by Alan Furst
His uncle turned, his eyes widened with disbelief, then he shouted, “Constantine!” rose to his feet, and embraced his nephew. Strong as an ox, Uncle Anastas, who held him tight while Zannis felt, on his cheek, tears from his uncle’s eyes. “Oh my God, I thought I’d never see you again,” Anastas said. Then took him by the arms, stepped back, stared at him lovingly, and said, “Constantine, my own nephew, what the fuck are you doing here?”
“A long story, uncle.”
“My brother’s son,” Anastas said to his friends. “Look at him.”
“A handsome boy,” one of them said, in Greek.
“Are you still playing, Anastas?” said the other.
“I fold my cards,” Anastas said, wiping his eyes.
Uncle Anastas wanted to show him off at the antiquaires’ cafe but Zannis told him, as gently as he could, that they should close the booth and speak inside, so Anastas shooed his friends off, lowered the shutter over the front of the stall, then went to the cafe and returned carrying coffees spiked with Calvados. Zannis had meanwhile discovered-lying on a demilune table artfully coated with dust-a copy of that morning’s Le Matin. On the front page a headline: SS MAJOR SHOT BY JEWISH GANGSTERS!
His uncle, having had time to think things over on his walk to the cafe, was good and worried by the time he returned. He waited one sip of coffee, then said, “You better tell me the story, Constantine.”
Zannis held up the newspaper.
“Skata! You’re not a Jew.”
“Not a gangster either.”
Anastas switched on a lamp with a colored-glass shade, read the first few sentences of the article, then said, “Well, it’s in the Zannis blood. I got my first Turk when I was sixteen. A gendarme, but only a corporal, not a major.”
“I remember the story,” Zannis said.
Anastas put the paper down and looked puzzled. “But tell me something, why did you have to come all the way to Paris to do this thing? You could’ve waited, you know, they’ll be in Greece soon enough.”
“I came up here to rescue an Englishman, Uncle Anastas.”
“Oh, I see. You’re involved in … secret work?”
“Yes.”
“Bad business, dear nephew, they kill people who do that.”
“I know. But what happened last night was accidental-we were supposed to leave here quietly. Now we’re stuck.”
“Oh, ‘stuck’ I don’t know. All sorts of people in hiding here, waiting for the war to end, waiting for the Americans to stop sitting on their asses and do something.”
“I can’t wait, uncle. I have to get out, and I have to get my Englishman out.”
Anastas thought it over, finally said, “Not easy.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“But not impossible. Do you have any money?”
“Plenty. Grandma sewed it in the lining of my jacket.”
“Because that’s what it takes. And if you don’t have enough-”
“No, uncle, I have a lot. In dollars.”
“Dollars! Skata, I haven’t seen dollars in a long time. How much, hundreds?”
“Thousands.”
“Constantine!”
“It’s the war, uncle. Everything’s expensive.”
“Still, you must be very important. I mean, thousands.”
“The English do not want this man captured.”
From outside the stall, a low two-note whistle. Zannis could see, in the space between the bottom of the shutter and the ground, a pair of shoes, which then moved away. “What goes on?” he said.
“Police.” He tugged the little chain on the lamp, darkening the stall, then rested an elbow on his knee and rubbed the corners of his mouth with thumb and index finger. “What to do with you,” he said. “Where have you hidden your Englishman?”
Zannis described the building and the courtyard.
“He’ll be safe there, but not for long. When these clowns go away, you’ll bring him to my apartment.”
“Thank you, Anastas,” Zannis said.
“What the hell, you’re family. And maybe I have one idea.”
“Which is?”
“I know somebody.”
“Always good, to know somebody.”
“You’d better,” Anastas said. “Otherwise …”
In the apartment, Zannis and Byer settled down to wait. Byer would sleep on a chaise longue, Zannis on a tasseled couch. And, later that morning, one of Anastas’s card-playing friends took a can of blue paint and a license plate over to the courtyard where they’d hidden the Peugeot. He then drove the newly painted car to a nearby village, parked it on a mud flat by the river, and took a train back to Paris. “I suspect it was gone before I got on the train,” he told Anastas. “Into a barn until the war ends.”
“Harder than I thought,” Anastas said at dinner. His French wife had prepared steaks, with spinach and onions sauteed in oil, and they drank a very good red wine in unlabeled bottles. “The man I know …?” Anastas paused to chew his steak, then took a sip of the wine. “Well, he had to go to a man he knows.” Anastas met his nephew’s eyes, making sure he understood the magnitude of such an event. “So prepare to pay, nephew.”
“When do I meet him?” Zannis said.
“After midnight, two-thirty. A car will come for you.”
Byer looked up from his plate and said, “Thank you, madame, for this wonderful dinner.”
“You are welcome,” she said. “It is in your honor, monsieur, and Constantine’s. To wish you safe journey.” She smiled, warm and affectionate. If the occupation had affected her, there was no evidence that Zannis could see.
“We drink to that,” Anastas said. And they did.
2:30 A.M. The glossy black automobile was surely worth a fortune, Zannis had never seen one like it and had no idea what it was. It rolled to a stop in front of Anastas’s apartment building in Saint-Ouen, the back door swung open, and Zannis climbed in. The interior smelled like expensive leather. The driver turned to face him, holding him with his eyes for a long moment, likely making sure Zannis knew who he was dealing with. He knew. He recognized the breed: confident young men to whom killing came easily and smart enough to profit from it. Then the driver rested his hands on the wheel but the car never moved, simply sat there, the huge engine purring softly.
Zannis had known corrupt men of every sort, high and low, over the years he’d been with the police, but the friend of the friend, sitting next to him, was something new. He looked, Zannis thought, like a French king; prosperously stout, with fair, wavy hair parted to one side, creamy skin, a prominent nose, and a pouch that sagged beneath his chin. “I’m told you wish to leave France,” he said, his voice deep and used to command.
“That’s right.”
“The price, for two individuals, is two thousand dollars. Have you the money with you?”
“Yes.”
“I believe you are the man who shot a German officer. Did you do this because you have a hatred of Germans?”
“No. My friend was lying on the floor of the car, the officer would have seen him, so I had to do it. Why do you want to know?”
“To inform certain people-the people who need to know things. They don’t care what is done, they simply require information.”
“Germans?”
The man was amused. “Please,” he said, not unkindly. Then, “It doesn’t matter, does it?” It was as though he enjoyed innocence, found Zannis so, and instinctively liked him. “Now,” he said, “there are two ways for you to leave France. The first choice is a freight train controlled by Communist railway workers. Traveling in this way you may go to Germany, Italy, or Spain. However, once you’ve crossed the border-there will be no inspection of papers-you are on your own. Hopefully, you’ve made arrangements that will allow you to proceed from one of those countries.”
“I haven’t.”
“I see. In that case, you may wish to travel by airplane.”
“By airplane?” Zannis was incredulous.
“Just … surprised.”
The man’s shrug was barely detectable. “If you wish to leave tomorrow, and for you that might not be a bad idea, the plane is going to …” He leaned forward, toward the driver, and said, “Leon?”
“Sofia.”
“Yes, Sofia.”
“That would be best,” Zannis said.
“Very well.” He held out a hand, creamy and fat, palm up, and said, “So then …”
Zannis had removed the money from his jacket lining and put the thick wad of bills in the pocket of his coat; now he counted out two thousand dollars in fifty-dollar bills. The man next to him, the French king, stowed the money in a leather briefcase, probing first to make room for it. Then he gave Zannis directions: the name of a village, how to identify the road that led to an airstrip, and a time. “All memorized?” he asked Zannis.
“Yes, I won’t forget.”
“When you describe your adventures in France, as no doubt you will have to, I would take it as a personal favor that you remain silent about this particular chapter, about me. Do I have your word?”
“You have it.”
“Do you keep your word?”
“I do.”
“Then good evening.”
Uncle Anastas had a friend-also an emigre Greek, it turned out-who owned an ancient truck, and he picked them up at dawn. A few minutes later they joined a long line of produce trucks, coming back empty after delivery to the Paris produce markets, and the soldiers waved them through the control at the Porte Maillot. Then he headed northwest from Paris on the road that followed the Seine, with signs for DIRECTION ROUEN. A wet, steady snow that morning, from a low sky packed with gray cloud. “We won’t fly today,” Byer said, staring anxiously out the window.
“We may have to wait,” Zannis said. “But I expect we’ll take off.”
“Not in this.” After he spoke, Byer swallowed.
Zannis studied him. What went on? “Everything all right?” he said.
Byer nodded emphatically. Nothing wrong with me.
It was hard to see, the windshield wiper smeared snow and road grime across the window, not much more than that, and the driver leaned forward and squinted, cursing eloquently in Greek. Finally he found the route departementale for La Roche-Guyon, the truck skidding as he made the last-minute turn. The narrow road wound past winter farmland for a long time, then it was Zannis who spotted the stone marker with a number chiseled into it, and the truck drove, in low gear, up a muddy, deeply rutted path. Finally, when they knew they’d taken the wrong turn, they saw an airplane in a plowed field. A compact twin-engine aircraft, a workhorse used for a few passengers or a small load of freight, with a white cross in a red circle insignia behind the cockpit. Swiss markings, Zannis thought. What a clever king. Two men were loading crates into the plane, through a cargo hatch on the underside of the fuselage. “You can walk from here,” the driver said. As he worked at getting the truck turned around, Zannis and Byer trudged across a field, wind-driven snow in their faces. When they neared the plane, one of the men saw them, stopped loading, and waited until they reached him. “You are the passengers?”
“Yes.”
“Bad morning.”
“Will we be able to fly?” Byer said.
“Me?” The man grinned. He had high, sharp cheekbones, hair sheared off close to the scalp, and, Zannis could hear it, a hard Slavic edge to his French. A Russian? A Serb? He wore a leather jacket and a dirty white scarf spotted with oil-a cinema aviator-with a holstered revolver on his hip. “You give us a hand,” he said. “We’ll take off sooner.”
The crates were heavy, MAS 38 stenciled on the rough wooden boards. Zannis wasn’t certain, but he had a pretty good hunch he was loading French machine guns. When they were done, the pilot’s helper headed toward a farmhouse on the horizon. The pilot rubbed his hands and looked up at the sky. “One of you can sit on the crates, the other can use the co-pilot seat.” He led them around the plane, to a door behind the cockpit with a short steel-frame ladder propped against the bottom of the doorway.
Standing at the foot of the ladder, Zannis waited for Byer to climb up. When he didn’t, Zannis said, “Time to go.” He sounded cheerful, but he knew he had trouble.
Byer stood there. He was in a trance, face dead white, eyes closed.
“Harry?”
No answer.
“Let’s go,” Zannis said sharply. No nonsense, please. The pilot was staring at them through the cockpit window.
But Byer was rooted to the earth. Zannis guessed that something had happened to him when the Wellington went down, and now he couldn’t get on the plane.
The pilot’s patience was gone, the engines roared to life and the propellers spun. Zannis tried once more, raising his voice over the noise. “One foot in front of the other, Harry, your way back to England. Think about England, going home.”
Byer never moved. So Zannis took him by the back of the collar and the belt, hauled him up the ladder, and shoved him into the plane. Then he sat him down on a pile of crates. From the cockpit, the pilot called out, “I have a bottle of vodka up here, will that help?”
“No, it’s all right now,” Zannis yelled back, closing the door, pulling a bar down to secure it.
The plane began to bump across the field, gathering speed, then, heavily loaded, it wobbled aloft and climbed into the gray cloud.
Melissa stood on her hind legs, tail wagging furiously, set her great paws on his chest and licked his face. “Yes, yes girl, I’m back, hello, yes.” The welcome from his family was no less enthusiastic-they knew he’d been up to something dangerous and were relieved that he’d returned. A demand that he stay for dinner was gently turned aside; he wanted to go back to his apartment, to his bed, because he wanted to sleep more than he wanted to eat. So he promised he would return the following night and, by the time he let Melissa out the door, his grandmother was already at her sewing machine, working the pedals, restitching the lining of his jacket. As he walked down the hill toward the waterfront, Melissa ran ahead of him, turning from time to time to make sure he hadn’t again vanished, a sickle slice of moon stood low in the night sky, the streets were quiet, it was good to be home.
The flight to Bulgaria had been uneventful. At one point-was it Germany down there? Austria? — a pair of patrolling Messerschmitts came up to have a look at them, then banked and slid away. Perhaps the French king had permission to fly his crates over Germany-from some office, in some building. Perhaps more than one office, perhaps more than one building, perhaps more than one country. Perhaps the French king could do whatever he wanted; it had not been easy for him to find room in his briefcase for the two thousand dollars. Zannis had, in time, accepted the pilot’s invitation to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. From there he watched the passage of the nameless winter land below, the hills and the rivers, and wondered what to do about the crates. Machine guns to Bulgaria? For who? To shoot who? So, say something to Lazareff? Who worked for the Sofia police. Tell them? Tell Bulgaria-the historic enemy of Greece? He’d given his word to the French king, he would keep it. Did that include the crates?
In the end, it didn’t matter.
Because the pilot landed at a military airfield north of Sofia, and a squad of Bulgarian soldiers was waiting to unload the shipment. The officer in charge at the airfield had no idea what to do with unexpected, and unexplained, passengers, and had pretty much decided to hold them at the base and await orders from above. But then, at Zannis’s insistence, he’d made a telephone call to Captain Lazareff, which produced a police car and a driver, who dropped them off at a restaurant in Sofia.
There, over plates of lamb and pilaf, accompanied by a bottle of Mastika, Lazareff and Zannis conversed in German, which excluded Byer, who, now back on solid ground, hardly cared. Lazareff inquired politely about the flight, Zannis responded politely that it had been smooth and easy. Lazareff suggested-still polite, though with a cer
tain tightness at the corners of the mouth-that it would be better if Zannis were to forget he’d seen the plane’s cargo.
“What cargo?”
“You’ll tell your friend there? Whoever he is?”
“What friend?”
“Ha-ha-ha!”
More Mastika, tasting like anise, and lethal.
“By the way,” Lazareff said, “the situation in Roumania is a little worse than the newspapers are letting on. We calculate six hundred and eighty thousand troops, maybe sixty Wehrmacht divisions, artillery, tanks, all of it. They have to be fed, it isn’t cheap, so they’re obviously there for a reason. Probably they’re meant to intimidate us or, if it comes to that, invade. Or maybe they’re there to threaten the Serbs, or maybe Greece. Our response, so far, has been to tell Hitler that we’re not quite ready to sign his pact.”
“Not quite ready?”
“Not quite. We’ve destroyed the bridges over the Danube.”
“That would be a message, I’d think.”
“A tantrum. We’ve seen the materiel, struts and floats, that can be assembled into pontoon bridges.”
“I appreciate your telling me,” Zannis said.
“I expect your generals know all about it,” Lazareff said. “But I think you should know also, Costa, so you can make your own, personal … arrangements. If you see what I mean.”
From there, they’d moved to lunchtime conversation. And by midafternoon, after Zannis had telephoned Escovil, and with exit visas provided by Lazareff, Zannis and Byer were on the train to Salonika. At six-thirty in the evening, Byer was delivered to Escovil at the Pension Bastasini. “How did you get here so quickly?” Escovil said, accusation in his voice.
“It’s a long story,” Zannis said. “For another time.”
“You didn’t travel on the trains,” Escovil said. It wasn’t a question.
“You were watching, weren’t you.”
“Of course. So we’ll want you to explain.”
“Later,” Zannis said. “I’m going to see my family.” He was exhausted, at the last available edge of patience. Escovil knew what came next, so left it there and, a brief taxi ride later, Melissa came to the door to greet the returning hero.
