Spies of the Balkans

by Alan Furst

  Vasilou turned to see what Zannis was looking at and waved to the woman. For an instant her face was still, then it came alive, like an actress before the camera: the corners of the full lips turned up, but the rest of the perfect face remained perfectly composed. Flawless.

  “Can we drop you somewhere?” Vasilou said. He didn’t mean it; Zannis had had from him all he was going to get for one day.

  “No, thanks. I’ll walk.”

  Slowly, the window of the Rolls was lowered. She was wearing a bronze-colored silk shirt and a pearl necklace just below her throat. “Can you get in front, darling?” she said. “I’ve got packages in back.”

  Vasilou gave Zannis a certain look: women, they shop. A chauffeur slid from behind the wheel, circled the car, and opened the front door.

  “Again, thank you,” Zannis said.

  Vasilou nodded, brusque and dismissive, as though Zannis, by taking his money, had become a servant. Then walked quickly to his car.

  •

  26 December. Berlin.

  Only the wealthy could afford to live in the Dahlem district of Berlin, a neighborhood of private homes with gardens. The houses were powerfully built, of sober stone or brick, often three stories high, sometimes with a corner tower, while the lawns and plantings were kept with the sort of precision achieved only by the employment of gardeners. However, in the last month of 1940, hidden here and there—one didn’t want to be seen to acknowledge shortage—were the winter remains of vegetable gardens. Behind a fieldstone wall, a rabbit hutch. And the rising of the weak sun revealed the presence of two or three roosters. In Dahlem! But the war at sea was, in Berlin and all of Germany, having its effect.

  At five-thirty, on a morning that seemed to her cruelly cold, wet, and dark, Emilia Krebs rang the chime on the door of the Gruen household. She too lived in Dahlem, not far away, but she might have driven had not gasoline become so severely rationed. When the door was answered, by a tall distinguished-looking gentleman, Emilia said, “Good morning, Herr Hartmann.” That was Herr Gruen’s new name, his alias for the journey to Salonika.

  He nodded, yes, I know, and said, “Hello, Emmi.”

  Emilia carried a thermos of real coffee, hard to find these days, and a bag of freshly baked rolls, made with white flour. Stepping inside, she found the Gruen living room almost barren, what with much of the furniture sold. On the walls, posters had been tacked up to cover the spaces where expensive paintings had once hung. The telephone sat on the floor, its cord unplugged from the wall—the Gestapo could listen to your conversation if the phone was plugged in. She greeted Frau Gruen, as pale and exhausted as her husband, then went to the coat closet in the hall and opened the door. The Gruens’ winter coats, recently bought from a used-clothing stall, were heavily worn but acceptable. They mustn’t, she knew, look like distressed aristocracy.

  Emilia Krebs tried, at least, to be cheerful. The Gruens—he’d been a prominent business attorney—were old friends, faithful friends, but today they would be leaving Germany. Their money was almost all gone, their car was gone, soon the house would be gone, and word had reached them from within the Nazi administration—from Herr Gruen’s former law clerk—that by the end of January they would be gone as well. They were on a list, it was simply a matter of time.

  Frau Gruen poured coffee into chipped mugs but refused a roll. “I can’t eat,” she said, apology in her voice. She was short and plump and had, in better times, been the merriest sort of woman—anyone could make her laugh. Now she followed Emilia’s eyes to a corner of the living room where a green fedora-like slouch hat rested on a garden chair. “Let me show you, Emmi,” she said, retrieving the hat and setting it on her head, tilting the brim over one eye. “So?” she said. “How do I look?”

  Like a middle-aged Jewish woman. “You look perfect,” Emilia said. “Very Marlene Dietrich.”

  The hat was meant to provide a kind of shadow, obscuring her friend’s face, but if the Gruens, traveling as the Hartmanns, ran into difficulties, it would be because of the way Frau Gruen looked. Their papers, passports and exit visas, were excellent forgeries, because resistance friends of Emilia’s had managed to link up with a Communist cell—they left anti-Nazi leaflets in public buildings—and with this very dangerous connection had come one of the most desirable people to know these days in Berlin: a commercial printer.

  Emilia and the Gruens drank their mugs of coffee in silence, there was nothing more to say. When they were done, Emilia said, “Would you care for company on the way to the tram?”

  “Thank you, Emmi,” Herr Gruen said, “but we’ll go by ourselves, and say farewell to you now.”

  And so they did.

  They left early, seeking the most crowded trains, and they were not disappointed. During the run to Dresden, two and a half hours, they stood in the corridor, packed in with people of all sorts, many with bulky parcels and suitcases. Their own luggage was a simple leather valise, packed for the eyes of customs officers. On this leg of the journey they were ignored, and the passport control on the German side of the Czech border was perfunctory. They were on their way to Vienna, part of the Reich, and so were most of the other passengers. Not quite so smooth was the entry control on the other side of the border—by then it was two-thirty. The officers here were Sudeten Germans, newly empowered, and so conscientious. One of them had a good long look at Frau Gruen, but was not quite so discourteous as to mention that he thought she looked like a Jew. He stared, but that was it, and so failed to notice the thin line of perspiration at her husband’s hairline—on a frigid afternoon. But their papers were in order and the officer stamped their visas.

  Vienna was a long way from Prague, some eight hours on the express train. Here the Hartmanns were in a first-class compartment, where passengers were rarely subject to unscheduled security checks by Gestapo detectives. One didn’t want to annoy powerful people. The Gruens, in preparatory conversation with Emilia and her friends, had determined that friendly chitchat was dangerous, better to remain silent and aloof. But certain travelers, especially the newly prosperous, felt that first-class status was an opportunity to converse with interesting people and were not so easily turned aside. Thus a woman in the seat across from Frau Gruen, who said, “What takes you to Vienna?”

  “Unfortunately, my wife’s mother has passed away,” Herr Gruen said. “We’re going for the funeral.” After that they were left alone.

  A useful lie, they thought. How were they to know that this woman and her mouse of a husband would be on the Leverkusen, the excursion steamer to Budapest?

  In the war of 1914, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires had fought as allies. After surrender in 1918, Hungary became a separate state but Germany, with a new war on the horizon in the late 1930s, sought to rekindle the alliance, courting the Hungarians in the hope they would join up with Hitler in the planned conquest of Europe. We must be friends, said German diplomacy, accent on the must, so commercial links of all sorts became important. For example, the round-trip excursion steamer that sailed up and down the Danube between Vienna and Budapest. True, it crossed the border of the Reich, but not the border of national amity. It was fun. A band played on the dock in Vienna, another on the dock in Budapest. The food aboard the Leverkusen, even in time of rationing, was plentiful—as much potato as you liked. Not that there wasn’t a passport control, there was, beneath great swastika banners, but the Austrian SS men kept their Alsatian shepherds muzzled and at a distance, and the officers, on the border with a new ally, were under orders to be genial. “The ice on the river is not too bad, not yet,” one of them said to Herr Gruen, who for the occasion wore a Nazi party pin in his lapel.

  “One can be glad of that,” Herr Gruen said, with his best smile.

  “You’ll have a jolly time in Budapest, Herr Hartmann.”

  “We expect to. Then, back to work.”

  “In Berlin, I see.”

  “Yes, we love it there, but, always good to get away for a bit.”

 
The officer agreed, stamped the exit visa, raised his right arm, and said, amiably, “Heil Hitler.”

  “Sieg Heil,” said the Gruens, a duet. Then, relieved, they climbed the gangway.

  Standing at the rail of the steamer, watching the passengers as they filed past the border control, was the woman from the train and her husband. “Isn’t that …?” she said. She had to raise her voice, because the oompah of the tuba in the dockside ensemble was particularly emphatic.

  “It is, my dear.”

  “Very curious, Hansi. He said they were going to a funeral. In Vienna.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear properly.”

  “No, no. I’m sure I did.” Now she began to suspect that the pleasure of her company had been contemptuously brushed aside, and she started to get mad.

  Poor Hansi. This could go on for days. “Oh, who knows,” he said.

  “No, Hansi,” she said sharply. “They must explain themselves.”

  •

  But, where were they?

  The Gruens had taken a first-class cabin for the overnight trip to Budapest and planned to hide there. Hunger, however, finally drove Herr Gruen to the dining room, where he ate quickly and ordered a cheese sandwich to take back to the cabin. As he left the dining room, here was the woman from the train. Her husband was nowhere to be seen, but she was sitting on a lounge chair just outside the door and rose when she saw him. “Sir,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Excuse me, but did you not say on the train that you were attending the funeral of your wife’s mother, in Vienna?”

  Herr Gruen flinched. Why had this terrifying woman, cheeks flushed, arms folded across her chest, suddenly attacked him? He did not answer, looking like a schoolboy caught out by a teacher, said, “Well,” to gain time, then “I did, meine Frau, say that. I’m afraid I did not tell the truth.”

  “Oh?” This was a threat.

  “I did not mean to trouble you, meine Frau, but I felt I could not honorably respond to your question.”

  “And why not?” The admission had not appeased her; the prospect of a really nasty confrontation apparently provoking her to a sort of sexual excitement.

  “Because we are married, but not to each other.”

  The woman’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

  “We are in love, meine Frau, so much in love, we are.” He paused, then said, “Tragically.”

  Now she went scarlet, and stuttered an apology.

  For her, he thought, just as good as a fight. Humiliation. Possibly better. It wasn’t until he was back inside the cabin that he realized his shirt was soaked with sweat.

  27 December. In the sunless light of a winter morning, the Gypsy musicians on the Danube dock seemed oddly out of place, as though they’d become lost on their way to a nightclub. Still, they sawed away on their violins and strummed their guitars as the passengers disembarked from the Leverkusen. Holding hands as they walked down the gangplank, the Gruens were as close to peace of mind as they’d been for a long, long time. True, their train to Belgrade didn’t leave until the morning of the twenty-ninth, so they would have to spend two nights in a hotel. This didn’t bother them at all—they were no longer on German soil, and the hotel would be luxurious. A Hungarian officer stamped their passports in the ship’s dining room, and they’d begun to feel like normal travelers as they headed for the line of taxis waiting at the pier.

  But they were, just then, intercepted.

  By a strange creature, small and dark and vaguely threatening, who wore a narrow-brim brown hat with a card stuck in the hatband that said Hotel Astoria. Not a bad hotel, but not where they were going. “Hello, hello,” said the creature.

  “Good morning,” said Herr Gruen. “We’re not at the Astoria, we’re booked at the Danube Palace.”

  The Gruens started to walk away, but the creature held up a hand, stop. “No,” he said, “you can’t go there.” His German was rough but functional.

  “Excuse us, please,” Herr Gruen said, perhaps less courteous now.

  The creature seemed puzzled. “You’re the Hartmanns, right? Green tie, green hat?”

  Herr Gruen’s eyes widened. Frau Gruen said, “Yes, we are. And?”

  “I’m called Akos, it means ‘white falcon.’ I’m sent by your friend in Salonika, and I’m here to tell you that if you set foot in the Palace, well, that’s the end of you.”

  Herr Gruen said, “It is?”

  “A big fancy hotel, Herr Hartmann, so Germans all over the place, and they’ve bribed every waiter, every porter, every maid. You won’t last an hour because they know, they know fugitives when they see them.”

  “So it will be the Astoria?”

  “What? Oh, I forgot.” Akos took off his hat, slipped the card from the hatband and put it in his pocket. “No, I got this just for the dock. It’s not so nice where I’m taking you, but you’ll be safe.” He glanced sideways, at something that had caught his attention, something he didn’t like. “Let’s go,” he said. “And let’s make it look good,” he added, taking the valise from Herr Gruen. They walked to the line of taxis, then past it, to a taxi parked in a side street just off the waterfront. Akos opened the door for the Gruens, then stared toward the dock as they settled themselves in the backseat.

  The taxi sped away, cornering through side streets as Akos, from time to time, turned the rearview mirror so he could see out the back window. The driver said something in Hungarian, Akos answered him briefly. They crossed a bridge, then drove for a few minutes more, entering a narrow street with dead neon signs over nightclub doors. “It gets busy here at night,” Akos explained. Midway down the block they stopped in front of a hotel—an old building two windows wide, brick stained black with a century of soot. “Here we are,” Akos said. The Gruens peered out the window—here? “Don’t worry,” Akos said. “You’ll survive. Wait till you get to Serbia!”

  The smell inside was strong: smoke, drains, garlic, God only knew what else. There was no clerk—a bell on the desk, a limp curtain over a doorway—and Akos led them upstairs, up three flights past silent corridors. The room was narrow, so was the bed, with a blanket over a mattress, and the paint had been peeling off the walls for years. “If you want food,” Akos said, “just go downstairs and ring the bell, somebody will get you something, but you don’t leave the hotel.” He stood to one side of the window, moved the curtain an inch with his index finger, and muttered to himself in Hungarian. It sounded like an oath. To the Gruens he said, “I’ll be back. Something I have to take care of.”

  Gus wanted these people kept safe, and Akos was proud that he’d been chosen for the job. But now he had a problem. A man he’d spotted at the dock had stared at every passenger leaving the Leverkusen, then a taxi followed his own through a maze of back streets, and now the hotel was being watched by the same man. Not young, with the sort of head that looks like it’s been squeezed flat, a brush mustache and waxy complexion, he wore a grimy pearl-gray overcoat. Who was he? A policeman? Akos didn’t think so. The guy definitely didn’t act like a detective; he was furtive, and he was alone. He was, more likely, some miserable little sneak who sold fugitives for cash—cash from the Budapest cops, or even from the Germans.

  These people he’d hidden in the hotel were on the run, surely using false papers. And how did the sneak know that? Because when people ran from the Nazis they ran through Budapest, and when you see something often enough you learn to recognize it; you can smell it. And if the guy was wrong, so what? He was still some cop’s lapdog, next time he’d get it right. Cops lived off informers; that was how they did their work. They’d tried it with Akos, but only once: he shrugged, he didn’t know anything, I’m the dumbest guy in town. In the gang Gus ran, no rats allowed, there were stories, bad stories, better to be loyal. Akos left the hotel, made a sharp turn away from the man in the doorway of an abandoned store, then, head down, in a hurry, he walked around the block, coming up on the man from behind.

  Akos carried a little knife,
simple thing, a cheap wood handle and a three-inch blade. But that was all you needed, if you knew what you were doing. Only a three-inch blade but he kept it sharp as a razor, so it had to be protected by a leather sheath. As he neared the man, he took the knife out of its sheath and held it behind his leg. What to do? Slide it in and out? That would be that. Put it in the right place and the victim never made a sound, just fell down, as though the air had been let out of him. But now you had a corpse, now you had a murder, so there would be cops on the street, sniffing around. They would search the hotel.

  Akos dropped his hand on the man’s left shoulder and, as he turned in that direction, circled around on his blind side. Startled, the man opened his mouth, ready to tell some tale but he never got it out. What an ugly tie, Akos thought. Maroon, with a gray knight-on-horseback in the middle. Who would wear such a thing? He took the bottom of the tie between thumb and forefinger as though to study it, then the knife flashed, so fast the guy never saw it, just below the knot. Ah, but maybe Akos wasn’t as deft as he thought, because the blade not only sliced off the tie but took a shirt button as well, which flew up in the air, landed with a click on the pavement, and rolled away. Still holding the bottom of the tie, Akos folded it in half and stuck it in the pocket of the man’s shirt. The man whinnied with fear.

  “Could’ve been an ear,” Akos said. “I think maybe you should go back wherever you came from. And forget what happened. Because if you don’t …” Akos put the knife away.

  The man said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir,” turned, and hurried off.

  29 December. The train was classified as an express, but it never sped up, just chugged slowly south across the Hungarian plain, past snow-covered fields where crows waited on the bare branches of the trees, through mist and fog, like a countryside in a poem or a dream. The Gruens were nine hours from Belgrade, in the neutral nation of Yugoslavia, as Germany faded away with every beat of the rails.