that her position must be aching, painful, difficult to maintain without collapse. He knew, too, that she liked it that way, that the more she could feel debased and used and forced into positions of pain, the better she liked it, just like all the rich, French cunts out there who'd now be getting hot and probably inviting the old boys next to them to have a feel while they watched him as their idol.
He caught her buttocks and kneaded them in his fingers, letting the flesh flow round his fingers, digging deep, hurting, grabbing in fierce handfuls and squeezing with terrible pressure as he thrust so deep into her passage that he felt the soft solidity of its end and heard her gasp and jump with the unexpected sensation before she wriggled back on her phallic tormentor again.
He moved his hands over the smooth, glossy flesh of her ass which was sweating slightly. He pushed his knees against her thighs and rubbed his belly against the taut buttocks. He released his hold on her bottom and instead moved his hands between her thighs next to his stiff thing which lurched in so that he could feel its heat in a soft friction against the backs of his hands. He touched with his fingers the inflamed lips of her quim and pulled them apart, watching them trying to move back to clasp his prick as it battered triumphantly up into her belly. He felt a mad swirl in his loins and then he raised his hand and slashed it down across her buttocks so that she cried out, and there was a murmur of terror and ecstasy in the room.
Watching, they saw his beat her with the flat of his hand, his buttocks hollowing, his loins seeming to disappear in a fusion with her ass. They listened to every little groan she made and the hissing which escaped from between his clenched teeth. They saw his prick and they longed to hold it, to suck, to claw, to ram down on it-a spit that crashed into their bodies in a merciless punishment. And the men watched her groaning and waggling and near-collapsing and their eyes glued on her sagging breasts and her swaying, tensing, finger-marked buttocks and they heard her passion and longed to be in her with their own hard, hot pricks which needed relief.
Unconcerned, because everybody in the tense room was unconcerned, some of them had begun to fuck. The women had raised their skirts and moved over onto the men's laps so that naked pricks could surge up into their crannies under cover of the skirts which fell back, a covering umbrella to the activity if not to the whimpers of passion which burst from the throats.
Mohammed Arab crashed into the girl and held his thickness buried into her to its greatest extremity, moving on the balls of his feet, so that he could feel his pulsating knob grazing against her soft cervix. He wanted to gouge out her insides, to split her from her pelvis to her throat, to hear her scream, to have her fight and try to get away, to have her helpless. That was what he liked. That was what made him a killer. But she liked to be killed. He would have liked her to resist.
In his loins the swirl had become a moving tide of sensation which was going to flood into her and drown her, make her gasp for breath as she struggled against it and it filled her. He strained back his head, veins standing out on his neck, his perfect controlled little muscles bulging and shimmering under his dark skin. He caught at her anus with his fingers and tore it apart, jabbing thickly into it with his hands as his penis bulged and battered in her channel. He heard her little scream, her gasping bewildered ecstasy as she felt the final, taut expansion of his stiffness in her.
He had a brief image of a sausage bursting its skin and then he roared out a great gasp and began to drown her with his teeth biting his lips hard and he heard the gasps from the audience and then the curtain over the stage came down as he slumped back from the girl who collapsed to the floor. He didn't like his exhausted vulnerability to be seen.
He sat on the floor, staring at the woman without emotion now it was over and she lay with her eyes closed, breathing heavily. At times like this he was a little bewildered because suddenly there seemed no point in killing anybody. There seemed point only in resting and perhaps eating little dishes which could be brought to one's bedside. He felt naked and for the moment helpless.
The woman didn't move. Only her belly and breasts moved, heaving, and he noticed her thighs quivered a little as well.
He listened to the shuffling sounds outside, the people leaving. In an anteroom the women would begin outbidding one another for his favors for the next few nights-unless they, too, had had an orgasm, in which case they would probably think of him with disgust and hurry off telling themselves that they would not come again, but next week they would be back.
He stood up. The girl still didn't move. She would wait for him to go as usual. Neither of them spoke; she didn't try to cover her nakedness. He saw the semen flowing back out of her and making a viscid patch on the floor.
He felt with relief that in a short time he'd recover his normal killer instinct. He didn't like to feel so robbed.
CHAPTER III
The glass contained a tiny remnant of beer, just enough to justify not leaving the cafe. For the last hour it had held the same small amount and Ahmed ben Lulla's hands had lain idly on either side of the glass, his elbows across the table.
Nobody had come to sit opposite him at the small table. Most people stood at the counter, swallowed a beer, a glass of wine or pernod and then went off on some nocturnal pursuit. A few couples occupied tables farther back in the salle over which the patron, sitting in regal immobility behind the till, glanced from time to time without expression.
While he'd been sitting in the window, aimlessly watching the passing scene, the young prostitute opposite had been upstairs four times. That was good going in a couple of hours, with so much opposition, and he'd wished he could make money so easily. As far as he could see, the luck of the older whores was out tonight; nobody had taken any notice of them. Occasionally one of them had taken a little strutting walk along the street and up the boulevard but without result.
Ahmed sat on and on. His thoughts, which had been all inturned, now fixed only on things outside himself as if his brain had rebelled and was giving itself a rest from depressive exhaustion. He noticed everything in great detail without having any particular concern about it. He watched the waitress in the tight skirt tnd sweater which was in keeping with the area. She was quite a dish and knew it. Once a large, handsome Frenchman had come in and they had stood talking for a moment at one end of the bar while the patron glanced at them occasionally in irritation that the girl was wasting her time, although as far as Ahmed could see, there was nothing for her to do at the time. As they parted, the man had placed his hand along the girl's full breast for a moment and pressed it, at which she had smiled at him. The incident had sent a sharp, painful despair to Ahmed's heart. It was a long time since he'd had a woman. He needed a sexual outlet, but, even more, what had pained him was the recognition of belonging one to the other that he'd read in their eyes. His thoughts moved fatefully back to the visit he'd had.
He considered telling the police. But they'd be as-likely to assume that he was part of the National Liberation Front as well. They'd take his information and then beat him up and set him free. The NLF would inevitably get him. The loss of an odd killer would not make all that difference to its powerful organization. There was no work. He would have gone anywhere that there was work, back to Algeria, even although he remembered the bidonvilles with even more horror-filled suffocation than when he thought of his room. Algerians were suspect and there were not enough jobs for them and for Frenchmen as well.
Life should be simpler than this. When one wanted so little, such ordinary things.
While he mused hopelessly against a background of hopelessness, a couple of policemen with Sten guns came in and looked over his papers. They also ran their hands over him for any concealed weapons. They taunted him while they searched.
"What dirty little game are you up to-dirty little Algerian?" He didn't answer. "Too stupid to talk-you'd better not be funny with us." He still had said nothing and, not finding anything, they'd gone out of the cafe and wandered off down the boulevard looking for other people to stop and search and taunt into insulting them back so that they could manhandle somebody and take him in.
His mind had hardly rid itself of the hurt pride at this latest unpleasantness when he realized the young, successful prostitute had come in and was at the bar drinking a coffee. He glanced out through the window at the hotel door to make sure he was not mistaken and then looked back at her, excited a little at the thought that this girl had recently been ridden naked on a bed by four different men one after the other in a short anonymous blaze of passionate necessity. She showed no signs of the experiences. She looked composed and sipped her coffee with slow, deliberate gulps, staring straight across the bar at her distorted reflection in the chrome coffee machine. He understood, now, why she had done such good business. She looked quite young and fresh. He thought she must be new at the game. She was quite attractive with short, blonde hair curled up over her head and blue, almond-shaped eyes. Her lips were well-shaped, neither thin and mean in tight lines which the majority of these women tried to hide with wads of ill-applied extra lipstick; nor yet too full and sagging in the vacancy which was so often the alternative. Her nose was straight and broad at the nostrils and her chin firm and rounded with the skin drawn smoothly over her high cheekbones. She might have been an attractive schoolgirl. But her clothes were the uniform of this part of the world-a tight yellow sweater which emphasized well-shaped breasts and a tight black skirt through which the hems of slight briefs could be seen hardly protecting her nicely-rounded buttocks.
Watching her he wondered how much she was. But he thought of his 534 francs-and he'd not yet paid for his beer-and looked sadly away out of the window.
In the dark street he saw the two older whores coming across the road towards the cafe. A general strike, he thought, one would think they'd take advantage of her absence. He looked back at the girl at the bar and felt heat in his loins. He imagined her on a bed with the four men who'd had her that night. He wondered how firm her flesh was and how it felt to hold one of her buttocks in each of your hands, feeling it overflow in your fingers as you buried your despair in her and gained a brief respite from the ugly world. He wondered if she stripped entirely and what her breasts were like without clothes. And whether she just lay passively or whether she ever got excited. He wondered, finally, if she'd got syphilis or anything like that. It wouldn't take long for her to spoil, to look just like these other two old beat-up poules who came through the open door of the bar and scowled in her direction.
He transferred his attention to them, surprised at first by their hostile glances at the girl but understanding in a moment the fierce desperate jealousy they must feel not only for her youth and looks in a profession where they were all-important, but also in the suffering they underwent through loss of business.
They went to the other end of the bar and the girl didn't look at them although she must have realized they were there. She continued to sip her coffee and looked away from her reflection in the coffee machine to the inside "salle." For a further instant she glanced at Ahmed sitting alone at his table, held his eyes for a minute, probably in anticipation of another customer, and then looked away again.
Ahmed gulped to relieve the constriction of his throat. She certainly was fresh. Why, he wondered, doesn't she get a reasonable job and live a quiet, simple, pleasant life out of this hard, gaudy, brassy tinsel of Pigalle where everything is slowly destroyed through commerce and anxiety and sometimes through a bullet or acid in the eyes or a knife in the back? He was overcome with a surge of self-pity. He felt no hope. He wished he had the cocky self-confidence which he read.in the girl's face. He seemed to remember he'd had it once. But it didn't take long for a life with no work, little money and no hope to undermine the strongest morale. He wondered if he just went up and asked the girl if he could have a go for free whether she might take pity on him as she'd been so successful tonight. It was strange how, when everything else was low, when there was no hope in anything else, what he sought was a woman to help him ride the depression, as if it really made a difference to the outside reality of events ... as if.
One of the older whores had moved along the bar and placed herself next to the girl. She was saying something to her quietly and he couldn't make out the words. She looked very angry and the girl looked disdainfully defiant in return.
The other woman had stayed at the far end of the bar but now she came up next to her crony, sliding her glass of beer along the counter with her.
Suddenly the young girl raised her voice.
"Je m'en fous," he heard her say. "Qa ne me regarde pas. I have my own life to live."
The anger on the face of the older woman deepened, her eyes looked hard and dangerous and her lips were a thin, unforgiving line.
"You dirty little bitch," she snapped back. "You'll clear out of this quarter or it'll-be the worse for you."
"Leave me alone," the girl retorted, her breasts seeming to lift in pert defiance. "You can't frighten me, you old crone."
The older woman grabbed her by the hair without another word and swung her head down so that the girl's face was staring up at her in startled astonishment.
"Dirty little bitch," she rasped again. "I'll fix you."
The girl kicked out then and the woman shrieked but didn't let go of her hair. The other whore, her face wrinkled with hatred, downed her beer with a single gulp and smashed the glass on the counter.
The patron started to move round the bar but he would have been too late to save the girl's face. It was Ahmed who, propelled as if by some nervous reflex, found himself between them, knocking the glass from the woman's hand so that it smashed in a hundred splinters behind the bar and then hauling the other whore off the girl, forcing her to release her by a quick twist of her free arm.
The patron was between them too, then, and roughly pushing the older women away. A few passers-by-so quick to sense a drama-had stopped outside and were gathering in a small crowd to watch.
"Get out of here," the patron barked. "I don't want the police in here-and you'd better watch out for yourselves."
"Throw out that dirty bitch-that cutthroat little pig," one of the whores shouted as she nonetheless allowed herself to be pushed from the bar. Her companion shouted a few filthy words and spat at the crowd which hastily made way for them.
The patron came back and looked at Ahmed and the girl without smiling.
"You'd better get out, too," he said. "It's better if you've all gone by the time the police get here."
"I'll come with you," Ahmed said to the girl, "It'll be safer for you."
"All right," she said. "Thanks."
They went out in the street together. The two whores, still cursing and swearing, had wandered back towards their hotel. The crowd made way afresh for Ahmed and his companion and then began to drift off when they realized there was nothing further to see. Farther along the street, two policemen, attracted by the sight of the small crowd, were making their way quickly towards the scene.
Ahmed began to cross the road which led on from Pigalle towards Clichy. The girl glanced down at the two women who'd attacked her and then walked after him.
"I'd better not go back there tonight," she said frankly. "Tomorrow I'll have to get some protection."
Ahmed felt wet heat on his hand and glanced down at it. There were thin streaks of blood where he'd cut himself on the jagged edge of the glass.
The girl saw it too and caught hold of his hand to look.
"C'est pas grave," she said. "We can go to my place and I'll fix it for you."
"It's not important," he said. "I don't want to put you to that trouble."
"Do you think I'm attractive ?" the girl asked.
Ahmed was taken aback. Was she trying to solicit him?
"Very," he said.
"Well I wouldn't be any longer if it hadn't been for you," she said. "Come on, let's go."
They walked on through the bustle of the Boulevard de Clichy, where the noise of traffic made talking unnecessary, and turned off to the left into a quieter street.
"I thought you lived in the other hotel?" Ahmed said.
"No," she said. "That's my office."
He followed her into a quiet-looking hotel with a staircase beyond the door. The hotel-keeper didn't bother to give them a glance as they passed his lodge.
"Very nice," Ahmed permitted himself as he took in the dark shape of a single tree in a bed of earth in the centre of the cobbled courtyard.
The girl said nothing and he followed her into a small foyer and up a flight of stairs with a narrow carpet running up their centre. His eyes were just below the level of her buttocks as he followed some steps behind. Her legs were flawless and shapely and the buttocks so pert and firm-looking that he longed to reach out and touch them.
They went up to the second floor and the girl took a key from under the mat.
"They're informal here," she said. "We don't have to hang our keys on a nail like a lot of schoolchildren." She unlocked the door and switched on a light.
Ahmed followed her across the threshold into a room which was twice the size of his, better-furnished and improved by various little evidences of the personality "of its tenant. On a sort of washstand in a corner was an electric ring, which meant she cooked for herself. Ahmed felt hungry at the sight of the ring.
The girl walked to the end of the room and pulled back a curtain which he'd taken to be a makeshift closet. Beyond it was a washbasin with hot and cold taps. It was a long time since he'd seen such luxury.
"Come here," the girl said. "You can wash your hand first and then I'll bandage it."
He washed his hands, delighted at the warm caress of the water. The cuts were long but very superficial. He let the blood run in the water and suddenly remembered that he was under what amounted to sentence of death. He supposed it was the incredibility of the situation which enabled him to dismiss it from his mind so easily.
The girl straightened up from a small cabinet under the washbasin. She had a length of bandage in her hand and she stood looking at him, waiting for him to finish the cleaning. They had spoken very little.
She took his hand and he let her take it and hold it and bandage it, not because he thought a bandage necessary, but to feel her human warmth against his, to sink into an agreeable acceptance of someone else actually occupying herself in doing him a kindness. He couldn't remember the last time someone had actually done something for him as if he were a brother or even as if he meant anything at all.
Neatly, the girl tore the end of the bandage, splitting it into two thin laces and then she tied them gently around his hand, looking at him to see if it was all right or whether perhaps it was too tight.
He watched her concentrating on the task of bandaging and suddenly remembered the four men who'd sweated with her within the last few hours. The thought gave him a strange little chill in the pit of his stomach. Close up he saw that her skin was just as soft and smooth as it looked from a distance and that her features were, indeed, those of a high-school girl. He found that he no longer felt an urge towards her which was purely sexual. He wished they could spend a day in the country, lying in some field near a stream.
"There," she said. "That's the best I can do."
"Thank you," he said. "The cuts are really nothing.'
There was a short silence. Neither seemed to know whether they should now end the brief relationship which had sprung up. Each seemed a little shy.
Ahmed looked away round the room and remarked on what a nice little place it was. The girl followed his eyes as if she'd never really looked at the room herself before and agreed that it was pleasant enough.
"Would you like a cup of coffee?" she asked as he made no move to leave.
"But you must be tired," he said. "I don't want to trouble you.
She gave him a quick glance from her almond-shaped eyes. She sensed a trace of sarcasm in his voice, but she wasn't quite sure.
"It's not all that tiring to lie on your back and have things done to you," she said, as if to show him that she wasn't ashamed of what she did.
He held her glance and then smiled.
"Well in that case-yes, I'd like some coffee," he said.
She reached up and opened the top section of a cupboard, standing on tiptoe so that the muscle of her calf contracted and stood out and the skirt pulled tighter around her buttocks which hollowed obviously through the material. He envied all four of the men who'd had her.
Inside the cupboard when it swung open he saw packets of biscottes, a few tins of things and several eggs. He licked his lips, hunger rising up in him in a tormenting wave. The girl turned round with a tin of Nescafe in her hand and saw his eyes, aching and fixed on the food.
"Are you hungry?" she asked, in surprise.
"Yes," he said, simply.
She reached up again and brought down some of the eggs and a packet of biscottes.
"There's really not much here at the moment," she said. "But if you really want something to eat this will keep away the worst pangs."
He sat down on her bed and she busied herself with preparations for a scratchy meal. He supposed that if they'd messed up her face she would really have lost all hope of future business for a time. It was a small thing for her to fry him a few eggs.
"When did you eat?" she asked.
"Oh I have some bread and pate most days," he said, not answering her question directly. "And often I buy some chips and a sausage."
Arranging a small saucepan on the heater, she glanced round at him briefly as if she were reconsidering him.
"No work?"
"No," he said. "Not for some time."
"What were you doing?"
"I worked in several factories but there were always too many Frenchmen looking for jobs."
She nodded sympathetically. That's what got me," she said. "There were always too many women looking for jobs-and what wretched jobs, for what wretched pittances."
"I guess you make quite a bit now."
She straightened up from buttering a couple of biscottes and looked him straight in the eyes. When people asked questions like that they were usually wondering how much they could make out of you. It hadn't taken her long to find out what a hard, selfish world it was. He looked back at her, knowing what she thought. He'd had the same thought himself so often.
"I don't want to know," he said. "It's just that it's fascinating to see someone being successful at anything on the level on which we operate."
"I don't do too badly," she said, relaxing. "But I have to pay some of it to the syndicate."
"Uh-huh." He didn't want to sound interested any longer.
"Still," she said, "it would be much more difficult without them. They'll give me protection tomorrow from those old crones.
She made the coffee and put a small frying pan on the heater. Soon an oily aroma of eggs was steaming through the room. She sat down next to him on the bed and they both sipped the coffee from cups without saucers. She sat in a relaxed, not unfriendly manner. She seemed to begin to feel quite pleased that he was there and she had someone to talk to. Her commerce with men enabled her, when the mask of invitation was rejected, to talk to him quite naturally and without coquettry as she might have done with another woman.
"When will you get work?" she asked.
"Who knows," he said. "I try all the time."
' It must be difficult to live."
He shrugged at the understatement. He didn't really feel like discussing it and he remembered, now, the shadow which hung over him.
"It's not a very pleasant life," he said. "But when the NLF begin to get tough it makes everything else seem a trivial trial."
She took the eggs off the heater and reached up to the cupboard for plates. Her breasts rose up tautly under the sweater and a loose fold of skirt furrowed above the protrusion of the buttocks.
"You owe them money."
"Yes."
"What happens if you can't pay?" He ran his hand across his throat.
"Really," she said. "Even if you just can't pay?"
"They're quite happy if some people can't pay," he said. "It gives them a reason for liquidating them and that keeps everybody else in order."
She passed him a plate with two eggs and a thickly buttered biscotte. Her eyes were clouded with disgust.
"Will you be able to pay?"
He shook his head slowly.
"I had my last warning today," he said. "There's nothing to be done. I can't pay them."
"Can't you get away?"
"Where? How? On what? My only chance of work is here. Elsewhere I'd have no hope but slow starvation."
"But the police?. . . "
"Perhaps you'll get to know the police some day. But for your sake I hope not."
"How much do they want from you."
"Three thousand francs."
After a minute or two of silence she said: "It's such a small sum really."
He didn't answer. He was tired of it. He didn't want to think about it.
"So what are you going to do?"
He shrugged again. He didn't know what he was going to do. He had never thought of himself as a fatalist, but there was a great streak of it in him.
"How can you just wait for them to kill you?" she said, with a little burst of vehemence.
"There's nothing I can do," he said. "Perhaps they won't kill me after all." He didn't add what was after all an unformed thought in his mind: that life gets to such a pitch of dull hopelessness and monotony that giving it up does not seem such a terrible thing.
"I'll give you the money."
She said it in a matter-of-fact, undramatic way, this, that simply sweeping away the difference of life and death for him. He was surprised that he felt no emotion except one of pleasure that she was willing to give him the money. Some perversity in him even brought out an argument.
"But can you afford that much-and why should you do this for me?"
"Good God," she said. "You don't place your life very highly."
"I've lost most of the feeling I ever had about life. It doesn't seem to amount to very much."
She reached out involuntarily and touched his hand, a light touch which she withdrew immediately as if ashamed of showing any emotion.
"I will give you the money," she said. "And you can eat here with me every day ... " she petered out searching for a reason to explain what she'd just heard herself say. "It's terrible ... it's ... inhuman not to care about life."
Ahmed ben Lulla was astonished to hear her talking in this way and to recognize that she had conceived a sudden overwhelming pity for him. He felt unworthy of pity. He felt in no sense tragic; his existence had just become a sordid headache.
"You are very kind," he said. "It will be a great burden on you ... "
"It will be nothing of the sort," she said. "I happen to think that human life is ... is sacred. We do lots of things which are not very nice, but to throw away life for a few thousand francs ... it's too terrible to even think about."
He sat there, staring at her. It was on his lips to say: "I've never heard a prostitute so concerned with her fellow men before," but he stifled the words in his throat and said nothing.
She stood up, reaching again into the cupboard, and he found his eyes drawn yet again to the curve of her bottom. Now that she had become definitely involved with him of her own free will, he saw possession of those buttocks as a distinct possibility. He looked away, suddenly a little ashamed of his secret thoughts which were so hard and selfish compared with hers.
She tipped a little pile of fruit onto the bed-bananas and oranges.
"Help yourself-and peel me an orange," she said. "I have to clean up."
He skinned a banana and then began to peel an orange, biting first through the skin and then levering the thick peel away with his thumbnail. The girl stepped into the small alcove where the washbasin was and pulled off her sweater. Ahmed stared, his heart quickening, as, completely unconcerned about his presence, she turned on taps and gathered things from a little cabinet below. Her brassiere covered her breasts fully, but it was made of a strong-looking but very thin material through which he thought he could see the color of her skin. Certainly there was a darker patch where her nipple stabbed out.
Ahmed had let the half-peeled orange fall into his lap. He was guiltily unable to take his eyes from the girl. When she had arranged the things she needed-talcum powder, perfume, soap on a small shelf below the mirror above the basin-she turned to pull the curtain across and caught his eyes. It took a second or two for her to realize that he was staring at her and then she glanced quickly down at her breasts and up at him again as if a recognition of their sexual difference had only just occurred to her. She pulled the curtain across with a slow, thoughtful movement and he could no longer see her.
Slowly he ate the banana. He studied the room, the long window, the little table with some cinema magazines on it and a French-English phrase-book. The phrase-book reminded him that she made her money by opening her thighs. He wondered how many GIs she'd entertained and how many words she managed to say to them in English. He noticed that she even had a small radio and he wondered again how much she charged.
His eyes wandered back to the alcove. He could hear her slithering out of her skirt. She was getting rid of the sweat and semen of the past hours, he thought, freshening up after the day's work. He stared at the curtain as if he'd pierce it with his eyes, but he couldn't see anything, except its occasional movement as she brushed against it.
After several minutes she said to him: "There's a dressing gown in the cupboard. Will you pass it to me?"
He opened the cupboard and saw the thick dressing gown on a hook in a line of skirts and sweaters and blouses and one decent-looking suit.
The girl extended a long bare arm between the curtain and the edge of the alcove and he put the dressing gown over it. After a few minutes more, she came out with the dressing gown swathed around her, knotted tightly by the cord around her waist. In her hands she carried the skirt and sweater and some underclothes which she flung into the bottom of the cupboard. She seemed very unconcerned about her nudity under the dressing gown, but Ahmed felt a little shiver tremble through his chest.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and took the orange which he held out to her.
"God, what a relief," she said. "I feel a new person."
"You look fine," he said. Any trace of tiredness seemed to have been washed away. Her eyes looked softer as if they had relaxed with her body, her face had a slight flush from washing. She hadn't bothered to put on any cosmetics and now he saw that her skin was fresh and school-girlish. She still looked good without any makeup. It was difficult to think of her as a prostitute.
She glanced quickly at him over a bite of orange. It was as if any hint of sexual reference took her by surprise, as if she hadn't yet quite equated them as man and woman.
"Are you still hungry?" she asked.
"No."
She had asked the question as if she wanted to avoid a silence after his compliment and he answered her as if he preferred the silence to remain.
They sat looking at each other without speaking. Her lips embraced and then swallowed quarters of orange which she chewed gently, her cheeks hollowing, her eyes thoughtful.
"You really look fine," he repeated.
She looked at him warily. He couldn't understand what thoughts she was hiding behind the alert watchfulness in her eyes. She seemed purposely ready to set up a barrier and he said with a sudden passionate bitterness: "But you'll lose it all before you realize what's happening."
"Oh, nonsense," she said, as if she'd often had this argument with other people, or perhaps with herself.
"You've seen them," he said. "You've seen their slack bodies, their pockmarked faces, those worn faces and dull eyes. It's inevitable."
"It's just that they're stupid," she said. "They don't know how to look after themselves and they don't bother either. It's quite unnecessary to become an old slut at 30 in any case I'm not going to be lectured by you or anyone else."
He relapsed into silence, surprised at his own vehemence. Thinking about what she was and how she'd be was like standing by and watching some beautiful bird dashing itself against the bars of a cage until it was reduced to a straggling mess of feathers.
Goaded by his sad eyes looking at her, the girl added: "I want money. I want to have enough money to buy the things I want and this is the only way I can get it. Nobody forced me into this and I had a good, ordinary job with no prospects before I started it." Her voice seemed to fan out like a cat's back bristling.
"I can get 3,000 francs a time and I give a thousand to the syndicate. I've made 8,000 francs for myself tonight and I can do twice as well as that. How else could anyone my age be getting that sort of money? I'm not Francoise Sagan and I'm not Brigitte Bardot and there's no other way to make it."
"It's your life," Ahmed said. "It's just that I find you so attractive that-maybe I feel a little jealous."
"Jealous!" she said.
"But if I had 3,000 francs," he went on, "I'd be wanting to go to bed with you, so that wouldn't exactly be consistent with the tone of what I've just said."
"Is that how you'd think of it, too?" she asked. "You'd give me 3,000 francs and then use my body and forget about it?"
"Is that exactly how it seems to you with all the rest of them? " he countered.
"Oh, the first few times I was nervous and I got excited," she said, frankly. "But afterwards it became just something I did without caring. It's really very easy not to be moved by the whole thing."
"I suppose it is," he said. "I wouldn't like it that way. I'd prefer to spend 3,000 francs on beer if I knew you were going to be as indifferent as that."
"Why should it matter to you?"
"I like things like that to be a little more human," he said. "Like you, I have ideas about human life."
She studied his face, searching it with her blue, almond eyes. A fleeting trace of something close to longing fled across her face and then she seemed to snuff it out.
She stood up and went to the basin to rinse her fingers under the tap and after watching her for a moment he got up too and stood behind her, looking at her in the mirror. He felt all of a sudden an inevitability about their having met. It moved him to a feeling of closeness with her which he wanted more than anything to communicate, but which he knew was made so difficult by what she was and what she expected in the attitudes of men towards her.
She saw him in the glass and stared back at him for a long moment. Then she turned slowly to face him, looking up at his eyes as if again trying to read his thoughts. The longing had moved into her eyes again and was not yet, this time, snuffed out.
"I could fall in love with you," he said.
She went on looking at him, her eyes questioning and a little sad and then he leaned forward and kissed her. For a moment she made no response and he took his mouth from hers and said: "If you don't believe me or if it doesn't matter to you I'll go now."
And then she moved in towards him and kissed him and her lips swallowed his and seemed to draw the soul df his feelings out through his mouth. He put his arms around her and pulled her body gently in against his so that he could feel her warmth along him. They didn't use their tongues as if in this first moment they each wanted to show that there was something more than just sexuality in their action.
When their faces moved apart she smiled at him.
"It's so-so different to hear you say that," she said.
"I don't care if you don't really feel it, just as long as I can feel that for once somebody feels something."
He kissed her again and then ran his lips over her face as if they were sensitive fingers tracing the lines of her features. She slipped her hands round him and linked them in the small of his back as she searched out his lips and locked them with her mouth And this time he moved his lips, sucking on hers, and her tongue slithered out into his mouth and he felt a growing weight in his loins.
"Do you feel like it?" he said. "Or are you tired?"
"I feel more like it than I ever have before," she said softly.
He felt now a vague jealousy for all those other times she'd been had that very night. He wanted to ask her questions: "Did you have an orgasm? Did you get excited? How does this feel different? Did you undress completely? Did you put your tongue in their mouths? What did their groans of passion sound like? Did any of them hurt you?. . . " But instead the questions joined in an unvoiced whiplash to his own passion, as if with his lovemaking he wanted to wipe away all memory she might have of previous occasions.
He ran his lips down her neck, drawing Little red marks from her soft skin. He saw a bruise already there and the sight of it made him want to get into her immediately, almost to punish her with his love for the bruise she had allowed to be given her in the heat of someone else's passion and perhaps her own.
He reached down to the cord of her dressing gown and unknotted it so that it fell open and her bare skin was pressed against his body. He slipped it from her shoulders and she slithered her arms out of it, letting it drop to the floor. He ran his hands over her back and down to her bottom, letting his fingers revel on the firm skin, his loins tingling, his whole body trembling at the feel of her nakedness, so firm and resilient.
He moved his face down her body, finding her breasts which were as firm and full as he'd expected and which responded to his kissing with a tautening of the nipples. He drew his fingers gently along their bulging sides, from her ribs round to the nipple, just his fingertips. And then he bit her smudge of nipple gently so that she gasped and clasped his head.
With a pulsing in his jeans, he pushed her back to the bed and slithered down her body as she sat back on the edge of the bed. He thought again of those who had possessed her within the last few hours. Those who had done what he was doing, perhaps produced the same reactions in her, and he ran his lips over the flat, little belly and down between her thighs, which she opened with a little moan.
Between them he found the warm lips and licked them with a tongue which, too, seemed to tremble and tingle. His tongue entered her, its moisture mingling with her own and she slipped forward on the bed, moaning and held his head against her crotch.
He licked and sucked and found her clitoris moving up to erection. He fastened on it and she began to wriggle her hips in little, contracting movements as if she was trying to control her passion.
Her quim had opened and there was a perfumed moisture on his tongue. She smelt of perfumed soap and her skin, the skin of her thighs which clasped his face in a gently, never-still embrace, was soft and sweet-smelling.
He felt her hands on his head, trying to pull him up. She wanted him now and he stood up, quickly, stripping off his clothes. She lay back on the bed with her eyes closed, her body wracked with heaving breath. Her body was just as lovely as it seemed in her sweater and that tight skirt. They didn't lie. She was firm and youthful and hebody was full of vigor and passion.
Naked, he moved over and knelt beside her, running his hands over her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, up and down over her nakedness with trembling hands which brought out a response of gasping and quivering from her.
She opened her eyes and pulled his head down on hers, her tongue searching immediately with a strong, rigid pressure as if she wanted him to emulate her movement with his penis in her.
"Now darling, now," she breathed.
Again he saw the bruise on her neck and it made his stiff prick a hot pulsation which throbbed against her thigh so that she could feel its scorching heat like a stick of hot metal.
He ran his hands over her and rummaged between her thighs which opened to admit him and stayed open, moving continuously in a little passionate tremulation.
"It was never like this," she whispered, choking on her words.
Her words seemed to ease the painfulness of his desire to punish her for the existence of the bruise and he moved over, slithering on her body, feeling it warm and springy under him, feeling it quiver helplessly.
She reached down under her thighs which she drew up gently and he felt her cool hand on his prick. Her hand stabbed a shock into his rigid flesh and his uncircumcised foreskin ripped back and she gently guided him at her vagina until he could feel the moist, fleshy warmth against his prick waiting for its entry.
"Darling, darling!" she whispered, losing the words in a groan which broadened and deepened as he thrust into her.
Her moist heat clamped him like a warm, resisting jelly, and he barked a gasp out into the room and began to give quick, aching thrusts up into her vagina, thrusts which slowed and lengthened as he filled her yielding passage to greater and greater depth.
Under him her body quivered and trembled and her nipples pushed into him with a pointed, erect pressure; her warm belly brushed against his and her thighs clamped and undamped, holding and releasing him in waves of flesh-warmth and air-coolness.
"Oh-oh," he groaned as he felt her quim squeezing along the length of his cock which seemed to expand and maintain a point just below bursting point.
"Darling, darling," she whispered over and over again as she bucked and writhed under him. Her face moved from side to side, marks appeared on her lips where she bit them and every so often her mouth came against his and her teeth bit into him and she sucked his tongue and forced her own between his lips, panting warm breath into his throat.
With her pinioned by his arm of thick flesh, he thought again of the others who'd had her in just this way, holding her with big, horny hands, digging up into her most intimate core with big, blunt pricks, producing from her just such gasps and perhaps movement while they groaned and sobbed out their coarse male passion into her slim, delicate girl body.
He felt a chill course down his spine at the thought and gave an extra hard thrust which seared into her and brought forth a throat-rasping groan: "Ooooh! Yes, darling ... please."
Did she ask them when they fucked her "Ooooh yes darling ... please?" He lunged again, stabbing in in a bludgeoning thrust which tore roughly deep into her cunt and she groaned and murmured: "Oh Cod! God!"
He slipped his hands down her sides and slid them under her moving buttocks, clasping them one in each hand, remembering that that was the very thought he'd had, of holding her buttocks, bare, in his hands.
They were tensing and untensing, firm, hollowed and then relaxed and oozing around his fingers which he dug into their orbs with fierce pressure. Her pulled her hips against him as he in-thrust and felt her pull back her thighs a little more.
He slipped his fingers over the taut, stretched flesh of her rump and found the unconcealed anus, smooth and hot and working itself as she tensed and relaxed.
He dug it with a finger and it yielded and his finger, a replica of his rod, moved into soft, warm depths, bringing new gasps and exclamations from her ever-working lips. He intruded another and felt the tight resistance slowly give as she screwed her anus back on his fingers and soon both were moving and circling in her and she was impaled in both her orifices and wriggling in abandon under the dual rifling.
Her legs, on cither side of his impaling, were jerking and writhing like puppet legs in abandon. He felt their warm fleshy pressure as they held him tight and then they would move off and she would pull them up to her shoulders or sling them out at right angles to her hips, moaning and gasping continuously.
Her eyes were closed; all the time her mouth worked and trembled and her neck was strained as she thrust back her head in the intensity of her feeling.
Ahmed was aware of no part of his body but his heavy, too-full prick which moved deeply in and out of her, lovingly clasped in the excruciating warmth of her. He moved his fingers from her rectum, sliding them down through her crotch, tracing where buttocks ran into thighs and then feeling the soft folds of flesh and his own prick moving into her, making those folds yield and give way as they held his organ in a tight, contracting grip.
He stroked and pinched the folds and she jerked and cried out afresh. She was almost whining and the heat from her body seemed to envelop him.
"Oh, darling, darling!" she moaned. Her voice rose on a high, gasping note. "Now, now ... coming ... coming ... farrive!" she groaned and choked.
He felt the sudden widening of her hole, the relaxing of the pressure of his penis and then the liquid surrounding him as if he were stabbing his rod into a lake.
Hot and pulsating, he quickened the rate of his thrusts as she continued to moan, more gently. He felt his own passion reaching up to a pin-point of highly-defined sensation at the very tip of his prick, all gathering in the aching knob of his organ.
For the last time he thought of those others who had reached this stage, about to pump their heart into her quim, with her lying under them, accepting their passion, their semen with widespread legs and breasts which dug warmly into their hairy chests.
He gripped her buttocks and squeezed with a pulverizing pressure, feeling her cringe, wanting in a strange way to hurt her as he reached up and up to that culminating point.
"Oh-oh-oh-oh!" He grunted and groaned and slowed his stroke, grinding slowly and deep so that his abdomen smacked firmly against the flanges of her sex and his stiffness reached to its farthest point in the recesses of her body. He felt himself coming and pulled back her thighs to her shoulders, hearing her moan and applying all the pressure of his body down there at his loins and the long aching finger which drove into her.
"Daaaaarling!"
With a sudden wet, warm relief which was too much to bear he shot into her and he shot and shot and shot into her all the pent-up emotion of weeks in a greut, overwhelming relief which her body encouraged him in.
Trembling, he relaxed on her and she put her arms around him and lay there against him, neither of them speaking for several minutes.
"It was never-never-like that," she whispered.
His passion relieved, he no longer cared about the bruise on her neck which was somebody else's doing. He felt comfortable and pleasant lying close to her other human warmth.
"I'm glad," he said. "I don't want it ever to be like that for you with anyone else."
When they both fell asleep it was without any worry shadowing their dreams. Their difficulties for the moment seemed not to exist. Such is the moment of discovering another human being.
CHAPTER IV
Detective-Inspector Pierre Raimond cut himself another piece of Munster. With the air of a man enjoying something he really liked for the last time, he dabbed the soft, runny cheese into a little pile of carraway seeds.
His young wife sat opposite watching him with a smile. A smile which covered the anxiety which gripped her heart like the premonition of death.
Raimond looked up at her over savoring the mouthful of cheese.
"Those seeds make all the difference," he said, and, without altering his tone at all, added: "There's nothing to worry about, Michele. It's not much more than a routine patrol."
Her beautiful, pale face with its aristocratic air of determination looked less sure and determined than he'd ever seen it before. She'd eaten hardly anything and seemed almost unable to do anything but smile at him weakly. He reached across the table and took her hand. There were tears in her eyes.
"It's nothing, darling," he said. "There's really little danger."
"Oh, Pierre," she said. "Whatever you say, please don't treat me like a child. There is danger. Everybody knows there is danger. They're well armed and they wouldn't hesitate to shoot anyone who was after them."
"But I only have to do the location work, darling," he said. "I find out where they are and how to get them and then the security police move in and take over when the shooting starts."
"Darling, I wish they'd given the job to someone else."
"Now, is that any way to speak of an honor that's been done your husband?"
He grinned at her cheerfully and she smiled back wanly and nibbled at a piece of bread as if she didn't even realize what she was eating.
Pierre Raimond was young for a detective-inspector. He was a detective-inspector because he was one of the most brilliant young men in the force-and this job of rooting out the NLF in Paris, of discovering who and where they were, had been entrusted to him because he was the best man for the job. It was, of course, a highly dangerous job and he knew that his wife knew this. But he went on minimizing it just to show that he didn't consider it to be anything too tough for him. As long as he didn't show any anxiety it would to some small extent prevent her own from overcoming her.
He wiped his fingers on his napkin and dabbed his mouth. It was a tough job all right. ' The situation had been getting worse and worse and there was no hope of improvement until the hard core of Algerian nationalists in the city were rounded up and put out of harm's way. There was reason to believe they were quite few in number, the real fanatics, but their fanaticism and the manner in which they terrorized the rest of the Muslim population in Paris made them a force to be reckoned with.
In recent weeks more Algerians had been killed in the city than had lost their lives for several months before: those who wouldn't pay their contribution towards nationalist funds, those who wanted to remain French, one after another they'd been shot up in bars, knifed in their shabby hotel rooms, found dumped on wasteland on the outskirts of Paris. And not only Algerians. Passers-by had been wounded in broad daylight through happening to be in a particular spot at the particular time when somebody walking nearby or drinking at their elbow had been scheduled to return to his Maker.
And, more and more serious from the point of view of law and order and the confidence of the civilian population, no fewer than six policemen who had got involved in hunting down the killers had themselves been shot and killed.
Large-scale manhunts and ratissages had produced no solid result. Hundreds of Algerians had been taken in for questioning. Police patrols had been doubled in affected areas and a prime de risque had been agreed for police working in dangerous spots.
But the killers and their leaders remained at large, hidden in a veil of silence. Those who knew would say nothing, afraid of revenge. Others who might have given information knew nothing worth telling.
So Pierre Raimond, former parachutist lieutenant in Algeria, where he'd mastered Arabic, and now bright young member of the metropolitan police, was to be given an opportunity to root out information which his colleagues had failed to wring out of months of questioning suspects and believed sympathizers.
He left his wife pouring the coffee and went through to the bedroom of their small, comfortable apartment near Raspail. When he reappeared he was dressed like a typical lorry driver, porter, working man. There remained about him no vestige of his profession.
He sipped his coffee and watched his tall, lovely wife clearing away the debris from their meal. She had long, perfect legs and trim, oval-shaped buttocks with a slim torso not overburdened by neat, high breasts. He wished he could stay with her tonight. He always had these feelings when off on some mission, always the thought that after all one never knew when the end was coming.
When he'd finished his coffee he stood up and looked round the familiar room. His wife came towards him and put her arms around him, her head against his neck. He held her to him, feeling tender and wanting to rid her mind of the worry he knew filled it.
"Darling-don't take any unnecessary risks," she begged. "Leave that to the others. You said you only have to find them."
He gave a little laugh to reassure her.
"I told you it's not even dangerous," he said. "There's nothing to worry about at all. I'll be back in the morning and I'll probably have spent my whole night just sitting around in bars."
She made a brave attempt at humor.
"Well, don't go to bed with any strange whores," she said.
He tipped her head back and kissed her hard.
"They couldn't hope to measure up to you," he said.
"Well, don't try to find out," she said.
He patted her bottom gently, feeling the hard round summit under his hand, wanting her now, but having to go.
He drove in his little Simca through the tree-shaded boulevard, past the brightly-lit restaurants of St. Germaindes-Pres where conversation was endless in the cafes and each elegant woman tried to show a little more of her figure than her neighbour.
Over the great, moving chasm which was the Seine, muddy and fast-flowing from earlier floods. Up the broad sweep of the Avenue de l'Opera where all the windows were alive with light and posters beckoned to lazy islands and bullfights and Roman sunshine and temples in the Far East. In the Cafe de la Paix the tourists were watching the steady flow of traffic and reading La Vie Parisienne.
He stopped with the lights, proceeded with the flow of this traffic, waited for pedestrians to cross. He might have been going to visit a friend.
Soon he was moving slightly uphill amidst myriad bars and clubs where a lemonade cost 400 francs and platinum blondes leaned on the door with breasts the equal of Jayne Mansfield's and twice as showing. Inside, as doors swung open and shut quickly letting in a shirt-sleeved GI, there was glimpse of strong-thighed negresses at the bar.
These little streets were jammed with cars and he had difficulty finding somewhere to park. He left the car and walked up onto the main boulevard, dominated by the lights of the Moulin Rouge and several large cinemas. He turned right towards Chapelle and the comparative darkness. Underneath his left arm he could feel the reassuring coldness of his little automatic. He hoped it wouldn't be necessary to use it.
For half a mile or so he followed the overhead metro, a dark, giant scaffolding running along the centre of the broad boulevard with every so often a little train running with rumbling brightness along it like some noisy glowworm.
The bars became gloomier and shabbier and both streets and cafes swarmed with a larger proportion of Arabs than any other nationality. The monotonous, strange wail of Arab music came from doorways and he passed policemen walking slowly and carefully in groups of three, watched by ugly prostitutes sitting hopelessly in the doorways of dim, cheap hotels.
As he passed the bars he glanced in through the smoky windows. Some were almost empty, others crowded almost exclusively with Algerians. He chose one from which music came and in which he could see a group of men and women nudging a pinball machine ajid pushed open the door.
CHAPTER V
This was another busy night area. Around the commissariat people were strolling towards their favorite cafes. In the kerbside several barrows, from which vendors were selling bananas, dates and oranges, were perched. The commissariat was surrounded with a number of small, winding streets in which the dustbins had already been placed along the kerb for cats to start their scavanging. In the windows of the crumbling apartments which rose like cliffs on either side of the narrow streets lights were shining through washing which hung on miniature balconies. Concierges were chatting in dilapidated courtyards or sitting smoking at their windows. There was an air of quiet, every night animation.
Outside the commissariat was a familiar blue panier d ralade, a capacious police van. A man in uniform was sitting at the wheel waiting, yawning occasionally. In the back were two more uniformed men with Sten guns, indifferently staring out through the dark windows.
In a doorway just across the street from the commissariat, Mohammed Arab was standing back in the deep shadow, his eyes fixed on the door of the commissariat. Occasionally he glanced at different points nearby, particularly noting a large, empty barrow which a vendor was slowly trundling towards the commissariat some distance away.
Above the unobtrusive, stone building, a tricolor hung limply while people passed laughing and talking and seeing neither the police van, nor the dark figure in the doorway.
As the minutes ticked by, Mohammed Arab eased the revolver out of his pocket. His hand was as steady as a knife, his face was a vicious mask.
Along the street, the barrow was trundling nearer. It had been impossible to time exactly as there was no regular schedule to go by.
There was a sudden stir in the doorway of the commissariat and a broad, squat man with gray hair and a hard face came walking quickly out with a younger man in uniform beside him.
Mohammed Arab stepped quickly from the doorway with the revolver hanging by his side, holding it close in against his leg. He stepped into the road and began to cross as the man at the wheel of the van opened the door. The vendor with the barrow came level, hurrying his last steps. As Mohammed Arab raised his arm and fired in a quick, smooth movement, the vendor gave his barrow a push which sent it crashing in front of the van and then took to his heels.
Mohammed Arab ran quickly too, fading into the darkness, pushing through astonished, bewildered passers-by as police came running from the building and the two guards with Sten guns leapt down from the disabled van to be met with a volley of shots from several points.
Round the nearby corner, Mohammed Arab sat low in the back of a car which sped off from the kerbside.
"Did you get him?" a voice asked.
He gave a single nod and his mouth twisted in a smile of triumph.
CHAPTER VI
Ahmed ben Lulla lay on his own bed in his own hotel room which now seemed so much less of a prison. He chuckled to himself happily. He was in love with a prostitute whose name, he'd discovered, was Francoise Lou-vier and she was in love with him. He'd paid his contribution to the NLF and he had no more serious money troubles. Every day he ate a good meal and he'd paid off his hotel arrears. That was on the credit side. On the debit side, and the chuckle muted in his throat as he thought of it, was the fact that she was still taking her stance outside her "office" and being solidly fucked by several men every night, the fact that he still couldn't find a job, the fact that they were both tied to their present situation by their need of money.
For the first day or two after the night they'd spent together at her hotel, he'd sat in the same bar watching her, cringing, losing his stomach every time a man stopped and spoke to her, aching in his soul when he saw her turn and lead a man into the hotel. He'd see a light go on overlooking the street three storeys up and it would remain on sometimes for as long as 25 minutes, sometimes just for ten. Then there would be darkness and the man would come out of the hotel, look round as if to prove that he wasn't embarrassed and then walk briskly away, his lust satiated. A minute or two later she would come out, just as if nothing had happened, and glance over at the cafe where he sat. After a little of the watching he'd felt too sick to do it any more and had removed himself to another cafe or spent the hours in his hotel room waiting for the early morning when he'd see her.
She had decided, although he hadn't really understood the necessity, that he should keep his own room and not move in with her completely. There might be trouble with the protection, she'd said. It was better if she didn't appear to have any attachments.
Reluctantly he'd agreed. They had talked for a long time about what they could do. She said it meant nothing to her to continue her "profession." It was the most certain way that they could go on making money. Besides, she'd agreed to stay in the protection ring for a year at least and she was afraid they might get nasty if she tried to withdraw. They'd slashed some negress who'd tried to get out to marry a paratrooper. And in any case they had no other way to live.
Now she was on the job, being fucked at this very moment probably. Even as he lay here on his bed gazing up at the cracked ceiling, she was groaning under the weight of some gasping stranger, her legs all awry while he thrust up into her belly to rid himself of the weight of desire in his loins. He caught his breath. This couldn't go on.
He glanced at the newspaper beside him on the bed with its headlines about the assassination of the police superintendent. There was no escape once you'd been marked by the nationalists. If a police chief was unsafe, what chance did a lone Algerian have against the secret forces of Algeria for the Algerians.
It was an astonishing business. There was a lot of talk in the newspaper of special police measures, of the city being unsafe for the general public, even suggestion of the deportation wholesale of the Algerians in the metropolis. But there was always so much talk and never any conclusive action. Ahmed knew that Algeria for the Algerians would eventually become a reality. The sweep of nationalism from Syria to Morocco was undeniable. But he didn't see how much in Algeria would change because of it. Algeria would still be no place to make a fortune in-but it might become a place where the bidonvilles were replaced with the decent sort of apartments that even the poorer French population occupied.
In the meantime-a police chief! The reign of terror in Paris, designed to push the government to making concessions to the nationalists elsewhere, was taking a dangerous shape.
And its effect on the Algerian population of Paris would be considerable. There would be no defaulters in the payment of contribution for the funds to create a new nation.
His thoughts wandered off politics and a brave new North Africa to his comparative happiness of the last few days. She loved him. It was the first time she, too, had considered a man as a person in whom she would find sympathy and a desire which was not purely to tear down her panties and fuck. But in bed she was warm and sweet and a relieving shelter from all their uncertainty. Every time he threaded gently into her warm, receptive body he felt at peace and could forget all events and anxieties beyond the moment in which they joined to share a fleeting movement together which convulsed them in a vacuum of pleasure which involved only themselves.
But when he made love to her at the end of the night or in the early morning or sometimes later, even, during the day, he suffered from the knowledge of those who had so recently made love to her before him, even though she claimed that it meant nothing to her, that the girl in bed with them was a different person without feeling, thinking only of the time when she would see him again and of the money she was accumulating which would be of use to them.
He was interrupted from his reverie by a sharp tap on the door. He moved slowly off the bed. For some reason the tap had seemed to contain a menace. But he'd paid his contribution. What sort of menace could there possibly be?
He stepped across to the door and opened it without calling out to ask who was there. Three men sidled into the room, pushing him in front of them and closing the door Behind them. All three were Algerians. Two of them had collected his contribution to the funds only a day ago.
"What's this?" he said. A coldness seeped inside him, surrounding his heart like ice water.
None of the men replied. One placed himself in front of the door, another moved over between Ahmed and the window and the third pushed him back onto the bed and looked Jit him with a vicious smile. Ahmed had never seen a killer before, but looking at this man he knew that killing was his job and his chest began to flutter with horror.
The smile on the man's face broadened and managed to become more vicious. His teeth were startlingly white where one might have expected them to be dirty and decayed. He had a feline air of nervous energy, perfectly controlled. Ahmed's voice dried up; he felt drained of life itself.
After a long, intimidating silence, the man in front of him spoke.
"You are a good boy," he said, with a sneer in his voice. "You managed recently to pay your contribution to the movement in spite of difficult circumstances. These circumstances did not, of course, provide any more reason for you not to pay. It's of no interest whether you can pay or not-no personal interest to us, you understand. But the fact that you paid shows you are a good boy, which we recognize ... "
His voice droned on and, after a few seconds of astonishment that they seemed so aware of his circumstances, Ahmed hardly heard the words. He stared into the dark vicious eyes of his visitor, fascinated as by a cobra. Occasionally the words swam back into his consciousness and then he lost them again, becoming aware, this time, only of the man's cruel lips, moving slightly as he talked.
". . .Francoise Louvier is the property of the-of certain people who protect her," the voice came through, startling him with the mention of her name and pulling him together at the thought that she, too, might be involved with these men. "She can, thus, not be permitted to become too intimate with others who are nothing to do with the protection. She might get ideas."
He paused and in the next second Ahmed saw that there was a long, slim knife in his hand. It had appeared there as if he'd pulled it out of the air like a professional conjuror. He balanced it casually on the flat of his hand while he talked.
"We can, therefore, not allow such an insignificant part of humanity as you to interfere in her life and consequently in the life of the organization behind her. You will, therefore, not see her again and not contact her in any way."
The indication in the words that at least he was not at this moment to be killed out of hand, reacted so strongly, so reassuringly in Ahmed's mind that he voiced a small protest.
"But we are in love with each other," he said. "It would be impossible ... "
The man's hand slashed through the air and lashed him full across the face, not only numbing him with pain, but knocking him sideways down on the bed with its unexpected force.
The grin on his face became, if it were possible, even more vicious than, before.
"You have been warned," he said, pricking the point of the knife against Ahmed's throat. "You know what it is to disobey."
Ahmed said nothing. Here he sensed his life hung on a thread.
The.man withdrew the knife and slipped it away inside his dark jacket. He motioned to the man near the window, who crossed the room. He grinned at Ahmed and said softly: "Don't make us have to see you again."
And then the door opened and, one after the other with movements so swift that they seemed to move out like one person, they left.
Ahmed lay where he'd been knocked, for, several seconds without moving, and then he raised his fingers to his face, where he could now feel the stinging pain. His heart was beating like a train shunting. The whole interview had lasted only a few minutes. They had come and gone like phantoms walking out of a dream, not belonging to the material world one knew and recognized.
After several minutes more his thoughts began to clarify and rushed to Frangoise, who, even now, unaware of the danger he'd just-for the moment-survived, was submitting to a stranger's lovemaking in a hotel a few blocks away. The thought that he would obey, would not see her again, never occurred to him. His mind was simply flooded with thoughts on how to evade this embargo. He stood up and went to the airshaft, stared down into its gloomy depths which seemed an abyss as dark and endless as the future.
CHAPTER VII
Francoise let herself into her room, rather surprised to find that Ahmed was not there. She felt tired and rather sick with the evening's business. Perhaps it was just as well if he'd fallen asleep in his own hotel and would not be round until late the next day.
Things had taken a slightly different shape today. Clients who hitherto had been content with straightforward fucking had begun to want to experiment. Two of them had wanted to thrust their pricks up her ass-hole. She'd refused at first; she wasn't used to the idea of that sort of thing. But the first one had offered her double and after some hesitation she'd been unable to refuse. The act had proved painful in spite of the lubricant and had at one point made her feel sick. She'd been on the point a number of times of trying to wriggle away and refuse to go on, so considerable had been the pain in her rectum and the sweeping waves of disgust which had consumed her. But each time the grip in which she was held as her customer stuffed her anus and the thought of the money had choked the words in her throat, drowning them in her moans. When he'd finished she'd lain, bottom uncovered, face buried in the bed, until, with a few inappropriately cheerful words of what a tight little back-crack she had and how much he'd enjoyed it, the monster had gone. At last she'd got up and washed and gone down again to take up her stance.
When the whole procedure had been repeated she'd been torn once again between refusing outright and permitting what, after all, was no longer a horrible novelty. It had been easier the second time although it had made her twice as sore and left her feeling as if she were walking about with a hole the size of a bomb crater between her buttocks.
She undressed slowly and began to wash again. Now it would become part of the night's activities-to be buggered between fucks. Then they would be wanting her to suck them off and God knew what else would follow. She bathed her anus, tenderly, and tried to see it in her mirror. It felt inflamed and it seemed, strangely, like a dark secret she must keep from Ahmed. If only there were another way of making so much money ...
Recently she'd found her attitude modifying slightly. She was no longer the girl who had left her home in Marseilles to take a job with a business firm in Paris, knowing that she was going to make money by her looks, whatever the cost. Several weeks of being presented so nude and intimate for the pleasures of strangers, some of them ugly with bad breath, coarse tongues and dirty bodies, had made her feel that perhaps she could manage with less money. If only Ahmed could get a job, she felt almost inclined to become a normal housewife, staying in and doing the shopping and washing his clothes and being able to lavish all her love, emotional and physical, on him alone.
She pulled her dressing gown over her nakedness, not bothering to tie it with the cord, and then she lay on the bed, aware still of the tender heat at the core of her bottom.
She had dozed off when the knock came on the door. It took a second for the noise to penetrate the haze of sleep which inundated her and the knock was repeated before she began to swing her legs off the bed to open the door for Ahmed.
Outside, when she unlocked the door, three strange men were standing, men who pushed immediately into the room without being asked and locked the door behind them.
So sure had she been that it was her lover that she'd not bothered to pull the dressing-gown around her and her breasts and down to her feet had been uncovered in a long panel of nudity as the men moved in. Now, too astonished to protest, she became aware of their eyes rifling her form, her nakedness, and instinctively pulled the gown tightly around her. She was too frightened to cry out and she simply stared at them with her large, almond-shaped eyes filled with terror as one of them, with the most vicious expression she'd ever seen, began to speak.
"We're here from the protection organization," he said. "We've come to tell you what a naughty little girl you're being and how much those who have your interests at heart disapprove."
A certain streak of indignation began to merge with her fright after the initial shock. After all. this was a hotel in the centre of civilized Paris.
"What do you mean?" she said. "And how do I know who you are?"
"There is no need for any discussion," the man said, his eyes moving over the curves of her body where they indented and pushed out the dressing gown. "This man, Ahmed ben Lulla-you've been giving him money?"
A new fright gripped her at the mention of his name. Had they seen him? What had happened? Her instinct told her to deny that she knew him or that she'd ever given him anything, but then reason asserted itself.
"Yes," she said. "I've given him money."
The man smiled, an extremely unpleasant expression.
"You will give him no more," he said. "And, as from now, the organization will take two instead of one-third of what you make in the exercise of your-uh-talents." He continued to look at her appreciatively and glanced away to her clothes which hung flimsily over a chair. Neither of the other two men had spoken. They stood with slight smiles which were replicas of their spokesman's. She felt as if she were surrounded by tigers. But her indignation bridled at the injustice of what they had threatened.
"The money I've given him was my own," she said. "I gave it him as a present and nobody has any right to tell me what to do with my money."
With a movement which took her totally by surprise, the man caught her wrist and twisted her arm behind her back so that she twisted involuntarily round and fell against him, back towards him. Her dressing gown fell open and, even with the sudden pain which shot through her arm, she was more aware of his eyes looking down at her breasts which poked whitely, pointedly out of the open gown. The other two men moved a little so that they could look at that naked, rounded, front view of her body.
"Little girls like you do not try to argue with the organization," the man who held her said softly. "You obey or you ... "
With a shock which ran like ice-cold water down her spine she felt the flat of a knife blade drawn across her throat. Her immediate reaction was to cry out. He clamped a hand over her mouth and she bit it wildly, hearing his oath and the order that he barked to the other two to leave the bitch to him.
She was flung onto the bed and the dressing gown ripped effortlessly off her. She tried to cover her nakedness with a sheet but then the breath was knocked out of her as his fist sank into her stomach and then the flat of his hand smacked her cheek with such force that for a moment she felt nothing. She rocked back as a blow lashed her other cheek and then his hands were slashing her breasts and she was rolling over the bed, trying to escape while blows lashed across her shoulders, her buttocks, everywhere with stinging power, and she was held by other hands so that her punishment could be effected without resistance.
Mohammed Arab stood back after a few minutes and motioned to the other two to let her go. She lay before them, slim and voluptuously rounded and fresh-looking. She seemed for the moment to be dazed. There were angry red marks on her white body. He was excited by the beating he'd just administered. The soft yielding of the flesh under his hand, its warmth and resilience, had moved a weight to his loins and his penis was bulging out against his tight trousers.
Francoise lay face down, trembling, not looking round at her tormentors. And then she felt thin, wiry hands on her shoulders, with fingers that dug into her flesh like pincers.
"How many times have you been fucked tonight?" asked the sneering voice which seemed to be gloating as well.
She didn't answer and the fingers tightened until she cried out and said: "I don't remember-five."
"Well now we're all going to fuck you to help put up your average-or maybe the boys would rather do other things with you."
The other two laughed softly, menacingly, and then the hands were forcing her down on the bed, pushing her shoulders onto the counterpane. She began to struggle, fighting and kicking, but she was held so firmly that she couldn't even turn round and a few curses were all the result she got.
Her shoulders were held tight against the counterpane and knees had forced her own knees apart with a rough pressure.
"Kneel up," his voice commanded. She tried to force herself flatly onto the bed. She was crying as much with rage as fear. The hands moved off her shoulders, making them feel free as if they'd been sheathed in iron. One of them grabbed her arm and twisted it up behind her shoulder-blades; the other reached under her loins and hauled them up bodily. The strength used against her was frighteningly great. She felt like an almost lifeless teddy bear in the hands of a hefty child even though she continued to struggle and swing her bottom in an effort to escape.
"A wildcat," she heard one of the henchmen say. They were all around her, looking at her naked body, gloating over their satisfaction which was to come.
The twisting of her arm forced her face down hard against the bedcover and her hips seemed to be lifted high up into the air while she swayed and struggled punily.
She gasped with pain as, suddenly, there was a thick intrusion which felt as if a log was being pushed into her dry, unwanting vagina. She screamed out for them to stop; tears smarted against her cheeks. But the intrusion grew and she felt her thighs swept wide apart, the heavy weight of loins crashing against her buttocks pushing her face hard into the bed with every hot pain which seared her vagina. Her vaginal passage felt on fire. The great penis penetrating it felt like sandpaper. She ached and her back ached from bending. She felt hands, many hands, the other men's hands running over her behind. Someone stuck several thicknesses of finger up her ass, which was still so sore from the sodomy she'd been subjected to earlier.
Little screams of breath broke from her lips. Her passage felt as if its walls were being chafed and pared of their skin. Then she began to lubricate a little and the pain was a little less but the penetration greater and she felt as if her whole belly were being split open, as if someone were levering apart her thighs until her body would split all the way up from her pelvis right through a line between her naked breasts which were being squeezed and kneaded brutally.
Kneeling behind her prostrate body, Mohammed Arab gritted his teeth and fucked in and out with great lunges which began from his toes and quivered up through his strong, wiry thighs to reach a zenith of sensation in his tough, iron-hard prick which burst into her, pushing her flesh in all directions, making a path for entry as if his phallus were a bulldozer tunneling through the earth.
His hands gripped her body, squeezing with sadistic force, hurting her, making her cry out and wriggle helplessly with pain.
His balls itched with desire and his prick tingled. He ran his hands over the tormented flesh which, unwilling but helpless, was at his mercy. He tore the buttocks apart, spreading them obscenely, revealing the little, hard anus which he noticed was red and raw-looking and into which his fingers slipped without too much difficulty. His prick buried itself into her up to the hilt, encountering a certain resistance over the last inch. Her channel was pulverizing tight around his rigidity and its squeezing clasp brought forth oaths and gasps of pleasure from his thin lips.
Francoise, shamed and aching, her face sideways against the bedcover, felt only a great heat and splitting at her loins. She felt super-naked and every part of her seemed to be at that great hole which grew and grew between her legs as if it were some forest pathway being broadened, having its undergrowth swept away by some irresistible tornado.
Her lips opened and closed in torment. Occasionally she tried to flatten her hips or draw her buttocks in to contain the pain of her anus. But then she was aware only of the tightening of her vagina and the extra pain which ensued from his brusque entry.
Suddenly there were fingers at her lips, opening her mouth and then a spongy, stiff substance rubbing against her lips. She opened her eyes and saw, close under them, a prick some eight inches long and thick in proportion. One of the other men was lying alongside her, forcing his penis into her mouth. She resisted from a moment, sickened, but then he held her nose between finger and thumb and, as she gasped for breath, the thick sword of flesh rammed in, crushing through her soft, moist lips, between her even teeth and into the moist saliva of her mouth. She felt it on her tongue, this great blunt, hot thing, tearing her attention in brief spasms from the continuous piercing of her vagina and the blunt solidity which crashed against her cervix and made her jerk forward with pain.
The trouser-covered hips behind the prick began to undulate in towards her and the fat prick to slide in and out of her mouth, never quite withdrawing, always leaving an inch or two beyond her lips in the warm shelter of her mouth.
She saw where it came, broad and searching out from the trouser flies. There were a few black hairs straggling out with it. It grew broader towards the knob and the skin was drawn back in a series of little ridges like narrow olive terraces.
She closed her eyes. Saliva seemed to fill her mouth-all of her mouth that was left after the great rod expanding within it had rammed down towards her tonsils.
Once or twice she coughed and spluttered but then she grew accustomed to the asphyxiating entry and let it move in and out with ever increasing vigor, ramming at a faster pace than its brother which gouged her quim. '
Mohammed Arab felt himself coming. He squeezed her flesh in his hands so that it grew up in great ridges-small, artificial buttocks embossed on her real buttocks. When he released her, the ridges settled back slowly into her flesh, leaving angry red marks, fringed with a white bloodlessness on her skin.
Every time he thrust now, pushing his loins forward, his pelvic area in the avant-garde of the thrust, he felt the imminence of his orgasm grow greater until there was a heavy weight of blood hanging in the knob of his penis.
While he thrust he saw her tender lips clasping the growing, whitening prick of one of his cronies who was writhing his hips as he forced her to suck him.
Francoise, obeying the command of the fingers which forced her mouth to follow, sucked and licked the great tree-like being in her mouth. Her torture had gone on and on. She prayed for it to end and so she sucked to end it quickly.
The glans in her mouth was slimy with her saliva and suddenly the moisture was thicker with a seaweedy taste. She felt his loins crush into her face, tensing in great, trembling movements. His hands gripped her cheeks and then her hair and he seemed to be trying to push his cock down her throat to meet the other coming up in her cunt. She felt at this moment totally debased, as if her body were just a piece of putty-like flesh which these men were using for masturbation, as if she had no rights, no soul, no humanity, as if she were some stuffed dummy exclusively for their pleasure.
The man lying beside her gasped, once, twice, three times and then crushed his hips into her face so that she was suffocated and fought for breath. And as she fought for breath, her mouth was flooded with a great undamming of hot, thick liquid, which choked her and slithered automatically down her throat. At the same time, the organ in her mouth, after its rigid ejaculations, began to lose its size and weight and his loins moved away and she was able to breathe again and she opened her mouth and spat out some of the sperm which still remained around her tongue and on her palate.
She became aware again, exclusively, of the filling of her cunt, the never-ending object which barraged into her belly untiringly and which seemed as broad and deep as her loins. No feeling came to her except the hot chafing where his prick grazed her vaginal wall. But his orgasm, too, was coming. She heard him panting, faster and faster and he forced her thighs so wide with his knees that she was almost flat on the bed with her hips and her pelvis aching with the stretching. His fingers gripped the tops of her thighs with a pressure which didn't relax, now, but became greater and greater as his panting became more and more agitated and deep.
She heard him gasp out some words in Arabic which she didn't understand and then he thrust into her so hard and seemed to go so deep with the long thrust that it actually seemed as if his penis had been transformed into a spear which wounded her and made her moan in pain. She felt his convulsive jerks against her ass and then he too fell back from her and there was suddenly cool air entering her unstoppered hole and she fell forward on the bed, crying bitterly and aching all over as if her body had been cramped in a tiny tomb for hours on end.
While she lay, sobbing, the men began to recover.
From their joking remarks it was apparent that the third member, who'd held only a watching brief on the whole proceeding, preferred young men. She was too curvaceous for him even to think of buggering her and pretending her name was Frangoise.
But now he was urged by the others to complete what they referred to as her punishment.
Frangoise lay on the bed, sobbing, aware only partially of what was going on between them, prostrate, not trying to move or protect herself from further assault.
Above her the third member of the trio began to remove his belt. His teeth were drawn back from his teeth in a vicious grin. It was difficult to say which of them looked more vicious than the others.
The belt was of thin, shiny leather. He held it at the buckle end and motioned to the others to hold the girl. Mohammed Arab sat on her feet and the other held her shoulders. Both of them kept well back from her body, leaving it free.
The man with the belt looked down on her pummeled body, which still bore faint, dying traces of her previous mishandling. This time he'd leave more permanent traces. His chest tingled with excitement. The thought of watching his belt bite into that woman-flesh, woman-flesh that he disliked so intensely, filled him with sadistic delight.
He raised the belt and lashed it down across her buttocks. She screamed exhaustedly and her body jackknifed but was firmly held by the others. The belt rose and descended again in the same thin line and then it flashed up and down, up and down until her back from thighs to shoulders was a grill of weals and her body was squirming as if in death throes.
Finally he lowered his arm and began to buckle the belt around his waist once again. Mohammed Arab looked at her body. She didn't look too attractive now. He grinned meanly, showing his teeth.
"Let's go now," he said to the others.
On the way out. he said to the almost still body on the bed:
"Don't be a naughty girl and nothing serious will happen to you."
CHAPTER VIII
A day of hanging around the dirty little bars of La Chapelle and the surrounding area had brought only a thin slip of information to Detective-Inspector Raimond. Dressed in his blues, he listened to Arabs chatting, had sometimes chatted with them himself in French, assuming a broad, lower-Parisian accent.
Nobody had recognized him as a flic. He was able to gauge all reactions to himself by simply listening to the remarks in Arabic which interspersed any conversation he had with any Algerians, none of whom assumed that he could understand.
It was simply by standing at an almost empty bar listening that he got the little scrap of information he now intended to use for what it was worth. And, certainly, the assassination of the superintendent in what one would have thought of as impossible circumstances enlarged the value of any bit of information which might give the slightest lead.
He was walking casually along the centre pavement which divided the dual carriageway. He was looking for the next hotel and appearing not to. Already he had called at four and each time had drawn a blank. There had been no Ahmed ben Lulla and nobody had heard of him and nobody sounded as if they'd admit it even if they had, harmless though the inspector looked in his workingman's clothes.
It was an hour ago that he'd picked up the name. There had been just himself and two Arabs standing at the comptoir with the patron away in a backroom for most of the time.
He had listened to them quietly discussing the latest political moves in the French political switchback and then his ears had spread wide when he heard mention of somebody who had almost refused to pay his "contribution" but had changed his mind at the last minute.
With quiet, expressive gestures one of the men had explained to the other what his nodding acquaintance, Ahmed ben Lulla, had narrowly missed becoming-a corpse in a back street.
Pierre Raimond had made up his mind immediately that this would be followed up. Vainly he listened for information on the whereabouts of the Algerian whose name he'd heard mentioned, but all he'd been able to gather was that it was in a side street off the main boulevard that his hotel was located.
He was tired of this area; almost beginning to feel that he was one of the lonely, helpless, misfit Arabs who lived here. He wanted some action and he was determined to wring whatever he possibly could from this tiny and perhaps dead-end clue.
He crossed the road, dodging the fast-moving traffic and headed into the next side-street. like most of the others he'd been in it gave an impression of movement just under a dark facade-rather like the sensed movement of fish in murky water. There were prostitutes in doorways who whispered invitations at him as he passed-each trying to outdo the last in offers of what exquisite or peculiar pleasures were in store for him if he cared to entrust himself to her imagination.
He tried the first two grimy hotels without any luck. He could sense the inevitable repetition. The street was full of uneven doorways leading blackly off the pavement, with battered signs swaying over some, nothing but a street number over others.
The third one was even grimier than the others. There were two whores sitting on the stairway and they both looked at him in startled expectancy and one of them got up and smoothed her sweater over her breasts.
He looked in at the office, which was less an office than a dismal little room where the hotel manager lived and hung his dirty clothes in a pile over a clotheshorse and stacked his dirty plates on a table as if he were never going to wash them up but just wait until the room was full and then move out.
The prostitute reached him as he knocked on the door and invited him upstairs, catching hold of his hand in encouragement.
"I just want to see someone here," he said, grinning pleasantly, "that's all."
"I'm the only person worth seeing here," she said and placed his hand on her big breast as if that proved what she said.
Raimond removed his hand after giving her teat an appreciative squeeze.
"I really only want to see this fellow," he said. "Some other time."
He knocked on the door again. There didn't seem to be anyone at home. The girl beside him moved back a pace and pulled her skirt up to the tops of her thighs to show him how beautiful her legs were. They weren't bad at all.
"Isn't anyone ever here?" he asked.
"He went out an hour ago," the girl said. "He's in the bar down the street."
She put her hand down between the inspector's legs and felt for his penis, pressing her thigh against him.
"You can have anything you want for a thousand francs, " she said. "All my openings are available."
"Is there anyone called Ahmed ben Lulla here?" he asked.
She gave his prick, which responded a little even if he was on business, a hearty squeeze and thrust her breasts into his chest.
"He won't go away," she said. "You'll have time to see him after. I'll give you a quick suck for 500 francs."
"He lives here, then," Raimond said, trying to keep the quick interest out of his voice. "Which room is he in?"
"How would I know," she said. "He's too poor to invite me in. You needn't go afterwards-I'll let you have an hour for a thousand francs. You could make it three times in that."
"You tell me which room he's in and I'll give you 500 francs just for the information," he said.
She looked at him suspiciously.
"Let me see the money," she said.
"I'm in a hurry to find him," he said, "otherwise I wouldn't be throwing away tomorrow's dinner money."
He pulled out a note from a suitably battered purse and held it towards her.
"It's room 38 on the fourth," she said. "You must want to see him bad."
She took the money and smiled up at him suddenly, as if she had only just believed he was really going to give it to her.
She patted him on the bottom as he walked past her.
"If you want to see me on the way down," she said. "You've got 500 francs credit."
The other whore made way for him on the stairs. She was wearing a blouse with nothing underneath and she'd undone enough buttons for the whole of her left breast to show. She thrust it towards him.
"If she hasn't got what you want-I have," she said.
He patted her on the bottom to even up the pattings and felt her little animal buttocks bridle against his hand and then he was going up the stairs two at a time. He heard them laughing down below him.
Ahmed ben Lulla had not yet made up his mind what to do when the second knock of the night sounded on his door. He stiffened, like a dog seeing some phantom thing in an empty room. Nervously his mind ticked over. He hadn't yet been out. He could have done nothing to offend them. Had they had second thoughts?
He moved up close to the door and listened. Then he said unsteadily :
"Who's there?"
"A friend," said a voice in French. "Who are you?"
There was a second's silence and then the voice said:
"I can help you if you let me speak to you."
Again Ahmed's mind raced. If it was the NLF, he reasoned, there was no escaping them and he would merely antagonize them by being difficult.
He opened the door a little and saw a big lorry driver. It looked like a lorry driver. He opened the door farther.
"What do you want?"
The man pushed open the door and came into the room past him.
"Shut the door," he said, with an air of command which Ahmed mechanically obeyed.
The man sat down on the bed and looked at Ahmed pleasantly. He seemed completely at ease and his face was frank and determined. Ahmed felt relieved but wary.
"Who are you?" he said.
"How much do you pay the NLF?" his visitor countered.
Ahmed scrutinized him carefully and said nothing.
"I know you pay and I know you recently were unable to," the man went on. "I can help you if you help me."
"A flic," Ahmed said, as if to himself.
"I know how you're forced to pay," the man went on. "You have nothing to fear; you have only help to gain."
Ahmed sat on the bed and looked at his unexpected visitor. Various ideas were turning over in confusion in his head. If the man was a flic, as he was, he could get tough and Ahmed would have no recourse to the forces of law and order. Here was the force of law and order. At least here was the force. But could no dare to give any information. Who had seen this fellow come into the hotel? And what information had he to give, except perhaps a description or two? It was true that a description could be all-important.
"I know nothing," he said.
"You could give me any information about these men who collect the money from you-what they look like, when they come."
"It's more than my life is worth."
"If you give me information that leads to my getting hold of these men, you can be sure of police protection."
"Police protection," Ahmed said, with a hint of sarcasm in his tone. "For how long, against what reprisals." He pointed to the newspaper. "You saw what happened to the police superintendent. Nobody is safe."
Pierre Raimond looked down at his hands and then up into the eyes of the young Algerian.
"What sort of life do you have?" he asked. "Work?"
Ahmed shook his head.
"And you hand over money to these fanatics? That means you don't eat, you don't drink, you don't go to a cinema, you're in arrears with your hotel money. What sort of life is that?"
Ahmed shook his head again.
"It is nothing-but it is life," he said. "It is not death, which is the alternative if you refuse to pay or if you inform. There's no ... "
There was a light tap on the door and Ahmed stood up as if someone had jabbed him with a needle. He looked at the policeman on his bed in horror.
"They saw you come!" he whispered.
Pierre Raimond went to the door, motioned Ahmed back and, standing to one side, called: "Who's there?"
A woman's voice answered.
"If you think it's a joke climbing all these flights of stairs and me with bad legs and no money to see the doctor and willing to do a kindness even if it does waste my time and put me out and make my heart bad, as if it isn't weak enough already ... "
Gently Raimond opened the door. An old woman stood outside. She was carrying a tray of violets and she was red-faced and puffing so much that it was amazing that she could talk at the same time.
"What do you want here?" Ahmed asked from behind Raimond.
"Which of you gentlemen is Monsieur Ahmed ben
Lulla?" the old woman asked, peering shortsightedly at them.
Ahmed moved forward in front of Raimond. "I am," he said.
The old woman reached into a tattered pocked and fished out a small envelope with no name on it.
"Young lady stopped me in the street, gave me this for you," she said. .
Ahmed took the envelope. Raimond watched him open it, read it once quickly, pale and read it again more slowly.
"Where was she?" Ahmed said.
"Right near the mitro at Anvers," the old woman said. "Very nervous she was. Didn't explain nothing, but begged me so hard I couldn't say no."
"God," Ahmed said. "God!" He swayed away from the door and sank onto the bed. Raimond held out his hand for the note, knowing it would be given, and Ahmed handed it to him without a word.
The note said:
"Darling, oh darling, What have they done to you? Are you all right? I daren't come. They came to my hotel and did things to me and told me not to see you again. But I'm all right. Only we mustn't see each other for some time. Send back a note with the old woman and I'll get it from her, but don't try to see me or talk to me. I'm afraid for us both!'
The note was signed with an "F."
"Come in," Raimond said to the old woman. He turned to Ahmed, lying dazed on the bed. "Girl friend?" Ahmed nodded.
"They? Same people who came to see you?"
"Protection organization-same people."
"Oh-indeed." Raimond's mind was racing, putting facts together, drawing conclusions. Things were looking up, he decided.
"Will you help me now if I help you?" he said. Ahmed stood up and confronted the old woman. "How was she?" he said, intensely. "How was the girl who gave you the note."
"How was she."
"How did she seem."
"How did she seem?"
"Oh God," Ahmed snapped, his voice rising dangerously.
He stepped towards the old woman and Raimond caught hold of him. "Take it easy," he said and added to the old woman, "Did she have any sign of injury?"
"Oh no," the woman said, looking from one to the other, startled. "Oh no. She seemed very nervous, kept looking round and telling me not to let anyone see me with the note. Oh no-no injury. Least I couldn't see any."
Raimond looked down at Ahmed.
"Send her back a note," he said. "Telling her that a friend of yours will get in touch with her."
Obediently Ahmed look a pencil out of his pocket. Raimond found him a piece of paper from his wallet while the old woman continued to stare at both of them in wonderment.
"You will get in touch with her for me?" Ahmed asked. "Yes-tell her to give me any information I want."
"How will I know what information you want."
"It shouldn't worry you now."
After a second's hesitation, Ahmed began to scribble on the piece of paper and then handed it to Raimond, who read it rapidly and then handed it to the old woman, giving her 500 francs at the same time.
"You know where to find the young lady."
"She said she'd be watching out for me-but that I was to tell the gentleman not to try to see her."
"Right. Off you go."
Raimond closed the door behind her and looked at Ahmed, setting dejectedly on the bed. "Now let's hear what you have to say," he said.
CHAPTER IX
Along the street, outside the hotel door, Francoise was standing in her usual encouraging stance.
From the point under the boulevard trees where they stood, Ahmed and Raimond could see her clearly. Ahmed's lace was strained and longing, but he kept back out of sight and occasionally he glanced quickly in either direction along the boulevard, or up at the dim-lit windows over it.
"Somebody'll be watching from somewhere," he said. "They may even have seen us already."
"I hope not," Raimond said. "And I doubt it. They'll be watching her from close up."
They stood silently for a minute or two and then Raimond added: "Well, I'll go. Walk up the street a bit and I'll look for you."
Ahmed watched the big man stroll off and head up the street towards Francoise. He hoped this was going to work out all right. It was all much deeper than he cared to think about. From now on their lives were in real danger until such time as the gamble of taking sides paid off.
Raimond strolled along the street, looking at each of the whores who lined it, in turn. Some he spoke to for a few seconds, some he argued with and always he walked on as if dissatisfied until he came to Frangoise.
What a pretty one, he thought. What the devil is she doing in this racket? Even as she smiled at him and he approached her the sadness of the relationships people like these clung on to filled him. He thought of his own wife and imagined his own thoughts if she were forced to take up prostitution as a living.
He remembered just after the war, when things had been so difficult, how she had gone to a hotel with an American in exchange for some tinned goods he'd promised her. They'd all done that, even the nicest, most virtuous girls had done that, rather than see their families short of food in the terrible shortage there had been after the Germans had retreated. She'd told him about that in her honesty and he'd felt agonies for some time, imagining her in the arms of that American, submitting her intimacies to him for a tin of cassoulct. She'd been so young, so alive, so beautiful. He hated that American who tasted her beauty so cheaply. But he'd recovered. Time healed that sort of wound like everything else and, after all, he'd had plenty of women before he'd met Michele. But how did this young Algerian accept that his girl friend should submit to so many strange embraces every night? How could he bear the idea? Did one become accustomed to it? Was it like facing the necessity in the same way that Michele had faced it that time when the American had dangled such bait in front of her lovely eyes?
"Je t'emmine?"
He turned to the girl, seeing her smile, knowing what darkness and horror the smile hid. "How much?" he said.
"Three thousand francs," she said. "All right."
She led the way quickly, almost eagerly, into the hotel and up the narrow staircase. She was a shapely creature, he thought; under different circumstances ...
She opened the door into a small room with just a bed and washing facilities and a small chair to put clothes on.
She began to strip immediately and he let her for a moment to see the sweater whisk off, the bare, unbrassiered flesh beneath and then the skirt, also with nothing underneath. He saw her pert, rounded nudity and felt a movement in his loins. But he was here on business.
"Don't bother," he said. "I'm a friend of Ahmed's."
Her eyes sparked with wild interest and she forgot to cover her body as she turned toward him. Seeing his eyes drop to the lightly-haired triangle at her loins, she began quickly to pull on her clothes as she questioned him.
"Where is he? How is he? What's happened?"
He chuckled at her eagerness and took a note out of his pocket that he'd bought for her. When she'd finished eagerly, joyfully reading it, she looked up at him slowly.
"A flic ... ! But what can you do?"
"Ensure that you people have a life which isn't run by fear. I want a description of the men who came to you and anything else useful you can tell me. Then I'll take a note for Ahmed from you and maybe you'll be seeing him in peace and security before very long."
She looked at the note from her lover again. Normally, informing a flic was the last thing she would have dreamed of doing. But Ahmed urged her to. It was their only chance of seeing each other again in safety, he said, if the NLF were smashed. He also said this man seemed a good man and had been very nice to him. He was, perhaps, a man they could trust.
She looked up into Raimond's straight-staring eyes and remembered that he'd let her get undressed before he'd told her. In certain directions, she reflected, no man could be trusted.
"All right," she said. "I'll tell you what I know-but we must be quick. I don't usually take too long with my . . .my clients, and they'll be watching from across the street."
Quickly she described to him the three men who'd visited her, paying particular attention to the vicious-eyed ringleader. She then told him about the protection ring, whose connections with Algerian nationalist organizations she only vaguely knew about. As she was so young and attractive, she'd been taken to a man named Mahmoud Taluffah, who had told her what she must pay to the protection ring. He'd also made it clear she had no alternative. He'd then forced his attentions upon her-which was the reason why she'd been brought to him instead of being interviewed by one of his lieutenants. This man, then, seemed to be the chief of the protection ring and was probably well up in the nationalist hierarchy, as the two activities seemed to be running hand in hand.
"Where is he, this man?" Raimond asked.
"I don't know much about him at all," she said. "But he runs all sorts of clubs and bars. He-likes to live well, everybody says. He often spends some time in his bars around Pigalle, but there is another near Clichy where he presents his legitimate front-I can't remember the name of it."
"Apart from this you know nothing about his activities-meeting-places, where he lives, etc?"
"No. He has a girl friend. She dances in one of the Pigalle places and sings. She was there when I was taken to him and he sent her off when he wanted to ... be alone with me. They say she has a roving eye herself and doesn't care too much what he does."
"What does she look like?"
"She has black hair with a bleached, gold-silver streak running back from the front. Her hair's long-down to her shoulders. She's about up to your shoulder and very curvaceous. She has big, dark eyes, a rather small nose and a small mouth with a large, pouting bottom lip. I don't know about any peculiarities. I really didn't have time to study her. He called her 'Rolande.'"
Raimond let these details sink into his brain.
"Write your note for the boy friend," he said, then: "I've got to get moving."
CHAPTER X
Later that same night, dressed now in a smart suit, Raimond made a tour of the bars on the sloping streets running south from Pigalle.
The streets were crawling with American servicemen, some on foot, some creeping around in enormous cars, all looking for women. And women were there in plenty-French, negresses, Arab women, all sorts-standing on the street corners, peering from bars, disappearing into hotel doorways with a catch, climbing into cars to make whoopee with four men together. The bars were named with every invitation-likely to appeal to a woman hunter: "Sexy Club."
"Strip Club."
"Le Trou Mademoiselle." From them all came the sound of music and occasional dancing. It was a gaudy, garish glitter which to anybody who preferred home comforts was almost frightening, Raimond thought as he walked slowly from bar to bar, peering in at the doors, being immediately accosted by several painted women who "invited" him in for a drink. Some looked as if they might have entertainment at some time, others looked hopeless. He made a note to return to some if he didn't find what he was looking for. He didn't want to ask any questions unless he absolutely had to.
At last he found what he was looking for. It was rather quieter, more luxurious-looking than most. Somehow the cheap effect of the other bars which surrounded it didn't touch this one. You could tell as you approached that you needed to have even more money than a GI on leave to be able to hang around in its plush interior.
There were, however, some score of people inside, sitting at tables and on stools against the bar. They were drinking, but not, at the moment, talking. They were listening to the soft, sexy voice of a woman who was sitting informally at the far end of the bar, singing into a little microphone. Her voice, was quite something. It seemed to curl into the corners of the room, feeling for anybody who might be trying to escape its effect, and then to turn lazily back and whisper amongst its captives.
Raimond went to a table from which he could see the woman clearly. A first glance had shown him the long, blonde-silver streak running back from her forehead. He asked for Scotch and the white-smocked waiter brought it and slipped away. Raimond hoped his expense account would hold good.
He surveyed the woman and mentally raised his eyebrows. She really was some dish. There was about her an unashamed air of a willing playgirl who managed to extract the utmost enjoyment out of living dangerously on the edge of vice, and managed to keep her own special sexy vitality without getting'jaded.
She was wearing an amber-colored dress which was cut very low on her full breasts, revealing them as she leaned forward almost to the nipples. The dress was caught up in the front in a couple of long folds which stretched over her thighs just below the point where they ran into her hips, and attached in a bow on either hip. She wore very high-heeled, pointed, gold shoes which made her long, slender legs appear even more slender and her arms were covered in silver bracelets, matching the sequins all over the dress. She really seemed to be worth somebody's discovering.
Raimond had no doubt this was the girl he was looking for: the description fitted. He wondered just how easy it would be to get to know her and then how difficult it would be to get the information he needed from her. He was prepared to go to any lengths to get it, in fact he rather fancied going to any lengths. There were some aspects of this job it would be better not to tell his wife about.
He pulled his gaze off the girl and glanced discreetly around the club. Most of the people in there seemed just to be visitors enjoying the night life, mostly French, although there were one or two American tourists dressed in pale suits and having the air of successful business men on the one trip of their lives to faraway Europe. After two days in Paris they'd rush to Berlin for two days and then down to Rome for two days and then Nice for three and then perhaps Spain for a non-stop week's tour and then back to Paris and then on to London for a day. At the moment they looked a little drunk, so they might find themselves staying for more days than they'd anticipated in Paris.
At a corner table were two rich-looking Algerians. They were sipping iced whiskies and generally taking in the scene with pleasant, patronizing expressions. They obviously belonged. But neither of them fitted any of the descriptions he'd been given.
The room was very dim-just, a few wall lights-and it was some time before he realized that the music was coming from a little trio set back in an alcove at the far end of the room opposite where the girl was sitting at the bar. It was quite a slick setup. He wondered why people who owned or ran such a business needed to go around frightening the daylights out of down-and-out brethren for a few thousand francs of their public assistance.
The girl came to the end of her song and there was a reaction of untensing, as if everybody had been hypnotized up till that point.
A restrained but appreciative clapping followed and then, as the trio took up another number, the girl slipped off her stool and began to dance an exotic and somewhat erotic little business in front of the tables, between them and the bar.
She slid out of her dress as if it was part of the dance, as smooth as poking out a tongue.
Underneath, she was dressed in a tiny pair of gold, matching pants, and, to the general astonishment, as she'd appeared to be naked in that area, a couple of little circles of gold cloth which just covered her nipples, resting on them like coolie hats on a head, hiding nothing of the finely-shaped teat behind.
She really was something, Raimond decided once and for all ... Her body was sinuous and yet not lacking in flesh in the right places. She looked quite athletic as if she'd be a superbly active companion in bed. Her buttocks as she moved in a slow circle, were not too large, but compact and very firm-looking, her legs slender and flawless under their brown makeup. Her hips, swaying to the music, were long and well-moulded, with hints of hollows just above the thighs showing through the gold cloth. When she stretched her slender, firm arms, there were faint bevel-' lings of her ribs marking the flesh of her body and her breasts, reached up below a slender, unlined neck, seemed to fight against being lifted and then remained stretched and swaying heavily as she moved.
She didn't take off anything else-at least she didn't take off the one real garment that was left-and that was part of her superb attraction. Just that something that they weren't going to sec, that something hidden which heightened her sexiness threefold.
Her body as she danced seemed to respond with exact, controlled rhythm to her slightest thought. It was like a long, slender instrument in perfect coordination, a fine, sleek piece of material with nothing superfluous about it, resolving and dissolving in a series of sexy movements which emphasized breasts and then buttocks and then her hips and then the whole of her body merging and submerging into an instrument of love and offering.
The audience watched spellbound as the lights moved over her extremities, rotundities, sensuousness, voluptuousness. It was excruciating, they found, that they couldn't run their hands over that live, moving, inviting flesh; it was a pain which became almost unbearable.
Raimond watched, too, experiencing the same sensations. He thought of his wife, who was really just as attractive as this girl. He remembered how he'd first watched her at the tennis club, her skirts swishing up as she served, revealing a lacy piece of panties covering buttocks which stretched hard against the tight, confining material; how, facing her, waiting for her service, he'd been fascinated, to the point of losing his concentration, on the way her breast rose darkly up against her blouse as her racquet arm swept up over her head. And then those first passionate moments, kissing, petting in the car and at dances until the summer and the car trips out to the country where he'd had her finally in a field in the long grass with cars going by on the road 200 metres away and they'd kept their clothes on with just her panties lying beside them as he waved his hips up and down above her and she held him tight and seemed dazedly lost by her own passion. He loved her just as much now, more, and she still filled him with desire, but now it was muted. One had to accept that it became muted and that one could sit here and watch this dark, sexy figure undulating and desire it with a sharp edge which one never felt any more with more familiar limbs and breasts ... To know that this sharp, excited, overpoweringly desireful sensation was never again to be fully experienced and satisfied was a crushing disappointment, which made one all the more joyful when, in the course of one's duty-necessitated even to fulfill one's duty-one had to try to take this new, exciting body to bed.
This number, too, came to a yearning end and the applause was mixed with some polite whistles of appreciation. The girl curtsied, took her dress from the bar and disappeared into a back room. Raimond sat on, waiting to see if she came back, keeping an eye on the two Algerians who had taken out cigars and begun to smoke.
The little orchestra began to play some soft dance music and a couple got up and started to dance, to be followed by several more. A couple more lights were doused and a low hum of animated chatter began with a fresh ordering of drinks. A few more people came in from the street and filled up the remaining tables and then, at last, the girl, in a dress like the last only emerald, came out from the back room and went to the bar.
Raimond reached her just as she finished arranging herself comfortably on the well-upholstered stool.
He congratulated her quietly on her voice and her dance and offered her a drink. She accepted and took a champagne cocktail. The barman maintained a suave, unmoved exterior. but he must have seen this so often that it was a wonder he could resist a smile.
The girl gave Raimond a quick, appraising glance as be gave the order and took another Scotch himself. It was a long time since she'd had an "adventure." Mahmoud had been rather jealous lately and so she'd eased off as she didn't want to offend him to the point where he might have her pushed under a train. But the desire was there. She liked variety, she liked excitement, she liked love and glamour and having a good time. And things had been getting just so stick-in-the-mud she felt she could go to bed with a smelly old clochard and get a kick out of it. Raimond was the best-looking man she'd seen in some time and he had an air about him of-difficult to define-well, just being a real man.
"A votre sante," he said, raising his glass towards her, "and may that dance get even sexier, in which case you'll have to have a grating between you and the audience."
"Is that how it made you feel?" she asked, smiling.
"Worse than that," he said.
Yes, all the description fitted: pouting lower lip, dark eyes and small nose and, above all, the hair.
"Some people seem to think it would be sexier if I took off the pants," she said. She smiled into his eyes. Her voice was a taunting suggestion. She wanted a risque conversation. Even if she couldn't have a risque relationship, she'd have a risque conversation, just to send a tickle of frustrated anticipation up her spine.
"I'd certainly like to see that," Raimond said, falling in with the game. "Normally, of course, concealment adds something to the attraction, but I'd say that with a figure like yours you'd look so hot without anything that nobody'd be able to stay in his seat."
"That wouldn't be a good idea," she said. "I can only take one at a time and I'm very, very selective."
"What sort of qualities pass the selection board?"
She raised her eyes from his, looking from the top of his head down his long, wiry frame with the coolest invitation he'd ever come across.
"I'd say about your build, probably, and good looking in a manly way, intelligent, a good lover, good company and preferably with enough money not to have to worry about which bars, as candidates, they drink in."
"Must take quite a time to decide who has all those qualities."
"Well, one can start with the obvious and then allow a bit of time to find out about the others."
"I'd like to offer myself as a candidate-and no bar is too expensive."
She smiled at him cat-like and for a moment he thought he'd been wrong and that she was now going to tell him where to get off, like the bitch she might be. But instead she said:
"On a superficial view you have the right qualities, but I don't know what the rest of the selection board would say." Still smiling, she glanced casually over at the two Algerians, who didn't seem to be taking the slightest interest in her activities.
"Perhaps they wouldn't have to know anything about it," Raimond said, "or do they sleep in your room?"
She grinned at him and behind the grin was the excited glimmer of readiness to take this farther than she thought wise.
'They might report to my boss," she said. "I'm not supposed to play with the other boys. On the other hand they're getting rather slack and they might not even care to mention that they don't know where I got to for a while."
"Your boss must be a real hard taskmaster. Though I don't blame him for being concerned about his merchandise."
"He's variable. But don't let's talk about him. I have another number to do in about half an hour. Then I'D meet you outside. Have you got a car?"
"A black Simca in the Rue La Bruyere."
"Go and sit in it after my next number and I'll join you within ten minutes."
"All right," he said. "What's the name of my fellow conspirator ? "
"Rolande," he said, "and yours?"
"Pierre."
She sipped the last of her cocktail and smiled at him, letting her eyes linger on his as if in promise of what was in store for him.
"Don't get mixed up with any other girls in the meantime," she said.
"I wouldn't miss the chance of seeing those pants off," he said, grinning.
She pursed her lips in a little mock reproach and slid off the stool to take up her perch at the end of the bar beside the microphone.
Raimond went on sipping his whisky, listening to that sexy voice which was soon going to be whispering in his ear, watching that athletic body which, he hoped, was soon going to be joined with his. He never glanced at the two Algerians again.
CHAPTER XI
They sat close together at one end of the chic, elegant hotel bar just off the Champs-Elysees. It was two hours and several drinks later and the girl was glowing with generosity. She wanted to give and give and give herself. Now, Raimond thought, is the time to take off for a hotel. So far he had extracted no information. There had been small talk and a certain amount of talk about life and living and what people wanted and why. There had been a lot of sexy innuendo and virtual promise of what she was like in bed. He was clearly a very successful candidate. He'd passed himself off as an advertiser. The small Simca was passed off as his little gadabout used for narrow streets and at times when he risked not seeing quite straight enough to avoid the lampposts.
His Oldsmobile was for country weekends and trips to Spain and Italy.
The bar was quiet, but had just enough customers to drown their conversation and make them not embarrassingly noticeable. She was sitting close, looking into his face.
Her skin was good and her perfume, which was slight, not overwhelming, dusted in his nostrils, making him think of all of her body as a scented flower. She seemed to like him very much. It was partly the drink, but, he thought, she's been cooped up too long for a woman of her promiscuous passion.
"How's the selection board getting along with making up its mind?" he asked.
"The selection board? Oh, the selection board's taken a trip," she said. "A dictator's taken over and he's all for you.
"So I'll see those pants off yet."
"You're very audacious," she said, smiling and running her tongue over her pouting bottom lip. "Let's go and find somewhere where you'll see what you want to."
Raimond felt the breath catch in his throat and checked himself. He remembered his wife fast asleep at home or perhaps worrying about him and unable to sleep and he reminded himself that he was on business, big business.
"We'd better go to a hotel," he said. "I've got a boss, too.
"Oh, you have." She seemed on the verge of disappointment for some reason but then her eyes twinkled wickedly at him.
"Well, well-that puts us both in the same boat."
"And in the same hotel," he said. "What does your boss look like with her pants off."
"Wonderful," he said.
"Let's go," she said. "I want you to see that there's always something better."
They walked from the bar and heads turned discreetly to glance after her firm curves which moved tantalizingly in the sack dress into which she'd changed from her entertainment costume.
CHAPTER XII
She was moving about the room in pink, almost transparent underwear. The room was white and pale gray with green fittings in the adjoining bathroom. The bed was broad enough for a whole orgy. The broad windows looked down onto the street where an occasional neon light flashed like a spear of lightning. The Champs-Elysees was not very far away, but the street below was sufficiently narrow to be fairly quiet.
Slowly undressing, Raimond looked at her appreciatively and thought, "I won't try and pump Her until afterwards; I might as well enjoy myself in the meantime."
She moved towards him and twirled round in a little pirouette in front of him.
"How's that?" she said.
Through the tight, high-holding brassiere he could see the sharp points of her nipples, darker than the surrounding skin which pushed it outwards in balloon-like tautness. The little, pink panties held her buttocks in a tight embrace like another layer of skin, revealing half of the orbs, and through the front of them he saw the dark muff of hair with the protrusion of flesh behind it, pushing out the material.
"Lovely," he said. "But I wanted to see them off."
"Am I making you hot?" she asked with a little laugh. He stripped off his own pants and his penis shot up into the air.
"You're really quite an athlete," she said, looking over his body and then letting her dark eyes rest on his stiff member. "I hope you're capable of a good athletic performance."
He moved towards her and said: "You're so exciting even with them still on, I hope seeing them off doesn't induce a curtailment of the performance."
"Better not," she said.
He reached her and she moved into his arms, hot and sweet-smelling. She was one of those women who, as soon as a man touches her, seems to melt to a jelly, to tremble and whimper with excitement. He felt her body shivering against him as he unhooked the brassiere and he heard her murmur with passion.
The bra came away and fell to the floor and now he felt her resistant breasts hot, too, against him with the pointed nipples heavy and digging in his chest.
"Oh-oh," she murmured as he ran his hands in a long quick caress over her back, bringing his fingertips up her spine and then moving them round to feel her teats, bulbous and bursting under the palms of his hands. He squeezed them gently and massaged the nipples, which grew long and erect under his gentle manipulation.
"Oh darling," she whispered. She was trembling from head to foot. He could feel her thighs trembling against him and his prick, riding up between them, snuggled against the soft heat of her flesh, was tingling along its length like a sharp pins and needles.
He ran his hands down her back and gently pushed and pulled the pants down over her buttocks, feeling them slide reluctantly off her hips. She gave a little wriggle of help and then shook her thighs so that they slipped down and fell to the floor. Gasping a little, she stepped out of them, leaving them in a pink, crumpled pile on the floor.
He rubbed her bottom gently in little, round, exciting gestures over the crack which separated the two. She began to wriggle against him and put her arms around his neck, murmuring little animal noises all the time.
Cupping her buttocks in his hands, feeling their weight and form and texture, raising them and her slightly up his body, he moved his fingers between her legs from behind, reveling in the moist flesh he found there.
"Oh-I can't stand it!" she said, quickly.
She pulled his face down and crushed her lips with bruising force against his mouth, opening her lips wide, and after an instant's extreme tension, hurtling her tongue with a silvery movement into his mouth. She gave little whimpers all the time as he pressed and rubbed himself against her. Her tongue seemed to fill his mouth, reaching down to his throat.
With an effort, he withdrew his lips from her and moved his mouth down onto her neck, bruising it with bites and kisses. She threw her head back and the full neck strained against his mouth and her loins pushed hard against him.
"Let's see how you look with them off, now," he said, softly.
After a second or two, she moved away from him, still trembling and shaken and turned in another pirouette. His eyes feasted on her lush curves. The sight of her breasts and buttocks moving with lives of their own, of her sinuous lack of superfluity rounding to fullness at her most exciting points, made his penis thrill.
"Yes-you do look better with them off," he said. "You should never wear those pants again." She waggled her bottom at him.
"Do you like my bottom?" she asked. "Do you really think I have a nice body?"
Her words excited him almost beyond endurance.
"I've never seen one so good," he said.
"Do you think you're lucky to have it for yourself-to do you want with it?"
"A man never had such good fortune. I can't wait to show how much I appreciate it. But you'll know as soon as we start to make love."
She glided quickly towards him and wound herself around him, mouthing little cries, her eyes closed, her body in a fluid torment all around him. It was more than he'd expected.
Kissing her, wildly, he felt her hand slither down to his aching prick and touch it, sending sparks along its thick fatness. She stroked it gently, with little nervous, fluttering gestures and then held it firmly and squeezed it hard so that her hand crushed into its resistant, spongy tissue and made him gasp.
He picked her up, putting his arms around her, lifting her by her buttocks. She wound her legs, warm and smooth, around his hips as he carried her to the bed. She reached under her ass as he carried her and placed his prick against her vagina. She was groaning and murmuring incoherently. Then she wriggled down and slumped on his rigid member so that it shot into her with a strong bridgehead which made her gasp and go wild and clamped around his glans so moistly and firmly that he had to restrain himself from falling with her onto the floor and fucking her there.
They reached the bed with her jogging on the end of his organ with every step they took.
He lowered her onto the bed and moved straight in to lie between her widespread thighs which invited him not to linger. He fell between them in the same movement as he placed her on the bed and immediately began to screw into her, gritting his teeth with passion. Her body began to move with wild abandon.
"Oh, oh, oh!" she groaned as if in agony, digging her nails hard into his shoulders, waving her crotch wildly at his prick, scraping her buttocks along the counterpane and flinging her thighs in all directions.
"Oh-c'tst bon-c'est bon!"
He wriggled his long wrist of rigidity up and up, delving into her like an exploring party in a cavern, farther and farther, deeper and deeper into darkness and moisture and a clawing grip which pulled at his loins, at his very bowels.
Her whole body twitched and writhed and she groaned incessantly, her face contorted with passion, mouth working, neck straining, nostrils flared, a light sweat breaking out on her forehead under the now tangled dark hair.
He felt the smooth, raw flesh of her vagina holding him in, breaking and pulling all around his hot, bursting prick. He pushed into her from his very toes and sent the last inch of his thickness plundering up her hole, pulling a fresh, ecstatic groan from her lips, making her open her eyes to look at him with a wild, desireful, glazed look.
"Oh, oh-wonderful, wonder-aaah!" She gasped as he grabbed her buttocks and raised them off the bed, raising his own body slightly for greater leverage, squirming into her with all the strength of his hips and thighs.
His loins moved in and out at her pelvis, her broad pelvis with that chasm at its centre, pistoning in with strong, muscular regularity. His own breath was short and the sight of her breasts, swaying over sideways towards the bed on either side of her, with her still erect nipples, made him give an involuntary extra thrust which moved her up the bed slightly and made her arch her neck with the sudden sensation.
He watched her face, drawing different expressions of passion from it as he moved his hands over her, as if she were an instrument which produced fresh sounds as he moved his fingers over its notes. He moved his fingertips gently into the little hard area of smooth, crinkle-edged flesh which was her anus, felt it tightly resist and then give way so that his finger moved softly, persistently, sawing into softer depths, and cries broke from her lips in a consistent stream.
His loins were aflame, consumed with a fierce burning which swept through him in gusts of heat from his bowels. He gasped and quivered as he fucked, reveling in her flesh, flesh of this beautiful sexy girl whom he'd never seen before tonight.
He ran his hands from her buttocks down her thighs to feel his own chafing prick ramming in and out, to feel the clinging lips of flesh which held it firmly in and were now running with moisture which overflowed stickily down her thighs.
Her arms, which had been moving jerkily around her head like a puppet's, fists closing and opening spasmodically, swept down now and held his own buttocks as they tensed and thrust at her.
"Oh, oh, oh-darling, hard, hard!" she begged, gasping . as if she'd burst something in her throat. She was nearing her climax and her body had become something demoniac, hardly human as she twisted and contorted, spreading her legs wide apart and then pulling them up to her shoulders, bending them at the knees, urging him on.
Her body was hot. Her head moved wildly from side to side, that full lower lip thrust out still further, her mouth open in abandon. She swung her soft thighs up and clasped his waist in a scissors grip with her calves, winding her legs right round his body, tightening her grip on him, waving her ass from side to side, spiralling her quim down at his searching, hotly expanded cock.
"I'm coming!" she gasped suddenly with a sharp, shrill, intense passion. "I'm cominc-aaaaah ... " She grabbed his face as she came and bit his mouth at the same time as her body from breasts to thighs arched convulsively into his and held there with the intensity of a sudden cramp and her orgasmic fluid escaped around his still hard-probing prick and ran down her smooth thighs, flooding his balls, too, as they brushed against her vaginal lips.
The intensity of her reaction was like a spur to his own potential climax. He dug deeply into her, forcing her legs up almost to her neck, doubling her over, screwing into her like an electric drill, crashing up to her cervix with his pulsating near-bursting rod. She continued to gasp and pant with little fluttering movements of her belly and thighs. She was still highly excited and followed his directions, however he wanted her to move, with a wild, eager passion.
"Darling," she murmured. "It's good, it's good. Fill me now, fuck me hard, let me have it." So she encouraged him, filling him with sharp, ecstatic pains in the region of his loins so that his prick grew and grew until he could hardly stand it and the breath was choking with difficulty through his open lips and his hands clasped and dug into her buttocks convulsively.
"Kill me with it, darling," she murmured. "That's-ah-a-ah!" She gasped as he thrust savagely high and hard, searing up through her passage, resting at the apex of his drive and jogging there for a second before withdrawing a little for another thrust and another.
He could feel he was on the verge of the break-through.
It was unbearable, it had to come now or he would die. He gasped, groaned, felt the bursting, heard her moan a little and hold him tightly round his shoulders and then, with a long, toe-shaking groan which went on and on reverberating round the room he shattered into her, shooting his sperm high up into her open, receptive channel towards her womb.
***
Much later, after he'd had her twice more in different positions, each time with the same trembling abandon on her part and the same bone-shaking orgasm on his, she said to him:
"I don't know why you want to display such curiosity in my boy friend at a time like this."
She played with his penis and kissed his neck as she talked and he found himself tempted just to go on fucking her and forget everything else, but instead he said: "Naturally I'm interested in my rival. In any case I've heard he's quite a big man around."
She raised an eyebrow at him, slithered down and took the glans of his penis in her mouth to give it a little sucking nibble.
"He's not as big as this," she said. He grinned and felt his prick move, the fibres tighten. She was insatiable. What a woman to have on safari. "I meant in his activities."
"He doesn't like too many people to know about his activities. Anyway how do you know about him?"
"Oh, one hears about these things around the bars. It's of no interest, really, except that I wonder what sort of man attracts you."
"You do, darling," she said, licking his ear.
"I mean as a permanent or semi-permanent proposition."
"You do, darling," she repeated.
"Come, come," he said, pretending to be scandalized. "Nobody would think you're almost a married woman."
"Or you, my sweet," she retorted. "Sex is always better out of wedlock, though. Maybe it's better if we just have a long, lingering affair."
"Is that easy for you-wouldn't your boy friend wonder?"
"Oh, he's pretty busy. It's just a question of avoiding the spies he has on me without appearing to be avoiding them."
"What's he so busy at that he hasn't enough time to get you in bed at every opportunity."
"Oh, he does that, don't worry."
"Does he prefer you to dance with your pants on or off?"
"He-likes me to start one way and finish the other-so that I'm ready for the kill, as it were."
"I think I'll kill you again in a minute."
"Please-I love you to kill me like that."
"But I still can't understand what could be so important as to keep him away from you. Maybe he's having an affair you don't know about."
"Not him. He's spending tonight at Martha's."
"Martha's?"
"Yes. It's a striptease joint just off Pigalle-very ordinary, but it has a special show in a backroom once a week, for people who don't think the usual show's up to much."
"I see. He's so discontented with you that he actually has to go to sex shows to get an orgasm."
She laughed and poked her tongue out to run it over his lips.
"He never even looks in. He has mysterious meetings in a room up above."
"Aha-that's where he has his orgy. It's probably a one-way view ceiling so that he can watch what's happening below at the same time."
"No, they're all men up in that room."
He laughed uproariously.
"My God, this gets better and better. You'll be losing him soon for some young man from the Fiacre." She grinned.
"Wrong again. They have some sort of political meeting ... " she stopped as if she remembered that caution was really the best policy, and then said: "I don't want to talk about that, anyway. Let's make love again. I'll make you really wild this time."
So saying, she wriggled down his body and stroked his prick up to a tree-like attention. While she rubbed it gently with the palms of both hands, she began to suck voraciously.
Lying back, letting her work him up, Raimond decided he had all the information he needed. Now he might as well see the night through and enjoy her in every way possible.
CHAPTER XIII
Mahmoud Taluffah looked down viciously at the naked girl lying at his feet. She was bruised and cut and sobbing. He had beaten her so brutally that she'd fought him savagely afterwards when he'd started to have her and he'd had to rape her without mercy. He'd put real brutality into his pounding of her cunt, paying her for her infidelity which his spies had implied and which she'd confessed under pressure.
His feeling toward her was a mixture of wanting and hating her lying in the arms of another man. He'd fucked her, thinking all the time of her nakedness and the abandon he knew her capable of while the other man fucked her in delight. It had put his heart in a vice and constricted his chest. He was the boss. No woman of his was going to monkey around with him in that way.
He kicked her up her bare behind with his foot and she rolled over and lay there still sobbing. She was beaten and she'd think twice before she indulged her passion with a strange body again. He'd been about to kick her in the quim but then he'd thought of his own future pleasures and restrained himself. He didn't mind giving her pain, but he didn't want to ruin his own sadistic enjoyment.
"You don't do anything I don't know about," he spat at her, glaring at her rounded nudity quivering and heaving at his feet. "Now you've had your punishment and he's going to get his."
***
They'd seen Raimond and the girl on their way back to Pigalle, driving without caution. They'd been looking for her all night, these two bodyguards who'd got anxious after she hadn't reappeared in the bar. It would be all right by them if it was a put-up job with no fear of their boss knowing and if they could have got their reward for blindness in kind from her body. But she'd purposely given them the slip and at any time he was-likely to summon them or come looking for her. It was more than their lives were worth to keep quiet. As it was they'd got a bawling out which had made them tremble. But then he'd been viciously happy when at last they'd found her and taken her to him, keeping an eye on the man she'd been with as well.
They remembered him from the bar, of course, a big, good-looking fellow who might have been any sort of well-kept, successful business man. Little, doubtless, had he known he was messing around with the mistress of someone as powerful as Mahmoud Taluffah. He soon would.
When it came to a little reglement de comptes like this, the victim was followed and kept under observation until such time as the night was dark enough and the spot quiet enough to enable a beating up to take place without the necessity of a kidnapping to precede it. That was how it was to be with Raimond.
He'd been followed to his home-even his wife had been noted for future reference if necessary-and had been trailed ever since. True, he seemed to lead an odd sort of existence, but it didn't occur to his shadowers that he was a flic. He was, perhaps, just what he seemed to be, a man who didn't need to work, who lived in a very respectable but not millionaire quarter, who could take days off from his office if he wished, who could persuade his wife that he had a lot of business to occupy him and thus spend nights away from her, hanging around the bright lights, picking up beautiful or not-so beautiful women to seduce or be seduced by and then return home as if nothing had happened. The sort of rich, idle Frenchman whom they disliked, these Algerians, although their turn was yet to come and then perhaps they'd show themselves capable of just the same idleness. At the moment, of course, they had the fire of a cause to cover their idleness and destroy it even with the occasional supreme work of a murder.
At this moment there was no idleness. A piece of work was afoot. Raimond had decided to pay a preliminary visit to Martha's just to give it a once-over in preparation for something more in the line of a field day. He was walking, now, through the narrow streets which led to it off from the bright glare and noise of the boulevard.
Except for the bright blaze of light from a cafe every few doors down the street, the street itself was quiet. From the cafes came the explosive noise of pinball machines, jukeboxes, drunken talk and laughter. There was nobody in the street at all.
Raimond was alert; the three men who watched him from the doorway of a courtyard which he was destined to pass couldn't know that he was alert, of course. In the first place they had no idea he was a policeman and in the second they had no idea he was on business and preparing himself for trouble.
The pavement made soft contact with his rubber soles as he walked. He was wondering how he could possibly find out what nights they had these meetings she'd told him about. That would really be a coup to catch them all together, like laying a net for the fish.
This area really swarmed with Algerians, he thought. And not one of them, officially, ever saw anything that went on. People were killed in these streets and when the trouble started the crowds which had been listening and playing and talking and drinking disappeared like forest animals at the sound of a human footfall.
The arm grabbed him from the doorway, closing around his neck and, without even thinking, he rammed back with his elbow. He heard the gasp of pain, moved quickly and felt a blow from what felt like the butt of a pistol graze down the side of his head numbing the path it took on his skull. He kicked out and saw a dark figure recoil as another sprang at him.
He was too quick, much too quick. The side of his hand lashed with a sharp flinging movement at the throat of his adversary, hitting the Adam's apple at the point of full impact.
At the same instant he pulled out his automatic, catching the dull glint of another as he fired at point-blank range. A body fell against him, heavy and clinging in the near-darkness. He pushed it back into the courtyard, catching sight of a little black moustache on the swarthy features.
The other two had gone-just like that. He saw them scuttling round a corner as he himself began to run quickly.
Windows were opening, throwing dull oblongs of light onto the street below, but the noise in the bars was so great that nobody had heard a thing. Nobody rushed into the street to try and stop him.
Round the second quick corner he stopped running. He was slightly shaken and out of breath. The graze on his head felt hot and, putting his hand up, he felt the slight wet patch through his hair.
Now he walked at a good pace, but without any appearance of hurrying. He kept his hand tightly on his automatic in his pocket and watched each doorway and entrance to the street like a hawk as he headed back to the main boulevard. He didn't want to get mixed up in this. There was nothing to be learned from it except that they were up to his game. It was far better that he retained whatever anonymity he still possessed.
Once on the boulevard he crossed to the central island and sat down for a moment on a seat, never once relaxing his vigilance. He wiped his head with his handkerchief and wondered how they knew about him. Then he thought of the girl, Rolande, and wondered if they did, in fact, know everything. There was, perhaps, one way to find out.
He walked fast along the boulevard towards Chapelle until he came to a small, but heavily guarded commissariat on a corner. He looked up and down the boulevard once or twice and then crossed quickly and went in through the doors. He heard the hee-hawing warning of the police van just going off to where he'd come from.
***
The Algerian had taken the bullet in the shoulder. They'd bandaged him up in the commissariat and Raimond and his chief had left him in the hands of those specially trained to wring any secrets from him. They were waiting, smoking outside a little room from which muffled noises came. They were both fairly humane men in the normal way of things, but this was no time to be squeamish.
After several minutes a man in his shirtsleeves came out and told them that the prisoner had said they had been ordered to beat up Raimond because he'd seduced the girl friend of a man named Mahmoud Taluffah. They had not been ordered to kill him and had had no intention of killing him.
"Would you like to question him yourself, sir?" asked the shirt-sleeved man, and the chief looked at Raimond with a query in his brows.
"No," Raimond said. "Won't be necessary."
"We could bring him in on that," the chief said, taking him aside. "It speaks for itself."
"Trouble is, sir, that his two cronies have spilled the beans by now and he'll be hiding out. Better that they don't know who I am and are allowed to think that we don't know anything about them. Do you think that Arab was telling the truth?"
"Never fails by our methods."
"Well I won't be able to do much for a day except keep in touch with contacts. Better let them think there's no reason to get scared."
CHAPTER XIV
Mahmoud Taluffah was very angry. In the flat in which he'd taken refuge, he and Rolande were listening to the shamefaced account of the attempted beat-up by the two would-be beaters who narrowly escaped becoming victims.
"How would a man like that have a gun?" he snapped, immediately on the crucial point, after the resume had been made.
"He said he was in advertising," said the girl. "Those big business men usually have something to protect themselves, particularly hanging around these quarters."
Mahmoud Taluffah sneered at her.
"They need to protect themselves from incensed cuckolds," he snapped, forgetting in a fresh pang of wrath the presence of the two men.
The girl went silent and he turned his gaze slowly back to the two men, the sneer still on his lips.
"I didn't think I'd have to use Mohammed Arab just for a beating-up," he said. "But I see that nobody else is to be entrusted with any task set them, however simple."
"He was like lightning," one of the men said. "We weren't expecting that."
"Three to one," Mahmoud Taluffah murmured, as if to himself, and then he added in a louder voice: "Was Ben abed dead?"
Neither of them knew, although it was probable, they said, at that range.
"He'd better be," Taluffah said softly. "But we'd better stay here for a day or two."
He remained thoughtful for several minutes while they all kept silent, waiting for him to speak. Then he said: "He's not getting away with this. Keep a watch on his home. Tomorrow he'll see that he can't meddle with me and get away with it."
The two men left and Mahmoud Taluffah sat in a meditative silence for a while. He'd been told the man's wife was lovely. He smiled to himself. An eye for an eye ...
Then he took hold of Rolande and led her submissively into the bedroom. She'd caused him more trouble than he'd ever expected. The knowledge of that made him angry and the memory of how it had started made him want to keep fucking her until he'd wiped away the infidelity, of hers, as if it would take so many times of making love to erase the traces of her one-night lover.
When he got the other woman tomorrow he'd show her an old Arab custom which her husband probably hadn't taught her. In the meantime he'd have to wreak his vengeance by proxy on Rolande.
He pushed her down roughly on the bed, let her lie there while he stripped and then pulled up her skirt and thrust into her without further ado. For some time she lay under his drubbing, simply gasping with pain as he chafed into her, but after a time her sexiness overcame her desire to remain cold and aloof and she began to buck with him, moaning with a growing passion. After all, the fuck was the thing, she told herself. Nothing else really mattered.
CHAPTER XV
Pierre Raimond was sitting once again in the prison-like room which belonged to Ahmed ben Lulla.
"So you haven't seen her at all in the days since you were warned?" he said.
"No," Ahmed replied. "We exchange notes-that much is easy. But we both think it better to wait until they have forgotten us and relaxed."
"You think that day will come?"
Ahmed shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to him more than ever that life held nothing, could never hold anything, all the promise turning to hopeless frustration as soon as it formed.
"We can only hope."
"Ahmed. When they ask you for the next contribution I want you to refuse. Tell them you have reasons and that you want to be tried by their court."
Ahmed stared at him as if he were crazy. He said nothing. There was no point in talking to a madman.
"Will you do it."
"You are not serious."
"Perfectly serious and I'll give you the reasons."
"But there is only one decision from their court. Nobody lives."
Raimond nodded. It was common knowledge that the NLF held these mock courts, generally before execution. like revolutionary purge courts there could be only one result. They were held for men who had already been condemned just to give a false semblance of justice to murder. To ask to go before such a court would mean that you were committing suicide, because it meant that you would never pay.
"You will not actually be tried by the court," he said. "It's just a question of getting the main people all together. We know where they meet; we want to get them there. You'll go in with them and the place will be surrounded by police in plain clothes with a hundred uniformed men standing by. We'll see that they're there and then we'll go in to get them."
"And me. I shall be with them-in their hands."
"If we act quickly they won't have any hands to have you in. I can give you a gun and show you how to use it if you think it'll do any good. It's unlikely they'll suspect you. They'll think it's a raid on the striptease joint. It shouldn't be too difficult for you to get away in the confusion."
Ahmed shook his head. He didn't imagine acting as bait. The whole thing seemed childishly dangerous.
"Naturally," Raimond went on, "you'll have done some service to the Republic and you'll be suitably rewarded."
Ahmed studied him with curiosity but without belief.
"How would I be rewarded?"
"You'll get one of the new apartments going up in the 10th Arrondissement and you'll be assured of work for as long as you stay in France. I'll give it you in writing if you wish."
Ahmed looked away around the room, slowly. A few seconds ago he would have laughed the project of going before their court to scorn, but now a big doubt had set in. An apartment! A new apartment! And work guaranteed!
"You and Francoise would be able to live happily ever after," Raimond coaxed.
Ahmed saw the room, coming back into focus from his scudding thoughts. What other hope was there ? Continual threat of death from the NLF if one couldn't pay. Not enough to live on. No happiness with oneself or the people who could make one happy. What was there to lose? Could you even say you were losing your life when your life represented such a living death?
"But my life may be in danger even if you succeed. There are agents in many countries who would come here."
"If we break this ring, we'll smash it completely. Nobody'll know what happened. There simply won't be any more NLF in Paris and we'll do our utmost to make sure it doesn't rise up again. You've got nothing to lose-nothing."
It was true. He thought of Francoise. He wouldn't tell her until it was done. And then she wouldn't be able to stop him. If he died, well he died and she would find out then. If he didn't they would forget all this and be happy. His eyes brimmed with tears as he thought how happy they would be in their new apartment.
"All right," he said. "I will do what you ask."
As an afterthought, as the smile of encouragement spread across Raimond's face, he added: "I would like it in writing as soon as possible."
CHAPTER XVI
Michele Raimond had the chess book on her knee and the board and men spread out on the low table in front of her. She was really tired of going over the games of the masters, but there was so little else to do. She'd read so much that her eyes felt strained, there was no housework, no knitting or sewing and she couldn't keep on ringing up friends.
Whatever she did, thoughts of Pierre kept swimming into her mind. The injury to his head, casual though he'd been about it, had filled her with horror and foreboding. And she knew he hadn't told her the truth about how he got it. And he knew that she knew. It was part of the half-fiction which was supposed to stop her from worrying too much through keeping her ignorant of the facts. But if the facts were worse than the explanations her imagination provided for her it was all too grisly anyway.
She moved a black knight and removed a white pawn from the board. Perhaps she loved Pierre too much, just .a little too much. She always had and had always thought of it as more of a fault than a virtue-when she thought of it at all.
Even from the beginning. She'd always been unable to hide the depth of feeling she had for him. She'd hidden nothing from him, even telling him what had been such a shameful secret for so long, a secret she'd sworn would always be one-about the American soldier who'd had intercourse with her in a hotel bedroom in Montparnasse just like that, a stranger, because the family needed food so badly. She shivered even now when she thought of the American, who'd been so confident, so superior in the knowledge that he could do what he liked for a package of cigarettes. She had never told Pierre how much the American had demanded, how much he'd humiliated her. Never told him that it had happened more than once-five times in fact-always with the same American before his regiment moved on. She shuddered when she remembered the way he'd treated her. She could recapture it all with such chilling clarity if she let herself. How he'd forced her to walk around the room wearing nothing but a pair of high-heeled shoes, how he'd made her kneel before him and suck his hot erection until he came in her mouth and down all over her breasts, how he'd licked her vagina and sucked her clitoris, while she hated him with every second that passed, how he'd forced her to lie face down across his knees while he spanked her because it gave him a kick to see his hand sinking into her buttocks and to feel them quiver under his blows, how he'd made her do the same to him because that was another kick he got. All that, all that with a man she hated, all because he could get food and cigarettes which the family needed so badly in the shortage. She'd read later how the same sort of thing had happened in Germany. Indeed, how the German girls had sold themselves for a single cigarette or one piece of chewing gum.
And then there had been Pierre and she had loved him so much that she had told him and he'd been nice and understanding except that it had made him want her, insist on having her before they got married-"so that the other man didn't get anything I didn't"-whatever he had meant by that.
And so she had given herself to him with all her heart and with a chill in the pit of her stomach one day in the long grass and she'd found herself rising to a pitch of response and abandon that she'd never have believed possible. And they'd gone on and on making love every time they met until eventually they'd got married after she'd begun to doubt if he ever would really marry her. And she'd always loved him so much, more and more and never been able to hide the depth of her feelings although she'd known that his had become, to a slight extent at least, blunted. Sometimes she'd thought that perhaps she should have an affair or be a little distant just to make him a little jealous, a little more acutely desiring again. But these, she knew, were mere fantasies. She simply was too involved with Pierre even to notice another man or even to be capable of saying "I don't feel like it tonight" when he began to move his hand over her breasts ...
She was interrupted in her reverie by the buzz of the doorbell. She looked up from the chess board towards the door which led to the vestibule as if she expected to see somebody standing there. She got up, wondering who on earth this could be and walked into the vestibule and from it through into the little porch to open the door.
Three men were standing outside on the broad stairway in front of the lift. The red light was still illuminated on the lift where they'd just come up.
At the sight of them she began to close the door, uncertainly. They looked evil. She'd never seen them before in her life and she was sure that any business they had was bad business.
In the first place they were Algerian and she didn't like Algerians; in the second they had about them an air of menace which was frightening.
One of them quickly put his foot in the door as she tried to close it and, before she had time to think what was happening, far from what to do, he had thrust the door open again with a big hand and walked into the porch, followed by the other two.
"What-what's the meaning of this!" she gasped, keeping her voice firm. "Get out immediately or I'll call the police."
The big, broad man who seemed to be the leader caught hold of her wrist and a knife glinted in his other hand.
"No you won't." he said. "Or you'll get more than we really intended to give you." , She stood frozen, with his grip cutting into her wrist. Was this something to do with Pierre? She felt sick in her stomach but she said nothing to bring him into it.
One of the other men, a lean, alert animal with the most vicious eyes she'd ever seen went past them and found the telephone in the vestibule. She heard him cutting the wires and the nausea in her stomach pervaded her whole body. They were going to do something terrible.
"What do you want with me?" she managed to get out. "What have I done-who are you?"
"We've just come in to have a little friendly play," the big man said. "We just have to pay your husband out for his little play."
"Pierre? Where is he? What's happened to him?" Her voice broke, but the man's next words reassured her.
"He's all right now, but he's not going to be when he finds out that his wife's been unfaithful to him." The three men laughed. The big man had released her wrist but still held the knife in his hand, pointing it casually at her.
Her thoughts became confused. Over everything she was aware that at least Pierre was all right. And then the words sank in. They were going to rape her! These beastly Algerians were going to rape her! She felt physically sick again at the thought and looked round instinctively for a weapon, a way of escape. The three men grinned at her and the horror of her situation overcame her and brought a scream to her lips, a scream which was stifled immediately as two of the men seized her roughly, covering her mouth, holding her struggling arms.
"We are not averse to slitting your throat," the big man said. "But if you don't struggle or try to cry out only sweet pleasures are in store for you."
She tried to bite the hand that held her mouth but it simply crushed her lips with numbing force. She was lifted bodily and carried into the bedroom where they tied a scarf around her mouth and began to take off her clothes.
"Beasts, beasts, beasts!" sobbed through her head as she kicked and struggled. Worse than the American, horrible, unthinkable what they were going to do to her. She struggled and fought until she was on the point of exhaustion, but the two men who were stripping her seemed completely unbothered by her efforts. They held her firmly on the bed while they pulled at her garments, ripping them from her if they didn't come easily. The big man watched them as he slowly took off his own clothes.
Already they had her naked down to her underclothes. She struggled feebly as one of them caught her brassiere strap and ripped the bra off her, leaving a line of pain across her.
Her breasts soared free before their eyes and she saw those eyes as, ashamed and frightened, she struggled-vicious, avid eyes and then hands which mauled her breasts in the struggle.
"Good," said Mahmoud Taluffah, stripped now. "Pretty little duds. Let's see what else she's got." He came over, gloating, and with eyes deep in fear she saw his shaggy body and the great mast of a prick rising out from the forest of his pubic hair. She closed her eyes to cut out the sight and felt the ripping, pulling around her hips. She made a last desperate attempt to resist and then she was naked and helpless before their eager gaze. She was sick and chilled; strange sexual horrors sparked and knifed through her loins and through her heart.
Mahmoud Taluffah came right close to her while the others held her and he pulled her thighs apart with a force she couldn't resist. A tear slipped over her cheek and her head ached.
"A nice little quim, too," he said.
She felt his fingers on her vagina and she cringed her crotch away from him, but the fingers insisted and entered, filling her with dread and shame.
"Not too big," he said. "It will be very good. Turn her over.
Nakedly she resumed her struggle with a sudden lease of fresh life. It was then they hit her; a couple of punches on the back of the neck which seemed to bring bile to the back of her throat in a sickening pain and she slumped over onto her stomach, helpless, while they pinioned her arms.
"Beautiful ass," Mahmoud Taluffah said. "Just made for giving me a nice ride."
In a daze she felt their hands opening her ass, drawing the buttocks apart. She tried to tense her behind, holding the buttocks together, feeling naked, obscenely, horribly naked. But she couldn't stop the pressure and her buttocks were stretched away from each other until she could feel the cool air on the hot, perspiring interior of them.
"Ah," she heard Mahmoud Taluffah say. "That's ittight and smooth and hairless-lovely to fuck."
His words chilled her and them she felt his fingers exploring the tight skin of her anus until with a little painful shock she felt one of them enter her and go in up to the first knuckle joint. Mechanically she closed her buttocks, gripping his finger in her posterior hole. She heard him laugh and she relaxed again, not knowing what to do, how to keep him away.
"Tie her," he said.
They hauled her up the bed and attached her wrists with handkerchiefs to the bed posts, spread-eagling her so that her arms were stretched out in a large V across the top of the bed.
She felt garlic breath on her and then a great shaggy body rolled onto her and oozed and undulated all over her as if reveling in the contact of'their flesh. She wished she could faint, but she was fully conscious and bearing the ordeal with mounting horror. She could feel an enormous prick hot against her behind and rough hands ran all over her neck, shoulders and back. She was bitten in the neck and she squealed, opening her eyes and raising her head as far as sbe was able. The other two men were gloating over the spectacle, vicious grins on their faces. She closed her eyes with a gasp and dropped her head back to the bed. She had never felt so humiliated.
She felt a tongue running down her spine, felt his body moving up off hers. He forced her thighs which she was trying to clasp together apart and knelt between them. She felt his face on her ass and then he bit into a buttock. She heard his voice as she winced. It was uneven and excited.
"Delicious," he said. "Like butter."
She tried to cringe her buttocks away, but she only succeeded in waggling them in what seemed like sensual invitation.
"She wants it; she can't wait," she heard one of the other men say and there were raucous guffaws of laughter.
The knees between her thighs pushed them wide, hard and painful against the soft flesh of the insides of her legs. Her thighs were wide and helpless. She knew he could have her just as he wanted and another tear forced itself from her eyes although she was trying not to show any emotion.
She felt his hands on her hips, clasping them, digging into the soft flesh and he pulled her roughly up to a kneeling position. She could feel his hairy loins and his enormous prodding penis hard against her pelvis. She pushed out her legs stiffly, trying to flatten her body and he said:
"Hold her up-the sexy bitch."
Then fresh hands grabbed her, holding her hips high up in the air, keeping her legs apart. She felt his thumbs on the tender flesh on either side of her anus. Then she felt a hard, pointed thrusting against the anus, between the thumbs which were trying to stretch it apart. She chilled": with terror. "No-no!" she screamed through the gag. The words were just muffled, meaningless sounds grunting out into the room. She opened her eyes and tried to raise her head.
"Hold her," Mahmoud Taluffah barked, as she began to struggle. She was held in a vice as she felt her anus being stretched as if it would tear, by those rude fingers, as she felt the hard, thrusting thing pushing and being rebuffed and pushing again.
She began to pray, wild prayers, and she bit at the gag.
This was death, worse than death. To have this shameful thing done to her, this horrid, disgusting, unnatural thing by beasts, by strangers. Her soul cried out against the disgusting, loathsome horror of it and then she jerked wildly with pain as a red-hot iron seemed to brand her ass-hole with an unbearable, aching, splitting pain.
"Hold her, hold the bitch!" Mahmoud Taluffah wheezed again. And she was held, almost unable to move, her bottom high up in the air, buttocks spread, nakedly, helping his prick to enter in and bugger her and she began to sob as the pain spread and made her stomach convulse with a sickness which rose in her throat.
Her anus was splitting. It would tear into a great slit, the length of, the crease of her buttocks and blood would flow and all her inner organs would flow out to be drowned in the unbearable pain which with every second she felt she could no longer bear, but somehow did. Although she struggled, trying desperately to escape from the anal impalement, not just from shame now, but because the splitting pain was so terrible, she was held fast, held still in the kneeling posture best suited to his fucking of her ass.
She could feel the enormous intrusion of his cock, pushing solidly in now, widening her back passage, chafing and rubbing to a raw pain the soft skin of her rectum.
Once, involuntarily, she farted. And even that little occurrence, forced on her by the unnatural straining of her ass against the solid, sickening ravishment, added to her shame.
She became aware of his hand gripping her hips with a numbing pressure as he sawed and throbbed into her behind. The pain went on and on and each thrust brought fresh cringing sobs from her lips until the pain and sobbing was merged in a continuous alliance. Each time he thrust in he seemed to go deeper and to split her more as the broader base of his penis moved slowly towards the point where the entirety of his prick would be lost in the stretched, reddish hole which suffered and clung to it like a clam.
The gag was wet with her tears. She felt wounded and ruined at her behind. As it waved and jogged high up behind her flattened shoulders, she felt as if it was a great wet open wound.
He was pummeling into her with long, smooth strokes, running into her with the whole length of his member. She heard him gasping and she heard the heavy breathing of the other men who watched. She was still held stiffly in a bent position, her thighs wide and inclined slightly forward, her shoulders pressed down on the bed, her back, arched in a concave curve from the rounded hips where his body dominated her.
"God-it's tight. Ugh, ugh!"
He mouthed obscenities and descriptions to the other two men, which made her fiery with humiliation. As he lunged in at her, the other two men would let go and he'd pull her back onto his prick, slipping her over it as if she were some long boot he was pulling over his leg.
Her inside was a great, fiery, painful ball of sensation in the midst of which she was aware of that white-hot, rasping block of pressure, coming and going, which was his prick. She was a prisoner, there was no escape, she just had to kneel there, bent over painfully like a slave, while he thrust his penis harder and harder, faster and faster into the soft depths of her rectum, pushing the inflamed flesh aside with each long, ramming entry and insweep.
Her breasts heaved with her sobs. She would not be able to live after this, never able to look at Pierre or anyone else.
She would carry this ache in her nether hole as a permanent reminder of her shame and humiliation. Even when, physically, it had gone, it would creep back like a heavy phantom throughout her life.
Her body shook and trembled and her thighs, released now that resistance was broken in her, occasionally convulsed as an extra-hard thrust seared her rectum, seeming to push his cock right up to her colon, to fill her bowels.
Above and behind her his gasps and grunts filled the air, and she hated the pleasure and gratification and sadistic pleasure she was aware of giving him.
She longed as she gasped brokenly into the counterpane for the moment when he would finish and withdraw his deflated penis from her vastly enlarged aperture. The pain would be there still, but the solid, worming presence which seemed so repulsive would be gone-and gradually, too, the pain would go.
But with this longing went an even greater one that he should not finish his orgasm in her. It would seem like the crowning point of domination over her, of her helpless, humiliated slavery to him, at that point where he discharged into her all the pent-up concentration of his brutal passion, punishing her as the fleslipot receptacle of a climax which she in no way reflected.
But, with a growing horror which even stilled her sobs and made her sway and wait for the inescapable ejaculation with stifled groans, she knew that he was coming to the point she dreaded.
His organ was like a huge, rough-edged cudgel in her behind. like a cudgel with knots and nails sticking out from it. And now he was grating breath through his teeth and grinding slowly into her ass, joggling his prick around in her rectum once it had gone up her to the hilt-so that she felt his hairy surrounds against her buttocks and the inside of her thighs. .
"What an ass-hole!" he gasped. "God-it's here-here!"
She bit the gag with all her force and screwed up her eyes tight, trying not to think, but she couldn't maintain a vacuum in her mind and she relaxed and heard him again just at the point where he let out a long, choking gurgle and came right up in her rectum. She froze, seemed to empty of everything and as, shaking still, he emptied the last of his vicious sperm up at her colon, filling her soft passage with warm wetness, she began again to shed bitter tears.
After a while his great bulk moved off her and her rectum and anus felt as if cold gales were whirling around and through them. They felt coldly wet and aching and she felt hopeless and wanted to die or to awaken and rind it had all been just some horrible dream. But instead, as she sank down on the bed, aware when she moved of the ache in her back, she heard him say: "Go ahead, Mohammed. She's all yours-what's left of her."
"I'll find something left," said one of the other men. "Even if I have to dig a fresh hole in her belly."
Her hands were untied and she was rolled over. She opened her eyes, reluctant, but afraid to leave them closed. She saw the man with the vicious eyes pulling off his pants. He came at her in a business-like way, rolled her over onto her back, slumped on her, pulling apart her thighs and slid his prick straight into her cunt, making her cry out with pain where she'd thought there could be no pain left.
She didn't bother to struggle. She was exhausted and hardly thought of herself as a person capable of resisting. When his dark, sweating face came down on hers and he sucked at her mouth, she let her lips be crushed softly under his and tried to forget the moment as if it didn't exist.
His hands slid under her buttocks and when he told her to put her tongue in his mouth she obeyed mechanically, refusing to think.
She became aware of the other two watching before she closed her eyes so that there were only his mouth and his prick in her quim which seemed real.
CHAPTER XVII
At the time of his wife's ravishment, of which he was blissfully unaware, Pierre Raimond found himself giving way to an irresistible impulse. It was an impulse which, when followed, could put him in considerable danger. It was an impulse, too, which if followed really gained him nothing except a peculiar satisfaction which, analyze and rationalize it as he might, he could hardly understand.
Having got what information he could from Rolande, he'd put off any plan to see her again. He'd let her understand that he'd show up in the club where she did her turn. He now felt magnetically drawn to it. Her violent sensuality had reacted on him so powerfully that he found he wanted her again, not to get information or through any ulterior motive at all, simply to enjoy the abandoned, passionate lovemaking at which she was such a natural past master.
There was really nothing further he could do until Ahmed ben Lulla had done what was necessary for him to do. The chief was in possession of all the latest developments and a vast force of men were standing by to go into action at any time.
He had reasoned with himself that, if he went to the club and just watched her, it was highly unlikely that her two watchdogs would try anything with him on the premises; that would brand it a little too clearly. In any case he felt adequate to deal with them. Whenever he thought of her protruding, inviting bottom with those pants off he got a quiver from his toes to the crown of his head which almost made his hair stand on end. He had only to picture her body naked on the bed in the hotel and the way she trembled like a leaf in the wind as soon as he touched her and he got an erection which threatened to ruin the line of his trousers for ever. She was a sexual instrument, designed for that purpose, with all the allure which was sometimes missing from others similar.
He was touched by a little "in-loveness" towards her, a situation the ironic stupidity of which he recognized. It was superficial feeling that would past. Of that he was well aware. But at this moment it was almost unbearable and he saw no reason to smother it. He would take the risk.
He left the bar near Opera where he'd been moodily sipping a beer at the counter and drove towards Pigalle, speedily, wanting to get there, to give himself no chance to turn back and change his mind. He parked the car, as usual some distance from the scene of operation, and walked warily through the bustling, vice-tinted streets, ignoring the perky, tight-clad whores who encouraged him or slyly offered to give him a quick suck, as he passed them.
Outside the bar he hesitated for just a second, aware that this was the moment when history was changed, that there was still time to be cautious and live happily ever after. But then he'd never been too concerned about living happily ever after.
He went in quickly, his eyes taking in the whole room at a glance, while his legs didn't stop moving but directed him to an empty table against the wall within easy reach j of the door.
The place was half full. It always seemed to be about half full. The usual clientele by the look of it. A single Algerian was sitting at the bar, looking out over the room. But Raimond didn't recognize him. And after a cursory glance, the man looked away, obviously not recognizing the newcomer either.
Raimond arranged himself behind the table, his automatic loose in his side pocket, hand in pocket, ready for any sudden eventuality. The man at the bar was probably a new watchdog. He looked very bored with his new work.
The little trio in the alcove were playing some soft music. The people at the tables and the bar were chatting in low voices which made a general, vague hum. There was no sign of Rolande.
The waiter came. It was the same waiter. But he gave every impression of being just an employee who knew nothing of the intrigues which involved the management. He was French anyway.
Raimond took a whisky and found, when it was brought and he took a swig, that his mouth and throat had dried up as if he'd just come through a sandstorm.
The trio were playing some French popular romantic songs and conversations were being carried on with a recognition of the background atmosphere. The few couples in the room were distinctly amorous.
Raimond, taking no chances, not risking his own evaluation of the Algerian at the bar, kept a weather eye on the man, but the object of his attention didn't look back at him again or seem to be the slightest bit aware of him.
After a time the trio changed their mood to a soft, old-fashioned blues.
Raimond began to wonder if this was, perhaps, the wrong night. Or maybe she'd been taken off this particular aspect of her entertainment value.
He finished his whisky and ordered another, making a mental note that this was to be the last. He never got drunk, nor anywhere near it. His capacity, as a regular drinker, was considerable, but he never overburdened it.
He'd taken two sips of the liquid and chilled his teeth on the ice when Rolande came in from the back room. She was dressed in the same sort of costume as before, showing her shapely calves and thighs and the same considerable swell of breast, but this time it was pink and it reflected a rose glow on her taut skin.
She didn't see him. She went and sat at the end of the bar in her usual place, waiting for her turn to sing.
Raimond watched her for several seconds, shifting his glance from her to the Algerian at the other end of the long, elegant counter.
From where he sat he could see the long, slight furrow of muscle in her calf, the rounded heart shape of her bottom on the stool. A little contraction started in his stomach and he stood up, hand still in his pocket, picked up his drink and went over.
He slipped onto the stool next to her, and, turning to glance at him, she stiffened involuntarily and her lips opened. In the next fraction of a second she became calm and smiling, all trace of anxiety gone.
"You," she said, softly, "you."
The intensity of her tone belied the calm, smiling expression, a blind for the spy who was watching them without much curiosity. It was usual for men to engage her in conversation between her turns.
"Me," he agreed. "I had to see you."
"I've been thinking about you all the time," she said. "What happened."
"I thought you might be au courant."
"I know the rough outline. You're lucky to be alive."
"How about you?"
"I got smacked for being a naughty girl-nothing too serious."
"They're quite nasty-your friends."
"Well you gave them quite a shock anyway. How come that you're all prepared for that sort of thing."
"I've had an adventurous life."
"Darling, it was dangerous for you to come here. You came just to see me."
"What else?"
She stared at him and smiled into his eyes.
"You're even better than I thought," she said. "God I wish we could just go off to Spain or something."
"Yes," he said. "I know some nice little spots and the climate's so conducive to making love. You feel you can do it anywhere: in bed, on the beach, in the sea, in the mountains ... "
She grinned.
"I can't believe that you've come just to see me after all that," she said. Her eyes were mellow and they looked at him with tenderness overlaying desire.
"I wanted to see you in those pants again-as it's not very-likely I'll see them off for a bit."
Rashly, she slipped her hand against his under the bar, just a fleeting contact because she wanted to touch him.
"We must see each other," she said. She glanced casually along the bar. The Algerian was staring into his drink.
"That's the new boy," she said. "The others lost their stripes."
"We'd better wait a few days," he said. "Things may be easier in a few days."
Something in his tone made her look at him, wondering.
"No, it won't be any easier," she said. "But we'll take the risk. I'll make this one lose his stripes, too. Just give him long enough to lose his eagerness."
"You look lovely," he said.
Her fingers touched his again, for an instant.
"Don't say it," she said. "I can't bear having you say things like that and not be able to let you see how lovely I am.
"I know how lovely you are."
"You don't know all my loveliness yet."
The trio changed tempo again to a slow, modern song.
"That's for me," she said. "You'd better go and sit at a table or I'll get too emotional and start to make love to you."
"I'll go after I've seen the dance," he said. "And I'll see you again in a few days. It'll be easier then, believe me."
"It doesn't matter whether it's easy or not," she said. "It'll just be."
He took his drink and went back to the table. The Algerian glanced at him casually but without any expression. He sat down as she started to sing, her lower lip pouting out, her dark eyes longing. As she sang her voice took on a husky splendor of feeling and a deep silence fell on the club. She seemed to be trying not to look in his direction, but at last, as if she couldn't stand not to, she raised her eyes to his table, looking at him with a meaning intensity which she couldn't hide.
He held her eyes for several seconds, seeming to lose himself in the savage demanding of them and then he looked down at his drink. He wanted her so badly.
As the song came to a yearning end and the music went on softly, filling the place her voice had taken, there was the whisper of a sigh of relief and applause in the room.
Raimond looked up from the drink which was mostly ice now and saw that she'd slithered off the stool and was dancing, swaying in a gentle rhythm. This part would be the worst for his nerves, he thought, seeing her in the scantiness of her underclothes yet not being able to stretch her out on a bed and fuse with her, not even be able to look forward to it.
She unclipped her dress and drew it away from her body in a smooth movement. A lump rose in his throat and stayed there. Her breasts quivered and jogged gently under the tiny pieces which covered the nipples. He could see the hollows above her hips, the neat tapering away from the breasts to the small, firm belly. When she turned he felt his prick move in his trousers at the sight of that half-shown hollowing rump which rounded out towards the spectators like a glazed basin, stretching hard against the flimsy material which clung to it and outlined each buttock separately. He fixed his eyes on the voluptuous join of the buttocks, unable to believe, now, that his hands had held them, his finger caressed her hard little anus. It was all so unbelievable: that he'd lain on that body, that he'd caressed those breasts, that that tongue had danced in his mouth while she herself writhed under him with his sex deeply embedded in her wet, excited sexual channel.
His eyes ran over the fluid curves of her moving body as if they were hands, trying to be hands so that they could feel the flesh simply by looking. And then the innovation happened.
She caught at a couple of clips on those pants of hers and in a trice they were off and she was dancing in the nude.
The spectators craned forward in delighted astonishment.
The Algerian raised his eyebrows and then grinned. Raimond nearly wept with consuming frustration. She had done that for him, because she knew that was what he wanted to see. She even moved towards his end of the room, swaying her buttocks as if in a mamba at the faces of the audience, so that they could follow closely the delicious curves of her buttocks which tensed and hollowed and moved like two eggs rolling together. She didn't face the audience again. Strictly speaking, that was not allowed in a respectable club. She had no g-string. But the few men at the bar had a good eyeful of her down-covered loins and the heaviness of flesh which crowned them.
Raimond swallowed his drink. If this didn't stop he'd have to go. It was too much. He took another look at her long, slender back with the shoulders slightly broader than the slim waist and all that tight, bursting flesh rounding out invitingly below the waist. His eyes ran down the slender thighs which gripped so well in the act of love, the slim calves which muscled lightly as she moved. His mouth was dry, his face flushed-and then the number ended smoothly and, without looking back, she whisked up her clothes and disappeared in the back.
Raimond called the waiter. Next time he came here it would be when he was certain of the rest of the night's entertainment.
CHAPTER XVIII
Ahmed ben Lulla was nervous. He had refused and they were giving him until today to reconsider. They were coming at any moment.
There was always the possibility that they might not accede to his request to be tried before their court. Everybody knew it was a farce, and although they liked to feign a certain democratic procedure, purely for political reasons, there was nonetheless that slight chance that they might take it into their heads to finish him off there and then.
He was nervous. But at the same time he was resigned. His only regret was that he hadn't been able to see Francoise before the event. Hadn't even told her anything about in in their secret notes. He was afraid she'd react in some way that would make the whole scheme impossible. It was better if she were presented with the fait accompli either of his success-or of his death. His mind had been so involved with the details of this plan that he'd even forgotten to feel sick about the fact that Frangoise was still being mounted and screwed, perhaps even getting an occasional orgasm herself, by other men. They were having her in a long stream, night after night, while he wasn't even able to see her. It was too, too cruel and if it hadn't been for the overwhelming importance of his own imminent activities he'd have been near to committing suicide.
There was a tap on the door. This was it. He steeled himself and crossed to the door, opened it. It was a single man, Mohammed Arab. He came into the room, a sardonic smile on his cruel lips.
He sat on the bed casually, chattily, his appearance belying the true nature of the situation.
"You have the money?"
"I told you I can't pay."
"You have been told before what happens to those who 'can't' pay."
"I want to go before the court to defend myself."
Mohammed Arab's lips curled in a sarcastic smile. He put a hand patronizingly on Ahmed's shoulder.
"If you take my advice you will pay."
"It's impossible-I haven't got the money."
"Why haven't you got the money? What defense have you of your incapacity to help the revolution?"
"I will put my defense to the court."
Mohammed Arab's smile disappeared. You are being very stupid," he said, scowling.
He seemed to hesitate, glaring at Ahmed, as if he were considering taking the law into his own hands as he'd so often done before. And then he stood up and went to the door.
"You are very, very stupid," he repeated. "We shall call to take you in a day or so."
He went out, closing the door softly behind him. And Ahmed sat down with a shiver of apprehension and of relief. So far so good. But the most dangerous was to come.
CHAPTER XIX
Raimond sat in stunned silence. He had listened for a difficult, broken half hour to his wife trying to tell him of the horrible experience she'd been through. She was wearing a thick dressing gown. She had taken a number of baths since the assaults as if to wipe clean the symbolic stain. She was sore and she ached and her heart was still heavy with shame. Nonetheless she had told her husband everything that had happened and he had listened without a word, his face changing every so often, and once he had taken her hand.
Now he sat, at the end of her recital, overcome with a sense of tragic remorse. She had undergone this not because of his investigations into the nationalists as she believed, but because of his extra-marital relations with the nationalist leader's girl friend. One always had to pay for everything. Somehow one always paid. While he had been happily fucking away, plundering the bodily delights of Rolande, this situation had been building up as from his own hand by which his wife was not only raped, but buggered and beaten to exhaustion.
He stood up then and took her in his arms, speechless, and she clung to him as if she had been frightened he might have renounced her.
Pictures began to form in his mind of these greasy Algerians toying with her body, all of them naked. He saw her tied helplessly to the bed while with lewd words and gestures they thrust their dirty pricks up her cunt and her ass, hurting her, making her cry out with pain. He remembered, once again, the American of years gone by. Every "adventure" she had was one of force. He got a nasty little chill in the pit of his stomach.
"I'll kill them with my hands for this," he muttered after a time. "I want them to die slowly, in agony."
On his insistence, she reluctantly gave him a full description of each man as far as she could remember them. One of them, a vicious-eyed one, he remembered from a previous description. He pictured them well from her description and he thought of them naked as she had seen them. He began to ask more questions about the way they had treated her, what they had said, how she had struggled how many times they'd assaulted her. The details began to make his stomach and loins contract. The thought of her being forced to submit, gasping and helpless, made him begin to flush with a self-torturing excitement.
He began to stroke her with his hands. He wanted her. He couldn't bear to think the last sexual relations she'd had had been with these violent, rapist Algerians.
He kissed her and stroked her and opened the dressing gown. They went to a divan and, unable to wait to take off his clothes, he pulled his penis out and put her hand on it.
When he started to slip gently and purposefully into her orifice, she clung to him desperately as if she, too, wanted with this act to wipe out all that had gone before.
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.
CHAPTER XXI
Detective-Inspector Raimond moved into the little street with his two companions. They walked casually, chatting, but with alert, trained eyes which took in every detail, every nuance of movement.
At each end of the street, just out of sight round each corner, van-loads of police began to pull up. Another small part of plain-clothes men followed in the inspector's wake some thirty yards behind, also chatting casually and laughing.
"I think we can go in now," Raimond said quietly to his companions. "The boys will move up as soon as we're inside."
"O.K."
"And don't use a gun until we have to. We don't want to have them all hopping out the back door."
"O.K."
They crossed the road, still talking casually, towards the striptease club. There was nobody outside, but Raimond knew there would be plenty of people just inside, waiting for just such an emergency. He hoped they'd manage to get to whatever inner sanctuary was reserved for the "trials" before anything happened to Ahmed. He felt sorry for the boy. But it would be touch and go. He also felt a little responsible for him. He'd misled him about the lack of risk.
He reached the club door and pushed in, followed closely by his two men. The door of the club swung open. It had been left that way to look more casual.
As Raimond disappeared, so the group of plain-clothes men behind quickened their pace and began to cross the road. Down at each end of the street police began to block off the road and move along from each direction in a body. Crowds began to gather in horror and astonishment beyond the barriers way out on the boulevard.
Just inside the door of the club an Algerian was sitting on a stool. He wasn't expecting visitors. Nothing had ever happened before. Raimond's knife ran through him before he could utter a sound. Raimond lowered the body. He felt nothing. This sort of thing had become common to him during the Resistance. It was the only way to ensure that warning was not passed on. There could be no half measures.
By the time Raimond and the other two had fanned out through the rooms which led off from the vestibule, the second batch of police had entered the building and fanned out as a second line of attack.
One by one, expertly, with a minimum of noise, the Algerian guards were dealt with and quietly left behind. Sometimes there was a struggle, but nobody had a chance to utter a cry. With rapid efficiency, the police began to take over the building. It was at the foot of the stairs that there was the first real resistance. They were seen from the top of the stairs and, crying out a warning in
Arabic, the guard from the top came springing down to help his crony on the ground floor.
Both were overpowered without too much difficulty, but by that time the alarm was raised. There were sounds and voices from a corridor which could be seen leading off from the stairs.
Running up, three at a time, Raimond and his men saw a door open and a number of Arabs dressed in expensive-looking suits come racing out.
As they saw the police vanguard, they turned to run back into the room they'd just vacated, but the door slammed shut, keeping them out and, after a preliminary push, they made off along the corridor, firing revolvers back at the police as they went.
Behind the detectives, throughout the whole building now that firing had started, was the heavy sound of armed and uniformed police swarming through the room in a body.
All around the building itself, out in the street and in the houses opposite, police with Sten guns and rifles had taken up positions of waiting, their arms trained on any exist they could see. Down along the boulevard the crowd of sightseers had grown in spite of the obvious danger. Nobody knew what was going on. But everybody wanted to be in on it. As long as "in" didn't mean being involved.
CHAPTER XXII
When the scuffle sounded down below, the nationalist "judges" had forgotten about Ahmed. With one accord they'd made towards the door of the room and rushed out into the corridor.
Ahmed, momentarily left alone in the room, had understood and also moved towards the door. He'd been about to go out himself into the corridor when the unnecessary risk he would thus run came home to him.
Instead he simply slammed the door and turned the key. Then he drew out his automatic and moved over behind a big wardrobe out of range of the door.
Within seconds came the thudding pushes at the door and then the sound of shots, barking out and resounding within the walls of the building.
Ahmed stayed where he was, staring at the door which received no further battering for several minutes. The shots continued to string out, getting a little farther off, and he heard the heavy, thumping rush of many feet clumping past the room. He heard voices snapping out orders in French and he felt a glow of relief and then a sort of shaken happiness.
It had succeeded, actually succeeded, the whole plan. Here he was quite alone in this room with the sound of battle in which he'd expected to be involved receding. He was unhurt, unscratched. He had won his end of the gamble. The nationalists must be cornered; there was no escape surely from such a building and the police would have it surrounded. Tomorrow he would be free from all anxiety. Tomorrow-no, later today-he would see Frangoise, hold her in his arms, make love to her, all without fear because fear had been surrounded with his help and defeated. His eyes lit up with joy. He remembered the apartment in the 10th Arrondissement which would be his and Frangoise's and the promise of work which had been made to him.
He was still overcome with wonderment at the idea when the battering at the door resumed. Gruff voices called out in French for whoever was in there to open up. Ahmed waited a few seconds until there was no doubt that the voices belonged to the police and then he went to the door and turned the key.
Several black-uniformed police immediately brushed into the room, two of them seizing him, and began a quick search, even opening the wardrobe.
"We've got another of them," a policeman said as an inspector in silver-braided cap came through the door.
"I'm Ahmed ben Lulla," Ahmed said, quickly. "It was I who laid the trap for the terrorists here. I was working with Inspector Raimond."
They eyed him narrowly. These police were not too fond of Algerians.
"Bring him along," the inspector said. "We can check his story. Better take his gun."
CHAPTER XXIII
Raimond had flung himself into a doorway with the first wild shots that sped back from the retreating figures in the top corridor.
Behind him he heard a gasp and, half turning, saw one of his men fall. He opened the door against which he was pressed, yelled to those on their way up to take cover and, using the doorway for his own shelter, sniped at the Arabs who were rushing headlong up another staircase at the end of the corridor.
"Search all the rooms on the way up," he called back. "We don't want any rear ambush."
He moved on quickly but carefully and reached the staircase. There was a door at the top. When he reached it he found it locked. The stairs were bare boards and, at a guess, Raimond thought, it led out onto the roof.
He put his shoulder to the door but it merely hurt his shoulder when he barged. A group of police gathered around him as he shot round the lock. The door opened at the first push and, motioning back the men behind him, Raimond peered out. He was met by a little hail of bullets.
The door opened straight out onto a flat roof which climbed to other levels and was dotted with chimney stacks.
"They can't get away," Raimond snapped. "No point in risking any of our blood. Send back and tell them downstairs that they're on the roof, to make sure the place is completely surrounded and to get up on top of the buildings opposite."
"Can they get from this one onto any other?" someone asked.
"Tell them surround the whole block and to send somebody into each apartment. We'll cut off any possible means of escape."
Raimond peered through the door again to be met by several more bullets, dangerously close to his head.
"All right," he said, "we can wait for them."
He posted a large body of men on the staircase and retraced his steps down through the building and out into the street where, in the doorways on both sides, uniformed police were keeping watch.
He had a few words with a little group of officers who were staring up at the roof of the building and then he entered the apartments on the opposite side of the street. He took the lift up to the top floor. On every floor the anxious inhabitants were crowding and being calmed by police who'd taken over the building.
From the top floor he climbed the rough spiral stairway which led out onto the roof. A superintendent came over as soon as he saw him.
"Good work," he said. "I think we've got them all cooped up there. But it may take some time to break them down."
"What's happening. Can you see them?"
"There's a parapet round the front, same as this side.
We've given them a few shots but they're not wasting their ammunition. They're keeping low."
Raimond walked with the superintendent to a low wall which formed a parapet all around the roof. Crouching behind it he glanced over to the building opposite, some 30-40 feet away.
The block of buildings was not large and all the roofs were flat on different levels. There was no sign of the Algerians.
"Well, we've got them all right," he said. "But it certainly looks like a long wait. They're covering the only entrance to the roof we've found like hellfire. And I've no doubt they're covering everyone we haven't found too. There's no way of even having a straight gunfight with them and we don't want to wreck the building."
"By the way," the-superintendent said. "There's an Arab being held down below says he was working with you. We found a gun on him. That's quite a new escape method."
"Ahmed ben Lulla?"
"That sounds like his name. You know him."
"He did it."
"Did what?"
"Got them there and us here. I'll go down and see that he's all right. I suppose we'll just have to wait for them to run out of cannon fodder."
He went back across the roof and down the stairs, leaving the superintendent staring after him in astonishment. It didn't do for everybody to know everything-even if he was a superintendent.
Going down in the lift, past the crowded landings, Raimond felt quite pleased with the way things had worked out. Of course he had no illusions. National Liberation Front activities would start up again in the capital pretty soon. But it would need fresh organization and after this it would have to be more careful and thus less effective. It would mean a quieter time for everybody for a while and it wouldn't do much for the morale of the enemy troops in the Algerian mountains.
On the bottom floor he pulled open the wooden swing doors and undid the iron gate. He stepped out, closing the gate with a clang and went into the ground floor apartment which had its door open and was swarming with policemen. He found Ahmed ben Lulla, handcuffed and indignant, seated in a corner and guarded by two policemen who seemed quite amused at his explanation of the part he'd played in the whole business.
"Inspector Raimond," he cried out in violent relief. "Thank God you're here."
Raimond grinned.
"A misunderstanding," he said. "These are pretty hectic times."
He motioned to the two men to release their captive which they did, slowly, in an astonishment which amounted almost to disbelief.
"You'd better stay here until we've got them," Raimond said. "Be nice to him," he added to the policemen. "He deserves a medal."
In the porch of the house he stared up at the opposite building. There must be a way of getting onto the roof. At the far end of the block was a raised platform of roof with a few chimney stacks on it. It was the obvious last line of retreat, except that the Algerians couldn't get there now because it was covered from the roof opposite. Below the roof at this point were the apartment windows with their little balconies. A pattern of bas-relief designs were carved into the wall above and around them.
Raimond slipped out of the building and moved carefully along the street, keeping his eyes on the parapet of the roof which sheltered the prey.
In a large tunnel-like entrance to a courtyard which had become the G.H.Q. of the police forces he had a quick discussion with a number of officers and then, followed by a couple of lieutenants, edged along the street and entered the apartment building under the raised section of roof.
This was it. He knew. This was the way to get them quickly, to make a neat and effective job of the whole thing instead of having it drag on and possibly losing a man or two in the process.
They crammed into the lift, all three of them, and went up to the apartment on the top floor, as everywhere, police and anxious people mingled in the doorway, on the landing and in the apartment itself.
With a few words of explanation, Raimond led the two lieutenants onto the balcony.
Looking up the edge of the roof-seemed farther than it had from opposite, but the footholds and handholds in the bas-relief were deep.
Raimond loosened his revolver from its hoister and put it in his pocket. Half held by his two aides he climbed onto the little iron railing of the balcony and searched for a suitable hold in the bas-relief ... He didn't look down at all.
He found the hold and reached up for it with his hands, digging his toes into another indentation of the wall at the same time. He clung for a minute, accustoming himself to the balance and then he began to step gently, cautiously up the wall, using each crevice and clinging tightly with his fingers. The roof which overhung slightly was three feet above when he started.
The men below helped to apply inward pressure first to his back and then to his legs and finally, as his hands caught at the ledge of the roof and eased over, they could reach only his feet.
Hanging onto the edge of the roof over the street, leaning outwards slightly with the angle, Raimond felt with one hand towards the inner edge of the parapet. He found it. gripped it and then released his hold on the outer edge with the other, sliding it over the stone to join the first.
Sweat gathered on his face and body and he felt a slight chill in his stomach as he eased his whole body outwards around the lean of the roof, levering himself with his hands and arms, letting his feet swing free. Just for a moment or two he hung there dangerously six stories up, heaving himself over the parapet.
He heard the sound of firing. He was being covered from the opposite roof.
A final heave and he was lying along the parapet and could see down onto the roof below where the crouching figures of the Algerians filled every spot of cover.
They were not expecting attack from this quarter. They were all facing the far entrance to the roof, which, he now saw, appeared to be the only one.
Firing from the opposite roof redoubled and some intrepid marksman managed to take a few shots from the roof entrance.
Raimond leaned back over the parapet and caught the hands which were already reaching up over the parapet. He braced himself, taking their weight as the lieutenant below pushed up with his feet. In a few seconds the man was with him on the roof and behind him, the third man was passing up a couple of Sten guns.
The two men took the guns and moved quietly to the cover of a chimney stack. The enemy was spread out below. They had what was almost an aerial view.
"Right," Raimond said.
There was no time to be squeamish. The nationalists were desperate men who would give no quarter. Surprise was the only way to avoid greater bloodshed.
The two Sten guns nosed out from the chimney stacks.
"Now," Raimond said tensely.
There was sputtering fire which fizzed and ricocheted all over the roof.
It was all over in a matter of seconds. A perfect target, the Algerians collapsed under the stream of unexpected fire, without returning a shot.
When it was done and the roof was littered with bodies and police began to invade the roof from the apartment entrance, Raimond leaned heavily against the chimney, staring with his companion over the carnage.
"Quite an anticlimax," he said.
CHAPTER XXIV
In their delightful flat in the 10th Arrondissement, Ahmed ben Lulla and Francoise were lying on the bed. They were a perfect, contented couple. Ahmed had regular work and Francoise no longer propped up the doorway of a hotel to earn a living for both of them. Everything past seemed like a nightmare of several nights ago which one hardly remembered but which left a vague disquiet somewhere in the subconscious.
The only trouble was that Francoise had found that since her half dozen lovers a night had been reduced to one she took an enormous amount of satisfying. But Ahmed was doing his valiant best. It wasn't a serious complaint.
"Let's again, darling," she whispered, stroking his half-inflated penis which was still wet from the last time. He kissed her taut, demanding breasts and ran his hands over her naked body.
"I'll have to employ a stand-in," he said with a grin as, fully erect now, he slithered onto her and began to thread his hips between her thighs in a long, smooth rhythm.
Lying alone in bed, Michele Raimond felt very proud of her husband, who'd had such universal recognition for his cracking up of the NLF. Already she'd put behind her the ghastly experience she'd undergone at their hands. After all, she'd told Pierre everything and time was covering it over like new grass growing up. She still had her secret about the American, but it was just as well to have one secret from a man when you loved him so much. She fell asleep, wishing Pierre were there to make love to her the way he'd been making love to her these past nights. What a man he was for work. She pouted to herself. But she had pleasant dreams.
***
Pierre Raimond was "working" hard. Thrust, thrust, thrust-in, in, in and Rolande writhed and twisted and groaned under him in that special volcanic way of hers which filled him with such excitement. In his hands her buttocks were like footballs.
As he worked in, deep into her loins, it occurred to him that he'd really robbed the National Liberation Front of everything they possessed.
