11. REVENGE OF THE SABRE

Chapter 1

THE LITTLE STRANGER

The lights are dim, the noise is loud, and the fume of wine hangs throughout the large room where a great throng of humanity sits, talking and drinking animatedly. Men of the French Foreign Legion rub shoulders with Arabs in long white robes, traders, caravan drivers, hawkers, and idlers. Somewhere an orchestra plays Eastern music, then interrupts it again with modern jazz, but no one pays much attention to the music.

The Legionnaires speak extra loudly because most of those sitting and drinking here tonight are on leave, and they try to savour every moment, knowing that sooner or later they will have to return to the scorching misery of the Sahara desert.

Here at the small table in the farthest corner, there is loud chatter. Teuns Stegmann, the tall, blond South African, has just sat down here after carving a path through the milling crowd. There is a noticeable blush beneath the tan of his glistening cheeks, and a particular light shines in his deep blue eyes. His large, well-formed hands seem tremulous, and he is as diffident as a schoolboy who has taken out his first sweetheart.

“Tell us, tell us!” bellows Fritz Mundt, the large German, the strongest man in the French Foreign Legion.

“Yes, speak up!” urges Podolski, the big Pole.

“How does she kiss?” wants Jack Ritchie, the blond Englishman, to know, and they all lean forward, their torsos on the tabletop as if Teuns must impart some tremendous secret to them. Petacci, the small Italian, doesn’t ask questions, but he stares intently at Teuns as if he already knows the entire secret, as if he is privy to every little detail the tall South African could tell them. But eventually, he too asks.

“Are her lips warm and trembling, mon ami?”

Teuns shifts uncomfortably on the hard chair, looks at his hands, then at the bottles of wine standing before them on the table, and then simply over the crowd towards where the warm night lies outside.

“Come on, come on,” Fritz Mundt prods again. “Don’t keep us hanging like this, man.”

“What is there to tell?” asks Teuns, spreading his large hands despairingly and blushing deeper.

“How Mademoiselle Julie Lefevre kisses, that is what we want to know,” says Podolski loudly. “Or haven’t you found that out yet?”

Teuns looks somewhat helplessly at the large Pole.

Jack Ritchie lays his hand on the South African’s. It seems as though there is compassion in his eyes.

“Don’t tell us you just sat with her on a bench under some palm tree, mon ami,” he says.

“Or just went for a walk along the waterfront of Algiers,” Petacci breaks in.

“Or just stood looking at the moon,” bellows Fritz Mundt. He throws his hands in the air. “After all, you saved her life, didn’t you, South African,” mocks the big German.

Teuns Stegmann’s thoughts slip back for a moment to that bitter time when the Arabs kidnapped Julie Lefevre, the beautiful daughter of Captain Gaston Lefevre, when she went to visit her father in Dini Salam. That was the time when he and Gaston Lefevre alone had to outwit a horde of Arabs in Fort Laval to save their lives and Julie’s. That time, she had cordially invited him to come and visit her when he was next on leave in Algiers, and now he had done so.

He thinks of their evening together at her apartment, of the meal she prepared for him, of the delicate wine she poured for him, of the soft, stimulating fumes of exquisite French perfume, the fragrance of her hair, and the supple, heated allure of her lips. He thinks of her lips, how they trembled lightly beneath his searching