Red Gold

by Alan Furst

  On the way out he passed the new Polish girl, a whirlwind at her sewing machine. “Hey,” he said.

  She looked up, startled. He was beetle-faced and small, his eyebrows grew together, and when he stood still he seemed to tremble with something held tight inside him, energy or anger.

  “You like to go dancing?” he said.

  Now she got it. “Well, sometimes.”

  “Want to go with me? Thursday?”

  “I can’t, Thursday.”

  “How about Friday?”

  “Well, all right.” She shook her hair back and smiled at him.

  “I have to go out for a minute, when I come back we’ll make a time and place to meet.”

  Whistling, he headed down the factory floor and out into the office. “Back in twenty minutes,” he called to the receptionist. The boss, drinking a cup of tea at his desk, looked up at him, but didn’t say anything. Bosses were a dime a dozen, the way Slevin saw it, but good cutters were hard to find.

  Hunched over, hands in pockets, he hurried down Turenne, then turned on Ste.-Anastase. The street was blocked by trucks picking up racks of coats and dresses—it might be winter everywhere else but it was spring on the rue Ste.-Anastase. Florals, green and red, big patterns. And big sizes. For the big German bitches, he thought. Just once before he died he’d like to—

  “Hey, mec.”

  Louis, a guy he knew from party meetings. They shook hands, talked for a minute. “I’ve got to run,” Slevin said.

  Louis punched him on the shoulder. “Sunday night.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Two models came toward him, holding their arms around themselves to keep warm; wool hats pulled down over their ears. No modesty in these girls, he thought. They walked around in their slips all day while the buyers and the salesmen used them as mannequins. He gave them a look, but they pretended he didn’t exist. Snobs.

  He cut over to Thorigny, then went down Elzévir. A nice laundress owned a shop there, sweet if you got on her good side. It was closed now—any reason? Stupid war, you never knew what was what. Over to Francs-Bourgeois, a narrow street but a main thoroughfare. Sometimes a German patrol came through here. He walked another minute, then stopped at an open stall where they sold dried fruit and nuts and took bets on horse races. He looked over the bins and his mouth watered; figs and dates and almonds and raisins. “Fifty grams of dried apricots,” he said. He hadn’t meant to do this, but he couldn’t resist.

  He got the fruit and ate an apricot while waiting to pay. Fresh inside, soft, sharp, and delicious. He handed over the money, then the envelope. “This is for Monsieur Gris.”

  The boy nodded. He was about fifteen, kept his yarmulke on with a bobby pin. The envelope disappeared into the fold of his apron.

  “Thanks,” Slevin said.

  Tuesday night, Casson called the lawyer in Paris. “It’s been straightened out,” the lawyer said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Very sure. Go back tomorrow morning, everything is arranged.”

  “All right.”

  “I don’t know what gets into people. Enough is never enough.”

  Casson went back on Wednesday morning—it was as though nothing had happened. We tried to cheat you, but you refused to be cheated, so now life goes on in the ordinary way. Business is business, we know you’ll understand.

  “We’ll bring it in tonight. Around 1:30, but it could be later if the weather stays like this.”

  “Delivered to the pier.”

  “Yes, as specified. We’d like it moved before daylight.”

  “Of course.”

  A clerk knocked at the door and brought in demitasse cups of strong coffee, the real thing.

  “I hope you’ll take a coffee with me.”

  Nervous, Casson thought. Maybe even scared. The lawyer had found a way to be very persuasive.

  “I wonder,” Casson said, “if we could buy some kind of merchandise, a normal Marseilles–Paris shipment, to cover up our crates?”

  “What did you have in mind? Something in bulk, like jute? We ship it in burlap sacks.”

  “No, we’ll want boxes of some kind. What about salt cod?”

  “It would work, but we don’t have it. Closer to Easter we have it all the time.”

  “What, then?”

  “Sardines,” he said. “Tins packed in crates.”

  “All right, sardines. How many crates would we need?”

  “Tiens.” He took a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper from a drawer. “Your shipment from Syria is packed six to a crate—a hundred crates, thirty-eight pounds each, with the accompanying merchandise taking eight crates. So, a hundred and eight crates total, approximately . . . say, two tons.”

  He jotted down a few numbers. “So then,” he said, “if you stack ten high, let’s see, eighty inches, say you go two by five, six by eleven feet. Put your eight additional boxes on their sides, about a foot. Then, to cover, you need a height of ten inches—sardine crates—times eight, then, also, you’ll want a double row in the back, given the way they operate at road blocks. So then, multiply by eleven, ten up. I would say . . . it looks to me like two hundred crates will do it. Which I can let you have at my price—ninety-six tins to a case, two hundred cases—call it a hundred and twenty thousand francs. Of course the jute would be less expensive, I’ll be happy to give you a price. But if you put the sardines on the black market in Paris, you’ll make that back easily. They aren’t bad, by the way. Packed in oil.”

  “Olive oil?”

  “Oil.”

  Casson nodded. “I can give you the money tonight.”

  “You see, if you have the two hundred crates, and you have a double stack in the rear of the truck, it won’t be a problem if you have to tell somebody, a policeman, ‘and while you’re back there, make sure and take a couple of crates for your family.’ ”

  “You’ll have them delivered to the dock?”

  “Our pleasure, monsieur.”

  15 JANUARY.

  The mistral sharpened after midnight and it started to rain in sudden gusts that drummed on the roof of the Pension Welcome and spattered the open shutters. Casson stared down at the waterfront; a set of slow-moving headlights, amber blurs in the rain-drops on the window. He put out a cigarette, lit another, looked at his watch. Paced the room, went back to the window.

  A knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Monsieur, your taxi.”

  One last look around the room. He put on a sweater, a wool jacket, a peaked cap.

  The dock was hidden away on the north side of the waterfront, beyond a long row of warehouses at the Bassin National. Just about abandoned, he thought. Built in Napoleon’s reign of quarried block, with an old customs shed about halfway out and a green warning light at the far end. The night sea was heavy and black, it rammed into the stone, broke across it, and ran back in small rivers. Even in the wind, Casson could smell dead fish and diesel oil.

  The Pardoner was already there, wearing an oilcloth slicker, and Degrave showed up twenty minutes later. They stood inside the shack and smoked as rain blew sideways through the broken windows.

  It was 2:40 before somebody spotted a bow light, dim in the mist and spray, bobbing up and down as it tried to work its way into shore. It took a half hour before the boat managed to dock, the old tires roped to its bow slamming against the stone as they tied up. The captain was very good, Casson realized, but it helped that the old hulk he commanded, two boom derricks angled up from amidships, had powerful engines hidden down below. He jumped easily onto the dock, younger than Casson expected, with a thin line of beard tracing his jaw and a Luger automatic worn in a shoulder holster over an old sweater. He shouted to the crew in a language Casson didn’t know, and they ran extra lines from the boat to iron rings set in the stone. He shook his head and said something to the Pardoner, who smiled sympathetically and patted him on the shoulder. The crew, barefoot, began to unload the crates, stacking them in the shed.
Degrave set one of the crates on the floor and prised up the lid with a crowbar. The Pardoner took a flashlight from beneath his slicker, switched it on, then peeled back a sheet of oiled paper. “As ordered,” he said. The light revealed six submachine guns packed side by side, the black steel gleaming with Cosmoline.

  It didn’t take long to finish unloading. And if, at some point, a customs officer was supposed to have played a part in this, he never showed up. They had paid for that, of course, along with everything else. When the crates were counted, everyone shook hands. The captain jumped back on deck, the engines growled as the lines were cast off, the bow light moved out to sea, then vanished.

  Just after four in the morning, the truck showed up. Degrave had bought it in Nice a week earlier. Old and solid, it seemed to Casson, with a square radiator grille and a canvas tarpaulin stretched over metal hoops. Degrave paid the hired driver, who took his bicycle from the back and pedaled off into the rain.

  Casson and Degrave loaded the truck by flashlight. A fifty-five-gallon drum of gasoline rode just behind the cab. Slowly, they packed the sardine crates around and on top of the guns. Not much camouflage, but better than nothing.

  It was almost dawn by the time Degrave got the truck started. “There is one thing I promised to do,” he said. “Not much out of our way.” He jiggled the shift lever, then slowly let the clutch out. Right away it was clear that the weight of the load was not insignificant, not for this truck. They moved, but they could feel the engine strain. The truck had obviously lived a long, hard life—the speedometer frozen at thirty-eight, the other gauges long gone, leaving empty holes with a few wires hanging out. The engine sang, hauling the load up the hill from the dock. At the top they got out, unlatched the hood, and felt the radiator. Hot, but not boiling over. Degrave nodded with grim satisfaction.

  “We’ll get there,” he said.

  Degrave’s errand was in Cassis, an hour away. They pulled up in front of the villa and Degrave left the engine running and went inside. He came back almost immediately, his wife at his side. They said a few words, kissed, and held each other for a time. When they moved apart she rested her hands on his arms, spoke to him, then kissed him quickly. Degrave nodded, he would, and walked back to the truck. His wife waited at the doorway while Degrave started the engine. The wind was blowing hard and she held her hair back with one hand and watched them until they drove away from the house.

  The truck rumbled down the hill, through Cassis, and north on Route 8.

  Degrave was very quiet. “You’ve been married, I think,” he said at last.

  “Yes,” Casson said. “For a few years, anyhow.”

  “Then you understand.”

  Casson said he did.

  With morning, the rain fell back to a drizzle. The black surface of the road glistened in the winter light. They passed a road marker, thirty kilometers to Aix-en-Provence, PARIS—772.

  There was a checkpoint north of Marseilles, where a few trucks and cars were pulled over by the side of the road. Most of the fish and wine moving up to Paris went by train, so the sardines were supposedly headed for Avignon. A gendarme glanced at the permit and waved them through without looking in the back.

  Degrave took the main roads, kept a steady speed of fifty kilometers an hour, and reached Salon by midmorning. Then he drove northeast through the countryside, into the foothills of the Vaucluse and across the river Durance, where he turned into a country lane. “They hunt around here,” he said. “Mostly rabbits and birds, ducks sometimes, but every farmer has a shotgun.”

  He parked under a plane tree, tight-mouthed as he turned off the ignition—maybe it starts again, maybe it doesn’t—then pulled a valise from beneath the seat. He unbuckled the straps and took out an automatic pistol. “Ever use one of these?”

  “No. I shot a rifle—for a morning—when I was in the air service in 1916. The only time I’ve been around pistols is making movies.”

  “It’s a Walther,” Degrave said. “German officer’s side arm.” The pistol had a bare snout, like a Luger, but the barrel was shorter. He broke the magazine free, handed it to Casson with a box of 9mm bullets, and showed him how to load it.

  They climbed down the embankment of a stream. Degrave found a rock, smooth black basalt, and propped it up at the edge of the water. He paced off a distance down the stream and turned to Casson.

  “All right, try to hit it.”

  Casson pointed the gun, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand, the impact blew some dirt around a few inches from the rock.

  He tried again, this time he hit the water.

  “Once more.”

  He held his breath, squeezed off the shot, same result.

  “Let me try,” Degrave said. He took the gun from Casson, held it loosely at his side, brought it up level and, without coming to a full stop, pulled the trigger. A white chip appeared on the rock.

  “Should I keep trying?”

  Degrave handed the gun back. “Just keep it with you,” he said.

  They drove into the late afternoon, Casson behind the wheel for a time, following the edges of the Rhône valley into the hills of Provence. There were two routes to Paris from the south: straight up to Lyons and Dijon, the ancient trade route; or west into the Massif Centrale, the Auvergne, then due north into the city. The mountain route had hairpin turns and steep grades, the valley route had police. Degrave’s idea was to work just east of the Rhône, village to village, on back roads.

  They stopped in Carpentras and bought bread and cheese and pears and a few bottles of mineral water, enough for three days. When the sun was low on the horizon, they parked the truck and sat on the running board. Degrave cut up some of the bread and cheese and spread it on a sheet of newspaper. “We dine in style, chez nous,” he said. He carved a bad piece out of a pear, sliced a half off, and handed it to Casson.

  “Not too bad,” Casson said. It was hard and burned by frost, but very sweet.

  Degrave finished his share and wiped his hand on the newspaper. “I hope this is all worth it,” he said.

  “There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about,” Casson said. “We’re giving them a thousand rounds for each of these guns but, according to Vasilis, the cartridge is hard to find. So, when they’ve used up the ammunition, that’s that.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. You never know what they’re going to come up with—or they may have to come back to us for more. Fact is, we don’t want them to go to war. A thousand rounds doesn’t mean much in a military action—the Modèle 38 empties a thirty-two-round magazine in a few seconds. What you can use it for is assassination, attacks on convoys or banks. At that level of résistance, a submachine gun with a thousand rounds will raise hell.”

  Degrave cut up another pear and handed a piece to Casson. “The sad fact is, the FTP is the best fighting group in France. They’re organized, disciplined, they have clandestine experience, and they control the unions. They’re brave. And cold-blooded— reprisals don’t concern them. We know what they can do, we’ve been enemies for twenty years.”

  “And now, allies.”

  Degrave smiled. “Raison d’état, as old as the world. I’ll tell you something, Casson. People in my trade have to live with some hard truths. One of them is that sometimes you want men and women to fight for freedom, sometimes you don’t.”

  Degrave finished his pear, worked the porcelain cap free on one of the bottles, took a long drink, and handed it to Casson.

  The water was cold, and tasted good despite the bitter mineral. “I’m going to sleep for a while,” Degrave said. “Four hours, then wake me up. You have guard duty until then.”

  Casson tucked the Walther in his belt, back where it couldn’t be seen. Then he leaned against the door of the truck and watched the sun set.

  16 JANUARY.

  He woke up suddenly, cold and stiff, with no idea where he was or what he was doing—for a moment he thought he was on location, making a film. No, he was lyi
ng across the front seat of a truck, breathing gasoline vapor, the night beyond the windshield black and starless. He forced himself to a sitting position, cranked the window down. Degrave was standing by the front fender. “Almost dawn,” he said.

  Casson took a sip from the water bottle, spit it out, then drank. He lit a cigarette, and rubbed his eyes. “My turn to drive,” he said.

  The narrow dirt roads zigzagged northwest, northeast. Sometimes they had to drive south. The villages got darker and quieter as they neared the center of the country, people stared from doorways. There were no cars on the road, sometimes a horse and cart, once a wagon loaded down with cut lavender.

  At seven in the morning they stopped so Degrave could probe the gas tank with a stick. “Not good,” he said, checking the level against a mark he’d made the day before. “Let’s go another hour, then fill up.”

  Casson tried to save gas, pushed the clutch in going downhill, which worked until he tried to slow down. Third gear screamed as the pedal came up, and he had to double-clutch to ram the thing into second. Still too fast. A sudden curve, he fought the wheel, the back end started to swing. He hit the brake, the pedal went to the floor. Degrave swore. Casson tried again, pumping gently until he felt it grab. At last the road flattened out and Casson let the truck coast to a stop. His hands were shaking.

  Degrave stared out his window, into the gorge at the bottom of the hill. “Probably all kinds of old trucks down there,” he said. He turned to Casson. “I’ll drive, if you like.”

  “Next village,” Casson said.

  The next village was Beaufort-St.-Croix. An old woman in a shawl hobbled past the parked truck, a basket over her arm. She stared at them—who are you? Don’t stop here.

  Degrave drove to the other end of the village and pulled over. By the road was a wayfarer’s shrine, a cross of woven willow twigs on a wooden box atop a post; inside, a carved saint, his white robes and red wounds faded by snow and sunlight.

  Degrave unscrewed the cap on the gasoline drum, ran a rubber hose from the drum to the gas tank, sucked on the line, and eventually got it to flow—siphoning worked better in theory than in practice. He spat gasoline on the ground when he was done, then got behind the wheel and started up the mountain road. Carefully, he maneuvered the truck over a long patch of black ice, then stood on the brake as they sped down a steep grade. “Another day of this and it’s behind us,” he said.