Algiers, May 22, 1962
Sigma no longer understands anything. Unless perhaps that the French have lost Algeria. It’s too late, there’s nothing left to do.
Two months since the ceasefire was signed, and the war continues. The OAS no longer has any leaders. Lieutenant Degueldre? Arrested on April 7 and taken back to France that same evening. General Salan? Arrested two weeks later, and also immediately taken to the other side of the Mediterranean. The OAS continues to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. Everyday it kills more. Seven Arab housekeepers killed with a bullet to the back of the neck the same day in the center of Algiers. Sixty-two people killed at the port on May 2 when a car stuffed with dynamite, bolts, and scrap iron exploded. Men, women, and even children melted into a terrible mush of flesh and blood.
The European neighborhoods are emptying a little more every day. The French are rushing to get on ships and planes. They are “returning” to France, that country many of them have never known and that has just betrayed them. Despite the OAS’s repeated prohibitions, whole families are fleeing. The organization is striking them every time it can. The OAS is no longer an organization of combatants but a band of desperados whose objective is to leave behind them a scorched earth and as many corpses as possible.
Sigma signed up for the battle for the honor of French Algeria, not for this nameless, endless horror.
And yet, he, too, continues to kill.
He gets out of the Dauphine, following Babelo and Bizerte. Omega remains at the wheel, ready to take off. The three men move toward the entrance to the branch of the Bank of Algeria.
Sigma doesn’t want to desert. He doesn’t want to run away from the fighting. He feels bound to his group, to his companions, to his last friends in this land of Algeria. But he has nonetheless secretly prepared everything to put his grandmother out of harm’s way. A ticket on a ship is waiting, hidden between two books in the cabinet in the living room of their apartment. Or rather two tickets, because Henriette would never have agreed to leave the country alone.
The two sentinels guarding the bank lay down their arms when they see the commando coming into the building. One of them even gives them a military salute. Sigma, holding a submachine gun, remains in position near the door while Babelo and Bizerte approach the teller’s window. Three customers, including a woman, are waiting in line. They move aside without saying a word.
The teller has already opened the safe built into the wall behind his seat. He grabs a large canvas bag and starts filling it with one bundle of bills after another. The operation takes no more than a minute. The employee closes the safe and passes the bag, which has the bank’s logo on it, over the counter. Sigma sees his superior put down his gun near the counter before plunging his hand into the bag. He pulls out a bunch of bills that he casually throws down.
“That’s for the trouble.”
Then he picks up his weapon and turns away, followed by Bizerte. Just as all three of them are about to leave, the sound of glass breaking makes them jump.
On their right, three armchairs grouped around a small coffee table form a lounge where the employees of the bank sometimes receive customers. On the table, there is an intact goblet, and alongside it, shards of glass. Two naked feet, dirty and tanned, stick out from behind an armchair.
“Come out of there!” Babelo shouts.
The two feet start trembling but don’t move. Babelo fires a bullet that shatters the second goblet.
“I said, come out of there.”
The terrified face of an elderly Arab timidly appears behind the chair.
“Stand up,” Babelo orders.
The man, resigned, obeys and begins mumbling a prayer. He knows what’s coming. Sigma does, too, and goes out of the bank. He hasn’t taken three steps before a shot rings out. Soon followed by a second one. More muted. A coup de grâce fired point-blank.
The three militants get back into the Dauphine. The leader sits alongside the driver, Bizerte and Sigma in the backseat. An odor of gunpowder fills the car. Omega calmly starts the engine. Babelo puts both hands on the bag that he’s set between his legs.
“Too easy . . . John Ford wouldn’t make good westerns with bank robberies like that one.”