Midnight in Europe: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  By preference, Max de Lyon did not have an address. He stayed here and there; in pensions and residence hotels, sometimes in the apartment of a woman friend. When, on Monday morning, Ferrar reached him at the Oficina Técnica, he suggested a meeting after work, at a café on the south side of the Luxembourg gardens, where the Boulevard Montparnasse traces the border of the Sixth Arrondissement. De Lyon often stayed in this neighborhood, one of the hidden quartiers of Paris, quiet, and far from the honking taxis and marching communists of Saint-Germain.

  De Lyon had chosen a fancy café, with polished brass and tiled floor, the waiter was quick to arrive and Ferrar ordered brandies. As de Lyon sat down he said, “From your phone call, I had the impression that something’s gone wrong.”

  Ferrar nodded, then started slowly. “I met this woman, as a law client, and we began a love affair, but she is a spy, I think.”

  De Lyon raised his eyebrows. “Really? What makes you think that?”

  Ferrar told the story of his time with Maria Cristina, concentrating on her campaign to meet a senior diplomat at the Spanish embassy.

  “And then, a new love affair begins,” de Lyon said. “It can work that way, it has, often enough. Are you in love with this woman?”

  Ferrar’s no was tentative. “It was desire, a folie, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.”

  “A condition I know well,” de Lyon said. “And when you made love to her, was she, umm, practiced? The sort of woman who will go to bed with a man to get what she wants? A courtesan?”

  “No. The first time we tried, she was suddenly in tears. Then, last Friday, it happened.”

  “And so you wonder, what now? Well, perhaps she is being coerced. Somebody somewhere might have a lock on her and she must do as he says, so she tries, and fails, and will be disposed of. And that’s just one possibility. If you follow the rules, you have to tell Molina about this, as well as the embassy security officer, Zaguan, and if they accept your suspicion she will be interrogated, and then disposed of. Either way she won’t survive.”

  “You make it sound hopeless,” Ferrar said.

  “It is.”

  “What should I do?”

  “End the affair, never see her again, and, if you care about her, give her an excuse—tell her you’ve fallen in love with another woman. She can try that on her controller, maybe he’ll believe it. She can’t run and hide, because the terrible consequence, whatever is being used to coerce her, will take place.” He thought for a time, then said, “You know, I might just have an idea who she is.”

  “You do?”

  “Your predecessor, Castillo, had a woman spy, a volunteer, or so he believed. She was supposedly spying for the Republic, but that’s an old game—misleading information for the enemy, and discovery of what the enemy wants to find out. This woman entered Madrid but she was being pursued and she was trapped, in hiding. Somehow she got a message to Castillo and asked for help. Castillo found himself a set of false papers and went to Madrid to save her. And there he disappeared, and the story ends, but it doesn’t. Now she’s sent after you, likely by Franco’s secret service. They have her hunting a diplomat, but she’s also after information from the Oficina Técnica, such as the date for the Ebro offensive.”

  Ferrar lit a cigarette and finished his brandy. “Max, can anything be done?”

  “I don’t think so. You may want to save her, but I am afraid she’s lost.”

  “I can’t accept that,” Ferrar said.

  “You’ll have to,” de Lyon said. “She is a casualty of war, Cristián.”

  “There must be something,” Ferrar said.

  “Give her an alibi for losing contact with you, maybe it will work.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “She will vanish. And they’ll go after the next name on their list.”

  To return to the Place Saint-Sulpice, Ferrar made his way through the Luxembourg gardens, glorious on a day in June but Ferrar, head down, saw none of it. When he opened the building door she was waiting for him by the mailboxes in the lobby. “Your concierge is a good soul,” she said. “And he let me wait in here.”

  She was different now, he saw: a blue spring suit, a sensible handbag. “May I come upstairs, Cristián?” she said. “I am here to say goodby.”

  In his apartment, he offered her a brandy, and they sat in his study. “I think you know what’s going on,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “You are spying for Franco’s secret service.”

  “Trying to. But that’s over now.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I can’t say, but it doesn’t matter. I wanted to ask your forgiveness.”

  “You have it.”

  “I had no choice, Cristián. I was forced to do this; they have my younger sister at Nationalist headquarters in Burgos. She is kept in a guarded house, and she is allowed to write once a month. To remind me of what may happen.”

  “How long has she been there?”

  “About eight months. She was abducted in Lisbon and taken to Spain. She said in her first letter that they would kill her if I didn’t do as I was told. So, I tried.”

  “Was I your first … target?”

  “No. Castillo was the first. Then you.”

  “Other than the letters, are you in touch with them?”

  “Oh yes, they must have their reports. Her captor telephones me, arranged calls to a public phone at the Gare du Nord. And asks the most intimate questions, in order to humiliate me. This excites him, I can hear it. I don’t know who he is, but I know what he is, a señorito, as they are known, a ‘little gentleman.’ He speaks the most particular Castilian Spanish, with a kind of lisp—thinko for cinco. So very upper class he is, and arrogant beyond belief.”

  “I know the breed,” Ferrar said. Impeccably dressed, hair perfectly combed, a superior being, the señorito was known for his imperious stare, you offend me by your very existence. Of the señorito a French journalist remarked, “He judges the poor man’s worth by his servility.”

  “They will rule Spain, when Franco wins the war, sad to say.”

  “Do you have any ideas—about what to do now?”

  “I might try to play them along for a while. After that, I don’t know.”

  “You’ll tell them you’re still working on me? A friend of mine suggested that I break off the affair, having fallen in love with another woman. Do you think they might accept that?”

  “Maybe so, maybe not. But, if they don’t … I’ve thought of ending my life. A sacrifice. It might free my sister.”

  “What if you pretended to die?”

  “Pretended?”

  “Perhaps a traffic accident—a statement by the police, reported as such by the newspapers.”

  “How would one even attempt such a thing?”

  “The French authorities could do it if they wanted to. By which I mean the Sûreté. They might be willing to help you if they thought you could be useful to them.”

  “From one master to another, is that what you mean?”

  Ferrar nodded. “You will have to work for them—they will not help you otherwise, sympathy is not what they do. On the other hand, as a marquesa, you would have entrée into certain circles that interest them.”

  “I am not a whore, Cristián.”

  “There’s no need for that. Female spies don’t necessarily have to sleep with male targets—they can go to parties and hear gossip. Remember, the love affair with me was the señorito’s idea.”

  “I actually thought I could do it—I found you attractive. Then the moment came, at the Windsor, and I couldn’t. And I meant to do something similar in Varengeville, but you tricked me. I’m not made of stone, and when you touched me it began to feel good and I didn’t want to stop.”

  Ferrar sighed, then shook his head in sorrow over what had happened. “Would you care for some more brandy?”

  “No, my dear, I have to be on my way. I know I shouldn’t ask you, but this is the last time we�
�ll ever talk so, is there any chance you know someone at the Sûreté?”

  “I don’t, but I believe you can find your own way to approach them.”

  He led her to the door and they kissed goodby, left cheek then right. Ferrar returned to his study, refilled his glass and lit a Gitane. De Lyon was right, he thought, he could have nothing further to do with her, and that included easing her way to someone at the Sûreté. Complicit was a prosecutor’s word he did not want to hear. Still, he had to do something for her, and he would find a way. Secretly, so that she would not know what he’d done. Of course, if the Sûreté accepted the scheme, she couldn’t remain in Paris. The more he thought about it, the more complications he discovered, so he stopped thinking, found the dog-eared page in The Road to Oxiana and joined Robert Byron where “A mountain freshet had cut the road outside Isfahan.”

  In Odessa, Lieutenant Commander Ivan Malkin, the assistant director of the Red Star Armoury, was reaching the end of a busy day. He planned, after work, to take his wife and children for a picnic—ride the train a stop or two, then walk out into the woods. The country around Odessa reminded visitors of Provence; gentle hills, blue skies, serenity. Malkin badly needed a dose of that. He had been running the armoury for almost a year, ever since the director, a victim of the Stalin purges, had been taken away at night. It was a difficult job, but Malkin worked hard and had so far survived. Munitions for the Black Sea Fleet were now manufactured in nearby Tiraspol and shipped by rail to the naval base at Odessa, and that made Malkin’s job easier—he had to warehouse the shells, then have them loaded onto the warships.

  Outside the office, one of his sailor-workmen was moving three crates with a forklift; the engine pumped out clouds of black smoke, burning oil, and Malkin could hear the bad piston. The forklift wouldn’t last long, he thought—he had five or six dead machines rusting away in the cinder yard behind the armoury. He did make the ritual requests for replacement parts and repairs, and the requests were always approved, but, after that, nothing happened. This was a type of Soviet theatre, the theatre of bureaucracy.

  Malkin stared at the clock on his office wall—how much longer could this day possibly go on? Then the telephone rang and he answered it. “Lieutenant Commander Malkin.”

  “Comrade Lieutenant Commander, Comrade Zhenitev speaking. I am a supervising officer with the Port Facility Inspection Bureau, Southern Ukraine Division, and this evening the Red Star Armoury will receive inspection.”

  Malkin’s heart pounded. He thought there might be an organization with that name but it didn’t matter—these people would find evidence of some crime against the state and the Cheka would come and arrest him. In the USSR, bureaus and committees multiplied like rabbits. Lethal rabbits. “Thank you for informing us, Comrade Zhenitev, we are prepared for inspection.”

  “The committee will arrive in forty-five minutes. We expect your workers will have left for the day, make sure that they do. Only you are to remain.”

  “Yes, comrade, I understand, I will be waiting here for the committee.”

  The comrade supervising officer hung up.

  Malkin looked death in the face. Once the authorities showed up, that was that. He telephoned his wife and, trying to keep his voice steady, told her there would be no picnic that evening. She sensed that something was wrong but, Russian phones being what they were, did not ask for fear he would answer and say the wrong thing. “I see,” she said. “Perhaps tomorrow, we can go.”

  They would find everything, it couldn’t be hidden—corroded metal, broken machinery, holes in the ceiling, there was so much he’d been unable to repair. Unable? No. Unwilling, in the eyes of the state—and so guilty of that form of sabotage known as wrecking. He saw the grisly word in the newspapers every day. Malkin held his head in his hands and said a prayer. A short prayer. He leapt to his feet and hurried out to the armoury floor and began to pick up cigarette butts. There were signs everywhere, smoking was forbidden. Imagine, all that explosive going up at once.

  He was halfway through this task when the committee arrived. There were four of them, three were pure apparatchik types, lumpy men in lumpy suits, accompanied by a terrifying woman—small, mean eyes, a hatchet for a face—who carried a terrifying briefcase; it meant authority, it meant power, it was a weapon. “I am Comrade Inspector Kostova,” she said, her voice as dry as a bone. Malkin, trying to conceal his shaking hands, greeted them. Offered them vodka from the bottle in his desk. They refused, eyes narrowing, are you trying to bribe us, comrade?

  The old armoury, built by Czar Alexander II in 1861, was three stories high and packed with munitions; torpedoes, depth charges, anti-aircraft shells, heavy machine-gun bullets. “Shall we begin on this floor?” Malkin said.

  “Top floor, comrade,” one of the apparatchiks said.

  “I will inspect the office,” Kostova said. “Are these all the filing cabinets?”

  “They are, comrade inspector.”

  As Malkin led the rest of the committee toward the wooden ramp that served the upper floors, they produced notebooks and pencils to record the sins of the soon-to-be former assistant director. In the office, Kostova, using the technique common to thieves, opened the bottom drawer of the first filing cabinet, finding it packed with official forms, pages interleaved with carbons. Kostova knelt on the floor, thumbed through the forms, and under her breath said, “Poshol,” which meant “fuck.” She’d thought at first that the forms packed into the drawer were duplicates, but they weren’t, there were a dozen of each variety, then K566-Q gave way to C-49 HH. She began to go through them, selecting three of each type—God only knew what they were for. She slid them into her briefcase, then went on to the next, and the next.

  While she was at work, Malkin and the committee had finished the inspection of the third floor and descended to the second, walking along aisles where crates with stenciled identification markings were stacked to the ceiling. Midway down an aisle, one of the apparatchiks paused and said to Malkin, “I will take a count of some of these crates, you go on ahead, I will catch up with you.”

  “As you wish, comrade inspector,” Malkin said.

  But the apparatchik didn’t count anything, he worked his way back two aisles, where a certain marking had caught his attention. He found the camera in his briefcase and began to take photographs, focusing on the stenciled identification: 76MM MODEL F-22. When he was done, he went off to find the rest of the committee.

  They were there for an hour, by which time there wasn’t much left of Malkin, who wiped at his brow with a handkerchief. What unnerved him was that they didn’t say anything, never asked a question, simply looked here and there and scribbled little notes in their notebooks. What had they found? When at last they returned to the office, Inspector Kostova was waiting for them. “Have you finished your work, comrade?” said the apparatchik who seemed to be in charge.

  “I have,” she said. “The office appears to meet the standard.”

  The lead apparatchik turned to face Malkin and said, his voice angry and hard, “But the armoury does not meet the standard.” He let that sink in, then said, “Listen to me carefully, comrade, there are many things wrong here, I won’t read you the list, but it is obvious that little effort has been made to maintain this facility.” Malkin winced, these words meant he was to be accused of wrecking. “Some of it we may report—the committee must meet and decide what to do with you. But, until that decision is made, you may not discuss this inspection with anybody, is that clear? The work we do is considered a state secret and, if you talk about it, you will be guilty of revealing a state secret. And what happens next is just what you think. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, comrade inspector, perfectly I understand, completely.”

  The apparatchik stared at him—for a long time, perhaps twenty seconds, an even sharper threat than could be put into words. Then the committee left the armoury, driving away in a large, official-looking black car. So, what he’d feared had come to pass, he would ne
xt face investigation by the Cheka, then they would force him to sign a confession. Still, the committee hadn’t taken him into custody, which meant he was safe until two in the morning, the hour when the Cheka came to call. Or perhaps that would happen the following night, or the one after that.

  Malkin went back to his office and telephoned his wife, “I will be home soon,” he said.

  She knew what that meant—he was still a free man. “I will have dinner waiting,” she said. Thank God.

  At the Oficina Técnica, Max de Lyon received a telephone call from a man called Morand, the Odessa gangster’s confidential agent in Paris. “I have a telegram for you,” Morand said. “I assume it’s important so you may want to come over here and collect it. I’m at 12, rue de Liège, one flight up.”

  De Lyon took a taxi to the address, and found the office easily enough—a sign painted on the pebbled glass door said J. P. MORAND, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS. De Lyon knocked at the door, which opened to reveal a man who, as Vadik had said, looked something like Oliver Hardy—the resemblance evidently appealed to the detective because he had grown a duplicate of the comedian’s little mustache. Standing at his side was a woman, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Morand acknowledged de Lyon with a glance and said to the woman, “Now, now, my dear, don’t cry, I’m sure it will all work out for the best.”

  Trying to hold back the tears, she nodded, and closed the door behind her.

  As Morand showed de Lyon into the office, he said, “That’s the worst part of this job, but it pays the rent. So, you are Monsieur de Lyon?”

  “I am.”

  “Here is a telegram from Vadik—I didn’t want to use his name on the phone. It supposedly comes from a Soviet trading company in Odessa.” Although Russians didn’t have enough to eat, the state needed hard currency so they sold wheat abroad. Thus the wire was addressed to a grain brokerage in Paris, and said: We have found the variety of wheat you requested stop In future we will specify date of shipping stop signed R. Szapera for SovExportBuro Odessa.