by Alan Furst
‘Well, not yet they haven’t.’
As always, the blunt and beefy Wilkinson was a port in a storm, and a good listener. When Stahl was done describing the phone call at Renate’s apartment, Wilkinson said, ‘Well, another piece of the puzzle anyhow.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They know about Orlova, and they suspect you might have had some secret involvement with her.’
‘The man on the phone certainly sounded confident.’
Wilkinson shrugged. ‘What else? I suspect they were watching the courier, and went chasing after him when he headed for Morocco. And I believe they, the people following him, couldn’t let him do whatever they feared so they killed him. They were on that train, Fredric, and maybe – don’t take this badly – didn’t know who you were.’
Stahl grinned. ‘I thought everybody knew who I was.’
‘Luckily they didn’t. But once they found the money, they started to investigate all the people the courier had contact with. At this point, Orlova’s name came up. Now nobody, anywhere in the world, gets close to a national leader without serious attention from the security services, and that goes double for Hitler. Who is this person? What do they want? Who are their friends? Everything you can think of and some things you’d never imagine. I would guess they have a record, a daily, hourly record, of her life in Berlin. They knew that you spent the night with Orlova at the Adlon, so they took a close look at you, then decided to give you a poke to see what you did next. Now, that’s the optimistic version of …’
A waiter arrived with two scotch-and-sodas. ‘Salut,’ Wilkinson said in French. To Stahl, the bite of the whisky felt comforting on a cold, raw evening.
‘The optimistic version, as I said. The other possibility is that they’ve caught Orlova spying and arrested her. Which means she’s been interrogated, and given them your name. However, if they really felt sure you were spying on Germany I doubt they’d fool around with telephone calls. So, there’s a chance that Orlova got away and they’re looking for her. One thing I do know is that she’s not in Berlin. She’s vanished.’
‘Is she in Moscow?’
‘For her sake, I hope not.’
‘She is a survivor,’ Stahl said.
‘She’d better be. And I suspect she’ll be doing her surviving in Mexico, or Brazil. Even so, the Gestapo has a long arm.’
‘Was that where the phone call came from? The Gestapo?’
‘I would think so. The crowd from the Ribbentropburo, Emhof and his friends, wouldn’t be involved at this level.’
‘Oh,’ Stahl said, meaning he understood. But something had jumped inside him when Wilkinson said ‘Gestapo’. ‘Is there anything I can do about it?’
Wilkinson thought it over. ‘You can go to the police, maybe the Deuxième Bureau – I can help with that, but protecting you would involve a lot of time and money and many people. Still, they might do it. The danger comes if they say they’ll do it but don’t do much, the danger comes when, because you’re a movie star, they say things to make you feel better.’ Suddenly, Wilkinson turned grim and uncomfortable. ‘It’s been known to happen,’ he said.
It has happened, Stahl thought. Why on earth had he assumed he was the only one involved in Wilkinson’s operations? Now he knew he wasn’t and that, for some of the others, things had gone badly.
The launch pulled into another dock to pick up more passengers. The band on the foredeck began to play ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’, Wilkinson swirled what remained in his glass, then drank it off and said, ‘Care for another?’
Stahl said he would.
Wilkinson turned halfway round and signalled to the waiter. ‘Actually, you don’t have too much time left here, only a few weeks, right? You’ll just have to be cautious – where you are, who you’re with. You know your way around the city and you aren’t going anywhere else.’
‘I’m going to Hungary.’
Wilkinson looked at him, clearly alarmed. ‘Fredric, that’s not a good place for you, the Gestapo can do anything it wants there.’
‘Still, I have to go,’ Stahl said. ‘I am curious about one thing, why did you have the American couple on the dock?’
‘It seemed odd to have you go to an event like this by yourself. And I didn’t want you standing alone in a deserted place.’
The drinks arrived, Stahl took more than a sip, so did Wilkinson.
20 December. True to the words of the voice on the telephone, the colleagues in Paris got in touch with him. A second phone call, this time in the morning, as Stahl, barely awake, was having his morning coffee. ‘Good morning, Herr Stahl, how are you feeling today?’
Stahl started to hang up the phone when the voice called out, ‘Oh no, you mustn’t do that, Herr Stahl.’
Holding the receiver, Stahl looked around him.
‘Over here, Herr Stahl, across the street.’
Directly opposite the Claridge was an unremarkable, but no doubt expensive, apartment building and, at a window that looked into his room, Stahl saw a hand waving at him. The voice on the phone said, ‘Yoo-hoo. Here I am.’ Then the hand disappeared.
‘Yes, I see you, and so what?’ Stahl said.
‘If I had a decent weapon I could just about put a little hole in your coffee cup.’
As Stahl slammed the receiver down he heard a laugh. Not a portentous or threatening laugh, but the honest, merry laughter of someone who finds something truly funny. And that, Stahl realized, was worse.
Out at Joinville that morning, Stahl asked Avila when they were going to Hungary. ‘A few days from now,’ Avila said. ‘Paramount has rented the castle, and we can stay in the rooms there, most of us anyhow. There’s a hotel in the town for everyone else. Wait till you see it, Fredric, the location is perfect.’ So much for Stahl’s faint hope that the trip might be cancelled. He worked with particular concentration that day, making a point to himself: he wasn’t going to allow voices on a telephone or someone waving from a window to distract him from doing his best. He did think about it, between takes, but finally realized this led nowhere and turned his mind to other things.
By four o’clock Stahl was back at the hotel, where a square parcel in brown paper awaited him at the desk. Holding it in his hands – it hardly weighed anything – his defensive instincts surged: another one of their tricks? But the return address on the package said, B. Mehlman, The William Morris Agency and Stahl relaxed – his agent had sent him a Christmas present. In the room, he tore off the brown wrapping, which revealed fancy gift paper, silver stars on a blue background, tied with a red ribbon. Given the size of the box, Stahl suspected sweaters. Not like Buzzy to do this, he’d never done it before, perhaps it heralded good news about his career. The card would tell the story – where was it? No doubt in the box. And so it was. A small sealed envelope lay on crumpled white paper, in the middle of what he realized – after a few seconds of blank incomprehension – was a garrotte. Sickened by the look of the thing, he held it up and examined it: some kind of very strong cord, like a bowstring, that had a knot in the middle and two wooden handles. With some difficulty, his hands not their usual selves, he tore open the envelope and read the card, which said, in German, ‘Merry Christmas’.
He went out a few minutes later and eventually came upon an alley where, by the open back door of a restaurant, he found a garbage can and threw the box on top of a mound of potato peelings. The card he kept.
21 December. Renate had to work late so Stahl, in for the evening, had a brandy and started a new Van Dine murder mystery. He’d thought about going to a movie – the Marx Brothers’ Room Service was playing nearby – but preferred to stay home and rest. He wasn’t precisely afraid, he just didn’t want to be out in the street. Some combination of Philo Vance and brandy had him dozing by 10.20, when the telephone rang. He went over to the desk and watched it for a ring or two, then thought what the hell and picked it up. And was relieved when a voice on the other end said, ‘Hello, Fredric, it’s Kiki,’ but then, a momen
t later, not so relieved. This was not a late-evening call from a former lover – there was real urgency in her voice as she said, ‘Fredric, there’s something I must tell you, it has nothing to do with, with you and me, it’s something … very different. And not for the telephone. Can you meet me at a café? It’s not far from your hotel, a little place on the rue de la Trémoille. Please say yes.’ Whatever motive lay behind the call he did not know, but it wasn’t seduction. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Are you at this café?’
‘I can be there in twenty minutes.’
Stahl paced the room for a time, then threw a trench coat on and left the hotel.
The rue de la Trémoille was lined with imperious apartment houses built, lavishly, in the nineteenth century – here there were rich people. But it was after ten at night and the street was dark and silent, a condition that the inhabitants, inside their fortresses, no doubt found restful and much to their taste. Not so Stahl. Wilkinson’s cautionary words, about being aware of where you were, echoed in his memory. Not a soul to be seen, not a light visible in the draped windows. When a car’s headlights turned a corner and came up behind him, he stepped into a doorway. Slowly, as though the driver were searching for something, the heavy car rumbled past, its taillights glowed red for a moment, then it went on its way.
Minutes later, Stahl found the café, an old-fashioned oasis in the desert of a fashionable neighborhood. Inside it was all amber walls and a haze of Gauloises smoke, and crowded with the usual cast of characters: old women with their dogs, men in workers’ caps at the bar, lovers without a place to go. From a far corner, Kiki waved to him and Stahl wound his way past the close-set tables, and they kissed hello. Kiki, despite the cloud of expensive perfume, seemed to be playing a chaste version of herself; the seductress make-up was gone, leaving her fresh-faced and younger, and she wore a sweater of very soft wool in a colour that reminded Stahl of mocha cream. Inside the shawl collar of the sweater, a silk scarf decorated with gold anchors replaced her pearl necklace. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, meaning it. ‘You sounded like you were half-asleep.’
‘I was,’ Stahl said.
‘I should’ve called earlier,’ Kiki said, ‘but I couldn’t make up my mind, and I was afraid you’d just hang up on me.’
‘That’s not like you, Kiki.’
‘No, I suppose it isn’t, but you’ll see why. Are you going to order something?’
‘I don’t really want coffee, it will keep me awake. Anyhow, I’m getting more curious by the moment, so …’
Kiki took a breath, then said, ‘I’m here as a messenger, Fredric. And the message comes from the Baroness von Reschke. She knew you wouldn’t agree to see her, and she regrets that, though she does understand. But I must tell you this: when she told me what she wanted me to say to you she was, how to put it, intense, serious, and not her usual self – you know what she’s like.’
‘I do know,’ Stahl said. ‘All charm and smiles, the baroness.’
‘Not when I saw her. She wanted to make sure, absolutely sure, that you received what she called “a final warning”. According to her, certain people, her words, no explanation, certain people require your cooperation, and it would be unwise not to help them. What she said was, “please make him understand that he won’t be warned again.” Does that make any sense to you?’
‘It does.’
‘Who are these people, to threaten you?’
‘Being in the movies, Kiki, doesn’t shield you from what goes on in the real world. And the people she’s talking about are very much from the real world, where politics is a game with no rules, and they’re determined to make me help them.’
‘Do you know who they are?’
‘Well, they’re friends of the baroness, and sure of her to the point that they’ve used her, and thus you, to send their message.’
She stared at him. ‘What if you don’t do what they want? Are you in danger?’
‘Not really. You shouldn’t worry about it, and I’ll only be in Paris for a few more weeks.’
‘I care for you, Fredric, being with you meant a lot to me. I don’t want you to be – hurt.’
‘Likely that won’t happen, though it’s hard to predict.’
‘What shall I tell her? She said, “I must have an answer,” and she meant it. Not like her at all, not the baroness I know. Suddenly, right there in her parlour, she was a different woman. Cold, and almost, well, cruel.’
‘The answer is that you gave me the message. I heard what she wanted me to hear.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No, nothing else.’
‘Fredric’ – she reached across the table and took his hand in hers – ‘is there anything I can do to help you?’
He shook his head. ‘Leave it alone, Kiki. Forget this happened. There is no point in your being involved, in fact there’s every reason you shouldn’t be.’
She let go of his hand and sat back. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But the offer is still there, if you change your mind.’
Amid the low burble and clatter of the night-time café, Stahl was silent for a time, then leaned forward and said, ‘Kiki, maybe I shouldn’t ask, but I will anyhow. Are you more a part of this than you’re telling me?’
Slowly, she shook her head. ‘I’m only Kiki de Saint-Ange, Fredric, that’s all I know how to be. And when you go back to America I’ll just be a girl you knew in Paris.’
Stahl and Renate spent Christmas Eve together – had a champagne supper served in his suite, then stayed for the night. Renate Steiner was a supremely sophisticated woman, but a supremely sophisticated woman who had lived in penury for a long time and Stahl was secretly delighted to watch as the luxurious surroundings went to her head. A glass of champagne in hand, she took a bubble bath in the glorious bathroom, then, pink and excited, lounged around the suite in Stahl’s pyjamas as the radio played Christmas carols – ‘O the rising of the sun, the running of the deer’. Finally, drunk and happy, they went to bed, made love, and woke in the morning to the icy fog of a northern European winter.
Late that morning they took a taxi to Renate’s apartment, where she was giving a buffet lunch for her émigré friends. Perhaps twenty people were packed into the tiny apartment, all of them fugitives; artists, leftists, Jews, the sort of people the Nazis loathed, the sort of people the Nazis murdered. A ragtag lot, all of them poor to one degree or another. The lunch was abundant – Stahl saw to that – and practically all of it was eaten. And drunk. A few tears were shed, and La Belle France was toasted as their saviour, though one of the guests turned to Stahl and whispered, ‘For the time being, anyhow.’ Stahl had visited his bank the day before and, as a line of guests left en masse – ‘I don’t want these opened at the party,’ he’d told Renate – each was given an envelope containing a thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills. He was plenty rich enough to make such gestures, and so he did.
Trouble came the following day, from an unexpected direction, and it also affected a group of émigrés, including Stahl and Renate. Avila called a meeting of the cast and crew on the set, where he announced that Paramount had declined to pay for air travel to Budapest. The cast and crew would, the studio executives had declared, have to go by train. A certain hush fell over the set when Avila said this. It took a moment, but soon enough everybody realized what that meant: the eleven émigrés working on Après la Guerre could not cross the German border. The Gestapo list of those who had fled Germany illegally was precise and thorough, and the émigrés would certainly be arrested. And to reach Hungary from France you had to go through Germany. ‘Deschelles fought hard,’ Avila explained, ‘but the Paramount executives wouldn’t budge. As Jules put it to me, ‘I did the best I could, but I am an ant and they are a thumb.’
In the discussion that followed, the émigrés didn’t say much, but the rest of the company was passionate on their behalf. ‘We are a family,’ Justine Piro said. ‘Every good production company becomes a family, we can’t leave people behind.
’ At the end of the discussion, it was worked out that the eleven would fly on a small chartered aeroplane; Deschelles would ‘borrow’ some money from production funds, and those who could afford it – which meant Stahl, paying for himself and Renate, and two others making high salaries – would contribute. Avila would donate, and so would Piro, Pasquin, and Gilles Brecker. At the end of the discussion, a carpenter from Hamburg, formerly a communist streetfighter, stood and thanked everyone there. ‘I’ll tell you it’s a fucking pity,’ Pasquin said to Stahl as the meeting broke up, ‘that the whole country won’t work this way.’
Early on the morning of 28 December, Stahl took a taxi to Le Bourget. As they left the city, the driver said, ‘Excuse me, monsieur, is it possible that someone is following you?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because there’s a car that’s been behind us at every turn.’ Then, with the bellicose flair of the Parisian taxi driver, he said, ‘I’ll lose them if you want me to, monsieur.’ Stahl told him not to bother. An hour later he was in an aeroplane, looking down at the snow-dusted forests of Germany.
28 December. They circled Budapest as the lights of the city came on, then landed at the nearby airfield. The customs officers were amiable enough, smiling and silent as they stamped passports – silent because they knew that nobody spoke Hungarian, and they didn’t care to conduct business in German, the second language of Hungary, and what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Next, the eleven émigrés crowded into two rattletrap taxis. Avila had given Stahl a hand-drawn map of the castle’s location, near the Danubian port of Komarom, and Stahl handed it to the taxi drivers. After some head scratching and a spirited argument, inspiration struck and the taxis drove off over snow-covered roads. Soon enough the driving grew difficult, the bald tyres spun, the drivers cursed, everybody got out and pushed. Finally, at the edge of a tiny village, the drivers gave up. ‘Can’t go,’ said one of them in rudimentary German. Stahl paid him, the driver said they should stay where they were and that someone would come for them. Then the taxis got turned around and headed back towards Budapest.
