by Alan Furst
Craveur was a famous restaurant owner, his family had been in the business since 1790, when the first restaurants were opened. Simic signaled to a waiter, a plate of petits fours salées—herring paste, oysters, or smoked salmon on puff pastry—appeared along with two large whiskey-and-sodas.
“It’s what I always have,” Simic confided. “Mm, take all you want,” he said, mouth full.
Casson sipped the whiskey-and-soda, lit up one of Simic’s Camel cigarettes, and sat back on a little gold chair with a gold cushion.
“Your name came up in a conversation I had,” Simic said. “With a man called Templeton. You know him, right? Works in a bank?”
“Yes.”
“He vouches for you.”
“He does?”
“Yes. And that’s important. Because, Casson, I still got Agna Film, but now I’m also a British spy.”
“Oh?”
“That’s how it is. You’re surprised?”
“Maybe a little.” Casson ate an oyster petit four.
“I’m a Hungarian, Casson. Not exactly by birth, you understand, but by nationality at birth. Still, Mitteleuropa, central Europe, is the world I understand, just like Adolf—so I see clearly certain things. Some people say that Adolf is a devil, but he’s not, he’s the head of a central European political party, no more, no less. And what he means to do in France is to destroy you, to ruin your soul, to make you despise yourselves, that’s the plan. He wants you to collaborate, he makes it easy for you. He wants you to denounce each other, he makes it easy for you. He wants you to feel that there’s no nation, just you, and everybody has to look out for themselves. You think I’m wrong? Look at the Poles. He kills them, because they come from the same part of the world that he does, and they see through his tricks. You understand?”
Casson nodded.
“So we got to stop that—or else. Right? Myself, I’m betting on the English, and I am going to work with them, and I want you to work with me, to help me do what I have to do.”
“Why me?”
“Why you. You’re known to the English—James Templeton has spoken for you, he knows you don’t have sympathy with the Germans. It also helps that you’re a film producer. You can go anywhere, you can meet anybody, of any class. You handle money, sometimes in large amounts, sometimes in cash. You might take ten people on a train. You might charter a freighter. You might use several telephone numbers, bank accounts—even in other countries. For us, it’s a good profession. Do you see?”
“Yes.”
“Want to help?”
Casson thought a moment, he didn’t really know what to say. He did want to help. Left to himself he would never have done anything, just gone on trying to live his life as best he could. But he hadn’t been left to himself, so, now, he had to decide if he wanted to become involved in something like this.
Yes, he said to himself. But it was what they called un petit oui—a little yes. Not that he was afraid of the Germans—he was afraid of them, but that wouldn’t stop him—he was afraid of not being any good at it.
“I will help you, if I can,” he said slowly. “I don’t know exactly what it is you want me to do, and I don’t know if I’d do it right. Maybe for myself that wouldn’t matter, but there would be people depending on me, isn’t that true in something like this?”
A backhand sweep of the arm, Simic knocked the uncertainty across the room. “Ach—don’t worry! The Germans are idiots. Not in Germany, mind you—there you can’t spit on the street, because they got everybody watching their neighbor. But here? What they got is a counterespionage service, which is lawyers, that’s who they hire. But not the Jewish lawyers, they’re all gone. And not the top lawyers, they’re high up, or they’re hiding. Found themselves a little something in this bureau or that office—hiding. So, you don’t have to worry. Of course, you can’t be stupid, but we wouldn’t be talking if you were. And, oh yes, you’ll make some money in this. We can’t have you poor. And you’ll get all the ration coupons you need, the British print them in Tottenham.”
“Where?”
“A place in London. But they’re very good, never a problem. Suits, food, gasoline, whatever you want.”
In a dark corner, the piano player was hard at work: “Mood Indigo,” “Body and Soul,” “Time on My Hands.” Cocktail hour in Paris— heavy drapes drawn over the windows so the world outside didn’t exist. The bar filled up, the hum of conversation getting louder as the drinks arrived. The expensive whore at the next table was joined by a well-dressed man, Casson had seen him around Passy for years, who wore the gold seal ring that meant nobility. He was just out of the barber’s chair, Casson could smell the talcum powder. The woman was stunning, in a gray Chanel suit.
The waiter brought two more whiskey-and-sodas. “Chin-chin,” Simic said and clinked Casson’s glass.
“Tell me what,” Casson said, “exactly what, it is that you want me to do.”
Simic looked serious, the big head on the narrow shoulders nodding up and down. “A proper question, Casson. It’s just, I have to be cautious.”
Casson waited.
“Well, to those who know, the place that matters most in this war is Gibraltar. Sits there, controls the entrance to the Mediterranean, means that the British can go into North Africa if they want, then up to Sicily, or Greece. Or Syria. That means Iraqi and Persian oil—you can’t fight without that—and the Suez Canal. Can Adolf take Gibraltar? No. Why not? Because he’d have to march across Spain, and for that he needs Franco’s permission because Franco is his ally. A neutral ally, but an ally. Don’t forget, Adolf helped Franco win his civil war. So, what will Franco do?”
“I don’t know,” Casson said.
“You’re right! The British don’t know either. But what you want, for your peace of mind, is your own man guarding the back door to your big fortress, not the ally of your enemy. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“So, what I’m working on.” Simic lowered his voice, leaned closer to Casson. “What I’m working on is a nice private Spaniard for the British secret service. A general. An important general, respected. What could he do? What couldn’t he do! He could form a guerrilla force to fight against Franco. Or, better, he could assassinate Franco. Then form a military junta and restore the monarchy. Prince Don Juan, pretender to the Spanish throne, who is tonight living in exile in Switzerland, could be returned to Catalonia and proclaimed king. See, Franco took the country back to 1750, but there’s plenty of Spaniards who want it to go back to 1250. So the junta would abolish the Falangist party, declare amnesty for the five hundred thousand loyalist fighters in prison in Spain, then declare that Spain’s strict neutrality would be maintained for the course of the war. And no German march to Gibraltar.”
Slowly, Casson sorted that out. It had nothing to do with the way he thought about things, and one of the ideas that crossed his mind was a sort of amazement that somewhere there were people who considered the world from this point of view. They had to be on the cold-hearted side to think such things, very close to evil—a brand-new war in Spain, fresh piles of corpses, how nice. But, on the other hand, he had been reduced to crawling around like an insect hunting for crumbs in the city of his birth. It was the same sort of people behind that— who else?
The man and the woman at the next table laughed. She began it, he joined in, one of them had said something truly amusing—the laugh was genuine. You think you know how the world works, Casson thought, but you really don’t. These people are the ones who know how it works.
Several times, over the next few days, he put one hand on the telephone while the other held his address book open at the S–T page. Sartain Frères. Ingrid Solvang. Simic, Erno—Agna Film. Not a complicated situation, he told himself. Very commonplace. Sometimes we believe we can make a certain commitment but then we find that, after all, we can’t. So then, a courteous telephone call: sorry, must decline. It’s just the way things are right now. Or, maybe, It’s just not something I c
an do. Or, It’s just—in fact, who the hell was Erno Simic that he deserved any kind of explanation at all? So, really, it was Casson explaining to himself.
Out on the boulevard, from the building they’d requisitioned in the first month of the Occupation, the young fascists of the Garde Française and the Jeune Front goose-stepped on the packed snow. Across the street, the optician Lissac displayed a sign that said WE ARE LISSAC, NOT ISAAC. A few doors down, broken windows, where an umbrella-and-glove shop had been forced to advertise itself as an Enterprise Juive.
Would murdering Franco stop that?
His heart told him no.
Then do it for France.
Where?
France—was that Pétain? The Jeune Front? Those pinched, white, angry little faces, scowling with envy. The patrons of the bar on the avenue Montaigne? The soldiers running away from the battle on the Meuse?
But he didn’t dial the telephone. At least, not all the numbers.
And so, inevitably, he arrived at his office one morning to find that a message had been slipped beneath the door. Hocus-pocus, was how he thought about it. An uncomfortable moment, then on with his day.
Hotel Dorado. That was better medicine than Spanish murder, right? And so, inevitably, the hocus-pocus itself.
Maybe not the best time for it, an icy night in the dead heart of January. Something that day had reached him, some sad nameless thing, and the antidote, when he found her, was blonde—a shimmering peroxide cap above a lopsided grin. Older up close than she’d first seemed—at a gallery opening—and not properly connected to the daily world. Everything about her off center, as though she’d once been bent the wrong way and never quite sprung back.
They sat on the couch and nuzzled for a time. “There is nobody quite like me,” she whispered.
He smiled and said she was right.
She undid a button on his shirt and slid a hand inside. The telephone rang once, then stopped. It bothered her. “Who is it?” she said, as though he could know that.
But, in fact, he did know. And a minute later, sixty seconds later, it did it again. “What’s going on?” she said. Now she was frightened.
“It’s nothing,” he said. Then, to prove it was nothing, “I have to go out for a while.”
“Why?” she said.
He’d always thought, not all that proud of it, that he was a pretty good liar. But not this time. He’d been caught unprepared, no story made up just in case, so he tried to improvise, while she stared at him with hurt eyes and pulled her sweater back down. In the end, she agreed to wait in the apartment until he returned. “Look,” he said, “it’s only business. Sometimes, the movie business, you need to take care of something quietly, secretly.”
She nodded, mouth curved down, wanting to believe him, knowing better.
In the street, it was ten degrees. He walked with lowered head and clenched teeth, the wind cutting through his coat and sweater. He swore at it, out loud, mumbling his way along the rue Chardin like a madman hauling his private menagerie to a new location.
At last, half-frozen, he crept down the ice-coated steps of the Ranelagh Métro and installed himself in front of a poster for the Opéra-Comique, a Spanish dancer swirling her skirt. A few minutes later, he heard the rumble of a train approaching through the tunnel. The doors slid open, out came a little man with a briefcase of the type carried under the arm. Casson could have spotted him five miles away, but then, the Germans were “idiots.” And he, Casson, was so brilliant he’d believed Erno Simic when he’d called them that.
The contact was a small man, clearly angry at the world. Peering up and down the station platform he reminded Casson of a character in an English children’s story. The Wind in the Willows? Waxed mustache, derby, fierce eyebrows, ferocious glare above an old-fashioned collar. Following instructions, Casson turned to the wall and stared at the poster. For a time, nothing happened. The dancer smiled at him haughtily and clicked her castanets in the air.
Finally, the man stood beside him. Cleared his throat. “An excellent performance, I’m told.”
That was part one of the password. Part two was the countersign: “Yes. I saw it Thursday,” Casson said.
The contact leaned the briefcase against the wall at his feet and began to button his coat. Then, hands in pockets, he hurried away, his footsteps echoing down the empty platform as he headed into the night. Casson counted to twenty, picked up the briefcase, and went home.
His blonde was bundled in a blanket, snoring gently on the couch. He went into the bedroom and closed the door. Before he put the briefcase on the shelf that ran across the top of his closet—under the bed? behind the refrigerator?—he had a look inside. Three hundred thousand pesetas—about $35,000 in American money—in thirty bundles of hundred-peseta notes, each packet of ten pinned through its upper right-hand corner.
Back in the living room, the blonde opened one eye. “You don’t mind I took a nap,” she said.
“No,” he said.
“Keep me company,” she said, raising the blanket. She’d taken off her skirt and panties.
Casson lay down next to her. It wasn’t so bad, in the end. Two castaways, adrift in the Paris night, three hundred thousand pesetas in a bedroom closet, air-raid sirens at the southern edge of the city, then a long flight of aircraft, south to north, passing above them. On the radio, the BBC. A quintet, swing guitar, violin—maybe Stephane Grappelli—a female vocalist, voice rough with static. The volume had to be very low: radios were supposed to be turned over to the Germans, and Casson was afraid of Madame Fitou—but he loved the thing, couldn’t bear to part with it. It glowed in the dark and played music—he sometimes thought of it as the last small engine of civilization, a magic device, and he was its keeper, the hermit who hid the sacred ring. Some day, in times to come, the barbarians would break camp and trudge away down the dusty roads and then, starting with a single radio, they would somehow put everything back the way it had been.
Very sensitive to the touch, this blonde. Thin, excitable—she sucked in her breath when something felt good. Still, she was quiet about it. That was just common sense. They even pulled the blanket up over their heads, which made everything seem dark and secret and forbidden. Probably he’d laugh at that some day, but just then it wasn’t funny, because they really were out there, the secret police and their agents, and this was something they probably didn’t approve of. It wasn’t spelled out—just better to be quiet.
When they were done with one thing, and before they moved on to the next, Casson went to the phone, dialed Simic’s number, let it ring once, and hung up. Then he counted to sixty, and did it again. He wondered, as he was counting, if it was a good idea to keep Simic’s number in his address book. In fact, where did Simic keep his number?
He crawled back under the blanket, the blonde yawned and stretched, and they began to resettle themselves on the narrow couch. By his ear she said, “You had better be careful, my friend, doing that sort of thing.”
“Perhaps you prefer I do this sort of thing?”
“I do, yes. Anybody would.” A few minutes later she said, “Oh, you’re sweet, you know. Truly.” Then: “A pity if you invite them to kill you, chéri.”
Lunch, Chez Marcel, rognons de veau, a Hermitage from Jaboulet, 1931.
Hugo Altmann held his glass with three fingers at the top of the stem, canted it slightly to one side, poured it half full, then twisted the bottle as he turned it upright. He looked at the wine in his glass, gave it just a hint of a sniff and a swirl before he drank. “I like the script,” he said. “Pretty damn smooth for a first draft. Who is this Moreau?”
“Comes out of the provincial theatre, down by Lyons somewhere. Strange fellow, afraid of his own shadow, keeps to himself pretty much. Has a little cottage out past Orly—lives with his mother, I think. No telephone.”
“Maybe I could meet him, sometime. A very sure hand, Jean-Claude, for the ‘provincial theatre, down by Lyons.’ ”
Casson shrugged
and smiled, accepting the compliment, proud of his ability to unearth a secret talent. He suspected Altmann knew how much he’d depended on Louis Fischfang for his scripts, and he’d intended “Moreau” as a fiction convenient for both of them. Altmann, however, seemed to think Moreau actually existed.
“Maybe some day,” he said. “Right now, Hugo, I need him to think about Hotel Dorado and nothing else. If he meets you, he might start having ambitions.”
“Well, all right.” Altmann chased the last of the brown sauce around his plate with a piece of bread. “That banker in the first scene— Lapont? Lapère? Don’t let anything happen to him. He’s magnificent, truly loathsome—I can just see him.”
“I’ll tell Moreau he’s on the right track. Now, make it really good.”
Altmann smiled and took a sip of wine.
“I’ve been thinking,” Casson said. “Maybe we should consider a different location.”
“Not the Côte d’Azur?”
“It’s commonplace, everybody’s been there.”
“That’s the point, no?”
“Mmm—I think we have the plot, Hugo. But it’s the setting I worry about. The feel of a place that’s not the everyday world—come August, you leave your work, you leave the daily life, and you go there. Something special about it. I don’t want anybody thinking, ‘Well, I wouldn’t sell that hotel—I’d put in a damn fine restaurant and put some paint on the façade.’ ”
“No, I guess not.”
The waiter came to take the plates away. “There’s a reblochon today, gentlemen,” he said. “And pears.”
“Bring it,” Altmann said.
“I’ve been thinking about Spain,” Casson said.
“Spain?”
“Yes. Down on the Mediterranean. Someplace dark, and very quiet.
The propriétaires are still French. Expatriates. But the clients are a little more adventurous. They go to Spain for their holidays.”
“Hm.”
“Anyhow, I’d like to go and have a look. Scout locations.”
“All right, it shouldn’t be a problem. But, I don’t know, it doesn’t, somehow—Spain?”