Spies of the Balkans: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  "Unfortunately, my wife's mother has passed away," Herr Gruen said. "We're going for the funeral." After that they were left alone.

  A useful lie, they thought. How were they to know that this woman and her mouse of a husband would be on the Leverkusen, the excursion steamer to Budapest?

  In the war of 1914, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires had fought as allies. After surrender in 1918, Hungary became a separate state but Germany, with a new war on the horizon in the late 1930s, sought to rekindle the alliance, courting the Hungarians in the hope they would join up with Hitler in the planned conquest of Europe. We must be friends, said German diplomacy, accent on the must, so commercial links of all sorts became important. For example, the round-trip excursion steamer that sailed up and down the Danube between Vienna and Budapest. True, it crossed the border of the Reich, but not the border of national amity. It was fun. A band played on the dock in Vienna, another on the dock in Budapest. The food aboard the Leverkusen, even in time of rationing, was plentiful--as much potato as you liked. Not that there wasn't a passport control, there was, beneath great swastika banners, but the Austrian SS men kept their Alsatian shepherds muzzled and at a distance, and the officers, on the border with a new ally, were under orders to be genial. "The ice on the river is not too bad, not yet," one of them said to Herr Gruen, who for the occasion wore a Nazi party pin in his lapel.

  "One can be glad of that," Herr Gruen said, with his best smile.

  "You'll have a jolly time in Budapest, Herr Hartmann."

  "We expect to. Then, back to work."

  "In Berlin, I see."

  "Yes, we love it there, but, always good to get away for a bit."

  The officer agreed, stamped the exit visa, raised his right arm, and said, amiably, "Heil Hitler."

  "Sieg Heil," said the Gruens, a duet. Then, relieved, they climbed the gangway.

  Standing at the rail of the steamer, watching the passengers as they filed past the border control, was the woman from the train and her husband. "Isn't that ...?" she said. She had to raise her voice, because the oompah of the tuba in the dockside ensemble was particularly emphatic.

  "It is, my dear."

  "Very curious, Hansi. He said they were going to a funeral. In Vienna."

  "Perhaps you didn't hear properly."

  "No, no. I'm sure I did." Now she began to suspect that the pleasure of her company had been contemptuously brushed aside, and she started to get mad.

  Poor Hansi. This could go on for days. "Oh, who knows," he said.

  "No, Hansi," she said sharply. "They must explain themselves."

  *

  But, where were they?

  The Gruens had taken a first-class cabin for the overnight trip to Budapest and planned to hide there. Hunger, however, finally drove Herr Gruen to the dining room, where he ate quickly and ordered a cheese sandwich to take back to the cabin. As he left the dining room, here was the woman from the train. Her husband was nowhere to be seen, but she was sitting on a lounge chair just outside the door and rose when she saw him. "Sir," she said.

  "Yes?"

  "Excuse me, but did you not say on the train that you were attending the funeral of your wife's mother, in Vienna?"

  Herr Gruen flinched. Why had this terrifying woman, cheeks flushed, arms folded across her chest, suddenly attacked him? He did not answer, looking like a schoolboy caught out by a teacher, said, "Well," to gain time, then "I did, meine Frau, say that. I'm afraid I did not tell the truth."

  "Oh?" This was a threat.

  "I did not mean to trouble you, meine Frau, but I felt I could not honorably respond to your question."

  "And why not?" The admission had not appeased her; the prospect of a really nasty confrontation apparently provoking her to a sort of sexual excitement.

  "Because we are married, but not to each other."

  The woman's mouth opened, but no words came out.

  "We are in love, meine Frau, so much in love, we are." He paused, then said, "Tragically."

  Now she went scarlet, and stuttered an apology.

  For her, he thought, just as good as a fight. Humiliation. Possibly better. It wasn't until he was back inside the cabin that he realized his shirt was soaked with sweat.

  27 December. In the sunless light of a winter morning, the Gypsy musicians on the Danube dock seemed oddly out of place, as though they'd become lost on their way to a nightclub. Still, they sawed away on their violins and strummed their guitars as the passengers disembarked from the Leverkusen. Holding hands as they walked down the gangplank, the Gruens were as close to peace of mind as they'd been for a long, long time. True, their train to Belgrade didn't leave until the morning of the twenty-ninth, so they would have to spend two nights in a hotel. This didn't bother them at all--they were no longer on German soil, and the hotel would be luxurious. A Hungarian officer stamped their passports in the ship's dining room, and they'd begun to feel like normal travelers as they headed for the line of taxis waiting at the pier.

  But they were, just then, intercepted.

  By a strange creature, small and dark and vaguely threatening, who wore a narrow-brim brown hat with a card stuck in the hatband that said Hotel Astoria. Not a bad hotel, but not where they were going. "Hello, hello," said the creature.

  "Good morning," said Herr Gruen. "We're not at the Astoria, we're booked at the Danube Palace."

  The Gruens started to walk away, but the creature held up a hand, stop. "No," he said, "you can't go there." His German was rough but functional.

  "Excuse us, please," Herr Gruen said, perhaps less courteous now.

  The creature seemed puzzled. "You're the Hartmanns, right? Green tie, green hat?"

  Herr Gruen's eyes widened. Frau Gruen said, "Yes, we are. And?"

  "I'm called Akos, it means 'white falcon.' I'm sent by your friend in Salonika, and I'm here to tell you that if you set foot in the Palace, well, that's the end of you."

  Herr Gruen said, "It is?"

  "A big fancy hotel, Herr Hartmann, so Germans all over the place, and they've bribed every waiter, every porter, every maid. You won't last an hour because they know, they know fugitives when they see them."

  "So it will be the Astoria?"

  "What? Oh, I forgot." Akos took off his hat, slipped the card from the hatband and put it in his pocket. "No, I got this just for the dock. It's not so nice where I'm taking you, but you'll be safe." He glanced sideways, at something that had caught his attention, something he didn't like. "Let's go," he said. "And let's make it look good," he added, taking the valise from Herr Gruen. They walked to the line of taxis, then past it, to a taxi parked in a side street just off the waterfront. Akos opened the door for the Gruens, then stared toward the dock as they settled themselves in the backseat.

  The taxi sped away, cornering through side streets as Akos, from time to time, turned the rearview mirror so he could see out the back window. The driver said something in Hungarian, Akos answered him briefly. They crossed a bridge, then drove for a few minutes more, entering a narrow street with dead neon signs over nightclub doors. "It gets busy here at night," Akos explained. Midway down the block they stopped in front of a hotel--an old building two windows wide, brick stained black with a century of soot. "Here we are," Akos said. The Gruens peered out the window--here? "Don't worry," Akos said. "You'll survive. Wait till you get to Serbia!"

  The smell inside was strong: smoke, drains, garlic, God only knew what else. There was no clerk--a bell on the desk, a limp curtain over a doorway--and Akos led them upstairs, up three flights past silent corridors. The room was narrow, so was the bed, with a blanket over a mattress, and the paint had been peeling off the walls for years. "If you want food," Akos said, "just go downstairs and ring the bell, somebody will get you something, but you don't leave the hotel." He stood to one side of the window, moved the curtain an inch with his index finger, and muttered to himself in Hungarian. It sounded like an oath. To the Gruens he said, "I'll be back. Something I have to ta
ke care of."

  Gus wanted these people kept safe, and Akos was proud that he'd been chosen for the job. But now he had a problem. A man he'd spotted at the dock had stared at every passenger leaving the Leverkusen, then a taxi followed his own through a maze of back streets, and now the hotel was being watched by the same man. Not young, with the sort of head that looks like it's been squeezed flat, a brush mustache and waxy complexion, he wore a grimy pearl-gray overcoat. Who was he? A policeman? Akos didn't think so. The guy definitely didn't act like a detective; he was furtive, and he was alone. He was, more likely, some miserable little sneak who sold fugitives for cash--cash from the Budapest cops, or even from the Germans.

  These people he'd hidden in the hotel were on the run, surely using false papers. And how did the sneak know that? Because when people ran from the Nazis they ran through Budapest, and when you see something often enough you learn to recognize it; you can smell it. And if the guy was wrong, so what? He was still some cop's lapdog, next time he'd get it right. Cops lived off informers; that was how they did their work. They'd tried it with Akos, but only once: he shrugged, he didn't know anything, I'm the dumbest guy in town. In the gang Gus ran, no rats allowed, there were stories, bad stories, better to be loyal. Akos left the hotel, made a sharp turn away from the man in the doorway of an abandoned store, then, head down, in a hurry, he walked around the block, coming up on the man from behind.

  Akos carried a little knife, simple thing, a cheap wood handle and a three-inch blade. But that was all you needed, if you knew what you were doing. Only a three-inch blade but he kept it sharp as a razor, so it had to be protected by a leather sheath. As he neared the man, he took the knife out of its sheath and held it behind his leg. What to do? Slide it in and out? That would be that. Put it in the right place and the victim never made a sound, just fell down, as though the air had been let out of him. But now you had a corpse, now you had a murder, so there would be cops on the street, sniffing around. They would search the hotel.

  Akos dropped his hand on the man's left shoulder and, as he turned in that direction, circled around on his blind side. Startled, the man opened his mouth, ready to tell some tale but he never got it out. What an ugly tie, Akos thought. Maroon, with a gray knight-on-horseback in the middle. Who would wear such a thing? He took the bottom of the tie between thumb and forefinger as though to study it, then the knife flashed, so fast the guy never saw it, just below the knot. Ah, but maybe Akos wasn't as deft as he thought, because the blade not only sliced off the tie but took a shirt button as well, which flew up in the air, landed with a click on the pavement, and rolled away. Still holding the bottom of the tie, Akos folded it in half and stuck it in the pocket of the man's shirt. The man whinnied with fear.

  "Could've been an ear," Akos said. "I think maybe you should go back wherever you came from. And forget what happened. Because if you don't ..." Akos put the knife away.

  The man said, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir," turned, and hurried off.

  29 December. The train was classified as an express, but it never sped up, just chugged slowly south across the Hungarian plain, past snow-covered fields where crows waited on the bare branches of the trees, through mist and fog, like a countryside in a poem or a dream. The Gruens were nine hours from Belgrade, in the neutral nation of Yugoslavia, as Germany faded away with every beat of the rails.

  And so, slowly, they began to believe that they had escaped. The wretched hotel in Budapest had been frightening; neither of them had ever been in such a place. But with the appearance of the little gangster Akos--what a character!--a hand had reached out to protect them. Now all they had to do was watch the scenery and talk about the unknown future, a life different from anything they'd ever contemplated, but at least a life. This optimism, however, proved to be unfounded.

  They passed easily through Hungarian customs; then the train stopped in Subotica, the first town in Serbian Yugoslavia, for border control. Ten officers boarded the train and took the Gruens, and many other passengers, into the station. The officers were ferocious--why? Why? What had they done? One or two of the officers spoke some German but they didn't explain; that was the ancient prerogative of border guards. They gestured violently, shoved the passengers, swore in Serbian, and took all documents away for examination behind the closed doors of the stationmaster's office. The passengers were forced to stand facing a wall. For more than an hour.

  When the officers returned, they took Frau Gruen and two other women into the office and made them undress, down to their slips, while two men in suits and ties ran their hands over every seam and hem in their clothing, then slit the shoulder pads in their dresses and jackets. But, Frau Gruen realized, Emilia Krebs had saved her, had told them both not to think, even, of sewing jewels or coins or papers or anything in their clothing. And, apparently, the clothing of the other women also hid nothing. As the search proceeded, the women's eyes met: why are they doing this to us? Later, Frau Gruen learned that her husband and several other men had been subjected to the same treatment. And one man, the passengers thought, had been taken away.

  They weren't sure. When they were permitted to reboard the train, they gathered in the corridor of the first-class car and, as the engine jerked forward and the station fell away, they argued. Had there not been a fat man with red hair? Perhaps he had simply left the train, perhaps he lived in Subotica. No, one of the passengers didn't think so; she had spoken with this man, and he'd said he was Polish. Well, yes, perhaps he was, but did that mean he didn't live in Subotica? As the train made slow progress through a frozen valley, the dispute went on and on. No one claimed to have actually seen him being led away, but somebody said, "That's the way it's done!" and again they could not agree. Mysterious disappearance? Public arrest? The passengers had stories to tell, had seen arrests, had heard of disappearances. In time, they returned to their compartments, in accord on only one point: the man was gone.

  Twenty minutes later, a woman came to see the Gruens. She had been taken into the office alone, an afterthought. While she was there, a senior officer, speaking halting German, had attempted to telephone an office in Berlin. In his hand, she said, was a piece of paper with the name Hartmann, and what she thought were passport numbers. "I don't know your name," she said, "but I am telling everybody who was searched." The Gruens were silent; could do no more than stare at her. "Don't worry," she said. "He never got through. Something wrong with the line, maybe a storm in the north. He shouted and carried on, then the operator got tired of him and cut him off." After a moment, Herr Gruen, his heart pounding, admitted they were the Hartmanns, and thanked her. Later he wondered, Was that safe? It was surely the decent thing to do but, perhaps, a mistake.

  When the train stopped in Novi Sad, the station before Belgrade, a uniformed police lieutenant opened the door of the Gruens' compartment, as though searching for an empty seat. When Herr Gruen looked up, the lieutenant made eye contact with him and gestured, a subtle nod of the head, toward the corridor. He waited there until Herr Gruen joined him; then they walked along the car together. He had a friend in Zagreb, he explained, who'd asked him to see "the Hartmanns" safely through the police control in the Belgrade railway station. He knew they would be changing trains there, for the line that ran south to Nis, not far from the Greek border.

  So when they left the train at Belgrade station, the lieutenant accompanied them, spoke briefly to the officers, and the Gruens were waved past. In the station waiting room, he bought a newspaper and sat nearby, keeping an eye on them. When the train for Nis was announced, he followed them along the platform and, once they found seats, paused at the window and gave them a farewell nod.

  The train to Nis was slow and dirty and crowded. There was no first-class car. Across the aisle from the Gruens, a woman was traveling with two rabbits in a crate, and at the far end of the car, a group of soldiers got drunk, sang for a time, then went looking for a fight. To the Gruens, none of this mattered at all--they had traveled deep into the Balkans, now far
from central Europe, thus the rabbits, the soldiers, the women in black head scarfs, meant safety, meant refuge.

  In Skoplje, capital of Yugoslavian Macedonia, they sat in the waiting room all night and, in a slow rain that came with the dawn, boarded the train that followed the Vardar River down to the customs station at Gevgelija, then across the border to Greece, at Poly-kastro. At last on Greek soil, in sight of the blue-and-white flag, Frau Gruen broke down and wept. Herr Gruen comforted her as best he could while Greek soldiers, manning machine guns and an antiaircraft cannon, stared at them. Greece was at war, and the border guards were courteous but thorough. As the Gruens walked toward the waiting train, a man in civilian clothes was suddenly by their side. "My name is Costa Zannis," he said, adding that he was an officer of the Salonika police, would escort them into Salonika, and arrange for their passage to Turkey. Frau Gruen took his hand in both of hers, again close to tears. "I know," he said gently. "A long journey." He took his hand back and smiled, saying, "We'd better get on the train."

  A very old train, that ran to Salonika. Each compartment spanned the width of the car and had its own door to the exterior, where a narrow boardwalk allowed the conductor to move between compartments as he collected tickets. Brass oil lamps flanked the doors and the seats were made of wood, with high curved backs. As the train rattled along, Zannis took a pad and pencil from the pocket of his trench coat. "Forgive me," he said. "I can see you are exhausted, but I must ask you questions, and you must try to be as accurate as possible." He turned to a fresh page on the pad. "It is for the others," he said. "The others who will make this journey."

  In Berlin, at the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, Hauptsturmfuhrer Albert Hauser kept a photograph of his father on his desk. It had been taken in a portrait studio during the Great War, but it looked older than that, like a portrait from the previous century: a rotund, solemn man, sitting at attention on the regal chair provided by the studio. The subject wore a white handlebar mustache, a Prussian-style helmet, and a uniform, for he had been, like Hauser himself, a police officer in the city of Dusseldorf. A good policeman, the elder Hauser, stern and unrelenting and, in much the same way, a good father. Whose son had followed him into the profession.