by Alan Furst
In the mirror, Albertine’s face was dreamy, her eyes half closed, mouth slightly open. Also in the mirror, the front of his underpants highly distended. For a few seconds, they stood like statues, then she whispered, “I want to see it,” hooked her thumbs in the waistband of his underpants, and pulled them down.
“Alber-tine!”
“What?”
She reached out and closed her hand around it, her skin warm and damp. He leaned back against her, then moved away. “We’re not supposed—”
“Oh foo,” she said. So much for family morals. “You like it,” she said firmly, and ran her finger along the underside, back and forth. “Don’t you?”
He could only nod.
She pressed against him, above and below, and he reached back, hands on her bottom, and pulled her closer. She now stroked him with index finger and thumb: where had she learned to do this? He was very excited and, a few seconds later, came the inevitable conclusion, accompanied, from deep within him, by a sound somewhere between a sigh and a gasp.
“There,” she said softly, taking her hand away.
“Well, that’s what happens.”
“I know that.”
He started to move away from her, but she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him tight. Close to his ear, she whispered, “Now it’s my turn.”
“What?” His heart quaked.
She raised her dress, revealing white cotton underdrawers, and bunched it around her waist, then took his hand and placed it between her legs. He’d never touched a girl there and had no idea what was expected of him, but immediately found out, as she pressed his hand against herself and began to move it. In the mirror, he could see her face: eyes closed, lower lip held delicately between her teeth. With his free hand, he again reached around her, where, in slow rhythm, her bottom tensed, relaxed, and tensed again. After what seemed to him like a long time—he began to wonder what he was doing wrong—she exhaled hard, her breath audible, and held on to him as though she might fall down. Astonishing! It had never occurred to him that this happened to a girl; his friends at school had a completely different version of things.
He pulled up his underpants, then sat down hard on the edge of his bed. Albertine resettled her dress, then came and sat beside him, brushing her long hair off her face. “Did you like it, Jean-François?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Both things?”
“Yes, both.”
She kissed him, a dry kiss on the cheek. “I think you’re sweet,” she said and, for a moment, rested her head on his shoulder.
This was not the only time, for the Mercier cousins; it happened once more before they went north to their schools. The following week, the cook baked grand brioches, as big as cakes, and his mother asked him to take two of them over to Uncle Gérard’s. Mercier, already a cavalry officer in his daydreams, climbed on his bicycle and pedaled like a fury over the tiny dirt lanes that wound through the hills to his uncle’s house. Once there, amid the usual disorder, he set the brioches down on the table in the kitchen, then waited while his aunt wrote a thank you note. Albertine appeared, as he was retrieving his bicycle from the steps that led to the terrace, and told her mother she would ride with him part of the way back home. Halfway there, they walked their bicycles away from the lane and found a grove of cork oaks, and, this time, Albertine suggested that they take off all their clothes.
Mercier hesitated, uncertain of what lay ahead. “I don’t want you to have a baby,” he said.
She laughed, brushing her hair aside. “I’m not going to do that. Cousins mustn’t do that, but we can play. Playing is always allowed.”
What rules she was following he did not know, but in the days after their first encounter, before he went to sleep and when he woke in the morning, he had ravished his gawky cousin in every way his imagination offered and was now more than ready for anything she might think up. And so, her skin white in the hot sun, Albertine posed prettily for him and then, at their leisure on a summer’s day, as the cicadas whirred away in the high grass, they played twice.
True to her word, Albertine returned to the apartment at six-thirty. Her hair was darker now, styled short, falling just to her jawline. She wore a quiet tweed suit with big buttons, skirt well below the knee, and a fancy silk scarf from one of the fashion houses, wound around her neck and tucked into the vee of her suit jacket. With pearl earrings and fine leather gloves, she was very much an aristocrat of the Seventh. As in all their meetings over the years, he could find the Albertine he’d known that summer; she was, as he put it to himself, still in there; he could find her if he tried.
She made them drinks, vermouth with lemon, and showed him the latest additions to her collection—onyx cameos and intaglios on small wooden stands, filling the shelves of two glass-fronted bookcases. Some of the new ones were ancient, Greek and Roman, others from tsarist Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire. “They are exceptional,” he said, taking time to study them, appreciating what she’d achieved. Then they walked out to the boulevard and over to a busy brasserie on the rue Saint-Dominique. A compromise: she didn’t want to cook, it was too early to go to a proper restaurant, and neither of them cared that much. So they ordered omelettes and frites and a bottle of Saint-Estèphe.
“It is so good to see you, Jean-François,” she said, taking the first sip of her wine. “Is life going well? I expect you miss Annemarie.”
“Every day.”
“And do you see anyone?”
I wish I could, he thought, Anna Szarbek’s image smiling up at him on a nightclub dance floor. “No,” he said. “I would like to, but it isn’t easy, meeting somebody—who’s available.”
“Oh you will, dear,” she said, looking at him fondly. “People do find each other, somehow.”
“Let’s hope so. And you?” Years earlier, there had been a fiancé, then another, but, after that, silence.
“Oh, I’ve settled into my life,” she said. “How are the girls?”
“Thriving, but passionately busy. Béatrice is in Cairo, her sister, Gabrielle, in Copenhagen—I haven’t seen them for a long time. At Christmas, perhaps. I might see if Gabrielle will come down to the house in Boutillon. That is, if I can get there myself.”
“And Warsaw? Is that a good place to be, for you?”
He nodded. “I certainly see enough of it—hotels, restaurants, cocktail parties, receptions.”
“The glamorous life!”
His tart smile told Albertine all she needed to know about that.
“Always difficult, a new job. But I assume you’re good at it,” she said.
“It has its ups and downs—as you say, a new job.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, but I’m a soldier. I do what they tell me.”
“What is that? Are you a spymaster?”
“Nothing so dramatic. Mostly I am a liaison between the French and Polish General Staffs. Everybody has to know what everybody else is up to.”
The omelettes—aux fines herbes—arrived, with mounds of frites, crisp and golden and powerfully aromatic. Albertine, suddenly maternal, salted both their portions. “Still, you must learn secrets.”
“Bad manners, Albertine, when the host country is an old friend.”
“Yes, of course, that makes sense,” she said, thinking it over. “Maybe German secrets.”
“Well, if they come swimming by in the stream, I net them.”
“Evil bastards, Jean-François, they’ve got their whole country in prison. I have friends who are Jews, a couple, fled from Frankfurt with the clothes on their backs. Surely great threats to the government: cellists, both of them. Did you know that, by German law, persons of more than twenty-five percent non-Aryan blood are forbidden to play Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, or any other Aryan composer? Can you imagine? I know I shouldn’t pry, but if you get a chance to put a boot up their backsides I trust you’ll give it an extra shove for me.”
“I’ll remember that,” he
said. “You never know what might happen.” He poured more wine for both of them. “And you, Albertine? What goes on with you?”
She shrugged. “I work hard at what I do—charities, boards of directors, and so forth, wherever they need people they don’t have to pay. Oh, speaking of boards, some awful woman, Madame de Michaux is her name . . . had dinner with you in Warsaw? She was eager to tell me about it. Very taken with you, she was.”
“Yes, I’d forgotten her name. The dinner was a banquet, at the Europejski.”
“Perhaps, since you’re in Paris, you’ll go and see her.”
“Albertine, don’t be wicked.”
She smiled. I can be, as you well know. “Here’s one bit of news. I’m going to Aleppo, in December.”
“Any special reason?”
“I might buy something for the collection, we’ll see. I’m going with a friend of mine, she’s a professor of archaeology at the Sorbonne, so that will give me entrée to the local collectors—and the tomb robbers.” She paused, then said, “Have you a secret mission for me, as long as I’m there?”
“I’m not concerned with Syria, dear. And best not to say such things.”
“Oh foo,” she said. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
He laughed and said, “Albertine, you are incorrigible.”
Albertine’s eyes wandered, then fixed on a nearby table. Mercier ate some frites, then looked over to see what interested her. A very handsome man was having dinner with his daughter, maybe twelve, who was chattering away while she worked at eating a plate of escargots. She was quite adept, using the shell-holding tool with one hand, probing for the snail morsel with a special fork, yet more than keeping up her end of the conversation. The father listened earnestly. “Yes? . . . Really? . . . That must have been interesting.”
Albertine leaned toward Mercier and said, “Are you watching this?”
“What’s going on?”
“Can’t you see?”
“No, what is it?”
“He’s teaching her how to have dinner with a man.”
Mercier took another look. “Yes, I do see, now that you mention it.”
Albertine was amused, and pleased with what she’d discovered. “How I love this quartier,” she said. “And, come to think of it, this country. I mean, where else?”
Back at the apartment, Albertine made sure that Mercier had everything he needed, then went off to her room, down the hall. He tried to read Guderian, but it had been a long day, they’d finished the Saint-Estèphe, and German military theory wasn’t the best bedside companion. He thought about the following morning: Bruner, the others. Would he defend himself? Or just sit there and listen? The latter, an easy decision, the best way to keep his job. His pursuit of the Wehrmacht’s intentions—the abandoned tank trap, a careful reading of Guderian’s book—had changed the chemistry of his assignment in Warsaw. This, along with the abduction of his agent Uhl, had turned a desk job into something very much like a fight, so to walk away now would be to walk away from a fight. He had never done that, and he never would.
It was quiet outside, in the hidden rue Saint-Simon, quiet in the building, and quiet in the apartment; private, cloistered. Warm enough, with the radiators going, the room mostly in shadow, with only a small lamp on the night table lighting his bed. From down the hall, he heard the faint sound of music—Albertine apparently had a radio in her room—a swing orchestra playing a dance tune, then a woman vocalist, singing a song he recognized: “Night and Day.” Was Albertine reading? Or lying in the darkness, listening to her radio? Not, he thought, that he would ever find out. Not that he would walk down the hall and knock at her door. Not that she wanted him to do that. Nor would she—walk down the hall and open his door. Not that he wanted her to, not really. Not that much, anyhow.
29 November. In his best uniform, shoes polished to a high gloss, Mercier walked up the rue de Grenelle, past the walled Soviet embassy, then along avenue des Invalides to the avenue de Tourville. The chill gray morning, typical for the city this time of year, did nothing to soften the official buildings, the heart of military Paris. Saluted by the sentry, he entered 2, bis, climbed the stairs to Bruner’s office, and at ten hundred hours sharp, as ordered, he knocked at the door.
Bruner took his time, and after he got around to calling, “Come in,” his greeting was subdued—polite and cold. “How was your flight, colonel?”
“It was uneventful, sir. On time.”
“When I served in Warsaw, I always found LOT to be dependable.” Bruner took a sheet of paper from his drawer and placed it before him, squaring it up with his fingertips. He had, Mercier sensed, flourished with his promotion to full colonel and his new position. Short and tubby, with a soft face and a dapper little mustache, he virtually glowed with vanity, and its evil twin, the infinite capacity for vengeance when insulted. “So then,” he said. “Our lost spy in Germany.”
“Yes, colonel.”
“How did this happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll have to find out, won’t you.”
“He thought he was under surveillance on the previous trip. Somehow the Gestapo, or a counterespionage unit of the SD, uncovered him. I’ve questioned him at length, and he’s been forthcoming, but he doesn’t have the answer.”
“And what do you propose to do about it? It’s a serious loss, a view on German armaments, which imply tactics, and that is information crucial to our own planning. We’re in the midst of a political conflict these days, the politicians don’t want to spend money on tanks and planes—we still have serious unemployment—but Hitler has no such problem. He spends what he likes.”
“I am aware of this, colonel.”
“Perhaps this position, in Warsaw, is not to your taste, Colonel Mercier. Would you like me to arrange a new assignment?”
“No, colonel. It is my preference to remain in Poland.”
Bruner returned to their lost spy, then spent some time on the shooting incident in Silesia, and around again. He was like a terrier—once he took hold, he wouldn’t let go. But, at last, with a final threat or two, Mercier was dismissed. “There will be more meetings, Colonel Mercier, so please be good enough to stay in contact with my adjutant for the next two days. You are also scheduled to see General de Beauvilliers. Call his office for the details.”
Oh no. Not de Beauvilliers. Now, Mercier thought, he really would be sent off to some fever-ridden island.
When he left Bruner’s office, he badly wanted coffee. There’d been no sign of Albertine when he got up, and he hadn’t bothered to make it for himself, so he descended to the officers’ mess in the basement and found an empty table. There were three officers at the next table, including a major, a fellow military attaché he recognized from his training class the previous spring. They acknowledged each other; then, as Mercier ordered coffee from a mess steward, the major resumed telling a story, which the other two were clearly enjoying.
“So they took me to the far end of the palace,” the major said, “to a glorious room: divans, you know, and gauze curtains.”
“Perhaps you were in the harem.”
“Perhaps. But there were no women about. Just the sultan, the chief eunuch, the head of the army—the sultan’s younger brother—and me. For a time, we made small talk: the progress of the new railroad, their war with one of the mountain tribes. Then a servant—turban, dagger tucked in sash, those slippers with the toes turned up—entered with a brass tray. Which held four little pipes, made of silver, filigreed silver, very old and beautiful, and a silver bowl holding four brown—well, lumps, the size of small pebbles.”
“Ah,” said one of the other officers. “Opium.”
“No, hashish. As the honored guest, I was served first. Which meant the servant put a brown lump in the bowl of a pipe and held a taper over it until I managed to get the damn thing to light.”
“You couldn’t decline?”
“I could’ve, but you can’t be rude to sultans. That m
ight have been the end of French concessions in the sultanate.”
“How was it?”
“Harsh. Quite harsh—I had to stop myself from coughing. Then the sultan lit up, followed by the general and the eunuch. The smoke is very fragrant, sweet; not like anything else. When we were done, the servant took the pipes away. And then we began to negotiate. Imagine! I’d memorized a list of objectives—what we wanted, what we could offer in return—”
“And so you offered them Marseille.”
“They didn’t ask for it, but just as well they didn’t.”
“And you felt . . . ?”
“Light-headed. And peaceful. With a great desire to smile, an overwhelming desire.”
“And did you? Smile?”
“Not quite. I managed to force the corners of my mouth to stay where they were. Meanwhile, the eunuch was watching me carefully, and the general began to talk about Schneider-Creusot cannon, seventy-fives. Then, right in the middle of it, the sultan cut him off and began to tell a story, the silliest story, really, about his visit to France before the war, some hotel in Nice, and shoes left outside the rooms at night to be shined by the porter, and his cousin switching them around—two right shoes here, two lefts down the hall. Doesn’t sound so funny, now, but if you’d been there. . . .”
•
Mercier finished his coffee and left the building. The major’s story—an attaché stupifié with hashish in some desert kingdom—had been, in its way, instructive. Droll, rather than violent, but nonetheless, like his own experience, a misadventure of foreign service. Perhaps the major too had been recalled for consultations. Well, Mercier thought, he’d survived; endured that pompous ass Bruner without losing his temper, the parting shot no more than an order to replace Uhl, at least to the extent of having the Schramberg maneuvers observed. But that was more than reasonable—he would have done that without a trip to Paris. What lay ahead of him now was a session with the Service des Renseignements—the clandestine service of the Deuxième Bureau—which would not be a scolding, simply an interview. And a meeting with General de Beauvilliers, which was worth worrying about, but just then Mercier didn’t feel like worrying. On the walk home he took the rue Saint-Dominique, a commercial street, busy in the late morning, where he saw a bunch of red gladioli in a florist’s shop and bought them for the apartment.
