During the course of the summer he too visited Paris, with the aim of obtaining a direct audience with Mendès-France or his Minister of the Interior, Mitterrand. But as it was the holiday season he was fobbed off with minor functionaries, who listened with apathetic disbelief when he warned them “if Algeria moves it will be in December”. By October Vaujour knew the whereabouts of the main bomb depot in the Casbah (which already contained some two hundred complete bombs). Momentarily he toyed with the idea of getting a double agent to plant a bomb detonating the stock, but was deterred by the loss of life that this would inevitably cause in so crowded a quarter.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 259