Assignment Madeleine by Edward S. Aarons

down, has it not? You Americans no longer walk the
world in pride and arrogance.
    “Humility can have a cleansing effect,” Durell said.
    “Would you like a drink? For myself, of course—”
    “No, thank you. You asked to see me, Hadji, but not in
friendship. Only in a state of truce.
    “We have no quarrel, you and I. Please sit down. Forgive me
if you think I greet you with a taunt and a jeering phrase. But what I said is
true, is it not? Between East and West, the balance has tipped against you. You
no longer have the comfort of complacency. The world walks on the edge of a
knife.”
    “We can use that knife to pare some of our fat, Durell said.
“We respect our rivals now, and that is good.”
    He sat down. “Your war with the French is not my war, and I
am not permitted to take part in it or even to venture an opinion on it. If I
am ere under terms of truce, then I must warn you not to tell me anything I
should not know. I may be considered a neutral, yet most of my associations are
with the French. Do you understand?”
    El-Abri smiled. “You are here as a friend, then, unless you
choose otherwise.”
    “Agreed.”
    “You look well.”
    “And you, too.”
    “Much time has passed since our old victory, Durell.”
    “The war is not yet over,” Durell said.
    There was a single, smoky kerosene lantern in the one-room
hut, and the Berber chieftain turned it up slightly so that its yellow light flared
out in the bare room. His teeth gleamed whitely as he smiled. His face was the
face of the desert, lean and dry, scarred under a thin gray beard. He wore a
khaki uniform, the trousers stuffed into American paratrooper’s boots. El-Abri
was armed with a German Schmeiser and a long,
wicked-looking knife in a leather scabbard. His pale brown eyes were brooding
and intelligent.
    “Did you know I spent four years in Paris after the
liberation?” the Berber asked abruptly. “I learned the ways of the French and
then I went to Mecca and then I attended the Arabic University of Zitouna , in Tunis. By that time the resistance movement was
in full swing and I joined it. Your war has not ended, and indeed, is going
badly for you, Durell. My war is the same. But today we fight, if not on
opposite sides, at least in different directions.”
    “I wish it were otherwise,” Durell said.
    “But you and I are not enemies, and never will be.”
    “Let’s hope not.”
    El-Abri sighed. “Yet the fighting will go on. The relationship
between Arab and Frenchman must not he that of horse
and rider.”
    “You don’t hate the French, then,” Durell said.
    “No. I hate the extremists of both parties, if you must
know. The French territorials, the settlers, the proprietors call us gooks and
want to continue the attitude of treating us as inferior people, using terror
and violence to prolong the war between us, just as much as the rebel factions
have now become intransigent and refuse to treat or negotiate.”
    “You didn’t send for me, though, to give me a political
lecture,” Durell said.
    “You wonder why I sent for you. The French would like to
know about this douar .
I should tell you, first, that tonight’s raid on Marbruk was not my
operation. It was the extremist faction.”
    “You don’t work together?”
    Something flickered in the Kabyle’s tawny eyes. “No.
It has not been so for some time. This is my territory and my people live here,
and I have been in command since the fighting began. But recently the extremists
came in and demanded jurisdiction. Until then, I managed to keep things
peaceful. There was no terror, no murders.” El-Abri’s eyes darkened. “Unlike
the extremists, I refuse to kill Arabs who remain loyal to the French. We owe
much to France and will owe more before our legitimate aims are achieved. And
long afterward, as well.”
    “You do not speak like a man of violence,” Durell said.
    “I have had enough of it.”
    “But you bear arms and command troops.”
    “A great many harkas ,