“Well, what’s the business, then?” Murchie said. “We’d better be quick about it. I’m half sure I was tailed here by a Bureau man. You can always tell them, can’t you? Short and shifty, terrible taste in suits.”
“Here’s the business,” Varian said. “I’ve promised to help you get your men out, and I’ll continue to do so, whether Vichy considers it treason or not. And in return, I’ve a small favor to ask. I need a particularly reliable officer to escort one of our own men to Africa, a young German who’ll be traveling in the guise of a Brit. With one of those cards Vinciléoni has been getting you, only we won’t tell him who we’re really putting on the ship. We’ll simply pretend he’s one of yours.”
Murchie blinked his pale-lashed eyes. “Sorry to disappoint, Mr. Fry, but I can’t do anything of the sort. I’m under strict orders to cut off all communication with you. This meeting must be our last.”
“But what about your men, Captain? Would you strand them here in Marseille? I’m your connection to those boats to Oran and Casablanca. You understand that, don’t you?”
“We’re grateful for all you’ve done, truly. But High Command won’t take responsibility for your neck. I assure you, it’s not a matter of altruism. They believe that our desire to protect you might conflict with our own interests.”
“But this runs against your interests! Without those boats—”
“My orders are clear, and they come straight from Admiralty. All rescue activities conjunct Centre Américain to cease at once. It’s entirely out of my power.”
“But Captain, if you’ll permit me—this particular client—”
“We can’t be a party to it, I’m afraid. And I wouldn’t go hoodwinking Vinciléoni if I were you, either. He’ll kill you as soon as look at you.”
“But this one man, Captain. I beg you. One more run to Oran, that’s all. If I could be more candid about my reasons, about the deep urgency of the matter—”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t make a difference. I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Fry. We’re deeply obliged to you, of course, for all you’ve done.”
Varian’s pulse pounded in his temples, his mind already spinning wildly from the wine. “If you’re truly obliged to us,” he said, “would you at least consider helping our man once he arrives in Oran, if I could find another way to get him there? Could one of your men look out for him while he gets his visa? It’s just that he’s quite young, and his work is so very essential—to all of us, perhaps.”
Murchie turned his glass on the scarred table. “You’re a stubborn man, Mr. Fry. I say that with admiration.”
“I’ve been accused of possessing that quality, yes.”
The captain blinked his pale-lashed eyes with maddening slowness. “Just what is it that’s so pressing about this young man’s case?”
Varian leaned close and spoke in his lowest tone. “He’s an escapee from Vernet, wanted by the French and Germans both. A physicist, a young genius whose talents could be put to dangerous use if he were to fall into the wrong hands. I believe he’d die first, but they wouldn’t give up easily—he’s got a mother in Berlin, and who knows what they’d do to her? Can’t you help, Captain? What would it cost you?”
Murchie put a fist to his mouth and coughed. “Well,” he said. “Well.”
Varian sensed the balance tipping in his favor. “If we get this boy to the States, all his power will be on our side. It’ll be our military putting him to use, not theirs.”
“Your military’s not involved in this war,” Murchie said, with some bitterness.
“How long do you think that’ll hold? It’s only their own shortsightedness keeping them out of it.”
“I’d have to find a way to get a message to our people in Oran, if that’s where you send him,” Murchie said, contemplating. “Can’t cable, of course.”
“We sometimes slip a scroll of paper into a toothpaste tube, send it with one of our refugees,” Varian said. “Tube-o-gram.”
“Clever.”
“What do you say, then, Captain? May I rely on you?”
Murchie gave an almost imperceptible nod, looking down the length of his equine nose. “But we can’t meet again, Mr. Fry, not in person. Not on this continent, anyway.”
* * *
________
Of course, Varian thought as he walked back toward the boulevard Garibaldi, of course there must be another way to get Tobias to Oran. Africa lay a few hundred miles distant, a mere day’s journey. The obvious thing was to consult Captain Deschamps. The Sinaïa was due to arrive in three days; Deschamps had agreed to contact Varian as soon as he landed. Perhaps he could be persuaded to take another clandestine passenger as far as the coast of Africa. Tobias would be safe, or at least as safe as could be managed, traveling under Zilberman’s care. Wasn’t that the obvious solution? Why had it not occurred to him before? He knew the answer, and he didn’t like to consider it: he didn’t want to risk two of his most valuable clients on an untried route. But he also knew that to hesitate might be fatal.
When he arrived at the office, he found Grant pacing the front room in a state of high agitation, the back of his linen shirt soaked through, his skin damp and flushed, as if he’d run all the way from the train. They were alone; it was nearly eight o’clock by now. Varian took his hand and brought him into his own private bureau.
“What is it?” he said, half-sitting on the desk. “You’re in a state.”
Grant, swaying before the desk, put his hands through his hair. “We’ve had a visit from the police at Air Bel,” he said. “This afternoon. They came in two cars—six officers—and turned everything inside out. Every canister in the pantry, every drawer, every suitcase—”
“The attic…?”
“They didn’t find Tobias. He was out on one of his rambles. And Zilberman had the wherewithal to hide himself and the Flight Portfolio in the root cellar.”
“Did they arrest anyone?”
“No, though they rather annoyed Mary Jayne and harassed old Killer.”
“God, is he back? If only they’d arrested him! Did they say what they wanted?”
“They’d had a tip about a clandestine radio transmitter, they said.”
Varian couldn’t help but smile at that. “Now, there’s an idea. Maybe we should get one.”
“Oh, yes, let’s. We can have our own variety show.”
“Did they take anything?”
“I wish I knew! They wouldn’t let me follow them through the house.”
“Well, all’s well that ends well, it sounds like. No one arrested, at least.”
But Grant’s agitation hadn’t passed. “We’ve got to get Tobias off the continent. What if he’d been home?”
“I know it, Grant. I came just now from a meeting with Archibald Murchie.”
“Then it’s all going forth?”
“Well, not precisely. Or not exactly as planned. Murchie won’t let us send Tobias in the guise of one of his men. The Brits won’t use Vinciléoni’s route at all anymore, in fact. So we’ve got to find another way for Tobias to travel.”
“What other way is there?”
“I want to put him on the Sinaïa with Zilberman,” Varian said. “I hope I can get Deschamps to agree.”
“Do you think you can? Just to Africa, or all the way to Martinique?”
“Tobias can’t get a U.S. visa before the Sinaïa sails. So it’ll have to be Africa. He can stay with Murchie’s crew while he gets the rest of his papers—I know Bingham can lubricate the process through his contacts there. Once it’s all set, Toby will leave for the States.”
“When does the Sinaïa dock?”
“Thursday.”
Grant went to the windowsill and looked down at the street below, where a hat vendor pushed a cart of trembling fedoras over the cobblestones. “And what if Deschamps won�
��t take them both?” he said. “Not even as far as Africa? I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to Tobias. Not after I sent that letter to Gregor. I can’t stand the thought of failing at that—failing him again.”
Varian sat down on the sill with Grant, smoothing the fine stripe of his suit as it lay along his thigh. Beneath the light wool, Grant’s skin felt unusually hot. Varian moved a hand to the back of Grant’s neck, then to his forehead.
“Why, Grant,” he said. “Do you feel unwell?”
Grant put a hand to his own head. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m sure it’s just the strain of it all—the raid, and my running here from the train.”
“Your skin’s burning hot. I believe you’ve got a fever. You’ve got to get home. Let me call a doctor for you.”
“A doctor for Dr. Grant!” Grant said, and gave a pained, truncated laugh. “Oh, my head! It figures, doesn’t it? Just as at school, always before the end of term. Remember when we had the influenza? Didn’t you help me study for a philosophy exam when we both had temperatures of a hundred and three?”
Varian put his own cool forehead against Grant’s. “I remember,” he said. “I remember everything, Skiff. Every single thing that happened.” How they’d both been half-delirious, how the words of Grant’s philosophy books had boiled up into a stew of unmeaning, how they’d held each other in the narrow bed in Varian’s room, shivering violently under every blanket they had.
“I’m calling the doctor,” he said now. “And I’m sending you home in a car.”
“A car! What car?”
“The one that was meant to transport poor Breitscheid and Hilferding.”
“But how can you get it?”
“I’ll telephone Vinciléoni.”
“Don’t move just yet,” Grant said. “I think this is helping my head.”
* * *
________
Half an hour later they were both seated in the back of the black Citroën, coursing through the streets of Marseille at a speed that seemed half-magical. Between them and the world, a veil of glass that damped all sound. How strange, he thought, how dreamlike, that back home in New York he had traveled by taxi almost daily; stranger still to think that he actually owned an automobile—not the yellow Packard that had dealt death to the Irish laborer all those years ago, but a glossy black Bentley, stabled at his parents’ house in Ridgewood. And would they fly along those rural roads someday, he and Grant, masters of that long sleek vehicle? Would they fly as they were flying now, through the city’s outskirts and into the countryside, over the cypress-lined roads toward La Pomme? Grant lay back against the seat, breathing shallowly; Varian dared to rest his hand beside Grant’s on the seat, his smallest finger embanked along Grant’s, tracking his fever as it rose.
Vinciléoni’s chauffeur said not a word when they arrived at Air Bel. In silence he opened the car door and helped Grant out of the deep back seat. When Varian tried to tip him for his services, he raised a hand as if to ward off insult, gave a half-bow, and took himself away in the long black car.
Mary Jayne met them at the kitchen door, her eyes widening.
“What’s happened?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“Grant’s ill,” Varian said. “Help me get him upstairs. Tell Madame Nouguet we need some cold compresses. The doctor should be along in a minute.”
“I’m fine,” Grant said, but halfway up the stairs he paused on the landing and bent at the waist. He coughed, staggered against Varian. “God, my chest!” he said, and brought a hand to his heart. “It hurts. It burns. I can scarcely breathe.”
Varian caught him under the arms and Mary Jayne held him around the waist, and together they walked him upstairs and into the bedroom. As Varian undressed him, Mary Jayne sat in the desk chair, averting her eyes from Grant’s long, sweat-pricked body, and narrated the events of that afternoon: how the two police cars had come roaring up the drive, sirens howling, as if some great crime were being committed at Air Bel; how the policemen had nearly broken down the door, then tramped in and begun pulling out every drawer and opening every cupboard, using the foulest language imaginable; how she and Grant had tried to stall them, insisting on seeing a search warrant, which of course they didn’t have; how the policemen had demanded to see the radio transmitter, threatening to arrest everyone if it wasn’t produced; how they’d interrogated Killer, who had convincingly portrayed ignorance on all subjects.
“You were brilliant, Mary Jayne,” Grant said, faintly, from the bed. He closed his eyes and lay back against the pillows. “And Madame Nouguet scolded—like a harpy. Made them—pick up everything they’d thrown down. Never seen such rudeness from anyone, she said.” He coughed again, curled in upon himself in pain. “God! What is this, Varian? What’s wrong with me?”
Madame Nouguet appeared in the doorway, carrying a bowl of water and some folded cloths. “You wanted these, Monsieur Fry?”
She lived for crises, Varian knew, for her quiet and wise-eyed role in them; he supposed he’d provided enough, during their tenure at Air Bel, to last her a good while. He took the bowl and cloths from her and laid them on the washstand, then wet a cloth and wrung it. As he applied it to Grant’s forehead, Grant closed his eyes. His breathing deepened, and he was asleep within moments.
“If you please, Madame Nouguet,” Varian said, adjusting the cloth. “I want you to go down to the cellar and dig up whatever roots and scraps might be left. And young Mr. Katznelson may be able to provide some foraged mushrooms. Mr. Grant’s got to have some food, some hot soup.”
“The odds and ends we’ve got can’t bring a man back to health,” Madame Nouguet said. “You need something with meat and bones.”
“You’re a worker of magic, madame,” Varian said. “I know you’ll do your best.”
“I’ll talk to Killer,” Mary Jayne said. “Maybe he can get something in town.”
Once they’d gone, Varian sat down in the bedside chair and put a hand to Grant’s forehead. He seemed hotter than ever; how long before the doctor would arrive? He tried to remember what his mother had done when he was sick. Made him lemon tea. Stroked the backs of his hands with her fingertips, saying it would cool him like a breeze. Longtime patient that she was, she had known how to nurse him; it was one of the few duties of motherhood he could remember her performing with alacrity and skill. He adjusted the cloth on Grant’s forehead minutely, hoping not to wake him.
Their room—he’d gotten used to thinking of it that way now—looked to have been hastily tidied by Madame Nouguet while Grant was in town; everything had been put away, though not in its usual place. Grant’s tortoiseshell comb stood upright between the bristles of Varian’s silver hairbrush, and Varian’s razor lay across Grant’s tin of shaving soap. Grant’s shirt and Varian’s jacket hung intersleeved on the back of the desk chair. Their separate books now sat on the desk in mixed piles, Faulkner and Marcus Aurelius layered with Baudelaire and Langston Hughes and several scholarly works on English verse. Two identical copies of Finnegans Wake made their own stack. Varian took the one on top—Grant’s, he could tell from his friend’s careless way with the spine of a book—and opened it to a late chapter where Grant had underlined a few lines: Amengst menlike trees walking or trees like angels weeping nobirdy aviar soar anywing to eagle it!…The form masculine. The gender feminine.
The doctor must have been watching from the doorway for some time before Varian noticed him; he cleared his throat, and Varian dropped the book.
“Please,” Varian said. “Come in.”
Grant woke at Varian’s voice; as he did, he put a hand to his chest. “Jesus,” he said. “God, it hurts! Like something clawing from the inside.”
The doctor set his bag on the spindle-legged table beside the fireplace, installed his monocle, adjusted the tips of his white mustache between his middle finger and thumb, and commenced his examination, to
which Grant submitted without a word, his large clear eyes raised to Varian’s. The doctor was a long time listening with his stethoscope. He asked Grant to sit up all the way, and then to lean forward slightly. When Grant did, the pain he’d been feeling seemed to abate. Then he drifted back down onto the pillow, only to bolt up holding his chest again, shouting.
“What is it?” Varian said, half-choked with terror. “Is it his heart?”
“There is a distinct—” and the doctor pronounced a few medical words in French that Varian couldn’t follow. Grant looked anxiously at the doctor, and he repeated the words in heavily accented English: “Three-component friction rub. Indication of acute pericarditis.” An inflammation of the sac that surrounded the heart, the doctor explained. Grant must be made to rest, for ten days at least. An upright or forward-leaning posture decreased the friction between the pericardium and the heart.
When Grant protested that he must be active, that there were people relying on his aid, the doctor inquired if he cared to live out the week. Grant leaned forward on his pillow and fixed his fever-glassed eyes on the doctor.
“En fait,” he said, “ma vie n’est plus la mienne. Elle appartient à quelqu’un d’autre.”
“Preserve yourself, then,” the doctor said, in a tone of paternal admonition. He dispensed a dose of aspirin to the patient, directed Varian to apply more cool cloths, and then put on his hat, instructing Varian to call at once if there was any change. The course of the virus could not be predicted, he said. Pericarditis could last for a matter of days, or it could go on for weeks. He would return in two days’ time unless Varian called sooner. Then he touched Varian’s shoulder and descended the stairs.
“Did he just say I might die?” Grant asked, faintly.
“I think he just meant to scare us.”
“But I do feel like I might die. Every time I breathe, it’s—like someone’s sandpapering my heart.”
“I’ll take that over a heart attack,” Varian said. He arranged Grant upright against the pillows and exhorted him to rest. Then he laid a new cool cloth over the patient’s eyes, reassuring him that he, Varian, would take care of everything; that Grant need not fear for Tobias Katznelson; and that, insofar as it was within his power, he would make sure that Gregor’s son got off the continent unharmed.
The Flight Portfolio Page 46
