by Alan Furst
Principal requires London confirmation here soonest
Marchais
18 December. The Geneva/Paris night express was almost empty, only a few passengers leaving Switzerland for occupied France. Serebin took a stack of manuscripts from his briefcase and, with a small sigh, for himself, for the universe, began to work. The Harvest would not appear for Christmas, but maybe it could be done before the New Year. New Year also needed a boost for morale, didn’t it? Of course it did, and their emigre printer was an angel sent from heaven, explicitly, Serebin thought, for the salvation of editorial souls.
Anyhow, he reminded himself, he liked working on trains. Here was Kacherin, “To Mama.” Oh Jesus. The man never gave up-this poor sweet lady cooked potato pancakes, sat in a chair by her sleeping son, three or four times a year. Love rhymed with above, also with stove, well, it almost did. But then, what the hell, this wasn’t The Resounding Shell, or any of the powerful Russian quarterlies. This was The Harvest, it had no Blok, no Nabokov. It had Kacherin and his sugar bun for mama. Who was Serebin to deny him his thirty-six lines? Fix it! Serebin went for the pencil, determined compassion burst like a bomb in his heart. Even in an imperfect world, bedizened didn’t have to rhyme with wizened.
The pencil hovered, and died in his hand. He had no right to do this. Use it as it was, or leave it out. But then, Kacherin’s dues paid for The Harvest, was it not just to include him? Not really. He put the poem aside-maybe in, maybe out, he would wait and see if they had room. And, if they didn’t, and Kacherin didn’t get published, he would at least get a banana.
Serebin carried a handsome check drawn on Kostyka’s Paris bank, but the shaking-by-the-heels hadn’t been easy. To Kostyka it was all the same, donating for Christmas baskets was no different than buying a lead mine, it was investment, and it demanded negotiation. How many baskets? What, exactly, was in these baskets? Serebin improvised. Cheese, a sausage, Ukrainian sweet bread, chocolate, every sort of festive delicacy. Kostyka looked grim. That was all well and good, but what about oranges? What about bananas?
Such things existed in Paris, Serebin admitted, but had to be obtained from German sources or on the black market-either way, very expensive. Kostyka didn’t care, these were now his Christmas baskets, and his Christmas baskets would have an orange and a banana. Understood? Agreed? For a moment, Serebin was afraid he was going to have to sign something, but Kostyka stopped short of that. So, they’d find a way to buy the fruit. They had better, Serebin realized, because Kostyka would not forget their contract and would make it his business to find out if the IRU had met its obligations.
Serebin returned to work. He had a story from Boris Balki, called “Tolstoy’s Lizard.” This was good, and definitely in the winter issue. Balki was an emigre who worked as a barman at a Russian nightclub, the Balalaika, up in the tough Clichy district. He didn’t much like Balki, who he found ingratiating and sly, and always up to something, but he wrote clean, steady prose. “Tolstoy’s Lizard” was a retelling of a true story about Maxim Gorky, who habitually followed people, secretly, in order to use them in his fiction. That was nothing new, Balzac had confessed that he did it all the time. Gorky, the story went, had once followed Tolstoy in the forest of Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy had stopped in a clearing to watch a lizard lying on a rock. “Your heart is beating,” Tolstoy said to the lizard. “The sun is shining. You’re happy.” Then he became sorrowful, and said, “I’m not.”
The train slowed suddenly, then jerked to a stop. Serebin looked up from the manuscript. Now what? They were only twenty minutes from the Kontrolle at Ferney-Voltaire, certainly not scheduled to stop at some village. Serebin peered out the window but there was only the dark station and the frost-whitened fields of the countryside. He put the manuscript aside and opened the door of his compartment in time to see three men in suits, speaking German in low, excited voices, hurrying toward the end of the car. Two of them carried small automatic pistols, barrels pointed safely at the floor. Gestapo? What else.
When they left the train, Serebin followed them to the door, stepped cautiously outside, saw that a few other passengers had done the same thing. Up beyond the locomotive, at the far end of the station, he could see flickering orange light. Serebin took a step along the platform, then another. Somebody said, “What’s the problem?” Nobody knew. Slowly, they all walked toward the fire-nobody had said they couldn’t.
Just beyond the end of the platform, an old Citroen had been pushed across the track and set on fire. Why? The three Germans returned, pistols now put away. One of them waved the crowd of passengers back toward the train. “Don’t worry,” he said in French. “Go back to your seats, please.”
“What happened?”
“As you see.” He laughed. “Some idiot threw a match in the gas tank. They’ll have to wait for it to burn out before they can move it.”
“Sabotage?”
The German, still amused, shook his head. “ Folie, ” he said, and shrugged. French madness. Who could say what these idiots might do next?
By post:
Drake’s 8 Grosvenor Square London S.W. 1 18 December, 1940
The Right Honourable the Baron Kostyka Hotel Helvetia St. Moritz Switzerland
Sir:
I write at the direction of Sir Charles Vaughn to offer our most sincere regrets that your name was erroneously omitted from the club’s published list of members for the year 1940. You may be sure that this oversight will be corrected on the 1941 list.
Sir Charles hopes you will accept his personal apologies, and that you will agree to be his guest for dinner as soon as you are able to return to London.
Yours most respectfully, J. T. W. Aubrey Secretary
Come home, all is forgiven.
27 December.
The Parisian French had a grand passion for institutes, where people were known to be clever, and well-dressed, and subtly important, their offices located in fine, antique buildings in the fancy neighborhoods. The Institut National de la Recherche Petroliere was a champion of the breed, the windows looked out over the bare trees of the Jardin du Ranelagh, just across from the Bois de Boulogne, on the majestic border of the 16th Arrondissement. “We interest ourselves in numbers here,” Mademoiselle Dubon told Serebin. “Economics. We don’t actually touch the filthy stuff.” Her smile was tart and sunny, as was Mademoiselle Dubon.
From the moment they met, in her office on the top floor, Serebin thought of Mademoiselle Dubon as a nun. Of a certain age, she was conventionally dressed for business, a somber suit, a green scarf hiding her neck, but she wore nun’s eyeglasses-delicate, gold spectacles, her fair hair short and severe, her rosy face innocent of makeup. There was, as well, a certain biting innocence in her manner-all sins known to her, and all forgiven. At least in the business of oil, but, Serebin suspected, perhaps well beyond that. “So, monsieur,” she said, “you are an old friend of the baron’s.”
“We’ve met, here and there, over the years. Moscow, Paris. A conference, a dinner party.” Oh, you know.
She knew. “I’ve had a note from his Paris office, hand-delivered, that suggests someone like you would call, and that I am to be, informative.” A dark cloud passed in front of the sun. “So I shall be. But, monsieur, if you are not discreet, we shall both be shot, or whatever it is that the Boche do these days. Beheading, is it?”
“So they say.”
“Well, I’d prefer that mine stay where it is, if it’s all the same to you.”
Serebin’s smile was meant to reassure. “I wonder if you could tell me,” he said, “what happened to him, in London?”
“Nobody knows, not really. He was forcing his way up the ladder, as always, but it’s thought he pushed a bit too hard, perhaps bested somebody who was better left unbested. They have rules there-they don’t tell you what they are, but they have them. And, if you break them, doors close, people are out when you call, invitations don’t come. A summer frost, it’s all quite magical.”
“Nothing like Paris, of
course.”
The irony was clear, but she said, “We’re perhaps more tolerant here, but you may be right. In any event, the British find themselves in difficulty, and perhaps not so particular about their friends. That’s also in the rules, no doubt.”
“A footnote. But they will prevail, in the end.”
“God and Roosevelt willing, they shall. And sooner would be better. Now, that said, how can I be of service to you?”
“Friends of mine have an interest in the disruption of Roumania’s oil exportation to Germany.”
“Oh do they? Well, I suppose it can be tried. Again.”
“If it will end the war it has to be tried, no?”
She thought for a moment before she answered. “Oil is critical for Germany, especially in time of war. So, it excites them, inspires them to heroic effort. For example, during the evacuation of Dunkirk, the British bombed the oil storage facilities near Hamburg. The hits were not direct, but the tanks were punctured, and three thousand tons of oil leaked out. Almost all of it, however, was recovered, pumped back into the tanks. That, monsieur, that level of determination, is what your friends ought to be thinking about.”
“We know this, in Russia. The last, oh, three hundred years or so, when the moment was right, we would invite them to come over and help us out.”
She knew the history. “National character,” she said. “They fix things. For example, the last time the British went after Roumanian oil, they were quite successful. Have you ever heard the name Empire Jack?”
“No.”
“Colonel John Norton-Griffiths, member of Parliament, no less, and one of those delicious madmen produced by a rather sane race of people. Griffiths showed up in Bucharest in 1916, just ahead of the German cavalry. He came from Russia, in a two-seater Rolls which carried him, his valet, and several crates of champagne. He got the Roumanians to agree that the Ploesti oil fields had to be destroyed and, under his direction, they wrecked. I mean, they wrecked. Blew up the derricks, plugged the wells, broke into the pipelines, flooded the fields with oil and set it on fire. Griffiths worked alongside them, lit off the gas in an engine house and was blown out the door with his hair on fire. Didn’t stop him for a minute. He got hold of a sledgehammer and went for the derricks and the pipes like a demon. In the end, they smashed seventy refineries, burned up eight hundred tons of crude oil and petroleum products. The flames didn’t die down for weeks.”
Serebin acknowledged the magnitude of the adventure but could sense the ending, the homily.
“But, by 1918, the Germans had production back up to eighty percent of the 1914 level.”
“Still, two years.”
“Oh yes, it hurt them. When the war ended, Ludendorff was headed for Baku after Caspian oil, with Turkey, Germany’s ally, trying to break in from the south. At that moment, the army had only a two-month supply, the defense industries were out of lubricants, and the navy was barely able to function.”
“It worked.”
“With Roumanian help, I emphasize that, it did. The Allies held a conference, about ten days after the armistice, where a man named Berenger, a French senator, made a speech that we don’t, in this building, tend to forget. Oil, he said, ‘the blood of the earth,’ had become, in war, ‘the blood of victory.’”
“A dramatic image.”
“The Germans certainly thought it was. ‘Of course he’s right,’ they told each other. ‘So now we’ll find a way to make our own oil.’”
“Synthetics.”
“The hydrogenation of German coal. The process developed by Bergius in the 1920s, acquired by IG Farben in 1926. Bergius got the Nobel Prize in chemistry, Farben sold a share of the process to Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Germany had oil. Some of it, anyhow. At the present moment-and here I remind you of that man in the top hat, raising his axe-the Bergius process provides ninety-five percent of the Luftwaffe’s aviation gasoline. Still, they must have Roumanian oil. At the moment, they import a high volume from Russia but, if that should stop, they’ll need Roumania. Even with fourteen synthetic fuel plants at work, the Ploesti field would account for fifty-eight percent of the German oil supply. Thus the Blitzkrieg: rapid invasion, no long-term demand for fuel. But, even if the Russian imports end, and even if the tanks stop, down on the roads, Germany can fight the air war, can bomb Britain every night.”
Mademoiselle Dubon studied the look on Serebin’s face-it was not, apparently, unamusing. Her tone was gentle: “You may say merde, monsieur, if you wish.”
“Merde.”
“And I agree. For war in these times, only partial solutions, and not very satisfying. Nonetheless…”
Serebin rose, walked to the window, looked out at the cold, empty park. Before the war, he would have seen British nursemaids and two-year-old French aristocrats, but they’d gone away. When he lit a Sobranie, Mademoiselle Dubon produced an ashtray.
“Have you met the tempestuous Elsa?” she said.
“I have. But no tempests, at least not while I was around.”
“They occur, I’ve heard, but Kostyka is smitten, she can do no wrong. And, adding spice to the gossip, there are those who say she is a Russian spy.”
Serebin returned to his chair. What would that mean? “Is she, do you think?”
“Who knows. A man like Ivan Kostyka serves a life sentence of suspicion, he must assume that everyone he meets is trying to get to him. Sex, love, friendship, gratitude, respect, you name it-those are the tools of the trade. So, if she is a Soviet agent, he suspects it, he goes to bed with it, and worries about it in the morning.”
She paused to let that sink in, then said, “And, speaking of Russia, you should keep in mind the events of last May and June. When Roumania chose Germany over Russia as her patron state-she had to pick one or the other-Stalin became very irritated and took Roumania’s provinces of Bessarabia and the northern Bucovina. That made Hitler nervous, it put the USSR just on the doorstep of ‘his’ oil. So, don’t be surprised if Hitler goes east, maybe sooner than you think.”
“Let’s hope he does, because that will be the end of him.”
“Likely it will, but you can’t count on it. Now, you must be aware of what the British have already tried.”
“Some, certainly not everything.”
“In the fall of 1939, Britain and France offered the Roumanians money, as much as sixty million dollars, to destroy the oil fields, but they could never settle on a price. Then, that same winter, the British secret service sent a force of men from the British navy, posing as art students, up the Danube, to sink a line of barges and block the river. Since almost all Roumanian oil is barged to Germany, a logical solution.”
“That was in the newspapers. A loud snicker from Dr. Goebbels.”
“A justified snicker. The Germans fooled them-got them to go ashore, then stole their fuel. A debacle. And there were other attempts; a plan to bribe fifty river pilots, to disappear, and murder the other ten. A guerrilla raid on the Tintea field, which is the high-pressure field, thwarted by diplomatic concerns. Some other plot, betrayed by an oil executive in London. There may have been more, that I don’t know about and never will, but the lesson is clear, this is harder than it looks.”
“Encore merde?”
“With pleasure, a Wagnerian chorus of it.”
“And, when they’re done, I have a rather simpleminded question.”
“Ask.”
“Why don’t the Germans simply double their synthetic output?”
“Certainly there is such a plan in the economic ministry, and if they could wave a magic wand, they would. However, these plants take time and resources to build, and the Bergius process demands an extraordinary tonnage of coal-you don’t want to starve the Krupp forges. No guns if you do that. They will certainly build more refineries, but they will also lose capacity to British bombing. So, today, they must have the Roumanian oil. And, tomorrow. And, I believe, for a long time to come.”
“Mademoiselle Dubon. Tell me, what wou
ld you do?”
She thought it over for a time, then said, “Well, I leave the miserable details to you and your friends, but there are only two possibilities, as far as I can see. If this is to be a secret operation, sabotage, then there must be, at some level, Roumanian complicity. The only other choice is waves of British bombers, willing to accept an obscene casualty rate from the antiaircraft protection. It took Empire Jack and his Roumanians ten days to do their work, so the small-unit commando raid isn’t an option. And then, you are surely aware that the Roumanians and their German friends know you’re coming. They are waiting for you, my dear.”
There was a silence when she stopped talking. He could hear typewriters in other offices, a telephone rang. Finally she said “So,” raised an eyebrow, and left it at that.
“You’ve been very helpful,” Serebin said. She didn’t, he could see from her expression, especially believe it.
A man appeared in the doorway, a dossier under one arm. “Ah, excuse me,” he said, “I’ll…”
Serebin stood up. Mademoiselle Dubon said, “You can come in, Jacques. This is Monsieur Blanc from the finance ministry, he was just leaving.” Over the man’s shoulder, as he shook hands with Serebin, she mouthed the words bon courage.
29 December. When Serebin returned to his hotel, in late afternoon, there was a letter waiting for him at the desk. When he saw the Turkish stamps and the handwritten address, each letter carefully drawn in blunt pencil, he knew what it meant. He took the letter up to his room and sat on the bed and, after a time, he opened it.
“ Gospodin, I am grieved to tell you that Tamara Petrovna was taken to the hospital. Doctor says it will only be a few days.” Serebin looked at the postmark, the letter had taken three weeks to get to Paris. “She wanted me to write that she says farewell to you, that you must take care, that you are right in what you do.” The words Tamara had spoken were underlined. The letter went on. Could they stay at the house, for now? They must look for work. This was life. God watched over them all.
That same afternoon, in Istanbul, on the second floor of a waterfront lokanta called Karim Bey, Janos Polanyi ate a bland stew of chicken and tomatoes. Seated across from him was an English businessman, long a resident of the city, who owned entrepots in the port of Uskudar, on the Asian shore. The Englishman was known as Mr. Brown. He was fattish and soft-spoken, a slow, comfortable man who smoked a pipe and wore, against the chill of the harbor, a slipover sweater beneath his jacket. When he spoke, his French was steady and deliberate, a fluency that, Polanyi thought, one wouldn’t have predicted on first impression. “Something’s needed right away,” he said.