They Call Me The Cobra

They Call Me The Cobra

Benson Lee Grayson

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI - EPILOGUE

CHAPTER I

They call me The Cobra. It is an epithet that I detest. It conjures up in my mind an image of something loathsome and deadly, something always ready to strike, suddenly and without warning. I hate this image because of what it conveys. I hate it even more because it is an accurate picture of what I have become. I have executed many people and tortured many more during my interrogations of them. I despise myself for doing this, but I have no choice. I do it only to preserve our revolution, to keep it faithful to the principles with which it was launched. Ideals that so many in our leadership have discarded.

Many times, I have thought of giving up my post as Chief of the Internal Security Service, which everyone calls the Secret Police. But, that would be foolish. Unless I can rely on the security apparatus that I control to protect my own safety, I would be easy prey for all those who hate me. Their number is legion. It includes most of my subordinates, certainly the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists I combat, and most senior officials in the Revolutionary Party and in our government. If I were not there, I would be replaced by someone even more vicious and cruel. And while I employ these tactics only to the extent necessary, my successor would do so for his own advantage. As for corruption, it would rise to the level it enjoyed before I took charge.

As Chief of the Internal Security Service, I am feared by the very people I am trying to protect. The merchants in the market, street vendors, students in their classes, and their professors all fear my organization and anyone associated with it. This dread is only natural. In my operations against the Islamic fundamentalist underground, I often secretly arrest, try, and execute those guilty of terrorist acts. Of course, all of this is perfectly legal, if you accept the legality of the State of Emergency Act, whose promulgation I personally achieved in order to more effectively counter the terrorists.

Usually, I hear myself being called The Cobra when it is shouted across the table at me by suspects I have sentenced to death. They spit it out at me, foolishly believing that they have nothing more to lose. They are wrong. If I wished, I could torture them so effectively that in only a few minutes, they would be pleading for me to stop. They would offer to say anything I wished, betray whatever secrets they might possess. I do not do so, of course. Despite my reputation, I have no desire to inflict pain. More important, it would serve no useful purpose.

As the head of the Internal Security Service, I am one of the three most powerful men in the country. Almost certainly, the most powerful. In theory, both President Abdullah and the Army Chief of Staff outrank me as generals. However, I have no doubt that, in a confrontation, I would be successful in eliminating either one. If they conspired against me, I would probably have some difficulty in dealing with them. I regard this as unlikely, but I carefully monitor their activities, to ensure that I can take effective counter-measures if they should conspire against me.

Officially, I am only a colonel, one of many. Several times, I have been offered a promotion to the grade of general. Part of me would like to see me become a general. As a child, I enjoyed playing with toy soldiers. I fantasized about becoming a general, as being another Alexander the Great, another Saladin, another Napoleon. However, I have always rebuffed these suggestions and will continue to do so.

I have always declined the offer of promotion for a reason. I would look and feel foolish in a general’s uniform, no matter how resplendent the epaulets on my shoulders and the gold braid on my hat. I am in my mid-sixties, slender, and with a shaved head to disguise my baldness. I am so ordinary looking that I do not attract a second glance when I walk through the streets of the capital at night, whether I am wearing western or native dress.

I am well aware that the promotion would increase the envy and hatred against me harbored by most of my subordinates. To adjust Lord Acton’s dictum to apply to my position, all power is hated, and absolute power is hated absolutely. As chief of the Internal Security Service, my power borders on the absolute, although I can rely on the loyalty of none of my subordinates. Most are venal and corrupt. This in itself does not cause me to remove them. Anyone I chose as a replacement would be equally corrupt.

My primary concern is that they do not plot against me, either individually or in groups. Only if I gather sufficient evidence to suggest that their loyalty is becoming suspect, or their venality is exceeding the limits I can accept, do I eliminate them. If this becomes necessary, I act quickly, ruthlessly, and effectively.

It is ironic that my youthful experiences were so different from what I do now. My father was a minor civil servant in the French Colonial Administration, rising to the highest grade permitted to a non-Frenchman. He had studied in France and, while there, married a French woman, who accompanied him back to his homeland when his studies were over. She nominally converted to his Muslim faith, but in reality, remained French in mind and action. She wore Muslim garb only when necessary to protect my Father from criticism by his family and friends

I remember how, as a child, she would often take me with her. She normally patronized the shops that served the French community. Sometimes, she would stop at a French café and order a French pastry for me and a glass of wine for herself, which she slipped slowly as she told me about her childhood in Paris.

She was not doing this to conceal her wine drinking from my father. Although, he was a Muslim and sometimes attended a mosque on Fridays, he was not a devout one. He permitted my mother to keep wine in our home and drink it as she chose, so long as she did it in a manner that would not give offense to our Muslim relatives and friends. He made sure that I was instructed in the Muslim faith, which I now find extremely useful. Although my religious views are probably closest to those of the French deists, my knowledge of Islam enables me to better understand their way of thinking and to more effectively counter their operations.

I grew up as an only child, a great rarity among the many families, both French and Arab, of which I was acquainted. My parents never revealed to me the reason I had no brothers or sisters. Perhaps they realized from their experience raising me just how difficult it was to blend the widely different French and Arab cultures and traditions into a single, functional individual.

When I reached school age, I was sent to the school attended by children of the French community. There, I was educated to live as a Frenchman in France. Then, and I do not know the reason, I was transferred after six years to a new academy. This school was attended by the children of the upper-class Arab community, many whose fathers were colleagues of my father in the French Colonial Administration. Some of the instruction was in Arabic, and the students were being prepared to work as mid-level officials in the local colonial government, or in French-owned banks and other commercial establishments. When I graduated, I went off to the local university, majoring in history.

My father had intended for me to join him in working for the French Colonial Administration. Although its top ranks were closed to us, it still represented the surest way of climbing to the top rung available to us. I surprised him by telling him that I would rather become a professor of history at the university. Although obviously disappointed, he acquiesced and supplied me with the funds necessary for me to travel to France, where I spent five years studying for my doctorate.

While in France, I met and fell in love with a female student named Nicole, the daughter of the mayor of a city in the Department of Alsace, who was also studying in the history department. I emulated my father by marrying her, although unlike him, I did not press her to convert to Islam. We were married in Paris in a civil ceremony, attended only by fellow students. With some misgivings, she agreed to return with me to North Africa. My mother welcomed Nicole warmly and treated her as her own daughter. My father was somewhat more reserved, but was certainly friendly toward her.

Nicole and I moved into a small house in an area largely populated by members of the French community, and I was quickly given a post teaching history at the university. I loved the work, was regarded as a good teacher, and was soon promoted to be an assistant professor of history, teaching courses in Modern History of Western Europe. At the request of the Chairman of the Department, I agreed to add a course on American History and so became somewhat proficient in that subject, certainly enough to give a decent course in it.

Nicole had no knowledge of Arabic, and so could not qualify for a teaching post at the university. Instead, she began teaching at a primary school serving the French community. After three years, she became pregnant and was obliged to leave, remaining at home as a housewife after our daughter, Jeanne, was born. I was thoroughly content, my only sorrow being the sudden death of my mother from a stroke. Her last words to me, as she lay dying, were, Please be careful, my son. Remember, you can always move to France if anything happens here.

She was undoubtedly prescient in this. The next year, the armed