Under Occupation

by Alan Furst

  Montrésor nodded, not sorry to hear bad news for the Gestapo, but his face was tense with anxiety. “They’ve been here twice, they’ve been to my house in Neuilly, you are a much-wanted man.”

  “I need somewhere to hide.”

  “Not in Paris. Not in France. You have to get out of the country.”

  Ricard took a deep breath, Montrésor was right and Ricard knew it.

  “The word is around that you’re an English spy,” Montrésor said.

  “Well, I’ve…done things. For the Resistance.”

  “Then they’ll have to hide you. Because when the Gestapo finds out that someone hid you, that’s the end of him and his family. The Germans are worse every day, their appetite for cruelty…”

  “So, I shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’m sorry, Ricard, I’d like to help you, but…”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “This building has a back door that leads to an alley, you should use it.” Montrésor was silent, anxious for Ricard to leave.

  “Thank you, I’ll take the back door.”

  “Contact me when you’re safe,” Montrésor said.

  “I will,” Ricard said, and left the office.

  Finally, he decided he had to use the hotel where he had arranged to meet Leila, so climbed the hill to the Sainte-Geneviève church and the Panthéon and approached the reception desk.

  At the desk, he paid in advance for two nights. “Your passport, monsieur”…the clerk ran his finger over the signature in the guest register…“Ricard.” As Ricard handed over his passport, the clerk said, “Don’t worry yourself, monsieur. The police pick them up every night and return them in the morning.”

  “Yes. I know,” Ricard said.

  The clerk gave him a big iron key on a wooden plaque that said CHAMBRE 18.

  Ricard climbed the stairs, looked around the room, then, valise in hand, went back downstairs and headed for the post office where they asked to see his passport before he entered the telephone booth, so he went off to find a café with a telephone. As usual, Leila’s contact number was answered by a woman’s voice, and Ricard gave her the name of his hotel. Then he called a friend, another writer, who said, “Don’t call here again, Ricard,” and hung up. The Gestapo’s dossier, Ricard thought, had better information than he’d realized. He tried another friend, a friend from his time at the Sorbonne, whose wife answered and said, “I’ll tell him you called. He’ll surely call you back,” but she did not ask for a telephone number.

  Desperate, Ricard went back to the hotel where, at the reception desk, the clerk was speaking on the telephone, his voice low and confidential. When he’d hung up, Ricard said, “I’m leaving the hotel, give me back my passport.”

  “Oh, monsieur, I regret…”

  Ricard unbuckled his valise and put the muzzle of the 7.65 under the clerk’s chin, forcing his head back. “Give it to me, you sneaky little bastard, or I’ll blow the top of your head off.”

  The clerk, with trembling hands, returned his passport. “We’ll see you after the war,” Ricard said, and walked quickly out the door.

  Now he couldn’t wait for Leila at the hotel, but he could, he thought, intercept her when she arrived. There was a small park across the street, and, as the snow drifted down, Ricard sat on a bench that faced the doorway of the hotel. It was after five, a night as black as any Ricard remembered, but he could see the hotel well enough. Where is she, he thought. As he waited, the cold began to work its way through his overcoat and he pulled it tighter. People sometimes died of the cold in Paris when they had nowhere to shelter—the newspapers noted the death with one paragraph: Monsieur X, sometimes Madame X, was found frozen to death in an alley, in a doorway, sitting on a bench in the park. A still figure, Ricard thought, face glazed with ice.

  An hour passed and it was getting colder as the evening wore on. If he went to a café, he might miss Leila, and she was now his only hope to get out of Paris, to get out of France. The Gestapo was watching the railway stations but, he thought, Leila would know a way around that. Again he looked at his watch, five hours until curfew, but curfew didn’t matter when it came to an operative like Leila.

  Ricard clapped his hands together in order to warm them, the cold had seeped through his gloves, and his fingers were stiff and numb. How much longer could he last? He rose from the bench and walked around the perimeter of the park. And realized that his feet were damp—the melting snow was soaking its way through his shoes. All he could do now was find a café with a telephone and try Leila’s number again.

  Halfway down the hill, a student café, crowded on a cold night because, when there wasn’t enough heat in an apartment, a café with a wood or kerosene stove was a refuge. Ricard sat at the bar—all the tables were taken—and ordered a brandy. The barman stared at him, poured out his brandy, and slid it across the zinc bar. Then, without speaking, he handed Ricard a sheet of paper. A Gestapo circular with a faded photograph at the top, a mimeographed photograph of poor quality, but it was him. In the text below, a reward of ten thousand francs was offered for information leading to the arrest of Paul Ricard, of 9, Rue de la Huchette. Ricard handed the circular back to the barman, who said, “Drink your brandy, monsieur, one needs something on a night like this, but then you’ll have to go.”

  “I understand,” Ricard said, slugged down his brandy, went back out into the night, and returned to the park across from the hotel. A few minutes later, a black Citroën pulled up to the door of the hotel and two men in suits entered. Gestapo. That bastard of a reception clerk had called the police, Ricard thought, he had been denounced. Nothing new in Paris, but now it was his turn. And he could only hope that Leila hadn’t visited the hotel in his absence. What if she had? What if she’d asked for him at the reception desk? What if the Gestapo was there for her?

  Sick at heart, he waited. Five minutes went by, then ten. At last, the two Gestapo men left the hotel and returned to their car. Ricard squatted down behind a bench as the Citroën’s lights illuminated the park. Then the lights disappeared as the car turned onto another street. Just the two of them, he thought. No Leila.

  Again, he began to walk. The fierce cold burning the skin of his face, the powdery snow sometimes lifted by the wind and sent dancing in the air. So then, he thought, if Leila was not coming to his rescue, that left Adrian, his last chance. What had Adrian said, in their last conversation?

  “Get on a train, go somewhere.” What if Adrian had done that very thing, in response to the Solitaire warning?

  Ricard returned to the student café, where the barman was not happy to see him. So Ricard was contrite, apologetic—eating crow was, after all, preferable to freezing to death. “Forgive me, monsieur, it’s the occupation, it’s made me forget my manners.”

  “You’ll get into trouble if you go on that way,” the barman said.

  “Yes, you are right. I apologize.” Ricard extended his hand and, after a beat, the barman took it in his own. “I would be very grateful if you would permit me to use the telephone.”

  “Very well,” the barman said, not entirely appeased.

  Ricard lifted the receiver and dialed Leila’s number, but there was no answer. Then he tried Adrian. The telephone rang and rang, nobody answered. I dialed the wrong number, Ricard thought, and tried again, with the same result. He looked at his watch, it was now nine twenty-five, the eleven o’clock curfew was approaching and that would mean real trouble.

  Ricard looked around the café and saw a girl, likely a student, sitting alone at a table. Ricard ordered a coffee, took it over to the girl’s table, and said, “Do you mind if I join you? It’s crowded in here tonight.”

  The girl considered it, then said, “Avec plaisir, monsieur.” She didn’t mean the words, with pleasure; her response was a formula. Still, he sat down, took off his wet gloves, and wrapped his ice-cold hands arou
nd the warm cup.

  Ricard saw that the girl had nearly finished her glass of red wine and said, “Mademoiselle, would you permit me to buy you another wine?”

  The girl looked at her watch and scowled. “I must go back to my room, but…if you want to, I would appreciate it.”

  Ricard went to the bar and brought back two glasses of wine. “What brings you out in the storm?” Ricard said.

  The girl shrugged. “I couldn’t bear to stay in that little room any longer, so I called a friend, but he hasn’t shown up.”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “Oh, of a sort. What brings you out tonight, monsieur…?”

  “Ricard. Paul Ricard.”

  “I’m called Sabine.”

  “What brings me out in the storm, Sabine, is that I’m locked out of my apartment, so I’m trying to figure out where to go. All the hotels are full.”

  “You really have nowhere to stay?” Again, she looked at her watch. “Curfew will be in a little while, you’ll have to go somewhere.”

  Ricard shrugged and smiled. She was a pretty girl, he thought, with thick, black hair and full lips—not pink, almost red, even though she wore no lipstick.

  “Well,” Sabine said, “I have a room, not much, a student room, but you can stay there tonight.”

  “That would be very kind of you,” Ricard said, gratitude warming his heart.

  Sabine laughed. “Wait till you see the room, maybe you won’t be so grateful.” Preparing to go out into the storm, she drew a red wool muffler around her face, just below her eyes, and pulled her hat, a roomy version of a beret, down to her eyebrows. “Now I’m ready,” she said.

  As Ricard prepared to go, he said, “It might not be a good idea to have me in your room. The Gestapo is after me, so you could get into real trouble.”

  “Let’s go,” she said. “I can’t worry about the Boche, because that’s what they want me to do.” As they approached the door, Sabine said, “What did you do to get the Boche after you?”

  “Better if I don’t tell you, but they would really like to arrest me.”

  Out on the street, the two bent against the wind, walking carefully in the snow. “I’m already cold,” Sabine said. “Put your arm around my shoulders.” As Ricard held her, she drew him against her by circling her arm around his waist. “There,” she said. “Now we look like a couple. A nice student couple. What is it you do, Paul?”

  “I write books.”

  “I don’t think I’ve read them,” she said. “In my literature class, we only go to the nineteenth century: Stendhal, the poet Gautier. Are you famous?”

  “Well known, for what I do, I’m a genre novelist. I write about detectives and spies.”

  Sabine turned them right on the Rue Saint-Jacques. “Not far now,” she said.

  From some distance, Ricard heard the rumble of a powerful engine. Sabine stopped and said, “What’s that?”

  “A Citroën Traction Avant. The SS favorite.”

  Ricard knew that the officers in the Gestapo car were looking for him. He could hear the car stop, then the slam of a door and, after half a minute, the door slammed again, and the Citroën moved down the street. It was difficult for Ricard to hear over the sound of the wind, and standing still, trying to pick up direction, was the only way to do it. First, the sound moved closer, and Sabine put a hand on his arm, then the car stopped again, an officer searching the shadowed doorways, he thought—then it moved away.

  Suddenly, a blast of sound rose above the wind, a loud-hailer, a bullhorn. The voice had the metallic ring of speech amplified by a microphone:

  “Ricard, we know you’re out here. Give yourself up and it will go easier for you.”

  “Let’s try for your room,” Ricard whispered.

  They set off up the Rue Saint-Jacques, past shuttered stores and restaurants—the owners had, because of the storm, gone home. Ricard and Sabine tried to walk quickly over the frozen snow. Then, a single word from the loud-hailer: “Halt!”

  The Citroën was, Ricard guessed, maybe a block away, but they had been seen. Ricard knelt down and started to open his valise, meaning to get hold of the 7.65 automatic and try to chase the Citroën away. Then shots rang out, four or five, and, instinctively, Ricard stood and started to run, Sabine at his side. A few seconds later, Ricard slipped and fell facedown on the snow. “Are you wounded?” Sabine said.

  “No,” Ricard said, “I fell.”

  Then Sabine sank down to her knees. “I am shot,” she said. “Merde, it hurts. Help me, Paul.”

  Desperately, Ricard looked around him and saw a small park, the Jardins de Navarre, it was called. In the spring, he’d sat on a bench there and read a book. Now he said, “Can you walk?”

  “Yes. I have to.”

  Ricard helped her to her feet and they ran toward the park. This didn’t take much time, just enough for another Halt! from the Gestapo officer.

  As they entered the park, Ricard looked desperately for a place to hide.

  A moment later he saw the fountain—turned off for the winter. But fountains, he knew, had an operating apparatus hidden beneath them. “Over there,” Ricard said, but, as he started to move, Sabine again sank to her knees.

  “Save yourself, Paul,” she said.

  “No,” Ricard said, and hauled Sabine to her feet as she gasped from the pain. As they reached the fountain, there were more shots fired from the Citroën, but Ricard barely noticed. Beneath the fountain, an old wooden door. Ricard pushed against it, but it was locked. Then he stood on one leg and smashed his heel against the door, in the place where he calculated the lock would be, and the door opened.

  The Gestapo looked for them in the park. Through cracks at the edge of the door, Ricard could see flashlight beams, hunting this way and that, and at one point, a Gestapo officer stood somewhere nearby and said, in German-accented French, his voice loud, “Well, I guess they’re not here.” Then, a few minutes later, with the icy cold and the wind, they’d had enough of searching and went off to find different victims.

  Ricard and Sabine made it back to Sabine’s room on the Rue Saint-Jacques, where Sabine took her shirt off and Ricard got a look at the bullet wound, in Sabine’s back, just below her shoulder blade. It had bled very little, and they both thought this had something to do with the cold. “Do you have a telephone?” Ricard said.

  “On a little table, at the foot of the stairs.”

  Ricard called Leila’s number, left a message, and Leila immediately called back. “I’m with a friend who has a bullet wound and we need a doctor.”

  “It’s after curfew,” Leila said. “Can it wait?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Give me the address and wait in the vestibule, a panel truck will pick you up and take you to a doctor.”

  “A panel truck? After curfew?”

  “He has papers that say he delivers medical supplies, he can go anywhere at any time.”

  * * *

  —

  The doctor’s office was in the Avenue Montaigne, which meant a wealthy, upper-class clientele. Ricard rang the bell, and the doctor himself let them in, the concierge gone for the night. The doctor had white hair, was maybe sixty, and was wearing a plaid bathrobe and pajamas. “Come in,” he said. “Your friend is waiting for you.”

  As the doctor took Sabine into his examining room, Ricard and Leila sat on a couch in the office reception.

  “Will your friend be alright?” Leila said.

  “I think so. I had a look at the wound, the bullet hit at an angle, maybe came out somewhere in her armpit, though I didn’t see anything there. She’s lucky; if the bullet had entered in a straight line it would have gone through her heart.”

  “How do you come to know her?”

  “I don’t. I couldn’t go home, I still can’t, can’t go anywher
e without being caught, there are circulars posted all over Paris. Anyhow, I was in a café near the Mont Sainte-Geneviève and she said I could stay in her room. On the way there, the Boche caught up to us and fired a few shots—I doubt they know they hit anything.”

  “The Gestapo guards every hospital and clinic in Paris, looking for gunshot wounds.”

  “I know. Thank heaven for the doctor,” Ricard said.

  “Yes, he’s a well-known internist but, at night, he’s a Resistance doctor.”

  Leila paused a moment, then said, “I have news to relay to you, Ricard, important news, from the people in London, the civil servants who run at least some of the networks, the escape lines, the safe houses, all of it. They have asked me to tell you that, for the moment, at least, your days of fighting the occupation are over. You’re now like some kind of poisonous plant, it’s not safe to be anywhere near you, so it’s time to go, to leave France. You can refuse, of course, they will accept your answer politely, but, if it’s the wrong answer, if it’s No, I won’t, you’ll be dead in an hour. That’s how it has to be done, chéri, I’m sure you understand.”

  Ricard thought it over, what it would mean to him, and then said, “If I have to run, Leila, will you run with me?”

  “I will. I’m in love with you, Ricard, I won’t let you go.”

  “And Kasia?”

  “She must also leave, she’s being told as we sit here.”

  “Alright, Leila, we’ll run. Where will we be safe?”

  “Spain, at first, then, in time, Istanbul. My family will take care of us, and Turkey is a neutral state, so you’ll be safe there.”

  “And when do we leave?”

  “Tomorrow. The doctor will let us stay here overnight.”

  * * *

  —

  Kasia traveled west, crossing the frontier into Switzerland, in time reaching a chalet, deep in the mountains, where a very rich woman friend meant to wait out the war. Kasia was greeted warmly, by good friends from Paris, and given a glass of well-aged Burgundy. “Will you go back to Paris?” her friend asked.