Solo - Jack Higgins [6]
God, but he was cold. He stood up, went out and walked quickly through the streets, hands thrust deep into his pockets.
It was six o'clock in the morning when he returned to the apartment. It seemed grey and empty, devoid of all life. The piano lid was open, music still on the stand as he had left it. He had missed the examination, not that it mattered now. He sat down and started to play slowly and with great feeling that haunting little piece 'Le Pasteur' by Grovlez that he had been playing on the day of his grandmother's funeral in New York when Dimitri Mikali had arrived.
As the last notes died away, he closed the lid of the piano, stood up, crossed to a bureau and found his passports, both Greek and American, for he had dual nationality. He looked around the apartment for the last time, then let himself out.
At seven o'clock, he was on the Metro on his way to Vincennes. Once there, he walked briskly through the streets to the Old Fort, the recruiting centre for the Foreign Legion.
By noon, he had handed over his passports as proof of identity and age; passed a stringent medical and signed a contract binding him to serve for a period of five years in the most famous regiment of any army in the world.
At three o'clock the following day, in company with three Spaniards, a Belgian and eight Germans, he was on his way by train to Marseilles, to Fort Saint Nicholas.
Ten days later, together with a hundred and fifty recruits and a number of other French soldiers then serving in Algiers and Morocco, he left Marseilles on a troopship bound for Oran.
And on 20 March, he arrived at his ultimate destination. Sidi-bel-Abbes, still centre, as it had been for almost a century, of all Legion activity.
The discipline was absolute, the training brutal in its efficiency and designed with only one aim. To produce the finest fighting men in the world. Mikali flung himself into it with a fierce energy that drew him to the attention of his superiors from the beginning.
When he had been at Sidi-bel-Abbes for a few weeks, he was taken to the Deuxieme Bureau one day. In the presence of a captain, he was presented with a letter from his grandfather, who had been informed of his whereabouts, asking him to reconsider the decision he had taken.
Mikali assured the captain that he was perfectly happy where he was and was requested to write a letter to his grandfather saying so, which he did in the captain's presence.
During the six months that followed, he made twenty-four parachute jumps, was trained in the use of every form of modern weaponry, was drilled to a peak of physical fitness he would never have dreamed possible. He proved to be a remarkable shot with both rifle and handgun and his grading in unarmed combat was the highest in his class, a circumstance which caused him to be treated with considerable respect by his comrades.
He drank little and visited the town brothel only occasionally, yet the women there vied for his attention, a circumstance which had long since ceased to intrigue him and still left him supremely indifferent.
He was a junior corporal before he saw his first action in October, 1960 when the regiment moved into the Raki mountains to attack a large force of fellagha which had been controlling the area for some months.
There were some eighty rebels on top of a hill that was virtually impregnable. The regiment made a frontal attack that was only apparently suicidal for at the crucial point in the battle, the 3rd Company, which included Mikali, were dropped in on top of the hill itself by helicopter.
The fight which followed was a bloody, hand-to-hand affair and Mikali distinguished himself by knocking out a machine-gun post which had accounted for more than two dozen legionnaires and looked for a while as if it might ruin everything.
Afterwards, as he was sitting on a rock tying a field service dressing