Red Ice

“I could have understood, though not justified, it being some perverse form of revenge against me. But it wasn’t revenge. They were just people in a café. Hassim and I hunted down these particular FLN terrorists ourselves. After capture, they laughed at our revulsion at their act. “That is the way to win, Frenchmen, in these times,’ one had said. Hassim had them executed fellagha fashion. They died very painfully, very slowly. I felt no remorse; the punishment fit the crime.

“The terrorists were right. La guerre révolutionnaire required the courage and insight of those in Algeria, and the resigned conviction of those at home. My country betrayed me and the Moslems that believed in me. All I could ever promise the Moslem company was that the French army would fight until a conclusive victory… or defeat. But self-indulgent France did not have the resolve of its soldiers. France, I learned, talked high principles and sought the luxury of world adulation. It was willing to conduct crusades as long as they didn’t prove too inconvenient. Terrorism put the soldier’s burden of courage on all civilians—and worse, it threatened to spread to France. In other words, France could be high minded as long as the going didn’t get too distasteful. Sordid situations required emotional commitments. The average Frenchman didn’t want the front page of his evening paper upsetting his digestion. Crusades were fine at a distance, but all-consuming conflicts were a bother.

“Eventually the French government caved in and virtually offered to hand Algeria over to the FLN—not the loyal Moslems who had stood by us—the FLN whose mindless terrorism had been decried throughout the world.

“The Moslem commando company deserted to a man. That day I found Hassim staked to a cork tree with bayonets. He cursed me with his dying breath. Painted in blood across his chest was the message: ‘This is what happens to fools who trust the two-faced Europeans.’

“I couldn’t begrudge the company. ‘Trust me,’ I had told them. ‘Trust me.’ But the country behind me had said, ‘Well, so long, have to be going now. Take care.’

“My regiment, the Premier Regiment Etranger Parachutiste did the honorable thing. It mutinied. Now it is no more—sort of institutional suicide on the grand scale. Matsuma would understand. As for me, I resigned my commission.

“In subsequent years, I have served as un mercenaire with the Sixth Commando of Katanga and for many other causes, but never as an officer. I lost any right to be an officer when as a stupid patriotic junior officer I asked to be trusted and couldn’t be trusted. I am now Sergeant d’Epinuriaux. As un mercenaire I put my faith in no one but my comrades and gauge the sincerity of a cause by the money they’ll pay. And when they betray me it will be with a bullet, not sweet-tasting poison in my mint tea.”

His face flushed.

“I have had my fill of clever-tongued types who can find grand reasons to begin fighting for a cause and as quickly gather splendid reasons to abandon it.

“All we have here are ourselves, and I’m glad of it.”

The steam rose from his ration and curled defiantly around him.

The temperature climbed slowly through the day and next night until by the following morning it was safe to travel. Clouds seized more and more of the available sky. We glided on. Kick, slide.

The gradient, too, was increasing and we were compelled to traverse more often. Finally I had each man affix mohair climbers to the bottom of his skis. Surprisingly, we were covering ground quickly now.

About midday I spotted a musk deer trotting along parallel to us. Perhaps curiosity had overcome its fear of these clumsy green-and-white walking bundles. As my eye followed him, it caught an irregularity. I pulled my binoculars from my jacket.

“Matsuma, have a look. What do you make of that?”

He focused them on a frozen river and then scanned left and right. “Dogsled tracks, a day or two old. Probably Evenki. But maybe we should keep away from them, just the same.”

As if this new development weren’t enough, a disturbing new thought plagued me. Since we’d left the submarine, there hadn’t been a single act of treachery. We’d lost Lutjens and left Dravit. Could Dravit have been the turncoat? The thought stuck in my mind and put a hollow feeling in my chest. There was no man on earth I trusted more than Dravit. We’d been through much together. But hadn’t every man his price? He wasn’t getting any younger and it was time to think of retirement. It would be easy. Dravit was our representative on the submarine. On his say-so they could abandon us with a clear conscience. A large part of our fate rested in his hands.