by Alan Furst
You’ll die.
But then, what did that matter? Better now, he thought, before they go to work on me.
“Just a minute.”
He put his index fingers under the two handles and very gently pushed up. Nothing. Locked. He could back up to the door, take a run, and jump through it, smashing the glass, tumbling six stories to the courtyard below. He pushed harder, the window moved. Opened an inch. The night air rushed in, it was black outside, and pouring rain.
Lower the window. Go back to Guske’s office. Explain everything to him. Try to talk your way out of it-crawl, do whatever you have to do.
He listened, held his breath. Against the background hum of office business he could just make out Werner’s voice. It spoke German, but Casson could easily understand the tone of it. He was explaining something-he was being important. Casson raised the window, perhaps a foot. A damp, sweet wind blew in on him and he could hear distant thunder, a storm up the Seine somewhere, the sound rolling down across the wheatfields into Paris.
He put one knee on the edge of the sink, pulled himself through the window, then froze, terrified, unable to move. The night swirled around him, the courtyard a thousand feet below, the wet cobblestone gleaming in the faint spill of light from blacked-out windows. He forced himself to look around: the window was set out a little from the slanted plane of the roof, slate tile angled sharply up to the peak- copper sheathing turned green with age. To the left: a cascade of white, foamy water. He followed it, found an ancient lead gutter, eaten through by time and corrosion, water pouring through the hole, spilling off the edge of the roof and splashing into the courtyard below.
If he stood on the window ledge …
He had to force his body to move-he was trembling with fear. He got himself turned around, feet dangling into space, pulled himself to his knees by using the inside handles of the window, then stood up, back to the courtyard. The rain was cold on his face, he took a deep breath. The gutter ran to a perpendicular roof. He could inch over-feet on the gutter, body pressed flat against the slate-and climb the angle. He would then be-he would then be somewhere else.
He heard the bathroom door open, heard Werner cry out. He let go of the window handles, lifted his right foot from the ledge and placed it on the gutter. Werner ran toward the window, Casson left the ledge and let his weight shift to the gutter. It rolled over, dumping its water, then dropped three inches. Casson bit down against a scream and clawed at the wet slate for traction.
Werner’s head appeared through the window. He was pale with terror, his carefully combed hair hanging lank from its center parting. Suddenly he leaned out, took a swipe at Casson’s ankle. Casson crabbed sideways along the gutter.
From Werner, a taut little laugh-just kidding. “Tell me, what on earth do you think you’re doing out there?”
Casson didn’t answer.
“Mm?”
Silence.
“Perhaps you will end it all, eh?” His voice was low, and edged with panic. It was, at the same time, hopeful. To allow an escape was unthinkable, but suicide-maybe they wouldn’t be quite so angry with him.
Casson couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes, felt the rain on his hair and skin, heard the storm in the distance. From the darkness, from the very root of his soul, he said slowly, “Leave me alone.”
A minute passed, frozen time. Then Werner gave an order, his voice a shrill whisper. “You come back in here!” Casson could hear a life in the words-all the failures, all the excuses.
Casson moved another step, the gutter sagged. He stretched his arms as high as they would go, discovered a mossy crack between the slate tiles. He tried it-it was possible, just barely and not for long.
Now Werner saw everything he’d worked for about to fall apart. “One more step,” he said, “and I call the guards.”
Casson counted to twenty. “All right,” he said. “I’m coming back.” But he didn’t move. He could imagine Guske in his office, looking at his watch.
“Well?”
“I can’t.”
“You must try!”
“My feet won’t move.”
“Ach.”
Teeth clenched with fury, Werner wriggled through the window then stood on the ledge. “Just stay still,” he said. “I’ll help you.”
Casson drove the tips of his fingers through the moss, into the shallow crack. Werner stepped daintily off the ledge, made sure of his balance, then, leaning his weight on the roof, began to move slowly sideways. Casson shifted his weight to his hands, lifted his right leg as high as it would go and rammed it back down against the gutter.
Nothing happened.
Until Werner’s next step-then he mewed with fear as the gutter came away. Then he vanished. For part of a second he thought it over, at last allowed himself a loud whine of indignation that ended, briefly, in a scream. The lead gutter hit the cobbles with a dull clatter.
Thirty seconds, Casson thought, no more. The crack between the tiles deepened, and he moved along it quickly. Reached the corner where the two wings of the building met, shinned up the angle to the peak, lay flat on the copper sheathing and tried to catch his breath. As he looked over the other side he saw a row of windows-the same type he’d just crawled out of. The only difference was a narrow spillway, wedged between the slanted roof and a stone parapet.
Now they discovered Werner.
He heard shouts from the courtyard, somebody blew a police whistle, flashlight beams swept everywhere, across the facades of the building and the roof. He rolled off the peak and let himself slide down to the spillway. There he stayed on his knees, looked over the parapet, saw a sheer drop to a narrow street. He had no idea what it might be, the city was a maze-secret courtyards, blind alleyways, sense of direction meant nothing.
He ran along the the spillway, looked in the first window. Blackout curtain. At the next, the curtain was slightly askew. He could see an office in low light, a cleaner in a gray smock was polishing the waxed parquet with a square of sheepskin tied to a broom. Casson tapped on the window.
The man looked up. Casson tapped again. The man walked slowly to the window and tried to see out. The Lost King, Casson thought. An old man with snow-white hair and thin lips and rosy skin. He moved the blackout curtain aside and cranked the casement window open a few inches. “What are you doing out there?” he asked.
“I escaped. Over the roof.”
“Escaped? From the Gestapo?”
“Yes.”
“Bon Dieu.” He ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it back, thinking. “Well, over here we’re the National Meteorological office, but, we have our Germans too, of course.” He stopped, the shouts from the courtyard on the other side of the building could just be heard. “Well, then, monsieur, I expect you may want to climb in here, and permit us to hide you.”
25 June, 1941.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning. I was wondering if you have, a certain book.”
“Yes? What would that be?”
“An atlas.”
“Yes? Of what country?”
“France.”
“Perhaps, we could call you back?”
“No. I’ll be in later.”
“But sir …”
He hung up.
Not the same person, and, he thought, not French.
German.
25 June, 1941.
The baroness answered the phone in a cool, distant voice. “Hello?”
“Hello. This is your neighbor, from upstairs.”
“Oh. Yes, I see. Are things going well? For you?”
“Not too badly. My friend?”
“Your friend. Has returned to Lyons. I believe, without difficulties.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“You are, you know, very fortunate to have such a friendship.”
“Yes, I do know that.”
“In that case, I hope you are careful.”
“I am. In fact, I ought to be going.”
“Good-bye, then. Perhaps we’ll meet again, some day.”
“Perhaps we will. And, madame, thank you.”
“You’re welcome, monsieur.”
25 June, 1941.
“Galeries Lafayette.”
“Good morning. I’m calling for Veronique, in the buyers’ office.”
“One moment, please.”
“Hello?”
“Hello, may I speak with Veronique, please.”
“I’m sorry, she hasn’t come in today, perhaps she’ll be in tomorrow. Would you care to leave a message?”
“No, no message. I’ll call back tomorrow.”
“Very well. Good-bye,”
“Good-bye.”
A cafe in the Tenth, busy and crowded. Casson went back to his table. Took a sip of his chicory-laced coffee. The Lost King and his colleagues had been very generous, had given him a shirt, a cap, an old jacket, and a few francs. They had even hit upon a scheme to persuade the Gestapo that their intensive search of the building was likely to prove fruitless- one of the men who took care of the furnace had snuck upstairs to the street floor of the Interior Ministry and, simply enough, left a door open.
Still, kind as they’d been, Casson was in some difficulty. Everything was gone: apartment, office, business, friends, bank accounts, passport. He was down to fourteen francs and Citrine-who would be safe, he thought, as long as she stayed in Lyons and didn’t call attention to herself.
So then, he asked himself, what next? He imagined Fischfang, sitting across the table, ordering the most expensive drink on the menu. Now that the hero has given his pursuers the slip, what becomes of him? His uncle dies, he inherits. Casson looked at his watch, but there was nothing on his wrist.
He drank up his coffee, left a tip, and went out to the street. A clock in the window of a jewelry store said 10:10, Casson started walking. A long walk, from the 10th Arrondissement all the way across the river to the Fifth. He had no identity papers, so the Metro, with its snap searches, was dangerous. Besides, he thought, he really couldn’t afford the five sous it cost for a ticket.
A warm day, the city out in its streets. Casson hadn’t shaved, he pulled the worker’s cap down over one eye, walked with hands in pockets. Good camouflage, he thought. Women going off to the shops gave him the once-over-a little worn, this one, could he be refurbished? He took the rue Pavee in the Jewish district, past a chicken store with feathers floating in the air. He saw a tailor at work through an open shop door, the man felt his eyes, looked up from a jacket turned back over its lining, and returned Casson’s wry smile.
He crossed the Seine on the Pont d’Austerlitz, stopped for a time, as he always did, to stare down at the river. Still swollen and mud-colored from the spring rains, it rubbed against the stone piers of the bridge, mysterious in the rolls and swirls of its currents, opaque and dirty and lovely-the soul of its city and everybody who lived there knew it.
He worked his way around the rough edges of the Fifth, avoiding the eyes of Wehrmacht tourists, taking the side streets. The place Maubert was hard on him-the smell of roasting chicken and sour wine was heavy on the air, and Casson was hungry.
The cafe where he’d met Veronique earlier that spring was deserted, the proprietor rubbing a dry glass with a towel and staring hypnotized into the street. Casson stood at the bar and ordered a coffee. The owner jiggled the handle on the nickel-plated machine, produced a loud hiss and a column of steam, the smell of burnt chicory, and a trickle of dark liquid.
“Seen Veronique today?” Casson asked.
In return, an eyebrow lifted in the who-wants-to-know look. “Not today.”
“Think she might be in later?”
“She might.”
“Mind if I wait?”
“Fine with me.”
He waited all day. He took his coffee to the last table in the back, kept the cup in front of him, pored over yesterday’s newspaper, and, at last, broke down and spent three francs in a tabac for a packet of Bulgarian cigarettes.
A workers’ cafe, Veronique had called it. Yellow walls dyed amber with smoke, slow, steady stream of customers-a red wine, a beer, a coffee, a marc, a fine, elbows on the bar. At six, some students came down the hill and stood in a crowd by the door, imitating one of their professors and having a good loud laugh. Casson looked a second time, and there was Veronique, in the middle of it, getting an envelope from the owner.
She was startled when he appeared next to her. Then she nodded her head toward the square. “Let’s go for a walk, Jean-Claude.”
They walked from cart to cart in the Maubert market, pretending to shop, staring at baskets of eels and mounds of leeks. Casson told her what had happened to him, Veronique said he’d been lucky. As for her, she’d been warned in person, at the office. “I’m leaving tonight, Jean-Claude. I just stopped at the cafe for a final message.”
“Leaving for where?”
“South. Over the mountains.”
They were standing in front of a mound of spring potatoes, red ones, the smell of wet earth still on them.
“Jean-Claude,” she said. “I want you to go to number seven, in the rue Taine. Immediately. The man there will take care of you. You know where it is?”
“No.”
“Bercy. Near the wine warehouses.”
“All right.”
An old man in an ancient, chalk-striped suit strolled over to the potato cart and stood near them, just close enough to overhear what they might be saying. Casson wanted to bark at him, Veronique took his arm and walked him away. “Oh this city,” she said in a low voice.
They stood in front of a barrow filled with dusty beets, the little girl minding the store was no more than eleven. “Ten sous, ‘sieur et ‘dame,” she said hopefully.
Veronique took a breath and let it out slowly. Casson could tell she sensed danger. “So now,” she said quietly, “we’ve done this shopping, and, old friends that we are, it’s time to part. We’ll kiss each other farewell, and then we’ll go.”
Casson turned to her and they kissed left and right. He saw that her eyes were shining. “Good-bye, my friend,” she said.
“Au revoir, Veronique.”
The last he saw of her, she was walking quickly through the crowd in a narrow lane between market stalls. Just as she turned the corner, she gave him a sudden smile and a little wave, then she vanished.
It was the sharp edge of the war on the rue Taine-an apartment of little rooms, all the blinds drawn, above a dark courtyard. There was a.45 automatic on the kitchen table, and a Sten gun in the parlor, candlelight a dull sheen on its oiled barrel. The operative was British, but nothing like Mathieu-this man was born to the vocation, and 1941 was the year of his life.
“You’re going to England,” he said. “We’re closing down the network, saving what we can, but you can’t stay here.”
It was the right, probably the only, thing to do, but Casson felt something tear inside him.
“You’ll like England,” the operative said. “We’ll see you don’t starve, and you’ll be alive. Not everybody is, tonight.”
Casson nodded. “A telephone call?”
“Impossible. Sorry.”
“Perhaps a letter. There’s somebody, in Lyons.”
It was the wrong thing to say. “Help us win the war,” the operative said. “Then you’ll go home. Everything will be wonderful.”
An hour later they brought in a wounded British airman, face the color of chalk. Casson sat with him on a battered sofa and the man showed him a photograph of his dog.
At midnight, two French railwaymen came for the airman.
At 1:30, Casson was escorted to another apartment in the building. His photograph was taken, then, at 2:10, he was handed a new identity-passport with photo, Ausweis, work permit-a thousand francs and a book of ration stamps.
Back at the first apartment, he dozed for a time. The operative never slept, worked over coded transmissions-there was a clandestine radio in another building in the neig
hborhood, Casson guessed-and listened to the BBC at low volume. Sometimes he made a note of the time- the Messages Personnels were long over for the night, but Casson thought he was being signaled by what songs were played, and the order they were played in.
Casson left at dawn. The woman who took him out was in her fifties, with dark red hair and the hard accents of northeast France. A Pole, perhaps, but she didn’t say. He sat silent in the passenger seat as she drove. The car was a battered old Fiat 1500, but it was fast, and the woman made good time on the empty roads. She swung due east from Bercy, and was out of Paris in under a minute. They stopped for a German control at the porte de Charenton, and a French police roadblock in Montreuil. Both times the driver was addressed-as the passports were handed back by the officers-as “Doctor.”
After that, they virtually disappeared, curved slowly north and west around the city on the back streets of small towns and secondary roads. By eight in the morning they were winding their way toward Rouen on the east-much less traveled-bank of the Seine. Outside a small village the driver worked her way down a hillside of packed dirt streets to the edge of the river, just across from the town of Mantes. The car rolled to a stop at the edge of a clearing, two black-and-white spaniels ran barking up to the driver and she rumpled their ears and called them sweethearts.
Beyond a marsh of tall reeds, Casson could see a houseboat- bleached gray wood with a crooked piece of pipe for the stove-tied up to a pole dock. A young man appeared a moment later, asked the driver if she wanted coffee. “No,” she sighed. “I can’t stop.” She had to be somewhere in an hour, was already going to be late. To Casson she said, “You’ll remain here for thirty hours, then we’ll move you north to Honfleur. These people are responsible for you-please do what they ask.”