by Alan Furst
“Oh, yes, she sends her fondest regards.”
The colonel smiled, some nostalgia in his expression, memory of an old and treasured love affair. There followed the necessary prelude—the weather, the house and its peculiarities—then the colonel said, “So then, monsieur, what brings you to my house?”
“I had a strange experience the other day, a man fleeing the police gave me a drawing before he was shot and killed.” Ricard drew the engineering schematic from the inside pocket of his jacket.
The colonel found a pair of spectacles on a table next to his chair, put them on, and peered at the drawing. “A detonator, maybe for a German torpedo, where did it come from?”
“I would guess it was copied at an armaments facility, perhaps in northern Germany, where the workforce is composed of Polish slave laborers. Then it journeyed, I have no idea how, to Paris.”
“I can’t do anything with this document, Monsieur Ricard, but I think you should. The English will be glad to have it. In war, the smallest thing may be important, crucial, you never know, but getting it to them will not be easy. Still, I can send you in the right direction, to someone in Paris. But I am sure you understand how very dangerous it is for you to be in contact with such people. So, will you take the chance?”
After a moment, Ricard said, “Yes.”
The colonel nodded, then stood. “Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”
They left the house and walked across a field of wheat stalks; the colonel’s dog ran ahead of them, pawing at the brush, sometimes looking back with hypnotic blue eyes. “Nadine is hunting rabbits, she’s good at it, perhaps we’ll have lapin for dinner,” the colonel said. “Tell me, monsieur, did you serve in the military?”
“I was too young for the Great War, but in 1940 I was called up in May, sent to an infantry unit fighting near Soissons on the river Aisne. We had old Lebel rifles, the Model 1886, for the year of manufacture, so…we did the best we could.”
“Le Débâcle we call it now,” the colonel said, “everything went wrong, nobody really responsible, which is the worst merde of course. The politicians fought each other all during the thirties, fighter planes weren’t built, tanks were manufactured without radios, the tanks at least had treads, but the fuel trucks didn’t, now Paris is full of German tourists.”
“We held our own,” Ricard continued, “fighting on the river, old rifles and all, we never ran away. But then, the Panzer tanks appeared, the Blitzkrieg went right through us. My unit surrendered, they had us marching up some road, but, at nightfall, I took a walk.”
“Ah yes, the famous Blitzkrieg, lightning war, unstoppable. A Goebbels invention, that idea. The Germans had to win quickly, because they didn’t have gasoline for their tanks. Wehrmacht truck drivers were allowed only ten days’ practice. These boys came from the country, most had never driven anything, so now they’re trying to drive trucks on Russian roads.”
“What will happen there, do you think?”
A rabbit came scooting out of the brush, Nadine in close pursuit, but the rabbit found a hole and disappeared. The dog stood there, staring at the hole, then turned to look inquisitively at her master: Where did it go?
“The Russians will destroy the Wehrmacht—too many Russians, many are killed but more appear. It’s the same with tanks and warplanes. Hitler is deluded; the Germans don’t know it yet, but they’ll find out.”
When Ricard and the colonel reached a hedgerow that bordered the colonel’s property, they turned around and walked back to the house. After another cognac, the colonel said, “Why don’t you stay for dinner? We’ll eat early and you’ll just make the 9:07 back to Paris.”
“Thank you,” Ricard said.
“It will be good to have company. Now, it’s come time for me to help you with your diagram. But, please, everything I tell you is in confidence.”
“Naturally. One thing the occupation has taught me is to keep my mouth shut.”
The colonel nodded with approval. “There is a café, the Café Albert on the Rue Saint-Dominique in the Seventh Arrondissement: at four in the afternoon, approach the barman—it is the proprietor, Albert, who works that shift—and tell him you are seeking one Monsieur Duval, then sit down and wait; this may take some time. Eventually, you will be given a contact, likely an address where you will be put in touch with the people who will know what to do with your diagram. I would strongly suggest that when you enter the café you take a good look around—the Gestapo is known to be active in that quartier, drawn by the wealth and status of the arrondissement’s population.”
“I will be careful, Colonel.”
“Now, dinner, can you smell it?”
“I can.”
“Beef stew with potatoes and carrots, a specialty of my cook, especially since the occupation. At least you won’t have to use your ration coupons. We don’t eat so badly out in the countryside, especially when an old cow dies.”
* * *
—
17 October. His instructions from the colonel would have him at the Café Albert at four in the afternoon, so Ricard decided to make himself work for two hours, then leave for his rendezvous at three-thirty. He glanced at his watch, a few minutes after eleven. Get busy, he told himself, because this book won’t write itself. Ricard had a writer’s fantasy based on “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” where an enchanted broom sweeps the floor by itself. Perhaps, if he spoke the words of a magic spell, his typewriter would write his new novel while he watched. He stared at the Remington, but it just sat there. With an unvoiced sigh, he squared up his stack of blank paper, adjusted the position of his typewriter, and aligned two sharp pencils.
Now where was he? He always started his novels by writing an outline, which was supposed to spell out the entire book, but his effort never lasted longer than fifty pages. Still, he had to try. Working title: The Investigator. On his bookshelf there was the autobiography of a Parisian arson investigator, written in the 1930s. Many stories, and much technical description. So then, his new hero would be an arson investigator. Ricard named him Valois.
Valois is a confidential agent, a private detective, whose specialty is arson, and who works for insurance companies. In Paris? No, in Switzerland, in Zurich! That said insurance company to Ricard. A suspicious fire has burned down a factory. Where? In France? No, a more foreign sort of place. Maybe…Bucharest. Good. Valois would be sent, by his hardheaded despot of a boss, who always, at first, scoffs at Valois’s theories, to Bucharest. So he will go to Roumania on—what else?—the Orient Express.
Now, he would need a romance.
Ricard lit a cigarette, sat back in his chair, and gazed out the window for inspiration. Maybe, he thought, the larcenous rascal who’d burned down his factory would have…a wife? A much-younger wife? No, Valois was an honorable fellow, he wouldn’t sneak around, he wouldn’t chase wives. A lover? No, the same but worse. Give the factory owner a daughter, then. Who lived at home and took care of the household. Not, on the surface, a beauty. She would be educated, she would be—he hunted for the word—prim. He liked that word: prim. So, put her hair up in a bun, put her in eyeglasses, give her compressed, disapproving lips, the shape of her body unknowable in the severe suits she wears.
So, how would he seduce her? Ah, much better, he wouldn’t, she would seduce him, afraid that he knows the truth and Papa will be arrested. At least that is what she tells herself; in fact she has wanted Valois from the moment she first saw him.
TRAP!
What to do with Papa? Let him go? Not in Ricard’s detective novels or anyone else’s. So then, kill him. Ricard had killed off inconvenient characters for his whole career, but it had to be their own damn fault, their insatiable greed would prove their undoing, so au’voir. Satisfied, for the moment, with his outline, Ricard found himself musing over his night with Romany, was tempted to lie down on his bed for a while. However, he had to
work, so sat forward and returned to his outline.
* * *
—
Four in the afternoon. Ricard entered the Café Albert on the Rue Saint-Dominique and found it busy and loud. He looked at the patrons, as he’d been instructed to do by the colonel, but at first saw nobody who might have been a Gestapo officer in civilian clothes. Well, there was one, sitting at a table with an apéritif, who didn’t belong, but the Gestapo always traveled in pairs, and this cold-faced gentleman was alone.
Ricard waited at the bar until the barman—Albert the proprietor according to the colonel—came to see what he wanted. He ordered a beer, and wondered if Monsieur Duval had been in yet. He saw the recognition in Albert’s expression, then the proprietor said, “Your friend is waiting for you, at a toy shop called Le Petit Soldat on the Rue des Récollets, just across from the Gare de l’Est railway station. The shop is closed, but the door will be left open for you.”
The toy shop was indeed closed, the interior dark and still, but intact. There were shelves of soldiers, dolls and dollhouses, toy trains with stations and locomotive drivers, and more, all beautifully crafted in fine detail, made of tin and wood, while the soldiers were molded in lead. There were yo-yos, paddleball sets, wooden puzzles, and stuffed animals.
In a shadowed corner of the store Ricard saw a striking woman: thirtyish and dark with a gently curved nose and eyes almost black. She comes, Ricard thought, from the eastern Mediterranean, from Turkey perhaps. Stylish and poised, she wore a slate-gray raincoat and tight, shiny black gloves with gold buttons at the wrist, she could have, then and there, posed for the cover of a fashion magazine. Saying “Bonsoir, monsieur,” she moved toward him, and shook hands, the hand inside her glove warm and firm.
“Bonsoir, madame.”
She smiled to put him at ease and said, her voice low and husky, “Thank you for coming to meet me, would you please tell me your name?”
“Paul Ricard. And you are…?”
“I am called Leila.”
Leila, he thought. Perhaps a false name, perhaps not, but the sound of her name touched his heart.
She took from her pocket a sheet of stationery and a fountain pen, wrote down his name, then said, “I am told you are seeking to make contact with us.”
“Yes, that’s right. I was instructed to approach a fellow at a bar, he sent me here.”
“And can you tell me who instructed you, Monsieur Ricard?”
“A French military officer.”
“And his name was?”
“I’ll just leave it at that.” He smiled, she smiled. This was a spy game, rules had to be obeyed.
“Very well,” she said. “And what is your work?”
“I am a writer of detective novels.”
Now she smiled; this news interested her. “Titled, for example?”
“Oh, L’Affaire Odessa, for one.”
“And where do you reside?”
“On the Rue de la Huchette, number nine.”
“Well,” she said, “now that you’ve made contact, how can we help you?”
“I was given a certain document, there’s nothing I can do with it myself, but I believe it might be useful to certain people in London.”
“May I see it?”
Ricard took the schematic drawing from his pocket and handed it to her.
“How do you come to have this?” She emphasized the word you.
“A man, fleeing from the police, was shot down in front of me. As I tried to help him, he put this paper in my pocket. Then he died.”
“And how much shall we pay you for it?”
Ricard felt slightly affronted. “I don’t want anything.”
Leila was pleased, nodded to herself; this wasn’t an x transaction, this was a y transaction. “Then perhaps we’ll be in touch with you, perhaps you might help us.”
“I will. Whatever you need, just ask. You have my telephone number?”
“Yes, I have it.”
“Then you’ll call me.”
She met his eyes, then nodded slowly, saying, “Soon.”
“Does someone own this toy store?” Ricard said.
“Owned by Jews, at one time. They fled, if they were lucky. Or they were taken away.”
“Who ever thought that such a thing would happen,” Ricard said.
“There were those who did,” Leila said. “Throughout the thirties. Some of us knew, but nobody would listen to us.”
“Sad,” Ricard said.
“It is,” Leila said. “I will see you again, Monsieur Ricard.”
“Whenever you like,” Ricard said.
She left the store, walking quickly, turned up the street, and disappeared.
* * *
—
In Paris, the last day of October was a treasure: a bright sun, white wisps of cirrus cloud strung across the sky, and, all over the city, people were in a good mood, the commonplace exchanges of Parisian life—excuse me, you’re welcome; the elaborate, remercier version of thank you—delivered with intimacy and warmth. At nine the previous night, Ricard had listened to the French program of the BBC, volume down because you would be shot if they caught you doing it: the U.S. Marines were fighting on Guadalcanal, the British making headway toward El Alamein, the Germans again repulsed before Stalingrad.
In his garret, Ricard looked out the window at the busy life of the Rue de la Huchette—so much in Paris happened in the street. On the terrasse of the Café La Régence the tables were all occupied, a formally dressed older man was buying flowers, bargaining, but not too hard, for a dozen red gladioli, kids in short pants were playing soccer with a ball made of old rags, shouting at each other as they ran. In time, Ricard forced himself back to work. Do you like writing? he was asked quite often. A difficult question. He hated hard work, and writing was very hard work, at least for him. A shrug and I can’t really do anything else usually sufficed.
At that moment, he was toying with the character Valois, the arson investigator, in his novel The Investigator. He put a mustache on him, then took it off, then put it back. A shaggy mustache, he thought. Valois was his own man, good enough at his job to dress as he liked and say what he wanted. Tightly wired heroes weren’t much in evidence in Ricard’s detective fiction.
And then, the Bucharest problem—Ricard had never been there, so time for the Guide Bleu and Fodor’s On the Continent. A lucky photograph of a tram showed it painted red and yellow. He then installed yellow wicker seats—if some finicky reader knew different, well, too bad.
The telephone rang. People often disconnected their phones because the Gestapo could use them as microphones and hear everything you said, but Ricard disliked being cut off from the world and so kept his plugged in. He put the receiver to his ear and heard a woman’s voice, fraught with anxiety. “Oh, Paul, it’s your friend Leila, there’s something I need to discuss with you. I’m in the station buffet at the Gare du Nord, waiting for a train, but the train’s late, so we’ll have time to talk.”
“I’ll be right there.”
* * *
—
2 November, 1942.
At ten-thirty in the morning, Kasia changed into a moss-green sweater and slacks beneath a raincoat. She tried putting the Browning automatic in her pocket, but it made the coat sag, so she put it in the waistband of her slacks. Then she rode her bicycle to a branch of the Banque du Commerce on the Avenue Hoche, a block from the Courcelles Métro. She began locking her bicycle to a lamppost a little way from the bank, taking her time and looking busy while she waited for Jacquot and his friend Antek. Ten minutes later, walking fast, they arrived.
Kasia entered the building first, her job was to reconnoiter the bank and make sure nothing was different than on a previous visit. The bank guard was the same one as before: a stoop-shouldered little man with gray hair, a holstered pi
stol at his waist—likely not cleaned for years, she thought—shifting his weight as, hands behind his back, he stood to one side of the vault. Kasia approached the high counter, got change for a fifty-franc note, then left. Her reappearance was the signal for action, and she followed Jacquot and Antek into the bank.
Trouble right away. As Jacquot shouted, “Hands up! Nobody move!” the bank guard drew his pistol and fired at Jacquot, missed him, but hit Antek in the foot. Antek cried out and began to hop back toward the entry. Then the guard aimed at Kasia but hesitated, possibly reluctant to shoot a woman. Such chivalry cost him dearly, as Kasia shot him twice in the thigh. Jacquot grabbed the back of her overcoat and yelled, “Get out!” Turning to leave, Kasia found herself facing one of the tellers, terrified, scream stifled by a hand over her mouth. It was Paulette, last name forgotten, a former schoolmate at Kasia’s lycée. Now Kasia was truly in the merde, and she swore as she ran for her bicycle. Up the street, Jacquot was helping Antek into a taxi. She doubted the driver would forget them, and Paulette certainly wouldn’t forget her.
* * *
—
The waiting room at the Gare du Nord was crowded when Ricard arrived, the station buffet in one corner was busy, with people waiting to be served. Lost souls, with nowhere to go, nursed their coffees and read old newspapers they’d found left on the benches. Fugitive couples, trying not to be noticed, leaned toward each other in whispered conspiracy. Some of the people in the waiting room, headed to the countryside in search of food, held rolled-up burlap sacks and ancient valises, to be filled with potatoes, turnips, and carrots. Among the other travelers on the wooden benches, families leaving occupied Paris for occupied Lyons, hoping that life would be better there. Wehrmacht officers smoked and relaxed, knowing that the first-class carriages were reserved for them. Well-dressed businessmen checked their watches, fearing that their trains would be late. They feared also a train so overcrowded that the stationmaster would order it to leave early.
