Mission to Paris

by Alan Furst

‘Well, don’t. Just stand still.’ Then she said ‘Merde!’ and withdrew her hand, a drop of blood on the ball of her index finger. This she put in her mouth for a moment, took it out and pressed her thumb against it. Looking for something to cover the pinprick, she walked over to her work table. Stahl couldn’t take his eyes off the back view. She wore, as usual, a smock over a long skirt, which should have hidden the motion beneath but didn’t quite. He hadn’t noticed this the last time he’d seen her – was she wearing a different skirt? Had she changed for his eyes? That idea he liked very well but he knew it was wishful thinking. Probably.

  At the table she found a strip of adhesive tape, tore off a piece with her teeth and stuck it on her finger. That done, she mumbled, ‘Goddamn thimble,’ and went rummaging through mounds of fabric, retrieved only a scissors and a magazine photo, then gave up. She turned, walked back and stood in front of him. ‘You can take it off now,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry this took so long.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘I expect you want to go home and have a drink.’

  ‘I do.’ Then, after a moment, ‘Is there anything here?’

  ‘There is, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I have Strega.’

  ‘Strega!’ Of all things. ‘The witch,’ he said, translating the Italian word. It was a liqueur made of mountain herbs, secret herbs – a strange taste, sweet at first, then something more.

  She walked over to a cabinet, took out a bottle of Strega and two cloudy glasses, poured some thick, dark-gold liqueur in each, returned and handed him a glass. ‘Salut,’ she said.

  ‘To us,’ he said and immediately regretted it. He was acting like a teenager.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘To us. You like it?’

  ‘It’s been a while since I’ve had it.’

  ‘Myself I like it.’

  ‘I like it too.’

  ‘Good. Want some more?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Aren’t you getting cold?’

  ‘Not at all. I don’t mind being undressed.’

  ‘Hm. Well …’ She took the undershirt back to her table and said, ‘You’ve been very patient.’

  He put his shirt back on, buttoning it as he walked over and stood next to her, their shoulders almost touching. For a moment, neither of them moved, then Stahl said, ‘I guess I should go.’

  ‘I will need another fitting once it’s been resewn.’

  ‘When is that?’

  ‘Oh, tomorrow. Can you stop by when the filming’s over?’

  ‘I’ll see you then.’

  Stahl found a taxi on the street that bordered the studio and, settled in the back seat, felt the excitement of a man who’d found treasure. He’d been drawn to her the first time they met but she was married, off-limits. He had wondered what it would be like with her, then let it go. But when she’d told him she was free, when she’d flirted with him … She had, hadn’t she? He hoped so because now he really wanted her, he wanted to fuck her – it was the same heat he’d felt as a schoolboy. What was it that reached him? What? She was no pinup girl, more the opposite: the minister’s prim daughter, the well-curved spinster beneath the spinster skirt. In fact, Renate Steiner wasn’t anything like that, she was a sophisticated, intellectual woman. That was her inner self, no secrets there, but her outer self, her face with its pointy nose and pale forehead, her concealed shape, was that of the fantasy spinster. And Stahl, after weeks of Parisian glamour, after the erotic tricks of Kiki de Saint-Ange, discovered that, at least for the moment, he was again sixteen, and hot for one of the plainer girls in the school. Would she do it with him? In the back seat of the taxi it was already tomorrow night and his imagination undressed her: she would touch not one button, one popper, one waistband of her clothing.

  There was a crowd of people in the street as they drove up the Champs-Elysées and the driver had to slow down and work his way through them. A few held signs, NEVER AGAIN and SAVE THE PEACE, and Stahl realized it was 11 November, Armistice Day, celebrating the end of ‘the war to end all wars’. There’d no doubt been a military parade, an official parade, earlier in the day; this was just a crowd of people – workers, students, middle-class Parisians – who’d made a few signs. The driver asked Stahl what he thought about the march and Stahl said, ‘Who doesn’t want peace?’ The driver turned halfway round and said, ‘Amen to that, monsieur.’ But to Stahl it was a dream, a hope. He’d seen Germany, and he knew there would be war.

  The night of his return to Paris he’d met J. J. Wilkinson, as planned, in the waiting room of the American Hospital in Neuilly and, in the hallway by the WC, handed him Orlova’s notes. They were together only a moment, but Wilkinson had said, ‘You’ll be invited to a party on the night of the eleventh, please be there if you can manage it and we’ll have a chance to talk.’ Stahl’s time with Renate Steiner had, until this moment, undone his memory but now he realized he would have to go. The party was being given by an American woman, her name sometimes in the society columns, a longtime expatriate married to a French aristocrat. Oh well, he would at least have his hot shower at the Claridge. His heart sank a little, at the idea of going to a party, but the people marching in the street cured that. Going to a dinner party was the least he could do.

  Wilkinson wasn’t at the party. A dozen well-dressed people and a vast centerpiece of white gladioli, but no diplomat. A disappointed Stahl did the best he could, chatting right and left, telling a few movie stories, getting a laugh or two, resisting the urge to look at his watch. After dessert, as he headed dutifully off to the library for brandy and cigars, the hostess appeared by his side and said, ‘There’s a staircase behind that door at the end of the hall. Your friend is waiting upstairs.’ She smiled at him and her eyes twinkled – nothing quite like a little intrigue.

  The apartment was a duplex – there were a few of these in the Sixteenth Arrondissement – and J. J. Wilkinson, drink in hand, tie pulled down, was waiting for him in what had once been a small bedroom for a child – a model aeroplane, a Spad fighter, hung on a cord from the ceiling light fixture, and boys’ books, Poppy Ott and the Stuttering Parrot, filled the bookcase. Wilkinson was sitting on a narrow cot covered with a camp blanket and rose to give Stahl his powerful handshake. ‘First of all, thank you,’ he said.

  Stahl sat on the other end of the cot and told the story of his time in Berlin. Wilkinson made notes, interrupting only to make sure he had the names right. Stahl tried to be thorough, and hesitated only when it came time to tell Wilkinson about Rudi – was it wise to confess he’d helped to commit a murder? But to keep it secret wasn’t a possibility – he had to trust Wilkinson. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘this next part is difficult, but it happened, and you ought to know about it.’

  Wilkinson nodded, took a sip of his drink, and said, ‘Might as well.’ What could be so bad? But when Stahl described what had gone on in room 802, Wilkinson sat bolt upright, his eyes widened and he said, ‘Good God.’

  Stahl shrugged. ‘She had to do it, she said something about “this will never end”, and she was right.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘I know,’ Stahl said. ‘I saw it, but I couldn’t believe it was happening.’

  Wilkinson reached over to the windowsill, took a half-smoked cigar from a clamshell and, after several tries, got it lit. ‘I’m shocked,’ he said, ‘but maybe not that shocked, now that I think about it. People talk about tough women, “a tigress” and all that, but Orlova is the real thing.’

  ‘You’ve met her?’

  Wilkinson shook his head. ‘She sent a friend to see someone else at the embassy. Everything after that was in letters carried by hand. But, to do what she does, under the nose of the Gestapo …’

  ‘Anyhow,’ Stahl said, ‘I trust her report was worth it.’

  ‘Not up to me, Fredric. But I suspect it’ll be useful.’

  Useful? ‘I mean, fifty thousand dollars – I assume the government wouldn’t spend money like that unless it wa
s very important.’

  Now Wilkinson stopped. He took a puff on his cigar, blew the smoke out, and stared at Stahl, trying to make up his mind. ‘Very well, I think you’ve earned the right to hear a little more about this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell you, or what stays secret – the truth is I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I have to make it up, to improvise, as I go along. Just promise me you’ll keep your mouth shut – I don’t mean to be rude, but no point in mincing words.’

  ‘You have my promise,’ Stahl said. ‘I am not going to talk about it.’

  Wilkinson nodded, but he was clearly uncomfortable. ‘First of all, this is not government money. The USA doesn’t spend money like that, maybe it should, but it doesn’t. The money is, umm, donated? I guess that’s the word. The Department of State and the military spend a little money for information but nothing like this. With Orlova, we don’t even know where it goes – it’s not some kind of sale, she demanded the money and we found a way to get it into Germany. Maybe she keeps it, maybe she pays agents of her own, maybe she gives it to the Reds.’

  ‘The Reds? She’s a Russian spy?’

  ‘Who knows. Circumstantial evidence says she could be. She’s got family, prominent family, still in Russia, I can’t believe the Bolsheviks just let her pal around with Hitler and his crowd.’

  ‘She works for you, she works for them …’

  ‘And God knows who else.’

  ‘But she doesn’t get caught.’

  ‘No she doesn’t, and you just saw why.’

  ‘I guess I did,’ Stahl said. ‘But still, the information is important.’

  ‘Very important. We don’t have a political spy service, but, um, people have to know what’s going on.’

  ‘People?’

  Wilkinson pointed up at the ceiling with his index finger. ‘People who live in a big, white, house, those people. Oh what the hell, that person.’

  ‘The President.’

  ‘Yeah, him.’

  Stahl was sufficiently impressed that he had no idea what to say. At last, he managed a quiet ‘Oh.’

  From Wilkinson, a thin smile. ‘America is isolationist, he isn’t. America doesn’t want to fight, he does. But he can’t, politically can not, and what truly hurt was the appeasement at Munich – all over the US the sentiment was, “if the Europeans don’t want to fight Germany, why should we?”’

  ‘They don’t know what goes on there,’ Stahl said, more passion in his voice than he intended. ‘If they did …’

  ‘And if my grandmother had wheels she’d be a cart,’ Wilkinson said. ‘It’s not that Americans don’t know what goes on, endless articles have been written in the liberal press, in small magazines, but that has no effect on the population – people in small towns, “just plain folks”, as they say. So FDR and the people around him are looking for an opening, some damning intelligence that lets the American people know they’re threatened, not just some Frenchy with a moustache. The army and navy attachés do their jobs, they count aeroplanes and cannons and ships, but the president needs to know what the Nazis are up to, and he’s enlisted his friends, rich and powerful friends, to learn what goes on. They have money, and plenty of nerve, and there’s at least a chance they’ll find something.’ The cigar had gone out, Wilkinson looked at it in disgust and squashed it into the clamshell.

  ‘I didn’t set out to be in the Foreign Service, Fredric. As I told you earlier, I’m a Wall Street lawyer. But they got me appointed Second Secretary and here I am. Why me? Well, my mother’s people came from Holland, a long time ago, we’re one of those old Dutch families up the Hudson River and we’re distantly related to the Roosevelts. This work is, as I said, improvisation, so we use whoever’s around, if we can trust them.’

  ‘Even movie actors,’ Stahl said.

  ‘Movie stars, Fredric.’

  ‘At one point, I don’t think I mentioned it, Orlova gave me back the ten-reichsmark note and said something like, “for next time”. Is there a next time?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe. Would you do it again if I asked you?’

  ‘Whatever you want,’ Stahl said. ‘You know where to find me.’

  12 November. Heading off for work, Stahl was beckoned by the clerk at the front desk, who handed him a letter from America. The return address said The William Morris Agency, with an address in Beverly Hills that Stahl knew well. His agent, Buzzy Mehlman, had scrawled a note on agency stationery: ‘Attaboy, keep up the good work! Buzz.’ The note was accompanied by a clipping from the Variety gossip column where the phrase we hear headed every item.

  WE HEAR that Fredric Stahl’s new film for Paramount France, Après la Guerre, has started production in Paris and that leading man Stahl is working hard at publicity for the European market.

  Stahl was relieved. Apparently he needn’t have worried what impression his trip to Berlin made back home. A deft hand, in the press release: he hadn’t been in Germany, he’d been in Europe. Someone, somewhere, had protected him.

  Out at Joinville, the day crept by at tortoise speed. Stahl couldn’t stop thinking about what would follow the day’s shooting – a visit to Renate Steiner’s workroom in Building K. Script in hand, he went through the scene he’d play once the cameras rolled but, no matter how hard he tried to concentrate, his mind summoned images of what he hoped for that evening.

  In the studio, a hayloft set had been built and here the legionnaires would spend the night – supposedly in Roumania, just across the border from Hungary. In this scene, Justine Piro’s false countess Ilona and Stahl’s Colonel Vadic first discover they are falling in love. Pasquin’s and Gilles Brecker’s characters have gone off to search for food, Ilona and the colonel are alone. Outside the hayloft window, the lighting designer had created twilight, the soundmen would provide distant rumbles of thunder, and the music, added later, would complete the illusion.

  Ilona, in a black cotton dress, her hair worn loose and artfully disordered, is lying on her side in the hay, her head propped on her hand, the colonel sits with his arms clasped around his knees. The first shot took a long time to set up – Avila wanted Ilona’s face lit a certain way and the spot had to be adjusted again and again until he was satisfied. Then, when he had what he wanted, there was a problem with the camera. Meanwhile, dust from the hay made Stahl and Piro sneeze, and Stahl’s back started to hurt every time he got himself into position.

  At last, the camera was ready and Piro delivered Ilona’s line: ‘You know, I was a little afraid of you, at first.’

  In the distance, the thunder rumbled.

  ‘Afraid? Of me?’

  ‘Cut!’ Avila shouted. The spot lighting Ilona’s face was flickering on and off. ‘Louis, we need another bulb.’

  ‘It’s not the bulb, chief.’

  ‘Where’s the electrician?’

  ‘He’s wiring the other set.’

  ‘Would someone go and find him, please. Quickly.’

  And so on, for hours. Every time they got something to work, something else didn’t. Or a line was fluffed, or the thunder was too loud.

  By three-twenty, Avila had had enough. ‘The gods are against us today,’ he said. ‘We’ll start here in the morning; nine-thirty sharp, everybody.’

  Finally, Stahl thought. He felt drained, but some Strega and conversation in Building K would fix that, he just needed time to recover. Then, as he was headed to his dressing room to change out of his uniform, one of the studio office workers handed him a telephone message. Wolf Lustig’s office in Berlin telephoned, can you please call them back as soon as possible. There followed a telephone number.

  Stahl’s first reaction was irritation – what the hell did he want? Stahl had never met Wolf Lustig but he knew who he was: one of the most prominent producers at the UFA studios in Babelsberg – Germany’s Hollywood – and UFA was the biggest, and now almost the only, film company in Germany. Taking off his uniform tunic, Stahl wondered if he had to call back, then put off deciding until the morning.
What would Wolf Lustig want with him? By the time Stahl had brushed his hair, he thought he knew. This was not film business, this was Emhof business, Moppi business. Somewhere in his mind, Stahl had decided that once he was done with the festival, those people would be done with him. How naive, he thought. Now the decision to call back would have to be taken in a different light. No, he thought, now he would have to call back, because that was ‘Wilkinson business’.

  Outside, the late-afternoon sun had broken through, shafts piercing the rain clouds, and the wet tiles on the roof of Building K shimmered in the light. The door to Renate Steiner’s workroom was open, Stahl looked in from the threshold and called out, ‘Hello? Renate?’

  The response was a small shriek. Renate was standing on the platform in front of the mirror, in profile to Stahl, wearing a peasant blouse, panties, garter belt, black stockings, and no shoes. She hurried for the shelter of the curtain, leaving Stahl with an image of very white, full thighs and well-shaped legs. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I …’

  From behind the curtain: ‘Why are you so early?’

  ‘Avila let us go.’

  ‘Close your eyes.’

  He heard her walking quickly, then opened his eyes to see her wrapped in the blue smock. ‘Shall I try the entry again?’

  She laughed. ‘Bad boy, you surprised me.’

  ‘I am sorry, I didn’t mean to …’

  ‘Oh it doesn’t matter. Your undershirt’s on a hanger by the platform. Why don’t you try it on while I get decent.’

  Stahl took off his blazer and shirt and pulled the undershirt over his head. In the mirror, the undershirt fit perfectly, falling just so across his shoulders. Meanwhile, Renate was again dressed as usual. As she approached him, he saw a faint rose colour on her cheeks. The glimpse he’d had of her had aroused him, the blush did nothing to change that. Renate stared at Stahl’s image in the mirror, put her silver-rimmed glasses on, then took them off. ‘What do you think?’ she said.

  ‘It’s perfect.’

  She took the bottom of the shirt and shook it, then let it fall back in place. ‘Can you take a little walk for me?’