Midnight in Europe: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  “You are welcome, any time. They love to play,” Polanyi said. Then, “Now, where were we?”

  “We have most of it, she has to explain that her marriage wasn’t so good, implying that her husband was never the lover that Fabi was and now he has died, leaving her in a cheap hotel and dreaming of lost love.”

  “How do we close?”

  “ ‘Please write to me, dearest, at least I will know I am not forgotten.’ This will take an exchange of letters, and he has to be the one who writes, ‘Guess what, I’m coming to Paris on business, would you care to have a cocktail?’ ”

  “True. And she signs …?”

  “ ‘Your Celestine,’ best to keep it simple.”

  “Then let’s do that,” Polanyi said.

  The vizsla got Ferrar’s attention with a little whine and he reached for the tennis ball.

  The following day found Ferrar working on a letter of his own, a letter to the marquesa. He wasn’t really supposed to do such a thing, court one of the firm’s clients, but Coudert left such matters to its attorneys’ discretion. The general rule, not said aloud, was that serious affection, so long as it was kept separate from legal business, might be pursued, but making passes at female clients was frowned on. Ferrar would use his personal stationery, with the Place Saint-Sulpice address, and write briefly. “Dear Marquesa Maria Cristina …” He hoped she was well, and likely looking forward to the spring season. Would she care to join him, next Wednesday at five o’clock, for hot chocolate at Angelina’s? He looked forward to hearing from her, then closed respectfully with one of the French formulas. He licked the envelope and sealed it, then went off to the Bureau de Poste.

  Angelina’s, beneath the arcades on the rue de Rivoli, was a Paris institution, in business as an elegant tearoom since the turn of the century, and famous for its Mont Blanc pastry and hot chocolate. Here Ferrar preferred the French version, the warm, soothing sounds of chocolat chaud: “showco-la-show.” As for the Mont Blanc—noodle-shaped strands of cream of chestnut over whipped cream—watching the marquesa go to work on it was, for Ferrar, beyond appetizing. She scooped up a tiny spoonful and closed her lips on the spoon, resulting in the daintiest smear of crème de marrons on her upper lip, a sight which she allowed him to enjoy for an instant before raising her napkin.

  “And do you travel for your work, Monsieur Ferrar?”

  “At times I do, to meet with clients.”

  “And have you traveled lately?”

  “Last week I was in Poland, in Warsaw and Danzig, or Gdansk if you prefer the Polish version.”

  “A troubled place, one reads in the newspapers.” With delicate fingers, she raised her cup of chocolate and took a sip. She was dressed for afternoon tea in a pale lilac blouse, with a strand of pearls at her throat, and a suit colored dove gray which, he suspected, came from one of the better fashion houses. She wore her hair back, twisted into a chignon, and in the low light of Angelina’s it glowed like metal. She had been wearing fitted suede gloves when she entered the tearoom, these now rested in her lap.

  “Have you been in Poland, Marquesa?”

  “I was there years ago, at the Krynica spa in the Tatra mountains, where the marques went for treatment.”

  “They are uneasy now, the Poles, they fear the ambitions of their neighbors.”

  “And so they should. Do you not agree, Monsieur Ferrar?”

  “I’m afraid so, Marquesa.”

  “I do try to keep up with European matters,” she said. “I was raised in France, at an old house on the edge of Angers. But then, at the age of fourteen I was sent to a Swiss boarding school for young women. There were girls from England, and Italy, and Spain, and I came to realize that the world was a much bigger and more varied place than I had imagined.”

  “And did you learn to like it there?”

  She smiled and said, “I do not believe one was supposed to like it, but I don’t recall being miserable; oh perhaps now and again, in the way of young girls. The school was run by a religious order and the sisters could be severe.” She paused, remembering, and said, “We had to work very hard, and write with perfect penmanship. If not, we could expect … punishment. I mean of the physical sort.” Again she smiled.

  A smile, just shy of naughty, which implied she had a good idea of what his imagination might make of that. Would you care to describe it? Ferrar thought. Oh if only I were so daring. He settled, instead, on “Still, a good education is crucial these days, do you agree?”

  “Certainly. And some of my schoolmates were good companions, I still have two or three friendships from those days.”

  Ferrar had a sip of his chocolate, first dipping up a spoon of Angelina’s exquisite whipped cream from the little pot that accompanied the cup and saucer.

  The marquesa said, “And are you still in touch with friends from Spain, Monsieur Ferrar?”

  “I am not,” he said. “And I expect that the boys and girls I knew in Barcelona are scattered far and wide by the war. And I fear that some of them are no longer alive.”

  “What terrible things war does to us,” she said, with sorrow in her voice.

  He nodded. Wanting to move away from this subject he said, “One has to escape it, however one can. For example, having hot chocolate at Angelina’s.” Then he said, “With a friend.”

  She nodded her head to one side, eyes briefly closed—thus she accepted his compliment. “You don’t sound as though you have much desire to return there.”

  “That’s true, sad to say.”

  “And is that because your sympathies lie with the Republic?”

  “Yes,” Ferrar said.

  “I would imagine,” she said, “that you have been tempted to act on those sympathies.”

  “Of course I have … most of the Spanish émigrés here do what they can … in the way of donations, meetings, whatever support is possible. But you don’t have to do much; if General Franco wins, and it is beginning to look like he will, it would be unwise for me to go back to Spain. And then, I’ve become a lover of this city and will stay here. If I can.”

  “Oh I’m sure you can, Monsieur Ferrar. One would hate to lose you.” At this, she looked very directly into his eyes.

  They went on for a while longer, leaving the border of intimacy and settling on the pleasures of the city for their conversation. When he sensed that she was ready to leave, he asked if he might accompany her to her car and, after she had worked her hands into her gloves, they left the tearoom. Outside, the day had turned cloudy and chilly at the end of the afternoon, he said he hoped they could meet again, she said she would look forward to it and offered him her hand, palm down.

  •

  When Ferrar reached the office the following day, Jeannette said, “Mr. Barabee asks if you’ll please stop by his office.” He waited an instant, wondering if she might let him know more, but she returned to her work. Barabee was affable enough to begin with. Still, Ferrar felt something was troubling him. At last Barabee said, “Of all the strange questions I’ve ever had to ask anybody, this may well be the strangest.”

  From Ferrar, a noncommittal “Oh?”

  “Cristián, is it somehow possible that you stole a Polish train?”

  Ferrar took a moment, then said, “Perhaps ‘borrowed’ is a better word, the train is still there. But we were having difficulties with the Polish railway authority—an attempt to block our shipment—and my associate, a fellow who does not easily accept failure, found an engineer who would drive the train up to Danzig.”

  Barabee was tight-lipped, then shook his head in a way that meant, what times we live in. “The reason I ask is that I’m in touch with an official at the Sûreté Nationale, the French security service, and received from him an unofficial telephone call. Someone in the Polish government called him and said they were contemplating legal action against you. The French security official said he would see to it, informally, and the Pole said in that case they would not proceed. So, now I’ve spoken to you about it. But,
Cristián, please, try not to draw fire, and, if you’re contemplating another visit to Poland, you might put that off for a time.”

  “Thank you, George. And, I promise, no more stealing Polish trains.”

  “The truth is, we’re being drawn into European conflict, more every day. The French have sent an arms-purchasing commission to New York and they have retained Coudert to advise them. What’s happened is that they are attempting to purchase five thousand warplanes and have fallen afoul of the Embargo Act. Now, we may be able to help, France may well need those warplanes, but I’m told they don’t exist, they will have to be built, and it will take a while to build them. This is a new industry—most of the men who own aircraft manufacturing companies built their first aircraft with their own hands.”

  “This isn’t such good news, about the French.”

  “No, it isn’t. We’re safe enough here, for the moment, but that may change in a hurry. The French are scared.”

  Barabee’s secretary knocked at his door, then opened it and said, “Mr. Barabee, Mr. and Mrs. Blaustein are here for their ten o’clock meeting.”

  “We’ll talk later,” Ferrar said, and left the office.

  That evening Ferrar went to Chez Lucette for poulet de Bresse, then returned home, settled a blanket around his shoulders, poured himself some brandy, lit a Gitane, and found his place in the Robert Byron book he’d been reading, The Road to Oxiana. Byron was one of the truly great English travelers and Ferrar read him in order to become lost in another time and place—in this case 1933 and Persia.

  The day’s journey had a wild exhilaration. Up and down the mountains, over the endless flats, we bumped and swooped. The sun flayed us. Great spirals of dust, dancing like demons over the desert, stopped our dashing Chevrolet and choked us. Suddenly, from far across a valley, came the flash of a turquoise jar, bobbing along on a donkey. Its owner walked beside it, clad in a duller blue. And seeing the two lost in that gigantic stony waste, I understood why blue is the Persian colour, and why the Persian word for it means water as well.

  Rising to have some more brandy, Ferrar felt as though he was at least beginning to calm down. The conversation with Barabee—who had his ear very close indeed to the political ground—had unsettled him. What if the Germans attacked France? What would he do with his family? Take them to New York? And just when should he start to make such arrangements? Then, too, working with de Lyon had stirred a certain part of him, and he found himself wondering if it wouldn’t be better to stay and fight, if they would let him.

  He poured the brandy in his kitchen, then, on the way back to his study, he opened the shutter over the single window that faced directly away from the Place Saint-Sulpice, and through which he could see a few treetops in the Jardin du Luxembourg. The night sky was clear, the trees visible in moonlight.

  3 May. In mid-afternoon, a sudden thunderstorm: lightning bolts flashed over the Champs-Elysées, rain poured down, and Ferrar watched through his window as people ran to shelter in doorways, covering their heads with newspapers. As he forced himself back to work, his telephone rang. The call was from a young woman who worked for the diplomat Molina, the second secretary at the Spanish embassy and the man who had recruited Ferrar to work at the Oficina Técnica. Could he, she asked, come to a meeting that evening? Ferrar agreed. The young woman said he would be telephoned later in the day and given the time and place for the meeting.

  “Is it not at the embassy?” Ferrar said.

  “We will call you later,” she said and hung up.

  By five-thirty Ferrar was beginning to wonder what was going on, then, just before six, the young woman telephoned and said the meeting would be at six-fifteen and gave him an address on the rue de Berri.

  Strange, he thought. The rue de Berri was not far from the embassy, but hardly the place for an official meeting; it was a thoroughly commercial street, always busy, home to press agencies, small shops, and a few cafés. Ferrar left the office, then put up his umbrella as he crossed the boulevard. On the other side, he noticed two men sitting in a car, their eyes following him. What was this? Probably nothing. But at the address he’d been given, a man, somehow kin to the men in the car, was waiting just inside the door. He asked Ferrar who he was, politely enough, then directed him to another building, just up the street. Where, in the lobby, yet one more man who happened to be there said, “Can you tell me your name?” Ferrar told him, then was given the number of an apartment on the fourth floor. He was ushered into the apartment by two men, bigger and tougher than their colleagues, who stared at him a moment longer than necessary, then stepped aside.

  “Ah, it’s you,” Molina said, rising from a sofa. The parlor had the feel of a living room at the end of a long social evening; full ashtrays, empty wineglasses and coffee cups, stale air. Even Molina, as always in pince-nez and Vandyke beard, appeared slightly rumpled. This was not, Ferrar thought, the first meeting held in the apartment that day. “Señor Ferrar,” Molina said, some drama in his voice, “allow me to introduce General Juan Quebral.”

  A young man, surely not yet thirty years old, rose from the couch. He was tall and fair-haired, wore eyeglasses with steel frames, had his jacket off, tie loosened, and shirtsleeves rolled up. “Pleased to meet you,” Quebral said and took Ferrar’s hand in a powerful grip. His presence was that of a man well known and well respected. And he was, Ferrar knew, all of that and more. General Quebral was one of a small group of young communists who had joined the Army of the Republic, fought well, been promoted through the ranks, led brilliantly, and become senior officers. Formerly an electrician at the Gijon shipyards, he had risen to be the military hope of the Spanish Republic—if their troops were to be led to victory, it was Quebral who would lead them. “Julio,” Quebral said to one of the men guarding the door, “please get a glass of wine for Señor Ferrar.” Turning to Ferrar he said, “Unless you would prefer coffee.”

  Ferrar, sitting in a wing chair, said, “A glass of wine, please.”

  “I thought so,” Quebral said.

  “It is an honor to meet you, General Quebral,” Ferrar said.

  “My honor, Señor Ferrar. We are grateful to you and the Oficina Técnica. The Skoda cannon have reached our base in Salou, thanks to your determination.”

  There was a knock at the door, everyone in the room tensed, then the door opened to admit Max de Lyon. Again Molina rose and, as he began his introduction, de Lyon glanced over his left shoulder, then his right, spoofing the man unnerved by excessive security.

  Molina was amused. “You’re a comedian, Max. But you understand precaution. General Quebral has come secretly to Paris, he is in danger here, so we shall keep his visit a secret.”

  De Lyon took an armchair and lit one of his brown cigarettes. Molina said, “We’ve been at this all of yesterday and today. Talking to a number of our arms buyers, some of whom had to travel a considerable distance.”

  “People we need more than ever,” Quebral said. “Because we are going to make our most important effort of the war. For this we are forming a new army, to be known as the Army of the Ebro. This too should remain secret, of course, although anybody with a map and some knowledge of the terrain will have a good idea of where this campaign will take place.”

  Molina said, “Of course we will be fighting, like any army, to gain territory, but I should remind you that we are this time fighting to prove to the world, and particularly to the politicians of Europe, that the Republic is still a powerful force that is nowhere near surrender.”

  “We’ll do our best,” de Lyon said.

  “Of course you will,” Quebral said. “We expect that. But the reason you are here is that we will now concentrate our efforts in one area, and I thought it would be a good idea if you heard it from me, personally. Now, if I were a fancy journalist, I might call it ‘the future of warfare.’ Our soldiers are digging trenches as I speak, our navy is fighting the submarines, but what we’ve learned in this war, and spilled blood to learn it, is that the outco
me of any battle, now and in the future, will be determined in the sky.” He paused, then said, “I didn’t mean to make a speech, but in a political life I’ve made a lot of them, it becomes a habit.”

  “It’s true,” de Lyon said. “We’ve watched it happen. The troops advance, then the Messerschmitts show up and destroy them.” He inhaled on his cigarette, sat forward in his chair, and said, “So then, General, what do you need? And how much time do we have?”

  “As for time, that depends on when we begin the campaign,” Quebral said. “Which I know but I can’t tell you.”

  De Lyon nodded that he understood. He too had been brought a glass of wine, now he took a sip and said, “I ask because it used to be that we needed everything, and right away. This is different.”

  “I know it is,” Quebral said.

  “I imagine you have a list,” Ferrar said.

  “I do. A short one. It starts with warplanes, which are impossible to find, there’s too much competition—Turks, Greeks, Poles, Yugoslavs, the French. Suddenly the world woke up.”

  “Didn’t it though,” de Lyon said, with a bitter smile. “The prices of replacement parts for airplanes are hard to believe. And then, even if you’re willing to pay whatever anybody asks, you can’t find them.”

  “There is also oil; we still have refineries and can produce aviation fuel.”

  “Better for someone who knows that business,” de Lyon said.

  “Next, anti-aircraft ammunition. The USSR shipped us anti-aircraft weapons, the seventy-six-millimeter Model F-22, and they are effective, but we lack ammunition. If we can’t fight the Messerschmitts from the air, we will have to fight them from the ground.”

  “We may be able to find it,” de Lyon said. “Should we take that as our responsibility?”

  “Yes,” Quebral said. “If you think you can do it, it’s yours.”

  In time, Ferrar and de Lyon left together. Outside, the rain had stopped and the air smelled fresh and clean.