by Alan Furst
Szarny ate slowly, with great relish, the soup reminding him that so long as he was alive, things could get better. At one point, as the tension in him waned, he looked like he was close to tears. “Tell me, Herr Szarny,” de Lyon said, “what did Lohr say to you as you left the room?”
The deflection worked, tears replaced by anger as Szarny looked up from his liver dumplings and said, “He told me that if I ever said anything about this he would have my wife and children murdered. What made it worse was that to him this was comical, as though he’d played a joke on me. And he somehow let me know that he’d done this before and would do it again.”
“Not to you, he won’t,” de Lyon said.
Szarny finished his soup and said, “Now, if you gentlemen don’t mind, I would like to rest for a while, I haven’t really slept for days.”
“Then we’ll be going,” Ferrar said. “But first, we would like to ask you for a favor.”
“Yes, of course, for you, after …”
“The Spanish Republic has great need for armament, Herr Szarny. And I wonder, even after everything you’ve gone through, if you are still willing to sell us the anti-tank cannon.”
“I can do that,” Szarny said. “But certain officials will demand money in exchange for their stamp of approval.”
“We can pay whatever is needed,” de Lyon said. “We’re losing a war, money doesn’t matter.”
“In that case, I will sell you whatever you wish. At one time I could have covered these extra costs myself, but over the last year and a half any money I had put aside went into Lohr’s pocket.” As de Lyon and Ferrar rose to leave, Szarny said, “As for losing a war, I pray you don’t, my friends, because, if you do, we’re next.”
In the elevator, Ferrar was cautious—the uniformed operator able to hear everything. “Did you mean what you said, Max? About a telephone call to Paris and … taking care of our short friend?”
“Yes.”
Back in Ferrar’s room, de Lyon said, “Now let’s get the hell out of this fucking country.”
“Don’t you want to visit the museum?” Ferrar said, picking up the phone. He reached the front desk and asked about airline tickets. The clerk said, “I am sorry, sir, there will not be seats available for days, we have commercial exhibitions in Berlin this time of year. Do you want me to reserve on the first available date?”
“Not at the moment,” Ferrar said. He hung up, then dialed the hotel operator and asked to be connected to Lufthansa, “not the reservations office, the corporate office.”
When a receptionist answered the phone, Ferrar asked for the law department, and, when they came on the line, he said, “Herr Bruno von Scheldt, please, and tell him that it’s Herr Ferrar, from Coudert.”
Von Scheldt took the call right away. “Cristián!” he said. “So good to hear from you, I miss the old firm, I really do. And, as for Paris … well, you know.”
“Come for a visit, Bruno. We’ll go to the Tour d’Argent, my treat.”
“Maybe some day I will, but they keep me busy here. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Speaking of Paris, a friend and I are trying to get home, but the planes are booked for days.”
“Can you leave tonight?”
“We can.”
“Where are you, Cristián?”
“At the Kaiserhof.”
“I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”
As February turned to March, the spring rains began to blow in from the west, and some of the chestnut trees at Métro entrances started to bud, forced by the warm air drifting up from the stations below. Parisians found themselves restless and vaguely melancholy for no evident reason, an annual malady accompanying the nameless season that fell between winter and spring. The streets were quiet—only dog walkers beneath shiny umbrellas and the occasional couple with nowhere to be alone. In the cafés, newspapers on their wooden dowels went unread, as though the patrons refused to read them until they produced better news. A change of government was in the air, though nobody believed it would change anything but itself.
Ferrar tried to regain his peace of mind but it was slow in coming. What he’d seen in Berlin had affected him. Evil was the only word for it, and Ferrar now knew it would not cure itself, as most of the world hoped. He tried to take refuge in work, but work was more and more about what was coming to Europe. Many of Coudert’s wealthy clients were converting paper assets into cash, buying paintings of stable value, and shipping them to America for storage. Twice he saw Chantal, the woman he’d met at a restaurant. The first time she spent the night at his apartment, where they tried to find the excitement of their first meeting, but only managed to make love by the book and fall asleep. The second time they went to the movies and he took her home in a taxi. There was to be no third time.
Then, on a drizzling mid-afternoon, he returned from a meeting to find Jeannette, his secretary, waiting impatiently to see him, her expression agitated and concerned. “You’ve had a telephone call, Monsieur Ferrar, from a woman friend in America. She has no telephone, so is waiting at a friend’s house for you to call her. Here is the number.” She sat there for a time, wanting to say more, and finally added, “Could you call right away? Even so, there will be a delay for the transatlantic line.”
“Please try it for me, Jeannette,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, he was speaking to Eileen Moore, his sometime lover in an affair carried on during his trips to New York. She had never telephoned before, they wrote back and forth as the time for their meetings approached. She managed to say hello and ask him how he was, determined not to be emotional, then went silent as she started to cry.
“Eileen? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here.” Again, she couldn’t talk.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Cristián, a terrible thing has happened.”
“Eileen?”
“Sorry, I can’t help it.” She blew her nose. “I’m pregnant, Cristián, that’s what has happened.”
“Well, we’ll just have to …”
“No, you don’t understand, you’re not …” This hit him hard—surprised him, how hard it hit. “Not long after you left,” she went on, “I met someone. He’s a very nice man, we had a fling, I got pregnant. I thought about having it taken care of, but I can’t.”
“What are you going to do?”
“He’s going to marry me, to do the right thing … We aren’t in love, Cristián.”
She meant but you and I are. His voice tight, he said, “I’m sorry about this, Eileen, much more than sorry. We …” He stopped himself from going further, far worse for her now, because it was too late, to hear a declaration of something that had always been just beneath the surface, and never said out loud. At last, in the transatlantic static, he managed, “Can I do anything? Do you need anything?”
“No, I’ll come through this.”
“I don’t want to lose touch with you. If you move, please send me your address.”
“All right, if you want me to, I will. And I do have to move, you can’t have a baby at the Iroquois Hotel.”
“I will miss you,” Ferrar said.
“I think we better hang up now. Goodby, Cristián.”
“Goodby.”
To allow him privacy, Jeannette had stepped into the hallway, now she returned and said, “I hope everything is all right, Monsieur Ferrar.”
“Maybe it will be,” Ferrar said.
Jeannette went back to work, Ferrar stared at the document he’d been reading, Marteau v. The Commercial Bank of Aberdeen, but all he saw was lines of typewritten print. He badly wanted to go home, to be alone, but he couldn’t. I have lost her, he thought, his turn to realize that sometimes you don’t know how much you care for someone until she’s gone.
•
De Lyon called the following day. “I’ve just had a letter from Sarah Vaksmann, she’s living in London, with her nephew, so it seems she took our advice.”
In Berlin, there’d
been time, before they left, to go to see Frau Vaksmann and thank her for what she’d done. Then de Lyon had told her in very strong terms that she had to leave Germany, Ferrar adding that her Oberfuehrer would throw her to the wolves without a second thought, she must not depend on him. She hadn’t been receptive at the moment but with time, evidently, she understood they were right.
De Lyon said, “We may have saved her. I wish I could feel satisfaction about that, I mean, I’m glad she’s safe, but she’s lost everything. Told everyone she was taking a vacation, then ran for it. Now she’s trying to sell the pension, which is complicated for an owner living abroad.”
“If she needs help with the sale,” Ferrar said, “have her get in touch with me at the office. It’s something we do here.”
On 8 March, after work, Ferrar walked over to the Oficina Técnica. From Max de Lyon’s office, the sound of one finger typing. When Ferrar opened the door, he found de Lyon, his face screwed into a scowl of intense concentration, using his index finger to fill out, a letter at a time, a densely printed form of several pages. As de Lyon worked he said, “May he roast in hell, whoever wrote this fucking thing.”
“There are those who love forms, Max. They think it’s clever to make people tell them things. What have you got there?”
“This, my friend, is an end-user certificate, originally dreamed up by the American Congress, in a law known as the Spanish Embargo Act of 1937. Now, of course, the whole world has them. So, if you ship arms from Country X to Country Y, Country Y must swear they are going to keep them, not sell them on to mean old Country Z, otherwise known as Spain. Without a signed form, Country X can’t ship their guns.”
“I know the end-user certificate, Max.”
“Then you also know that everyone cheats, but those who ship to Franco somehow don’t get caught at it.” He sat back, shook his stiffening index finger, and said, “Thanks for coming over, Cristián. This is a new version of the form, maybe you could look it over, then we have an eight-thirty dinner reservation at Lapérouse, have you been there?”
“I have. Very Belle Epoque, as the French put it, and the food is good.”
“An elegant restaurant, expensive and not subtle about it. We want our guest to feel honored and respected, a man we see as a high personage, because we’re going to insult him, by assuming he’s the sort of gent who would take a bribe. There’s gossip that says he might, but no more than that.”
“And he is?”
“An Estonian military man called General Zoltau. The name is German but no surprise there, the Germans—Teutonic Knights, Baltic Barons, what have you—ran the country for centuries.”
“It sounds like you know him.”
“I don’t, but I’ve seen him in person and heard his voice. I bought his photograph from a French press agency and spent a couple of hours in a car outside the Estonian legation and, presto, there he was. As for the voice, a faked-up telephone call works nicely. Once I have a look, and hear a voice, I’m more often right than wrong. So, are you able to join us?”
“I have to go home first, I’ll meet you there.” Ferrar was more than pleased, anything to get him out of his apartment and yet one more bachelor supper. He looked over the form, answered a few questions, then, as de Lyon went back to work, said, “Don’t you have a secretary who can type that out for you?”
“Usually I do, but her husband was badly wounded yesterday, by a German tank, as it happens. Anyhow, poor girl, she tried to work but she’s better off at home for a few days.”
“The form can’t wait?”
“Maybe, but in situations like these, with two bottles of wine and so forth, it’s better to have the form ready for signature and in one’s pocket. Something to remember if you have to do this by yourself.”
“Just out of curiosity, how did you manage the phone call?”
“I use a woman, so the operator can say, ‘A Mademoiselle Duval on the line for you.’ For men, it’s good bait. They wonder, Is she young? Is she sexy? I’ll just see who she is. Meanwhile, I’m on the extension line.”
From Ferrar, an appreciative laugh, then he said goodby and left de Lyon to his typing.
At eight-fifteen, Ferrar walked down to the avenue des Grands Augustins, which faced the Seine. He crossed the avenue and spent some time gazing at the river, which was running a heavy swell in the spring flood, the dark surface of the water ruffled by a gusty March wind. Eventually he looked at his watch and set off for the restaurant, sorry to leave the river. But as he entered Lapérouse his heart lifted: here was a lovely private little world: warm air, fragrant with the aromas of rich food; silverware and china gleaming in the muted light; and the low, civilized music of dinner conversation. Ferrar was led to the table, where de Lyon was laughing, apparently at some clever remark delivered by the general.
General Zoltau appeared to be a man of some vanity, who wore a cavalry mustache with its ends trained to sharp points, of the sort twirled by a villain in a melodrama. He was tall and fair, held himself in a stiff, military posture, his suit likely sewn up by a Bond Street tailor. He rose and shook Ferrar’s hand as de Lyon introduced them, then, as Ferrar sat down, de Lyon said, “General Zoltau has suggested we have gentiane as an apéritif, would you like one? Myself, I’ve never tasted it.”
This was a lead and Ferrar followed it. “Always good to try something new,” he said.
“It is a liqueur,” Zoltau said, savoring the French pronunciation, “made from the roots of the gentian plant, little blue flowers picked in the mountains. As for the taste, it cannot be described, so you must try a sip.”
“Then that is what I’ll do,” Ferrar said, bowing to the general’s sophisticated taste.
“General Zoltau is one of the military attachés at the Estonian legation here in Paris,” de Lyon said.
“Oh yes? And do you enjoy the city, General?”
“Indeed, yes, of course. It’s full of Frenchmen, unfortunately, but one can’t have everything.” De Lyon and Ferrar laughed at the barb.
“And where do you live?” Ferrar said.
“In the Eighth Arrondissement, on the avenue Montaigne, my wife and I so like that part of the city we’ve bought an apartment there.”
Ferrar knew the neighborhood, which was just off the Champs-Elysées, and one of the most expensive areas in the city. What did they pay generals in Estonia? Not enough to live on the avenue Montaigne. Maybe family money, Ferrar thought. Or the wife has money. Or the gossip has it right: “Always better to buy, in Paris,” Ferrar said.
“I believe so,” the general said. His eyes wandered over the restaurant’s lavish, nineteenth-century decor: the grand style, its crowning glory a magnificent chandelier made of hundreds of perfect crystal pendants. The general’s eyes paused there a moment, then he continued, “We are now engaged, more my wife than I, in redecorating. An impressive apartment, it deserves the best.”
A waiter arrived with the gentiane, which Ferrar had always liked, though the general had it right, the exotic flavor was beyond words. As they drank they studied the menu. “Lapérouse is known for its quenelles of lobster in cream sauce,” de Lyon said, choosing the most expensive dish offered. “And of course we must begin with the caviar. How does that sound to you, General Zoltau?” From Zoltau, an approving nod. When the sommelier appeared, de Lyon ordered two bottles of Château Mouton Rothschild.
The conversation turned to politics—no French dining rules that night. The general inquired about the progress of the civil war, in the way of a military attaché trolling for information. “It is not going well,” de Lyon said. “Now that Franco’s Nationalists have recaptured Teruel, they’ve begun to attack east of the town, heading for the Mediterranean coast. If they reach it, they will cut the Republic in two.”
“And then?” the general said.
“As long as we hold Barcelona and Madrid, there is hope,” de Lyon said.
From the general, a sage nod. He turned to Ferrar and said, “Your friend has it ri
ght, I think, arms merchants are known to have a good nose for war.”
Ferrar said, “And you, General Zoltau, what is your view?”
“If you can hold out long enough, perhaps a cease-fire, followed by a political solution, especially if the British support the idea.”
“They will not,” de Lyon said. “They will hem and haw, but in the end they won’t. We believe that the British Foreign Office and General Franco have made a secret arrangement. Something on the order of: we will allow you to win, if you will remain neutral when we fight Germany. This would mean the British could keep Gibraltar and thus control the Mediterranean.”
“They are hard people, the British,” Zoltau said, a note of admiration in his voice.
“They are,” de Lyon said. “And because they, and the French, keep us from buying armaments, we must take what the Russians offer, and then buy the rest wherever we can find it. What that means on the battlefield is that the soldiers of the Republic are armed with forty-nine different types of repeating rifle, forty-one types of automatic weapon, and sixty different kinds of artillery. Many of the replacement parts can’t be found, and we need ammunition of all sorts of calibres. When the war started, we were using hand grenades that were said to be ‘impartial’—sometimes they killed the man they were thrown at, while just as often they killed the man who threw them.”
“From a military point of view, an impossible situation,” Zoltau said.
A speculative de Lyon said, “I wonder if Estonia, a small nation bullied by powerful neighbors, Hitler on one side, Stalin on the other, might not be sympathetic to our difficulties.”
“Sympathetic, perhaps, but there’s little we can do.”
“There is one possibility, General Zoltau. We have managed to purchase fifty anti-tank cannon in Czechoslovakia, but the Skoda people must have an end-user certificate. Is there some way you could help us with this problem? Because the non-intervention pact does not affect Estonia, only Spain.”
“Ah, the caviar arrives!” Zoltau said. As indeed it had.
The conversation drifted away, to life in Paris and then, as they worked through the second bottle of wine and ordered a third, to nightlife in Paris: nightclubs high and low, and brothels catering to every imaginable inclination. De Lyon’s knowledge here was broad and deep, and the general was quite attentive. Finally, after the nude dancing girls and Pierre the Donkey, de Lyon closed with a homily. “The Parisians are worldly in these matters,” he said. “They believe that with money, all things are possible. They accept the reality of the human appetite, and the reality of markets. Here, one can have whatever one can pay for. I have always admired their point of view.”
