by Alan Furst
with a kill. The Rozens would give up their agent networks, Polish and
possibly German, when they were interrogated in Paris, and would,
before they were taken out of the country, steal from the Soviet
embassy whatever they could. That is, Mercier thought, if they were
still free. Or if they were still alive. Because there were occasions when
these affairs ended very quickly.
Marek drove him to the Warszawa-Wiedenski station at 4:45 p.m.,
early for the 5:15 departure. His plan was to watch Anna Szarbek
arrive--making sure that Maxim had not come to see her off--then
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"discover" her as they waited to board the train. At first, he was
excited. From a vantage point by a luggage cart piled with trunks, he
watched the platform; the locomotive, venting white steam with a
loud hiss, and the smell of trains, scorched iron and coal smoke, suggesting journey, adventure. But then, as the hands of the platform
clock moved to 5:10, excitement was replaced by anxiety. Where was
she? When the conductor stationed himself by the steps to the firstclass wagon-lit, Mercier realized he had to get on the train. Was he to
travel by himself? In white letters on a blue enameled panel by the
door, the train's route was announced:
Warszawa - Krakow - Brno
Bratislava - Budapest - Beograd
Beograd--the Serbo-Croatian name for Belgrade--was some seventeen hours away. Hours to be spent alone, apparently, in the splendor of his expensive compartment. Had she somehow managed to
board the train without his seeing her? Perhaps she'd never even
planned to attend the conference. But there was nothing to be done
about it, and on the chance he simply hadn't noticed her arrival, he
climbed the steps and a waiting porter showed him to his compartment. Splendid it certainly was. All dark-green plush and mahogany
paneling, the shade of the reading lamp made of green frosted glass
in the shape of a tulip, a vase in a copper bracket holding three white
lilies. When night fell, the porter would open out the long seat and
make the bed.
He raised the window and looked out on the platform, where a
few passengers were running for the train as the conductor shooed
them along, but not the one he was looking for. Then the whistle
sounded, the train jerked forward, and a very chastened Mercier
slammed the window shut and fell back on the seat. As the train left
the city and gathered speed, the porter appeared, asking if he preferred the first or second seating in the dining car.
"Which seating has Pana Szarbek chosen?"
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The porter peered at his list, down, up, and down again. "The
lady is not listed, Pan," he said.
"Then, the second."
After the porter moved on, Mercier walked along the broad corridor, glancing at the occupants of each compartment, finding an
assortment of passengers, reading, talking, already dozing, but not
the one he was seeking. He reached the end of the car and entered the
next--also a first-class sleeper--but saw only the embassy charge
d'affaires, thankfully absorbed in a newspaper as Mercier hurried
past.
He returned to his own compartment, soon tired of the January
countryside, lowered the tasseled silk shade, and, with a sigh, took a
novel out of his valise, The Red and the Black, Stendhal, which he'd
found in the library at the apartment, a book he hadn't read in years.
It was, according to one of his instructors at Saint-Cyr, a political
novel, very nearly a spy novel, one of the first ever written. But Mercier
had not chosen the book for that reason--rather, it was akin to the
tweed jacket, an adjunct of his traveling costume, and meant for Anna
Szarbek's eyes. He had always an instinct for something improving,
demanding, but by page fourteen he gave up and brought out what he
really wanted to read, a Simenon roman policier, The Bar on the Seine,
which he'd found in the French section of a Warsaw bookstore.
At eight-thirty, the train making steady progress across the dark
fields, the porter rang his triangle, two chimes, signaling that the second seating would now be served. As Mercier followed his fellow travelers to the door at the end of the corridor, the conductor collected his
passport--a courtesy to first-class passengers that kept their sleep
from being disturbed as they crossed borders through the night and, in
addition, a courtesy often exploited by secret agents.
The dining car, each table lit by candles, was even more romantic
than his compartment--well-dressed couples and foursomes gathered
over white tablecloths, conversation low and intimate, the rhythmic
beat of wheels on rails perfecting a luxuriant atmosphere of sus-Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 170
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pended time. Seated at a table for one, Mercier immediately noticed
a handsome woman at the adjacent table, also alone, in black velvet
jacket, her face lean and imperious beneath ash-blond hair going gray.
The waiter arrived immediately and addressed her as Baronin, the
German form of baroness, and, after he'd taken her order, she and
Mercier exchanged an appreciative glance of recognition: here we
both are, how interesting. When the waiter reappeared, he brought
an apple on a plate--nowhere to be found on the menu--which she
ate slowly, with knife and fork, her every motion precise and graceful
and, somehow, suggestive. Meanwhile, Mercier abjured the cream of
asparagus soup and toyed with a trout fillet in wine sauce. Too forlorn
to eat, he sent the fish away and ordered a brandy. And so did the
baroness.
A few minutes after nine o'clock, Cracow. As the locomotive idled
in the station, the baroness finished her brandy, rose from the table,
smiled at Mercier, and made for the door to the first-class wagon-lit.
Well, he was done with his brandy as well, waited until she'd left the
dining car, then headed in the same direction. Walking down the corridor, he saw that she was just entering her compartment, Compartment C, and her door closed gently as he passed.
Back in his own compartment, he found that the bed had been
made up, the Polish National Railways blanket turned down at a crisp
angle. He stretched out on top of it, raised the shade, and turned
off the reading lamp. Outside, southern Poland in moonlight. They
were going west now, a few miles above the border, the train rattling along at high speed. The little station at Oswiecim flew past,
followed by Strumien, as they neared Karvina, where they would enter
Czechoslovakia. Mercier was hard on himself. No more wild fantasies, he thought, that would never see the light of reality. Restless
and unhappy, he realized he could not sleep in this condition, and
decided to go for as much of a walk as the train would allow. He
went out into the corridor, where, to the right, lay only a few compartments, from H to A, including C, and turned left.
Past the other first-class wagons-lits, a succession of second-class
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carriages, where the passengers sat on faded leather seats. Very smoky
here, some travelers already asleep, others, lost in their thoughts, gazing into the darkness beyond the windows. He walked the length of
the carriage, and was halfway down the next, when he saw a woman
in a long gray coat, severely cut. She wore soft leather boots and a
black beret, set slantwise on dark-blond hair pinned up in back.
Engaged in conversation with a young woman in the seat by the window, she was facing away from the aisle. As Mercier paused by the
seat, the young woman looked up at him. "Hello," he said. "Anna?"
She turned, startled to see him there, and said, "Oh." For a
moment, she froze, eyes wide with surprise, lips apart. Finally she
said, in Polish, "Ursula, this is Colonel Mercier."
The young woman acknowledged him with a formal nod and
said, "Pleased to meet you, colonel."
"Ursula used to work at our office in Danzig," Anna said. "We
met at the station in Cracow."
Mercier looked at his watch. "One can have a drink in the dining
car now, the second seating has ended. Would you and your friend care
to join me?"
"Ursula?" Anna said. "Want to come for a drink?"
Ursula thought it over, but her sense of the situation was sharp
enough. "I don't think so. Why don't you go?"
"Are you sure?"
"Oh . . ."
"Don't be shy, you'll enjoy it! Ursula?"
"Thank you, but you go ahead, Pana Szarbek. Maybe later, I
might join you."
As they walked toward the forward part of the train, Mercier said,
"Do you have a suitcase?"
"I dropped it off--my compartment's up here somewhere--then I
went back to visit with Ursula."
"Your own compartment?"
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"A double. I've got the upper berth."
They reached the dining car and were shown to a table by a window. When they were settled, Anna said, "This is a surprise. Are you
going to the conference?"
"Well, I could. The subject is certainly interesting."
Her eyes searched his, uncertain.
The waiter appeared, and Mercier said, "What would you like? A
cocktail?"
"Maybe I would. Yes, why not."
"It's a long night ahead, might as well do what you like."
"Then I'll have a gin fizz."
"For me a brandy," Mercier said to the waiter.
Anna looked around, then said, "Very luxurious. You always seem
to be in nice places."
Mercier nodded. "I'm fortunate, I think. My fellow officers are
either in barracks or stuck on an island somewhere, taking malaria
pills."
"You are fortunate."
"Well, not always, but sometimes. It depends."
She was again uncertain, hesitated, then said, "What interests
you, colonel, about the conference?"
He went on about it for a time--national minorities, political
tensions--until their drinks arrived. She took a sip of the gin fizz, then
a second. "Good," she said. "They know how to make these."
"You can have another, if you like."
She grinned and said, "Don't tempt me."
"No? I shouldn't?"
"You were saying, about the conference."
"I really don't care about the conference, Anna."
"Perhaps you have--ah, a professional reason, to go there."
"I don't."
"Then . . . ?"
"I'm on this train because I found out about the conference, and
guessed, hoped, that you would be on this train."
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She hunted around in her handbag and found her cigarette case--
Bacchus and the naked nymphs--put a cigarette between her lips, and
leaned forward as he lit it. "So," she said, "an adventure on a train."
"No," he said. "More."
She looked out the window, then said, voice husky, her faint accent
stronger, "There's no need to say such things, colonel." When she
turned back toward him it was clear that she didn't at all mind the idea
of an adventure.
"But it isn't just something to say." He paused, then added, "And,
by the way, it's Jean-Francois. I think we agreed on that."
Suddenly, she was amused. "If I had a pocket mirror . . ."
He didn't understand.
"Well, you look quite a bit like a colonel, at the moment," she
said. "Jean-Francois."
The tension broke. His face relaxed, and he put his hand on the
table, palm up. After a pause, she took it, then inhaled on her cigarette
and blew the smoke out like a sigh of resignation. "Oh Lord," she
said. "I'd bid all of this goodby, you know, after the night of the
storm." She waited a little, then said, "I suppose you've taken a fancy
room, all to yourself."
"I have."
"And there we shall go."
"Yes. Now?"
"I'd like that second gin you suggested, if you don't mind."
"Why would I? I'll have another brandy."
She squeezed his hand.
He beckoned to the waiter.
They carried their drinks back to his compartment. "My, my," she
said. "Lilies." He helped her off with her coat, inhaling her perfume,
and hung it on a hook as she put her beret on the luggage shelf. The
compartment was almost entirely filled by the bed, so she sat across
the far end, her back against the panel by the window. She took her
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boots off, revealing black stockings, wiggled her toes, and sighed with
relief.
Unlacing his shoes, Mercier said, "A long day?"
"Dreadful. All sorts of people to see in Cracow."
The train slowed, then entered a small station and, with a hiss of
steam, came to a halt.
"What's this?" she said. "Not Brno, not yet."
"Kravina. Border control. Did you give your passport to the conductor?"
"Yes. When I got on."
Mercier took his jacket off and folded it on the luggage rack above
him, put his tie on top of it, and settled at the head of the bed, back
against the pillows, legs stretched diagonally down the blanket. A
group of Polish and Czech customs officers came walking along the
platform, heading for the second-class carriages. One of them glanced
in the window.
"Did Marie Dupin tell you about the conference?"
"I heard about it; then I asked her."
"This was her idea all along, I suspect. Putting us together."
"She likes to take part in her friends' lives."
"True. She does."
She took the last sip of her drink and put the glass on the shelf
below the window. Then she laced her fingers behind her head, closed
her eyes, and moved around to get comfortable, sliding forward so
that the hem of her skirt slid well above her knees. In the station,
someone called out in Czech and a woman laughed.
"A nap?" he said, teasing her.
Very slowly, she shook her head. "Just thinking."
A port
er, pushing a baggage cart that squeaked as it rolled,
trudged past the window. Anna opened her eyes, turned to see what
was going on, then closed them again. "Ahh, Kravina."
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ward, very slowly, the pillars of the station creeping past the window.
Anna extended her leg and put her foot on top of his. Warm and soft,
that foot. The train gained a little speed, crossing the town, past snowcovered streets and lamplit squares. A faint smile on her face now, she
reached beneath her skirt, left and right, undid her garters, and rolled
her stockings down, not far, just enough so that he could see the tops.
Mercier turned off the reading lamp, then crawled over to her, and,
telling himself not to be awkward, finished the job--his hands sliding
over her legs, white and smooth, as the stockings came down. She
opened her eyes, met his, and spread her arms. It was very quiet in the
compartment, only the beat of the train, but, when he embraced her,
she made a certain sound, deep, like ohh, in a way that meant at last.
Then they kissed for a while, the tender kind, touch and part--until
she raised her arms so he could take her sweater off. Small breasts in a
lacy black bra. For a day at the Cracow office?
Madame Dupin, you told.
He kissed her breasts, the lace of the bra against his lips, and they
wrestled out of their clothes until she wore only panties--again black
and lacy--and he took the waistband in his fingers. They paused,
shared a look of exquisite complicity, and she raised her hips.
Somewhere between Kravina and Brno, he woke, cold, the covers
down, the speeding train hammering along the track between low
hills. She slept on her stomach, curved bottom pale in the light made
by the moon shining on snow. As he ran his fingers up and back, he
watched her come awake, her mouth opened slightly, then widened as
her eyebrows lifted--the delicately wicked face of anticipation.
At Brno station, the sleep of exhaustion.
But after Bratislava, as the train roared through a tunnel, he woke
again, to find her making love to him, very excited, her hand between
his legs, while her lower part, moist and insistent, straddled his thigh.
"Easy . . . easy," she whispered.