Sahara Adventure Series

10. MADEMOISELLE JULIE-1

Captain Gaston Lefevre, the middle-aged Frenchman with his grey temples and tired eyes, once more pulls the bottle of cognac across the top of his bureau towards him. He pours the drinking glass half full and gulps it down with two swallows. Then he leans forward, rubs his eyes hard, and shakes his head with impotent and desperate tension. Like during the previous four days, he involuntarily listens every second for when the door to his office will be opened and for the orderly to enter with a new message.

He rises and slams his fist down on the table in a fury. He is impervious to the pain caused by the hardwood, as alcohol has numbed all his senses. That is, except for the dull pain he is experiencing because his daughter has gone missing. Captain Lefevre pulls the radio communication message towards him again. He must have read it several hundred times during the past few days.

Commanding Officer Dini Salam to Lefevre Fort Laval. Your daughter, Julie, is missing from Europa Hotel. An extensive investigation is underway. I will regularly keep you posted. Colonel Le Clerq.

Just that and nothing more, and since he had received the message, they have sent a radio message every day, saying that the search for Julie Lefevre continues.

And here he is, trapped in the fly-infested Fort Laval, hundreds of kilometers away from Dini Salam, with a small garrison of roughly thirty soldiers. And he, a captain in the French Foreign Legion!

But that is what a bottle of alcohol can do to a man… If your superiors think you are drinking too much, you get sent to a nest like this to hold the command of over thirty soldiers. You are sent to a remote part of the Sahara, the foremost post of the French authority, amid this immeasurable, unfriendly, and dangerous sandy wilderness.

Gaston Lefevre rises quickly, hobbles to the window, and stares over the desert. While he is squinting his eyes to cut the glare against the bright heat waves dancing over the sand swells, he wishes there was something he could do to look for his daughter. If only he could do something! But what could he do from this godforsaken and out-of-the-way place? He only has thirty men at his disposal, and he does not even have the faintest clue where she could be.

He grabs hold of the iron bars in the window, and for a moment, he feels as if he could break them out of the stone walls. He and his garrison would have been relieved a couple of days from now, and they would have returned to Dini Salam. There he would have met up with his only daughter, who had specially flown from Algiers to come and see him. After the death of his wife last year, Julie is all he has left now. The grey-haired captain hangs his head and feels the tears burning in his eyes.

“What have I done to deserve this?” He gives a short gasp and tugs helplessly at the iron bars. He turns around and totters back to his bureau. Sagging down onto the chair, he pulls the cognac closer once more. Cognac is the only thing giving him hope and courage right now during this terrible crisis he finds himself in.

Yesterday he had asked permission by radio to lead a search party out of Fort Laval. He had been very aware of the fact that it would be futile, as he had no idea where his daughter could be, but he had been going crazy with the waiting… hour after hour, and day after day. The fear and uncertainty gnaw at him constantly.

The answer to his request had come through Paul Le Clerq, Commanding Officer of the main garrison in Dini Salam. It had been a short and pertinent refusal, accompanied by a strict order. Under no circumstances was he allowed to leave Fort Laval.

For that reason, Gaston Lefevre now pulls the cognac bottle closer again without taking the trouble of using a glass. Instead, he drinks directly from the bottle.

“Orderly!” he shouts in a very unprofessional way, and as soon as the frightened orderly’s head appears in the doorway, he roars. “Go to that damn marconis, and find out if there is any news yet!”

The orderly jogs towards the radio room. He thinks it has to be the hundredth time that he has to walk there without need, as every time a message comes through, the marconis immediately sends it to the commanding officer.

Moments later, the orderly appears apprehensively at the door of Lefevre’s office and salutes energetically. “No further news, mon Capitaine,” he announces humbly.

mon CapitaineLefevre starts laughing, and it is an ugly, cynical laugh. It is the laughter of a drunken man, echoing through the small office, hitting the walls, and drifting away in the heat. He struggles upright, slaps the cognac bottle from the bureau, plucks out his revolver, and shoots blindly through the window’s iron bars.

The frightened orderly shut the door without ceremony and stood trembling still for a few seconds. He waits on the next outburst of the captain.

“Orderly! Cognac!” the captain shouts from inside the office, and he quickly runs to the officer’s mess to get a new bottle. Upon his return, Lefevre’s head is on his arms on the table. He slowly swings his head from side to side while repeatedly mumbling his daughter’s name.

When he looks up and sees the orderly before him, he says very softly. “Julie… My Julie… She is all I have left.”

“Qui, mon Capitaine” are the only words the orderly can think of. He cannot understand how this can be the same man… This man under whose command he had once fought his way out of an ambush by the Arabs.

Qui, mon CapitaineThat very same day, this Captain Lefevre had set an example for them with his death-defying braveness, and it had not been something one of them would ever make off lightly.

But although he is sitting here like a child now, with his red, dull eyes and trembling hands, the orderly understands the situation perfectly. Naturally, therefore, he merely salutes respectfully before leaving.

* * *

Private Zoelak is a Russian. Once in Ukraine, he had dealt a blow to the neck of a communist commissioner with a shovel. After that incident, he reckoned the French Foreign Legion would be the safest place for him. At this moment, though, while patrolling in the scorching sun on the guard gantry of Fort Laval, he is not thinking about that long ago day next to the cornfields in Ukraine. Instead, at this moment, he thinks about what distorted miracle could have created the Sahara, this wilderness of heat, loneliness, flies, and hardships.

He looks sideways up at the sun. It cannot be too long anymore until he gets relieved. Sighing gratefully, his heavy boots beat a rhythm over the worn board of the gantry behind the battlements of Fort Laval. He is entirely unaware of the Lebel rifle hanging from his right shoulder and that he is supposed to stand guard. He can only think about the huge amount of money he owes private Petacci, the small Italian man.

This afternoon, after he has finished with his guard duty, he will go and play some more cards. A full three months of his service pay had already been pawned to this sly little gambler, but this afternoon Zoelak wanted to try to turn the tables and win back some of his money. He is not prepared to fatten Petacci anymore with his own money!

Zoelak makes his round on the south corner of the battlement, clicks his heels, and swings around. He stops and looks to the west momentarily, but it is more out of habit than anything else. It is his strict discipline surfacing up from his subconscious. This discipline teaches you to be alert in the Sahara because the hidden danger lurks here. It is like the elusive sand adder, which is difficult to see but will bite you on your ankle when you are not alert enough.

When Private Zoelak looks to the west, he freezes. His eyes become narrow, and his heart gives a jolt. Involuntarily, he grabs tighter onto his Lebel rifle. He swings around and runs towards the side of the gantry, but then he stops again. He turns to the battlement and looks at the object before him. What on earth? He had never seen anything like that before in his life. And yet, it is a horseback rider. It has to be, but the thing looks so strange. It seems the rider is sitting stiffly in the saddle, nearly like a doll made of wood. Moreover, it appears like a woman from here, but a woman in this part of the Sahara? It is nearly impossible.

He walks up against the battlement and squints his eyes even further. He peers through the shimmering heat waves over the plain, stretching from the fort up to the far circle of the dunes surrounding Fort Laval. It is these dunes that cut this fort even further off from the rest of the world.

“Upon my word! What kind of rider is this? It makes no sense,” private Zoleak thinks to himself.

Zoelak turns around and jogs to the side of the gantry. “Attention! Attention! Attention!” he shouts in French toward the guard room on the other side of the square inside the fort.

Attention Attention Attention “Rider due west… rider due west… it looks like a woman.”

The sergeant of the guards bursts out from the guard room with binoculars in his right hand. He runs towards the stairs leading up to the battlement. The other guards, who had been just as sleepy as Zoelak, are also now looking at this phenomenon. They cannot determine either what is going on.

Sometimes it appears as if the thing is drifting on the heat waves, but all the same, it is quite clear it is a horse approaching the fort. It is also evident that somebody is sitting on the horse’s back, and it is relatively apparent the person is a woman.

The horse moves in such a strange manner, as it is not coming directly at the front. Instead, it walks this way, and then it walks that way, and then it stops again. Once the horse looks back, it nibbles again here and there on the sparse camel bushes growing in the desert. Then, it starts walking innocently toward them once more.

Sergeant Zhakof, the giant Russian officer of the guards, comes and stands with his legs far apart next to Zoelak, his fellow countryman. He places the binoculars before his eyes and looks intently at this spectacle.

“Mon Dieu!” he finally says. “That is the strangest rider I have ever seen. From here, it looks like a woman rider, but the figure is rigidly sitting. I am quite sure the rider cannot be alive.”

Mon Dieu “Is it not… is it not perhaps the Capitaine’s daughter, mon Sergent?” Zoelak asks.

Capitaine’smon Sergent Zhakof removes the binoculars from his eyes and looks shocked. Suddenly, sweat gleamed on his tanned face, and he paled visibly. He looks at Zoelak with uncertainty, and then he stares at the phenomenon out there in the desert once more.

“Mon Dieu,” he whispers. “I hope not.”

Mon Dieu Zhakof is an impulsive man. He grabs Zoelak by his shoulder and orders him. “Go and fetch that horse, Zoelak, and hurry up!”

The surprised Zoelak looks at the sergeant with uncertainty.

“Do not worry. We will protect you,” Zhakof assures him. “Do not be frightened, devil child and murderer of a commissioner.” Zhakof’s eyes flash, and Zoelak does not wait around any more. He knows this giant of a man’s temper, who would think nothing of hitting you over the head with a Lebel when he loses his temper.