Free State of Siege by Eric Ambler

so. We know too much.”
    “What do we know?”
    “That this is their headquarters. He spoke of other officers who will arrive. That’ll be General Sanusi and his staff, I suppose. They knew Jebb was away. Having ear-marked this place for their headquarters, they may even have arranged that he should be. It’s logical enough. There aren’t many buildings in the city as strong as this one, and Sanusi would naturally want to be near the radio station. He’ll be using it quite a bit, I imagine.”
    “Do you think that they will kill us?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I think they will.” Her tone was quite even and matter-of-fact.
    “Why should you think that?”
    “They kill very easily. During the war of liberation I saw them. Men like that major. They smile and then they kill. For them it is easier to kill than to have doubts, to be uncertain.”
    She stood up and then went over and switched off the light. Outside on the terrace, the sentry turned his head quickly. Rosalie crossed to the window and drew one of the curtains so that the man could see only half the room. He stirred, and I moved across to watch him. He was waiting to see if the other curtain would also be drawn. When it was not, he relaxed.
    Rosalie had taken off my dressing gown and droppedit on the chair. The strong moonlight was visible even through the curtains, and I could see her standing there running her hands over her body as if she had never touched it before. Then she realised that I was watching her and laughed softly.
    “I saw the men with the
parangs
,” she said; “and I knew that if they killed you, they would also kill me, because they would not have been able to stop. So, I was ready to die. Now, I am alive again.”
    I went over to her. I think I meant to make some futile apology for having brought her there, but instead I kissed her.
    From far away across the city there came a sudden rattle of machine-gun fire. The sentry got up and went to look out over the parapet. We stood behind the curtain, listening. There were several more bursts of fire and one or two small explosions that might have been from mortars. After about ten minutes, the firing ceased and there was an uncanny silence. It was broken by a murmur of voices from the square below, and a series of crashes as the windows of the Air Terminal offices were knocked out. I guessed that the ground floor was being fortified against a counter-attack. Once, a truck whined and clattered along on the other side of the square, but otherwise the streets seemed to be deserted. A little before five, there was a glow in the sky from a fire which Rosalie thought might be in the neighbourhood of the police barracks, and, soon after,a single explosion just heavy enough to make the windows vibrate. It could have been a small demolition charge of some kind.
    When the first bout of firing had ceased, we had feverishly hurried into our clothes, as if we had overslept and were late for an appointment. There was, I suppose, a logical need for haste; Suparto had warned us to expect further visitors; but I think that the true reason was less rational. Until that moment, what we had been facing had been like a nightmare; terrifying, yet also unreal. The sound of firing had sharply disposed of the unreality, and we were left with our fears. Our scramble for our clothes was a scramble for cover of a different sort. We wanted to feel safer. In fact, we only felt hotter. After a time, we sat on one of the beds, and smoked and listened and sweated and suffered the twin ills that afflict everyone who finds himself on a battlefield: the knot of fear in the stomach, and the desperate desire to know what is really going on.
    Thanks, no doubt, to the treachery of Suparto and others like him, Sanusi’s army had been able to make its approach march in secrecy, and to mount an attack at a moment when the capital was almost unguarded. Surprise having been achieved, it seemed unlikely that General Sanusi would