+++Name: "Jean-Martin Isidore de Florac,
à votre service. You are welcome to call me Jean-Martin, though only if you are American and formality would drive you mad. I am, for two reasons, the Chevalier de Florac: first, because I am the hereditary lord of a long-lost fief in the Cevennes; second, because I have the good fortune to be a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. So, you see, both the Republic and the Ancien Régime can at least agree that I am a knight. As for my military rank, I believe that I formally remain a Commandant de l'Armée de l'Air - though my superiors would very much like you to know that I am in Marmara as a private citizen, on leave from the forces of the Republic."
+++Age: "I was born in 1896, so I have just turned thirty-nine. I am not sure whether I look younger or older."
+++Sex: "I am a man, yes. I am also a gentleman, which I believe matters rather more."
+++Sexual Orientation: "I prefer women, though I would like to believe that I am somewhat less - dogmatic on this point than some of my Jesuit-educated peers. It is one of the great unearned windfalls of my life that women have tended to prefer me too."
+++Appearance: "Unless I take some pains to hide it, I look like what I am: a scion of the French colonial military aristocracy. I am about 180 centimeters, about seventy-five kilos: neither large nor small. I do not have the build of a weightlifter or swimmer, but I am still trim and wiry and strong: a horseman's build, I fancy, with a fencer's wrists and forearms. My hair is reddish-brown, like bronze, and so curly that I have never been able to part it, so I just comb it roughly back; my hairline has begun receding from a sharp widow's peak, but there is no grey there yet. I don't have a matinee idol's square jaw or blue eyes, but I know that I am handsome enough, in a sharp-boned and aristocratic fashion: narrow lips, straight nose, high forehead. My eyes are dark grey, like steel. In Hollywood, I suspect I would play the villain."
+++Identifying Marks: "Life has left some marks on me. My skin is tanned to an even pale gold from the African sun. I have scars: an ugly cicatrice of knotted tissue across my belly, a long white line on one thigh, a circular scar just beneath my clavicle. You can thank the Boches, and the Touaregs, and my fellow Frenchmen. I lost the last digit of my left middle finger in a crash many years ago - for that, at least, I blame no one but myself. I still have a considerable income from my family's estates in Oran, and I like to dress well: finely tailored three-piece suits, or a silk burnoose and slippers when I have some time by the fireside; I am a child of Africa, after all. When I can wear my identity openly, as now, I bear my family's signet on my left pinky finger: a small, centuries-old bronze ring from mountains now lost to us. I carry a Smith and Wesson Registered Magnum, custom-ordered, in a shoulder holster - say what you will of them, but Americans have always made the best guns. Finally, I've been told that I have a certain way of moving: langorous but precise. Before I was ten years old, I had been taught both to dance the minuet and to hunt lions in the Atlas mountains. Unless I choose to suppress it, my bearing reflects those influences."
+++Rank (O-1 to O-3): "As of now, I am ranked at 0-2; no doubt there was some - concern - in official circles as to whether a higher rank might provoke awkward questions about my status here, and the extent of the Republic's interest in this corner of the world. Should the situation become critical, I suspect my rank may rise accordingly."
+++Call sign: "'Durendal.' A bit of silliness, that; a schoolboy's enthusiasm. I've had it since my very first plane. Strange to think of how young I was when I chose it."
+++Aircraft: "A Dewoitine D.27. An excellent plane, this, my first monoplane. They use it for aerobatics back in Algeria, and
mon dieu, it is fast."
+++Aircraft Appearance: "What is there to say? It's a very small plane, and I have to sit with my knees halfway to my chest. I think it is oddly beautiful: a fat little dolphin, all smooth curves beneath an elegant parasol wing. I have painted it ocean grey - we do a lot of flying over water, one way and another."
+++Emblem: "My instructions on this point were - elliptical. 'Don't create evidence of our involvement, but let them know that we are here.' So I use the Marmara roundel, with the
coat of arms of the Republic at its center."
+++Modifications: "The one problem with the D.27 is its armament - two Darne machine guns, 7.5mm, scarcely better than a rifle. I have added a machine gun pod, a 13.2mm Hotchkiss that can shred through modern armor. Then I overhauled the engine so that it could bear the additional weight and still perform like an aerobatics plane. The result is quite the little dogfighter: enough firepower to kill quickly, enough agility to fly rings around most biplanes, and so small that it's hard to hit even at very close range. Which is a good thing, because one good burst could turn this tin can into a colander."
+++Funds: "After the plane and its modifications, I still have six and a half thousand dollars of the - endowment, let us say - that Deuxième Bureau provided me. Not a bad reserve. And, of course, I have enough cash from my own inheritance and business interests to meet my personal expenses. This is a beautiful city: splendid views, excellent food, fascinating history. It would be a shame not to enjoy it."
+++Psychological Analysis: "Do you believe in psychology? I do. Jung more than Freud; perhaps that is because we are both Protestants, of a
a rather similar kind. More than that, though, I have trusted my life to psychology: to the idea that it is possible to know myself, and to know others, so deeply and so well that human actions become eminently predictable. We do what we must, because we could not do otherwise and remain who we are. A curious kind of predestination, this - but Calvin might recognize it all the same. And it works. As a spy, one must rely on psychology: one must be able to recognize the signs of betrayal long before the notion of treachery has even begun to form in the conscious mind of the asset. And one must try to know oneself, too: as clinically as possible, withholding both judgment and sympathy, never quite believing the story one must tell the world about oneself. One must be unscrupulous in manipulation, ruthless in clarity. For the wages of delusion are death.
"So who am I? At bottom, I suppose, I am my country's contradiction: a child of the aristocracy, and of the Republic. As an aristocrat, I believe in duty: the obligation of those who have much to defend those who have little; the absolute necessity of guarding those placed in one's care, no matter the cost.
Noblesse oblige, as they say - come what may. But I believe, too, in good taste and good manners and fair play; in the value of beautiful things, and the inherent virtue of appreciating them; in loving literature and scholarship, and in living life by civilized rules. There is great humanity, I think, great decency, in the simple refusal to be barbarized by horror; to come through unspeakable carnage, and still to be able to appreciate a fine wine and a beautiful poem, or to be outraged by a man who cheats at tennis. It is folly, to be sure. But it is
holy folly, and by such folly do we preserve a life worth living.
"But I am also a child of the Republic - and what does that mean, now that it has been driven to the very brink? Just what it always meant, and even more so:
Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Not the classless, undifferentiated utopia of the communists, perhaps; but a willingness, nevertheless, to see value and virtue in every life; to believe that what truly matters are the things we can only do together. I fought for men in Paris, and for men in Algiers, and sometimes they lied; sometimes they even ordered me to do terrible things. Much of that clinical ruthlessness - that
psychology - that I spoke of earlier, I learned at their behest. But the principles that those men stood for - that my friends died for - they were true. Despite everything, I do believe that. As a Protestant, as a child of Africa, I might never quite belong in this Republic that I love. But I know that the Republic stands for the ideal that one day I might - and all the world with me. That hope is worth fighting for - if necessary, worth dying for. I have will enough, iron and unyielding, to carry on in that hope, despite all the disappointments and all the scars. And I have love enough to carry on, too - withal that I have loved and lost, and share my heart but gingerly.
"And in the mean time? I keep my sense of humor, and my sense of wonder. There is poetry, and wine, and cuisine, and lovely sunsets, and stirring music, and beautiful women - for the world is a fine place. And what could be more French than that?"
+++Weaknesses: "I do not believe I have any single great weakness, any fatal flaw in the Greek tragic sense. Perhaps my soul is too shallow for that, too hollowed by long deceit. I have many small weaknesses instead, I think. I can barely drive a car, for example; I grew up with horses and camels. I learned to dogfight in the Great War, and while I have learned to enjoy the greater capabilities of the new planes, I am not sure I can use them to full effectiveness; I do not understand these instructions about harmonizing guns a kilometer away. I had a gentleman's education, which is a fine way of saying that I speak Homeric Greek but still sometimes do sums on my fingers. I am not quite as young as I used to be, and though I am trim and my stamina is good, I can feel the raw strength leeching out of my bones with each new birthday. I can be charming, and pull people's strings, and make them do what I want - but I have very few friends, and I often feel quite alone, and when I am called upon to inspire men I cannot shake the sense that I am lying to them. And I have nightmares: of the mud at Verdun, burning villages in the Rif, the old city of Constantine after the OAS was done with it. If I hurt people for too long, I get tired, and I shake, and I drink too much, and the nightmares get worse and worse until I don't sleep at all. Other times I don't shake at all, even when I should, or I sleep like a babe when I'm certain I shouldn't. Amira thought it was some great darkness in me, but I don't think so. Just another scar."
+++Likes/Dislikes: "I like beauty, mostly - and I try to be very open-minded about where I find it. Beauty is about balance, I think: about appreciation without overindulgence. So I like fine food and drink, whether that means sole meunière and Chardonnay, or kubbeh b'siniyyeh and a perfectly prepared mint tea. But I do not overeat, and I rarely get drunk. I am very fond of poetry, but I also use it to practice my languages: Baudelaire in French, al-Mutanabbi in Arabic, Goethe in German. I appreciate art and architecture and music of all traditions, and have greatly enjoyed seeing and hearing so much of it here in Constantinople, but I know that I have little talent for it myself. I like flirtation, even if it goes no further: if nothing else, flirtation is an appreciation of beauty, n'est-ce pas? But I am cautious about going beyond flirtation; a man in my profession must be, and I owe that much to Amira and Aure.
"There are other kinds of beauty, too. I know horses and hounds and hawks very well, and I find a deep satisfaction in working with each of them; cooperating with a magnificent creature is utterly different from controlling a machine. I like exercise: I play polo and tennis, I keep up my fencing, and I try to run at least a few kilometers every morning. And I do like flying - though I do not think that it fills a void in me as it does for so many others. After all, everything I do not like - cruelty, bigotry, fanaticism, iconoclasm, and all the fevered
imbalance of modern barbarities - all those things are still waiting for me as soon as I Iand, as they have been since I first learned what it meant to be a Huguenot in France. Flight is a hallucination of freedom, nothing more. But oh, how sweet a dream while it lasts."
+++Interests: "I would like to believe that my interests are as broad as my tastes. I read a great deal, and find it relaxing to do so. I appreciate history, especially the classics; I take an interest in philosophy, too, and I try to stay abreast of the latest work in that field: Dewey, Russel, Wittgenstein. I have a great love of poetry - French, English, Arabic, and German - and try to read some before bed every night. Likewise literature; Proust's great work, published this last decade, is extraordinary. Psychology, too, is an interest - though more professional than recreational, I fear - and I closely follow Dr. Jung's latest work. I have found it surprisingly effective in the field. Likewise, I read at least two newspapers a day - usually the
Times of London and
Le Figaro, now in exile in Algiers. I am conscious of the moment in history which we all now are obliged to occupy; following current events is presently more a duty than a choice.
"As for other interests, outside the written word? I love art and architecture, as I said, and I spend much of my free time touring this city's magnificent artistic heritage. I have no talent with the brush myself, though. On the other hand, I play a tolerable viola: an unusual instrument, more prone to supporting roles than the violin, deeper-voiced and softer. My sports are fencing - mostly saber - and tennis and polo; there is more opportunity these days to practice the first two than the third. And I am at pains, no matter the labor or danger of the day, to keep up my correspondence. Aure writes me at least twice a week, and I am careful never to miss a prompt reply. I know that she must worry for me: so far from home, and with so much fire in the sky."
+++Fears: "I have lost a great deal - been shot down, blown open, cut up with a sword, even tortured once. I lost my country, too, or at least one of them - my ancestral lands, the physical connection to my past. I have my share of nightmares, and I would be lying if I said that I was not afraid of all the things that man naturally fears: pain, death, helplessness, grief. If I have courage, it is in fearing the realization of those things, and not their mere possibility: fearing
being killed, rather than the
risk of being killed. Most of all, oddly enough, I fear becoming nothing more than one of these wandering exiles who surround me here in the Hetaireia. I fear losing what anchors I have left in this world: those lovely miles of olive groves outside Oran, and what little remains of the Republic to which I've given my life, and above all Aure - small, serious Aure, with her mother's cheekbones and my mother's eyes, in whom now I see all the past and all the future that I have left. I have lost a great deal, but I would risk infinitely more for fear of losing my daughter."
+++Nationality: "I am French,
bien évidemment, no matter what some French fascists might tell you."
+++Ethnicity: "I am
un français - a Frenchman, not merely French. But others who call themselves Frenchmen might not agree. For though my roots in the Cevennes go back centuries, they are Protestant roots - Huguenot, and perhaps Waldensian before that. And I spent much of my upbringing at my family's estates in Oran, not in France itself; I speak Arabic and Kabyle Berber as easily as French. For some Frenchmen, even some who claim loyalty to the Republic, those facts disqualify me from full status as
un français."
+++Languages Spoken: "French, of course, is my true native tongue, but Arabic and Kabyle Berber are not far behind; my Algerian Arabic is native, while my Syrian and Egyptian and Tunisian and Moroccan all have an Algerian accent and some Classical Arabic affectations. I speak English, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish fluently; I can pass for a native speaker in any of those languages, complete with a slight regional accent for verisimilitude. My Vietnamese, Polish, Turkish, and Ngbaka are good enough for conversation, but never to pass for a native - though my Turkish is starting to improve as my stay in Constantinople lengthens. Enough of my schooling has stuck that I remain more or less literate in Latin and Ancient Greek, and I have found that speaking the Koine Greek of the Gospels lets me communicate well enough with Greek-speakers here. Languages have always come easily to me, and that fact has deeply shaped the course of my life; for in my line of work, facility with languages is very often the difference between life and death."
+++Religion: "I am a Huguenot, a French Protestant, from a long line of Huguenots. This is a bit like being a French Jew: it is to inherit so many centuries of stubborn independence of conscience that one's belief in God is rather less significant than one's refusal to roll over and go to Mass. It is an identity more than a faith. And so I rarely pray, besides the muttering to God of any man under fire; and while I usually attend Sunday services with Aure when we are at Mont-Olivet, I cease to do so while on assignment. But I do have a certain Protestant sensibility, I think; the resistance to arbitrary authority, paradoxically combined with the acceptance that some things are foreordained, predestined, out of one's control. And I am proud of my heritage; as one must be, if only out of sheer stubbornness, when it places one ever on the outside looking in."
+++Birthplace: "I was born at my family's chateau above the village of Florac, deep in the mountains of the Cevennes. I have seen it only once since the area fell to the Reds in '24."
+++Permanent Residence: "Mont-Olivet - the estate in the hills above Oran where I spent much of my childhood. A sandstone manor on a hill, all Arabic arches and French verandas, surrounded by rippling lines of olive trees and vineyards for as far as the eye can see."
+++Criminal History: "I assume you have clearance from Deuxième Bureau?
Eh bien, then. Off the top of my head, I am wanted by the Soviets for arms smuggling, under the name Yuri Andreyev; by the Greeks for espionage and sabotage, under the name Dietrich Brücker; by the Austrians for espionage, hijacking, and grand larceny, under the name William Cartwright; and by the Spanish for murder and war crimes, under my own name. My own view is that the only true crimes I ever committed were the orders that I carried out in Morocco and Vietnam and the Congo - and because we won those wars, the law says that they are not crimes at all."
+++Skills: "Unlike most of the Hetaireia, my skills do not lie first and foremost with combat flying. This is not to say that I am a novice. I was an air ace in the Great War: ten confirmed kills at La Malmaison and Paris. I flew close air support in Morocco and Algeria, and reconnaissance in Congo and Cilicia, and I took off and landed in desert wadis in Syria when I was coordinating Bedouin and Druze fighters during the revolt there. I have done plenty of flying over the last twenty years. But I have long been, in essence, a spy with a talent for flying - not a pilot with a talent for spying. Still - I have been at this long enough to have plenty of experience, and I have far more practice in doing without proper runways and airstrips than most younger flying officers. And my dogfighting, if antiquated, remains effective: I close much nearer than is now the fashion before I start shooting, and I rely more on aerobatics than on raw firepower. Those tactics were the norm in '17; today, they often take younger men by surprise. That has worked to my advantage, at least for now.
"On land, I have other skills. Languages are probably my greatest talent; as I said, I can pass for a native in English, French, Arabic, Berber, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. I speak four more languages well enough for conversation, though not for infiltration. I am well-trained and well-practiced in tradecraft: I can tap a phone, slip a tail, forge handwriting, and construct disguises - indeed, whole alternate personalities. I can force information out of a man, or resist those same techniques myself; I can pick locks, plan surveillance, improvise mechanical repairs, blend into crowds, befriend men, and seduce women.
"Regarding this last: charm is a far more dangerous weapon than is usually appreciated, but it is also largely a matter of practice, of trial and error. I have been at it for long enough to be able to intuit a stranger's background and insecurities and motivations from only a few moments of observation and conversation, and I know how to apply those inferences to influence behavior with the greatest possible efficiency.
Psychology - you remember? And so I have quite a few old friends, contacts, smugglers, and former agents scattered from Vladivostok to Brazzaville, and most of them owe me a favor.
"What else? I fought on land at Verdun, and I remember something of small-unit tactics. I have travelled alone in the arid places of Syria and southern Algeria, and am experienced in desert survival and navigation. I have trained carefully with a pistol, since it is often all that I can risk carrying; I have trained even more carefully with a knife, which was the only weapon safe to carry in Italy and Austria. I am a capable boxer, an excellent fencer, an even better horseman. I am good with a rifle, mostly from big-game hunting in the Congo; there are four lions' heads mounted on the wall at Mont-Olivet. And - a difficult skill to define, this - I am to the manner born. I have educated opinions about wine, food, art, music, brandy, firearms, horses, clothing. I learned formal European etiquette - the social code of the last century - as my native tongue. And I am rich - which, if not a skill, does at least tend to prove very useful."
+++Bio: "I am from Florac - the
particule alone should make that clear - a small village in the mountains of the Cevennes. France's Huguenots fled into those narrow dark valleys in the bloody days after the Edict of Fontainebleau. My ancestors rebelled against one French king as leaders of the Camisards, the Protestant rebels; a generation later, a different French king ennobled my great-great-great-grandfather for his part in hunting down the Beast of Gévaudan. The signet I wear today belonged to that ancestor, forged in 1768. My name - the name of the House of Florac - is his also. A generation after that, my family proved far enough from Paris and well-beloved enough of our Huguenot tenants to avoid the guillotine during the Revolution. And in fact, we have been Republicans ever since: for, signet ring or no signet ring, the Republic promises a place for Huguenots in a way that the royalists and reactionaries will never permit. Better an informal nobility than a formal bigotry.
"My grandfather made his fortune in Algeria, in the '50s and '60s - of the last century, of course - mostly in the olive business; then he was killed in action at Sedan, against the Prussians. Growing up, I divided my time between the chateau at Florac, and the estate at Mont-Olivet that actually produced our wealth. I learned a great deal in both places. My love of languages came first from my tutors; I was raised on Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, and Goethe as well as Moliere. I learned philosophy and rhetoric more than maths and accounting. My time was spent in shooting, riding, hunting, fencing, learning to dance the waltz and minuet. In Algeria, I played with the children of the estate steward, and learned Arabic and Kabyle Berber almost as early as I learned French, and haggled in the souk, and hunted to hounds in the Tell Atlas. Much of what I still believe in, I learned at that time: tolerance and fair play, good taste and good manners, and the importance of protecting those whom fate has placed in one's care. I learned to love places, and people, in all their vibrant specificity, and to mistrust the flattening effect of abstract ideals and sweeping generalities.
"When I was fourteen, a friend of my father helped to secure my admission to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand: France's Eton, a boarding school in Paris. That was a difficult transition. I was, for the first time, at the bosom of France: and I found it scornful of my rural accent, sneering toward my faith, incredulous at my affection for dusty old Algeria, convinced of its superiority. I studied hard, and kept up my languages, and learned to fake a Parisian accent perfectly by the time I graduated three years later. It was a lonely time, and it was the end of my childhood. There would be no more hide-and-seek among the olive groves.
"I went on to Saint-Cyr - the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, France's West Point or Sandhurst. I was the third generation in my family to do so; it was the expected course for minor provincial nobility with a long military tradition. I had learned to dissimulate by then, to mouth Catholic pieties and mimic Parisian sophistication, and I fit in fine. I even made friends, and came to understand that true affection does not require perfect honesty; indeed, there is often some tension between the two. I won prizes for saber-fencing and polo. I came gradually to believe in the Republic after all: to recognize the great virtue not in what it was, but in what it might yet be. And when the war came, I studied all the harder: knowing that the day would come soon when I would be asked to do my duty for that great promise of liberty and equality and brotherhood, and intending to be ready.
"My father was killed in action at the Marne in September of '14. I went to the battlefield to retrieve his body and bring it back to Florac for burial. And I remember looking at his body, and looking around at the devastation - the violence done to the Earth itself, everything dead and ashen and brown - and thinking of the cool forests of Florac and the rolling vineyards of Mont-Olivet, and thinking that
this was worth fighting for - killing for - dying for: to keep this horror from reaching the places that I loved. To preserve something gentle and beautiful and decent from all of this...unravelling. And in my mind, that cause became the cause of the Republic, somehow - I'm not sure how. But I have lived twenty years now, and done terrible things, all in the hope that it is so.
"I finished my studies in '16 and they put me straight into the line: a sous-lieutenant in the 2nd Infantry at Verdun. We went in up the Voie Sacrée: the living marching up one lane of the road, the broken and the dead carried down the other, each column without beginning or end as far as the eye could see. I was there for five months, just about. My platoon went over the top on October 4, and made it to a line of shell-holes halfway across No-Man's-Land before the fire stopped us. We could not go forward; we could not go back. We stayed there for nine days. Three quarters of my men died; the wounded could not be evacuated, and they drowned in six inches of mud at the bottom of their holes. A shell ripped my belly open. I held it shut with my hands. The next wave went over the top a half-hour later, and they made it twenty yards further than we had. So the medics got to me, and brought me out to the hospital, and I opened my eyes two days later quite surprised to still be alive.
"They gave me the Médaille des Blessés de Guerre and a few months' recuperation and they stitched up my belly and left this great mangled rope of a scar from one side of me to the other. And in April they sent me back into the line, even though there was still blood in my bandages every morning and I could not sleep at night without hearing the sound of wounded boys drowning in the mud. Two months later, at Reims, my men mutinied - May of '17, you remember. They would not, could not, go back into the line. But when they turned their rifles on me, I threw my revolver to the ground and tore open my uniform and showed them the bloody bandages still holding in my guts, and I told them the truth: because they deserved it, and because they would not believe anything else. It wasn't for the generals that we had to go back into the line, I said; not for the politicians or the tricolor or Marianne. It was for the villages that we all came from, the soft green gentle places that we loved. We went into the line - we held the line - so that the line would never reach our homes and loved ones. It was as simple as that.
"Then I fainted. The men picked me up, and when they went back into the trenches, they carried me with them. I remember how gently they held me. The generals gave me the Médaille d’Honneur Pour Acte de Courage et de Dévouement, and promoted me to lieutenant. But my wound had never fully healed, and it kept getting infected in the mud of the trenches, and my sergeant finally told me that I was no good to the men dead - no matter what I owed them, or what they owed me. So I put in for a transfer to the Aéronautique Militaire, and they sent me to pilot training.
"To fly - the exaltation of it, after two years in the trenches. To turn spins and loops and corkscrews; not to have to look down. At La Malmaison, I shot down three German fighters in three days, and when I crash-landed there were thirty-one bullet holes in my SPAD. I lost the last digit of my left middle finger - a fragment of the propeller snipped it right off. I was back in the cockpit three weeks later, and I was still there when the war ended - chasing the Boches out of Paris, where I shot down seven German aircraft in September and November of '18. I was an ace, and I received the Croix de Guerre, and they made me a captain even though I still could not sleep through the night. A week later, the Armistice came down. And then it all went to hell. I just didn't know it yet.
"You see, less that a month after the war ended, the Alawites rebelled in Syria, and my squadron was moved to Aleppo to respond. In retrospect, I wonder why I did not put in my papers like so many others and go home to Florac; I suppose I was still too shattered by it all to face home, to turn inward in that way. I was afraid, because I knew that home could not be the same. In any case, I flew reconnaissance under the desert sun for a few months before being shot down over Jebel Ansariyah. I wandered around the desert dying of thirst for three days before being picked up by an Ismaili tribe - they were on our side against the Alawites. We made our way back by camel to Aleppo, and once I learned enough Syrian Arabic - quite a bit different from Algerian - the Bedouin and I became fast friends, and they taught me a great deal about the desert: where to find water, how to navigate, how to spot danger on the horizon. I have fought a great many colonial wars since, and I have never again been fool enough to imagine that the rights and wrongs of those wars are
simple.
"That adventure attracted some attention. In Aleppo, I had a visit from Colonel Jean-Claude de Treville, Deuxième Bureau de l'État-Major Général - a high-ranking official in French military intelligence, who has been my dear friend and political patron ever since. Treville was going to Warsaw, to help the Poles hold off the Soviets. This was still a few months before the Le Havre Mutiny. Treville offered me a place in Deuxième Bureau if I would go along with him. I said yes - because somehow, the idea of being a spy made me feel young again, and I had not been young since Verdun. And by that strange, silly reason hangs the tale of my entire life.
"Off we went to Warsaw. I learned basic Polish in three weeks of frenzied study, while the Russians stormed closer to the city and the Polish Army melted away. By the time they reached the Vistula, all pretense that we were merely observers had melted away, and French officers were helping to coordinate Polish troop movements and artillery. I stood on a ridge above the river, Soviet shells crashing left and right, and scribbled grid coordinates onto scraps of paper for runners to send back to the heavy guns. One of these medals, the Médaille Militaire, they gave me for that. But mostly, I remember how clean and honest and honorable it felt, for we were helping the Poles fight for what was indisputably theirs against men who were indisputably bullies, and everything my family had taught me let me know that I was on the side of God in this matter. And when we won, that seemed like confirmation - for what else could you call the Battle of Warsaw but a miracle?
"The day after the battle, I got a letter from Florac. A right-wing mob had burned down the ancient whitewashed Huguenot church, my mother said; then a left-wing mob had stolen all the horses from the chateau stables. She was taking the good china and my sister and going to the estate in Algeria. 'Just until things settle down,' she said. Treville and I went back to France, and the day our train pulled into Paris, the Communists took Le Havre.
"The next six months were a blur. I fought house to house at Amiens with men whose only uniform was a tricolor armband, and then flew a SPAD to cover the retreat to Paris, and then spotted for artillery from the steeple of a church in Saint-Denis, and then got shot in the back - through and through just beneath the collarbone - when we had to pull back into the city. I remember riding in the sweltering darkness of an armored train down to Marseilles and hearing bullets hammer against the wall at my back. In Marseilles there was another mutiny - a fascist cabal in the Army this time, the OAS, determined to sabotage the evacuation to Algeria and force us all to stay and fight for the Metropole - and we had to shoot our way through to the harbor ahead of a mob of thousands of women and children, with communist artillery coming down all around. An apocalypse, this: the end of a whole world. It was too overwhelming even for nightmares; there are times, in fact, when I wonder whether it is possible that I even saw such things at all, with my own eyes.
"Algeria was better, but not by much. The OAS was strong in the far west near Tunisia, and the communists incited risings among the Berbers of the mountains and the Tuareg further to the south, and then landed armored cars and trucks to support them. But in Algiers and Oran, the government-in-exile was able fairly quickly to restore order, and when I got to Mont-Olivet I found my mother and sister and childhood friends all safe and sound. Treville put back together what was left of Deuxième Bureau, and sent me to reconnoiter the country around Constantine and rally the Berbers there against the OAS. By the time I arrived, it was too late – far too late. Old comrades, men driven mad by Verdun and exile and the myth of the stab in the back – they took the city a few days earlier. I crept in under cover of darkness, and saw the bodies stacked like cordwood in the mosques and the synagogue, men and women and children, each with a small paper tag like we used in the Army for casualties. So that the OAS would know, when they were done, how many vermin they had exterminated.
“I scouted the mountains around the city, and helped to plan the assault, and I was there when we took it back. I tried to get out those that I could. But by the time we pulled down their tricolor and ran up ours, I knew there was precious little left of Constantine to save, and my heart was cold with dread for Oran and Mont-Olivet.
“The war in Algeria didn’t end, but by ’22 or so it had stabilized: there was fighting south of the Atlas, fast-moving desert fighting, but we controlled the coastal plain and the mountains where the people were. Treville sent me abroad instead, to sow confusion among our enemies. My first assignment was Vladivostok – there were still Whites out there in late ’22, and we wanted Lenin too busy with them to spend time building ties with the People’s Republic. So I brushed up my Russian and spent eight months running guns from Sapporo, mostly by aid to beat the blockade. That turned out to be lucky; in the chaos when the city fell, I was able to get out by plane, racing Cossack horsemen down the runway.
“Still, that operation accomplished its main goal, which was to keep the Reds busy. Others followed. I was in Cilicia for a while, trying to figure out why Turkish ultranationalists knew where to find our convoys between Mersin and Adana. That led to a bit of pure romantic silliness: a love triangle with a White Russian émigré and an Ottoman intelligence officer. The whole business was a farce. I dueled the Ottoman, got shot by the countess – who was actually a Soviet spy who had tracked me from Vladivostok – and was credited by Treville with succeeding only because I ended up as the last man standing.
“Morocco was after that. More war than spy work, that, and a grim war at that: the Rif tribes rebelled, and I spent four months flying ‘ground support’ – strafing villages before the goumiers moved in to clean up what was left. I started having nightmares again, and the fire at Verdun became the fire in the Rif when both were set before my mind’s eye. I asked Treville to give me something, anything else to do. He sent me to Fez, to figure out where the rebels’ guns were coming from. That was where I met Amira: she was Jewish, and Moroccan, and her family had been powerful merchants in Fez since the fifteenth century. She cracked the smuggling ring more than I did. At first, I thought we were using each other: I got her out from under the shadow of her family and the threat of an arranged marriage, and she got me to the gun runners. But by the time it was over, it was more than that, and she came back to Oran with me. Her parents were not pleased; but her father was – is – an odd man, as cosmopolitan in some ways as he is traditional in others, and pragmatic to a fault. When he saw that he could not change Amira’s mind, he gave his blessing. As for my family? Since 1914, I have been the Seigneur de Florac. My mother assented in prim Huguenot silence. My sister I honestly think was delighted.
“I know that I have told you scarcely anything of Amira herself. I am sorry for that. But the memory is – she was beautiful, and funny, and cynical, and fiercely protective of me: knew she was smarter than me, knew I’d get my romantic Gallic self into all sorts of trouble unless she was careful. She saw me very clearly. No one else ever actually has.
“We had a honeymoon in Greece, on a beautiful Ionian island. After two weeks Treville called me and told me to go to Sparta instead: the naval dockyard there was working on a new battlecruiser, supposedly very fast, and Deuxième Bureau wanted details: we owed the Ottomans a favor, in part because of my duel with their man in Adana. I bribed one engineer; Amira charmed another – quite chaste, but I blackmailed him anyway, with a newlywed’s vindictiveness. I was captured while trying to get close enough for a photograph, but only for about five minutes; before they could get me to a cell I made a break for it, and managed to set half the dockyard on fire to keep the guards too busy to pursue. This had the wholly accidental consequence of destroying the battlecruiser, putting me back in the Ottomans’ good graces and delighting Treville.
“Delighting Treville is always a dangerous thing to do. He repaid my hard work with a trip home: undercover, back to France, to extract a communist military planner who wanted to defect. Amira stayed back at Oran – she was pregnant with Aure – and I slipped ashore at Toulon dressed as a dock worker. Paris was horrible. Not brutal, you know – no guillotines, no lanterns laden with corpses, not even any grinding poverty: people seemed well-fed and well-clothed. But there was no light in it; no spark of flirtation or irreverence, no Parisiennes promenading in the latest fashion, no street artists hawking outrageous caricatures of politicians. The communists had done what all the bourgeoisie in the world had failed in: they had made Paris respectable, and its soul was gone.
“But the countryside was different. I got the defector out quietly, but his absence was noted, and we had to leap from a moving train outside Lyon to avoid communist police in the dining car. We ran hard, by car and then horse, across the Massif Central, and in the way I made it back to the only place I could think of: Florac. The villagers remembered me, and I wept when they explained that they remained as loyal to me as my family had always been to them. I stole back a few heirlooms from the chateau – now occupied by the local party chairman, to the disgust of all who still remembered the Camisards – and my old friends sent me down to Nice hidden in a truckload of cabbages. The defector and I rendezvoused with a seaplane and escaped the next week. I went back to Oran, and regaled Amira with the tale, and met my daughter.
“The next assignment was absurd. Treville would never have sanctioned it; but he was sick, fighting liver cancer, and though he finally won he was not at headquarters to countermand the order. I was to infiltrate a fascist conference in the Tyrol, where the Austrians and Italians were supposedly going to plan a joint strategy. I spent three months in Trent trying to figure out how to get close enough, and building an asset network who could report at secondhand. It was madness: informants everywhere, police raids constantly, hundreds of foreigners arrested on espionage charges never to be seen again. Like trying to work in a burning building. In the end, one of my informers got too scared, and the fascists broke down my door at four in the morning. I went out the window, broke my ankle on the landing, and began two months of castor oil, and water, and pliers. I promised myself I would last two weeks, to give my other assets time to escape, and I did; in fact, I got to three before the Italians started preparing to blind me, and then I broke and told them what they already knew anyway. They kept up the torture for a while longer anyway, and then threw me in a basement cell and left me there for eighteen months. I was released in a quiet exchange in ’31.
“It was not fun, of course. I don’t mean to sound more stoic than I am. But – somehow, it was not as bad as I had thought. I knew the game: they wanted to exchange me, or they would have shot me as soon as I broke. So it was just a matter of waiting, of surviving to a better day. I remembered my Virgil:
Dabit deus his quoque finem. And I thought of Aure in her mother’s arms, and knew that everything that really mattered in my life was safe, quite safe, waiting for me to return.
“It wasn’t. Amira had died five months earlier: a riding accident. Aure was six, and she barely knew me. I was shattered. I lay abed for a week, and wept, to broken even to drink; then I drank for a few days, but after that my mother and Hamid, the estate steward who had known me since I was born, hid all the brandy and called Treville. He ended up staying for a month. And surrounded by family and friends, I healed. I saw that the world had still so much beauty in it – but not Amira, never never never again, never again her smile and her slightly too-mean joke and the loving worry in her eyes afterwards. I mourn her still; I will never stop mourning her. But I walked among the olives with my daughter’s hand in mine: the olives that my grandfather planted, and Aure with her mother’s cheekbones and my mother’s eyes, and I felt my grief softly cradled in a love that was gifted across generations, and smoothed the jagged edge of life and death. I stayed for a year, and taught Aure Latin, and in the end I even let her ride her pony, though my heart beat like a timpani at the thought. I let myself slow down, and imagine other lives, other ways of being. In the end, when I went back to work, it was because I knew that it was what I wanted – not just because I had been running since the Great War, and didn’t know how else to live. The Republic is not perfect, but I love it, and it is my daughter’s inheritance no less than those olive groves. There is work do be done on its behalf.
“My first mission back tested that faith. I was flying out of Brazzaville to help suppress the Kongo-Wara rebels, embedded with a group of other French officers flying under mercenary colors. If nothing else, I assumed I could get some big-game hunting in, and I did. But I quickly discovered that the scheme was intended to provide deniability for acts that Algiers had decided were necessary, but illegal. I was prepared to go along with the torture of insurgents, to a point; but when my supposed colleagues started dropping mustard gas on villagers, I blew the whistle to Treville. He pulled some strings and got the operation cancelled. But it was too late for me, by that time; some of the other officers had taken a liking to the mercenary life, and shot me down seven hundred miles upriver from Brazzaville. I put my plane down in a jungle clearing barely wide enough to land, and made it back to Brazzaville on a decrepit riverboat hauling rubber, fighting off malaria and dengue fever and a man-eating crocodile that accounted for three of our crew. It felt good: a good adventure, dangerous and difficult but challenging and new and full of remarkable people and sights and sounds. I spent five months back with Aure, and went back into the field. She started writing me letters when I left, at least twice a week, and she has kept it up ever since.
“My last mission – before this one, before Marmara – was Spain. I was posing as a mercenary again, fighting with the communists – yes, I know, but Franco had ties to the OAS, and they were considered a bigger problem. Besides, this way I could keep an eye on the People’s Republic and its influence in the Red Spanish forces. It all came off almost without a hitch, right up to the very end. I flew more than thirty missions, mostly air superiority or interception, and my antiquated dogfighting got more practice than it had in almost two decades – it is still antiquated, to be sure, but now it is at least both antiquated and effective. I also recruited an agent in the Red radio corps who sent me transcripts of every major broadcast from Paris. In the end, he shared this fact with the wrong women, and as I came in to land at the end of a mission half the guns on the airstrip opened up at me. I peeled away, ran hard for Gibraltar, glided in the last fifteen miles when I ran out of gas, and crashed on the promenade. The governor hosted me in quite good state for a week, and sent me home to Oran with his Brittanic majesty’s compliments, which ticked Aure quite pink when she heard about it.
“And now I am here: a new plane, a few thousand extra American dollars in my pocket, a lovely apartment in the backstreets of the Galata Hill, and tidy little letters from Aure twice a week, telling me how this year’s olive oil press is coming. My orders are to do what I can to keep Marmara on its feet, and I don't have to be too shy about who I am or why I'm doing it; direct intervention by the Republic would invite Greek escalation, but it's just as well if Athens knows that Algiers has taken an interest in Marmara's survival. No one in the shadows will believe that I am just on leave from my unit, and that is exactly how Deuxième Bureau wants it. My presence, however deniable, still sends a message.
"As I look back on it, I am grateful for this life that I have led – more grateful than I expected. There has been loss in it – of youth, innocence, country, love. There has been torture and nightmares and grief. But oh, I have known such riches too: of adventure and romance and love and family and friends. Should there be more to come, I have not had my fill of life yet; should my road end here, I think that few men could have done more living in thirty-nine years than I. Either way – I am grateful.”
+++Why You're Here: “The Republic called; I answered. Less poetically? This is my profession – not my first mission posing as a mercenary, and it will not be my last.”
+++RP Example: STAND-IN-THE-LINE-OF-FIRE (DO NOT REMOVE)