Spies of the Balkans

by Alan Furst

  “Going home,” Zannis said.

  “Because I have this very grand apartment up on the avenue Foch, and you and Gorgeous are invited, for, well, some … champagne.”

  The aristocrat sank her clawed fingernails into Zannis’s thigh; he almost yelped. “Thanks, but the lady is tired, I’ll take her home after dinner.”

  The officer glared at him, his head weaving back and forth.

  The woman beside him said, “Klaus? Are you ignoring us?”

  Thank God for Frenchwomen, puffy blond or not! “Enjoy your evening, my friend,” Zannis said, employing a particular tone of voice—sympathetic, soothing—he’d used, all his years with the police, for difficult drunks.

  And it almost worked; the officer couldn’t decide whether he wanted to end this battle or not. Then he lurched, and his face lit up. What went on? Maybe his girlfriend’s hand had done something under the table, something more enticing than the aristocrat’s. Whatever it was it worked, and the officer turned away and whispered in girlfriend’s ear.

  “Plat de la mer!” the waiter cried out, wheeling to a stop at the table, a gigantic platter of crustaceans held high, balanced on his fingertips.

  A taxi was waiting in front of the brasserie, and Zannis directed the driver back to his hotel. A much-relieved aristocrat sank back against the seat and said, voice confidential, “Thank God that’s over. I was afraid you were going to shoot him.”

  “Not likely,” he said. This thing in the holster is just for show. And so he’d believed, until his third and final meeting with Escovil. Who’d said, just before they parted, “Finally, I must say something a bit … sticky. Which is, you mustn’t allow Byer to be taken by the Germans, we cannot have him interrogated. So, if it looks like the game is up, you’ll have to, to, to do whatever you must.” Zannis hadn’t answered: at first he couldn’t believe what he’d heard, then he had to, but such madness, murder, was far beyond what he was willing to do.

  At war, the city was blacked out; every window opaque, the occasional lighted streetlamp painted blue, car headlights taped down to slits, so the taxi moved cautiously through the silent, ghostly streets. When they reached the hotel and were alone as they approached the doorway, his companion said, “Not long now. Your friend has been brought to the hotel, and you’re meant to catch the early train.”

  “The five-thirty-five.”

  “Yes, the first train to Berlin. You have all the papers?”

  “Stamped and signed: release from the Santé prison, exit visas, everything.”

  The night clerk was asleep in a chair behind the reception desk, a newspaper open across his lap. They made sure they didn’t wake him, climbing the stairs quietly as he snored gently down below. When they reached the third floor, Zannis stood by his door and said, “Where is he?”

  The aristocrat made an upward motion with her head. “Forty-three.”

  In his room, Zannis shed his trench coat and had a look at his valise, which appeared to be undisturbed, but, he well knew, an experienced professional search would leave no evidence. The aristocrat, waiting at the door, said, “Ready to go?” In her voice, as much impatience as, true to her breeding, she ever permitted herself to reveal. These people were amateurs, Zannis thought, and they’d had all they wanted of secrecy and danger.

  They climbed another flight, the aristocrat tapped twice on the door, then twice again, which was opened to reveal a darkened room. The man who’d opened the door had a sharp handsome face, dark hair combed straight back, and stood as though at attention. A military posture; he was perhaps, Zannis thought, a senior officer. The aristocrat and the officer touched each other’s cheeks with their lips, Paris style, murmuring something that Zannis couldn’t hear but certainly an endearment. So these two were husband and wife. The officer then said, to Zannis, “I can’t tell you my name,” as though it were an apology. “You are Zannis?”

  “I am.”

  They shook hands, the officer’s grip powerful and steady. “Your problem now,” he said, nodding toward the interior of the room.

  In the shadows, the silhouette of a small man sat slumped on the edge of the bed. Zannis said, “Harry Byer?”

  A white face turned toward him. “Yes,” the man said in English. “More or less.”

  Zannis went downstairs to his room and collected his trench coat and valise. When he returned to Room 43, the officer said, “We’ve arranged a car. At oh-four-forty hours. A police car, actually. So your arrival at the Gare du Nord, which is closely guarded, will look authentic.”

  “Stolen?”

  “Borrowed.”

  “Better.”

  “And driven by a policeman. Well, at least somebody wearing the uniform.”

  The aristocrat laughed, silver chimes, at the idea of whatever old friend this was, playing the role of a policeman. As she started to remove her earrings, Zannis noticed a bare ring finger. Now he realized that these two were probably not married but were, instead, lovers. This sent his mind back to Salonika and a fleeting image of Demetria, by his side, in an occupied city.

  Zannis crossed the room, the bare boards creaking beneath his weight, and shifted the room’s single chair so that he sat facing Byer. Then, very laboriously, in his primitive English, he explained how the operation would work. When he showed Byer his photograph in the Greek passport, he was rewarded with at least a flicker of hope in the man’s eyes. “It might even work,” Byer said. He took the passport and studied it. “I do speak a little French, you know. I took it at school.”

  “He does,” the officer said. “If you speak slowly.”

  Zannis was relieved and switched to a mix of the two languages, making sure at the end of every phrase that Byer understood what he’d been told. “At the borders, Harry, and on the trains—at least as far as Yugoslavia—you can’t say anything at all, because you’re supposed to be Greek. And nobody will speak to you, once you’re wearing these.” He took a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. Byer stared at them. Zannis said, “Better than a POW camp, right?”

  Byer nodded. “What did I do, to be in the Santé?”

  “You murdered your wife and her lover, in Salonika.”

  After a moment, Byer said, “Not the worst idea.”

  Zannis ignored the irony. “It had to be a murder of some kind, for the Germans to believe that we’d gotten the French police to arrest you, after you’d fled to Paris.” He paused, then said, “The only plausible crime would be a crime of passion. You don’t much look like a gangster.”

  Zannis stood, took a cigarette from his packet, then offered the packet around. Only the officer accepted, inhaling with pleasure as Zannis extinguished the match. He started to speak, but something caught his attention and he looked at his watch and said, almost to himself, “It’s too early for the police car.” Then, to Zannis, “Can’t you hear it?”

  In the silence of the room, Zannis listened intently and discovered the low beat of an idling engine. The officer went to the window and, using one finger, carefully moved the blackout curtain aside, no more than an inch. “Come have a look,” he said.

  Zannis joined him at the window. Across the street from the hotel, a glossy black Citroën, the luxury model with a long hood and square passenger compartment, was parked at the curb. The air was sufficiently cold to make the exhaust a white plume at the tailpipe.

  The officer kept his voice low, his words meant for Zannis and nobody else. “The only people who drive these things in Paris are the Gestapo and the SS. It’s the official German car.”

  Zannis understood immediately, though he found it hard to believe. “We had a problem at the restaurant,” he said, “with an SS officer. It seems he followed us back here.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He wanted your woman friend. He was very drunk.”

  “Then let’s hope it’s him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if it isn’t, we’ve been betrayed.”

  “Is that possible?”
<
br />   “I’m afraid it is.”

  The aristocrat joined them at the window. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a car out there. See it? Zannis thinks some SS man followed you home from the restaurant.”

  The aristocrat peered past the curtain. She swore, then said, “Now what?”

  “We’ll have to think of something.”

  “Will they search the hotel?” she said.

  Byer said, “What’s going on?” His voice rose to a whine. “What is it?”

  The officer said, “Keep quiet, Harry.” Then, “They might search the hotel. Maybe he’s waiting down there for a squad to show up.”

  “Is there a back door?” Zannis said.

  “There is, but it’s padlocked. And, even if we got out that way, what happens when our friend shows up with the police car?”

  They were silent for a moment. The officer again moved the curtain and said, “He’s just sitting there.”

  “There were two of them, and their girlfriends,” the aristocrat said. “Maybe they’ll just go away. They have to assume I’m in this hotel for the night.”

  “Maybe they will. Or maybe they’ll wait until morning,” the officer said.

  “Could anybody be … that crazy?”

  Nobody answered. Finally Zannis said, “Can you somehow contact your friend and warn him off?”

  The officer looked at his watch. “No, he’s left his hotel by now. The police car is up at Levallois, in a garage. The owner helps us.”

  Again, silence.

  Zannis’s mind was racing. He had seen, when he’d first entered the hotel, a metal shutter pulled down over a broad entryway. Not a shop, he guessed, because the sidewalk ended at either side of the shutter and a cobblestone strip led to the street. “If Byer and I aren’t here,” he said, “would it matter if a Gestapo squad searched the hotel?”

  The officer thought it over. “No, it would just be the two of us in a room. And, when our friend arrives, he’ll see the Gestapo vehicles and drive away.”

  “I think we’d better do something now,” Zannis said. He put on his trench coat and grabbed the handle of his small valise.

  “Good luck,” the officer said. He shook Zannis’s hand, and the aristocrat kissed him on both cheeks and said, “Be careful.”

  “Let’s go, Harry,” Zannis said.

  In the dark lobby at the foot of the staircase, the night clerk snored on, dead to the world. Zannis shook him by the shoulder and he woke with a start and said, “What … what do you want?” His breath smelled of sour wine.

  “Is there a garage in this hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s in there?”

  “A car, belongs to the guy who owns the hotel. He can’t drive it—the Bosch tried to confiscate private cars, so some people hid them.”

  “Is the car locked?”

  The clerk sat up straight. “Say, what do you think—” Zannis drew the Walther and showed it to the clerk, who said, “Oh,” then, “The key’s in the office, in the desk.”

  Zannis gestured with the Walther and the clerk stood up, went into the office behind the reception desk, and searched in the bottom drawer until he found car keys on a ring.

  “And next,” Zannis said, “I’ll want the key for the back door.”

  “On a nail, just next to you.”

  “Harry?”

  Byer came around the desk; Zannis gave him the key. “Run this upstairs. Tell them to open the back door and get out right away.”

  Byer hurried off and Zannis turned back to the clerk. “The shutter over the garage doorway, it’s locked?”

  “Of course.”

  “From inside? Is there an entry from the hotel?”

  “No, it has a lock at the bottom, you have to go out to the sidewalk.”

  “Get the key.”

  Muttering under his breath, the clerk searched the middle drawer, threw pens, a rubber stamp, an ink pad, and miscellaneous papers on the desk. At last he found the key, and started to hand it to Zannis, who waved him off. “Is there gas in the car?” Zannis said.

  “Yes.”

  “Battery connected? Tires still on?”

  “I charge the battery twice a week, late at night. The boss wants it ready to drive.”

  “He does? Why?”

  “The hell would I know? Maybe he wants to go somewhere.”

  Zannis heard Byer, running down the stairs, likely waking every guest in the hotel. This will not work, Zannis thought. There was no way he could get this man back to Salonika. A moment later, Byer, breathing hard, arrived at the reception. “They said thank you.”

  “Now it’s time,” Zannis said to the clerk, “for you to go outside, unlock the shutter, and roll it up.”

  “Me?”

  “You see anybody else?”

  “Why can’t your pal do it?”

  Zannis rapped him on the shoulder blade with the barrel of the Walther, just hard enough.

  The clerk mumbled something Zannis was not meant to hear and said, “All right, whatever you want.”

  Keeping Byer behind him in the darkened lobby, Zannis unlocked the hotel door and watched as the clerk went out the door and turned left, toward the shuttered garage. Across the street, the Citroën idled, but Zannis could see only dim shapes behind the steamed-up windows.

  The clerk came quickly through the door. “Done,” he said. “That Citroën out there, are they …?”

  “Go back to sleep,” Zannis said.

  “What about the boss’s car?”

  “Send me a bill,” Zannis said. “After the war.” He turned to Byer. “Ready, Harry? We’re not going to run, we’re going to walk quickly. You get in the back and lie on the floor.”

  “Why?” Byer’s eyes were wide.

  “Just in case,” Zannis said.

  Keeping Byer on his left—the side away from the Citroën—and the gun in his hand in his coat pocket, Zannis walked through the hotel door. The shutter was rolled up to reveal an old Peugeot sedan, the metal rims around the headlights spotted with rust. He thought he might get away with it: the SS officer hadn’t seen him in his trench coat, the seductive Didi wasn’t with him, and the people in the Citroën wouldn’t be able to see much of anything through the cloudy windows.

  On the first try, wrong key—trunk key, of course—then the driver’s door opened, Zannis unlocked the back door, and Byer, as ordered, lay flat on the floor. As Zannis settled behind the wheel, the driver’s door of the Citroën swung open and the baby-faced SS he’d seen at the brasserie started to get out, then turned his head as though somebody in the backseat had spoken to him. Zannis searched for the starter button, found it, and pressed it with his thumb. Nothing. Betrayed. By night-clerk malice, or by an old car on a damp night, it came to the same thing.

  “What’s going on?” Byer said.

  Zannis pressed again.

  Now the other SS officer climbed out of the Citroën. From the Peugeot’s engine, a single, rather discreet, cough. The SS man heading for the garage wasn’t in a hurry. A little unsteady on his feet, he kept one hand out of sight behind his leg. Zannis held the button down, which produced a second cough, another, and one more. Then the engine grumbled and came to life. Zannis shoved the clutch pedal to the floor and put the car in what he thought was first gear. It wasn’t. As the clutch pedal came up, the Peugeot stalled. The SS man, now ten feet away, was amused and shook his head—a world populated by fools, what was one to do?

  The starter worked once again and this time Zannis found first gear and gave the engine as much gas as he dared. The SS man’s hand came out from behind his leg, Luger pistol held casually, barrel facing down. He changed direction in order to block the Peugeot and held up his other hand—the amiable traffic cop. Zannis slammed on the brake, the Peugeot lurched to a stop and then, looking sheepish and embarrassed, he cranked the window down. He had almost hit a German officer, what was wrong with him?

  The SS man smiled, that’s better, and, ob
viously very drunk from the way he walked, approached the driver’s side of the car. He was just starting to bend over so he could have a word with the driver when Zannis shot him in the face. He staggered backward, his hat fell off, blood ran from his nostrils, and Zannis fired twice more; the first clipping off the top of his ear, the second in the right eyebrow. That did it, and he collapsed.

  Zannis hit the gas pedal, first gear howling. As he swung into the street, the baby-faced SS scrambled out of the Citroën. Idiot. Zannis snapped off two shots but the car was moving and he didn’t think he’d hit him. Or maybe he had, because the last Zannis saw of him he was limping back to his car. Just as, in the rearview mirror, Zannis saw the two puffy blondes take off like rabbits, high-heeled shoes in hand, running for their lives down the dark street. Go fuck Germans and see where it gets you, Zannis said to himself.

  From the back, Byer said, “What happened? What happened?”

  Zannis didn’t answer. Finally put the Peugeot into second gear—he could smell burning clutch—then third, and turned hard right into a side street, then right again, so that he was now headed north, toward the Porte de Clignancourt.

  Slowly, Zannis worked his way through the back streets, which angled off the main boulevards, so, a series of diagonals. But Zannis couldn’t have gone much faster if he’d had to—the untaped headlights were turned off, and it was hard to see in the blacked-out city. After ten minutes of driving, he stopped the Peugeot so Byer could move to the passenger seat and Zannis told him the details. Byer took it well enough; after everything he’d been through since the Wellington went down, this was but one more nightmare. As Zannis again drove north, he heard the high-low sirens in the distance, converging on the hotel, but he was well away from it. A few blocks on he passed a pair of French policemen, in their long winter capes, pedaling easily on their bicycles. One of them gave him a sour look, and Zannis wondered if Paris was under curfew, often the case in occupied cities. He didn’t know but, if it was, it was a German curfew, and the policemen couldn’t be bothered to stop him.

  Of course that would change, violently, in the morning. The Gestapo and the French Sûreté would turn Paris upside down, looking for him—they’d have a good description—and for the Peugeot. Maybe, he thought, he should have tied the clerk to a chair, evidence that the man wasn’t complicit in the crime, but he hadn’t thought of it and he’d been intent on escaping from the hotel. In any event, the escape south by railway was no longer possible, he’d have to find another way to get out of the country.