Mission to Paris: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  From Stahl, a reluctant yes – a nod and a grim face. He would be backing away from a fight and he didn’t like it.

  ‘I believe,’ Wilkinson said thoughtfully, ‘that it might not matter if you went. A sacrifice, for your pride, but a sacrifice made for tactical reasons; for the movie, even for your country.’

  Again, Stahl nodded. ‘Do you know, Mr Wilkinson, the worst part of this whole thing?’

  Wilkinson waited to hear it.

  ‘Being attacked, and not fighting back. Just sitting here and letting them come at me.’

  ‘That I understand,’ Wilkinson said. ‘But I hope you realize you’re not the only one. I mean, I would never think badly of you for not fighting, I’m a diplomat, I make myself agreeable to some of the most vile people on earth, I smile at them, I make them laugh if I can, I sit next to them at state banquets where I listen to them boast and brag about their triumphs, and then I suggest another glass of wine and then another. To them, I’m the most genial fellow in the world. And they are murderers, vicious, filth.’

  ‘Yes, but in time … In time you act against them, if you can.’

  ‘Maybe. I do what I do on behalf of our government and, if the policy is to defeat them, then I will work hard at it, with pleasure.’

  Stahl glanced at the window, which looked out over a darkened courtyard. Down below he could hear the sound of footsteps, maybe high heels, crossing the cobbled surface, and then a woman laughed.

  ‘You mentioned something,’ Stahl said, ‘the last time we spoke, about information, about my telling you if I found out something interesting, maybe important.’

  ‘What are you saying, Mr Stahl?’

  ‘Perhaps I would discover something, if I went to Germany.’

  ‘Oh I doubt that. What would you do? Meet a Wehrmacht general and try to get information? “Say, General Schmidt, how’s that new tank performing?” Believe me, you’d just get into trouble.’

  ‘Well, it was a thought.’

  ‘Put it out of your mind, that’s dangerous stuff, not for you.’

  ‘Really? Why not for me?’

  ‘Spying is a brutal business, and, if you get caught …’

  ‘What if there’s a war and France is lost? What if I might have done something, anything, even a small thing, and didn’t? What would I think of myself? I put that as a question but the truth is I know the answer. These people, these Nazis, are scum, Mr Wilkinson, but from the perspective of being here, in Europe, in Paris, it looks to me like they’re winning.’

  ‘They are. Right now, today, they are. And that’s from somebody who knows a lot more than you do.’

  ‘But you say there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t quite say that.’

  ESPIONAGE

  IN GERMANY, IN AUGUST OF 1938, A JEWISH ÉMIGRÉ COUPLE CALLED Grynszpan was informed by the authorities that their residence permits had been cancelled and they would have to reapply for permission to remain in the country. They knew they needn’t bother; the Nazi government wanted to get rid of them, two among seventeen thousand Jews of Polish origin, all of whom would have to return to Poland. In March of that year, however, Poland had annulled the citizenship of almost all resident alien Jews in Germany and Austria. So the Grynszpans couldn’t stay where they were, but had nowhere else to go. On 26 October, the Gestapo resolved this paradox by arresting twelve thousand Jews, taking whatever they owned, putting them in boxcars, then herding them across the border to the Polish town of Zbaszyn, where the Poles refused to admit them.

  Stranded in a field outside Zbaszyn, the Jews were without shelter and had very little to eat. So the Grynszpans, desperate for help of any kind, sent a postcard to their son, Herschel, who had fled Germany in 1936, at the age of fifteen, and was living illegally in Paris. On 31 October, Herschel Grynszpan received the postcard but there was nothing to be done, not by him, not by anyone he knew. Unable to help the people he loved, he was caught up in that particularly volatile mix of sorrow and anger and, by 7 November, he could bear it no longer. With the last of his money, he bought a revolver and ammunition, took the Métro to the Solférino station, walked to the German embassy on the rue de Lille and told the reception clerk he wished to speak with an official. The clerk told him he would be seen by a junior diplomat called Ernst vom Rath and sent him upstairs. When Grynszpan entered the office, he raised the revolver and shot vom Rath five times. Grynszpan, a farewell postcard to his parents in his pocket, made no attempt to run away, and was arrested by the French police. Vom Rath was taken to the hospital, where he died on 9 November.

  The Nazi leadership was enraged – the more so for being shocked. How could such a thing happen? A Jew, a member of a weak and degenerate race, had had the audacity to attack a German? Imagine! Jews didn’t fight back, they were expected to be meek, and to suffer in silence. So Herschel Grynszpan’s action was seen as a racial insult, an intolerable insult, for which the Jews must be punished. How? Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels met with Chancellor Hitler, and they determined that the German people would avenge the insult with attacks on the Jewish population – in Berlin, and throughout Germany. Thus, on the night of 9 November, at 11.55 p.m., an order was issued by the Gestapo:

  BERLIN NO. 234404 9 NOVEMBER, 1938

  To all Gestapo Stations and Gestapo District Stations

  To Officer or Deputy

  This teleprinter message is to be submitted without delay:

  1. At very short notice, Aktionen against Jews, especially against their synagogues, will take place throughout the whole of Germany. They are not to be hindered. In conjunction with the police, however, it is to be ensured that looting and other particular excesses can be prevented.

  2. If important archival material is in synagogues, this is to be taken into safekeeping by an immediate measure.

  3. Preparations are to be made for the arrest of about 20,000– 30,000 Jews in the Reich. Wealthy Jews in particular are to be selected.

  4. Should, in the forthcoming Aktionen, Jews be found to be in possession of weapons, the most severe measures are to be taken. SS reserves as well as the General SS can be mobilized in the total Aktionen. The direction of the Aktionen by the Gestapo is in any case to be assured by appropriate measures.

  Gestapo II Müller

  This teleprinter message is secret.

  9 November. The Lufthansa flight to Berlin would leave Le Bourget Airport at 10.20 a.m. A photographer from the Paris office of the DNB – Deutsches Nachrichtenburo, the German press agency – was at the airport, waiting to photograph Stahl as he climbed the stairway that was wheeled up to the door of the aeroplane. Starting early, Stahl thought. Very thorough, very Teutonic. But it would be a good photo – the handsome movie star in fedora and trench coat, the caption to read, American movie star Fredric Stahl leaves for Berlin. ‘Over here, Herr Stahl,’ the photographer called out. ‘Could you give us a wave?’ Then, ‘Thank you. Another?’ Well, Stahl told himself, you’d better be as good an actor as they say. Otherwise, the photo would reveal a very anxious man, going off to meet a bad fate.

  In the plane, Herr Emhof was waiting for him, black-framed glasses tilted over his bulging eyes as he read his morning newspaper. ‘Ah, here you are, right on time,’ Emhof said as Stahl settled himself in a seat across the aisle.

  ‘Good morning, Herr Emhof,’ Stahl said. ‘A good day for flying.’ True enough. Despite a low sky heavy with Parisian cloud, it was, everywhere but in Stahl’s mind, calm weather. Stahl wasn’t surprised to find Emhof waiting for him, making sure his package would be delivered to Berlin, bringing his treasure home. Once Stahl had made the change-of-mind telephone call to Moppi – who’d been so excited Stahl could hear him breathing – he knew the machine would be put in motion.

  For Stahl, some serious thought had gone into that call, a matter of tone. What he’d finally come up with was not precisely apologetic, something closer to I don’t really know why I made such a fuss about this. ‘I spoke with the pub
licity people in Paris,’ Stahl told Moppi. ‘And they thought it was a good idea. So, off to Berlin!’ Frivolous. Devil-may-care. It doesn’t matter. In fact, the newly cooperative Stahl had elected to stay a second night in his suite at the Hotel Adlon, so he could be honoured at the banquet opening the festival, then would announce the winners at a second banquet the following night.

  What he’d told Moppi was, like any good lie, partly true. He had spoken to Mme Boulanger about the journey – he didn’t want her surprised, if she found out, didn’t want her to think he had secrets. And though he couldn’t tell her what he was really doing, he could lie persuasively, and confided to Mme Boulanger that ‘someone at Warner Bros.’ had suggested he go ahead and attend the festival. But he’d prefer, if possible, that nothing appear in the Paris press. She’d thought for a moment, then said, ‘I don’t see that they’d care, when you think about it, it has nothing to do with France.’ As long as no press release was issued in Paris, she suspected the event would slide past without public notice.

  He’d told Jean Avila the same thing. Avila had grimaced, his loathing of Nazi Germany was no secret, but he understood Stahl’s position and simply said, ‘As long as you’re back on time, to hell with it.’ And then, he just couldn’t resist, ‘If they put you in a camp, be sure and send me a postcard. “Dachau at Sunset” maybe, if they have that one.’

  Very funny. No, not so funny.

  Emhof broke into his reverie. ‘Are you feeling well, this morning?’

  ‘I am,’ Stahl said. ‘And looking forward to the festival.’

  With one finger, Stahl touched the inside pocket of his jacket, making sure, yet once again, that what he carried in there was still with him. He didn’t need to touch the pockets of his trousers, those were so full he could feel them against his body. ‘It’s quite safe, that way,’ Wilkinson had told him in the stacks of the American Library. ‘They wouldn’t dare to search you. Not you.’ Wilkinson had spread his hands and smiled – that’s why you’re valuable. Still, there was some considerable bulk to the money, two hundred thousand Swiss francs in thousand-franc notes – a little less than fifty thousand dollars. And then there was the crucial ten-reichsmark note, in his shirt pocket. Stahl had wanted to go back over the whole thing, making sure he had it all right, but heavy footsteps were ascending the stairs and Wilkinson had laid his index finger across his lips and with his other hand had gripped Stahl’s shoulder. Goodbye. Good luck. Strong, J. J. Wilkinson, perhaps he’d played football, somewhere in the Ivy League. Then the diplomat walked away down the narrow aisle, leaving the Dewey Decimal 330.94s, European Economies, for Languages in the 400s.

  Grey mist whipped past the aeroplane window, stubbled fields and dark evergreens below when it cleared. Emhof, saying, ‘Perhaps you’d like something to read,’ handed Stahl the day’s newspapers, German newspapers. Well good, Stahl thought, a diversion. But of course it wasn’t. On top of the stack, Völkischer Beobachter – the nationalist observer – the Nazi party newspaper owned by Adolf Hitler. Or perhaps Das Reich, owned by Propaganda Minister Goebbels? Stahl settled on the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, supposedly the choice of German intellectuals.

  Stahl had read his share of Los Angeles tabloids; dreadful crimes and humorous gossip – humorous as long as it wasn’t about you – and he’d grown up with an Austrian press that could be venomous and often was, but what he had before him was something new. Hitler here and Hitler there, Hitler and his cronies everywhere. What a newspaper! It grovelled and fawned, down on its knees in the hope that its lord and master would present a certain part of himself for a kiss. After ten minutes – news of sports: how mighty the German shot-putters, how swift her sprinters, how noble her soccer players – Stahl set the newspapers on his lap and looked out of the window, then closed his eyes and pretended to doze, avoiding a potential conversation with Emhof. But solitude, alas, led Stahl to brood about what lay ahead of him. So it was a long plane ride. A long, long plane ride.

  On landing at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, the traveller was met by a force not unlike a storm; a powerful and dangerous storm – on its tide you could be swept away into a dark sea and never be seen again. The most sacred phrase of the Nazi creed was Blood and Soil. Well, here was the soil, the German earth, and before you could set foot upon such precious stuff you had to face its guardians, its border post. Where the uniforms of the SS were a shade of black that seemed to glow in the light of the overcast afternoon. Their polished boots glistened, their faces like white stone. The Alsatian shepherds on chain leads – no effete leather for us! – were as watchful as their masters, and the black and red swastika flags were hung as stiffened banners, which the wind was forbidden to disturb. Stahl approached the customs officers but he never reached them – Emhof cut in front of him, produced an identity card, then took Stahl’s passport and had it stamped. Wilkinson was right: Stahl was too important to search, and ignored the stares of the officers as he walked past, his pockets stuffed with money.

  The car waiting outside the terminal was a black Grosser Mercedes, its chauffeur standing at attention by the rear door. When Stahl and Emhof were settled in the back seat, Emhof barked out their destination and the chauffeur responded as though he’d been given a military order. And if Tempelhof Airport had been a kind of overture, the city of Berlin, when they reached its centre, was the Wagnerian climax. Uniforms everywhere, brown-shirted storm troopers with puttees bloused out above their boots, Wehrmacht officers in field grey, the navy in blue, the Luftwaffe in blue-grey, women in fur coats, men in homburgs and overcoats, and all of them, to a greater or lesser degree, marched. This country was already at war, though enemy forces had yet to appear, and Stahl could sense an almost palpable violence that hung above the city like a mist. And although he was not actually frightened, the street show had brought him to a state of high alert.

  Emhof glanced over at him and said, ‘Not much like Paris, is it?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘As you can see, we are a very determined people.’

  Berlin was, Stahl thought, a movie set, meticulously designed for effect. People who saw this place – visitors, or an audience watching a newsreel – might wonder what sort of fool would dare to attack such a country. A quote about Goering that Stahl had read somewhere suddenly came to him: ‘He loves war as a child loves Christmas.’

  His suite at the Adlon, the Bismarck Suite – and there he was, in a gold frame on the wall, heroically painted with heavy white moustache and Pickelhaube spiked helmet – had all the luxuries and all the conveniences; for example a telephone in every room. These, Wilkinson had warned him, had microphones that were always alive, sending conversation in the room back to some technician wearing headphones as he sat in front of a console with dials and a wire recording machine. Best, if you had to speak privately, to disconnect the phone from its receptacle in the wall. Stahl’s suitcase had been taken from the plane and driven quickly to the Adlon and it had already been unpacked – and no doubt searched. His evening clothes, for that night’s banquet, then the party in his honour on the following evening, were hung carefully in the closet, his brush and comb and toothbrush laid out by the shining porcelain sink. He undressed, stretched out on the bed in his underwear and worked to calm himself down. So far, so good, he thought. It surprised him – how much he wanted to do this work, and do it successfully. Getting out of the Mercedes at the entry to the Adlon, as the chauffeur held the door, he saw a few civilians passing by and one of them, a rather elegant woman of some age, her chin held high in a near desperate attempt at preserved dignity, wore a yellow star on the breast of her woollen coat.

  Stahl dressed for the banquet, then transferred the money and ten-reichsmark note to his evening clothes. As Wilkinson had put it, in the still, musty air of the library stacks, ‘If you leave this money in your room, you won’t be coming back to Paris.’ On the day before he boarded the plane, the resident seamstress at the Claridge had sewn a large inner pocket into the linin
g of his tuxedo jacket, much roomier than the one on the left side. He was now more than glad he’d had this done, for there was only a small back pocket on the trousers. Even so, he had to stash a few thousand Swiss francs in the back of his cummerbund. So I will not be dancing the polka tonight. Precisely on time, he made his way down to the Adlon’s grand ballroom.

  Splendid it surely was. Vast chandeliers glittered above, the white tablecloths were dazzling, endless ranks of silverware marched away from the side of every golden service plate, the satin draperies were blood-red, and the centrepiece on the elevated centre table held an exceptional display of marzipan tanks and fighter planes.

  Very carefully, to avoid a shower of Swiss francs, Stahl withdrew his typewritten speech – written in Paris with Mme Boulanger’s help – from his inner pocket. Herr von Somebody, the official host, spoke first, welcoming the bejewelled ladies and beaming gentlemen to the Reich National Festival of Mountain Cinema, ‘and tonight’s banquet in honour of Herr Fredric Stahl, who is to select the festival’s winners.’ There followed a flowery tribute to the Führer, ‘who has made all this possible.’ Stahl was then introduced, and gave a short speech, thanking everybody in sight, citing the importance of cinema to all the world’s cultures, and looking forward to choosing the best mountain film of 1938, ‘though I expect, given the general level of excellence, that will be an extremely difficult task.’ When he was done, the guests – there must have been at least a hundred – rose to their feet and applauded.

  The banquet began with a thin, and absolutely delicious, potato soup. It had been a long time – back in his days in Vienna – since Stahl had tasted good German food, and he made himself hold back on the soup, sensing there were perhaps even better things to come. Wild boar from Karinhall, the Goering estate, said the giant, both-hands-required menu. Leaving the soup, Stahl turned to the lady on his left, Princess von Somebody, with diamonds dripping down towards the cleft of a snowy bosom.