Jack Higgins – Wrath of the Lion 1964 The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. WILLIAM BLAKE

“A pity,” de Beaumont said. “Now I must move out rather sooner than I had intended. On the other hand, neither my immediate nor long-term plans will be affected in the slightest.” He stood up and smiled politely. “Under happier circumstances I should have enjoyed talking to you. We must have a great deal in common. I’m sure you’ll under-stand that my time is limited.”

“Naturally,” Mallory said ironically and got to his feet.

He had often wondered about this moment, how it would come and when. The strange thing was that he was not afraid. More curious than anything else. Jacaud moved rest-lessly behind him and Marcel came away from the wall, the gun still held against his leg.

De Beaumont took a revolver from his pocket, crossed to Guyon and handed it to him. “Will you do the honours, Cap-tain? A soldier’s end, I think.”

Guymon’s hand tightened on the butt of the revolver and he looked across at Mallory, his face very white. Quite suddenly he grabbed de Beaumont by the front of his coat, pulling him forward, and rammed the barrel of the revolver against his throat.

There was a moment of stillness and then de Beaumont laughed gently. “You know, our friends in Paris have been worried about you for some time now, Guyon. I can under-stand why. You’re slipping. I should have thought an officer of your experience would have been able to tell the difference in weight between a revolver loaded with blanks and one loaded with live ammunition.”

He reached up and took the revolver from Guymon’s hand and Guyon looked across at Mallory and smiled wryly. “Sometimes we can be too clever, my friend.”

“Nice to have you back,” Mallory said.

De Beaumont opened the door and nodded to Marcel. “Take him below and watch him carefully. I’ll send Colonel Mallory down later.”

He closed the door behind them, turned to Mallory and smiled. “And now that we all know exactly where we are we can perhaps relax for half an hour.” He took a bottle and two glasses from a cupboard in the corner and returned to his chair. “This is really quite an excellent cognac. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Mallory sat in the opposite chair, aware of Jacaud at his back, and waited for what was to come. He accepted a glass of cognac, drank a little and leaned back. “I can’t understand what you hope to gain from all this. Murder and as-sassination will only lose you what little support you com-mand.”

“A matter of opinion,” de Beaumont said. “The only politics which seem to matter in this modern world are the politics of violence. Palestine, Cyprus and Algeria were all examples of victory achieved by a deliberate and carefully planned use of violence and assassination. We can do the same.”

“The circumstances are completely different. In the cases you’ve quoted, nationalistic elements were opposed to a colonial power. In your own, Frenchmen are murdering Frenchmen.”

“They are not worthy of the name, the swine we have dealt with so far. Loud-mouths, professional liberals and scheming politicians who feathered their own nests while I and men like me rotted in the Viet prison camps.” De Beaumont laughed bitterly. “I remember our homecoming only too well. Booed all the way into Marseilles by Communist dock workers.”

“Ancient history,” Mallory said. “Nobody wants to know. In any case, unless they’d been through the same experi-ence themselves they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But you have1,” de Beaumont said. “Deep inside, I think you know what I mean. You learned a hard lesson from the Chinese. You put it down in cold print in that book of yours. What happened when you put it into practice?”

He stared into the fire, a frown on his face. “It was going to be different in Algeria, we were certain of that. We fought thefells in thejebel of the Atlas Mountains, in the heat of the Sahara, in the alleys of Algiers, and we were beating them. In the end we had them by the throat.”

He turned to Mallory. “I was in the army plot of the 13th May, 1958. They gave us no choice. They would have arrested my friends and me, tried us on trumped-up atrocity charges, designed to please the loud-mouths and fellow-travelers back home in Paris. We put de Gaulle in power because we believed in the ideal of a French Algeria, a greater France.”

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