The Predator

by Denis Pitts

  But even there, in that bright sunshine, away from the fury of the drawing room, the conversation was muted and unfriendly.

  The most determined efforts of the host to dispel the undisguised hostility could not move the two principal protagonists together. The great men continued to sulk. Becker worked assiduously to steer them away from politics. He talked about wines and ballet to the French President; and he found a common linking with the German Chancellor for a little-known restaurant in Hamburg; and he discussed the new tenor at the Naples Opera House with the President of Italy.

  The ice was beginning to melt. His efforts almost worked, until he tried to bring the British Prime Minister into the conversation by an oblique reference to the game of soccer. It was an unfortunate choice of subject. On the previous Wednesday, Britain had beaten France in the World Cup quarter-finals in a match which had led to widespread rioting.

  The abuse erupted again immediately; the Frenchman and the Briton were arguing over the validity of the single goal in the match when they sat for lunch.

  It was only then, around the table, that the atmosphere began to ease and the four men began, very slowly, to relax and to forget the events of the morning.

  This was due largely to the host himself, and to the food and the wines. He had allowed his guests just one drink of their own choosing. Then he demanded that they drink ice-cold Buck’s Fizz, which was made from a mixture of sparkling Galician new wine and freshly crushed orange juice. They drank this from pewter pint tankards, which had been wheeled out on a trolley packed with ice.

  “Of course, normally we would have used nonvintage champagne,” he apologized. “But I feel that one member of the present company might not like the mixture.” He smiled at the French President, who acknowledged the gesture with a grave nod.

  “Anyway,” said Becker. “Few people know of the enormous therapeutic value of this wine. I commend it as a drink on its own, served ice-cold and drunk preferably on the mountainside overlooking the Atlantic coast of northern Spain. I have arranged some of our own rather special vintage for later in the day. I think you will enjoy it.”

  The German Chancellor took a large swig from his tankard. He looked up and grinned broadly.

  “A most refreshing drink,” he said.

  “Gentlemen,” said Becker. “I realize that you have had a long morning. Please relax now and enjoy the lunch I have arranged. I have tried to suit all the national tastes. The smoked salmon was flown from the Hebrides this morning, Mr. Prime Minister. The wine which we shall be drinking with this will be a Bernkasteler Trockenbeemauslese of 1921, which, I am sure, will be to your taste, Herr Chancellor.”

  “If I remember correctly, Mr. Becker, that is the finest wine ever produced in my country. How on earth did you find it?”

  “Diligent research and a good merchant,” said Becker casually. “Actually, we bought the last case known to be in existence in an auction at Christie’s in London three years ago.

  “We will be following the salmon with an Italian treat which I know is very much to the taste of the President. This morning I drove down to the fishing harbor and succeeded in getting some gamberetti, which to my mind are the most delicious shrimps in the world. The taste you will not find this side of heaven.

  “And I thought you would enjoy a glass of real Capri wine from my own vineyard, a wine superb in its simplicity and perfect with seafood.”

  The four statesmen drank contentedly from their tankards.

  “And then something special which Monsieur Jouet, whom I have imported from the Negresco in Nice, is preparing for us. I am sure that the wine will be entirely to your taste, Monsieur le President. It is a Chateau Lafite, 1947, and I assure you that there is nothing quite like this in any cellar anywhere in the world.

  “Come, gentlemen, let us eat.”

  4

  The instructors at Camp Five, as it came to be known, were drawn partly from the political wing of the army that had seized power under Colonel Nasser, but mainly from the regular Egyptian army, mostly British-trained veterans of the Palestine campaign.

  The day began with reveille and the call to prayer five hundred children and their instructors prostrated themselves on the parade ground and chanted passages from the Koran. Then they were given their first meal: thick cereal eaten with sweet preserves.

  Most of the boys thrived. The skinny put on weight and muscle, they enjoyed the exercise, even forced marches across desert shrub without rest or water. After a few weeks, their daily recital in shrill voices of their hate for Israel and love for Nasser rang convincingly true.

  Jean-Paul Becker could have thrived also; but his introduction to Camp Five had been too traumatic. This, combined with the fearful loathing he had developed for Mustapha Fahmy, the sergeant-teacher, made him sullen and uncommunicative and disliked by the other boys.

  They tried to bully him, but he was stronger than many of them, and showed, besides, a considerable flair for self-defense. They stayed clear of him, preferring to shout “blue eyes” at him from a distance, or to spit on the back of his uniform while they marched. He took all of this with equanimity. He could never quite understand why his blue eyes, which had always been admired by the girls in the brothel, should now be a matter for insult.

  He was ahead of all of them at schoolwork, coping with French and English as extra subjects, as well as the essential Arabic.

  Politically, even under the sarcastic, sneering Sergeant Fahmy, he wrote the most vitriolic essays. He had mastered enough knowledge of recent history to fulminate in his exercise books about “Wall Street Jewry and International Zionism,” much to the admiration of the instructors.

  And he was fast to pick up soldiery. At unarmed combat, he learned to throw and boot his opponents in the groin; and he learned armlocks, weak points, killing holds — and the art of gouging out eyes and ripping off ears.

  With the other boys he was marched to the Port Said butchery quarter, where he was taught to cut a sheep’s throat and let the hot blood run through his hands while the other boys shouted “Revenge — revenge — revenge.”

  He learned to stab a man in the back with a slender stiletto — “Upward, child, through the ribcage, always slide it upward.”

  He learned to parry a bayonet thrust; and he learned to go without food or water in the burning heat of the Sinai for seventy-two hours, twenty-four hours longer than any of his classmates.

  At the age of six years and nine months, Jean-Paul Becker was a trained, skilled and remarkably proficient killer.

  He had learned that hatred was synonymous with killing; but there was no one at Camp Five concerned with the morality of teaching blood and death to six-year-olds. And so, with simple logic, he decided that because he hated Sergeant Fahmy, he would kill Sergeant Fahmy.

  *

  Nasser was coming to Port Said. For two weeks before his visit, the whole of the modern section of the town was scrubbed and sprayed and painted. His picture appeared in every window garlanded with flowers and slogans that required all the great wealth and richness of the Arabic language to produce the level of obsequity in which the Egyptians of that time excelled.

  Great billboards grew to cover waste lots and foul-smelling slums. They too bore the twenty-foot high photographic enlargements, in appalling color, of the smiling father of the revolution.

  It was so typical of that regime. For all the prolonged thunderings, the ever-present clichés about socialism, social democracy, social equality, freedom, fraternity and love, it was still no more than a traditional visit by Caesar, who came to take his tithe in organized adulation and a synthesized appearance of progress by his groveling proconsuls in a distant province.

  The small Jewish quarter of Port Said became a sealed-off ghetto; the synagogue was closed to avoid any question of Israeli assassination plots. Several hundred men and women were arrested on the morning of Nasser’s arrival and put quietly away until an hour after his departure.

  Loudspeaker sy
stems blared along the main streets; and all the brass bands of Port Said made a bizarre cacophony as they rehearsed music composed especially for this occasion.

  The major who commanded Camp Five appeared before the assembled boys and announced, his voice tremulous with excitement, that they were on the President’s itinerary. Marching and countermarching exercises would be doubled.

  New uniforms were issued. The boys were thrilled. With intense energy and concentration, they renewed the barracks with fresh paint and eager polishing that lasted through half the night.

  The details were handed out. Some children would stand at the railway station to greet the President with roses, which they would strew at his feet. Others, the older ones, would march in the parade with the army and navy.

  Jean-Paul was selected for a demonstration of unarmed combat. It was rehearsed every day for a week. Ten youngsters would take on ten instructors, and the star of the final showpiece would be little Jean-Paul.

  “Now, beloved President, we show how the smallest child will fight for the Fatherland and for his President against even the biggest Israeli coward and bully,” the loudspeaker voice would say.

  Sergeant Fahmy, wearing the blue Star of David on his gym vest, would come hurtling across the sand at the diminutive Jean-Paul. He would be holding a bayonet in his hands and would stab it directly at the boy’s heart.

  Jean-Paul would sidestep and parry and use all the force and momentum of the fat man’s run to throw him over his shoulder, to land heavily on the ground behind him.

  Then he would hold him down with a simple armlock. After this, his foot firmly on the quivering man’s gut, he would offer Fahmy as a “prize” to the President.

  For the sake of safety, a piece of wood was used instead of a bayonet at practice.

  On the great day, Nasser, heavily medaled, sat beaming with delight at the camp boys’ marching and physical-training displays.

  He had had a great reception in Port Said. It was a vital time for him. Many of his innovations had been disastrous, tried as they were on a backward, conservative country. But here, in the youth of his country, was something which was actually working.

  The unarmed-combat display was coming to an end now; and the small figure of Jean-Paul bounded out from the ranks of the other boys. He took his place on a training mat. The announcer began his commentary.

  “See the cowardly Israeli,” he said.

  Fahmy, acting well, lurked furtively.

  “See a trained, alert and vigilant young son of the revolution.”

  Jean-Paul stood smartly erect, pretending to look into the distance, shading his eyes from the sun.

  “See how an Israeli attacks — always from behind,” said the announcer.

  The audience of several thousand watched as Fahmy started to creep toward the boy, the bayonet raised, glistening in the afternoon sun. Women in the audience began to scream.

  Jean-Paul turned, exactly on the cue he had been given. He saw the great bulk of the sergeant, racing toward him now like a maddened wild animal.

  He should have sidestepped, parrying with his left wrist. Instead, with complete coolness, he stood quite still and reached up at the bayonet, pulling its point downward and moving back quickly with one foot extended in Fahmy’s path.

  The bayonet slid between their two bodies and entered Fahmy’s belly just above the navel. Even as he fell, flopping noisily on the ground, he was screaming.

  The little boy stood over him, his hands streaming blood. There was a look of utter pride in his face; and he began to shout “Revenge! Revenge! Revenge!” in a voice which could be heard all over that parade square.

  Then he turned, stamped his foot firmly on Fahmy’s face, and saluted the President of Egypt.

  *

  He ran that night, squeezing his body through the narrow glassless window of the detention hut and ripping his hands as he climbed the barbed-wire perimeter of the camp.

  Now, in the desert, he saw the distant lights of the ships in the Suez Canal and made his way across the sand toward them.

  He slept that first night in a plantation by the canal and lay there, shaded by the trees, for the next day, watching the ships slide slowly along past him. On the freighters sailors painted and scrubbed; on the big cruise liners there were deck parties and the laughter of the passengers.

  He bandaged his hands with the scarlet cravat and with palm leaves and wide esparto grass; and sometimes he cried out with pain as the giant desert ants found a wound and fought with one another to feed on it.

  That evening he made his way along the canal bank until he found himself in the outskirts of the town. With all the stealth he had been taught at Camp Five, he negotiated the well-guarded harborside and cut his way, flitting through the city by night, silent in his bare feet, across the lines at the railroad station to the alleyway which led to his old home.

  He raced across the courtyard as dawn began to break. He started to tug violently at the bell. He waited a long time. A woman’s voice screamed from inside, “Go away — we are closed.”

  It was a strange voice. But he persisted at the bell.

  The door opened and he saw the giant Nubian woman wearing a thin cotton dressing gown. She carried a long knife. She looked out angrily and then looked down and saw the small boy.

  “Go away, brat,” she shouted. She waved the knife at him. “Scrounging for piasters at this time! Fuck off!” She spat at him accurately.

  He stood alone in the courtyard.

  Had he been a few years older, or, indeed, had there been any point in his young life when he had been given even a hint that there was a difference between right and wrong, or even that these existed, Jean-Paul would have been able to see the enormity of his position that morning. He was, after all, a deserter, a traitor to the revolution — and he had disgraced his camp in front of the President himself.

  The stabbing of Sergeant Fahmy had been premeditated; but then the teaching at Camp Five encouraged cunning and forethought. He would have done it before, except that this was the first time a real bayonet had been introduced.

  Actually, it was most unlikely that he would have been charged at all. No one particularly liked the fat Fahmy; and the incident would almost certainly have been passed off as an unfortunate accident. Indeed, had Jean-Paul but known it, his zeal had earned the commendation of Nasser himself before the great man left for Cairo.

  But the boy had been locked up pending an inquiry; and while he was in the detention hut a gruff sergeant had told him jokingly that they would chop his head off. So he had run.

  It was light now, and he was still in his uniform. That, he reasoned, would have to go.

  A string of washing hung from a window of one of the apartments which overlooked the courtyard. He saw what he needed and started to climb a drainpipe toward it. The pain in his torn hands was almost unbearable. Often, in the course of his climb, he had to cling to the slender pipe with his knees to ease the agony.

  Slowly, he climbed until he was some forty feet above the courtyard. He reached out to the clothesline, grabbed a red-and-white-striped galabia and pulled until the clothes-pins gave way.

  A few minutes later, in a nightshirt, he was ready to merge with all the other nightshirted children of the town whom the revolution had missed and could no longer cope with.

  By listening to the other boys in the camp, he already knew about the difficulty of survival in the streets of Port Said. He had seen their emaciated bodies; he had heard their cries of fear during the nights in the dormitory.

  He would not, whatever happened, end like them.

  *

  For six months he lived by thieving. He stole with contemptuous ease from the bread barrows and from the glistening arrays of fruit in the Rue Lesseps. He eschewed the more easy targets — such as the swill bins at the rear of the Casino and Eastern hotels — preferring to slip, unnoticed, into the kitchens themselves, and race out into the street clutching hot croissants and great chunks
of meat, cooked or uncooked, which he would eat in the hideout he had made from ammunition cases in the shantytown quarter of Port Said.

  He had learned stealth; but now he was learning a more advanced kind of guile.

  Other children gathered in great gibbering gangs at the dockside to await the arrival of the tourist ships that brought day visitors seeking the tawdry souvenirs of the town.

  The other children would stand plucking at trousers and skirts, their cheeks deliberately sucked in, their eyes carefully saddened by sea-salt and sand. Some called for baksheesh; some clutched cellophane-wrapped packets of alleged dirty pictures.

  Jean-Paul stayed apart. He stood back and viewed each tourist with care, searching for the one face that would be his mark for the day. He looked for a particular combination of possible kindness and. wealth. Having made his selection, he followed the man or woman around town until he was ready to move.

  Sometimes it was an American matron. Sometimes a German returning with his family to look once again at the desert.

  The British were never good marks. Egypt and the Egyptians had created special words in the English vocabulary.

  He would wait for his mark to pause and look for some particular place or consult a guidemap. The boy would move forward shyly.

  “May I help you?” he would say quietly. He chose his language with care, usually able to distinguish an Italian from a Frenchman, always able to identify an American. He was fortunate in that he had a good number of languages to choose from.

  Usually his targets would wave him away as they had the other boys.

  That’s when he would strike. Drawing himself erect, he’d look them full in the face, hurt showing in his bright blue eyes, and announce: “I am not a beggar. I do not seek money. I sought only to help you. I apologize for inconveniencing you.”

  He would turn slowly and begin to walk away with great dignity.

  Seven times out of ten he would be called back and would end up spending the day as a tourist guide, being well fed and paid quite lavishly for his services. He also collected commissions from the stalls that he recommended in the bazaar.