by Alan Furst
He took a deep breath and slowly turned the knob on his door, listened for twenty seconds, and stepped out into the hallway. He descended the staircase one slow step at a time. Somebody coughing on the third floor, a light under a door on the second.
A few steps from the bottom—the reception area—he stared out into the gloom. There had to be a guard. Where? Finally, he made out part of a silhouette above the back of a couch and heard the shallow breathing that meant light sleep. Morath moved cautiously around the newel post at the foot of the staircase, entered the dining room, then the hallway where the waiter had appeared and disappeared during dinner.
Finally, the kitchen. He lit a match, looked around, then blew it out. There was a streetlamp in the alley, not far from the windows, enough light for Morath to see what he was doing. He found the sinks—big, heavy tubs made of gray zinc—knelt on the floor below them and ran his fingertips over the cement. Found the grease trap, realized he’d have trouble prying up the lid, and abandoned the idea.
Next he tried the stove, and here he found what he needed. In a cabinet next to the oven door, a large metal can that had once contained lard was now used to store the grease poured from cooking pans. It was surprisingly heavy, maybe twenty pounds of yellow, rancid fat, mostly congealed, with an inch or so of oil floating on top. Sausages, butter, bacon, he thought. Roast goose.
He looked around, saw an iron ring above the stove where implements were hung, carefully removed a giant ladle, and served up a heaping scoop of thick fat. Took a handful, and smeared it on the wooden countertop. Worked it onto the walls and the window frames and the doors of the cabinets. Then he laid the can on its side in one corner, sunk the corset stays halfway into the fat, lit a match, and tossed it in.
The celluloid caught immediately; a hot, white flash, then the fat sputtered to life and a little river of liquid fire ran across the floor and began to burn its way up the wall. A few moments later, he saw the ceiling start to turn black.
Now he had to wait. He found a broom closet by the entrance to the kitchen, stepped inside, and closed the door. Barely room for him in there, he discovered. He counted eleven brooms. What the hell were they doing with so many brooms?
He told himself to stay calm, but the crackling sound from the kitchen and the smell of fire made his pulse race. Tried to count to a hundred and twenty, as he’d planned, but he never got there. He did not mean to die in a Viennese broom closet. He threw the door open and hurried down the hallway through a haze of oily smoke.
He heard a shout from the guard in the lobby, then another. Christ, there’d been two of them in there. “Fire!” he yelled as he ran up the stairs. He could hear doors opening, running footsteps.
Second floor. Third floor. Now he had to trust that the Austrian SS guards changed shifts like everybody else. Halfway up the stairs to the fifth floor he started yelling, “Police! Police!”
A bullet-headed man in his shirtsleeves came charging down the corridor, a Luger in his hand. “What’s happening?”
“Open these doors. The hotel’s on fire.”
“What?” The man backed up a step. Open the doors?
“Hurry up. You have the keys? Give them to me. Go, now, run, for God’s sake!”
“I have to—”
Morath the policeman had no time for him. Grabbed him by the shirt and ran him down the hall. “Go wake up your officers. Now. We don’t have time for monkey business.”
That, for whatever reason, did it. The man shoved the Luger into a shoulder holster and went bounding down the steps, shouting “Fire!” as he went.
Morath started opening doors—the room numbers, thank God, were on the keys. The first room was empty. In the second, one of the SS men, who sat up in bed and stared at Morath in terror. “What? What is it?”
“The hotel’s on fire. You better get out.”
“Oh.”
Relieved that it was only the hotel on fire. What had he thought?
There was smoke in the hallway. The SS man trotted past, wearing candy-striped pajamas and carrying a machine pistol by its strap. Morath found another empty room, then, next door, Kolovitzky, struggling to open the window.
“Not like that,” Morath said. “Come with me.”
Kolovitzky turned toward him. He wasn’t the same man who’d played the violin at the baroness’s party, this man was old and tired and frightened, wearing suspenders and a soiled shirt. He studied Morath’s face—was this some new trick, one they hadn’t tried on him yet?
“I came here for you,” Morath said. “I burned down this hotel for you.”
Kolovitzky understood. “Blanche,” he said.
“Are they holding anyone else up here?”
“There were two others, but they left yesterday.”
Now they heard sirens and they ran, coughing, hands over mouths, down the stairs through the rising smoke.
The street in front of the Schoenhof was utter confusion. Fire engines, firemen hauling hoses into the hotel, policemen, crowds of onlookers, a man wearing only a blanket, two women in bathrobes. Morath guided Kolovitzky across the Mauerplatz, then a little way down a side street. As they approached, the driver of a battered Opel started his car. Kolovitzky got in the backseat, Morath in front.
“Hello, Rashkow,” Morath said.
“Who is he?” Kolovitzky asked, later that morning, while Rashkow watered a tree by the roadside.
“He’s from Odessa,” Morath said. Poor little Rashkow, Balki had called him, who’d sold Russian railroad bonds and Tolstoy’s unfinished novel and wound up in a Hungarian prison. Morath had gone to Sombor to get him out of jail. “He used to sell Russian bonds.”
“The way he looks,” Kolovitzky said. “He should come to Hollywood.”
Rashkow drove on farm roads through the Austrian countryside. A day in July, the beets and potatoes sprouting bright green in the rolling fields. It was only forty miles to the Hungarian border at Bratislava. Or Pressburg, if you liked, or Pozsony. In the backseat, Kolovitzky stared at the Austrian passport with his photo in it. “Do you think they’re looking for me?”
“Of course they are.”
They stopped well short of the Danube bridge, in Petrzalka, once a Czech border point, now in the Slovakian Protectorate. Abandoned the car. Went to a rented room above a café, where all three changed into dark suits. When they came downstairs, a Grosser Mercedes with Hungarian diplomatic registration was waiting for them, driven by the chauffeur of one of Bolthos’s diplomatic colleagues in Budapest.
There was a swarm of Austrian SS gathered at the border crossing, smoking, laughing, strutting about in their high, polished boots. But the chauffeur ignored them. Rolled to a smooth stop at the customs building, handed four passports out the window. The border guard put a finger to the visor of his cap, glanced briefly into the car, then handed them back.
“Welcome home,” the chauffeur said to Kolovitzky, as they crossed to the Hungarian side of the river.
Kolovitzky wept.
A midnight supper on the rue Guisarde.
Mary Day knew the trains were late, crossing Germany, so she’d planned for it. She set out a plate of sliced ham, a vegetable salad, and a baguette. “And this was delivered yesterday,” she said, taking a bottle of wine from the cupboard and a corkscrew from the kitchen drawer. “You must have ordered it by telephone,” she said. “Very thoughtful of you, in the middle of—whatever it was, to think of us.”
A 1922 Echézeaux.
“It’s what you wanted?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling.
“You are really very good, Nicholas,” she said. “Really, you are.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Furst, who has often been compared to Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, is widely recognized as a master of the atmospheric spy thriller. A journalistic assignment for Esquire inspired him to write Night Soldiers, the first of his highly original novels about espionage in eastern Europe before and during World War II. Born in New York,
he has lived for long periods in France, especially Paris. He now lives on Long Island.
ALSO BY ALAN FURST
Night Soldiers
Dark Star
The Polish Officer
The World at Night
Red Gold
