The Foreign Correspondent ns-9

by Alan Furst

  Matteo shrugged, but he didn’t mind the gratitude. “Have to do something,” he said. Then: “What goes on, with you? I mean, if you are who you say you are, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m here secretly, and I’m not here long. But I had to talk to you, in person, and some other people as well.”

  Matteo was dubious, and showed it.

  “We’re changing. We want to print more copies. Now that Mussolini’s in bed with his Nazi pals…”

  “That didn’t happen yesterday, you know. There’s a place we eat lunch, near the Secolo, just up the street from here. A few months ago, these three Germans show up, all of a sudden. In SS uniform, the skull and all that. Brazen bastards, it’s like they own the place.”

  “That could be the future, Matteo.”

  “I suppose it could. The local cazzi are bad enough, but this…”

  Weisz, following Matteo’s eyes, saw two men in black, standing nearby, who had fascist pins on their lapels, and were laughing with each other. There was something subtly aggressive in the way they occupied space, in the way they moved, and in their voices. This was pretty much a workingman’s bar, but they didn’t care, they’d drink anywhere they liked.

  “You think it’s possible?” Weisz said. “A bigger print run?”

  “Bigger. How many?”

  “Maybe twenty thousand.”

  “Porca miseria!” Pigs of misery, meaning too many copies. “Not at Il Secolo. I have a friend upstairs, who doesn’t keep such good track of the newsprint, but, a number like that…”

  “What if we took care of the newsprint?”

  Matteo shook his head. “Too much time, too much ink-can’t do it.”

  “What about friends? Other pressmen?”

  “Of course I know a few guys. From the union. From what used to be, the union.” Mussolini had destroyed the unions, and Weisz could see that Matteo hated him for it. Printers were considered, by themselves and most of the world, to be the aristocrats of the trades, and they didn’t like being pushed around. “But, I don’t know, twenty thousand.”

  “Could it be done at other printing plants?”

  “Maybe in Rome, or Milan, but not here. I have a pal at the Giornale di Genova-that’s the Fascist party daily-and he could manage another two thousand, and, believe me, he would, too. But that’s about what we could do in Genoa.”

  “We’ll have to find another way,” Weisz said.

  “There’s always a way.” Matteo stopped talking as one of the men with lapel pins brushed past them to get refills at the bar. “Always a way to do anything. Look at the reds, down at the docks and in the shipyards. The questura, the local police, don’t mess with them-somebody would get his head broken. They have their paper everywhere, hand out leaflets, put up posters. And everybody knows who they are. Of course, once the secret police show up, the OVRA, it’s finished. But, a month later, they’ve got it going again.”

  “Could we run our own shop?”

  Matteo was impressed. “You mean presses, paper, everything?”

  Why not?

  “Not out in the open.”

  “No.”

  “You’d have to be pretty smart about it. You couldn’t just have trucks pull up to the door.”

  “Maybe one truck, at night, now and then. The paper comes out every two weeks or so, a truck pulls up, takes two thousand copies, drives them down to Rome. Then, two nights later, to Milan, or Venice, or anywhere. We print at night, you could do some of it, your friends, guys from the union, could do the rest.”

  “That’s how they did it in ‘35. But then, they’re all in prison now, or sent off to the camps on the islands.”

  “Think it over,” Weisz said. “How to do it, how not to get caught. And I’ll call you in a day or two. Can we meet here, again?”

  Matteo said they could.

  24 June, 10:15 P.M.

  You had to meet with Grassone during his office hours-at night. And the dark streets off the piazza Caricamento made the Tenth Arrondissement look like convent school. Passing the jackals in these doorways, Weisz wished, really wished, he had a gun in his pocket. From the piazza, he’d been able to see the ships in the harbor, including the Hydraios, lit by floodlights as her cargo was loaded, and due to sail for Marseilles in four nights, with Weisz aboard. That is, if he made it as far as Grassone’s office. And, then, made it back out.

  Grassone’s office was a room, ten by ten. Spedzionare Genovese-Genoa Transport-on the door, naughty calendar on the wall, barred window that looked out on an air shaft, two telephones on a desk, and Grassone in a rolling office chair. Grassone was a nickname, it meant “fat boy,” and he easily lived up to that-when he barred the door and returned to his desk, Weisz was reminded of the old line, walked like two pigs fucking under a blanket. Younger than Weisz expected, he had the face of a malign cherub, with bright, clever eyes staring out at a world that had never liked him. On closer inspection, he was broad as well as fat, broad across the shoulders, and thick in the upper arms. A fighter, Weisz thought. And if anybody had doubts about that, they would soon enough notice, beneath his double chin, a white band of scar tissue, from one side of the neck to the other. Apparently, somebody had cut his throat, but, equally apparent, here he was. In the words of Mr. Brown, “our black market chap in Genoa.”

  “So, what will it be?” he said, pink hands folded on the desk.

  “Can you get paper? Newsprint, in big rolls?”

  This amused him. “I can get, oh, you’d be surprised.” Then: “Newsprint? Sure, why not.” Is that all?

  “We’ll want a steady supply.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. As long as you pay. You’re starting a newspaper?”

  “We can pay. What would it cost?”

  “That I couldn’t tell you, but by tomorrow night, I’ll know.” He leaned back in his chair, which didn’t like it and squeaked. “Ever try this?” He reached into a drawer and rolled a black ball across the desk. “Opium. Fresh from China.”

  Weisz turned the sticky little ball over in his fingers, then handed it back, though he’d always been curious. “No, thank you, not today.”

  “Don’t like sweet dreams?” Grassone said, returning the ball to his drawer. “Then what?”

  “Newsprint, a dependable supply.”

  “Oh, I am dependable, Mr. X. Ask around, they’ll tell you, you can count on Grassone. The rule down here, on the docks, is what goes on a truck, comes off. I was just thinking, since you made the trip, you might want a little something more. Parma hams? Lucky Strikes? No? Then what about, a gun. These are difficult times, everybody is nervous. You’re a little nervous, Mr. X, if you don’t mind my saying so. Maybe what you need is an automatic, a Beretta, it’ll fit right in your pocket, and the price is good, best in Genoa.”

  “You said tomorrow night, a price for the paper?”

  Grassone nodded. “Stop by. You want the big rolls, maybe you need a truck.”

  “Maybe,” Weisz said, standing up to leave. “See you tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll be here,” Grassone said.

  Back at the via Corvino, Weisz had too much time to think-haunted by the ghosts of the apartment, troubled by visions of Christa in Berlin. And troubled, as well, by a telephone call he would have to make in the morning. But if Liberazione was to have its own printing plant, there was one contact he had to make before he left, a contact he’d been warned about. “Not unless absolutely necessary,” Brown had said. This was a man known as Emil, who, according to Brown, could handle “anything that needs to be done very quietly.” Well, after his conversation with Matteo, it was necessary, and he would have to use the number he’d memorized. Not an Italian name, Emil, it might be from anywhere. Or perhaps it was an alias, or a codename.

  Restless, Weisz wandered from room to room; closets filled with clothing, empty drawers in the desk. No photographs, nothing personal anywhere. He couldn’t read, he couldn’t sleep, and what he wanted to do was go out, get a
way from the apartment, even though it was after midnight. At least, out in the street, there was life. Which seemed, to Weisz, to be going on much as it always had. Fascism was powerful, and it was everywhere, but the people abided, bent with the wind, improvised, got by, and waited for better times. Ahh, one more rotten government, so what. They weren’t all like that; Matteo wasn’t, the girls who distributed the newspapers weren’t, and neither was Weisz. But, the way the city felt to Weisz, nothing had really changed-the national motto was still do what you have to do, keep your mouth shut, keep your secrets. That was the way life went on here, no matter who ruled. People spoke with their eyes, with small gestures. Two friends meet a third, and one of them signals to the other-eyes closed, a fast, subtle shake of the head. Don’t trust him.

  Weisz went into the kitchen, the study, finally the bedroom. He turned out the light, lay down on the spread, and waited for the night to pass.

  At noon, he called home again, and this time his mother answered. “It’s me,” he said, and she gasped. But she did not ask where he was, and she did not use his name. A brief, tense conversation: his father had retired, quietly, unwilling to sign the teacher’s loyalty oath, but not making a point of it. They lived now on his pension, and her family money, thank God for that. “We don’t talk on the phone, these days,” she said to him, a warning. And, a minute later, she said she missed him terribly, and then said goodby.

  In the cafe, he had a Strega, then another. Maybe he shouldn’t have called, he thought, but he’d probably gotten away with it. He believed he had, he hoped he had. Done with the second Strega, he summoned the number for Emil from his memory and returned to the telephone. A young woman, foreign, but fluent in Genoese Italian, answered immediately, and asked him who he was. “A friend of Cesare,” he said, as Mr. Brown had directed. “Hold the line,” she said. By Weisz’s watch, it took more than three minutes to return to the phone. He was to meet Signor Emil at the Brignole railway station, on the platform for track twelve, at five-ten that afternoon. “Carry a book,” she said. “What tie will you wear?”

  Weisz looked down. “Blue with a silver stripe,” he said. Then she hung up.

  At five, the Stazione Brignole swarmed with travelers-everyone in Rome had come to Genoa, where they pushed and shoved the population of Genoa, which was trying to get on the 5:10 for Rome. Weisz, holding a copy of L’Imbroglio, Moravia’s short stories, was swept along in the crowd until an approaching traveler waved at him, then grinned, so happy to see him, and took his elbow. “How is Cesare?” Emil said. “Seen him lately?”

  “Never saw him in my life.”

  “So,” Emil said, “we’ll walk a little.”

  He was very smooth, and ageless, with the ruddy face of the freshly shaved-he was always, Weisz thought, freshly shaved-a face without expression beneath light brown hair combed back from a high forehead. Was he Czech? Serb? Russian? He’d spoken Italian for a long time and it came naturally to him, but it wasn’t native, a slight foreign accent touched his words, from somewhere east of the Oder, but, beyond that, Weisz couldn’t guess. And there was something about him-the smooth, blank exterior with its permanent smile-that reminded Weisz of S. Kolb. They were, he suspected, members of the same profession.

  “How can I help you?” Emil said. They’d paused before a large signboard where a uniformed railway employee, standing on a ladder, wrote times and destinations in chalk.

  “I need a place, a quiet place. To set up some machinery.”

  “I see. For a night? A week?”

  “For as long as possible.”

  A telephone on a table by the ladder rang, and the railway employee wrote the departure time for the train to Pavia, which drew a low murmur of approval, almost an ovation, from the waiting crowd.

  “In the country, perhaps,” Emil said. “A farmhouse-isolated, private. Or maybe a shed somewhere, in one of the outlying districts, not the city, but not quite the countryside. We are talking about Genoa, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “What do you mean, machinery?”

  “Printing presses.”

  “Ahh.” Emil’s voice warmed, his tone affectionate, and nostalgic. He had fond memories of printing presses. “Pretty good-sized, and not silent.”

  “No, it’s a noisy process,” Weisz said.

  Emil pressed his lips together, trying to think. Around them, dozens of conversations, a public-address system producing announcements that made everyone turn to his neighbor: “What did he say?” And the trains themselves, the drumming of locomotive engines echoing in the domed station.

  “This kind of operation,” Emil said, “should be in a city. Unless you’re contemplating armed insurrection, and that hasn’t come here yet. Then you move everything out to the countryside.”

  “It would be better in the city. The people who are going to run the machines are in the city-they can’t be going up into the mountains.”

  “No, they can’t. Up there, you have to deal with the peasants.” To Emil, the word was simply descriptive.

  “In Genoa, then.”

  “Yes. I know of one very good possibility, likely a few more will occur to me. Can you give me a day to work on it?”

  “Not much more.”

  “It will do.” He wasn’t quite ready to leave. “Printing presses,” he said, as though he were saying romance or summer mornings. He was, evidently, in the normal course of life, more of a guns and bombs man. “Call the number you have. Tomorrow, around this time of day. There will be instructions for you.” He turned and faced Weisz. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said. “And please be careful. The state security in Rome is becoming concerned with Genoa. Like all dogs, they have fleas, but, lately, the Genoese flea is beginning to annoy them.” He made sure Weisz understood what he meant, then turned and, after a few steps, vanished into the crowd.

  25 June.

  Weisz worked his way through the alleys of the waterfront district, and was at Grassone’s room by nine-thirty.

  “Signor X!” Grassone said, opening the door, and happy to see him. “Have you had a good day?”

  “Not too bad,” Weisz said.

  “It continues,” Grassone said, settling himself in the rolling chair. “I’ve found your newsprint. It comes down in freight cars, from Germany. Which is where the trees are.”

  “And a price?”

  “I took you at your word, about the big rolls. They price the stuff in metric tons, and for you that would be something in the neighborhood of fourteen hundred lire a metric ton. How many rolls I don’t know, but that should keep you in paper, no? And we beat the local price-or the local price wherever you’re printing.”

  Weisz thought it over. A man’s suit cost about four hundred lire, a cheap apartment rented for three hundred a month. He assumed they would be buying at a thieves’ price, and, even with fat commissions for Grassone and his associates, would still be getting the newsprint below the market rate. “That’s acceptable,” he said. On his fingers, he went from lire to dollars, twenty to one, then British pounds at five dollars a pound. Surely, he thought, Mr. Brown would pay that.

  Grassone was watching him work. “Comes out good?”

  “Yes. Very good. And, of course, it stays a secret.”

  Grassone wagged a heavy finger. “Don’t you worry about that, Signor X. Of course, I’ll need a deposit.”

  Weisz reached into his pocket and counted out seven hundred lire. Grassone held one of the bills up to the desk lamp. “Such a world we live in, these days. People printing money in the cellar.”

  “It’s real,” Weisz said.

  “So it is,” Grassone said, putting the money in his drawer.

  “Now, I don’t know when and where-it could be a few weeks-but the next thing we’ll want is a printing press, and a Linotype machine.”

  “Do you have a list? Size? Make and model?”

  “No.”

  “You know where to find me.”

  “In a day or so, I�
��ll have it.”

  “You’re in a hurry, Signor X, aren’t you.” Grassone leaned forward and flattened his hands on the desk. He wore, Weisz saw, a gold ring with a ruby gemstone on his pinkie. “I see half of Genoa in here, and the other half sees my competitors, and not much goes wrong, because we take care of the local police, and it’s just business. Now here you are, starting up a newspaper. Fine. I wasn’t born yesterday, and I don’t care what you do, but, whatever that is, it’s liable to make some of the wrong people mad, and I don’t want it coming down on my head. That’s not going to happen, is it?”

  “Nobody wants that.”

  “You give me your word?”

  “You have it,” Weisz said.

  It was a long walk back to the via Corvino, thunder rumbling in the distance, and flashes of heat lightning on the horizon, out over the Ligurian Sea. A girl in a leather coat fell into step with him as he crossed a piazza. In a warm, husky voice, she wondered if he liked this? Or maybe that? Did he want to be alone tonight? Then, at the apartment house, an old couple passed him, going downstairs as Weisz climbed. The man said good evening, the woman looked him over-who was he? They knew everybody here, they didn’t know him. Back in the apartment, he dozed, then woke suddenly, his heart racing, from a bad dream.

  In the morning, the sun was out, and, in the streets, life went on at full throb. The waiter in the cafe knew him now, and greeted him like a steady customer. In his newspaper, La Spezia had beaten Genoa, 2–1, on a goal in the final minute. The waiter, looking over Weisz’s shoulder as he served coffee, said that it shouldn’t have been allowed-hand ball-but the referee had been bought, everybody in town knew that.

  Weisz telephoned Matteo at Il Secolo, and met him an hour later in a bar across the street from the newspaper, where they were joined by Matteo’s friend from the Giornale and another pressman. Weisz bought coffee and rolls and brandies; the munificent visitor from out of town, confident, and amusing. “Three monkeys go into a brothel, the first one says…” It was all very relaxed, and amiable-Weisz used their names, asked about their work. “We’ll have our own print shop,” he said. “And good equipment. And, if sometimes you need a few lire at the end of the month, you only have to ask.” Was it safe, they wanted to know. These days, Weisz said, nothing was safe. But he and his friends were very careful-they didn’t want anybody to get in trouble. “Ask Matteo,” he said. “We keep things quiet. But the people of Italy have to know what’s going on.” Otherwise, the fascisti would get away with every lie they told, and they didn’t want that, did they? No, they didn’t. And, Weisz thought, they truly didn’t.