Midnight in Europe: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  “Teruel was supposed to be the turning point,” Ferrar said.

  “Not to be,” de Lyon said.

  From a German naval officer, a brusque “Excuse me” as he pushed past Ferrar, bought a copy of the newspaper, then looked back at Ferrar and de Lyon as he walked away.

  On the way to the Kaiserhof, the taxi driver wouldn’t shut up, a one-man propaganda machine; the Reich this, the Reich that, things were better every day, everybody had money, the labor unions had been dissolved, so no more trouble from those people, they knew who he meant, jah? Next, a sudden stop, as a traffic policeman held up a red paddle. The driver was philosophical, “They love their parades, so we must wait.” Ranked twelve across, wearing tan uniforms and soft cotton caps with bills, goose-stepping as best they could—throwing the leg high in the air, like the Wehrmacht, was an acquired talent—the zookeepers of Germany were on the march. Up at the head of the column, the zookeepers gave the Nazi salute, raised arm stiff, palm flattened, to a high personage on a reviewing stand.

  “They love our Fuehrer,” said the driver, his tone tender and sentimental. At this, Ferrar and de Lyon would have at least exchanged a glance, or worse, but the driver could see them in his rearview mirror so they stared straight ahead, admiring the strutting zookeepers.

  At the Kaiserhof, said to be not quite the equal of the Adlon but luxurious indeed, the performance continued. De Lyon was jovial with the desk clerk, a bit of a lout, on the verge of telling a dirty joke. Several guests—likely some of them were in fact guests—seated on elaborate chairs and divans in the lobby, looked over the tops of their lowered newspapers: now who was this, with his loud, jocular voice? As the desk clerk tapped the little bell used to summon a bellhop, de Lyon said, “We are so happy to be back in Berlin.”

  “You are always welcome here, sir,” the clerk said mechanically. But he would remember the exchange when a police agent approached the desk after Ferrar and de Lyon had been taken to their rooms.

  They didn’t stay long. Leaving their valises to be searched—Ferrar had packed a book by a prominent French fascist—they went downstairs, took a taxi to a department store, then used the underground train system to reach the Lübecker Strasse. They would officially be guests at the Kaiserhof, de Lyon had explained, but would operate from a pension—a boardinghouse—kept by one of his old and dear friends, Frau Vaksmann, where the walls didn’t have ears.

  Lübecker Strasse was in the Tiergarten section of Berlin, a quiet street of five-story residences built with elaborate stonework, that led to the vast Tiergarten park. The Tiergarten quarter was a genteel place to live, though much fancier neighborhoods lay to the west. The Pension Vaksmann—there was no sign outside, those who needed to know about it knew about it—was much like its neighbors, old and solidly respectable. De Lyon rang the bell and a maid wearing a pink apron, squinting through the smoke of a cigarette held in her lips, feather duster in one hand, dustpan in the other, opened the door and said, “Good evening, gents, she’s in the kitchen.”

  Down a dark hallway that smelled of musty carpets, the kitchen, where, from a chair at the kitchen table, Frau Vaksmann was directing the preparation of a stew by two young girls with their sleeves rolled up. Frau Vaksmann was a great mound of a woman in a floral housedress decorated with stains and cigarette ash, her hair thin and fluffy from a lifetime of drugstore dyes and home beauty parlors. When she saw de Lyon she gave a cry of delight, struggled to her feet, and embraced him, as they both laughed with the pleasure of old friends reunited. “Dearest Max,” she said, “where have you been?”

  “All over, my love, lately in Paris. And, to tell you the truth, this Berlin you have these days is not my favorite place.”

  “Oh, it’s Hitler’s city now. The other day I bought a mama doll for my grandchild but when you pressed the doll’s stomach it didn’t say ‘Mama,’ it said ‘Heil Hitler.’ ”

  De Lyon shook his head in despair, then said, “Cristián Ferrar, my old friend Sarah Vaksmann.”

  “It’s Helga now,” Frau Vaksmann said. “Has been for a couple of years—no point in letting the world in on your secrets. And, every few weeks when I can stand it, my neighbors see me in church. Being a Jew is not a good idea around here, so …”

  Ferrar took Frau Vaksmann’s hand, which was soft and warm and good to hold. The kitchen was, Ferrar saw, the center of the house, its walls painted bright yellow, its shelves crowded with all sorts of knickknacks: a ceramic toad, a frog on a lily pad, a shepherdess with a crook and two lambs, and the three little pigs, mouths open with horror as they looked out three windows of the house that the wolf threatened to huff, puff, and blow down. Above the stove, a cuckoo clock. On the opposite wall, a revolving stand on which a glum fisherman in rain hat and raincoat would appear with foul weather or, when the weather turned fair, his twin came out in overalls, with an oar and a beaming smile.

  Now that she was standing up, Frau Vaksmann checked on the stew, tasting from a ladle and saying, “Throw in some more onions, Greta.” She turned toward de Lyon and said, “Will you two have dinner with me?”

  “We’d love to, but we have to go back to the Kaiserhof—we need to be seen there. I’d prefer your stew, but it’s the hotel dining room for us. Maybe tomorrow night.”

  “It’ll be the same stew, only better. How long are you staying, Max?”

  “Three days, no more. You know the rule with this sort of business, in and gone before they think too much about you.”

  She grinned and said, with considerable affection, “Still a rogue, I see.”

  “Always,” de Lyon said.

  “Is there anything you need? Not much I can’t get—cars, drivers, documents.”

  “Do you still have a safe in the cellar? We’d like to keep some money there.”

  “You’re welcome to it.”

  “We’ll stay here until this evening, so, when you have a minute.” He paused, then said, “I’m curious, dear, do the police bother you?”

  “No more than anyone else. My papers have been fixed, because I have arrangements …” She stopped there and pointed her finger at the ceiling, meaning high officialdom. “They’re all gangsters, this crowd, and they’re always needing the quiet favor. Some of them use the good bedroom. Oy, such fucking! They like it noisy, the Nazis.”

  De Lyon started to answer, but the cuckoo came out of the clock and sounded its call. Frau Vaksmann looked at her watch and swore. “Time for a Hitler speech. Greta, turn on the radio, good and loud.” To de Lyon and Ferrar she explained, “It’s the law, you must listen to the Fuehrer’s speeches. So these little bastards from the Hitler Youth patrol the streets—sneak around and listen at your windows. If they don’t hear Adolf, they report you and the Gestapo comes around.”

  From the radio, hypnotic raving, a threat in every syllable. During the speech the SS drums never stopped, using, as always, the special SS rhythm: two slow beats, then three faster. Tum, tum, tum-tum-tum. To Ferrar, and not only to Ferrar, it meant we are coming for you.

  Just before seven, Ferrar and de Lyon took a walk down Unter den Linden, one of the grand avenues of the city, in search of a telephone callbox. A warmish, foggy evening in Berlin, the usual crowd thinned out at the dinner hour. They talked about Frau Vaksmann, de Lyon told stories. “I’m fortunate to have such friends,” he said. “And if something happens to me and you have to do this sort of thing by yourself, they will be your friends.”

  “Let’s hope—” Ferrar said, then stopped. As they walked past a beer cellar, the door was flung open and, for a moment, Ferrar could hear loud voices and drunken singing. Then four or five SS men in black uniforms spilled onto the sidewalk, unsteady on their feet, faces red from hours of drinking. When they saw de Lyon and Ferrar, they approached them. The leader said, “What have we here?” and first one, then all the others, threw their arms in the air with a Nazi salute and shouted “Heil Hitler!” The leader said, “Now it’s your turn.”

  Ferrar didn’t think long, fe
lt the first twinge of defiance, then understood what had to be done and returned the salute with a rousing “Heil Hitler” of his own. De Lyon was a second behind him but did the same thing.

  “No, not quite right. Try again.”

  In unison, Ferrar and de Lyon stretched their arms as far as they could and shouted even louder. The drunken SS men swayed, eyes bleary, and one said, “Maybe we should teach them to march.”

  “Hah, knee-march!”

  “No, the hell with it, let’s go.”

  As the group began to stagger away, the leader turned, suddenly not so drunk as he’d seemed, and took a step toward Ferrar. “Don’t let me catch you on this street again,” he said. Then he caught up to his men and they all went weaving and laughing down the street. Half a block away, they began to sing.

  “Merde,” de Lyon said.

  Ferrar’s heart stopped pounding, then slowly returned to normal. “He meant that, you know, about the street.”

  “They are going to kill somebody tonight,” de Lyon said. “You’ve heard the stories, about some tourist who has no idea where he really is, so refuses to return the salute and gets himself beaten to death right then and there. That’s what they had in mind for us, I suspect.” He stopped walking and lit a convalescent cigarette.

  “They weren’t ready, yet, but they’ll find somebody later.”

  “You’re right, Cristián, as sad as that is for some poor soul. I was in gangs, when I was a kid. I know how it works. Nobody says anything, they all just sense when the moment is right.”

  “That,” Ferrar said, “plus the fact that there are two of us. They likely prefer five-to-one odds. I wasn’t in gangs, but I saw it in the school yard.” He was thoughtful for a time, then said, “About a month ago I was at a cocktail party in Paris, there were a few people standing in a group, one of them was a young Englishman, of the upper-class type, and when somebody mentioned he was dreading a trip to Germany, the Englishman said he’d just spent a week there, on business, and he’d seen all he wanted of the SS. Then he kind of sighed and said, ‘What a bore it’s going to be to have to kill so many of these people.’ ”

  They found a callbox by an exit from the underground. De Lyon put in a coin and, looking at a slip of paper, dialed the Kaiserhof and asked for Herr Szarny’s room. Szarny took three rings to answer, then, a little breathless, said, “Yes?”

  “Herr Szarny, good evening, you’ll remember me, we’ve spoken on the telephone. This is just to tell you we’re here and would like to see you.”

  “Oh yes, the man from …”

  “From Prague, let’s put it that way.”

  “What?”

  “Much better to talk in person, Herr Szarny. Much better.”

  “Do you have—?”

  “I do have business in Berlin, so here’s an opportunity for us to meet together.”

  “I was worried—”

  “Don’t worry, Herr Szarny, we worry too much these days. I’ll be in touch tomorrow morning, can you wait until then?”

  “Very well.”

  “Good evening,” de Lyon said and hung up the phone.

  De Lyon looked up at the sky in exasperation and Ferrar laughed and said, “Not too quick, is he, that’s what it sounded like.”

  “He’s scared,” de Lyon said. “He knows perfectly well you can’t talk on the telephone here but he was so scared he couldn’t stop himself.”

  “You headed him off,” Ferrar said.

  “Only just. Now, we’re going to have a look at the Casanova dance hall.”

  •

  The following morning, Szarny was in his room when a bellhop knocked at the door and called out, “Delivery for Herr Szarny.” Szarny opened the door and found the bellhop holding a glorious bouquet of two dozen red roses wrapped in crinkly green paper. “For you, sir,” the bellhop said. Szarny was still in his dressing gown so went to the closet, took a few coins from his trousers, and tipped the bellhop. When the door was closed, Szarny stared at the roses, what could this mean? Then he saw a small envelope tied to a rose branch, tore it open, and read the gift card. “We’ll see you tonight, about nine, at the Casanova dance hall on the Lutherstrasse.” Signed: “Your friends.” Szarny’s hand began to tremble, the card fluttered to the carpet. Szarny bent over and retrieved it. Then he closed his eyes and said to himself you must do what you must do. It was a kind of prayer and he’d said it to himself time and time again since leaving Brno. He went to the dresser and found his wallet, inside there was a business card with a telephone number on the back. Perhaps this could wait, he ought to shave and get dressed, maybe go outside for a walk. A brisk walk, wouldn’t that be good for him? Wouldn’t that calm him down? Or he could go to the front desk and make arrangements for a flight back to Brno, where he would never, ever, think of this again. No, that wasn’t possible, he would never be allowed to do that. Again he closed his eyes and said his prayer.

  Then he went to the telephone, asked the switchboard operator to dial the number, and did what he had to do.

  Earlier in the day, Ferrar and de Lyon had bought a leather briefcase with handles and at eight-thirty in the evening they retrieved the hundred thousand dollars from Frau Vaksmann’s safe, put the bundled notes in the briefcase, and returned to the taxi waiting for them in front of the Pension Vaksmann. If somebody was following them they didn’t see him and, the way de Lyon thought, using evasive tactics could provoke confrontation, so they had the taxi drive directly to the Casanova. In his pocket, de Lyon had a photograph of Szarny, taken secretly by the confidential agent in Brno. It showed a plump and supremely confident Herr Szarny arriving at the gate of the Brno Ironworks.

  The Casanova ballroom—hot, smoky, and loud—was packed with people of every age and social class dancing beneath the mirrored ceiling. A small orchestra, DER RHYTHMUS MEISTERS according to a sign on the bandstand, was playing “The Carioca” and the serious dancers took to the Latin beat with a passion. Standing in front of the seated orchestra, a husky man with a gray mustache and thick glasses, wearing a white dinner jacket, was playing the maracas, shaking them left, then right.

  De Lyon watched over the briefcase while Ferrar, at his direction—“we have to look like we belong here”—waited until the tempo slowed, then danced with a woman who said she was a shopgirl. Sweet and soft, she pressed herself against him—he could smell her underarms and face powder—and, likely influenced by some movie, hummed the tune to “Once in a While” as they circled together. When the music stopped, Ferrar returned to the back wall, where de Lyon said, “He’s here.”

  He was. Dressed in business suit and crisp, white shirt, Szarny was making himself evident, threading his way through the crowd as though he were looking for somebody. “Wait for me,” de Lyon said, tension in his voice. A moment later, de Lyon returned with Szarny in tow. He introduced Ferrar simply as “my associate,” which Szarny acknowledged with a stiff motion somewhere between a nod and a bow. The orchestra was now playing a Latin song and a conga line had formed, snaking around the floor while, with each leg kick, the dancers shouted “Zo!” on the beat.

  De Lyon tried to pitch his voice just above the music. “Herr Szarny, my name is Max de Lyon and I represent the Spanish Republic. You’ve agreed to sell us Skoda anti-tank cannon, and you asked for an additional payment of a hundred thousand dollars in gold British sovereigns. That proved to be impossible. Instead, we have the money for you in American dollars, in denominations of five hundred dollars. Thoroughly negotiable, believe me. Do you want it?”

  Beads of sweat had formed at Szarny’s hairline. “Yes, very good,” he said. “May I look at the money, just to make sure?”

  “Of course. There’s a WC down that stairway, the money is in this briefcase, you can take it into a stall, count it if you like, but it’s all there.”

  “Very well,” Szarny said.

  Quietly, de Lyon said to Ferrar, “Wait for me where you can see the top of the stairway. If I’m not back in, oh, twenty minutes
, return to the Kaiserhof. If I don’t contact you, get yourself on a plane to Paris. Right away.”

  De Lyon and Szarny headed off, Ferrar found a place for himself by a wall where he could see the stairway. The WC was well attended—beer was available at the bar. A young man emerged, making sure of his pompadour, then two more. Next, two men disappeared down the stairs. Ferrar had a bad feeling about them, he had no idea why, they looked like middle-aged office workers out for a night at the dance hall. He started to follow them, hesitated, then started again, and stopped when a hand was placed gently on his forearm. “Just a moment, sir,” said a man beside him.

  He was short, perhaps five inches over five feet tall, with carefully parted black hair, and wore a well-tailored dark suit. He was a smug fellow, of the sarcastic sort. Not that he said anything derisive, it was in the set of his face, and a heavy upper lip just an instant away from curling into a sneer. Ferrar also had the impression that he was, at this moment, quite pleased with himself, happy. Suddenly he produced a small leather case, flipped it open, and held it up for Ferrar to see. Across the top of a card it said GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI BERLIN, below that SS-OBERSTURMFUEHRER JOZEF LOHR. At the upper corner of the card, a circle enclosed the twin lightning flashes of the SS. There was more, but Lohr flipped the lid back in place.

  “Now then,” Lohr said, “I am going to make sure that all goes well in the WC. You will wait for me here. If you move, there are three of my men watching you and they will, intervene.” For Ferrar, it was as though a curtain had been swept aside and something viperous and sickening revealed, and he was instantly ablaze with the desire to pick this little fellow up by the collar and the seat of the pants and dash his head against the wall. Lohr, something of a mind reader, smiled. Then he was gone and down the stairs. Ferrar searched the crowd around him, seeking the Gestapo operatives, but saw nothing. He didn’t wait long, decided that a commotion up here, maybe gunshots, would alert de Lyon, and took off running down the stairs. If there were people chasing after him, he couldn’t hear them. Midway down, he was blocked by a crowd of men in a panic, climbing the stairs as fast as they could, one of them trying to buckle his belt. Ferrar worked his way past them but it took time. At last he reached the door of the WC, threw it open, and rushed inside, prepared to fight or to be shot.