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his accusations against the conspirators. That they were full of exaggerations and lies. Somehow he hoped that this plea would affect Rocca, but a few minutes later, after a clerk had read aloud Rocca’s damning deposition, the court asked the witness if he affirmed the statement. Rocca simply nodded.
    As he had initially, Malevergne argued that whatever was discussed between him and his fellow conspirators, it had been just that: discussions. No actions had ultimately been taken to get the Belgian pilots out of Morocco. He was guilty only of talk. Unfortunately, that was enough to send Malevergne’s case to trial.
    The river pilot was whisked by rail back to Casablanca. As he passed through Port Lyautey on the ride to Casablanca, the train made a ten-minute stop. Malevergne’s heart ached at the thought that he was just a few miles from his wife and that it might be a very long time before he saw Germaine and his boys again. It might be never again. He sawa railroad employee in the city, an old friend, andleft a message for his family:
Please tell my wife that I was in the station this morning and taking a plane from Casablanca in a short while
.
    In Casablanca, Malevergne was taken by car from the train station to the airport, where he and half a dozen of his conspirators, including, again, Paolantonacci, Brunin, Brabancon, and Allegre, as well as the Portuguese captain of the
São José
, boarded an Air France plane bound first for Oran and then for Algiers, all on the way back to Vichy, France.
    In Algiers they were kept overnight in a prison whose warden was a former resident of Port Lyautey and gave the group a decent reception. Unfortunately, the Portuguese captain misunderstood these kindnesses. He thought they constituted the sort of soothing gesture that a priest offers to a condemned man before a coming execution. The captain became slightly unhinged and could not be convinced by Malevergne and the others that there was no illusion here; the warden was simply being nice. The morning could not come quickly enough, and they were escorted to another plane for the last leg of the journey to France.
    After landing in the city of Vichy, the prisoners were transported to the nearby city of Clermont-Ferrand, home of the Michelin Tire Company. They found themselves jailed in a crowded prison of 260 inmates, crammed into a facility meant for fewer than 200. The prisoners had come from all over the colonies, from French Equatorial Africa to French West Africa to Morocco and Algiers. All of them had been, in Malevergne’s words, “compromised in the affairs of the Resistance,” but they came from all types of backgrounds: some were thieves, spies, or deserters. “A lady of light morals” named Betty was also incarcerated. Some, like René Malevergne, were simply categorized as “incorrigibles.”
    New prisoners arrived from Morocco on a regular basis, including the Port Lyautey orchestra conductor and two women who were acquaintances of Malevergne: a Madame Mikaeaf and a nurse named Miss Krener. There was a daily flow of inmates into and out of the prison. Those who went to trial and were convicted were immediately replaced by newcomers, so that the overall total of inmates remainedpretty steadily around 260. To keep up their spirits, prisoners would invent songs of honor for each prisoner as he or she was taken off to the court for trial.
    The “dean” of the group was Pierre Mendès-France, a former under secretary of state for finance (and future prime minister of France), who offered counsel to prisoners awaiting trial, including Malevergne. Mendès-France, who would soon become Malevergne’s cellmate, was not optimistic about the river pilot’s fate, nor was he sanguine about his own. Regarding Mendès-France’s own situation, at least, Malevergne agreed. The charges against the former minister were trumped up and had no basis, but as Malevergne recorded in his diary, because Mendès-France was a politician