by Alan Furst
“The day will come,” Kasia said.
“To that,” Rafael said, raising his glass. “Tell me, is it safe to go out at night?”
“No, it isn’t,” Ricard said. “The Gestapo is lately very active at night, before curfew.”
“Curfew is at eleven?”
“Yes, but not tonight. The Germans have said that tonight we are allowed to be out on the street until two.”
“So people may attend midnight mass, Christmas mass,” Rafael said.
“Yes, just so,” Ricard said.
“That is what I would like to do, will it put you in danger? Probably I should go alone.”
For a long moment, Ricard and Kasia looked at each other, then Ricard said, “No, we will go together.”
“There is a church nearby?”
“There is a lovely church,” Ricard said, “a few blocks from here. It is by a little park, where there’s a tree with a plaque that says it is the oldest tree in Paris. Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, the church is called.”
Rafael brightened. “Then let’s go there,” he said. “Is it far?”
“No, we can walk there in twenty minutes,” Ricard said.
They waited for a time, drinking the wine, then left the Rue Crémieux house and walked along the Seine. The Parisians were out in the streets—they had always liked the later hours of the evening—and a fine snow drifted down over the city on the windless night.
* * *
—
Three days later, Kasia picked up an agent who had been hiding in a cellar up in Saint-Denis. He carried with him a small leather bag which, when he set it down carefully on the floor of the kitchen, smelled like almonds.
“I’ve got explosives in here,” he said, “808, it’s called—plastique, to the French—so don’t move it.”
He was different than the first agents they’d hidden in the safe house, perhaps a soldier in the French army before the surrender, with a weathered, suntanned face and eyes aware of everything that went on around him. “Do you have anything to drink?” he asked Ricard, once he’d settled in.
“We have some wine,” Ricard said. “Algerian wine.”
“I’d like some of that. We drank it all the time when I was a legionnaire.” He meant, Ricard knew, the French Foreign Legion. The soldier drank a lot of wine but was never close to getting drunk. He was in action, under orders, and, Ricard thought, would get no relief, from wine or anything else, until his mission was completed.
He stayed the night and left for the Gare de Lyon at dawn.
* * *
—
The tenth day of January, the holidays over. Now, to somehow live through the winter, which stretched out ahead forever. The low sky was oppressive, the color of ashes, as it would be for a long time, and there was frost on the windows of the houses and the shops.
Foret, the middle-aged stationery salesman who’d been brought in by Lysander, had been ordered to conduct surveillance on a large chemical factory in the town of Évreux, west of Paris, where several varieties of explosives were manufactured, a factory high on the list of facilities that the civil servants wanted destroyed.
Foret left his hiding place in Paris, where he’d gone after leaving the Rue Crémieux safe house, and rode the train to Évreux. There had been a military airfield here since the 1920s, and the chemical plant had been built, along with other industrial sites, to support the operations of French bombers and fighter planes. Now it was a German air base, which invited the attention of RAF planners.
The Romain et Fils Usine Chimique was situated at the western edge of the town, far from the Norman cathedral and the half-timbered houses and hotels of the centre ville, so Foret walked for a long time, shivering in the January chill, until he reached the neighborhood of the factory, where he found narrow streets of workers’ housing and a few local bars and cafés. He found also Gestapo patrols, as well as local police on their bicycles—the factory and the airfield were crucial to the German war effort. Foret had a camera but was afraid to take it out of his briefcase. Not here, he thought.
He spent some time watching the factory, where the acrid smell of chemicals hung in the still air and made it hard to breathe. The lights were on in the windows, and vans at the loading dock behind the three-story building were being filled with metal drums. A busy place, with three eight-hour shifts, he’d been told. Nearby was a bar where he could contact the local Resistance group, which had been ordered to attack the plant: eliminate the guards posted by the doors, then set the factory ablaze. Once the flames reached the vats of chemicals, there would be explosions and fires. Most of the plant’s workers were not expected to survive.
Foret entered the bar and asked for Claude, his Resistance contact, then took a coffee to one of the empty tables. Claude turned out to be a stout young man who wore a leather apron over his worker’s outfit. Foret gave the parole and Claude responded. “We’ve been expecting a Resistance agent,” he said. “What do you need from us?”
“I’m here to organize the destruction of the chemical works,” Foret said.
Claude nodded. “Yes, it’s an obvious target. The British tried to bomb it last month, but it’s hard to see from the air, the German fighter planes took off immediately, from the local airfield, and the bombers turned around and beat it back to England.”
Foret was sympathetic. “I know. This job has to be done on the ground.”
“You can try, but the factory is carefully guarded,” Claude said.
“Surely your friends can deal with that.”
“Yes, I suppose they could, but they’re not in a hurry to start trouble.”
“No?”
“No. You must have seen the workers’ housing on your way here, there are five hundred jobs at this plant. Good jobs, well-paid jobs. When the plant goes, all those jobs go with it. Which means we will all wind up as slave laborers in German factories.”
“I’ll tell them that,” Foret said. “The people who want the plant destroyed, that they’ll have to think of something else.”
But Foret was lying and Claude knew it. “Yes, that’s what you should do,” he said.
This is how it is when you’re at war. Foret didn’t say that, but both men knew it was true—that the people who had issued the order were not going to argue, they were not going to negotiate, they had ordered their agents to destroy a certain target, so it would be destroyed.
“I will be in contact with you,” Foret said.
“Then au revoir,” Claude said, left the table, and headed for the door.
Foret almost called out to him—perhaps they should talk this over for a little while longer. But then, with a shrug, he left the bar and began to walk back toward the Évreux railroad station. He almost made it, but Claude had reacted quickly to the threat and defended himself, and the chemical plant workers, without hesitation—Foret was a secret operative, who knew where he might be hiding. So Claude had made the telephone call to the Gestapo.
A few hundred feet from the railway station, a Gestapo Citroën pulled up next to Foret, who briefly tried to run for it, but the Gestapo operatives jumped out of their car, knocked Foret to the ground, hauled him to his feet, then threw him in the back of the car. Ten minutes later he was hustled into the Gestapo’s Évreux headquarters, taken to the cellar, and tied to a chair. They let him sit there and think about it for an hour, then an officer, whom the sergeant addressed as Sturmbannführer—Major—Geisler, sat in a chair and lit a cigarette while the sergeant took off his tunic, rolled up his sleeves, produced a rubber truncheon, and tapped Foret on the knee.
Pain exploded in Foret’s kneecap. He couldn’t believe how much it hurt, the man had simply snapped the instrument with his wrist. “We’re just getting warmed up,” Geisler said. “This should take a half hour, more or less.”
“What do you want to know?” F
oret said, panic in his voice.
The sergeant tapped him again and Geisler said, “Can you repeat that? I didn’t quite hear you.”
“Just ask, I’ll tell you anything.” Now he was pleading.
“We’ve heard there is a safe house, somewhere in the Twelfth, where is it?”
“On the Rue Crémieux.”
“What number?”
“I don’t think it has a number.”
Tap.
This one was a little harder, the sergeant was a master of his craft, and Foret heard himself say ah, not loud, the syllable forced from him.
“Soon you’ll sing like a nightingale,” Geisler said, and nodded to the sergeant.
Foret cried out, “No more!”
Geisler stood up, then knelt in front of Foret, tied tight to the chair. “Now I shall tell you what we’re going to do,” he said, the menace in his voice deeper as he pitched it to a level of quiet gentility. “We’re going to keep you here, and we’re going to have a look at the Rue Crémieux. Next you will accompany us, and you will indicate which house the British agents are using. If you fool us…”
“Yes, I understand,” Foret said.
Geisler was reflective as he said, “Perhaps you do, we shall see.”
* * *
—
Ricard and Kasia continued to work at the safe house, every two or three days another agent appeared, then vanished the following day, usually at night. Kasia brought in what food she could find, Ricard stayed hidden. Then, on the seventeenth of January, late on a gray afternoon, Kasia said, “They’re in the neighborhood, Germans in civilian suits, expensive suits.”
Ricard went out to see for himself. Kasia was right, the Gestapo was working the local streets. They were trying to be subtle, reading newspapers in the cafés, strolling down the street, insouciant as could be, but, from their dress, from their military posture, from their proper haircuts, it was clear as day who they were, what they were. They had a bad effect on Ricard, he was afraid of them, and he suspected they were there for him. So he took a chance, went to the Rue de la Huchette, and took the 7.65 automatic from the drawer of his desk, just beneath his typewriter and the manuscript of his new book. He was not going to be taken alive and tortured by the Gestapo and, if they tried to arrest him, he was going to fight. That would be the end, but he meant to take two or three of them with him.
* * *
—
By nightfall, an ice fog gathered over the city, then wind-driven snow began to cover the street. From the window of the safe house, Ricard could only just see the La Chapelle railway tracks; snow was swirling above them, driven by the wind that sighed at the corners of the building. On the tracks, a lone switching engine made slow way into the tunnel.
On the Rue Crémieux, a black Mercedes cruised past the house, the yellow beams of its headlights cutting through the darkness. As Ricard and Kasia watched, the car stopped, then backed up, and, when a door opened, the domelight revealed two Gestapo officers in front and two men in overcoats in back. When the two men in the back left the car, Ricard saw Foret and a pear-shaped man, holding on to his hat in the wind. Foret pointed at the house, the pear-shaped man nodded, then both returned to the Mercedes.
“We’re fucked, Kasia,” Ricard said.
“I saw them.”
“So, it’s time to leave,” Ricard said. The radio operator Bondeau shut down his transmission, closed the lid on the W/T radio, which made it look like a typewriter case, and headed for the door. “Good luck,” Bondeau said. “See you again someday.”
“I have to give the alert,” Ricard said.
He called Adrian’s number and, through the storm’s static on the line, Adrian said, “Yes?”
“Solitaire,” Ricard said. The word was a warning signal, it meant Drop whatever you’re doing and run like hell.
“What’s happened?” Adrian said.
“I just saw Foret and what I think was a Gestapo officer in a suit. Foret had guided him to the house.”
“Foret,” Adrian mused, then said, “You’ll have to take care of him.”
“Take care of him?”
“You know what I mean, he’s put the entire operation in danger, so you’ll have to…do what needs to be done.”
“And then?”
“Get on a train, go somewhere.”
“Alright.”
“Let me know when it’s finished,” Adrian said, and hung up.
“We have to find Foret,” Ricard said. “He has to be eliminated.” He put on his hat and scarf and raised the collar of his overcoat. Kasia was waiting for him at the door, her worker’s cap tilted down on her forehead.
“Anything you want in here?” Ricard said.
“No. Why?”
“You won’t see it again.”
* * *
—
From the telephone, a double-whirring ring. Ricard picked up the receiver before it rang again. It was Leila. “I just spoke to Adrian, he said you have a job to do and then you’ll have to leave Paris. Where can we meet?”
“The Gare de Lyon is close, we’ll meet there.”
“Will you wait for me?”
“Yes.”
* * *
—
Ricard and Kasia left the house and went out into the storm. Up the street, Ricard could see the light beams coming toward him as the Mercedes backed up. Ricard took the 7.65 from his coat pocket, made sure the clip was full, then snapped the magazine back in place and armed the weapon.
Ricard took careful steps through the dry snow, crossed the street, and waited. Very slowly, the Mercedes approached him, and it was still moving when he stepped off the sidewalk and fired through the driver’s window. From the other side of the car, he could barely hear the reports of Kasia’s little .25, but the passenger slumped over, his head in the driver’s lap, as the driver died with his forehead resting on the steering wheel. From the backseat, SS Erhard Geisler stumbled out of the car with his hands in the air. “Don’t shoot,” he said, raising his voice above the wind. A ruse. He didn’t intend to surrender, and when his hand reached inside his coat, Kasia shot him below the left eye. “Don’t,” he said, and Kasia shot him again. He sat down on the snow, touched the wound with his finger, then fell backward and lay still.
Ricard swung the 7.65 toward Foret, who raised his hands, his eyes wide with fear. Then Ricard did what had to be done and fired twice through the window, the bullets punching holes circled by crushed glass. Foret disappeared. Ricard tore the door open. Foret lay still, sprawled on the car’s floor, his head having landed on the running board when Ricard opened the door. To make sure, Ricard fired once more, hitting Foret in the temple, the wound bleeding red onto the snow.
* * *
—
Kasia and Ricard got away from the car as fast as they could, then, out of breath, they found an apartment house with an open door and took refuge in the vestibule. “Now we’re in for it,” Ricard said. “You don’t kill Gestapo officers, they’ll be all over the place in minutes.”
“The storm will slow them down,” Kasia said.
“Not much. Their big Citroëns have front-wheel drive. We’ll have to hide, and not in our apartments.”
“There’s a place we can go,” Kasia said. “Do you remember we once met in a club, on the Rue de Provence, out in the Ninth? Le Coup de Foudre, it’s called. My friends there will take care of us.”
“I do remember,” Ricard said. “Women in black, smoking with cigarette holders. But I can’t go there yet, so I’ll contact you later.”
“Be careful, Ricard,” Kasia said.
Ricard took her by the shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. Then Kasia headed for the nearest Métro.
* * *
—
It was unwise to run down a street in an occupied city,
so Ricard hurried as fast as he dared. When he reached the garret on the Rue de la Huchette, he had to sit down for a time, his hands shaking, his heart beating too hard. But he couldn’t linger, he had to leave Paris. He opened his canvas valise, found a shirt, a pair of trousers, change of underwear, toothbrush, and razor, and laid all of it in the valise. Then he hesitated: Am I coming back here? Or will I never see it again? He didn’t know, but he had no time to worry about it.
He glanced at his watch, then put the manuscript of The Investigator, bound with rubber bands, into the valise and set the 7.65 on top of it. When he’d closed the valise, the image of the gun and the novel stayed with him. A good subject for a painted still life, he thought. Paris, 1943.
Leila would be waiting for him, he knew, so he walked quickly to the Gare de Lyon. The waiting room was packed, a sea of faces: some travelers, some fugitives from the storm, some fugitives. Then he saw Leila, and their embrace was intense; he held her against him as tightly as he could. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” she said, voice unsteady.
“There was no chance of that,” Ricard said, smoothing back her hair. “We need a safe place to meet. There’s a student hotel on the street that runs up to the Panthéon. I have things to do, so I’ll meet you there tonight.”
“Be careful, love,” Leila said.
Ricard kissed her on the forehead and went out into the storm.
NOW RICARD HAD nowhere to go. The safe house on the Rue Crémieux was no longer safe, and a Gestapo Citroën was parked on the Place Saint-Michel, just beyond the Rue de la Huchette. So, valise in hand, he headed over to Éditions Montrésor on the Rue Jacob. The receptionist opened the inner office door, Montrésor saw who was coming to see him and said, “Ricard, come into the office,” then quickly shut the door behind him. “They’re looking for you, Ricard, what did you do?”
“A fight with a Gestapo officer, for him it ended badly.”
