by Alan Furst
Who had put the little slip of paper in his pocket? The redhead, he was almost sure of it. Pearl earrings, dancer’s legs. Haughty, the chin tilted up toward heaven. Passionate, he thought, that kind of a sneer could turn into a very different expression, an O—surprised by pleasure. Or playful indignation. How dare you. He liked that, an excellent trick. Jesus, women. They thought up all these things, a man had no chance at all. And then, like Citrine, they turned away from you. How long could he mourn? It wasn’t good not to make love. Unhealthy, there were all sorts of theories.
Tired. It scared him, what this little enterprise had taken from him in strength and spirit. Oh Lord, he was so tired. No redhead for him, not tonight. She wouldn’t do it anyhow, not now, not after he’d ignored the note. What? Monsieur! How dare you presume. Ah, but, even better, the redhead says yes, they go to his room. She likes to kiss, that hard mouth softens against his. White skin, blue veins, taut nipples. Then later he admits the note excited him. “Note?” she says.
For a moment he was gone, then he came back. A strange little dream—a hallway in a house. Somebody he’d known, something had happened. It meant nothing, and he could not stay awake any longer. He took a deep breath and let it out very slowly to tell himself that the world was slipping back into place.
Oatmeal.
The phone. Those two sustained notes, again and again. He clawed at it, knocked the receiver off the cradle, groped around the night table until he found it, finally mumbled “What? Hello?”
“Jean-Claude! Hey it’s me. I’m here. I owe you a drink, right? So now I got to pay up. Hello?”
Simic.
“Jean-Claude? What goes on there? Not asleep. Hey, shit, it’s nine-thirty. Wait a minute, now I see, you’re getting a little, right?”
“No, I’m alone.”
“Oh. So, well, then, we’ll have a drink. Say, in twenty minutes.”
Casson’s mind wasn’t working at all. All he could say was yes.
“In the bar downstairs. Champagne cocktail—what about it?”
“All right.”
“A bientôt!” Triumphant, Simic very nearly sang the words.
Don’t be a rat, Casson told himself. He’s happy, you be happy too. Not everything needs to fit in with your mood about it.
He staggered into the bathroom. What was Simic doing in Málaga? If he’d been intending to come, why hadn’t he brought the money himself? Well, there was, no doubt, a reason, he would know it soon enough. He stood in the tub, pulled the linen curtain closed, inhaled the damp-drain odor of Spanish beach hotels. Five showerheads poked from the green tile—maybe in summer you’d be splendidly doused from every side. Not now. Five tepid drizzles and the smell of sulphur. Putain de merde. He threw handfuls of water on himself, then rubbed his face with a towel.
He got dressed, tied his tie, brushed his hair. Simic wasn’t going to make a night of it, please God. Whorehouses and champagne and somebody with a bloody nose bribing a cop at dawn.
Down the hall, checked his watch, he was right on time. Pressed the bell for the elevator. It started up, humming and grinding, then stopped with a squeak. Maybe if they left some oil out of the food and put it on the elevator. All right, victory for the Alhambra, he would walk downstairs. No, here it came, slow and noisy. The door slid open, the elevator boy, about fifteen, in hotel uniform, mumbled good evening. Strange, he was pale, absolutely white. He slid the door closed. Everything smelled in this hotel, that included the elevator. Stopped on three. Bulky man in a tuxedo, who stood back against the wall and cleared his throat. Finally, the lobby.
The bar dark and very active, Spaniards having a drink before their eleven o’clock dinner hour. Fifteen minutes, then a table came open, next to a rubber plant. Casson tipped the waiter, sat down. Now, what could he order that would not do battle with the gruesome champagne cocktail he was going to be forced to drink? A dry sherry, and a coffee. A dish of salted almonds arrived as well. There was a string trio in the lobby, three elderly Hungarians who played their version of Spanish music. 10:10. Simic, where are you?
He sent the waiter to the bar for cigarettes. A brand called Estrella. Very good, he thought. Strong, but not too dry. He smoked, drank some sherry, ate an almond, took a sip of coffee. Why, he wondered, did he have to be the one to fight Hitler? Langlade was making lightbulbs, Bruno was selling cars. He ran down a list of friends and acquaintances, most of them, as far as he knew, were doing what they’d always done. Certainly it was harder now, and the money wasn’t so good, and you had to go to the petits fonctionnaires all the time for this permission and that paper, but life went on. His father used to say to him—Jean-Claude, why do you have to be the one? 10:20.
Simic hadn’t meant tomorrow night, had he? Was he in the hotel when he called? It had sounded that way, but as long as the call was local you couldn’t really tell. By now, Casson had decided that maybe a celebration was a good idea. After all, they’d done it, hadn’t they. Run money over the border, bribed a Spanish general. Despite the Gestapo and the vagaries of Spanish railroads. Strange—what was an English artist doing at Barcelona station?
10:22. Casson stood up, peered around at the other tables. That had happened to him once at Fouquet—his lunch appointment waiting at one table, he at another, both of them very irritated by the time they’d discovered what they’d done.
Well then, all right. A few minutes more and he was going back upstairs. The war was over for the night. Let the Germans rule the French for a thousand years, if they could stand it that long, he was going back to the room. Now, of course, he was hungry, but he wasn’t going to sit alone in the dining room. He ate another almond. 10:28. He watched the second hand crawl around the face of his watch, then he stood up. Just as somebody was coming toward him, weaving among the tables. Well, finally. But, not Simic. Marie-Noëlle—of all people.
What a coincidence.
She sat across from him, ordered a double brandy with soda, got a Gitane going.
“I do have somebody joining me,” he said apologetically. “A man I know from Paris.”
“No,” she said, “he isn’t coming.”
“Who isn’t?”
“Your friend. Simic.” She wasn’t joking. He tried to make sense of that but couldn’t.
She stared at him; worried, angry, tapped her index finger against the table, looked at her watch. “I’m leaving tonight,” she said. “But, before I go, it’s my job to decide about you, monsieur. As to whether you are a knave, or just a fool.”
He stared at her.
“So,” she said.
He didn’t know what to say. His first instinct was to defend himself, to say something reasonably witty and fairly sharp. But he didn’t. She wasn’t joking, to her the choice was precisely described, insulting, but not meant as an insult. And, he somehow knew, it mattered. At last he said quietly, “I am not a knave, Marie-Noëlle.”
“A fool, then.”
He shrugged. Who in this life hasn’t been a fool?
She canted her head to one side. Was this something she could believe? She searched his face. “Used?” she said. “Could be.”
“Used?”
“By Simic.”
“How?”
“To steal from us.”
“Who is ‘us’?”
“My employers. The British Secret Intelligence Service. In London.”
This was a lot to take in but, somehow, not completely a shock. At some level he had understood that she wasn’t just somebody met on a train. “Well,” he said. “You mean, the people in the business of bribing Spanish generals.”
“They thought they were, but it was a fraud. A confidence scheme— seven hundred thousand pesetas before your delivery, another million to come after that.”
Casson lit a cigarette, shook his head as if to clear it.
“Simic was an opportunist,” Marie-Noëlle said. “Apparently he’d dabbled with intelligence services before. In Hungary? Romania? France, perhaps. Who knows. He had a
good, instinctive sense of how the game is played, of how money changes hands, of what kinds of things people like to hear. When the Germans took over he saw his chance—he could get rich if he came up with an operation that felt really authentic.”
“And Carabal? Is he a colonel in the Spanish army?”
“Yes. Also a thief, one of Simic’s partners.”
“General Arado?”
“A monster, but not a traitor. Credible—for Simic’s purpose. A history of support for the Bourbon monarchy. But, no inclination to overthrow the Falange. No inclination for politics at all.”
Casson scowled, stared down at the table. He had assumed he was smarter than Simic, but maybe it was simply that he was above him, socially, professionally. He’d been worse than a fool, he realized. “And me?” he said.
“You. We are treating that as an open question. You’d been mentioned by a former business associate, and when Simic asked for a name we gave him yours. But then, after that, who knows. Under occupation, people do what they feel they have to do.”
“You think I took your money.”
“Did you take it?”
“No.”
“Somebody did. Not what you brought down, we have that back, but there was an earlier payment, and some of that is missing.”
“What happens to Carabal?”
“Can’t touch him. There’s an office theory that General Arado found the whole business amusing, and that Carabal’s career will not suffer at all.”
“And Simic?”
She spread her hands, palms up. What do you think?
“We went and had a drink,” Casson said. “He explained to me the importance of Gibraltar, it was very persuasive.”
“It is important.”
“But they won’t attack it.”
“No,” she said. “Because of the wind.”
Casson didn’t understand.
“It blows hard there, changes direction—it’s tricky. You’ve seen those Greek amphoras in hotel lobbies, they plant geraniums in them. Sometimes they wash up on the beach, from the ocean floor. Well, think how they happened to be down there in the first place—obviously somebody got it wrong. A wind like that, the Germans can’t do what they did with the Belgian forts, they can’t use paratroops, or gliders. As for an attack over land, the peninsula is narrow, and heavily mined from one side to the other. The roads are terrible, and the Spanish-gauge railroad track is different, which means the Wehrmacht can’t run trains through France—they’d have to change over, and we’d know about it right away. That leaves an attack from the sea, which would have to be staged from Spanish Morocco, and the cranes at the port of Ceuta aren’t big enough to lift heavy tanks and artillery onto ships.”
“So then, why pay Spanish generals to overthrow Franco?”
“You have to understand the nature of the business. It has, like everything else, fashion, what the hemline is to the prêt-à-porter. So once an idea is, ah, born—memos written, meetings held—it takes on a life of its own. For a time, it’s the local religion, and nobody wants to be the local atheist. Erno Simic understood that, understood how vulnerable we were to big, nasty schemes, and he decided to make his fortune. He would have played us along; the general is thinking, the general is nervous, the general has decided to go ahead, send a sniper rifle and a box of exploding candy. And on, and on. But, you know, somebody found a way to see if General Arado was actually in on it, and he wasn’t.”
“So everything I did . . .”
“Meant nothing. Yes, that’s right. On the other hand, if the Seguridad or the Gestapo had caught you with the money . . .”
Casson sat back in the chair, the life in the bar was growing brighter and louder. The Spanish brandy wasn’t very expensive, after a while it inspired a certain optimism. “Tell me something,” he said. “Are you really Lady Marensohn?”
“Yes. I am pretty much who I said I was. There’s just this one little extra dimension. Of course, I’d prefer you not to talk about it. As in, not ever.”
“No, I won’t.” He thought a moment. “I hope you understand— Simic was what he was, but I believed in the scheme, I really thought it would damage Germany.”
Marie-Noëlle nodded. “Yes, probably you did. It was my job, on the train, to find out who you were. As far as I can tell, you were drawn in, used. The people I work for, on the other hand . . .”
She paused a moment, she wanted to be accurate. “The people I work for,” she said. “You have to understand, Britain is living on the edge of a cliff—and these people were never very nice people in the first place. Now the issue is survival, national survival. So they are, even more—difficult. Cold. Not interested in motive—words don’t matter, what matters is what’s done. So, perhaps, they feel it isn’t over between you and them. Because if you sat down and joined, knowingly, with Simic, what, frankly would be different in your explanation? You’d say exactly what you’ve said.”
Casson thought about it for a time, to see how that wasn’t actually the case, but it was. “What can I do?” he said.
“Go back home, Monsieur Casson. Live your life. Hope for British success in 1941, and German failure. If that happens, there is every possibility that, for you, life will simply go back to being what it always was.”
NEW FRIENDS
FRIDAY NIGHT, 6 MARCH, WE’RE HAVING A COCKTAIL AMÉRICAIN, 5 TO 8. PLEASE COME, JEAN-CLAUDE, IT’ S BEEN FOREVER SINCE WE’’VE SEEN YOU.
Casson stood in Marie-Claire’s living room, talking to Charles Arnaud, the lawyer. Everyone in the room was standing—one didn’t sit down at a cocktail Américain. Casson sipped at his drink. “A cuba libre, they called it. It has rum in it.”
Arnaud rapped a knuckle twice against his temple and made a knocking noise with his tongue. It meant strong drink, and a headache in the morning. Casson offered a sour smile in agreement. “Always the latest thing, with Bruno,” he said.
“Have I seen you since I came back from Belgrade?” Arnaud said.
“No. How was it?”
Arnaud grinned. He had the face, and the white teeth, of a matinee idol, and when he smiled he looked like a crocodile in a cartoon. “Bizarre,” he said. “A visit for a week, a month of stories. At least. I went down there for a client, to buy a boatload of sponges, impounded in Dubrovnik harbor under a Yugoslav tax lien. Actually, at that point, I’d become a part owner.” Arnaud was even less a conventional lawyer than Langlade—had for years been retained by shipping companies, but had a knack for becoming a principal, briefly, in crisis situations where a lot of money moved very quickly.
“I always stay at the Srbski Kralj. You know it?”Arnard said.
“I don’t.”
“King of Serbia, it means. Best hotel in town, wonderful food, if you can eat red peppers, and they’ll send girls up all night. The bartender is a pimp, also a marriage broker—something interesting there if you think about it. Anyhow, what I have to do down there is clear, I have to hand over a certain number of dinar, about half the bill, directly to the tax collector, then they’ll let the ship go, the sponges belong to us, and we know some people who buy sponges. Takes all kinds, right? So, I’m waiting around in the bar one night—these things take the most incredible amount of time to arrange—and I start talking to this fellow. You have to put this in a movie, Jean-Claude—he’s, mmm, enormous, heaven only knows what he weighs, shaved head, mustache like a Turkish wrestler. A munitions dealer, won’t say exactly where he’s from, only that he’s a citizen of Canada, in legal terms, and would love to go there some day.”
Casson smiled, things happened to Arnaud.
“But, what really struck me about this man was, he was wearing an extraordinary suit. Some kind of Balkan homespun material, a shimmering green, the color of a lime. Vast, even on him, a tent. On his feet? Bright yellow shoes—also enormous. He could barely walk. ‘Pity me,’ he says, ‘looking like I do. An hour ago I met with Prince Paul, the leader of Yugoslavia, on the most urgent matters.’
> “And then he explains. A day earlier he’d been in Istanbul, closing a deal for Oerlikons, Swedish antiaircraft cannon, with the Turkish navy. Now he’s done with that, and he has to get to Belgrade, but the choice of airlines isn’t very appetizing, so he books a compartment on the Orient Express, Istanbul to Belgrade, should arrive just in time for his meeting. That night he goes to the dining car, sits across the table from a Hungarian actress—she says. A stunner, flaming red hair, eyes like fire. They drink, they talk, she invites him to come to her compartment. So, about ten o’clock our merchant, wearing red pajamas and bathrobe, goes to the next sleeping car and knocks on the lady’s door. Well, he says, it’s even better than advertised, and they make a night of it. He gets up at six the next morning, kisses her hand, and heads back to his room. Opens the door at the end of the car, and what do you think he sees?”
“I don’t know. His, ah, his wife’s mother.”
“Oh no. He sees track. The train had been divided into two sections at the Turkish border, and now his wallet, his money, his passport, and his suitcase are heading for Germany—where he does not want them to go—and he’s off to see Prince Paul in red pajamas. Well, the next stop is in Bulgaria, Sofia, and he gets off. In the station he manages to borrow a coin, and telephones his Bulgarian representative. ‘Buy me a suit!’ he says. ‘The biggest suit in Sofia! And get down to the railroad station in a hurry!’ Also a shirt, and a pair of shoes. Pretty soon the agent shows up and there’s the boss, all three hundred pounds of him, sitting on a bench, surrounded by a crowd of curious Bulgarians. The fellow puts on the suit, drives to the Canadian legation, demands they call the next station, have the baggage taken off the train before it reaches Germany, and have it put on the next train to Belgrade.
“And they did it.”
“He said they did. But he had his meeting in the big suit.”
“The Balkans,” Casson said. “Somehow it’s always—did you ever meet the man who ate the Sunday paper?”
