Under Occupation

by Alan Furst

  “Someone, I can’t imagine who, betrayed her, and the Gestapo sent one of their cars around. But she ran out the back door and I never saw her again. The Gestapo questioned me, but I didn’t tell them anything. They took a long time, a real grilling, but in the end I persuaded them that petite Suzette was in it by herself. I expect they are still looking for her.”

  “What did you tell them about Suzette?”

  “Only that she said she was going to shoot a German. I didn’t dare to tell them about the room, or the agents, then they would’ve taken me away.”

  True to his word, Ricard brought a thousand occupation francs to the shop later that day. Lolotte was mollified. “Now that’s the way to do business,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  Ricard resumed his inspection tour: to a cobbler in Bourges, then to a mansion, where the safe house was run by an eighty-year-old couple, in Limoges. Next he visited a farm run by two widowed sisters, husbands gone in the 1914 war, outside Périgueux; then to a small épicerie, grocery store, in a village near Agen; to a draper in Toulouse; finally to a bookshop in Perpignan, where the Pyrenees mountain border of Spain was visible from the train station.

  With one exception, Ricard thought, these were good and honorable people. They ran escape lines and kept safe houses because they hated the Boche, and they knew what would happen to them if the Gestapo discovered what they were doing, yet they persisted in the face of danger. The Gestapo could be stupid, but they could also be cunning. They set traps for the agents that spied, stole secrets, cut telephone lines, and assassinated German officers. In one case, the Gestapo set up their own escape line, north of Paris, and arrested agents who thought they were headed to Spain.

  As planned, Ricard was scheduled to meet with Adrian at the bookshop in Perpignan. This was owned by a gentle couple in middle age, the man with a white beard, who were virtual godparents to young students, struggling writers, communists, intellectuals, whoever needed the consolation of books. They had a carpenter friend, a veteran of the army, and he built them a clever bookcase, which slid aside to reveal a second bookcase. In the first, they stocked the shelves with children’s books, lives of the saints, and lengthy tomes that offered the reader ancient history, theology, and science. In the hidden bookcase, one would find the forbidden fruit: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Gide, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, François Villon, and Karl Marx. All of these deemed enemies of fascism, their books among those burned by the Nazis in 1933. Officers from the Propagandastaffel had visited the shop, found the couple mildly dotty but not dangerous.

  The carpenter who had built the secret bookcase had also designed a secret door, hidden by panels, in what had once been a wine cellar and was now a safe house. The couple brought Ricard down there, said, “Your friend is waiting for you,” pressed one of the panels, and there was Adrian.

  The couple left them to talk and went back upstairs. “Well,” Adrian said, “now you’ve seen the SHEPHERD line.”

  “I have seen it, one end to the other, it took me ten days.”

  “And that’s only one of many, there are dozens of others, all over France.”

  “I had no idea,” Ricard said.

  “Well, it’s what the British can do, right now, send agents to organize resistance, bring coastal raiding parties in by submarine, and bomb the Reich. ‘Set Europe ablaze,’ as Churchill puts it. Did you find anything amiss?”

  “There is a problem, I think, in Orléans. I had to bribe a woman known as Lolotte, who owns the beauty salon. She threatened to betray the woman who ran the safe house.”

  Adrian was silent for a moment, then said, “Explicitly?”

  “Yes. I gave her money, so she’s content.”

  “For the moment,” Adrian said.

  “Yes, for the moment.”

  “Well, people like that don’t stop. Once they realize they can blackmail somebody, they come back for more.”

  “I believe she will, that’s who she is.”

  “The line runs through Orléans, we can’t change that.”

  “And the woman?”

  “She is my responsibility,” Adrian said. “I have to consider her a real threat.”

  Ricard nodded, and lit a cigarette.

  “I imagine you’re tired,” Adrian said.

  Ricard shrugged. “That doesn’t matter.”

  “I want you to check the border crossing, then you can get back on the trains and go home.”

  * * *

  —

  The following morning, Ricard left Perpignan and took a very slow, two-car local up into the mountains, to the village of Latour-de-Carol, north of the town of Bourg-Madame. At the edge of the village he found a park that lay a few hundred yards from the actual frontier. There was no border station, nobody was entirely sure where the border actually was, and neither the French nor the Spanish residents really cared. Here, on Sunday afternoons, local people from both countries mingled for a few hours until it was time to go home for dinner. Agents coming down the SHEPHERD line joined the residents, met Spanish couriers, and simply walked into Spain.

  By the time Ricard got on the train, to make his way, eventually, back to Paris, he was cold—it was autumn—and tired. Spent. The journey down the escape line had exhausted him, though he hadn’t realized it at the time. Too many nights on trains, too many people to size up, too much anxiety about being watched or followed, too much shadowy danger in the world of escape lines and safe houses. Headed back to Paris, he broke the rules and took sleeping compartments on express trains—Adrian had given him money, he used it.

  And slept well. Beyond well, a dead sleep interrupted only by stops at railway stations. This is the cure for insomnia, he thought. The steady beat of train wheels on rails knocked him close to unconscious. At last, Paris, his garret, and, lying on his bed, he exhaled, as though for the first time in days.

  Meanwhile, Adrian had made arrangements to solve the difficulty with Lolotte.

  * * *

  —

  The Prestige Taxi Company was located in a garage in an industrial suburb of Orléans. Two men, known as Jules and Henri, met there on the afternoon of 14 November. Jules was tall, had thinning black hair, and a permanent five o’clock shadow, which made him look evil. Which he was. Henri was chubby and pink, baby faced, and had grown a mustache, which made him look like a baby with a mustache. Before the war, Jules had worked as a merchant seaman, Henri as a clerk in a government office, then, with the fall of France in 1940, both men had fled to London to join de Gaulle, and had then been recruited by the British Special Operations Executive, the SOE, for clandestine work in France.

  They had met before; now they were in Orléans to do a job for the civil servants. “Are you the driver?” Henri said. “Or is it me?”

  “You drive,” Jules said. “I’ll be the passenger.”

  They then bribed the dispatcher, who found them a dependable taxi and made sure there was enough coal in the bins beneath the taxi’s wheel wells.

  They drove out of the garage and found the Rue Candolle, and the Salon Lolotte, then they circled the block and parked a hundred feet from the beauty shop. And waited. Henri drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, Jules smoked a Balto cigarette.

  A few minutes after seven in the evening, Lolotte emerged from her salon, locked the door, and headed down the street. She wore a bright green coat and a matching hat with a feather, setting off her carrot-colored hair.

  “There she is,” Henri said.

  Jules climbed out of the backseat and caught up with Lolotte. He put an arm around her shoulders and said, “Lolotte, it’s Jules, don’t you remember me?”

  Lolotte, startled, said, “Who? I’m not sure I…”

  Those were her last words, because Jules reached around and, revolver in hand, shot her in the heart. Then, to make sure, shot her again,
in the left temple. That was the end of Lolotte. And the Orléans safe house was once again safe.

  KASIA CALLED RICARD. “I’ve met someone,” she said. “I’m going to a club tonight, why don’t you meet me there? I’ll buy you a drink, and tell you all.”

  “Which club?”

  “It’s called Le Coup de Foudre. It means ‘the lightning bolt’ ”—love at first sight.

  Ricard arrived at seven and found the club, in a cellar, somewhere out in the wilds of the Ninth Arrondissement. When Ricard came in the door, all eyes were on him—who is this in our private playground? A few men there but mostly women, all ages, wearing black, two or three of them smoking cigarettes in ivory holders, it reminded him of Berlin in the twenties.

  Kasia showed up right away, wearing her worker’s-cap/lace-up-boots outfit. Before she sat down, she kissed Ricard on both cheeks. Then she ordered brandies, quickly drank the first one, and dawdled with the second.

  “You seem to be in a good mood,” he said.

  “I had dinner with the bunny rabbit last night.” Ricard was perplexed. “The girl with the blonde shag across her forehead,” she explained. “I told you about her. I saw her on the Métro and invited her to supper in my room. And she showed up! I worried about that, but there she was, in a dress that showed everything and sexy shoes.

  “I cooked us a dinner on my hot plate—an omelet, that’s about what I can do, bread, and a bottle of wine. With an assignation, you know, you don’t want a heavy meal beforehand. Afterwards, that’s the time to eat. Then we sat on my bed—there’s nowhere else to sit—and I began to rub her back. She was telling me her life story, as one does, went to such and such lycée, up in the Sixteenth where she grew up. Papa was in the chemical business, obviously they were rich. But she wasn’t ready to get married and all of that, traveled for a time, before the war, you know, Rome and Venice, Capri, the usual. Then she lived at home until she had to do something, so she got a job teaching at her old lycée, then moved to one closer to the center of the city, where she had to take the Métro, and there I happened to see her, and I liked her right away, so I took that Métro a few times and, lo and behold, there she was and I invited her to dinner.

  “Still rubbing her back, I kissed her. She was reluctant at first, then she began to like it and kissed back. Took a little more time, but I got her dress off. What is it about rich girls’ bodies? Is it all the tennis they play? Ballet lessons? Anyhow, she was ravishing. Finally I stripped her, little hesitations on the way, of course, but off it all came. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and gave me a very shy, very timid smile. So, I thought, first time with a woman for the bunny rabbit. I stood in front of her and took off all my clothes. And her eyes never left me, she was rapt.

  “Then came the serious part, kissing on the mouth leads to kissing on the breasts, you know? Then down from there. Leisurely, at first, you know?”

  “I know, Kasia.”

  “God! Ricard! She was so loud when she came, the whole building must have heard her! What a girl, Ricard, I think I’m in love.”

  “I’m glad for you, mon amie,” Ricard said. He offered Kasia a cigarette, took one for himself, then lit both and said, “Does she have a name?”

  “Denise,” Kasia said, lingering on the name, in love with the sound of it.

  “She makes you happy, that’s obvious.”

  “That isn’t the word for what she makes me.”

  “So, you’ll see her again?”

  Kasia nodded, with a knowing smile. “We’re going to meet at a hotel, tomorrow night, it’s the Grand Hôtel, by the opéra.”

  “Fancy,” Ricard said. “And the restaurant’s a good one.”

  Kasia said, “What will I wear?”

  “You’ll find something.”

  “Oh, I will, I’ll go to Madame de la Boissière.”

  A thin woman in black approached the table and said to Kasia, “The band is just starting up, care to dance?” Then she turned to Ricard and said, “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Ricard gave Kasia a complicit look and said, “I was just leaving.”

  * * *

  —

  Room 406, the Grand Hôtel. Kasia had spent some money at Madame de la Boissière’s private boutique and wore a cream-colored silk blouse with the top two buttons open and wide-legged wool trousers. It was a thin shirt. Kasia wore no bra and her small breasts were evident beneath the silk fabric. Denise answered her knock immediately, wearing a heavy, bittersweet fragrance and a diaphanous nightdress that fell, just barely, to the tops of her thighs. Kasia kissed her on both cheeks, then on the lips. “You look wonderful, bunny rabbit,” she said.

  Denise turned in a circle for her and said, “Pretty, no?”

  “Mmm.”

  “I had a bottle of wine sent up, may I pour you a glass?” Kasia nodded, Denise poured a glass of red wine for each of them, then raised her glass and said, “To our time together.” Kasia had a sip, the wine was much better than anything she was used to. She walked to the window and, looking down, saw a crowd entering the opera house, some of the women were with German officer escorts. A poster by the opera door said, TONIGHT: OFFENBACH, LA BELLE HÉLÈNE. There was more, but the print was too small for Kasia to read from a distance.

  Denise had come up behind her and put her arm around Kasia’s shoulders; Kasia covered Denise’s hand with her own and said, “Ma biche.” My darling.

  “You’re sweet,” Denise said.

  The wine had been served with a basket of buttered little toasts. Kasia had one, then another, then a third. “Merde,” she said. “They know how to make toast here.”

  “Le Grand,” Denise said. “The best of everything.”

  Denise sat on the edge of the bed and patted the space beside her and, as Kasia sat down, turned off the lamp on the night table. That must have been a signal, because the door opened and two men entered, both holding automatic pistols. The leader had fair hair, was a short man, and not happy about it, stood with his chest thrust out and chin held high, and had a fat, sullen face, an angry face. “I am called Vozki; Kasia, put your hands behind your back.” As he started to tie her wrists with twine he said, “And that’s Simon.” Simon was thin and placid looking, with silver-rimmed eyeglasses. There was, Kasia thought, something very wrong with him, as though he lived in another world, his eyes unfocused, a slack smile on his lips.

  Vozki looked around the room and found Kasia’s pea jacket, draping it across her shoulders so that her bound wrists could not be seen. “Now let’s go downstairs and walk through the lobby. Don’t cry out, or I will give you the beating of your life.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” Kasia said.

  “Take you to another hotel where you will be under guard.” Kasia tried to figure out who Vozki was; where did he come from? But she couldn’t. He’d floated up to the surface from the seamy underside of Europe and made his way to Paris—one more predator in the City of Light. Simon was apparently French, at least his name was pronounced in the French fashion.

  Still sitting on the edge of the bed, the bunny rabbit was crying, silently, with two tears rolling down her cheeks. “Forgive me, Kasia,” she said. “I was forced to betray you.” Kasia stared at her and said nothing; she had been led by desire to capture and was too angry to speak.

  As Kasia was walked through the lobby, well-dressed Parisians were all around her, cigarettes in hand, smiling, laughing, posing, making brilliant conversation. They likely noticed Kasia and her keepers, but decided not to notice them—they were simply an oddity that required a glance and a look away. One of the German officers stared briefly, but he was going to the opera and these people, whoever they might be, were beneath him.

  There was a car waiting in front of the hotel, a Peugeot that ran on gasoline, not on coal. Which means, Kasia thought, that this Vozki creature is important. The tw
o men laid Kasia facedown on the backseat, then Vozki drove the car and Simon sat beside him. “The twine is too tight,” Kasia said, thinking she might get away as Simon tried to retie her.

  “It’s not for long,” Vozki said.

  For some twenty minutes, Vozki drove quickly through the thin traffic, then stopped. The two men helped Kasia from the car, pea jacket draped over her shoulders. Kasia saw that the hotel was called Le Briand, a common second-class commercial hotel. Inside, at the desk, stood an unsmiling blonde woman in SS uniform. She looked like one of those female athletes, in shorts and sleeveless tops, one saw in German newsreels, exercising with a heavy medicine ball. Vozki greeted her in German and she responded briefly. As Kasia was taken upstairs, she realized that the Germans had taken over this hotel for their own personal use.

  This puzzled her. Why had they not taken her to some Gestapo office? If not the Gestapo, then who had kidnapped her?

  * * *

  —

  At the beginning of the occupation, Vozki had gone into business, kidnapping people who were résistants and selling them to the German security services. At nine in the morning, Vozki drove to the Avenue Kléber and rolled to a stop in front of the Hôtel Majestic, an occupation command center. On the fourth floor of the hotel he found the office of his business associate, SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Erhard Geisler. Geisler was a pear-shaped man who wore clear-frame plastic eyeglasses, his exterior bland and placid. He was no street thug, rather a man who signed papers ordering arrests, transport to concentration camps, or immediate execution. Vozki stood in front of Geisler’s desk, gave the stiff-armed salute, and said, “Heil Hitler.” Geisler responded but did not invite Vozki to sit down.

  “Herr Vozki,” the major said. “What have you got for me?”

  “A young woman, Polish, I believe, called Kasia.”

  Gerhard took from a drawer a thick sheaf of typewritten pages, his list of Paris residents who were suspected of Resistance activity. After finding Kasia’s name, he studied the paragraph next to it, then said, “Where is she?”