Midnight in Europe: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  “A Russian gangster, what was his name? Bratya, something like that.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. We met a few times and were supposed to meet again but he never showed up, never telephoned, so … gone.”

  “This was in Kiev?”

  “What? No, this was in Marseilles.”

  Stavros was incredulous. “The Corsicans let him work in Marseilles?”

  “He just used Marseilles as a meeting place. Maybe the Corsicans knew about it, maybe they didn’t. As I remember, he was in some gang, a very rough gang, but all the Russian gangs are like that, it’s another world.”

  “So, a gang in Kiev, one of them called Bratya, now vanished. Do I have that right?”

  Videau thought it over, then said, “It wasn’t easy, talking to this guy. He spoke some French, a little English, but what I understood was that they weren’t from Kiev, that’s just where they’d hidden the tires, they were from someplace else.”

  “Where, Albert? Can you remember?”

  “Not Moscow. Maybe … Odessa? You know, Stavros, I think that’s right. Odessa. I thought the gangs in Odessa were Jews, but this Brotya said they were from Greek families who’d been there forever. Is that possible?”

  “I don’t know, maybe it will mean something to Max, he’s the one who sent me up here.”

  “Well, I think that’s about all I remember.”

  “Albert, how can we help you?”

  “Lawyers cost a lot of money, you know. So far I’ve managed to pay the bills—people like us have to put some money aside, here and there, and have the kind of friends we can trust to deliver it, but I can’t work now so …”

  “How do we find him?”

  “His name is LaMotte, he’s got an office by the Notre-Dame church in the Ninth.”

  “Notre-Dame-de-Lorette?”

  “That’s the one.”

  They talked for a time after that—friends they knew, good times they’d had, then the guard rattled his newspaper and stood up, so Stavros said goodby and told the guard he was ready to leave.

  That night de Lyon and Ferrar were back at Le Cygne to meet a pair of Turkish brothers who bought and sold weapons on the black market and regularly visited Paris in search of trade. Before the meeting, de Lyon mentioned, without making too much of it, that he was armed, and once they arrived Ferrar saw why. They were the sort of men, suspicious and violent, who threatened by instinct—everybody was out to get the better of them and that included de Lyon and Ferrar. Their speech was civil enough but the way they held themselves, the way their eyes worked, said that they would kill you if you crossed them. And they knew you would try. De Lyon wasn’t going to tell them the truth—because they might well sell it—but in his business he had to find a way to talk to sinister people who could find what he needed. De Lyon said he was interested in buying Polish armament. Sure, what did he want? Artillery, field pieces. That was easy, what was he ready to pay? De Lyon was vague—that depended on age and condition. Then he mentioned Soviet weapons, did they have anything available right away? Well, maybe, if he could pay before delivery. Though de Lyon kept refilling their champagne glasses, they never got drunk and talkative, only closer to the edge. Finally de Lyon grew tired of it, stood up, wished them well, and said they would meet again soon.

  “What a waste of time,” de Lyon said when they were gone. “Still, you have to try.”

  “At least it didn’t come to shooting,” Ferrar said.

  “No, it didn’t, not that it hasn’t happened in here.”

  An hour later, Stavros showed up, this time alone. De Lyon had made sure that Stavros and the Turkish brothers didn’t meet, which might have led to a real confrontation. Stavros had a piece of paper with notes he’d made in blunt pencil—he’d written down what Videau had told him so he wouldn’t forget anything. He didn’t stay long, left the notes with de Lyon and went off to see his brunette, who had a room up in Clichy. After he left, Ferrar said, “Does Videau’s story help us?”

  De Lyon laid Stavros’s page of notes flat on the table and kept smoothing the rumpled paper with his hands, as though that helped him to concentrate. Finally he said, “It’s like working on a jigsaw puzzle, but if I put together what I’ve learned in the last few days, then add what Videau said at the Santé, I can see how some of the pieces fit.”

  “Tell me then, what goes where?”

  “Do you recall saying something about stealing ammunition from a Russian ship?”

  “You said it wouldn’t work—not enough shells.”

  “And it wouldn’t. But Soviet ships get their supplies from Soviet armouries. Cristián, do you know what’s in Odessa?”

  “Not really. When I think about Odessa, I see the famous steps in the film, and I know you don’t mean that.”

  “What is in Odessa is a very large Soviet naval base, one of their warm-water ports on the Black Sea.”

  “Of course,” Ferrar said. “At least we know where the ammunition is stored. And do you think an Odessa gang could steal it?”

  De Lyon nodded. “We’d have to be careful with them—if they become suspicious they don’t ask questions. But it’s a place to start.”

  “How would we find a gang in Odessa?”

  De Lyon shrugged. “I have no idea, tonight, but, tomorrow …”

  “One thing I should point out,” Ferrar said. “The Republic has only two national allies, one is Mexico, the other is the USSR. We are considering an attack on an ally, and the Russians will soon figure out where their shells went—there is only one country that has weapons which take such ammunition. What then?”

  “Stalin will be quite angry. But he isn’t helping us now and he won’t in the future, because war is coming and he must conserve what he has. And, beyond that, the USSR has never really been our ally. For example: the Republic shipped the national gold reserve to the USSR because they were afraid Franco would get hold of it, and the Russians have been using that gold as payment for the arms they sent us—Stalin doesn’t give anybody anything. And they have been stealing it, by fiddling with the exchange rate for gold and the rouble. Is that what an ally does?”

  “All right, but we have another problem. We will have to tell Molina what we’re doing, and he will say no.”

  “I would remind you that General Quebral said yes. The Republic is desperate now, which means the general is far more powerful than the diplomat.”

  The Le Cygne crowd was getting louder as they drank and danced the night away. Ferrar had the last of his champagne and said, “So then, Max, what next?”

  “We work on finding a Russian gang that operates in Odessa—maybe we find the gang that Videau discovered, maybe a different group. Then we figure out how to approach them and, then, how to use them without getting robbed or stabbed in the process. The difficulty here is that we don’t have much time, I suspect the Ebro offensive will start in the summer. It is now May.”

  “And how do we work on finding a Russian gang?”

  “Contacts, Cristián. Always and forever, contacts.”

  Working at a law firm in Paris, with many clients from America and Great Britain, Ferrar had encountered one aspect of the profession that had nothing whatsoever to do with legal matters. Certain clients saw their attorney, discreet and helpful, as an advisor on the darker pleasures of the city. After some hemming and hawing he would be asked, in a certain voice, where sexual excitements, of this or that sort, were to be found. Ferrar had consulted the native Parisian lawyers and drawn up a list. Far easier were requests such as you know Paris, Mr. Ferrar, where shall we eat? So, another list, kept in a different drawer to avoid mortal error, perhaps by a secretary. But Mr. Ferrar, can the bistro really be called domination and whipping? Do they have onion soup?

  As Ferrar had worked on his restaurant list he had come upon the Brasserie Heininger. He had tried it out and discovered a particularly Parisian setting: the Heininger was exciting; smoky, noisy, crowded, the place to
go for an evening of good times, and the food was excellent. If Ferrar found that his clients had tired of solemn gastronomy, he encouraged them to try the Heininger. The brasserie was not only riotous—many Parisian brasseries were easily its equal—but it had a story, a story to tell the folks back home. In the spring of 1937, the maître d’ at the Heininger was a Bulgarian émigré called Omaraeff with an unfortunate passion for émigré politics. He surely angered the wrong people because one night young men with tommy guns arrived at the brasserie and gave the dining room a good spraying. Meanwhile, poor Omaraeff had hidden in a stall in the ladies’ WC and, badly frightened, had made the mistake of taking his pants down to his ankles—a dead giveaway to an assassin peering below the door which resulted in a dead maître d’. Miraculously, not a single person in the dining room had been shot. As the patrons cowered beneath their tables, the tommy gunners had concentrated on the gold-rimmed mirrors above the banquettes and had shattered every one of them except for the mirror above Table 14, which had only a single bullet hole. Papa Heininger was a sentimental man and, when all the mirrors were replaced, he left the Table 14 mirror as it was, a memorial to Omaraeff.

  This became a popular table, for those who knew about it, but Ferrar had found that with sufficient time a reservation was possible so that Mr. Pinkston, of the Pinkston flour mill family, had an intriguing tale to tell when he returned to Ohio. Now Ferrar had an inspiration: after time spent with the marquesa at the Coudert office and Angelina’s tearoom, he would try something different, something that would suggest they ought to acknowledge their more beastly selves by having fun together, by drinking a little too much at a brasserie and who-knew-what later. Thus he wrote her at the Hotel Windsor and asked permission to telephone. She sent him the number, he called, praised the Heininger, and asked her if she knew it. She didn’t, and four days later he picked her up at her hotel in a taxi.

  Once they were settled in the backseat and making small talk as the taxi sped through nighttime Paris, the marquesa said, “Your gracious formality is much appreciated, Monsieur Ferrar, but I wonder if, from now on, you might wish to call me Maria Cristina?”

  “I would very much like that. And I hope you will call me Cristián.”

  A promising start to the evening.

  Even more so, the first impression of the Brasserie Heininger. On the border of a neighborhood that was home to dance halls and cheap restaurants, down the street from the Place Bastille, a waiter in fisherman’s oilskin sou’wester coat and hat prepared shellfish from a bed of crushed ice. Opening the nearby door led to an enchanted world: under bright lights, the Parisian national colors red and gold glittered in the grand mirrors. The waiters, in fin de siècle whiskers—thick sideburns curving up to mustaches—hurried between the tables at a waiter’s run, balancing huge trays of choucroute garnie royale—sauerkraut with pork cooked in champagne—shellfish, sausages, and skewered meats. Standing at the maître d’ station was Papa Heininger himself, who led Ferrar and Maria Cristina to a table with a polished brass plate on a stand: TABLE 14, as Ferrar had requested. Gesturing toward the red plush banquette, Papa Heininger said, “And how shall we sit tonight, mes enfants?”

  Ferrar and Maria Cristina looked at each other for a moment, then Ferrar said, “Côte-à-côte, I think.” Side by side on the banquette. A waiter appeared and took the chairs away, Ferrar ordered apéritifs, then grand menus, two-handed menus, were whipped open for them. Maria Cristina said, “Cristián, may I look at your menu? I have the ladies’ version, no prices, and I always like to know what things cost.” She wore black that evening, a bias-cut dress in a finely woven material that suggested rather than revealed her figure, and thin enough so that when she slid over to study his menu a soft hip pressed against him. “What shall we have, Cristián?” Now that she was close to him he realized that she was wearing perfume, more spice than sugar.

  “Anything you like.”

  “Hmm, that fisherman in front of the restaurant was preparing a langouste.” Spiny lobster or crayfish, succulent and sweet. “I see they serve it cold, cut in pieces, with a mayonnaise.”

  “Let’s start with that,” he said. “Do you suppose it goes well with champagne?”

  “I would think so.”

  “And then?”

  “Maybe, boudins blancs?” White sausages; pork ground with cream and butter.

  “Sounds good, I will have that also.”

  The champagne arrived in a silver bucket, the sommelier poured a thin, pale stream into each glass. Ferrar raised his and said, “Salut, Maria Cristina.” The commonplace toast—he found the other possibilities too intimate or just plain silly. Maria Cristina raised her glass, met his eyes, and said, “Salut.” They drank, then she said, “Cristián?”

  “Yes?”

  “There is a hole in this mirror. Everything else here is so perfect, I wonder they don’t see to it.”

  With some relish, he told her what had happened and she watched him as he spoke—interested by the man telling a story more than the story itself. The langouste arrived, Maria Cristina took a forkful, tasted it, closed her eyes, and made a low sound of pleasure.

  Ferrar said, “Oh this is very good.”

  As the night wore on, the spirit of the brasserie rose to a high pitch, the conversation louder now and occasionally punctuated by a woman’s peal of laughter; somebody had said something irresistibly droll. Ferrar and Maria Cristina finished the bottle of champagne and Ferrar ordered another as they worked on their boudins blancs. The new bottle was uncorked and they each had more than a sip—Ferrar was beginning to feel a certain hazy elation.

  “What a place this is!” Maria Cristina said. “And what a crowd, so … carefree, it’s like going to a party.”

  “I hoped you would enjoy it.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and briefly rested her hand on his forearm. “Just the thing for me, I spent the day brooding about a friend of mine, and this evening has made me feel better.”

  “Brooding? What’s wrong?”

  She sighed. “An old friend in trouble, I knew her at school in Switzerland, Benita.” When she spoke the name she smiled, a triste smile, as she remembered her friend. “I had a letter from her this morning, she is in difficulty and doesn’t know what to do.”

  “And the difficulty is?”

  “Benita grew up in Madrid, her father was Spanish, her mother English. She has been living in Geneva but she cannot remain there, her residence permit will expire soon and cannot be extended. A few months ago her father died and, some time later, she went to the Spanish consulate to have her passport renewed, but her application was, after a few weeks, denied. The consul said something about a change in regulations that called for a search of records in Madrid, which is now impossible.”

  “Sad. This does happen though, I’ve seen it before.”

  “The consul in Geneva suggested she make application for what he called a compassionate exception, but her letter never arrived in Valencia, and now the time period for the request has expired.”

  Ferrar shook his head. “Governments are often not compassionate, Maria Cristina. They make rules and enforce them.”

  “Yes, I know, I know how they are. Now the only chance she has is to make a personal plea to the Spanish Republic, to, for example, the Spanish embassy in Paris. But, how to do this? She knows nobody in the government, and fears her application will be rejected by a clerk.”

  “I’m afraid she isn’t wrong.”

  “Then I wondered, what if I went myself, on her behalf, to plead her case?”

  “You would have to see one of the senior diplomats,” Ferrar said.

  “So I thought—the most senior diplomat who would agree to a meeting, but I don’t know a soul at the embassy.”

  After a moment, Ferrar said, “I might be able to help you, I’ll look into it.”

  “You will? I would be very grateful …”

  “Now, my dear Maria Cristina, is that an empty glass I see?”

&
nbsp; Again she touched his forearm and said, her voice emotional, “You are sweet, Cristián, you are a kind man.”

  They had a tarte tatin for dessert; soft, golden slices of apple in a flaky crust. And left the brasserie at midnight.

  In the taxi back to the Windsor, Maria Cristina was pensive, sat close to Ferrar, and rested her head on his shoulder. When they reached the hotel, Ferrar, his courage greatly buoyed by champagne, took a chance. “Maria Cristina?” he said. “May I see you to your room?”

  A subtle nod and, almost inaudible, a whispered yes.

  He followed her up the two flights of stairs to her room, which was in fact a suite, virtually a private apartment. It was not at all luxurious—floral-print wallpaper that had seen better days, overstuffed furniture with forest-green slipcovers—but quite comfortable. He sat at one end of a sofa, she at the other.

  “May I smoke?” he said.

  She went off to another room and returned with an ashtray and a packet of Gauloises. “I will have one as well,” she said.

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “So old-fashioned,” she said, “but I was raised to believe that it was not genteel to smoke in front of people.”

  Ferrar said, “Times change, thank God.”

  Now a silence that would grow awkward if allowed to continue. Finally he said, “I’ve been wondering all day …”

  “Oh? Tell me then, what is it that you have been wondering about?”

  “If we would kiss.”

  They stubbed their cigarettes out in the ashtray, he moved to her side, she raised her face, their lips met. A chaste kiss that stirred him deeply. When the kiss ended Ferrar stayed close to her so that his voice was low as he said, “I was about to say good night but …”

  “But …?”

  “I wondered also what would happen if I asked you to take off your dress.”

  “Well, now you will find out,” she said, her voice not entirely steady. She stood, worked at the back of her dress, then took it off, looked around, and laid it atop an easy chair. She remained standing, in a black silk slip with lace at the top and bottom.