Mission to Paris: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  Trudi prattled away, a waitress served a pot of tea and a plate of cream-filled pastries, Orlova smiled or frowned on cue, but her mind was far away. One of her couriers, a Swiss attorney called Wendel, was en route to some godforsaken village in the Moroccan desert, and would eventually return to Berlin with payment for the list of Polish names she’d photographed while Trudi was in the bathtub. This list she’d copied – eighteen typed pages! – and sold to the Americans and the British. As for the photographs themselves, they’d gone immediately to her superiors in Moscow, who believed that she was fairly compensated for her work. Very quietly, she disagreed, and sold her stolen secrets to those who would pay dearly to get their hands on them. Orlova had starved in Russia during the civil war that followed the revolution, but now she made sure that would never happen again. She did wonder, sometimes, how long that kind of thing could go on, but put the thought out of her head. In fact, she would have an answer soon enough.

  Orlova took a bite of a pastry and, to avoid a cream moustache, was dabbing at her mouth with a pink napkin, when she saw the jolly proprietor making his way across the room. But when he reached Orlova’s table, he wasn’t so jolly. ‘Excuse me, Frau Orlova,’ he said, ‘but there is a call for you on our telephone.’ His voice was professionally courteous but his manner was stiff and uncertain – this sort of thing was unusual and he didn’t care for it, even with a customer who was very much a local celebrity.

  To Trudi, Orlova said, ‘Well, I suppose I must answer the telephone,’ and laid her napkin on the table. Orlova the actress seemed mildly surprised and bemused by this intrusion, but Orlova the spy was terrified. The tearoom telephone was a contact point designated for extreme emergencies only, it had never been used before. She followed the proprietor back to the cashier’s counter, picked up the receiver and said, ‘Good afternoon, this is Frau Orlova.’

  The chatter in the tearoom was loud and she pressed the receiver to her ear. On the other end of the line: a man’s voice speaking German with a Slavic accent, a man’s voice almost breathless with tension. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Right away. Now. This minute. There are Gestapo officers in your apartment.’ Then there was a click as the man disconnected. Orlova saw that the proprietor was hovering nearby so, for his benefit, she spoke to the dead line. ‘Oh yes?’ she said. Then waited as though someone were speaking. After a few seconds she said, ‘Ahh, I see, I’m sorry to hear that.’ Then she said goodbye and replaced the receiver. To the proprietor, who was still standing there, she apologized for the inconvenience. ‘All is well?’ he said.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s something I must attend to,’ she said, asked for the bill and paid it, her heart hammering inside her.

  Back at the table, she said, ‘Trudi dear, please forgive me but I must leave immediately.’

  Trudi’s eyes, usually tender and caring, were suddenly wide with alarm. ‘You’ve gone pale,’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’

  Orlova took her fur coat from the back of the chair and put it on. ‘I’ve had bad news, I’m afraid I must go to the railway station.’

  ‘Then let me drive you, I have the car today, Freddi is in Potsdam.’

  Orlova started to say no, then realized it would be faster than looking for a taxi and said yes.

  Dusk came early to Berlin in December, yet many drivers were stubborn about turning on their headlights and it was hard to see them. At Orlova’s direction, Trudi, knuckles white as she gripped the wheel, worked her way towards the Lehrter Bahnhof, Berlin’s international railway terminal. Watching the traffic as it came at them, Orlova fought for control of her mind, fought to suppress the sharp little flashes of panic so she could concentrate. She doubted she would survive a search of her apartment – the Leica camera, the Walther automatic – and she realized that her time in Berlin was over. Now she had to run, to some other country and, wherever in the world she went, she knew they would take her if they found her.

  ‘Are you worrying, Olga dear?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you worrying, I said. You’re being very quiet.’

  ‘Yes, I am worried.’

  ‘Don’t, please don’t. Everything will turn out for the best, I promise.’

  Trudi had taken at least two wrong turns, each time provoking loud blasts from the horns of irritated drivers, which made her visibly flinch. Her car was a small Opel and, given the rules of the road in Berlin, drivers of fancier models bullied the cheaper car. But, at last, they reached the Lehrter Bahnhof. Naturally there were crowds of SS men at the entries, and to Orlova’s eyes they looked particularly grim and determined. They were, she thought, waiting for her. The Opel jerked to a stop as Trudi stamped on the brakes and said, ‘Sorry.’ Then, ‘Well, here we are. Where are you going? Can you tell me?’

  ‘Zurich.’

  ‘Is there someone in Zurich …’ Trudi didn’t quite know how to finish this question but Orlova understood what she meant: a lover, perhaps a secret lover. For Trudi, a rival.

  Possible answers tumbled across Orlova’s mind; my beloved aunt, who has only days to live, my oldest friend, who has only days to live, but none of them sounded credible. Heavy traffic moved about the station, busy this time of night with travellers coming and going. Finally, Orlova said, ‘Trudi, I think I had better tell you something. The fact is, I’m in trouble.’

  ‘I knew it! I felt it!’

  ‘Trouble with the Gestapo.’

  ‘My God! What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing. But I have enemies, vicious enemies who are jealous of my connections with important people, and they’ve spread terrible rumours about me. I didn’t think that anyone would believe such things, but I was wrong.’

  ‘You’re running away, Olga, aren’t you.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘They’ll catch you if you try to get on a train, that’s where they look for people, it’s in the newspapers all the time.’

  ‘I know,’ Orlova said. She had with her two passports, one her own, the other a false passport, a Swiss passport, with a different name. She always carried a lot of money, that was a basic rule of clandestine life. What she had to do was become that other woman, and get out of Germany. ‘Trudi,’ she said, ‘can you find a small hotel somewhere?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Trudi said, pressed the clutch to the floor and forced the shift into first gear.

  Driving away from the station, she took side streets, until they came upon a small building with a sign over the door, HOTEL LUXURIA. Trudi parked the car and the two women entered the hotel. Yes, they had a room available. When asked about luggage, Orlova explained that they’d missed their train and left their luggage in the baggage room. And, by the way, was there a pharmacy nearby? There was, a block away on the Bernauer Strasse.

  It was a tired little room, a commercial traveller’s room: twin beds with thin, floral coverlets, a single chair, a rusty sink, WC down the hall. Orlova described what she needed and, once Trudi headed off to the pharmacy, she lay down on one of the beds and stared up at the lightbulb in the ceiling. If she did manage to get away, what would she do with her life? She had money in Switzerland, enough to last for a few years if she lived frugally. As a fugitive, her movie star days were over. But then, her spying days were also over. What would it be like to live in obscurity, quiet as a mouse, always waiting for a knock on the door? A German knock, or a Russian knock. My God, she thought, they will all come looking for me.

  Twenty minutes later, Trudi returned, with scissors and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Orlova said, ‘Trudi, you are going to cut my hair. Short, very short, above the ears, like a boy.’

  ‘I don’t really know how, I’m afraid I’ll make a mess of it.’

  ‘No matter, just snip away, and when you’re done you’re going to make me a blonde.’

  Trudi took a deep breath; she couldn’t say no to her friend, she just had to be careful and take her time. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll do as you ask. But if I’m going to use the pe
roxide, you’d better take off your dress, and your slip.’ After a last look at her old self in the cloudy mirror above the sink, and as Trudi, scissors in hand, watched her, Orlova undressed.

  The following morning, the newly blonde and boyish Orlova stood at the door, anxious to leave. But when she put her hand on the knob, Trudi stopped her. ‘Wait, please wait,’ she said. ‘Just a few seconds. I lay awake for a long time last night, thinking about myself, and about my life, and I made a decision. Olga, I don’t want to lose you, I want to run away with you if you’ll let me. I know it will be difficult, and I will have to write to Freddi and tell him what I’ve done, but I don’t want to go back to him. I want to follow my heart, I want to stay with you.’

  Orlova was moved by this and showed it. And with all the kindness she could muster she said, ‘You know I can’t let you do that. Sharing the life of a fugitive will not make you happy. Please don’t cry. I will never forget what you said, Trudi, I will always remember you, but I must go on alone.’

  For a moment, Trudi fought back tears. Finally she said, ‘All right, Olga, I understand, so I have only one last request. I would like a kiss, a kiss goodbye, a real kiss.’

  They held each other, the kiss was warm and slow and touched with sadness. Then they left the hotel. At Orlova’s direction, Trudi drove out of Berlin to nearby Wannsee. From there, Orlova spent a long day taking local trains until she reached the city of Frankfurt where, at the main terminal, she bought a ticket and, an hour later, was on her way to Prague.

  18 December. Early in the morning, Stahl left Renate’s apartment and returned to the Claridge. In the bathroom mirror, he found shadows beneath his eyes – that dissolute Colonel Vadic – so used a washcloth and cold water as a compress. Perhaps this helped, but not much. By nine o’clock he was out at Joinville, where they had to do retakes of scenes that hadn’t, for a variety of reasons, turned out right. A mysterious hand on the back of a chair, a hat magically gone in mid-conversation, a line badly delivered, Pasquin’s sergeant saying, ‘Jean, let me try that again.’ Before they started shooting, the make-up man worked on Stahl and removed the evidence of a night rather too well spent.

  When Renate Steiner arrived on the set, carrying a different tunic for the lieutenant, she seemed all business, but she glanced at Stahl and a certain look passed between them. It was the look of those who see each other for the first time after making love, for the first time, the night before, and it made his heart soar. Then a technician approached with a question and Stahl had to turn away, but he would not forget that moment. Renate held up the ‘blood’-spattered tunic by the shoulders and said to Avila, ‘This will be much better, Jean. Now he’s really been shot.’

  At the end of the day, Stahl walked over to Renate’s workroom but she wasn’t there so he returned to the hotel and telephoned her. He would pick her up at 7.30, they would have dinner at Balzar, an active, noisy bistro in the Sixth. ‘We can have the mâche-betterave,’ he said, a salad of beets and sweet little clumps of mâche lettuce with a mustard-flavoured dressing. ‘Then perhaps a steak-frites or a ragout of veal. Everything there is good.’

  When he arrived at the rue Varlin tenement, the concierge welcomed him back with a sly but affectionate smile: she knew, she approved. On the top floor, Renate was still getting dressed so Stahl sat on the sofa, recalling favoured details of what had gone on there the night before. When the telephone rang, Renate said ‘Now what?’ and answered with a brusque ‘Hello?’ She listened for a moment, then turned to Stahl, clearly puzzled, and said, ‘It’s for you. How would …’ She didn’t finish the question, simply handed him the receiver.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Is it Herr Stahl on the line?’

  ‘Yes, who is this?’

  ‘My name doesn’t matter, Herr Stahl, not at the moment, anyhow. I’ll tell you when we meet.’ His German was refined and educated, his voice smooth.

  ‘Why would we meet?’

  ‘I believe you might be able to help us. We’re trying to resolve a … trying to resolve certain questions that involve your friend Olga Orlova – the actress. Have you seen her lately?’

  ‘No. What questions are you talking about?’

  ‘Mmm, better that we discuss these things in person. Are you planning a visit to Germany any time soon?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘No matter, we can meet in Paris. Always a pleasure to be there.’

  ‘Herr whatever-your-name-is, I don’t think I can help you. My regrets, but I must go now.’

  ‘Of course. I understand,’ the man said, his voice sympathetic. ‘Perhaps my colleagues in Paris will be in touch with you.’

  Stahl handed the receiver back to Renate and she hung up. Shaken, he reached for the cigarette pack in his pocket.

  Renate stood there for a moment, silent and uncertain, then said, ‘Were you expecting a telephone call here?’ She was being careful, trying to make the question sound offhand; she didn’t mind, she was just curious. Then she added, ‘From someone who speaks German?’

  ‘No, it was as much of a surprise to me as it was to you.’

  ‘Then how did he know where you were?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘This is very strange,’ she said. ‘Has it happened before?’

  She won’t let it go. So, how much to tell her? With a sigh in his voice he said, ‘I am, unfortunately, of some interest to certain German officials. The worst kind of German officials.’

  ‘Oh. Well now I understand. German officials of the worst kind who are evidently following you around the city. Will they be joining us for dinner?’

  ‘Renate, please, if you can find a way to ignore this …’

  She cut him off. ‘I’m an émigré, Fredric, a political refugee. I don’t like strange phone calls.’ She was going to continue but something suddenly occurred to her – from her expression, something she’d almost forgotten. ‘Does this have anything to do with that vile little Austrian who appeared on the set? The man in the alpine costume?’

  Stahl nodded, and tapped the ash from his cigarette into the Suze ashtray. ‘The same crowd. They’ve been bothering me ever since I came to Paris.’

  She thought it over. ‘Is that why you went to Berlin? To appease these people?’

  Now he had to lie. He couldn’t reveal what he’d done in Berlin. ‘No, the Warner publicity people liked the idea, so I agreed to go.’

  ‘You couldn’t refuse?’

  ‘Let’s say I didn’t, maybe I should have.’

  She took off her glasses, her faded blue eyes searching his face, her witchy nose scenting a lie. Finally she said, ‘I want to believe you …’

  She didn’t finish the sentence but he knew what came next. He looked at his watch. ‘Maybe we should …’

  ‘That telephone call scared me, Fredric. I know these people and what they do, I saw it, in Germany, and now it’s here, in this room.’

  ‘Which is my fault, but I don’t think I can do anything about it, except walk away from the movie and leave France. Is that what I should do?’

  ‘You’d better not.’

  ‘Then we have to live with it.’ He rested his cigarette on the ashtray, took her hands in his and held them tight. ‘Can you do that?’

  Some of the tension left her, he could see it in her face. She met his eyes, then shook her head in mock despair, a corner of her mouth turned up and she said, ‘Go make love to a sexy man and see what happens.’

  Perhaps, he thought, hoped, she wanted him more than peace of mind. ‘Speaking of which …,’ he said, with the playfully evil smile of a movie villain, a villain more than ready to skip dinner.

  ‘That’s for later.’

  ‘Then can we go get something good to eat? My dear Renate? My love?’

  She liked that, lowered her head and bumped him gently in the chest. ‘Help me on with my coat,’ she said.

  19 December. The mâche-betterave was superb, what followed on the rue Varlin was even better
. Having got the first time out of the way on the previous night, they had truly indulged themselves. Stahl reached the Claridge just after dawn, where the night deskman wished him a tender good morning – the hotel clerks of Paris were pleased when a guest enjoyed the delights of their city. Before Stahl left for work he telephoned Mme Brun and, after listening to a silent phone for a few minutes, was told Wilkinson would see him at 7.15 that evening, and the arrangements for their meeting.

  A few minutes early, Stahl got out of a taxi at a river dock on the Quai de Grenelle. A middle-aged couple, apparently waiting for his arrival, greeted him like an old friend. ‘Hi there Fredric, what a night for a cruise, hey?’ said the man in American English. This dock served the tourist boat that went up and down the Seine, and a hand-lettered sign on the shuttered ticket booth said AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CHRISTMAS CRUISE. Stahl chatted with the two Americans – Bob was a vice president at the National City Bank – until the launch arrived, strings of coloured lights shimmering in the icy mist, a band on the foredeck playing ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’.

  J. J. Wilkinson, in a camel-hair overcoat, was waiting for him in the lounge, a shopping bag from the Au Printemps department store by his side. Holding, Stahl guessed, Christmas presents. ‘I’ve ordered you a scotch,’ Wilkinson said as they shook hands. ‘I hope it’s something you like.’

  ‘It’ll do me good,’ Stahl said. ‘A long day on the set.’

  ‘Am I going to be taking notes?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’