by Alan Furst
He nodded in sympathy, it was a trap they shared. “Better that way,” he said.
They ate lunch together. And he followed her around Paris for most of the afternoon while she worked her way through an extraordinary list of last-minute errands. He kept an eye out, from time to time, for surveillance, but none appeared, and they were going to places where he’d never been before.
When all the items on her list were crossed off he helped her load a large, battered trunk into a taxi, then into a compartment on the train. He went down to the platform when the conductor blew his whistle, and she leaned out the top of the open window. “Can I write you a letter sometime?” she asked, her voice rising above the echoing noise of the vast, glass-domed station.
He thought for a moment. “I don’t know where you could send it,” he said.
“You may write to me, then. If you like.” She produced a fountain pen, shook it, and scratched a name and address on a scrap of paper.
He took it from her and put it in his pocket. The conductor sounded two short blasts on his whistle and swung himself on board. There was a loud hiss of decompression and a cloud of steam billowed onto the platform. Khristo reached up with both hands and she took them in her own. They remained like this for a moment, then the train lurched forward and they let go.
The twenty-fourth of June was the first warm summer night of 1937—the sort of night when everything was possible, when any dream could come true. Dusk was hazy and soft, as always, but the usual evening chill never appeared. Everyone in the city came out of their apartments, music spilled from the open doors of cafés, and the strollers, excited by the gentle air, made animated conversation and filled the streets with a music of their own. The clouds were low and dense that night, shutting out the stars, and the city felt like a lovely private room where a party would soon begin.
When Khristo arrived at the brasserie, it was a madhouse. Papa Heininger, glasses askew, was glued to the telephone as reservations poured in. As he spoke, he made soothing gestures with his unoccupied hand, as though to placate the invisible caller. “I am desolated, but I must tell you that His Excellency’s usual table is simply not available at midnight. He may have it at one, or there is table fourteen—a quite estimable location in my opinion.” He nodded and soothed, nodded and soothed, as the caller spoke. “Yes, I agree … Yes, most unusual … Just for tonight, of course … Please thank His Excellency for his understanding … Thank you, goodbye.” He hung up and patted his brow with a folded napkin. “Djadja!” he called out to Omaraeff, standing over the reservation book with pencil at the ready, “Count Iava will take number fourteen tonight. Move the Germans!” Omaraeff asked where, for they hadn’t a spare inch of space in the entire establishment. Papa Heininger waved his napkin in the air. “Must I do the thinking for the entire world? I don’t care where you put them. You may seat them in the toilet for all I care. Tell them it is more efficient so.”
So the night progressed.
The florist arrived with sprays of Bourbon roses, fat, decadent-looking things in shades of maroon and lavender. The baker arrived with baskets of loaves. A party of Americans arrived too early, expecting to be fed. They were, despite some shouting in the kitchen, accommodated. The Beale party of six came up the marble staircase at 10:30—early for them—but the magical night had excited them beyond fashion. Slowly, the sound level grew to a magnificent bedlam—the music of forks and plates, the ring of crystal glasses touched in toast, manic conversation, unbridled laughter, shouted greetings to friends at far tables. The huge mirrors glittered red and gold, the waiters ran to and fro with trays of langoustines and bottles of champagne.
And everyone was there.
Kiko Bettendorf, the racing driver. The Duchess of Trent, accompanied by Harry and Hazel, her deerhounds. Dr. Matthew O’Connor and his “niece,” Miss Robin Vote, charming and melancholy as always in her tuxedo and bow tie. The mysterious Mlle. M.—tonight with both her lovers. There was Voyschinkowsky—“The Lion of the Bourse”—with a party of twelve. Fum, the beloved clown of the Circus Dujardin. Ginger Pudakis, Jimmy Grey, Mario Thoeni—the tenor, and Adelstein—the impresario—guests of Winnie and Dicky Beale. The Prince of Bahadur was accompanied by his Austrian nurse, who showed to advantage in a million dollars’ worth of the Bahadur royal emeralds. There was Kreml, the ammunition king, squiring the immense Frau Kreml, her mother, her sister, her cousin, and that nice woman from the hotel who was teaching them bridge. Count Iava. The Baroness de Ropp. Miss Catherine Fetwick-Mill. Mr. Antonio Dzur.
Monsieur Escaldo, of Clichy.
His silent associate, Monsieur Sarda.
And their mentor, the handsomely attired Barbette.
Escaldo and Sarda, in their long gangster coats, fedoras pulled down on their foreheads, Thompson guns held at the hip, caused great stir with their arrival. First of all, they did not have a reservation. Simply swept past Papa Heininger, Mireille the hat-check girl, and Omaraeff the headwaiter without a word. When they entered the dining room, they provoked an instant burst of excitement. Was life not sufficiently fantastique on this magical night? No, apparently not. For here were real “American” gangsters, a spicy addition to an evening that had already established itself as thrilling and glamorous. Vive le grand Capone! someone shouted, and glasses rang as other voices joined in the toast.
With a cinematic flourish, Escaldo and Sarda raised their weapons and pulled the triggers. Muzzle flashes danced and glittered at the ends of the barrels and the great room dissolved into splinters, a confusion of color and motion, screams and raw panic.
Khristo was on the floor before he knew what was happening. A man in a cape jumped to his feet and sprinted for the exit, knocking him backward, first into a table of four, then onto the carpet. He heard the rounds buzzing over his head and burrowed down as the mirrors lining the walls dissolved in silvery showers of glass. These were sub machine guns—in effect, rapid-fire pistols using the same. 45-caliber bullet as the American military sidearm—so, even though they were fired into the ceiling and upper walls, whatever they touched virtually exploded, and diners groveling below the volleys were covered with plaster and mirror shards.
It was a miracle that nobody was actually killed. Count Iava, having secured table fourteen for the evening, found himself pinned to the carpet by its weight, and nearly choked to death on a mouthful of baby lamb. Kiko Bettendorf, survivor of the Death Curve at Frelingheissen Raceway, would require fourteen stitches to repair the gash in his scalp. Frau Kreml, hiding beneath a table cloth and believing herself the object of a robbery, dislocated two fingers in a fruitless attempt to remove her rings. Ginger Pudakis stood up, a foolish thing to do, and had her forehead creased by a spent round that ricocheted from the ceiling. She then fell backward against a chair, blood trickling down her face. From where he lay, Khristo saw what happened next, though he was not able to think about it until later. Of all the people in the room, amid the shrieking and the gunfire, it was Winnie Beale who acted with courage. Seeing her friend hit, she leaped forward, from a position of relative safety on a banquette, and covered her friend’s body with her own.
Barbette had disappeared, having elected to wander in search of Omaraeff, who had vanished from his usual position at the front of the room. Since he was the true object of this operation, Barbette was anxious to find him. He had not left the restaurant—Barbette had made sure of that. Nor was he in the Men’s Room. He was, however, in the Ladies’. In the last stall where he’d gone to hide, his legs bare, a red waiter’s jacket gathered around his ankles in imitation of a skirt.
Barbette stood at the entry to the stall, the door held open by his left hand, a 9 mm device of no particular distinction held loosely at his side, and contemplated the seated Omaraeff, who was bent well forward, his face hidden in his hands. Barbette’s mouth twisted in sorrowful irony.
“Oh Djadja,” he said, not unkindly, “women do not take their skirts down to use the toilet, they pull them up. Is that possibly s
omething you would not know? Yes? No? Or is it just the strain of the moment that’s confused you? Yes? Tell me, my friend, you must say something.”
Omaraeff just shook his head, refused to uncover his face.
“Poor Djadja,” Barbette said. From where he stood, the top of Omaraeff’s shaven skull offered a particularly tempting aspect and, without further discussion, he raised his hand and completed his mission. Omaraeff rocked back, then collapsed forward, still seated, his upturned hands resting motionless on the tile floor. It was a small facility, the ladies’ W.C. at the Brasserie Heininger, with marble walls and ceiling, and Barbette’s ears rang for hours thereafter.
Roddy Fitzware’s favorite place in Paris was the center window table at the Tour d’ Argent. He loved the view of the Seine, best appreciated from the sixth-floor restaurant, well above the heads of the tourists. He loved the serious atmosphere—one came here to dine beautifully, period—which stimulated a deep, formal serenity in him, made him, he felt, his best self. Here he could do without the absurd eye makeup and stylish effeminacy that cloaked his persona in the café society in which, by direction, he’d taken up residence. He loved the caneton, and he loved the turbot. When it came time to spend some of His Majesty’s Secret Impres’t Funds, the Tour d’ Argent was where he liked to go. One had to scribble the odd voucher, of course, so he couldn’t just simply dine. He had to do His Majesty’s business.
His Majesty’s business arrived on the stroke of 1:15. Fabien Théaud, a stiff-necked young Frenchman, surely somebody’s nephew, who moved in the upper circles of the DST—the French equivalent of MI5. In other words, a cop. But, Fitzware thought, a cop in a very good suit. He watched him march resolutely toward the table, chin raised, nostrils pinched, mouth slightly drawn down, as though the world disgusted him.
Fitzware stood, they shook hands formally, in the French manner—a single, firm pump—and Théaud seated himself with ceremony. To the left of the elaborate luncheon setting on Théaud’s side of the table lay a brown paper parcel neatly tied with string. The Frenchman politely ignored the package. He had been treated to these lunches for more than a year and had learned to accept Fitzware’s sense of theater. Revelations were not to be made in the first act.
Once ritual courtesies were done with and after the service of the wine, Fitzware came to the point. “Your people,” he said, “must be in a frightful uproar this morning.”
“Oh?” Théaud seemed legitimately surprised.
“Last night’s madness—the little war at Heininger.”
“Hardly a war. No one shot back and only the headwaiter was killed. In any case, nothing very interesting for us.” Théaud waved it away.
“Really?”
“Les gangsters. Some sort of stupid criminal nonsense. Perhaps an extortion, perhaps a war between butchers for the beef concession, one can only imagine the truth of it. The préfecture already has the two machine-gunners. Trash. Low-grade pimps from Clichy. As for the headwaiter, shot in the toilet, I think that was what the Americans call a rub-out.”
“Nothing much for you, then.”
“No. The police and the justice ministry will see to it.”
“Some prominent people injured, one reads.”
Théaud indulged himself in a mighty Gallic shrug accompanied by an explosive “Pach!” Then smiled grimly. “The American socialite? The German racing driver? These people. They come to Paris to be decadent, by accident they come upon the real thing, and then they howl. Good stuff for the newspapers is all it is. As for Heininger’s, I wouldn’t try to go there for a week or two if I were you.”
“They will close down, then?”
“Close! Heavens no. You won’t be able to get in the door.”
Fitzware smiled ruefully. “In any case, your efficiency is admirable, to have the assassins so quickly.”
Théaud brightened visibly at being complimented for efficiency. “Nothing to it, mon vieux. In the British phrase, ‘information received.’ The criminals were sold out almost immediately. They won’t talk, of course—that would be to violate the code of the underworld. So what they’ll get is a nice quick little trial and, if they don’t give us the murderer of the headwaiter, the services of Dr. Guillotin. Truly, I don’t believe they’ll mind all that much. There is some honor to it in their society.”
“In some countries they would be considered merely accessories.”
“Perhaps. But this is France, and here they are murderers.”
For a time they turned their attention to the food and the wine, then Fitzware asked, “May I ask the state of your progress in the matter of the Russian courier?”
“Ach, you’ll ruin my lunch. A nest of snakes is what that is. Informants and counterinformants, power struggles in the émigré community, lies and wishful thinking and false confessions and rumors and every sort of unimaginable nonsense. I fear that one may be forever lost to us.”
“You have found it,” Fitzware said simply.
Théaud looked at him suspiciously. “Yes? I cannot believe my luck would be that good.”
“But it is. Just to the left of your plat de salade.”
“This package?”
“Indeed. It is a Radom.”
“Oh. A Radom. And that is … ?”
“An automatic pistol of Polish manufacture, a very serviceable weapon, greatly prized east of the Oder. You’ll find that it killed Myagin and, by accident, Ivan Donchev, the old man in the movie theater.”
Théaud raised a hand and halted him right there. Called for the wine waiter and ordered the best Montrachet they could bring up. “Thus,” he said dramatically, “to those who serve France.”
Fitzware inclined his head in a seated bow. He was clearly enjoying himself. “There’s a bit more,” he said. “The gun was obtained from a Turk, called Yasin, in the quarter out by Boulevard Raspail. The man who bought it is called Nikko Petrov, a Bulgarian, presently employed as a waiter at the Brasserie Heininger. There. Now I feel I have served France.”
Théaud’s face collapsed. “Oh no,” he said, “you must not do this to me.”
Fitzware was stunned.
“You are telling me—if I were not deaf as a post and entirely unable to hear you—that some connection exists between the Myagin murder and last night’s frolic at the brasserie. Tit for tat. A plot in the restaurant results in the murder of a Soviet diplomat, thus the NKVD returns the favor by shooting the headwaiter and causing general consternation in the brasserie. They would assume, of course, that Heininger would not survive such an incident, being insensitive, for the moment, to café society’s appetite for scandal. If that is, indeed, what you are telling me, I do not hear it. You did not say it.”
“In God’s name why?”
“Politiques. Four days ago, as I am sure you are aware, Camille Chautemps, a radical socialist, succeeded Léon Blum, a plain old un-radical socialist, as the premier of France. This is, therefore, no time to anger our most formidable ally, the USSR, by accusing them of upsetting a bunch of rich foreigners in a restaurant. Not with Chancellor Hitler sharpening his teeth on our doorstep, it isn’t. My dear Fitzware, I think I am going to weep. With frustration. Right in front of God in the Tour d’ Argent. You have solved our most pressing case and taken it away from us in the same breath.”
Fitzware bit the end of his thumb and thought for a time. “Well, then, may I suggest you don’t solve it? You may come part of the way, surely. Pick up this Petrov character, drop a curtain around him—matters of national security, trial in camera—and let it stand there. The Heininger connection need not come up, as long as you keep him well away from the newspapers. And, in the case of the brasserie, at least you know what happened. That might mean something or other later on.”
Théaud drummed his fingers on the table. “Perhaps. It becomes complicated, one has to find a way through, but it’s possible. There are those in the Ministry of Justice who would unravel the whole affaire, and they will have to be deceived. But it would not
be the first time, and we could at least clear the internal accounting. One might ask, however, what this Petrov is to you, that such a fine lunch is served on the occasion of his, ah, delivery.”
“Well, there one has to proceed by indirection—too much information will only confuse the issue. Let us say we are always anxious to be in your good books, and we know that he damaged one of our operations. For his own purposes, he traded one of our people to the Russians for someone he wanted back. Our operative had been of significant value, helping us to acquire information about the NKVD in Paris and elsewhere, a surprising amount of information. This Petrov found a way to ruin him, shall we say. You’re not going to feed him to Dr. Guillotin, are you?”
“We might. If the Russians found out he was involved in the Myagin business we’d almost have to. But, on the other hand, execution always turns out to be a noisy business—the official sort of execution, at any rate. Still, if there’s a way …”
Fitzware thought for a moment. “Oh well, serve him right if you did.” The Montrachet arrived.
The cranes fly like summer nights,
their shadows on the sun.
No, not quite.
The cranes fly like summer girls,
here but an instant, then …
No. One saw girls in the sky. Ridiculous.
The cranes fly, like cranes.
No. Now his mind was tormenting itself.
The cranes fly like … How, in fact, did the fucking cranes fly? That was his problem. He’d never seen a crane or, if he had seen one, he didn’t know it was a crane. Someone had surely seen the cranes flying, for the accursed image had worked its way into the Russian mythos and stuck there like a dagger.
