by Alan Furst
“Very much,” he said.
She walked over to the desk, opened her purse, and took out a cigarette. Her walk was as always, like her, sensible and straightforward, simply a way to get from here to there, but, even so, the plum-colored panties made a difference, and maybe it took her a little longer, at that moment, to go from here to there. As she returned to the chaise longue, Weisz left his chair and, ashtray in hand, settled on the bed. “Come sit with me,” he said.
“I like it over here,” she said. “On this furniture, one can be languid.” She lay back, crossed her ankles, cupped an elbow with one hand, while the other, with the cigarette, was held by her ear—a movie siren’s pose. “But perhaps,” she said, with a voice and smile that matched the pose, “you’ll join me.”
The following day, 13 March, the Czechoslovakian situation deteriorated. Father Tiso had been summoned to Berlin, to meet personally with Hitler, and Slovakia, by noon, was on the way to declaring itself independent. Thus the nation, pasted together at Versailles, then torn apart at Munich, was in its final hours. At the Reuters bureau, Carlo Weisz was fully engaged—the telephones never stopped ringing, and the teleprinter bell chimed as it issued communiqués from the Reich ministries. Central Europe was, once again, about to explode.
In the middle of it, Gerda, with a certain knowing tenderness, called out, “Herr Weisz, it is Fräulein Schmidt.” The conversation with Christa was difficult, darkened by approaching separation. Sunday, the seventeenth, would be his last day in Berlin, Eric Wolf was due back in the office on Monday, and Weisz was expected in Paris. This meant that Friday, the fifteenth, would be the last time they could be together.
“I can see you this afternoon,” she said. “Tomorrow I cannot, and Friday, I don’t know, I don’t want to think about it, maybe we can meet, but I don’t want, I don’t want to say goodby. Carlo? Hello? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here. The lines have been bad all day,” he said. Then: “We’ll meet at four, can you be there at four?”
She agreed.
Weisz left the office at three-thirty. Outside, the shadow of war lay over the city—people walked quickly, faces closed, eyes down, while Wehrmacht staff cars sped by, and Grosser Mercedes, flying pennants on their front bumpers, were lined up at the entry to the Adlon. Passing knots of guests in the lobby, he twice heard the word again. And, a few minutes later, the shadow was in his room. “Now it’s coming,” Christa said.
“I think so.” They were sitting side by side on the edge of the bed. “Christa,” he said.
“Yes?”
“When I leave, on Sunday, I want you to come with me. Take whatever you can, bring the dogs—they have dogs in Paris—and meet me at the ten-forty express, on the platform by the first-class wagons-lits.”
“I can’t,” she said. “Not now. I can’t leave.” She looked around the room, as though someone were hiding there, as though there might be something she could see. “It isn’t von Schirren,” she said. “It’s my friends, I cannot just, abandon them.” Her eyes met his, making sure he understood her. “They need me.”
Weisz hesitated, then said, “Forgive me, Christa, but, what you are doing, you and your friends, will it really change anything?”
“Who can say? But what I do know is that if I don’t do something, it will change me.”
He started to counter, then saw it wouldn’t matter, she would not be persuaded. The more danger threatened, he realized, the less she would run from it. “Allright,” he said, giving in, “we’ll meet on Friday.”
“Yes,” she said, “but not to say goodby. To make plans. Because I will come to Paris, if you want me to. A few months, maybe, it’s only a matter of time—it can’t go on like this.”
Weisz nodded. Of course. It couldn’t. “I don’t like saying this, but if, for some reason, I’m not here on Friday, stop at the desk. I’ll leave a letter for you.”
“You think you won’t be here?”
“It’s possible. If something important happens, they could send me anywhere.”
There was no more to say. She leaned against him, took his hand, and held it.
The morning of the fourteenth, the temperature dropped to ten degrees and it started to snow, a bad spring snow, thick and heavy. Perhaps that made a difference, perhaps it cooled tempers, in a city muffled and silent. The phones rang only now and then—tipsters calling in to report the same rumor: diplomats would defuse the crisis—and the teleprinter was quiet. Cables from the London office demanded news, but the only news was in London, where, late in the morning, Chamberlain issued a statement: when Britain and France had committed to protect Czechoslovakia from aggression, they’d meant military aggression, and this crisis was diplomatic. Weisz got back to the hotel after seven, tired, and alone.
At four-thirty in the morning, the telephone rang. Weisz rolled out of bed, staggered to the desk, and picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
The connection was terrible. Through crackling static, Delahanty’s voice was just barely audible. “Hello, Carlo, it’s me. How is it there?”
“It’s snowing. Hard.”
“Start packing, laddie. We’ve heard that German troops are leaving their barracks in the Sudetenland. Which means that Hitler’s done talking to the Czechs, and that puts you on the first train to Prague. Our man in the Prague office is down in Slovakia—independent Slovakia, this morning—where they’ve closed the border. Now, I’m looking at a timetable, and there’s a train at five-twenty-five. We’ve cabled the Prague office, they’re expecting you, and there’s a room for you at the Zlata Husa. Anything else you need?”
“No, I’m on my way.”
“Call or cable, when you get there.”
Weisz went into the bathroom, turned on the cold water, and splashed his face. How did Delahanty, in Paris, know about German troop movements? Well, he had his sources. Very good sources. Dark sources, perhaps. Weisz packed quickly, lit a cigarette, then, from his overcoat pocket, he took the list he’d received from Christa’s friend, thought for a moment, and hunted through his briefcase until he found a twelve-page press release—“Steel Production in the Saar Valley, 1936–1939.” He carefully removed the staple, inserted the list of names between pages ten and eleven, refixed the staple, then slid the revised document into the middle of a sheaf of similar papers. Short of calling on a clandestine tailor at four in the morning, that was the best he could do.
Then, on a sheet of Adlon stationery, he wrote: My love, they’ve sent me to Prague, and I’ll likely return to Paris when that’s done. I’ll write you from there, I’ll wait for you there. I love you, Carlo.
He put the letter in an envelope, addressed it Frau von S., sealed it, and left it at the desk when he checked out.
On the 5:25 express, Berlin/Dresden/Prague, Weisz joined two other journalists in a first-class compartment: Simard, a sharply dressed little weasel from Havas, the French wire service, and Ian Hamilton, in a fur hat with flaps, from the Times of London. “I guess you’ve heard what I’ve heard,” Weisz said, stowing his valise above the plush seat.
“No luck at all, the sorry bastards,” Hamilton said. “Adolf will have them now.”
Simard shrugged. “Yes, the poor Czechs, but they have Paris and London to thank for this.”
They settled in for the four-hour trip—at least that, maybe more with the snow. Simard slept, Hamilton read the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. “Article on Italy today,” he said to Weisz. “Have you seen it?”
“No. What’s it about?”
“The state of Italian politics, struggle against the antifascist forces. Which are all Bolshevik-influenced, they’d have you believe.”
Weisz shrugged, nothing new there.
Hamilton scanned the page, then read, “‘…thwarted by the patriotic forces of the OVRA…’ Tell me, Weisz, what does that stand for? You see it now and again, but mostly they just use the initials.”
“It’s said to mean Organizzazione di Vigilanza e Repressione dell’
Antifascismo, which would be the Organization for the Vigilant Repression of Antifascism, but there’s another version. I’ve heard that it comes from a memo Mussolini wrote, where he said he wanted a national police organization, with tentacles that would reach into Italian life like a piovra, which is a mythical giant octopus. But the word was mistyped as ovra, and Mussolini liked the sound of it, thought it was frightening, so OVRA became the official name.”
“Really,” Hamilton said. “That’s worth knowing.” He took out a pad and pen and wrote down the story. “Watch out, it’s the piovra!”
Weisz’s grin was tart. “Not so funny, in real life,” he said.
“No, I suppose it isn’t. Still, it’s hard to take the man seriously.”
“Yes, I know,” Weisz said. Mussolini, the comic buffoon, a widely held view, but what he’d done wasn’t comic at all.
Hamilton gave up on the German paper. “Care for a look?”
“No thanks.”
Hamilton reached into his briefcase and opened to a dog-eared page in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. “Better for train trips,” he said.
Weisz looked out the window, hypnotized by the falling snow, thinking mostly about Christa, about her coming to Paris. Then he got out the Malraux novel and started reading, but, three or four pages later, he dozed off.
It was Hamilton’s voice that woke him. “Well, well,” he said, “look who’s here.” The railroad tracks, following the river Elbe, now ran by the road, where, dimly visible through the driving snow, a Wehrmacht column was headed south, toward Prague. Truckloads of infantry huddled under canvas tops, skidding motorcycles, ambulances, occasional staff cars. The three journalists watched in silence, then, after a few minutes, went back to conversation, but the column never ended, and, an hour later, when the track crossed to the other side of the river, it was still moving slowly down the snow-covered road. At the next station, the express shifted over to a siding so a military train could go past. Pulled by two locomotives, endless flatcars rolled past, carrying artillery pieces and tanks, their long cannons poking out from beneath tied-down tarpaulins.
“Just like la dernière,” Simard said—“the last one,” as the French called it.
“And the next,” Hamilton said. “And the one after that.”
And the one in Spain, Weisz thought. And, again, he would write about it. He watched the train until it ended, with a caboose, which had a machine-gun emplacement on its roof; the protective rim of sandbags and the helmets of the gunners white with snow.
At the next scheduled stop, the Czech town of Kralupy, the train stood in the station for a long time, its locomotive emitting an occasional snort of steam. Eventually, as Hamilton rose “to see what’s going on,” the first-class conductor appeared at the door of their compartment. “Gentlemen, I beg your pardon, but the train cannot proceed.”
“Why not?” Weisz said.
“We are not informed,” the conductor said. “We regret the inconvenience, gentlemen, perhaps later in the day, we may continue.”
“Is it the snow?” Hamilton said.
“Please,” the conductor said. “We do regret the inconvenience.”
“Well then,” Hamilton said philosophically, “damn it all to bloody hell.” He stood and yanked his valise off the luggage rack. “Where is beastly Prague?”
“About twenty miles from here,” Weisz said.
They left the train and trudged across the platform, to the station café on the other side of the street. There, the proprietor made a telephone call, which produced, twenty minutes later, the Kralupy taxicab and its sullen giant of a driver. “Prague!” he said. “Prague?” How dare they call him away from hearth and home in such weather.
Weisz began to peel reichsmarks from the roll in his pocket.
“I’ll take part of it,” Hamilton said quietly, reading the driver’s eyes.
“I can only help a little,” Simard said. “At Havas, they…”
Weisz and Hamilton waved him off, they didn’t care, were of a traveling class that mythically availed itself of oxcarts or elephants or sedan chairs with native bearers, so the overpriced Kralupy taxi barely deserved comment.
The taxi was a Tatra, with long, sloping rear end and bulbous body, and an extra headlight, like a cyclops’s eye, between the usual two. Weisz and Simard sat in the spacious backseat, while Hamilton sat next to the driver. Who grumbled continually as he squinted into the snow, and pushed hard against the wheel as they churned through the higher drifts, internal combustion being, to him, only part of the locomotion process. The invading Germans had closed the road to Prague, as well as the railway, and, at one point, the taxi was flagged down by a Wehrmacht traffic-control unit—two motorcycles with sidecars that blocked the way. But a determined display of red press cards did the trick and they were waved through, with a casual stiff-armed salute and an amiable “Heil Hitler.”
“So then, Prague, here we are,” the driver said, stopping the taxi on some nameless road on the outskirts of the city. Weisz started to argue, in Slovenian, distant from Czech but in the same general family.
“But I don’t know this place,” the driver said.
“Go that way!” Hamilton said in German, waving generally south.
“Are you German?” the driver said.
“No, British.”
From the look on the driver’s face, that was worse. But he slammed the Tatra into gear and drove on. “We’re going to Wenceslas Square,” Weisz said, “in the old city.” Hamilton was also staying at the Zlata Husa—the Golden Goose—while Simard was at the Ambassador. Once more, as they crossed a bridge over the Vltava, they were stopped by German traffic police, and got through by using their press cards. In the central districts, south of the river, there was hardly a soul to be seen—when your country is being invaded, better to stay home. As the taxi entered the old city, and began to work its way through the ancient winding streets, Simard called out, “We just passed Blkova, we’re almost there.” He had a Guide Bleu, open to a map, on his knees.
As the driver shifted down to first gear, trying to turn a corner never meant for automobiles, a boy ran in front of the taxi and waved his arms. Weisz’s impression was student—maybe eighteen, with tousled fair hair and a battered wool jacket. The driver swore, and the car stalled as he slammed on the brakes. Then the back door flew open and another boy, similar to the first, dove headfirst onto the floor at Weisz’s feet. He was breathing hard, and laughing, and bunched in his hand was a swastika flag.
The boy in front of the taxi ran around the car and joined his friend on the floor. His face was bright red. “Go ahead! Go, now. Hurry!” he shouted. The driver, muttering and cursing, started the taxi, but, as they began to move, they were hit from behind. Weisz, knocked halfway off the seat, turned around to see, through the snow-dappled rear window, a black Opel, which had been unable to stop on the slippery cobbles and rammed them, its front grille spewing steam.
The driver reached for the ignition key, but Weisz yelled, “Don’t stop.” He didn’t. The back wheels slewed sideways, then the car gained traction and drove away. Behind them, two men in overcoats climbed out of the Opel and started to run, shouting in German, “Halt! Police!”
“What police?” Hamilton said, watching from the front seat. “Gestapo?”
Suddenly, a man in a black leather coat ran out of an alley, a Luger pistol in hand. Everybody ducked, a hole appeared in the windshield, and another round hit the back door panel. The boy in the wool jacket yelled, “Get out of here,” and the driver stepped on the gas. The man with the gun had run in front of the taxi, now he tried to leap out of the way, slipped, and fell. There was a bump beneath the wheels, accompanied by a furious squawk, then the taxi sideswiped a wall—metal grinding on stone—and, with the driver hauling maniacally at the wheel, slid around a corner, wheels spinning, and swerved crazily down the street.
Just before they turned, Weisz had seen the man with the pistol, obviously in pain, trying to cra
wl away. “I think we ran over his foot,” he said.
“Serves him right,” Hamilton said. Then, to the boys on the floor, in German: “Who are you?” A reporter’s question, Weisz heard it in his voice.
“Never mind that,” the boy in the wool jacket said, now leaning against the door. “We took their fucking flag.”
“You’re students?”
The two looked at each other. Finally, the one in the wool jacket said, “Yes. We were.”
“Merde,” Simard said, mildly irritated, as though he’d lost a button. Gingerly, he raised the cuff of his trouser leg, to reveal a red gash that pulsed blood down his shin and into his sock. “I am shot,” he said, barely able to believe it. He took a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and dabbed the wound. “Don’t dab at it,” Hamilton said. “Press it.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Simard said. “I’ve been shot before.”
“So have I,” Hamilton said.
“Use pressure,” Weisz said. “To stop bleeding.” He found his own handkerchief, held the ends, and twirled it around to make a tourniquet.
“I’ll do it,” Simard said, taking the handkerchief. His face was very pale, Weisz thought he might be in shock.
In the front seat, as the taxi hurtled down a broad, empty street, the driver turned around to see what was going on in back. He started to speak, then didn’t, and held a hand to his forehead. Of course his head ached—his windshield had a bullet hole, his doors were scraped, trunk dented, and, now, blood on the upholstery. Behind them, in the distance, the high and low notes of a siren.
The student holding the flag got to his knees and peered out the window. “You had better hide your taxi,” he said to the driver.
“Hide it? Under the bed?”
“Pavel, maybe,” the other student said.
His friend said, “Yes, of course.” Then, to the driver: “A friend of ours lives in a building with a stable in back, we can hide it there. You can’t drive around like this.”
The driver blew out his breath in a great sigh. “A stable? With horses?”