The Alex Kovacs Series Box Set

by Richard Wake

  Manon grabbed my hand, but she knew I was right. A priest had showed up at the silk factory after work hours. If anyone saw it, and thought about it for more than a second, a phone call could lead to another phone call, and to trouble. So I didn’t have much time to tell her about my plan to kill Vogl.

  Again, she put aside her emotions and listened intently. She was a professional spy, after all — or at least she had been at the start of the war, before she grew sick of the incompetence of her bosses in Zurich. She understood why I’d spent three weeks attempting to discern a pattern in Vogl’s activities. She immediately dismissed the idea of doing anything to him after his work day was over.

  “It’s too erratic,” she said. “You could never plan something and be confident it would take place. And you can’t leave your ass hanging out too long here. It has to be quick.”

  “So you agree?”

  “I don’t know the plan yet because you don’t know the plan yet,” she said. “But the concept, yes. I agree. It scares the hell out of me but, yes, I agree. Because the way you’re living now is no way to live.”

  “We could just try to make a run for it,” I said. “Back to Switzerland. Or to Spain.”

  “I don’t run,” she said. “You know that.”

  “I know, but with the baby—”

  “We don’t run,” she said. “Besides, you’ve already been chased from Austria to Czechoslovakia to Switzerland to France — and Vogl is still there, still after you. Enough. You’d have to get to America to get away from him — and what are the odds? No. And I don’t run.”

  We talked some more about what I had seen. She agreed with what had become my preliminary thought, that the time when he was walking the dog on Fridays likely made the most sense because it was the most predictable.

  “Night is best,” she said. “It’s better than in the morning. Nothing there? Nothing at night? No pattern at all? I know he leaves work at erratic hours, but is there no cigarette on the front steps of the hotel before bed? Nothing like that?”

  “Sometimes he goes out to eat,” I said. “At least I think it’s out to eat. A driver takes him somewhere at dinnertime and brings him back about two hours later. But I had no way to follow him in a car. And it was only twice in three weeks.”

  “No, that won’t do — not enough information and too random,” she said.

  “Look, I really should go,” I said, the plan unresolved. I looked over at the Roneo, which was finished. I leaned in for a whiff of the paper and Manon said, “Like every schoolboy.”

  We were avoiding the obvious, and neither of us spoke the words as we hugged in parting. The truth was, this might be the last time we ever saw each other. If the plan went well, and I killed Vogl, and I was able to escape detection, and I was able to convince the Resistance of my loyalty, Manon and I could be together again. But that was a lot of ifs, a string of contingencies. If even one of them failed to fall into place, we could be done. I could be dead, or on the run. And Manon had made it more than clear that she would not run.

  Into the silence that we shared, I broke the hug, gestured at the Roneo and said, “Let me take a bundle.”

  “Well…”

  “The usual?” This was a reference to the used bookstore without a name on Rue Romarin. The word “BOOKS” was stenciled on the plate-glass window in the front, and that was it. The woman behind the counter was named Marie, no last name. That was all I knew — other than that there was a big delivery slot in the back of the store, big enough to accommodate an oversized book. We would drop a tied bundle of the flyers through the slot, and she would handle distribution in the neighborhood. Marie took care of about 25 percent of our print run that way.

  I tied a bundle with some twine. Manon said, “You’re going as the priest?”

  “You might be right,” I said. “It’s bad enough to have been seen on the way in as a priest. On the way out would be worse. There are some coveralls here, right?”

  And so, dressed as a silk weaver who had just worked some overtime at the factory, I left with a small cardboard satchel filled with La Dure Vérité. I felt almost naked without the priest disguise, but at least it gave me something to worry about — better than thinking about how I had tried to memorize every line and imperfection on Manon’s face in the last few minutes I was with her.

  37

  It wasn’t curfew yet, but I still decided to travel to Rue Romarin through the traboules. Because while there was no reason for the Gestapo to stop a man carrying a small suitcase as he walked the streets of Lyon before curfew, there was no prohibition against them doing it, either. There really were no rules anymore, other than that they made the rules up as they went along, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

  So when I walked in the first door at Cour de Vaces, I just looked like somebody who lived in one of the apartments. And then I began my journey of repetition: down the 10-or-so steps, into the little courtyard at the base of the surrounding buildings, across the courtyard to one of the exits, down another couple of steps and through a dark passageway, out the door that led to the next narrow street, then across that street and into another nondescript door, then down another 10 or so steps.

  Over and over, that was the journey down from the hills of Croix-Rousse into the center of the city. For some reason, I allowed myself to take in a few of the details along the way — I guess because I didn’t feel as if I was being chased. And if I sensed any danger at all, there were a dozen places to hide the little suitcase in one of the traboules — behind one of the big earthenware planters in the one, planters that held palm trees, of all things; in the wooden box containing gardening tools in another; or maybe behind on a hook behind the wool tapestry that hung on one wall. I looked behind it to see if there was a hook and there was.

  There were traboules in old Lyon that were more beautiful than the ones in Croix-Rousse, mostly because old Lyon was once a truly wealthy district while Croix-Rousse was always working class. But the traboules in Croix-Rousse were still beautiful in their own ways, mostly because of those little touches inserted by the current residents, like the palm trees and the tapestry. But what really hit you was what they represented: the whiff of danger. If Max had been right, they were not about the architecture or about keeping the silk dry as it was transported down to the river. If he was right, the traboules were about the nefarious, and had been for centuries.

  I actually took my time — there was still plenty of time before the curfew. I could drop the flyers at the bookstore and easily be home to the flat. So it was actually a nice stroll, down and down, into the Cour de Vaces with the beautiful stone staircase, out on Montee Sainte-Sebastien, through the narrow street passage and in on Rue Imbert-Colomes, then out on Rue Des Tables Claudiennes, then in and out again on Rue Burdeau, down and down, then out on a street I still didn’t know and back in to the next house across the way, then out on Rue des Capucins, then across the street and in one more traboule, where the exit was on Rue Romarin. I opened the final door and the street was dark and deserted. There were so few people out at night anymore, even early in the evening. No one had any money to spend, and none of the restaurants had any food worth spending it on — and forget the bars. It was almost impossible to get drunk in Lyon anymore unless you made the wine yourself in the bathtub.

  The bookstore was one block down on the right. The lights were off in the front but, after I walked between buildings and to the back door, the light was on in the back of the shop. Then I saw Marie on the back steps, feeding two alley cats. She heard me and looked up, and I could tell that she recognized me before I could speak.

  “You keep feeding them and they’ll never go away,” I said.

  “Kind of like you people,” she said.

  I opened the suitcase and took out the bundle of flyers, leaving the cassock and the bashed-in hat. She held it in her hand as we talked. I asked about the danger of distributing the flyers and she shrugged.

  “One of the b
enefits of being an old woman is that no one looks at you for very long,” she said. Old women and priests, then. Who knew?

  “I can easily take about 20 or 30 sheets a day,” she said. “They fit nicely in the inside pocket of my coat. And even if there were a few lumps, well, who thinks twice about the lumps in an old lady’s coat? I have some regulars who I know want them, and the rest, I just stick them in mail slots, or maybe leave one in the slats of a park bench. This stack will be gone in a week, no problem.”

  “Do you think it makes a difference?” I said. It was the question I always asked myself, because other than Manon and one or two others, I never knew anybody who actually read what Manon put out. It was almost impossible for either of us to gauge the reaction. Was it meaningful, or were we shouting into the wind? We just didn’t know.

  “Here’s the way I look at it,” Marie said. “I have people who ask me for it and ask when the next one is coming. So those people are reading. I know that for sure. If they pass it along to somebody else — and I tell them all to do that — then between those second readers and the people who just find it in their mail slot one day, I think yes. I think it makes a difference. We all need something to hold on to. We all need some sign of hope. That’s what these are,” she said, holding up the bundle. “They’re hope.”

  “I can’t tell you how much it means to hear that,” I said. My voice cracked at the end, as I thought about how happy Manon would be to know what Marie had said, and wondered whether I would ever be able to tell her.

  “Put it this way,” Marie said. “I wouldn’t take the risk if I didn’t believe it was helping. I mean, I might be old but I don’t have a death wish.”

  I left her with the bundle, and the cats, and with a kiss on each cheek. I still had time to get home to the flat, but I had to get to the journey. Curfew wasn’t for an hour and there were about two miles to walk. It wouldn’t be a problem, but I needed to get started, especially if I wanted to give myself time for the odd detour, just to be sure I wasn’t being followed.

  I walked back through the alley and turned right onto Rue Romarin. I hadn’t walked for two minutes when the black Citroen pulled over next to me, tires squealing, and the two uniforms invited me to sit between them in the big back seat. The black trench coat in the passenger seat welcomed me with, “Nice to see you tonight, Herr Kovacs.”

  38

  We drove for about five minutes, south from the center of the city into the old part of Lyon. Other than the initial greeting from the trench coat, using my real name, no one said anything. Traffic was less than half of what it used to be even during the day, given the scarcity of petrol, and it was almost non-existent at that time of night, so close to the curfew. The only other car that we passed was another black Citroen, and each honked to the other as a greeting.

  The car stopped in front of an old bouchon. I didn’t know exactly where we were, but I did see a church steeple looming behind the restaurant. I think it was Saint George’s. The light from the restaurant shone through the big front window and splashed onto the sidewalk. There appeared to be a half-dozen tables occupied, most in twos and threes, all in black uniforms. In a world of rationing, the Gestapo were the only ones who routinely ate well.

  The two uniforms and the trench coat escorted me inside. I was taken to the only table that was occupied by a single individual. It was Werner Vogl.

  “Alex, Alex, please join me,” he said, half-standing then returning to his seat. The napkin was tucked into his shirt beneath his chin, like a bib.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, that’ll be all,” he said to the three henchmen who had transported me. They were gone and I was sitting there, right near the front window, and Vogl was waving for the waitress to bring me a plate.

  “No thank you,” I said. It was half-hearted, though, and Vogl told the waitress, “No, leave it. He might change his mind.”

  It was an old place, as the bouchons tended to be. Rustic did not begin to describe the main dining room. The ceiling was held up by rough, exposed wooden beams — but they had been haphazardly reinforced in places. The table were all the same, about 30 inches square, but the chairs were mismatched, some cane back, some solid, all worn. The floor was made of wood planks, the wood in a bit better shape than the ceiling beams. For decoration, a wagon wheel hung on one wall.

  In the center of the room, there was an iron spiral staircase — down to the kitchen, up to a loft. When I asked to use the bathroom, Vogl said “certainly” and pointed me up the steps, where the loft contained the toilet, about 10 more tables, and an impressive wave of hot air that had risen from the kitchen and though the main dining room.

  There also was a private dining room on the main floor as well as a small bar. When I came back from the bathroom, every time I saw someone look in as they scurried past on the way home before the curfew, I so wished we were in that back room rather than in the front window. There was an ancient grandfather sitting on an elevated stool behind the bar, and he was sleepily taking in everything, too, especially me. The waitresses were a mother and daughter who sounded as if they were quietly bickering about the daughter’s latest boyfriend. It was a running argument playing out over time, a few words here, a few there, in between restaurant conversation about water pitchers and bread baskets. But they, too, were looking me up and down. Vogl noticed, too.

  “You do seem to be attracting some attention,” he said. “I guess they don’t get many civilians in here anymore.”

  The food was plain, delicious and massive. Just the bread basket, with real butter, would normally have fed me for two days. The salad Lyonnaise made me want to cry — lettuce, other greens, onions, two quarters of a tomato, croutons, a beautiful poached egg on top and enough bits of bacon mixed throughout — real bacon, meat not just fat, some in every bite.

  “Are you sure?” Vogl said, as they took the half-eaten salad and brought the next course. I just shook my head reflexively.

  The quenelle that came next was perfect. Big and fat, cooked in its own dish, swimming in a sea of cheesy fish sauce just made for the bread to wipe clean. Served along with a big plate of grilled vegetables and a mound of rice, crowned by a dollop of tomato sauce.

  Then came the dessert. It was crème brûlée, the sugar burned on top. Sugar! You needed cream and eggs to make the creme which meant it was impossible to make in Lyon in 1943, but the burned sugar on top — well, let’s just say that you couldn’t duplicate it with saccharine.

  He offered again. I declined again. But when the waitress brought the coffee, I couldn’t resist. I had not had real coffee in months, maybe a year. I missed it more than the wine sometimes. One cup, I figured. It was only a small sin.

  “Finally,” Vogl said. “Here, here, have some cream with it.”

  Coffee with cream. Okay, two small sins. I think I might have moaned after I took the first sip. But Vogl snapped me out of my brief ecstasy.

  “So, Alex, it has been too long,” he said. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “In case you were wondering, the Gestapo never believed the result of that little trial we had. They protected me from any real punishment. And after a few months, all was forgotten.”

  I wanted to tell him that I already knew that, but thought better of it. There was no advantage to be gained, and only the possibility of raising his antennae. I took another sip of the coffee instead. I don’t know what it said about me, but I was staring at my potential executioner across the table and still determined to finish the coffee before it turned cold.

  “So I had a choice,” Vogl said. He began talking about Fritz Ritter, the Abwehr general who was really the traitor to Germany, the old friend of my uncle who used me as bait in an elaborate frame-up of Vogl. I had not seen Ritter since 1940 and wondered if he were alive or dead. When Vogl kept referring to him in the present tense, I was slightly cheered.

  “I could either go after him and get my revenge that way, or I could go after you,” Vogl said. But Ritter was too complicated a maneuver becaus
e he was traveling constantly with the Abwehr and because the Abwehr rivalry against the Gestapo would always add a layer of protection.

  “You, on the other hand, were unprotected,” he said. With that, he inhaled an impolitely big spoonful of crème brûlée and then wiped the corners of his mouth with the bib.

  “Unprotected,” he said again.

  Other than to ask for the bathroom, I’m not sure I had said much of anything since sitting down. If he was waiting for some kind of reply, I had none. He was right — I was unprotected. I thought he didn’t know the half of it, that I was in both the Gestapo’s sights and the Resistance’s sights. But I shouldn’t have been so naïve.

  “You’re probably wondering by now,” he said. “You’re wondering why we keep arresting you and keep letting you go. You’re wondering why I just looked at you out of the window that day. It’s really simple. I’m going to get my revenge by letting your own people kill you.”

  I had considered this, in my most despairing moments, but had rejected the notion because the Gestapo were never about art. They were about brutality, and they were about delivering the brutality themselves.

  But this was Vogl, who used to attempt to offer academic comparisons to me between the Roman Empire and the Third Reich. He was, I had to admit, a different kind of Nazi. Thinking about it, and about him, it all began to make sense.

  “You know, we’re sitting so near the window for a reason,” he said, pointing out toward the street. “The Resistance keeps track of us everywhere. I know that, Barbie knows that — he eats in public restaurants, too, just to taunt them. They walk by the windows and take attendance whenever I am here. It is the same faces every time. They think they are so clever, but I don’t care. And now they have seen you. And at least a few of them have seen you drinking coffee. And one or two more will see you leaving by yourself in about five minutes.

  “Twice now, you have been released from Avenue Berthelot while your sabotage partners have been beaten or even killed.”