by Alan Furst
They climbed to the third floor, turned left, walked slowly and silently to the office at the end of the hall, then stood on either side of the door. Serra took a revolver from his belt. He held it casually, like a familiar tool.
Very carefully, Ivanic leaned close to the pebbled glass window in the upper half of the door. But the music from the floor below made it hard to hear the small noises people make when they are alone, the sound of a chair, or a newspaper. He signaled to Serra that he couldn’t hear, then pointed to a place just below the keyhole.
“Typewriter?” Serra mouthed the word.
Ivanic shook his head.
Serra stood in front of the door, raised his leg. Ivanic gestured with his gun, Serra drove his foot against the door. A second time, a third, the glass cracked and the door flew open.
Ivanic went through the door in a crouch, turned left, then right. Nobody. Serra came in behind him. “Easy does it,” Ivanic said. “He’s not here.”
They searched the dark office, there were cigarette stubs in the ashtray, a typewriter, a few pages of scribbled notes, but no Kovar.
“Where could he go?” Serra said.
They had seen him enter the building at 7:30. As far as they knew, there was only the single door to the street, and they had watched that for an hour. Ivanic rested a finger on the receiver of a telephone on the desk. “Warned,” he said. “Otherwise, he would either be here, or he would have gone out the door to the street.”
“Still in the building?”
“He could be.” Ivanic thought it over. In the ballet studio? In some other office? Hopeless, he thought. “We can look on the roof,” he said.
They climbed the stairs to the roof, looked over the parapet into the empty street. Went down to the fifth floor, walked the endless labyrinth of hallways with titles lettered on the glass door panels; importers, detectives, matchmakers. Then, to be able to report that they’d done it, they searched all the other floors.
“The ballet studio?” Serra said.
Ivanic considered it. “Better not,” he said. “We couldn’t do it there, even if we did find him.” He checked his watch. “We’re supposed to be out of here by 9:20, we’ll just go see Weiss and tell him what happened.”
“Perhaps he went to another office.”
“Maybe. Let Weiss worry about it.”
Kovar waited until 10:20 before he left the building.
He’d been hard at work at 8:15, when the telephone rang. This had never happened before-wrong number, he thought. They’ll hang up. He let it go; ten, eleven, twelve rings. What if they heard it downstairs? He picked up the receiver, a man’s voice said “Kovar.”
The voice was measured, and without emotion.
It was a voice he didn’t recognize, certainly not Somet. It told him to leave the office immediately, to go to Room 408, the door would be unlocked. He was told to stay there until 10:00 P.M. Told he should not return to the office, told he should find a new place to live, not in Melun. “Kovar,” the voice said, “do you understand?”
He said “Yes,” the connection broke, the dial tone hummed. On the door of Room 408 it said JOUVET, below that, PROMOTIONS EX-TRAORDINAIRES. Inside, there were photos and press clippings on the wall. Later, he heard footsteps in the corridor, then saw a shadow on the glass. It paused a moment, then moved away.
Casson tried one hotel, then another, then a third. Hotel du Commerce, on the avenue Daumesnil, behind the Gare de Lyon. He was getting rather good at it now, he thought. A particular combination of seediness, anonymity, and old age-you had to develop a taste for it. Perfect-nobody would ever stay here. Except that every room was taken. He had to wait a day to get in.
4 March, a spring gale; rain blown sideways, the window rattled all night. Casson stayed awake until dawn, reading battered mysteries from the stalls on the Seine. He’d bought a radio, it crackled and hissed, but he could listen to piano concertos, sometimes jazz. A new life. Monsieur Marin, of the Hotel du Commerce, went out only rarely..
The next morning he walked to the railroad station, called Natalie and told her where Helene could find him. Then-finishing up old business-he tried the contact number for the SR. As he’d expected, the phone was not answered. Just to make sure, he dialed a second time, but he knew what would happen.
Which left him with one last telephone call, and that would be that.
But the liaison girl at the FTP contact number wanted him to meet her at a newsstand in an hour. Twenty years old, he guessed when he saw her, maybe younger. Earnest and intense, prepared to die to change the world. And, Casson thought, it would probably turn out that way. “I am called Emilie,” she said.
They walked through the 12th, up to Bastille, then into the dance-hall area around the rue de Lappe. Entered a nightclub by a cellar door at the bottom of a flight of steps. Strange in midmorning, canvas flats on a tiny stage, scenes of la vie parisienne: Eiffel Towers, flics blowing whistles, their cheeks puffed out.
Weiss was waiting for him at a table in the back.
“The way it looks right now,” Casson said, “I don’t think I can be of further use to you.”
“No? Does that mean that Vichy doesn’t want to talk to us?”
“Not through me.”
“Is this final?”
“Nothing’s final,” Casson said. “But that’s the way it is right now.”
“Was it what we asked? To let our people out of prison?”
Casson shook his head. “I was wondering,” he said, “what became of Sylvie?”
Weiss didn’t answer immediately. “You can contact us through Emilie,” he said. He paused a moment, then went on. “If it should happen that you get back in touch with your contacts in the SR, I want to make sure they know we are still very much in the market for weapons-that above everything else.”
“And the MAS 38’s?”
“We’re glad to have them, but there are still a number of cells that need to be armed. The way we saw it, the first delivery was a test of good faith. On both sides.”
“I’ve been reading the newspapers, but nothing’s mentioned.”
“They’ve been used. Well used.”
“In Paris?”
“Up north,” Weiss said. “And in Paris. Remember, what the Nazis permit the newspapers to print is what they want them to print.”
“Well, yes, that’s true.”
“Casson,” Weiss said. “I need guns. Thousands of them. Ammunition. Hand grenades. I want you to know we’re willing to take on any kind of operation if we can get them. Almost anything-I hope you understand me. Of course we’ll take the blame; blood-thirsty Bolshevik beasts and so forth. People see us that way, after all, so it almost doesn’t matter what we do. And then we are held responsible for the reprisals. Somebody must see how very useful that can be.”
Casson nodded.
“Talk to them, Casson. For the moment, the real war behind the lines is in the Ukraine and in Poland. We have to make more happen right here. We don’t want these Germans walking down the streets of Paris smiling and laughing, we don’t want them walking down the street at all. We want them on special buses, with motorcycle escorts, going off to some wretched cultural program staged just for them.”
“I’ll try,” Casson said. “I’ll do what I can. But please understand my part in this is probably over.”
“It may be,” Weiss said. “If it is, I want you to know we appreciate what you’ve done.”
“There is one favor I want to ask,” Casson said.
“Yes?”
“I have a friend, a Jew. She needs to get out of France. Can you help?”
“I’m sorry,” Weiss said. “There are escape lines, some of them run by the British, but it’s not something we do. From time to time, we’ll move somebody-a senior officer, a special operative-but mostly our people stay here and fight.”
“If you think of something, you’ll let me know?”
“I will.” Weiss looked at his watch. “I have to be o
n my way,” he said.
They stood, shook hands.
“Another meeting,” Casson said.
“Yes. Then, another.”
“It never ends,” Casson said.
“No,” Weiss said. “It never does.”
Casson walked toward the Metro. No help from the FTP, he thought. That leaves de la Barre.
He took the Metro to the 7th and headed for de la Barre’s apartment. When he reached the street, there was a Citroen traction-avant parked at the corner, the driver behind the wheel. Casson glanced at him, then looked away. He walked down the block, went past de la Barre’s doorway. At the other end of the street, a man was standing on the corner. Casson’s heart sank.
He went to a cafe and called de la Barre’s number. A woman answered. “Monsieur de la Barre, please.”
“One moment.”
A man came on the line. “Yes? This is de la Barre.”
Casson couldn’t be sure. It was the voice of an older man, maybe it was de la Barre, maybe not. “I’m interested in eighteenth-century texts,” Casson said. “Particularly physiognomy and anatomy.”
“Anything in particular?”
Casson improvised. “The illustrator Matinus, in Montpellier.”
“The best thing for you, monsieur, is to come and take a look at what I have. Do you know the address?”
“I do.”
“And you are?”
“Monsieur Brun.”
“When would you like to come, Monsieur Brun?”
“Perhaps this afternoon.”
“I look forward to meeting you.”
Casson hung up. Walked away as fast as he could. A trap, he thought. They would trace the call.
The following morning he went out to Luna Park and worked on the books. Lamy sat with him, telling him stories about the Shanghai tong wars of the 1920s. Then he said, “I think I can help you out, Marin. I’d like to spend Thursday afternoons with my girlfriend-I could use somebody to keep an eye on things here. It isn’t hard. Collect the money at night, just make sure nothing goes wrong. An extra six hours a week, maybe a little more. Want to try it?” Casson said he would.
Some people went to church, Casson went to the movies. It took him most of the afternoon to decide what to do-a monologue in bits and pieces. He sat through the German newsreel, straight from the propaganda Abteilung in the Hotel Meurice. Rommel’s Afrika Korps bouncing over the sand dunes of Libya, then taking Benghazi. A shot of a British tank on fire, a shot of a sign that gave the distance to Cairo. Then, the film. Three girls from Paris take their summer vacation at the beach, each of them, it seems…
He sat in the comforting darkness, amid the coughs and the steady whirr of the projector, pretending to wonder what to do. He knew, of course. He just kept telling himself he was a fool. Not a realist, not shrewd. The first article of faith in French society: il faut se defendre. Gospel. You must take care of yourself, first and foremost. Because, if you don’t, nobody else will. Marie-Claire had baited him, telling him about her friend who worked for de Gaulle. Maybe if she hadn’t said anything-no, that wasn’t true. He would have found another way. On the screen, young Maurice, too shy to reveal his love, leaves a bouquet of wildflowers on the doorstep. What’s this? The milkman’s donkey. Oh no, he’s eating them!
How had they found out about de la Barre? Probably interrogated the passengers after the ship burned in the harbor. One of de la Barre’s fugitives, papers a little wrong, a forced confession. Casson looked at his watch. Twenty minutes more, he might as well see how it ended.
Why me?
He didn’t know. It didn’t have to be that way-here was Lamy, offering him a way out. A nice little job, soon enough, for Monsieur Marin of the Hotel du Commerce.
The final shot, a beach in the moonlight. Not so bad, he thought. Long white waves rolling into the shore, breaking gently on the beach.
The movie theatre had a telephone; he called Marie-Claire.
She met him at a cafe, just after five. Bruno was back, she explained, they were having dinner at nine. Celebrating his victory. From now on, German officers, crooked bureaucrats, butter dealers, any of the suddenly rich, would be able to buy an Alfa Romeo.
Casson ordered Marie-Claire her customary Martini Rouge, with lemon. “You don’t seem in the mood for a celebration.”
“I’m not. It’s beginning to bother me, all this.” She made a face he knew all too well.
“He is what he is,” Casson said, sympathetic.
“Yes, he is.” She paused a moment. “Our part of the world, up in Passy, is coming apart, Jean-Claude. That’s really what’s going on. Half of my friends listen to de Gaulle on the radio, the other half keep portraits of Petain on the piano. Somehow, Bruno and I wound up on different sides.”
“That’s not so good.”
She looked sorrowful. “And it’s not just the couples, it’s everywhere, even in the same family-between sisters, between fathers and sons. It’s terrible, Jean-Claude. Terrible.”
“I know,” Casson said. “Marie-Claire, I would like to talk to the friend you mentioned. The one who has ties to the French in London.”
“Did I tell you who it was?”
“No.”
She gave him the look that meant I know you too well, Jean-Claude, you’re not going to like this. “It’s Jacques Gueze,” she said.
“Oh no.”
“That’s who it is.”
Casson knew him, had sat across from him at a dinner party back in the old days. After that, a handshake two or three times at some grande affaire. Casson hated him. Short and wide, prosperously fat, with thick glasses and tight, curly hair. He floated on waves of amour propre-boundless conceit, in measures rare even in France. He described himself as an ethnologist, no, there was more to it than that, it was better than that. Socio-ethnologist? Psycho-ethnologist? Anyhow, a hyphen. Now he remembered- gods, something about gods. He’d written a book about them.
“So,” Marie-Claire said, one eyebrow raised. “That’s it for you and the resistance?”
“Jacques Gueze? Did you think he was telling the truth?”
“Yes. I believed him.”
“All the time trying to get you in bed.”
“Trying hard. Puffed himself up like a pigeon, as I think I told you, but I declined. It seemed to me he would probably fuck like a pigeon.”
Casson laughed. “All right,” he said, a sigh in his voice. “Can you let him know?”
“Let him know what?”
“That I want to speak with him. You can say ‘confidentially.’ How can de Gaulle tolerate him?”
“De Gaulle does not exactly undervalue himself, Jean-Claude. I don’t know, but to him Jacques Gueze may seem perfectly normal.”
A message was left at the hotel the following day, a meeting at 8:20 by the St.-Paul Metro station. “We will go to dinner,” Gueze announced. “To Heininger. A choucroute, I think, for this weather.”
Casson was horrified. “I might see people who know me,” he said. “Maybe not the best idea.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Gueze said. “You’re with me.” The idea of doing without his choucroute was beneath consideration.
They walked a few blocks toward the place Bastille, to the Brasserie Heininger. Famous, infamous, a vast marble palace, glowing wood, golden light, waiters in fancy whiskers and green aprons, and scandale, as fragrant in the air as the grilled sausage.
“Table fourteen, jeune homme,” Gueze said to Papa Heininger, not at all a “young man,” who accepted the courteously rude appellation with a genial nod. Of course it was available, held nightly for customers powerful enough to know about it. Table fourteen- a small hole in the mirrored panel where an assassin had fired a machine gun on a spring evening when the Bulgarian headwaiter was murdered in the ladies’ WC. The table where an aristocratic Englishwoman had once recruited Russian spies. The table where, in the first months of the Occupation, the companion of a German naval officer had taken to shooting peas at oth
er diners, using a rolled-up carte des vins as a blowpipe. The table where, a year earlier, Casson-in the last days of life as himself-had dined with a German film executive and his friends.
A waiter appeared, Gueze rubbed his hands. “Choucroute, choucroute,” he said with a smile. “Beer, do you think?” he asked Casson.
“All right.”
“Alsatian,” Gueze said to the waiter. “Dark. Two right away, then two more-keep an eye on us and see when we’re ready.”
Casson looked around the room-a number of Germans in uniform, and at least two people he knew, both of them very busy talking and eating.
“So then,” Gueze said. “Marie-Claire tells me you’re thinking of joining up with us. Les fous de Grand Charles.” He laughed merrily at the name-Big Charlie’s lunatics.
“Maybe,” Casson said. “I’m not sure what I could do.”
“Don’t worry about that. There’s plenty to go around.” A small cloud crossed his face. “You don’t want to go to London, do you?”
“No, it hadn’t occurred to me.”
The cloud vanished. “Good, good. People show up at the office, they all want the big desk. I was back in August-a real circus. Where we need help, of course, is right here.”
“What kind of help do you need?”
“As a government in exile, we’ve had to start from the beginning. That includes what we call the BCRA-Bureau Centrale de Renseignements et d’Action. Essentially, we’re de Gaulle’s intelligence service. The money comes from the British, along with lots of advice, most of it useless, and sometimes an order, which we usually ignore.”
“And the Americans?”
“A sore point. The people in the State Department don’t like the general. Nothing new there, all sorts of people don’t like him.”
Gueze turned gloomy for a moment-de Gaulle’s personality didn’t make his life any easier-then smiled. “In May of ’40, when de Gaulle went up to Belgium, Weygand got so mad at him he threw him out! Threatened to have him arrested if he didn’t leave the front lines.” Gueze paused to enjoy the scene. “But all for the best, all for the best. We’re rid of that now, it’s in the past. What we are, my friend, is the future.”
