The Foreign Correspondent ns-9

by Alan Furst

  True, he had lost interest, when he’d learned that she had not come to Portofino on a yacht. Not that she wasn’t appealing. He could see her down there as he looked out his window, a white star on blue water, and, if it had been a few years earlier…But it wasn’t.

  After the Hydraios had sailed off without him, he’d spent the night at the Brignole railway station, then taken the first train down the coast to the resort town of Santa Margherita. There he’d bought a valise, and the best resort clothes-blazer, white slacks, short-sleeved tennis shirts-he could find. Oh he spent money like water, and what an S. Kolbish lesson this had turned out to be! Then, after the purchase of razor and shaving soap and toothbrush and the rest of it, he’d packed the valise and taken a taxi-there was no train-off to Portofino, and the Hotel Splendido.

  Plenty of rooms, that summer, some of their regular guests weren’t traveling to Italy, that summer. For Weisz, good fortune, and the morning he arrived, he changed clothes and embarked on his campaign: a presence at the pool, in the bar, at afternoon tea in the salon; talkative, charming, the most amiable fellow imaginable. He’d tried with the British, joining this party and that, people off the yachts, but they wanted nothing to do with him-the discouragement of ingratiating foreigners a skill learned early, in the public schools, by the sort of people who came to Portofino.

  And he was beginning to despair, was beginning to consider a journey to a nearby fishing village-good-size boats, poor fishermen-when he discovered the party of Danes, and their effusive leader. “Just call me Sven!” What a dinner! Table for twelve-six Danes and their new hotel friends-bottles of champagne, laughter, winks and sly references on the subject of nighttime merriment aboard the Ambrosia, Sven’s yacht. It was Sven’s wife, white-haired and breathtaking, who’d finally, in her slow Scandinavian English, said the magic words: “But we must find our way to see you more, dear man, for the Thursday we sail to the Saint-Tropez.”

  “Maybe I should just come along with you.”

  “Oh Carlo, could you?”

  A last look out the window, then Weisz stood at the mirror and combed his hair. This was the Danes’ last night in Portofino, and the dinner was sure to be elaborate and noisy. One final glance at the mirror, lapels brushed, and off to war.

  It was as he’d thought-champagne, grilled sole, cognac, and great affection all ‘round the table. But Weisz caught the host looking at him, more than once, some question lurking in the back of his mind. Sven was jovial, and good fun, but that was on the surface. He’d made his money owning lead mines in South Africa, was no fool, and was, Weisz sensed, on to him. So, after the cognac, Sven suggested that the company gather at the bar, while he and his friend Carlo had themselves a promised game of billiards.

  And so they did-the angles of Sven’s face sharpened by the light above the table in the shadowy billiard room. Weisz did his best, but Sven could really play, and whisked the beads across the brass wire with the tip of his cue as the score mounted. “So, my friend, are you coming with us to Saint-Tropez?”

  “Certainly I would like to.”

  “So I see. But, can you leave Italy so easily? Do you not require, ah, some form of permission?”

  “True. But I could never get it.”

  “No? That is annoying-why not?”

  “Sven, I must leave this country. My wife and children went to France two months ago, and now I have to join them.”

  “Leave, without permission.”

  “Yes. Secretly.”

  Sven bent over the table, ran the cue across his open bridge, and sent his ball rolling easily over the felt until it bumped against a cushion and clicked against the red ball and the other white. Then he reached up and recorded the point. “It will be a rotten war, when it comes. Do you think you will avoid it in France?”

  “I might,” Weisz said, chalking the tip of his cue. “Or I might not. But either way, I cannot fight on the wrong side.”

  “Good,” Sven said. “I admire that. So perhaps we shall be allies.”

  “Perhaps we will, though I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Keep hoping, Carlo, it’s good for the spirit. We sail at nine.”

  5 July. Berlin.

  How he hated these horrible fucking Nazis! Look at that one, standing on the corner as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Short and stocky, the color of meat, with rubbery lips, and the face of a vicious baby. Now and then he strolled up the street, then back, keeping his eyes always on the entry to the office of the Bund Deutscher Maedchen, the teenaged girls division of the Hitler Youth. And keeping watch, and making no secret of it, on Christa von Schirren.

  S. Kolb, in the backseat of a taxi, was close to giving up. He’d been in Berlin for days, and he couldn’t get near her. The Gestapo watchers were everywhere-in cars, doorways, delivery vans. Were surely listening to her phone and reading her mail, and they would take her when it suited them. Meanwhile, they waited, since maybe, just maybe, one of the other conspirators would grow desperate, break from cover, and try to make contact. And, Kolb could see it, she knew exactly what was going on. She’d been all confidence, once upon a time, a self-assured aristocrat, but no more. Now there were deep shadows beneath her eyes, and her face was pale and drawn.

  Well, he wasn’t in much better shape himself. Scared, bored, and tired-the spy’s classic condition. He’d been on the move since the twenty-ninth of June, when he’d spent the night in Marseilles, waiting for Weisz, but, when the crew of the Hydraios left the freighter, he was nowhere to be seen. And, according to the second engineer, the ship had left Genoa without him. “Gone,” Mr. Brown said when Kolb telephoned. “Maybe the OVRA got him, we’ll never know.”

  Too bad, but so life went. Then Brown told him he had to go up to Berlin and exfiltrate the girlfriend. Was this necessary? “Our end of the bargain,” Brown said, from the comfort of his Paris hotel. “And she may come in handy, you never know.” He’d have some help in Berlin, Brown told him, the SIS was thin there, thin everywhere, but the naval attache at the embassy had a taxi driver he could use.

  That was Klemens, former Communist and streetfighter, back in the twenties, with the scars to prove it, now resting his weight on the steering wheel of the taxi and lighting his tenth cigarette of the morning. “We’re sitting here too long, you know,” he said, catching Kolb’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  Shut up, you ape. “We can wait a little longer, I think.”

  They waited, ten minutes, another five. Then a bus pulled up in front of the office, its engine idling, black smoke puffing from its exhaust pipe. And, a minute later, here came the girls, in brown uniforms, knee-high stockings, and knotted scarves, a flock of them, some with picnic baskets, marching in pairs, followed by von Schirren. When they boarded the bus, the thug on the corner looked over at a car parked across the street, which, when the bus drove away, swung out into traffic, directly behind it.

  “Go ahead,” Kolb said. “But stay well back.”

  They drove to the edge of the city, headed east, toward the Oder, and soon enough out in the countryside. Then, a stroke of fortune. In the town of Muncheberg, the Gestapo car pulled into a gas station, and two bulky men got out to stretch their legs. “What shall I do?” Klemens said.

  “Follow the bus.”

  “That car will soon catch up with us.”

  “Just drive,” Kolb said. A hot day, and humid. Irritating weather, for Kolb-if he had to walk, his underpants would chafe. So, at the moment, he didn’t care what the other car did.

  A few minutes later, a second stroke of fortune: the bus turned off onto a tiny dirt road. Kolb’s heart lifted. Here’s my chance. “Follow!” he said. Klemens kept well behind the bus, a trail of dust showing its progress as it climbed up into the hills near the Oder. Then it stopped. Klemens backed up and parked the car just off the road, at a point where the people on the bus wouldn’t be able to see them.

  Kolb gave the group a few minutes to get wherever they were going, then climb
ed out. “Open the hood,” he said. “You’ve had engine problems-this may take some time.”

  Kolb walked up the road, then circled well away from the bus, into a pine woods. Nature, he thought. He didn’t like nature. In a city, he was a clever rat, at home in the maze, out here he felt naked and vulnerable, and, yes, he’d been right about his underpants. From a vantage point up the hill, he could see the Deutscher Maedchen, swarming at the edge of a small lake. Some of the girls unpacked the picnic, while others-Kolb’s eyes widened-undressed to go swimming, and not a bathing suit to be seen. They shrieked as they ran into the cold water, splashing each other, wrestling, a frolic of naked girls. All this lovely, pale, Aryan flesh, bouncing and jiggling, free and unfettered. Kolb couldn’t get enough, and, quite soon, found himself more than a little unfettered.

  Von Schirren took off her shoes and stockings. Would there be more? No, her mood was beyond swimming, she paced about, staring at the ground, at the lake, at the hills, with sometimes a pallid smile when one of the Maedchen shouted at her to join them.

  Kolb, moving from tree to tree for cover, worked his way down the hill. Eventually, he came to the edge of the woods, and hid behind a bush. Von Schirren wandered toward the lake, stood for a time, then moved back toward him. When she was ten feet away, Kolb looked out from behind the bush.

  “Pssst.”

  Von Schirren, startled, glared at him, fury in her eyes. “You vile little thing. Go away! At once. Or I’ll set the girls on you.”

  By all means. “Listen to me carefully, Frau von Schirren. Your friend Weisz arranged this, and you’ll do what I say, or I’ll walk off and you’ll never see me, or him, again.”

  She was, for a moment, speechless. “Carlo? Sent you here?”

  “Yes. You’re leaving Germany. It starts now.”

  “I must get my shoes,” she said.

  “Tell your chief girl that you are unwell and you’re going to lie down in the bus.”

  And then, at last, in her eyes, gratitude.

  They climbed the wooded hillside, only birds broke the silence, and shafts of sunlight lit the forest floor. “Who are you?” she said.

  “Your friend Weisz, in his profession, has a broad acquaintance. I happen to be one of the people he knows.”

  After a time, she said, “I am followed, you know, everywhere.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen them.”

  “I suppose I cannot go to my house, even for a moment.”

  “No. They’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Then where?”

  “Back to Berlin, to an attic. Hot as hell. Where we’ll change your appearance-I have purchased the most dreadful gray wig-then I will take your photograph, develop the film, and put the photo in your new passport, in your new name. After that, a change of cars, and a few hours’ drive to Luxembourg, the border crossing at Echternach. After that, it will be up to you.”

  They circled the bus and descended to the road. Klemens was lying on his back beside the taxi, his hands clasped beneath his head. When he saw them, he rose, banged the hood shut, slid into the driver’s seat, and started the engine.

  “Where shall I sit?” she said, approaching the car.

  Kolb walked around the taxi and opened the trunk. “It’s not so bad,” he said. “I’ve done it a few times.”

  She climbed in, and curled up on her side.

  “Nice and snug?” Kolb said.

  “You’re good at this, aren’t you,” she said.

  “Very good,” Kolb said. “Ready?”

  “The reason I asked, about going to my house, is that my dogs are there. They are dear to me, I wanted to say goodby.”

  “We can’t go anywhere near your house, Frau von Schirren.”

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I should not have asked.”

  No, you shouldn’t have, I mean, really, dogs. But the look in her eyes reached him, and he said, “Perhaps you can have a friend bring them to Paris.”

  “Yes, it might be possible.”

  “Ready now?”

  “Now I am.”

  Kolb lowered the lid of the trunk, then pressed it down until it locked.

  11 July.

  It was after ten at night by the time Weisz climbed out of a taxi in front of the Hotel Dauphine. The night was warm, and the front door was propped open. Inside, it was quiet, Madame Rigaud sitting in a chair behind the desk, reading the newspaper. “So,” she said, taking off her spectacles, “you have returned.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “One never knows,” she said, quoting the French adage.

  “Is there, perhaps, a message for me?”

  “Not a one, monsieur.”

  “I see. Well then, good evening, madame. I’m off to bed.”

  “Mmm,” she said, putting on her spectacles and rattling the newspaper.

  He was on the fourth step when she said, “Oh, Monsieur Weisz?”

  “Madame?”

  “There has been one inquiry. A friend of yours has come to stay with us. And she did ask, when she arrived, if you were here. I’ve given her Room Forty-seven, just down the hall from you. It looks out on the courtyard.”

  After a moment, Weisz said, “That was kind of you, Madame Rigaud, it’s a pleasant room.”

  “A very cultured sort of woman. German, I believe. And she is, one suspects, anxious to see you, so perhaps you should be on your way upstairs, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “In that case, I will wish you a good night.”

  “For all of us, monsieur. For all of us.”

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  Alan Furst

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