The World at Night

by Alan Furst

  “You are hurted?” Lebec said.

  “No. Not me.”

  He was very young, Casson thought, not much more than nineteen. And he certainly didn’t look the hero—tall and gangly, unruly hair, big ears, freckles. The man sitting behind him grabbed the edge of the cockpit with his left hand and clumsily struggled to his feet. Clearly his right arm had been damaged. He appeared to be cursing under his breath. Angier used the tail fin to scramble up on the back of the plane, then slid himself forward to a point where he could help the man get down to the ground.

  The pilot looked at his watch. “We should move along,” he said to Casson. “I’m to leave here in three minutes.”

  “All right.”

  “You’ll have to help me get the tail swung round. And, don’t forget, n’oublah thing, the two, uh—deux caisses, deux valises.” The last burst forth with the fluency of the determinedly memorized.

  Lebec climbed onto the wing, then helped the pilot work two suitcases and two small wooden crates free of the cockpit. “Damned amazing, what you can get in here,” the pilot said. Lebec smiled—no idea what the pilot was saying but an ally was an ally.

  They handed down the cargo—carried off to Tonton Jules’s wagon—then Lebec jumped to the ground and saluted the pilot, who returned the salute with a smile, then tossed his flying cap back on and tried a parting wave, devil-may-care, as he revved the engine. “Best of luck, then,” he shouted. “Bonne shan!”

  He reached up, pulled the housing shut. Eddie Juin took hold of the tail assembly and started to turn the plane into the wind, everybody else ran to help him. The plane accelerated suddenly, there was a blast of hot exhaust as it pulled away, then a roar of fuel fed to the engine as it struggled into the air. It flopped back down, bounced off the field, touched one wheel a second time, then caught the wind and climbed into the darkness. The people on the ground listened for a time, peering into the dark sky, then lost the whine of the receding engine among the night sounds of the countryside.

  Verneuil, Brézolles, Laons—Casson drove east toward Paris in the spring dawn.

  The end of the operation had been complicated. Système D, Casson thought, always Système D, make do, use your ingenuity, improvise— it was simply the way life was lived. They’d left the field headed for a small village nearby, where a man who drove a milk truck to Paris twice a week was supposed to pick up the supplies delivered from England, leaving Casson and the operative free to take the train into the city. But the truck never appeared, so Eddie Juin had to come up with an alternative. Off they went to another village, where a barn on the outskirts hid a Renault—a four-year-old Juvequatre model, slow, steady, inexpensive, a family car.

  Casson drove through first light, staying on the 839. The two crates and two valises were in the trunk. Next to him, the man he had come to think of as the sergeant—though he used the name Jerome—bled slowly into the pale-gray upholstery.

  “It’s not so bad,” he said. “You could hardly call it shrapnel. More like, specks. But, iron specks, so I’ll have to see a doctor, sooner or later. Still, not bad enough for me to go back to England—no point at all to that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, at first everything went perfectly. We came in at eight thousand feet over the coast at St.-Malo—no problem. Picked up the rail line to Alençon a minute later—we spotted the firebox on a locomotive going east and we just flew along with him. Next we had yellow signal lights, for ten miles or so, coming out of the big freight junction in Fougères. After that, the track was between us and the moon and we just followed the glow on the rails. But somebody heard us, because ten minutes later a searchlight came on and they started shooting. Nothing very serious, a few ack-ack rounds, and Charley thought maybe a machine gun. Then it was over, but my arm had gone numb and I realized we’d been hit.”

  Casson slowed down for a hairpin turn at the center of a sleeping village, then they were back among the fields.

  He saw now how they worked it. First came Mathieu, the university man, getting the system organized. Next came the sergeant—almost certainly a technician. Why else bring him in? Short and muscular, working-class face, speaking French in a way that would fool nobody. Not his fault, Casson thought. Likely something he’d taken up years ago in hopes it would advance him in the military. So he’d put in his time in classrooms, dutifully rolled his r’s and nasalized his n’s, but finally to very little purpose—he might as well have worn a derby with a Union Jack stuck in the band and whistled “God Save the King” for all the good it was going to do him.

  Casson slowed for a one-lane bridge, the stream below running full in spring flood, water dark blue in the early light. The sergeant had winced when he tapped the brake. “Sorry,” Casson said.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Twenty minutes with a doctor and I’ll be fine.”

  “It won’t be a problem,” Casson said.

  Well, he didn’t think it would be. What doctor? He only knew one doctor, his doctor. Old Dr. Genoux. What were his politics? Casson had no idea. He was brusque, forever vaguely irritated by something or other, and smelled eternally of eucalyptus. He’d been Casson’s doctor for twenty years, since university. One day Casson had noticed his hair was white. Good heavens! He couldn’t be a Vichyite or a Fascist, could he? Well, if not him, who else? The dentist? The professor at the Sorbonne faculty of medicine who lived across the street? Arnaud had once had a girlfriend who was a nurse. No, that wasn’t going to work, old Genoux would just have to do the job.

  He worked his way through the medieval town of Dreux, intending to pick up the 932 that wound aimlessly into the Chevreuse valley. But then he somehow made a mistake and, a little way beyond the town, found himself instead on the N 12, with a sprinkling of early traffic headed for Paris. Well, all the roads went to the capital, the N 12 was as good as any other.

  Going over a rail crossing, the springs plunged and the cargo gave a loud thump as it shifted in the trunk. The sergeant opened his eyes and laughed. “Don’t worry about that,” he said confidently.

  An explosion, is what he meant. The shipment from England included radio crystals, which would allow clandestine wireless-telegraph sets to change frequencies, 200,000 francs, 20,000 dollars, four Sten carbines with 4,000 rounds of ammunition, time pencil detonators, and eighty pounds of the explosive cyclonite, chemically enhanced to make it malleable—plastique.

  “The trick,” he added, “is actually getting it to go off.”

  The town of Houdan. A place Casson had always liked, he’d come here with Marie-Claire for picnics in the forest—long ago and far away. They’d owned a set of chairs and a table that could be folded up and carried in the trunk of the car. She always brought a cloth for the table, he would pick up a pair of langoustes with green mayonnaise from Fauchon, and they’d sit by a field for hours and watch the day.

  The road turned north, the sun was up now, light glistening on the wet fields, the last of the ground mist gathered over the streams. The sky had turned a delicate, morning blue, with a rose blush on the horizon. Something world-weary about these dawns in the country around Paris, he’d always felt that—well, all right, one more day if you think it’s going to do you any good. The next village on the road seemed closed up tight, the shutters still pulled down over the front of the café. Casson spotted a road marker and decided to take the 839. The town ended, there was a bridge, then a sharp left-hand curve through a wood, which straightened out to reveal some cars and trucks and guards with machine pistols.

  Control.

  They had a moment, no more. Casson hit the brake, rolled past five or six policemen who waved him on, down a lane formed by portable barriers—crossbraced x’s of sawn logs strung with barbed wire. Coming up on the control, Casson and the sergeant had turned to each other, exchanged a look: well, too bad. That was all. Then Casson said, “Close your eyes. You’re injured, unconscious, almost gone.”

  A young officer—Leutnant—in Wehrmacht gray appeared
at the window. “Raus mit uns.” He was impatient, holster unsnapped, hand resting on his sidearm.

  Casson got out and stood by the half-open door, nodded toward the passenger side of the car. “There’s a man hurt,” he said.

  The Leutnant walked around to have a look, bent over and peered into the car. The sergeant’s eyes were closed, mouth open, head back. A bloody rag around his arm, a dark stain on the upholstery. The Leutnant hesitated, looked in Casson’s direction. Casson saw a possibility. “I don’t really know exactly how he got himself in this condition but it’s important that he see a doctor as soon as he can.” He said it quickly.

  The Leutnant froze, then squared his shoulders and walked away.

  The road lay in shadow—six in the morning, shafts of sunlight in the pine forest. Five cars had been stopped, as well as two rickety old trucks taking pigs to market. Amid the smell and the squealing, a German officer was trying to make sense of the drivers’ papers while they stood to one side looking sinister and apprehensive. By the car ahead of Casson, four men, dark, unshaven, possibly Gypsies, were trying to communicate with a man in a raincoat, perhaps a German security officer. Suddenly angry he yanked the door open, and a very pregnant, very frightened woman struggled out with hands held high in the air.

  The young Leutnant came striding back to Casson’s car, a policeman in tow—an officer of the Gendarmerie Nationale, French military police with a reputation for brutality. The gendarme was angry at being asked to intervene. “All right,” he said to Casson, “what’s going on?”

  “This man is injured.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I’m taking him to a doctor.”

  The gendarme gave him a very cold look. “I asked how.”

  “An accident.”

  “Where?”

  “Working, I believe. In a garage. I wasn’t there.”

  The gendarme’s eyes were like steel. Salaud—you bastard—trying to play games with me? In front of a German? I’ll take you behind a tree and break your fucking head. “Open the trunk,” he said.

  Casson fumbled with the latch, then got it open. The intense odor of almonds, characteristic of plastic explosive, came rolling out at them. The Leutnant said “Ach,” and stepped back. “What is it?” the gendarme said.

  “Almonds.”

  The two valises were in plain sight, packed with francs, dollars, radio crystals, and explosive. Tonton Jules, just before they left, had tossed an old blanket over the two crates holding the sten guns and ammunition. Casson, at that moment, had thought it a particularly pointless gesture.

  “Almonds,” the gendarme said. He didn’t know it meant explosive. He did know that Casson had been caught in the middle of something. Parisians of a certain class had no business on country roads at dawn, and people didn’t injure their upper arms in garage accidents. This was resistance of some kind, that much he did know, thus his patriotism, his honor, had been called into question and now he, a man with wife and family, had to compromise himself. He stared at Casson with pure hatred.

  “You had better be going,” he said. “Your friend ought to see a doctor.” For the benefit of the Leutnant he made a Gallic gesture—eyes shut, shoulders up, hands in the air: Who knows what these people are doing, but it’s clearly nothing that would interest men of our stature.

  He waved Casson on, down the road toward Paris.

  Salaud. Don’t come back here.

  10 June, 1941.

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning. I was wondering if you might have a life of Verdi, something nice, for a gift.”

  “The composer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure, we may very well have something. Can we call you back?”

  “Yes. I’m at 63 26 08.”

  “All right. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  This time they met in the church of Nôtre-Dame de Secours, then walked in the Père-Lachaise cemetery. At the gate, Mathieu bought a bouquet of anemones from an old woman.

  They walked up the hill to the older districts, past the crumbling tombs of vanished nobility, past the Polish exiles, past the artists. They left the path at the Twenty-fourth Division and stood before the grave of Corot.

  “Are you sure of the doctor?” Mathieu asked.

  “No. Not really.”

  “But the patient, can return to work?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll want him to work on the twenty-third.”

  “It won’t be a problem.”

  “His arrangements?”

  “He’s up in Belleville, in the Arab district. Above a Moroccan restaurant—Star of the East on rue Pelleport. If he can stand the couscous, from dawn to midnight, he’ll be fine. I suggested to the owner that the wound was received in an affair of family honor, in the south, somewhere below Marseilles.”

  “Corsica.”

  “Yes.”

  Mathieu gave a brief, dry laugh. “Corsica, yes. That’s very good. The owner is someone you know?”

  “No. A newspaper advertisement, room for rent. I put on a pair of dark glasses, paid three months in advance.”

  Mathieu laughed again. “And for the rest?”

  “Hidden. Deep and dark, where it will never be found.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. When are you going to make contact?”

  “Today.”

  “That sounds right. Difficult things—the sooner the better.”

  “Difficult—” Casson said. It was a lot worse than difficult.

  Mathieu smiled a certain way, he meant it was no easier for him, that he was just as scared as Casson was.

  Making sure that nobody was looking at them, Mathieu took a folded square of paper from his pocket and slipped it among the stems of the anemones. Then he leaned over, placed the flowers on the tomb.

  “Corot,” Casson said.

  “Yes,” Mathieu said. “He’s off by himself, over here.”

  They walked back down the hill together, then shook hands at the boulevard corner and said good-bye. “They’ll make you go over it, you know. Again and again. From a number of angles,” Mathieu said.

  Casson nodded that he knew that, then turned and walked to the Métro.

  It was Singer who picked him up in a black Traction Avant Citroën on the evening of 15 June and drove him out to the brick villa in Vernouillet. The parlor, even as the weather warmed up, still felt dark and damp and unused. Millau had a technician with him, a man who wore earphones and operated a wire recorder to take down what Casson said.

  Millau had just shaved—a tiny nick freshly made on the line of the jaw. He worked in shirtsleeves, his jacket hung in a closet, but despite the suggestion of informality the shirt was freshly pressed and laundered a sparkling white. He was, evidently, going to meet someone important later that evening. Only after they’d greeted each other and made small talk did Casson realize he’d been wrong about that. Jean Casson was the someone important—the shave and the white shirt were for, well, not so much him as an important moment in Millau’s life.

  Mathieu had been right. He was made to go over the story again and again. He was comfortable with plots and characters, had spent much of his professional life in meetings where people said things like what if Duval doesn’t return until the following evening? That gave him a slight advantage but not all that much, and the mistakes were always there, waiting for him. Perhaps they wouldn’t be noticed. He’d changed the Alençon names to code names—fish. Merlan drove the car, Rouget the truck, Angouille sat beside him, the shotgun on his lap.

  It ran, he hoped, seamlessly into the truth: the single-engine Lysander a single-engine Lysander, the pilot young and gangling and rather awkward, and the navigation guides were as they’d been: signal lights along the track, locomotive fireboxes, and the glow of moonlight on the steel rails. They had come in at 8,000 feet over St.-Malo, were later hit by an antiaircraft burst—Millau nodded at that.
The copilot was slightly wounded. The shipment included radio crystals and money, Sten guns and plastique.

  “And where is it now?” Millau asked.

  “In the store room of an empty shop, down among the old furniture workshops in the faubourg St.-Antoine. I bought the droit de bail— the lease—from an old couple who retired to Canada just at the beginning of the war. It was for a long time a crémerie—you can still smell the cheese. The address is eighty-eight, rue des Citeaux, just off the avenue St.-Antoine, about a minute’s walk from the hospital. In the back of the shop is a storage locker, lead lined, no doubt for cold storage using blocks of ice. The shipment is in there, I’ve padlocked the door, here are the keys.”

  “You bought it direct? From Canada?”

  “From a broker in Paris. LaMontaine.”

  “Who is expected to come there?”

  “They haven’t told me that. Only that it must be kept safe and secure.”

  “Who said that, exactly?”

  “Merlan.”

  “Beard and spectacles.”

  “No, the tall one who drove the car.”

  “When did he say it?”

  “The last thing, before I left. I would be contacted, he said.”

  “How?”

  “At home.”

  “The Bourdon address?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That simplifies things for us. It will be of great interest, of course, to see who collects the explosive and spends the money, who uses the radio crystals—to send what information. It’s like a complicated web, that reaches here and there, and grows constantly. It may be a long time before we do anything. In these operations you must be thorough, you have to get it all. You’ll see—before it’s done it will involve husbands and wives, lovers and childhood friends, brothers and sisters, and the local florist. Love finds a way, you see. And we find out.”