by Alan Furst
“A little late for you to join the Guards division.”
“He must be insane. A mad dog.”
“No, you are wrong about that. That's what Europe thinks—those who aren't in love with him. Here he might be mad, but in truth he is no more than that lovable old character, the wicked peasant. I'm sure you've known one or two. He hits his neighbor on the head, steals his gold, rapes his wife, and burns his house down. Who knows why. If he is reproached, he swears that a fiery angel forced him to do it.”
They strolled for a time, two acquaintances in mourning, through the maze of pathways lined tightly with the tombs of aristocrats and artists, some of which had received Sunday flowers.
“What of the others?” Khristo asked.
“Well, Kulic is alive.”
“Was he arrested?”
“No. He was blown up by a mortar shell in the Guadarrama, leading an attack of partisans. The Germans had him for a time, but we found a way to get him out. A Yugoslavian fascist group, the Ustachi, asked to collect him for interrogation. They are Croatian and Kulic is Serbian and the Germans appreciate such differences, so they released him and we got him back.”
“How?”
“It's our group—this particular band of Ustachi. You know this business, Khristo. One needs a little of everything.”
“He must be well regarded.”
“Somebody thinks he might be of use. Otherwise …”
“And Voluta?”
Ilya paused for a moment. “Probably I shouldn't tell you.”
“Well, don't if you can't.”
“No, it doesn't matter. You of course recall that girl, Marike, at Arbat Street. You knew her somewhat, I believe.”
“Yes.”
“One day she disappeared. Well, it seems that somebody had hidden a list of the names of the Brotherhood Front of 1934 in a most ingenious place—scratched on rubber, washed down the sink, but the rubber was just heavy enough to stay caught in the trap. Marike's bad luck was that some fool tried to get rid of a condom in the sink—no doubt the throne was occupied and he was in a hurry—and that stopped it up but good. Next, an unfortunate miracle: a plumber actually appeared one day and unplugged the drain. He knew what he had, went and barked his head off in the right places and down came the counterintelligence types. They pinned the thing on Marike, I don't know why, and away she went. Ozunov as well, of course. Later, much later, they found out some other way that it had been Voluta all along. Now, the best part. He was a priest! Part of a Polish nationalist movement called NOV, made up of priests and army officers. Not fascists—though Moscow would certainly call them that. Patriots, I think, in a conspiracy to preserve Poland as a national entity. They are very much on our Watch List, because they are very dedicated and have enjoyed some significant success. Witness Voluta: he penetrated the Arbat Street training facility, noted every personality and physical description in the place and then, when he was assigned to the rezidentura in Antwerp, simply got off the train and has not been seen since. The problem with this NOV is that it spreads among the priests—I mean outside Poland, among other nationalities—and there is reason to believe that the army officers have made similar connections. This is not exactly the Polish government, you understand, but a conspiracy that hides in its shadow. Thus our assets in Warsaw can do nothing about it. Our friend Voluta is quite a famous priest in Moscow.”
“My God,” Khristo said, truly amazed that he'd been deceived along with everybody else. “I never thought …”
“He was very much in himself, you'll remember.”
“Yes. And always helpful, willing to do more than his share.”
“Priestly, eh? And we suspect that this NOV shares information with Poland's dearest ally—British intelligence. Heaven only knows where it might go from there. I expect we are all quite famous by now.”
“Where do you think he is?”
Ilya smiled and spread his hands to include the entire world. They walked for a time, past the tomb of the Rothschilds, the graves of Daumier and Corot and Proust.
“Do you know the Mur des Fédérés?” Ilya asked, standing by the cemetery wall.
“No.”
“The last of the Paris Communards died here, in 1871. They fought all night among the gravestones, then surrendered at dawn. The soldiers put them against this wall, shot them, and buried them in a common grave.”
“Are you a communist, Ilya? In your heart?”
“Oh yes. Aren't you?”
“No. I just want to live my life, to be left alone.”
There was a moment's silence, then Ilya said, “Now, a matter of some delicacy.” They turned and began to walk again, their steps audible on the gravel path.
“What is that?”
“This business of the assassination of our courier.”
“On May Day?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“The rezidentura here is frantic—they are under the gun, believe me, Moscow is entirely outraged. They've sent in thugs from everywhere, specialists, and activated every net in Paris. So far, no fish.”
“Perhaps that was why it was done. To see who showed up, to learn from the activity.”
Ilya looked at him sharply. “The old Khristo,” he said. When there was no response, he went on. “Anyhow, they really want to know. What's come in to date is the usual plateful of crumbs—White Russians, phony princes, Cossack doormen, a Mills grenade with Stalin's name painted on it—but Yezhov's not buying any of that.”
“And so?”
“If you should happen to hear something …”
“Then what?”
“I believe you mentioned being left alone to live your life?”
“Yes.”
“That's what.”
Khristo spoke carefully: “I asked you earlier if they were getting close to me. Is this your answer?”
Ilya shook his head violently, like a wet dog. “No. Do not misunderstand me. I said they were looking for you. I don't know they are, I assume it. But you had better assume it as well. A favor might turn the pressure off, though nobody can guarantee it—not me, not anybody. On the other hand, what have you got to lose?”
They talked for an hour after that, reminisced: Arbat Street, Belov, Spain, Yaschyeritsa, Sascha. Then they parted. Khristo returned to the room. Aleksandra wasn't there. It was Sunday—she'd mentioned something about a picnic in the park. But he had talked to Ilya longer than he'd intended, perhaps she had given up on him and gone to the cinéma. That was probably what she'd done, he decided.
He waited for her, smoking Gitanes, watching the square of sky in the window turn slowly from blue to dark blue, from hazy lavender at sunset to the color of dusk, and then to night. At first, he expected her to return, and waited. Later, for a time, he hoped for it. The hour for him to go to work passed unnoticed. He paced the room, moving from the battered armoire that served as their closet to the open window. He would pause there and look out, sometimes seeing, sometimes not. The shops were closed, their metal shutters pulled down. A few people hurried along the sidewalk, one or two cars went by. Sunday night, and everyone was locked up in their apartments, hiding from whatever it was they hid from on a Sunday night. He could smell potatoes frying and the damp scents of the Paris street. It was so quiet that sounds of clinking plates and bits of conversation—once a laugh—floated up to him. Then he would turn away from the window, move to the foot of the bed and back across to the armoire. At one point he opened it, found all her clothing in place, including the white Marlene Dietrich trenchcoat—a fashion necessity that spring in the city—her pride and joy. But it had been warmish in the afternoon, she could have worn only a sweater. In the drawer of the night table she kept a box of small things she believed to be valuable. Bits and pieces. A silver button, an American coin, a cameo of Empress Josephine from a souvenir shop. Her perfume was heavy on the treasures, as though she had once kept the bottle among them. On one of his trips past the small mirror,
he discovered a red, angry mark on the skin beside his eye, realized it hurt, realized he had put it there himself. He looked at his hands, knew for a certainty that if he had a gun he would kill himself. She was lost, he knew; he had lost her, he would not see her again. He lay down on the bed, on his side, and drew his knees up to his chest and pressed his fingers hard against the sides of his head to stop the pain behind his eyes, but that didn't work.
Later, he woke up with a gasp, dizzy and lost, and felt the weight of sorrow return to him. Discovered the side of his face was wet. He forced himself off the bed and started searching the room, but he missed it on the first search, found nothing out of the ordinary. A ten-franc note hidden in a shoe, that was all. At 1:30 in the morning he opened the door and listened for a long time at Dodin's room down the hall, heard only silence. He kicked the door open, went over the room slowly and carefully, as he'd been taught, but there was nothing there at all, only dustballs beneath the bed. Nothing in the drawers. Nothing in the armoire. Nothing taped anywhere out of sight. Nothing. He tried to close the door, but the lock mechanism wouldn't work anymore where he'd sprung it, so he simply left it open. He checked the light fixture in the hall, took his money out, and put it in his pocket. That was all he could do.
He went back to his room and watched the night as the hours passed by. Sometimes he swore revenge, quietly, under his breath, a stupefying and obscene anger that meant nothing. At dawn, moving mechanically, he began putting his own things into a pillowcase. When everything he wanted was there and he was ready to go—though he didn't know where—he forced himself to search the room once again. He willed his mind clear and did the job as he knew it should be done: an inch at a time, starting in a corner and expanding outward and upward in imaginary lines of radiation. He got down on his knees, the lamp by his side wherever the cord would reach an outlet.
He found it an hour later. There was old wainscoting by the door, poor-quality wood with the varnish flaking off, and as he moved the lamp the shift of angle in the light revealed the marks. He moved his fingers across the wood, confirming what he saw. She had, after all, left him a message. He sat down heavily and cried into his hands for a long time. He didn't want anyone to hear him. Time and again he touched the wall, traced, with agonizing slowness, the faintly marked outlines of the four scratches her fingernails had made as she'd been taken through the door.
The guys out in Clichy absolutely loved it when Barbette came around. They'd run their poules off and set him up at one of the tables at Le Maroc or the Dutchman's place on Rue Truot that everybody called the cul de cochon and let him buy them drinks all night. He was the strangest thing they ever saw out there—where people didn't come unless they had to, and then always in daylight—because he had the money and he liked to spend it and he liked to spend it on them. He was tall for a Frenchman, and he stood straight up and looked at you with those little dark eyes that always seemed to catch the light and he had a big, false laugh. You could tell him you just stole your mother's teeth and he'd laugh. Even his name, Barbette, what did that mean? A nickname? The word meant “little beard” and he had one of those, a devil's beard, from side-burn tight along the jawline sweeping up to join the mustache, so closely pruned he must have nipped it with a scissors every night.
But a barbette was also a nun's veil that covered the breast, and that expression in turn was used in slang to mean sleeping on the floor or guns firing in a salvo. The word sometimes referred to a water spaniel—the efficient sort that always brought in the kill. They asked him, in their own way, but all they ever got was that laugh. They didn't really care—he was the kind of guy you liked even better because he wouldn't tell you what you wanted to know. It meant he wasn't in the habit of running his mouth, and that mattered to people out in Clichy. Johnny LaFlamme and Poz Vintre and Escaldo from Lisbon and Sarda, the deaf-mute who watched your mouth when you talked and knew what you were saying. They were all the family any of them had and they looked out for one another in their own way and they could smell a cop three blocks off. Barbette was no cop. But he wasn't one of them, either. He was something different.
The girls all said he was crazy, that he went for the petite soeur like a maniac who'd been marooned on an island. Maybe a bit of a showoff, they said, and he really liked that fancy stuff—nothing standing up—that went on all afternoon and left them worn out for their real work at night, down in the Rue St.-Denis near Les Halles or up in Montmartre. But the guys put up with it. Barbette was always good for a touch when you came up short and he never asked for it back. Everybody had to have one of those long coats like they had in Little Caesar or Public Enemy— and you couldn't steal those. The great Capone, they fancied, would have told them they looked just right.
Then one day he went off with Escaldo and Sarda and when they showed up again they were richer than they'd ever been. Sent away the rotgut the Dutchman dished up under the name vin rouge and ordered the real stuff—for themselves and everybody else. One couldn't ask questions. But the new wealth came from Barbette and it put matters in an entirely new, and very interesting, light. He'd gone from putting money in their bellies—drinks and whatnot—to putting money in their pockets, and that made him really important, no longer just a guy who came around. They were a little jealous of Escaldo and Sarda—why not me?—but they had nothing but time and maybe it was their turn next. Escaldo and Sarda, in the beginning, didn't say all that much. Sarda couldn't—not without a pencil and paper, and who wanted to bother with that—and Escaldo wouldn't. He looked like a pimp, dark and slick and vain, and he kept one of those Portuguese fish-gutting knives strapped to his ankle. You didn't press him too hard, the girls had found that out pretty quick. As for poor Sarda, his face was carved into deep lines from trying all his life just to do things that everybody else took for granted. When he got agitated, he made noises in his throat and privately they all admitted they were a little bit afraid of him. So, for a time, the wine flowed and the beef sizzled and everybody just shut up and waited patiently.
But in families everything comes out eventually, and Escaldo got drunk one night and let them in on part of it. He was, also, under some pressure to explain things. Some smart guy figured out that maybe Barbette banged the girls so hard to prove he wasn't a fairy, which meant maybe he was, which meant that Escaldo and Sarda had sunk to a level where it was definitely out of the family. Escaldo couldn't afford to let too much of that go on, so he sang.
The money they had now, he explained, was only the beginning. There'd be more—maybe a lot more, maybe the big one they all dreamed of and talked about. Barbette had taken them to an abandoned farmhouse somewhere to hell and gone outside Paris and he'd shown them these, ah, things, and run them through a little schooling and let them, even, use them a few times. Bon Dieu! Quelles machines! Quelles instruments! His eyes glowed as he talked, and it only took a few more glasses of marc to get the whole story out in the air.
Les machines à écrire de Chicago.
There it was, now they had it all. Chicago typewriters. That's what Barbette had to show them on the broken-down farm outside Paris. Escaldo spread his long coat apart and took out two little pimp cigars and lit one for Sarda and one for himself. Did Bottles Capone, Al's brother, or Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik have anything they didn't? Not anymore.
Machine guns.
Around the table, nobody could say anything for a long time, thinking about that.
Khristo found a room deep in the Marais, on a dark side street off the Rue des Rosiers. It was an ancient building, narrow, seven flights to the top floor, with rusted iron pipes crossing the ceiling and a small window on a courtyard where it was nighttime from dawn to dusk. He rented the room from an old Jew bent in the shape of a C, with black sidelocks, beard, coat, and hat. “Who wants you, little one?” the man asked in Russian. “I don't understand,” Khristo answered in French. The man nodded to himself. “Oh, pardon me then,” he said in Russian.
The thought of Aleksandra's things
in the treasure box, left to be pawed by the landlady, haunted him, but a return to the room was out of the question. Surely they had him spotted at Heininger as well, but it was less likely that they would snatch him there. He considered finding Yasin again, in the Turkish quarter out on the Boulevard Raspail, and acquiring another weapon, but he put it off. Ilya had given him a telephone number—that was his best weapon now. Had Ilya set him up? Kept him at the cemetery while Aleksandra was taken? Perhaps. Perhaps Ilya had been set up to set him up. At least he knew where he was now. On the NKVD chessboard, all his moves known and predicted, hostile knights and bishops dawdling while he figured out how to move onto the very square where they wanted him. Somehow, it didn't matter. Fate was fate. He would play the game out to checkmate, they would all meet again in hell.
Sweating in the late June weather, he stood in a telephone cabinet at the neighborhood post office while the call was put through. They answered on the first ring. He merely said, “I want a meeting.” They told him to be at the church of St.-Julien-le-Pauvre at 6:30 the following morning.
For early mass, Ilya was in worker's clothing, a copy of L'Humanité, the communist daily, folded under one arm. Khristo watched him move slowly down the aisle, kneel briefly, then enter the pew. They were virtually alone, the place was empty except for a few shawl-covered women in the front row and a priest who sped through the rite in mumbled Latin. The high ceilings held the church in soft gloom as the first sun touched the tops of the windows.
“You are very quick,” Ilya said, speaking in an undertone. He glanced at Khristo suspiciously. “Twenty-four hours,” he mused. “Have you considered a career in this business?”
“I want her back,” Khristo said, his voice tight with anger despite an attempt at neutrality. “Do what you like with me, but let her go.”
“Who?”
“She calls herself Aleksandra.”
“I'm sorry,” Ilya said, “I know nothing about this.”