Seeing

THEY ALMOST ALL CAME BACK. TO ECHO THE WORDS USED BY THE interior minister some days before when obliged by the prime minister to explain the discrepancy between the size of the bomb he had been ordered to plant and the bomb that had actually exploded, there was, in the case of this exodus, another grave failure in the chain of command. As experience has never tired of showing us, after long examination of many cases and their respective circumstances, victims not infrequently bear some responsibility for the misfortunes that befall them. Preoccupied as they were with political negotiations, none of which, as will soon become apparent, had been carried out at a high enough level to ensure the perfect execution of operation xenophon, the busy leaders of the committee had forgotten, or perhaps such a thing had simply never entered their heads, to check that the military would also be informed of their escape and, equally important, of the agreements they had reached. Some families, a half dozen at most, did manage to cross the line at one of the frontier posts, but this was because the young officer in charge had allowed himself to be convinced not just by the fugitives' repeated protestations of ideological purity and loyalty to the regime, but by their insistent declarations that the government knew about their retreat and had approved it. Meanwhile, in order to free himself from the doubts that soon assailed him, he phoned two other posts nearby, and his colleagues there were kind enough to remind him that their orders, since the begi