by Alan Furst
“You’re going out?” Weisz said.
“Yes, as usual. We’ll drink somewhere, then go back to her room.”
“Is she still at the nightclub?”
“Oh no. She’s found something else, at a restaurant, a Russian place, Gypsy music and a cossack doorman. Why not come along? Irina may have a friend.”
“No, not tonight,” Weisz said.
Kolb arrived as they were finishing up. When Ferrara hurried off, he asked Weisz to stay for a few minutes. “How’s it going?” he said.
“As you’ll see,” Weisz said, nodding toward that night’s pages. “We’re doing war scenes, from Spain.”
“Good,” Kolb said. “Mr. Brown and his associates have been reading right along, and they’re pleased with your progress, but they’ve asked me to suggest that you emphasize—and you can go back in the manuscript, of course—the German role in Spain. The Condor Legion—pilots bombing Guernica in the morning, then playing golf in the afternoon. I think you know what they’re after.”
So, Weisz thought, the Pact of Steel has had its effect. “Yes, I know. And I’d imagine they’d want more about the Italians.”
“You’re reading their minds,” Kolb said. “More about the alliance, what happens when you get into bed with the Nazis. Poor Italian boys slaughtered, Blackshirts strutting in the bars. As much as Ferrara remembers, and make up what he doesn’t.”
“I know the stories,” Weisz said. “From when I was there.”
“Good. Don’t spare the details. The worse the better, yes?”
Weisz stood and put on his jacket—he had his own, far less appealing, night meeting ahead of him.
“One more thing, before you go,” Kolb said. “They’re concerned about this affair Ferrara’s having, with the Russian girl.”
“And?”
“They’re not really sure who she is. You know what goes on here, femmes galantes”—the French expression for female spies—“behind every curtain. Mr. Brown and his friends are very concerned, they don’t want him in contact with the Soviet spy services. You know how it is with these girls”—Kolb used a squeaky voice to imitate a woman—“‘Oh here’s my friend Igor, he’s lots of fun!’”
Weisz gave Kolb a who’s-kidding-who look. “He’s not going to break it off because he might meet the wrong Russian. He could well be in love, or damn close to it.”
“In love? Sure, why not, we all need somebody. But maybe she’s the wrong somebody, and you’re the one who can talk to him about that.”
“You’ll just make him mad, Kolb. And he won’t let her go.”
“Of course he won’t. He may be in love, who can say, but he’s definitely in love with getting laid. Still, all they’re asking is that you raise the issue, so, why not. Make me look good, let me do my job.”
“If it makes you happy…”
“It’ll make them happy—at least, if something goes wrong, they tried. And making them happy, right now, wouldn’t be the worst thing for you, for both of you. They’re thinking about the future, Ferrara’s future, and yours, and it’s better if they think good thoughts. Believe me, Weisz, I know.”
The eleven P.M. meeting with Salamone and Elena was held in Salamone’s Renault. He picked Weisz up in front of his hotel, and stopped for Elena at the building, not far from the Galeries, where she rented a room in an apartment. Then Salamone drove, aimlessly, winding through the back streets of the Ninth, but, Weisz noted, heading always east.
Weisz, in the backseat, leaned over and said, “Let me give you some money for gas.”
“Kind of you, but no thanks. Sergio is more the benefactor than ever, he sent a messenger to the house with an envelope.”
“Your wife didn’t mind? Coming out this time of night?” Weisz knew Signora Salamone.
“Of course she minded. But she knows what happens to people like me—if you go to bed, if you leave the world, you die. So she gave me her worst glare, told me I better be careful, and made me wear this hat.”
“She’s just as much an émigrée as we are,” Elena said.
“True, she is, but…Anyhow, I wanted to tell you that I’ve telephoned the entire committee. All but the lawyer, who I couldn’t reach. I was, however, rather careful. I said only that we had some new information, about the attacks, and we may need help, over the next few days. No mention of you, Elena, or what happened. Because who knows, with the telephone, who’s listening.”
“Probably better,” Weisz said.
“Just being careful, that’s all.”
Salamone took the rue La Fayette, to the boulevard Magenta, then turned right onto the boulevard de Strasbourg. Dark, and almost deserted; metal shutters over the storefronts, a group of men loitering on one corner, and a crowded, smoky café, lit only by a blue light above the bar.
“Say where, Elena.”
“Sixty-two. It’s a little way yet. There’s the pâtisserie, a little further, further, there.”
The car rolled to a stop. Salamone turned off the one working headlight. “First floor?”
“Yes.”
“No lights on.”
“Let’s go and have a look,” Elena said.
“Oh wonderful,” Salamone said. “Breaking and entering.”
“What then?”
“We’ll watch it, for a day or two. Maybe you could come at lunchtime, Carlo. For you, Elena, after work, just for an hour. I’ll come back tomorrow morning, in the car. Then Sergio, in the afternoon. There’s a shoemaker across the street, he can get new heels, wait while they’re put on. We can’t be here every minute, but we might get a look at who goes in and out. Carlo, what do you think?”
“I’ll try. But I don’t believe I’ll see anything. Will this help, Arturo? What would we see, that could be reported to the police? We can describe the man who came to the gallery, we can say we don’t believe it’s a real photo agency, we can tell them about the Café Europa, maybe arson, and the burglary. Isn’t that enough?”
“We have to try, is what I think,” Salamone said. “Try anything. Because we can go to the Sûreté only once, and we have to give them as much as we can, enough so they can’t ignore it. If they see us as whining, nervous émigrés, maybe bullied by other émigrés, political enemies, they’ll just fill out a form and put it in a file.”
“Would you go in there, Carlo?” Elena said. “On some pretext?”
“I could.” The idea scared Weisz—if they were any good at their job, they would know who he was, and there was a fairly good chance he might never come out.
“Very dangerous,” Salamone said. “Don’t do that.”
Salamone shifted the car into gear. “I’ll make up a schedule. For a day or two. If we don’t see anything, then we’ll just use what we have.”
“I’ll be here tomorrow,” Weisz said. The light of day would make a difference, he thought. And then, he’d see how he felt. What pretext?
3 June.
For Weisz, a bad morning at the office. Wandering attention, a knot in the stomach, a look at his watch every few minutes. At last, lunchtime, one o’clock. “I’ll be back at three,” he told the secretary. “Maybe a little later.” Or never. The Métro took forever to come, the car was empty, and he emerged from the Gare de l’Est station into a light, steady rain.
It didn’t help the neighborhood, grim and desolate, and not much improved by daylight. He strolled along the side of the boulevard opposite to number 62, just to get his bearings, then crossed over, visited the pâtisserie, bought a pastry, and, back out on the street, got rid of it—there was no way in the world he could eat the thing. He paused at 62, as though searching for an address, walked by, crossed back over the boulevard, stood at a bus stop until the bus came, then left. All of which absorbed twenty minutes of his assigned surveillance time. And not a soul had entered or left the building.
For ten minutes, he paced back and forth on the corner where the boulevard met the rue Jarry, looking at his watch, a man waiting for a friend. Who never arr
ived. Arturo, this is a ridiculous idea. He was getting soaked out here, why on earth had he not brought his umbrella? The sky had been cloudy and threatening when he left for work. What if he said he was looking for a job? He was, after all, a journalist, and Photo-Mondiale would be a logical place for such employment. Or, maybe better, he could say he was looking for a friend. Old Duval? Who’d once said he worked there? But then, what would he see? A few men in an office? So what? Damn, why did it have to rain. A woman who’d passed him a few minutes earlier now came back with a string bag full of potatoes, and gave him a suspicious glance as she walked by.
Well then, the hell with it—go up there, or go back to the office. Do something. Slowly, he approached the building, then stopped short. Because here came the postman, limping along, the heavy leather bag at his side hung by a strap from his opposite shoulder. He stopped in front of 62, looked inside his bag, and entered the building. Less than a minute later, he reappeared, and headed off to number 60.
Weisz waited until he’d worked his way to the end of the street, then took a deep breath and walked up to the door of 62, pushed it open, and went inside. For a moment, he stood there, heart racing, but the vestibule was hushed and still. Go find old Duval, he told himself, and don’t be furtive. He walked quickly up the stairs, then, at the landing, listened again, and, recalling Elena’s description, turned left down the corridor. The door at the end of the hallway had a business card tacked below the stenciled 1 B. Agence Photo-Mondiale. Weisz counted to ten, and raised his hand to knock, then held back. Inside, a telephone, a soft double ring. He waited to hear it answered, but heard only a second ring, a third, and a fourth, followed by silence. They’re not in! Weisz knocked twice on the door, the sound loud in the empty hallway, and waited for footsteps. No, there’s nobody in there. Cautiously, he tried the doorknob. But the door was locked. Salvation. He turned away and walked quickly toward the other end of the corridor.
He hurried down the staircase, anxious for the safety of the street, but, just as he reached for the door, the envelopes in a wooden mailbox caught his attention. The box labelled 1 B held four. Watching the door, prepared to put them back in an instant if it so much as moved, he took a fast look. The first was a bill from the electric company. The second came from the Marseilles office of the Banque des Pays de l’Europe Centrale. The third had a typed address on a brown manila envelope. With, to Weisz’s eyes, an exotic stamp: Jugoslavija, 4 Dinars, a blue-toned image of a peasant woman in a scarf, hands on hips, staring solemnly at a river. The cancellation, first in Cyrillic, then Roman letters, said Zagreb. The fourth letter was personal, penciled script on a small, cheap envelope, and addressed to J. Hravka, with a return address, I. Hravka, also in Zagreb. With one eye on the door, Weisz dug into his pocket, came up with pen and pad, and copied the two Zagreb addresses—the French bank, for the countries of Central Europe, he would remember.
As Weisz hurried toward the Métro, he was excited, and elated. It had worked, Salamone had been right. Zagreb, he thought, Croatia.
Of course.
5 JUNE, 1939.
Carlo Weisz stared out the office window at the Parisian spring—the chestnut and lime trees in bright new leaf, the women in cotton frocks, the sky deep blue, with cloud castles towering over the city. Meanwhile, according to the melancholy papers stacked in his in box, it was also spring for the diplomats—French and British swains sang to the Soviet maiden in the enchanted forest, but she only giggled and ran away. Toward Germany.
So life went—forever, it seemed to Weisz—until the tedious drumbeat of conference and treaty was broken, suddenly, by real tragedy. Today, it was the story of the SS St. Louis, which had sailed from Hamburg with 936 German Jews in flight from the Reich, but could find no harbor. Barred from landing in Cuba, the refugees appealed to President Roosevelt, who first said yes, then said sorry. Political forces in America were violently set against Jewish immigration. So, the previous day, a final statement: the St. Louis, waiting at sea between Cuba and Florida, would not be allowed to dock. Now she would have to return to Germany.
In the Paris office, they’d elicited a French reaction, but the Quai d’Orsay, in six paragraphs, had no comment. Which left Weisz staring out the window, unwilling to work, his mind in Berlin, his heart untouched by the June day.
Two days earlier, when he’d returned from the boulevard de Strasbourg to the Reuters office, he’d immediately telephoned Salamone and told him what he’d done. “Someone in that office has connections with Croatia,” he’d said, and described the envelopes. “Which suggests that OVRA may be using Ustasha operatives.” They both knew what that meant: Italy and Croatia had a long, complicated, and often secret relationship, the Croatians seeking Catholic kinship in their endless conflict with the Orthodox Serbs. The Ustasha was a terrorist group—or nationalist, or insurgent; in the Balkans, it depended on who was speaking—sometimes used by the Italian secret services. Dedicated to an independent Croatia, the Ustasha had possibly been involved in the 1934 assassination of King Alexander, in Marseilles, and other terrorist actions, notably the bombing of passenger trains.
“This is not good news,” Salamone had said, his voice grim.
“No, but it is news. News for the Sûreté. And there is reason to suspect that funds may be moving through a French bank in Marseilles, a bank that also operates in Croatia. On that, they’ll bite.”
Salamone had volunteered to approach the Sûreté, but Weisz told him not to bother—he was already involved with them, he was the logical informant. “But,” he’d said, “we’ll keep this between the two of us.” He’d then asked Salamone if the surveillance had produced anything further. Only a sighting, Salamone said, by Sergio, of the man in the hat with the green feather. Weisz advised Salamone to call it off; they had enough. “And the next time we call a meeting,” he’d said, “it will be an editorial conference, for the next Liberazione.”
That was more than optimistic, he thought, staring out the window, but first he would have to telephone Pompon. He considered doing it, almost reaching for the number, then, once again, put it off. He’d do it later, now he had to work. Taking the first paper off the stack, he found a release from the Soviet embassy in Paris, regarding continuing negotiations with the British and French for alliance in case of a German attack. A long list of potential victims was named, with Poland first and foremost. A visit to the Quai d’Orsay? Maybe. He’d have to ask Delahanty.
He put the release aside. Next up, a cable from Eric Wolf that had come in an hour earlier. Propaganda Ministry Reports Spy Network Broken in Berlin. It was a lean story: an unspecified number of arrests, some at government ministries, of German citizens who’d passed information to foreign operatives. The names had been withheld, investigation continued.
Weisz went cold. Could he telephone? Cable? No, that might only make it worse. Could he telephone Alma Bruck? No, she might be involved. Christa had only said she was a friend. Eric Wolf, then. Maybe. He could, he felt, ask for one favor, but no more than that. Wolf already had his hands full, and he hadn’t been all that pleased to be involved with a colleague’s clandestine love affairs. And, Weisz forced himself to admit, Wolf had likely done all he could—surely he’d asked for names, but they had been “withheld.” No, he had to keep Wolf in reserve. Because, if by some miracle she survived this, if by some miracle this was a different spy network, he was going to get her out of Germany, and for that he would require at least one communication.
Yet he couldn’t make himself give up. As his hands pressed against the cable, flat on his desk, his mind flew from one possibility to the next, around and around, until the secretary came in with another cable. Germany Proposes Alliance Negotiations with the USSR.
She’s gone. There’s nothing you can do. Sick at heart, he tried to work.
By evening, it was worse. The images of Christa, in the hands of the Gestapo, would not leave him. Unable to eat, he was early for his eight o’clock work at the Tournon. But Ferrara wasn�
��t there, the room was locked. Weisz went back downstairs and asked the clerk if Monsieur Kolb was in his room, but was told there was no such person at the hotel. That was, Weisz thought, typical—Kolb appeared from nowhere and returned to the same place. He was likely staying at the Tournon, but evidently using a different name. Weisz went out onto the rue de Tournon, crossed the street to the Jardin du Luxembourg, sat on a bench, and smoked cigarette after cigarette, mocked by the soft spring evening and, it seemed to him, every pair of lovers in the city. At eight-twenty, he returned to the hotel, and found Ferrara waiting for him.
This town, that river, the heroic corporal who picked up a hand grenade from the bottom of a ditch and threw it back. What helped Weisz, that night, was the automatic process of the work, typing Ferrara’s words, editing as he went along. Then, a few minutes after ten, Kolb appeared. “We’ll finish early tonight,” he said. “All going well?”
“We’re getting close to the end,” Ferrara said. “There’s the time at the internment camp, then it’s finished. I’d guess you won’t want us to write about my time in Paris.”
From Kolb, a wolfish grin. “No, we’ll just leave that to the reader’s imagination.” Then, to Weisz: “You and I will be going up to the Sixteenth. There’s someone in town who wants to meet you.”
From the way Kolb said it, Weisz didn’t really have a choice.
The apartment was in Passy, the aristocratic heart of the très snob Sixteenth Arrondissement. Red and gold, in the best Parisian tradition, it was all heavy drapes and fabrics, paneled with boiserie, one wall a bookcase. A darkened room, lit only by a single Oriental lamp. The concierge had telephoned their arrival from her loge, so, when Kolb opened the elevator gate, Mr. Brown was waiting by the door. “Ah, hello, glad you could come!” A cheery call and a rather different Mr. Brown—no more the amiably rumpled gent with pipe and slipover sweater. Instead, a new suit, expensive and dark blue. As Weisz shook hands and entered the apartment, he saw why. “This is Mr. Lane,” Brown said.
