by Alan Furst
“What did you tell them?”
“A woman.”
“They believe you?”
“Well, I’m here.”
Polanyi turned to Serebin and Marie-Galante. “ Mes enfants, ” he said. Marie-Galante began, Serebin joined in. Colonel Maniu. The lawyer. Troucelle, Princess Baltazar. Gheorghe Musa. The oil field study.
“We managed to have most of it translated,” Polanyi said. “Depressing, really. The vulnerabilities the General Staff saw in 1922 were exploited by the French in 1938, and by the British a year later. Without success. The French tried to lease the oil-barge fleet, the British mined the fields-but they never used the detonators. What they tried instead was to outbid the Germans for the oil, and that worked very well indeed. Too well, in fact. The price of Roumanian oil went through the roof, and the Germans couldn’t afford it. So they threatened to occupy the country. The Roumanians caved in, and gave them an exclusive sales agreement.”
“Where does that leave us?” Marrano said.
Polanyi sighed. “On the river, I suppose.”
“Broad and flat.”
“Yes. We’re on the wrong fucking end,” Polanyi said. “Maybe up toward the Iron Gates.”
“I would think,” Marrano said, “that the British have been over that ground.”
“They have. But, my friend, you must understand, it’s our turn.”
“Whatever it is, it won’t be permanent.”
Polanyi wasn’t ready to admit that. “The right catastrophe…But, you’re not wrong. More likely I will offer them time, weeks, and at least the potential for repetition. Of course we all dream of the great coup-we have to do that, no?”
Just after midnight, Serebin stood on the pier as the Nereide departed. Watched it motor out the channel into the Black Sea, where, a few minutes later, the light at the stern grew dim in the mist, then disappeared. Marie-Galante had said a final good-bye on deck; reserved, steadfast, a farewell in time of war, tears forborne to preclude the memory of tears.
At the Hotel Tomis, on the Constanta waterfront, he drank, to no effect, and busied himself with housekeeping: committing names to memory, turning phone numbers into letter code concealed in journalist’s notes. Thus his new identity: a French journalist, with the notional assignment of a story on a French traveling circus playing in Bucharest. Crowds of children, clapping their hands in glee as they follow Caca the Elephant in the circus parade.
He burned his notes when he was done, washed the ashes down the sink, turned off the light, stared up at the world. He had met privately with Polanyi for an hour or so, and toward the end of the discussion Polanyi had said, “Labonniere is one of us, Ilya. Please understand. And while it is always preferable for a diplomat to be accompanied by his wife, it is crucial for a diplomat who is engaged in secret work. Crucial for this diplomat, anyhow, and, especially, this wife.”
The Hotel Tomis. By the Portul Tomis, the ancient Latin name for Constanta, infamous as the city of exile for the Latin poet Ovid. Who wrote a love poem that an emperor didn’t like. Thinking about that didn’t make Serebin feel any better, and it didn’t put him to sleep. But with time, and persistence, the vodka did.
In Bucharest, they’d found him a room in an apartment-a long way from the Athenee Palace and the center of the city-which belonged to an elegant, distant woman in her sixties who owned a jewelry shop. The strada Lipscani house was out of bounds, he’d been told, and the Hungarian operative, no Slav it turned out, sent back across the border. Serebin had two or three days’ work to do, then la revedere, Bucuresti. He sat on the bed in his room, unfolding two new shirts, squashing them this way and that to get rid of the creases, which resulted in rumpled shirts with creases.
To see the British foreign correspondent James Carr was not difficult. Serebin called the Reuters bureau, said he was an emigre with a story to tell, left a transparently common Russian name, and was in the office an hour later. He could have done the trick at the Associated Press or Havas-Carr was a freelance journalist and filed for any paper that needed a Bucharest dateline.
When Serebin arrived, Carr was half-sitting on the wooden railing in the reception area and telling a secretary some story that made her smile. He seemed, on first impression, a standard of the breed: tall and stooped, handsome face with a touch of Anglo-Saxon decadence, lank hair, dirty blond and too long unbarbered, a clever smile and a good blazer. The trench coat, hung carelessly on the clothes tree in the corner, was certainly his. “Jamie Carr,” he said, extending a hand with fingers yellowed by nicotine.
He ushered Serebin to a room in back. “All for us,” he said ruefully. It was too quiet-no sound of typewriters or telephones. “Looks like I’m going to be the last one out.”
“You’re leaving?”
This was in French. Carr answered in English, but slowly, so that Serebin could understand. “I damn well better,” he said. “I’m only here by virtue of an Irish passport. Neutral, you see. Officially. But that’s not true and the Legion knows it.” He settled himself in a swivel chair, Serebin sat on the other side of the desk. “Would you believe, somebody shot my bed? From the apartment below mine. Came home in the morning and there was a hole in the bloody thing.”
He offered Serebin a stubby Roumanian cigarette, lit one for himself, then produced a pad and pencil. “So then, what do you have for me?”
Serebin said he’d come to Bucharest to talk to people who’d done business with a company called DeHaas.
“No! That vulgar little shit. What’d he do, put my name on a list?”
Serebin nodded.
Carr opened a drawer, peered inside, found a tin ashtray. “Must be an interesting sort of a list, care to sell it?”
No point answering that.
Carr made a face, mock horror at the perfidy of it all. “ Quid pro quo, was what that was. A private inquiry agent, so-called, and he told me a good deal more than I ever told him. But, lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. He was probably blackmailing half the sinners in Bucharest. Which is half the city.” He grinned. “Jesus Christ you only had to look at him.”
“Was it Zarrea?” The name was on the list.
Carr tapped his notepad with the pencil eraser. “Say, you know a lot.”
“Not much, just Kostyka’s apparat. Some of it, anyhow.”
“All right, so what do you want with me?”
“We might need your help, later on.”
“Oh? And who would I be helping, then?”
“Your English friends.”
Carr burst out laughing. “Jesus I hope not!” Then he stared at Serebin for a time. Puzzled. Something he couldn’t figure out. “You mean the real thing, don’t you. Out of some little office in London.”
“Yes.”
He drew a face on his pad. “Well, maybe I believe it but no matter, it’s a moot point. I won’t be here long enough to help anybody.”
Serebin started to rise, discussion over, but Carr waved him back down.
“Not oil, is it? It can’t be that.”
“Why not?”
“Been tried. And it don’t work. They sent a couple of their knights-errant out here in ’39 and they got shipped home in their underwear.” He started to say more, thought better of it, then went ahead anyhow. “You know,” he said, “they can blow it up any time they want.”
“They can?”
“Oh yes. But they haven’t, have they, and that means they don’t want to. Because, fact is, there are plenty of RAF bombers at British airfields in Greece, as we sit here, and they can go up to Ploesti and bomb the oil fields tonight. What is it, maybe five, six hundred miles? They have the range, there and back, no problem. But, somehow, it isn’t done. Now what does that mean, do you suppose? To me it means that somebody important says no. Stop the oil, sure, don’t let it reach Germany, but don’t bomb the wells. So they’ve got you sniffing around whorehouse Roumania instead, and all you’re going to get for your trouble is the clap.”
“Britain and Rou
mania are not at war,” Serebin said. “Not yet.”
“Balls,” Carr said. “A matter of weeks, a technicality. No, what’s going on here isn’t diplomacy, it’s money and influence, it’s business, and it happens every day. Back in 1916, for instance, the Allies were in cannon range of the steel mills at Thionville, in the Lorraine. The mills were behind the German line, at that point, the Germans were using them to make artillery shells, and we knew it. But, nothing happened. And that was thanks to the intervention of Baron de Wendel and his friends on the Comite des Forges-which meant Zaharoff and the rest of the arms merchants. These were their mills, so they wanted them back, in good condition, when the war ended.
“After the armistice, of course, there was hell to pay. Questions in Parliament, newspapers saying rude things. So up jumps Lloyd George, and he claims that the government didn’t want the war to end with a destroyed industrial base in France and mass unemployment. That leads to comm-u-nism. Which was major bloody nonsense, you know? Because what it really was, was money, getting what it wanted, which it always does. No shock to anybody over the age of five, I suppose, but British soldiers died from those shells, just like they’ll die from Panzer tanks running on Roumanian oil.”
A brief silence, in honor of the way things were, then Serebin said, “I’m sure you’re right.” Though it doesn’t matter if you are.
Which Carr perfectly understood. “Doesn’t change anything, does it.”
“No.”
It meant of course not, the way he said it, and Carr perfectly understood that as well, because in a very particular way they were the same.
“Who are you?” Carr said. “I mean, as much as you can say.”
“Russian emigre. A writer, sometimes.”
“Well,” Carr said, “I wish I could help you…”
“But?”
“But…” He hesitated, wanted to say something he knew he shouldn’t say. Finally he wheeled the swivel chair forward as far as it would go and leaned on the desk. “It’s no secret,” he said quietly, “you could ask around, the right people, and they’d tell you, because there are no secrets in this place, that I’m already doing what you want me to do.”
Serebin was amused. “The same people?”
“Maybe different offices in the same building,” Carr said. “Hell, I don’t know.”
“It’s the war.”
Serebin put his cigarette out and rose to leave.
“Want some advice?” Carr stood up and walked Serebin toward the door. “Watch out for yourself. All right?”
“Always,” Serebin said. “Story of my life.”
“No, I mean now, tonight. This whole thing, Antonescu, the Legion, it’s about to explode.”
“You’re sure?”
Carr shrugged. “Just be careful where you go. Who you’re with.” They shook hands in the reception area. The secretary was on the phone, speaking rapidly in Roumanian. She looked up at them, then went back to her conversation.
“Well, good luck.”
“Thank you,” Serebin said. “To both of us, I think.”
It was restless, the city, Serebin felt it, yet not a sight or a sound explained anything. Race of ants. Telepathic-we know, we just know. It was cold, he raised the collar of his coat, people hurried past, eyes on the ground. A policeman on the corner took a moment to admire himself in a pocket mirror. Not unusual in Bucharest, Serebin had seen it often.
Polanyi had told him to stay off the street, to work at night, if he could. He came to a movie theatre, paid, and went in. It was practically empty, a romantic comedy on the screen. He dozed, then woke suddenly at the sound of a newsreel-somber music, a voice taut with melodrama. A destroyer stood bow up in the sea, black smoke pouring from its deck. Then an auto race, a man at the finish line waving a checkered flag. Valentina. When did she arrive at the club? Eight? Nine? She would be early, he thought. Maybe she likes you, Marie-Galante had said, teasing him. But women never joked about things like that, not really.
Idly, he considered it. She was dark and serious, an artiste, likely capable of fierce excitements once she broke free of herself. But not at his hands. Because she would never go after a man that way. Never. No, this was something else. What? She knew virtually nothing about him, except that he’d come from Paris and, presumably, was going back there. Was that it?
He looked at his watch. On the screen, two women spoke confidentially in a parlor, one of them dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, a man, about to enter, his hand on the doorknob, overheard them, and stood there, eavesdropping. What did he hear? Serebin couldn’t understand a word of it. Once again, he looked at his watch. He would try in an hour-he could always occupy himself for an empty hour. Then what? Go to the nightclub? Alone? Have his hair ruffled by a Zebra? No. Foolish, dangerous. Stage door, then. There was always a stage door, even at the Tic Tac Club.
He came out of the theatre into swirling snow and white streets. Two women held on to each other, taking timid steps on the slippery pavement. Usually, the sidewalks were shoveled right away. But not tonight. On the other side of the avenue, Floristi Stefan, a light in the window shining on the flowers. He waited while an army truck rolled past, then crossed the street and entered the shop.
Inside it was warm and fragrant, and two young girls in blue smocks said, “Buna seara, domnul.” There was a radio playing softly at the end of the counter, a string quartet, Mozart, or maybe Haydn, he could never tell them apart. One of the clerks came over to help him and he pointed to a tall bucket of long-stemmed red roses. He held up ten fingers, then two, she nodded with approval and said something like “Ah, she’s lucky, your lady friend.”
She drew a length of gold paper from a long roll, spread it on the counter, and began to make a bouquet, now and then adding a branch of small green leaves. Suddenly, the music stopped. The other clerk went over to the radio and began to work the tuning knob but, wherever she paused, there was only a low, steady hum. She kept trying, then decided the problem was in the radio and gave it a hard slap on the side of the case. That didn’t work either, and the girl making the bouquet said a few sharp words, so she gave up and returned to the counter. When the roses were securely wrapped, the paper folded cleverly into itself, Serebin paid, and left the shop.
Where was he? The next cross street was the strada Roma, he thought the club might be somewhere to his left, maybe not too far. He wandered for a time, then spotted a corner of the Athenee Palace. He immediately changed direction, but at least he knew where he was and, a minute later, headed off toward the nightclub.
The street he took was unlit, and unnaturally silent, any sound of life lost in the hiss of the snow. There were only a few shops and they were closed for the night, wooden shutters rolled down and locked. On some of them, the owners had nailed hand-printed placards. He stopped to have a look, and discovered that the words were close to French. Roumanian Shop, the first one said. Then, next door, Christian Property.
Fifteen minutes later, the Tic Tac Club. No cabs, no customers in sight, only the generalissimo doorman, hands clasped behind him, rocking back and forth as he waited for his night to begin. Serebin walked past the club, then turned right into the side street until he found the alley he was looking for. Halfway down the alley, a triangle of yellow light illuminated falling snow and an iron door. The door was set inside a small alcove, and Serebin stood in its shelter and tried to brush the snow off his roses.
A few minutes later, a man hurried down the alley, one hand holding on to his hat in the stiff wind. He turned into the alcove, breathed a soft “Ach” in disgust at the weather, saw the flowers, and gave Serebin a conspiratorial wink. He pulled the door open, letting out a powerful gust of roasting meat and garlic, and disappeared inside.
Next to arrive, Momo Tsipler and one of the Wienerwald Companions, a violin case under his arm. Catching sight of Serebin and his bouquet, Tsipler said, in German, “Tonight she will be his,” and the violinist laughed. He threw his cigarette into the al
ley and Tsipler opened the door, holding it ajar so that Serebin could go in. “You’ll freeze it off, out here,” he said.
Serebin shook his head and smiled.
As the door closed behind them, Valentina turned the corner at the end of the alley. Serebin left the alcove and met her halfway. She was wearing an old fur coat, and a wool muffler as a head scarf.
“Valentina,” he said.
She peered at him, then seemed startled when she figured out who he was. “Oh, it’s you.”
He offered her the bouquet.
“What’s this?”
“Can we get out of the snow?”
The building across the alley from the club had a matching alcove and there was just enough room for them to stand facing each other.
“I had to have a reason to wait here,” Serebin said.
Relieved, Valentina said, “Oh,” and took the flowers from him. “You surprised me,” she said. “Anyhow, thank you. They’re beautiful.” Then, “What are you doing here? The hotel operator said you’d left.”
“We did. But we got your note.”
“It’s Gulian,” she said. “He wanted to see you.”
“Why?”
“Well, to offer his services.”
“To do what?”
“Maniu talked to him, before he had to leave. He thinks you’re here to work against the fascists. He’s wrong?”
“No. Where is he?”
“Home. He’ll be along later, but you shouldn’t wait.”
“I can.”
“No, don’t. Something’s going on. There was a murder, earlier today. A German major was sitting in a cafe and a man walked up to him and shot him dead. The man was arrested, a former boxing champion, called Axiotti.”
“Why did he do it?”
“Maybe provocation. It’s the Legion-don’t try to understand, just get off the street.”
“What about you?”
“I have to be here.” She looked at him for a moment, then said, “Well, that’s how it is.”