Blood of Victory

THE GREEN SALON

5 January, 1941.

They watched it go on, for the next few days, sometimes from the tall windows in their room, the red and gold drapes tied back with braid, sometimes through the doors in the lobby, which looked out on an empty square and a statue of a brass king on a brass horse.

No windows in the lobby itself, only yellow marble pillars, settees in raspberry plush, Bordeaux carpets, mirrored walls, and, through a pair of arches, a green salon, with foreign newspapers laid out on low marble tables, and a gold-framed photograph of King Carol on an easel. In the green salon, one ordered Turkish coffee and listened to the fighting; around the royal palace, just next door, or the nearby police station. It was old Europe in the green salon, it smelled of araby—the scent, like violets, worn by Roumanian men, smelled of leather, of Turkish tobacco.

Sometimes the fighting stopped, and in the silence some of the guests went out for a breath of air and wandered through the streets, though not too far, to see what they could see. At dusk, on the third day of fighting, in the strada Stirbei Voda, Serebin came upon a bloodstain on the snow and a burning candle. He walked another block and saw, chalked on a wall, Homo hominus lupus est. Hobbes’s phrase, “It is man who is the wolf of mankind.” And what heartbroken citizen had dared, in the hours of street fighting, to do such a thing? Well, he was Serebin’s friend for life, whoever he was.

When the attack began—the traditional occupation of the national radio station, followed by the traditional plea for public calm and the traditional proclamation of a new regime—the Bucharest police, armed with pistols and rifles, had fought back, but they were no match for the legionnaires. Then the army appeared. Much the subject of rumors in the hotel lobby—the army has refused to leave its barracks, the army has gone over to the Guard. But then, very late on the second night, Serebin woke to the sound of cannon fire and saw a spectral Marie-Galante, nude and pale, staring pensively out the window. “At last, the army,” she said.

He joined her. Down on the strada Episcopiei, a group of artillerymen, in the sand-colored uniforms of the Roumanian army, were firing a field gun; a tongue of flame at the barrel, a shell tearing through the sky, then a distant explosion. And, on both sides of the street, as far as he could see, infantry, running from doorway to doorway, one or two at a time, going wherever the shells were going.

“It’s over,” Serebin said.

And, a day later, it was. In Bucharest, anyhow. For the time being.

Elsewhere, it continued. There were maps in the newspapers every day, and in some apartments, all across the continent, there were maps pinned to the kitchen wall. So it could be followed, studied, day after day, the war that went here, then there. To Libya, where British troops fought Italian units at Tobruk, to Albania, where Greek troops pushed Italian divisions back across the Shkumbi River and headed for Tirana. To northern Italy, where British warships from Gibraltar entered the Gulf of Genoa, shelled the city’s port, and bombarded the oil refinery at Leghorn.

That story was in the Tribune de Genève, which Serebin read in the green salon, while eating a large sugared bun studded with raisins. At the next table, a thin woman wearing bright red lipstick, a fur stole around her shoulders, spoke German to a friend. “My dear, I cannot abide this Marshal Antonescu, ‘the Red Dog’ I think they call him. Is that because he is a communist?”

“No, my dear, it’s his hair, not his politics.”

“Is it. Well then, I do so hope the Guard will, ah, put him down.”

They both laughed, gaily enough, but it was not to be, and, a day later, as the snow melted beneath a winter sun, the captured legionnaires were taken away in trucks, or dealt with in the street. Still, it wasn’t over yet, not according to the hall porter on the fifth floor, who shook his head and was sorry about the way people were now.

That afternoon, Serebin and Marie-Galante went to the strada Lipscani house to make telephone calls. Rather vague and general—an acquaintance in Paris suggested...Would so-and-so be at home? Then Serebin took a tram out to a neighborhood of opulent homes, where a retired naval officer had coffee served in the conservatory and said he had never heard of DeHaas AG.

Serebin got away as quickly as possible, and found Marie-Galante waiting for him at the Lipscani house, just back from an hour with a prominent lawyer.

“What did he say?” Serebin asked.

“He said that some people preferred to make love only in the afternoon.”

“And then?”

“That some women required a firm hand to make them passionate.”

“And then?”

“I mentioned DeHaas. He gave up on the firm hand in the afternoon, and explained that the Roumanian legal system was dynamic, not static, that it followed the French, not the English model, particularly with respect to contracts concerning the disposition of agrarian lands.”

“Well, good, I was worried about that.”

“He went on. And on. Eventually, he showed me to the door, told me I was beautiful, and tried to kiss me.”

Dr. Latanescu, the economist, was dead.

And the Hungarian bank employee had returned to Budapest. But Troucelle, the French petrochemical engineer, seemed pleased with a French telephone call—made by Marie-Galante, the native speaker—and invited them to lunch at the Jockey Club. “I’m free tomorrow. Can we say, one o’clock?”

He waved and smiled when they came through the door, clearly delighted at the prospect of lunch. Which was quite good; a puree of white beans, boiled chicken with sour cream and horseradish, and a bottle of white Cotnari, from Moldavian vineyards on the Black Sea.

“The Burgundy négociants needn’t worry,” he said, tasting the wine, “but they don’t do so badly here.”

He was terribly bright, Serebin thought. Young and brisk and competent, a classic product of the Sorbonne’s Polytechnique, wandering abroad, like so many Frenchmen, to make his fortune in foreign lands. Over lunch they followed, as best they could, the Gallic prohibition, no discussion of work or politics at table, and made it just past the chicken—a considerable achievement given the situation in the city. Then Troucelle said, “I have to confess, I’ve thought and thought, but I don’t believe I actually know this Monsieur Richard you mentioned.”

“No?” Marie-Galante said. “He was here maybe two or three years ago, with a company called DeHaas.”

“Hmm. Could he have used another name?”

“Well, he could have. But why would he?”

Troucelle had no idea. “Of course you never know, with people, especially abroad.”

“No, that’s true.”

And there she let it stay.

A waiter pushing a pastry cart arrived at the table. “Just coffee, I think?” the civilized Troucelle suggested. From Marie-Galante, the Genghis Khan of the dessert table, civilized agreement.

“After Poland,” Troucelle said, “I remember thinking, ‘I expect someone from DeHaas will turn up here.’ Appears I was right, no?”

“Logical, really, when you think about it.”

“I enjoyed my connection with Kostyka,” Troucelle said. “One only met his people, of course, he never appeared in person. Always the fusées.” It meant fuses, in French political slang, intervening layers of aides and assistants who would “burn out” before an important person could be reached by the law. “And in the end,” Troucelle continued, “the whole thing didn’t amount to much, a few research reports on the petroleum industry. And they were quite generous about it.”

“Even more so, now, I would think.”

“Yes, it’s only logical, as you put it. What sort of information do you suppose they’d want?”

Marie-Galante wasn’t sure. “Perhaps what you gave them before, but it’s not for us to say. The war was a shock to the commercial world, even though everybody could see it coming, but business can’t just stop dead. So it’s mostly a matter of flexibility—I suspect that’s the way DeHaas would see it. Find a way to adapt, to adjust, then get on with life.”

The waiter brought tiny cups of coffee, a dish of curled lemon peels, and little spoons.

“Going up to Ploesti?” Troucelle said.

“Think it’s a good idea?”

“I don’t see why not. It’s all there, you know, it was a real, honest-to-God oil town before the war, Texas riggers and all. They used to have contests on Saturday night, get drunk and see who could shoot out the most streetlights. A little bit of Tulsa, east of the Oder.”

“We have business in Bucharest,” Serebin said, “and our time is limited. But, maybe, if we have the opportunity...”

“It would be my pleasure,” Troucelle said. “I’d enjoy showing it to you.”

“Nazi bastard,” Marie-Galante said—but by then they were out in the street, walking back toward the hotel.

“How do you know?”

“I know.” And, a moment later, “Don’t you?”

He did. He couldn’t say how he did, it was just, there. But then, he thought, that’s why they’d hired him. I. A. Serebin—Minor Russian writer, émigré.

After midnight, in the room in the hotel, Serebin stared up at the ceiling and smoked a Sobranie. “Are you awake?” he said.

“I am.”

“Just barely?”

“No, I’m up.”

“Want me to turn on the light?”

“No, leave it dark.”

“Something I want to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“Did DeHaas actually do something? Or did it just, exist?”

“I believe they were in the business of building steam mills. Flour mills.”

“Were they built?”

“That I don’t know. Probably the office functioned, sent letters, telegrams, talked on the phone. Maybe they built a few mills, why not?”

“But these people, Maniu, the lawyer, they knew what they were doing.”

“Oh yes.”

“And Troucelle, of course he knew. And he knows what we’re doing now, and that it has to do with Roumanian oil—all that business about Ploesti.”

“Yes, the instinct of the agent provocateur. ‘And, they’re going up to the oil fields, why not arrest them there?’”

“So?”

“So it’s a problem, and it has to be solved. He may just want to be bribed, and, if that’s it, we’ll bribe him. Or, he may go to the Siguranza, but that’s not the end of the world. You see, Polanyi calculated that we’d talk to the wrong person, sooner or later. But he counted on two things to keep us safe, two forms of reluctance. If Troucelle turns us in, like a good little Vichy fascist, he turns himself in as well. Why do these people, who want to spy on Roumania, come to him? Because he used to spy on Roumania himself. Oh really, they’ll say, you did? When? What did they pay you? Who else did it? You don’t know? Sure you know, why won’t you tell us? Clearly, he’d best think things through very carefully before he goes singing to the Roumanians.

“And then, the second kind of reluctance is in the Siguranza itself, up at the top. They’d better have a meeting, because they’d better talk about how it’s going to go here. Today’s enemy may be tomorrow’s ally, then what? Seven months ago, Germany wouldn’t dare attack the mighty French army behind its impregnable Maginot Line. Seventeen months ago, Germany wouldn’t dare to attack Poland, because the Red Army would go to war against them and in six months the Mongolian hordes would be fucking the Valkyries in the Berlin opera house. The world has come undone, my love, and this thing isn’t over, and, when it is, quite a considerable number of people are going to discover they jumped into the wrong bed.”

“All right. But what if he goes to the Germans?”

“Well, a lot depends on which Germans he goes to. If he’s best pals with the chief of Gestapo counterintelligence in Roumania, that’s the end of us. With the others, the SD or the Abwehr, it’s not so bad. They’ll watch and listen and wait—they’ll want more, there’s always more. And, the way Polanyi has it planned, we have a good chance to disappear while that’s going on. As it is, we’re only here for a few more days, then out. If you don’t have time to do it right, Polanyi figured, do it wrong, do it fast and ugly, break all the rules, and run like hell. That’s why you’re called Marchais, my sweet, so you can return as Serebin.”

“Well, it sounds good,” Serebin said. “Safe in bed, it sounds good.”

“Polanyi is a kind of genius, mon ours, dark as night, but what else would you want? He’s done these things all his life—that’s all he’s done. He once told me that he’d been taken to some kind of lawn party, at the Italian legation in Budapest, where he made his way to a certain office and stole papers from a drawer. He was, at the time, eleven years old.”

“He went with his father?”

“He went with his grandfather.”

“Good God.”

“Hungarians, my sweet, Hungarians. Swimming for ten centuries in a sea of enemies—how the hell do you suppose they’re still there?”

Readily enough, the Princess Baltazar agreed to receive the friend of Monsieur Richard in Paris. As though, he told Marie-Galante, such calls were commonplace. The house was not hard to find, a white, three-story frosted cake, with turrets and gables, overlooking the botanical gardens. Once upon a time he had played on a beach in Odessa, and a little girl had taught him to take liquid sand from the edge of the sea and drizzle it through his fingers to decorate the top of a castle. The house of the Princess Baltazar reminded him of that.

She was somewhere beyond forty, blond and curly, pink and creamy, with a bosomy décolletage on a purple dress just tight enough to suggest the elaborate and complicated flesh beneath it.

“Monsieur Richard,” she said. “With the pince-nez?”

Who else?

“Such a brilliant man.” Would Monsieur care for coffee? Something to eat? There was a bit of Moldavian Swiss roll, she thought, or was it just too close to lunch?

“A coffee,” he said.

She left the room, haunches shifting high and low, and he could hear her making coffee in a distant part of the house. No maid? The tabletops in the parlor were covered with little things; china cats and porcelain dairymaids, demitasse cups and saucers, bud vases, ashtrays. And photographs in standing frames: Princess Baltazar with King Carol, Princess Baltazar with various significant men—minor royalty, chinless aristocrats, and two or three nineteenth-century types with grandiose beards and decorations.

“So many friends,” he said, when she returned with the coffees and thick slices of the dangerous-looking Moldavian pastry.

“What other pleasures in this life?” she said, sitting next to him on the couch. “Will you relent on the roll, monsieur?”

Serebin smiled as he declined. “And who is this?” he said, pointing at one of the photographs.

“Ah, if you were Roumanian, you would not have to ask,” she said.

“A well-known gentleman, then.”

“Our dear Popadu, the economics minister, a few months ago, and a great friend of Elena’s.” She meant Lupescu, the former king’s mistress. “I am told he is lately in Tangier.” Sad for him, to judge from her expression.

“And this?” The man he pointed to looked like a Ruritanian minister in a Marx Brothers film.

Why that was Baron Struba, the well-known diplomat. “Poor man. He was on the train with Carol and Elena, and he was shot in the—well, he couldn’t sit down for a month.” Serebin knew the story. When Carol had abdicated in September, he’d had a train filled with gold and paintings, even his collection of electric trains, then made a run for the Yugoslavian border. Along the way, units of the Iron Guard had fired on the train and, while Lupescu, a real lioness, had remained resolutely in her seat, Carol had gone into exile cowering in his cast-iron bathtub.

“You seem to know,” Serebin said, “everybody.”

The princess was demure on that point, eyes lowered, saying volumes with a modest silence. When she looked up, she rested a hand on the couch by his side. “And what brings you to Bucharest?” she said. Her smile was inviting, her eyes soft. He was, if he let on that he was rich or powerful, going to be seduced.

“I am here to buy art,” he said.

“Art!” She was delighted. “I can certainly help you there. I know all the best dealers.” He could return to Paris, he realized, with a trunkful of fake Renoirs and Rembrandts.

“Then too, I wanted to do a favor for a friend of mine, who used to work for a Swiss company here. Called, what, DeHaas, I think, something like that.”

Her eyes changed, and there was a longish silence. “What sort favor?” Her French was dying.

“To see old friends. Get back in touch.”

“Who are you, monsieur?” she said. She bit her lip.

“Just a Parisian,” he said.

Her eyes glistened, then a tear rolled down her cheek.

“I will be arrested,” she said. She began to cry, her face contorted, a thin, steady moan escaping her compressed lips.

“Don’t, please,” Serebin said.

Her voice rose to a tiny, choked-back wail. “The matrons.”

“No, no, princess, no matrons, please, don’t.”

She began to fumble with the back of her dress, her face had turned a bright red. “I will please you,” she said. “I will astound you.”

Serebin stood. “I am so sorry, princess.”

“No! Don’t go away!”

“Please,” he said. “It was a mistake to come here.”

She sobbed, her face in her hands.

Serebin left.

Outside, as he walked quickly away from the botanical gardens, he realized that his hands were shaking. He headed for a café on the Calea Victoriei, sat on the glass-enclosed terrace, thought about a vodka, ordered a coffee, then took a newspaper on a wooden dowel from a rack by the cash register—a copy of Paris Soir, the leading Parisian daily.

Reading the paper did not make him feel better. The German propaganda line was not overt, but it was everywhere: we are crusaders, out to rid Europe of Bolsheviks and Jews, and, regrettably, have been forced to occupy your country. Please pardon the inconvenience. Thus twenty minutes of Paris Soir gave Serebin a bad case of traveler’s melancholy—what one learned not to see up close was unpleasantly clear from a distance. Life in Paris, said the paper, had always been amusing, and it still was. There were reviews of films and plays—romantic farce much the current taste. Recipes for stewed rabbit and turnips with vinegar—it may be all there is to eat, but why not make it delicious? Interviews with “the man on the street”—what ever happened to plain old common courtesy? There was rather hazy news of the campaigns in North Africa and Greece, with expressions like “mobile defense” and “strategic readjustment in the battle lines.” And news of Roosevelt, urging Congress to loan money and ships to Britain. Gullible people, the Americans, how sad.

And so on. From local murders, robberies, and fires, to indoor bicycle racing, and, finally, the obituaries. Which included:

The artistic community of Paris has been saddened to learn of the death of the Polish sculptor Stanislaus Mut. Turkish papers reported yesterday that his body had been found floating in the Bosphorus, death having occurred from unknown causes. Istanbul police are investigating. Born in Lodz in 1889, Stanislaus Mut lived much of his life in Paris, emigrating to Turkey in 1940. Two of his works, Woman Reclining, and Ballerina, are on display at the Art Museum of the City of Rouen.

Serebin recalled meeting Stanislaus Mut, who’d been courting a Russian woman at the cocktail Américain on Della Corvo’s yacht. What happened? An accident? Suicide? Murder? Did his presence at the party make him an associate of Polanyi’s? Serebin returned the paper to its rack and paid for his coffee. Fuck this day, nothing’s going to go right.

But maybe it was only him. Back at the Athenée Palace, Marie-Galante had good news. She had visited with a professor of botany at the university. “He will do anything,” she said. “We have only to ask.”

“What can he do?”

That she didn’t know.

Well then, why was he there in the first place?

“He said he reported to DeHaas on developments in Roumanian science and technology.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t look at me like that. What happened with Princess Baltazar? Were you charmed? Were you—naughty?”

Serebin described the meeting.

“Maybe I should have gone with you,” she said, slightly deflated.

“You think it would have made a difference?”

She hesitated, then said, “No, probably not.”

The next two days were a blur. Life got harder: a number of calls went unanswered, and a few of the people who did answer spoke only Roumanian, managing an apologetic word or two in English or German, then hanging up. The heat went off in the Lipscani house, Serebin and Marie-Galante worked in their coats, breath steaming. The eight German names on the list were not telephoned. A police detective threatened to arrest them if they came anywhere near his house, while three people didn’t know a single soul in Paris or in France for that matter yes they were sure.

The wife of a civil servant thought they were selling bonds, which she made it very clear she didn’t want to buy. At the hotel desk, no contact from Troucelle, which was either good or bad, they couldn’t be sure. An accountant, from an office that worked on the books of the oil companies, said, “I cannot meet with you, I hope you will understand.”

“If the question is,” Serebin said to Marie-Galante, “can Kostyka’s intelligence apparat be brought back to life, perhaps we have an answer.”

“Don’t give up,” Marie-Galante said. “Not yet.”

Through the concierge at the Athenée Palace they hired a car and driver to take them up to Brasov, in the foothills of the Carpathians north of the city. “Dracula country,” Marie-Galante said. “Vlad Tepes and all that, though these days it’s mostly ski resorts.” And antique shops, where peasant arts and crafts were for sale. Serebin understood that Monsieur and Madame Marchais, having come to Roumania to buy folk art, had, eventually, to go and buy it. Still, he did not look forward to the excursion.

The driver told them his name was Octavian. A candidate, Serebin thought, for the oiliest man in Bucharest, which was no small distinction. His mustache was oiled to sharply pointed ends, oily curls sprang loose from his hair. Octavian welcomed them to his humble car—an old but highly polished Citroën with a plume of rich, blue smoke throbbing from its tailpipe, rubbed his hands like a concert pianist, grasped the wheel firmly and, after a moment of meditation, began to drive.

The road to Brasov took them through Ploesti, as it happened, where army officers manned checkpoints and demanded a special pass, required to enter the city, which they did not have. Octavian went off for a private chat with the commanding officer, then returned to the car and told Serebin what it cost. Could it be that much? Marie-Galante shrugged. Roumanian army officers were paid a daily wage of thirty lei, about six cents in American money, so bribery was a way of life. It had always been a poor country, too often conquered, too often plundered. The Russian General Kutuzov, preparing to invade Roumania in 1810, said of the Roumanians that he “would leave them only their eyes to weep with.”

Driving through Ploesti they could, now and again, get a view of the oil fields in the distant haze: the tops of the towers, and the natural gas flares, seen as wobbling air against a pale sky. A mile further on they reached the final checkpoint, at the northern edge of the city, with the usual crowd of Roumanian soldiers supplemented by two German SS officers. The Germans were curious, took the passports and examined them at length, made notes in a ledger, asked what brought them this way, and why no pass. Better not to have it, Serebin realized. Better to be hapless art dealers, confused and uncertain when it came to official papers and difficult things like that. The taller of the SS men was affable enough, until he asked Serebin for his wife’s maiden name. Serebin laughed nervously, then gave the name that Marie-Galante had insisted he memorize. “So,” she said as they drove away, “now you see.”

The road narrowed after Ploesti and wound through woods and farmland, the Carpathians looming high in the distance. Serebin’s spirits rose, it always surprised him how much he needed fields and trees. A city dweller, he thought himself, craving places where they kept cafés and conversations and books and love affairs. But he did not take sufficient account of his Odessan heart, eternally warm for a city that had, with its dirt streets and wild gardens and leaning shacks overgrown with vines, its own heart in the countryside. Marie-Galante felt his mood change, and took his hand in both of hers. At which moment Octavian met Serebin’s eyes in the rearview mirror and gave him an immensely oily and conspiratorial smile. Women, always women, only women.

Brasov was a small city, still, at its center, more or less in the thirteenth century. “See there,” Octavian said. “The Black Church. Very famous.” It was black, an ashy black, like charcoal. “Toasted by the Austrians in 1689,” he explained, his French failing him for a moment.

In a narrow lane behind the church they found a row of antique shops, the owners, not expecting much business in January and civil war, called down to do business by Octavian shouting in the street. Serebin and Marie-Galante bought a large wooden trunk plastered with the labels of long-vanished steamships, then looked for folk art to pack inside, Octavian sometimes signaling to them with agonized glances when the price was too high.

Serebin bought toys. A wooden ball bound to a stick with a cord—though how a child would contrive to play with such a thing was completely beyond him, and a variety of spinning tops. Also wood carvings: a hut, a sheep, a few saints, and several hounds, some lying with crossed paws, others bounding after prey. Marie-Galante added embroidered vests, wooden and ceramic bowls, and a set of woodworker’s tools that could have been centuries old, then bought a Persian lamb hat for herself. She tried it on, setting it at various angles, as Octavian and the shopkeeper and Serebin looked on, and asked them did it look better like this? Or this?

Serebin had called the number earlier, with no success, and drawn a line through the entry: Gheorghe Musa—senior civil servant. On the right-hand side of the page, no indication of payment. Now, the morning after they returned from Brasov, he tried one last time. Dialed, then stared out the window and waited as the double ring, a dry whispery vibrato, repeated itself again and again. It would, he knew, never be answered.

But it was.

“Yes? Who’s calling, please.” It was the voice of an old man. Perhaps, Serebin thought, an old man whose phone had not rung for a long time.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” Serebin said.

“No, sir, you are not.”

“My name is Marchais, I happen to be in Bucharest, and I’m calling at the suggestion of a friend in Paris.”

“Marchais.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

In the silence on the telephone Serebin could hear the silence of the old man’s apartment. He knows, Serebin thought. Knows perfectly well what kind of telephone call this is, and he’s thinking it over. At last, a voice. “How may I help you?”

“Would it be convenient for us to speak in person?”

Another pause. “All right. Would you want to come here?”

Serebin said he did, and Musa gave him a tram number, a stop, and an address.

The apartment occupied an entire floor, up six steep flights of stairs. Inside it was dark, and so quiet that Serebin was conscious of the sound of his footsteps. It immediately occurred to him, though he could not have said how he knew, that no woman had ever lived there. Gheorghe Musa was a small man, frail, with a few wisps of white hair and a pleasant smile. “You are a rare visitor,” he said. For the visit, or perhaps it was his usual habit, he had dressed formally; a heavy, wool suit, of a style popular in the 1920s, a white shirt with a high collar, a gray tie.

Musa walked slowly to a room lined with bookcases that reached the ceiling. When he turned on a lamp, Serebin could see, by his chair, well-used editions of Balzac and Proust, a Latin dictionary, a set of German encyclopedias.

“And, so, what brings you to Bucharest?”

Serebin mentioned folk art, Brasov, then DeHaas.

“Oh yes,” Musa said. “Some years ago, I used to see a gentleman who worked for that organization. Owned by—he calls himself Baron Kostyka now, I believe. We used to pass information to them, now and then. Depending on what we wanted them to do.” His smile broadened in recollection. “Influence,” he said. “A ministry word.”

“We?”

“Oh I worked for several ministries, over the years. I was at Interior for a long time, then, eventually, the Foreign Ministry, with various titles, until I retired. 1932, that was.”

“It’s that old?”

“DeHaas? Oh yes, very old, and venerable. A local institution, really. And why not? Kostyka’s financial arrangements were large enough to have an effect here, in this country. We tried to make sure his manipulations were favorable to Roumania. We didn’t always succeed, but that’s the game, as I’m sure you know. One must always try.”

“So, you’re retired.” Serebin prepared to leave.

“Yes. For a time I stayed active—a special assignment, once in a while, but that’s all gone now. I’m a Jew, you see, and that’s entirely out of fashion here.”

“Like Germany.”

“Not quite that bad, not yet. But there are, restrictions. I had to give up my radio, last month, and one does miss it terribly. But you wouldn’t want Jews having radios, would you. We are also forbidden servants, and, lately, there’s talk about housing. I have no idea where I’ll go if they take this place away from me.”

“What would they do with it?”

“Give it to their friends. It’s a way they’ve found to improve their lives. You’re surprised?”

“Unfortunately, no. It’s everywhere, Germany’s influence.”

“Yes, that, but we have our own enthusiasts. The Legion staged a grand event last November, the Day of the Martyrs they called it. The remains of Codreanu and his henchmen were supposedly dug up, two years after their execution, and reinterred, here in Bucharest. Fifty-five thousand Iron Guardsmen marched and a hundred thousand sympathizers cheered them on. The schools were closed, Codreanu and his thirteen followers were declared ‘national saints’ by the Orthodox church, the newspapers were printed in green ink. The ceremony was attended by official delegations from all over fascist Europe—Hitler Youth from Germany, Spanish Falangists, Italians, even a group of Japanese. As the coffins were lowered into a mausoleum, German war planes flew overhead and dropped funeral wreaths—one of them hit a legionnaire on the head and knocked him out cold. Then the Legion marched for hours, singing their anthems, while, in the streets, people wept with passion.”

He paused, and Serebin realized that he had actually seen it.

“Yes,” Musa said. “I was there.”

Serebin could see him in the crowd, old, invisible.

“I had to do something.”

After a moment, Serebin said, “Will Roumania be occupied? Like France?”

“We are occupied, sir. The Germans began to arrive in October, even before the king ran away. Just twenty or so, at first, in residence at the Athenée Palace, their boots lining the hall at night, set out to be cleaned and polished. Then more, and more. ‘The German Military Mission to Roumania,’ a euphemism taken from the language of diplomacy. A few thousand of them, now, housed in barracks, and they keep coming. But it will never be an official occupation, we’ve signed up as allies. The only question that remains is, who will govern here? The Legion? Or Marshal Antonescu? It’s Hitler’s choice, we await his pleasure.”

“Will there be, resistance?”

Musa smiled, a sad smile, and shook his head very slowly. “No,” he said softly. “Not here.”

Serebin didn’t want to go, but sensed it was time to leave. Gheorghe Musa would do for them whatever he could, but what that might turn out to be was for others to decide.

“Perhaps you will tell me something,” Musa said.

Serebin waited.

“What precisely interests you, at this moment?”

Serebin hesitated. Hard to know, right now. Of course, as events unfold...That was the established line and Serebin knew it was correct—the question had to be deflected. But then, for a reason he couldn’t name, he said, “Natural resources.”

“Oil and wheat.”

“Yes.”

Musa stood and walked to the bookshelves on the other side of the room, peering at a long row of red cardboard binders with handwritten labels on their spines. “If I have to leave here,” he said, “I suppose I will lose the library. It’s not the kind of thing you can take to, to—wherever it might be.”

He turned to a floor lamp, tugged on the chain again and again until the light went on, then went back to the binders. “One thing about governments,” he said, “think of them what you will, but they do write reports.” He ran his finger along the row. “For example, wheat and rye production in the province of Wallachia in 1908. Read that one? Bet you haven’t. There’s a drought in the final chapter, it will keep you up all night. Certainly kept us up. Or, let’s see, Ethnic Census of Transylvania—the date gives that one away, 1918, after they chased the Hungarians out. Or maybe you’d like...Petroleum Production and Transport: Report of the General Staff. The date being, uh, 1922.” He slid the binder out, brought it over to Serebin, and handed it to him.

Serebin turned the pages. The text in Roumanian he couldn’t read, but he found a map, with boundaries in dotted lines, and underlined names. Astra Romano. Unirea Speranitza. Dacia Romana. Redeventa Xenia. Standard Petrol Block. Romana Americana. Steaua Romana. Concordia Vega.

“The oil fields,” Musa explained. “With the names of the concessions.”

“What is it?”

“A study of our vulnerabilities, undertaken by the General Staff of the army. After the British raid of 1916, we had to look at what happened, what had been done to us, and what might happen in the future. For the British, of course, the destruction was a great success, a triumph. But for us it was a national humiliation, the more so because we did it to ourselves, we were forced to do it, and we had to ask, will this happen every time we go to war? Can we stop it? It’s our oil, after all. It’s owned by foreigners, but they must pay us for it, and it belongs to us.”

Serebin read further; long columns of numbers, percentages, paragraphs of explanation, a map of the Danube, from Giurgiu in Roumania all the way up to Germany.

“That’s the transport route,” Musa said.

Serebin leafed through the pages until he came to the end, then offered the report to Musa.

“Oh, you might as well take that along,” Musa said. “It’s no use to me anymore.”

It snowed again, that night.

Serebin had the concierge book them a ten o’clock table at Capsa, the city’s most popular restaurant, famous for its Gypsy orchestra. The hotel doorman helped them into a taxi and told the driver where they were going. Halfway there, two blocks from the Lipscani house, they said they had to stop for a few minutes and asked the driver to wait. Then they walked, hunched over, fighting the bitter wind that blew down from the mountains. Serebin carried the report in a briefcase that Marie-Galante had sent him out to buy earlier that afternoon.

“Cold,” Marie-Galante said.

Serebin agreed.

“Talk to me,” she said. “We’re lovers, going out for the evening.”

“What will you have?”

“Udder in wine.” A Roumanian specialty.

“Will you? Really?”

“God no.”

“There’s nobody around,” Serebin said. The city seemed deserted, white snow on empty streets.

“Talk anyhow,” she said.

He talked.

In the lane that led to the Lipscani house, the young officer was shivering in a doorway.

“Our guardian—how does he know to be here?”

“I make a telephone call. To a number that is never answered.”

They entered the Lipscani house and rode up in the moaning elevator. Marie-Galante took the briefcase from him, checked one last time to make sure the report was in there, then placed it by the desk.

They left, heading back toward the waiting taxi. From the darkness, a man in an overcoat came toward them on the other side of the street; head down, hands in pockets, bent against the wind-driven snow. As he hurried past, Serebin saw that it was Marrano.

Back in bed, thank heaven. The long, heavy meal eaten, and no work till morning. It had been a loud Gypsy orchestra, with copious Gypsies—Serebin couldn’t count them because they never stopped moving; leaping about the stage in their baggy pants and high boots, a whirl of fiendish grinning and shouting, singing and dancing, and savage, implacable strumming. Can you play “Shut Up and Sit Still,” traditional ballad of the Serebin clan? Nothing worse than nightclub Gypsies when you weren’t in the mood, and Serebin wasn’t, he was dog tired, period.

Marie-Galante yawned and settled herself on her pillow. “Thank God that’s over,” she said.

“What happens now?”

“Marrano is off to Istanbul. On Lares, the Roumanian airline—may the gods protect him. Polanyi will be pleased, or maybe not, one never knows. Maybe he’s had a copy for years, or the information is too old, or it was all wrong to begin with. Still, it can’t stay here, and we can’t afford to get caught with it. But the important thing is that Musa trusted you.”

“I guess.”

“Oh, he did. It’s in your nature.”

“What is?”

“Honor, good faith. You are who you are, ours, man without a country, soldier of the world.”

“All that?”

“Well, he saw something.”

“He didn’t care, love, he would’ve given that thing to a gorilla.”

“Maybe. But it happened, didn’t it, and it could be important.”

“Or not.”

“Or not.”

She yawned again, rolled over on her stomach, closed her eyes.

From the ballroom, far below them, Serebin could hear the orchestra playing a waltz.

14 January. It was just after eleven when they walked through the lobby, on their way back to work. From the corner of his eye Serebin saw an assistant manager, forefinger held stiff in the air, coming toward him, trying to get his attention. He was a tiny man, unsmiling and formal, who wore a gray cravat with a pearl pin and a boutonniere in his lapel, a pink tea rose that morning. “Monsieur Marchais? A moment, please, monsieur, if I may?”

The request had a certain pitch to it, an undertone of discretion, which meant, in the mysterious alchemy of hotel protocol, that what he had to say was for Serebin’s ears alone. Madame Marchais, the dutiful French wife, continued on her way to the door, while the assistant manager leaned close to Serebin, his voice infinitely confidential.

“Monsieur, your, ah, friend—she did not leave her name,” he paused for a delicate clearing of the throat, “telephoned last night. Rather late. She did sound terribly, distressed, if you’ll forgive me, and asked that you call her as soon as you can. She left a telephone number for you.”

The man pressed a slip of paper in Serebin’s hand. “It seemed quite urgent, monsieur.” Your slut is pregnant, now show some gratitude.

Which Serebin, magnanimously, did.

Well, would that there had been a slut, he thought later, and the problem the little problem.

They hurried to the Lipscani house and Serebin called the number. A woman answered—a cultured voice, but very frightened. “I am a friend of the colonel,” she said. “Of the family, you understand?”

He said, “Yes.” Then mouthed the name Maniu to Marie-Galante.

“They’ve left the country.”

“Why?”

“They had to. He was betrayed. Something about people he used to work with.”

“Did he say what happened?”

“A little. He approached the wrong person.”

“And?”

“They were almost arrested. But they got away, with the clothes on their backs.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“Over the border. I am to tell you that he regrets what happened, that he is sorry. Also, that he wants an old friend to know. You understand this?”

“Yes.”

“He said, ‘A visa for England.’”

“We will do what we can, but we’ll have to know where he is.”

She thought about it. “This is all I can do,” she said.

“Of course. I understand.”

Her voice wavered. “I would do more, I would do anything, everything, but I cannot. I must not. Other people could suffer.”

“You have to do what’s right.”

“I can explain...”

“No, don’t. Better that you don’t.”

“All right, it’s finished.”

“It never happened.”

“Then, good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

“I wish you success. I don’t know anything, but I wish you success.”

“Thank you,” Serebin said.

He hung up, then repeated the conversation for Marie-Galante.

“Merde,” she said. “At least they got away.”

“How would he get a visa?”

“We tell Polanyi, he tells the people he’s working with in London. The British legations are informed, and they—Lisbon, Madrid—wait for him to show up. That is, if the British are willing to take him.”

“Is it possible they won’t?”

“Yes, sad to say.”

“How could that be?”

“Can be, often is. Nature of the world,” she said. “That world.”

They returned to the Athenée Palace at four. Troucelle called from the lobby. He happened to be passing by. He wondered how they were doing. Serebin said they’d be down in a few minutes.

Marie-Galante sat in a chair, put her face in her hands.

“Are you all right?”

“Tired,” she said. She looked up at him. “Well, there it goes. What is it, fourteen days? Maybe that’s good, I don’t know. These things always come apart. If they’re built slowly, carefully, they can last a long time. If not, the roof falls in.”

“Escape through the kitchen?”

She shook her head. “Laurel and Hardy. No, we’ll find out what he wants. Let it just be money.”

“Will we be arrested?”

“Always a possibility, but not like this, this is a probe. I think we’ll have coffee. Very civilized. Don’t make it easy for him, but let him know we’re prepared to listen to a proposition.”

“We don’t have that much, do we?”

That didn’t worry her. “Cable to Istanbul.”

“What do we offer?”

“A year’s money, maybe. Not a lifetime—that makes us too important. In American dollars, say, five thousand. Twenty-five thousand Swiss francs.”

Downstairs, a table in the green salon. Turkish coffee in little cups without handles, cream cakes, toast with butter, Moldavian roll. Outside, beyond the mirrored walls, twilight on a winter afternoon.

Troucelle sprang to his feet when he saw them coming. Under pressure, he was a caricature of himself—too bright, too clever, his smile radiant. “Allow me to present Domnul Petrescu,” he said. The name Petrescu was the Roumanian version of Smith or Jones, the man who stood beside him somebody he would never have known. Pencil mustache, bad teeth, olive green loden jacket.

“So pleased to meet the friends of Jean Paul,” he said. Serebin thought he saw at least one more of them, sitting in a wing chair in the far corner, reading a newspaper.

“Domnul Petrescu is a devotee of the peasant crafts,” Troucelle said. He already regretted what he’d done, Serebin thought. There was a bead of sweat at his hairline, he wiped it away with his thumb.

“It’s your interest?” Petrescu said.

“Our business,” Marie-Galante said.

Petrescu looked at her a certain way. With anticipation. If things went right...Reluctantly, he turned his attention to Serebin. “You are born in France?” Then, an afterthought, “Monsieur?”

“In Russia.”

Marie-Galante put a spoonful of sugar in her coffee, stirred it around, then took a sip.

“Where was that?”

“St. Petersburg. I left as a child.”

“So, you’re a Russian.”

“In Paris a long time,” Serebin said.

“Marchais is a Russian name?”

“Markov, domnul. My father changed it.”

“Your father.”

“A grand old gentleman,” Marie-Galante said. “A poet,” she added, admiration in her voice.

“Of course, once he came to France he had to work in a factory,” Serebin said. “At a lathe.”

“And you, domnul?” Marie-Galante said.

“Me?” He was startled at her impudence.

“Yes. Your father, what did he do?”

Petrescu stared at her, his mouth worked as though something was stuck between his teeth. “We are from the countryside.”

“Ahh,” Marie-Galante said, sentimental for the land.

Troucelle laughed—how pleasant to have a good conversation!

Petrescu needed time to think. He reached for a buttered toast. Serebin could hear him eating it.

“Delicious, don’t you think?” Marie-Galante said.

“Tell me, domnul,” Serebin said, “is there a particular aspect of the peasant crafts that interests you?”

Petrescu put the remainder of the toast triangle back on his plate and patted his lips with a napkin. “Wood carving,” he said.

“I seem to recall,” Troucelle said, “that you were contemplating a visit to Ploesti.”

Serebin and Marie-Galante looked at each other. Us? We were? “I believe it was you who mentioned it,” Serebin said. “No?”

“You need permission to go there, don’t you?” Marie-Galante said.

“You do?” Troucelle said.

“Didn’t someone tell us that?” she asked Serebin.

“It’s no problem,” Petrescu said. “Really, you should go. The craftsmen there are known to do excellent work, and I can help you get a pass, if you like.”

“Something to think about,” Marie-Galante said to Serebin.

“It’s an interesting city,” Troucelle said.

“Maybe on our next trip,” Serebin said.

“But it’s very kind of you to offer to help us,” Marie-Galante said. She looked at her watch, then said to Serebin, “My dear?”

“Yes, you’re right,” Serebin said. He stood, so did Troucelle and Petrescu. “I regret our visit had to be brief, but we really must leave.”

“I hope I shall have the pleasure of meeting you again,” Petrescu said.

“Well, he did it,” Marie-Galante said, back in the room.

“Why?”

“To improve his position here? I don’t know. Il faut se défendre—it’s an article of faith, for some. ‘First above all, watch out for yourself.’”

“What was all that Russian business?”

“Your accent. Troucelle told them about it.”

“They think we’re Russian spies?” Serebin sat on the edge of the bed and began to take off his shoes.

“They might.”

Serebin unbuttoned his shirt.

“They’re scared of the Russians,” she said. “They’ll be cautious, if they think they’re dealing with Moscow.”

“Didn’t seem cautious.”

She opened the armoire, took out a daytime dress on a hanger, then put it back. “When you get dressed,” she said, “put on whatever you want to keep.”

By wireless telegraph:

18:10 14 January, 1941

Buro di Posta e Telegramma / Strada Traian / Bucuresti / Romania

Saphir / Helikon Trading / Akdeniz 9 / Istanbul / Turkiye

Confirm receipt your order #188

Carlsen

The Hotel Luna.

On a sign above the door, a naked wench sat cross-legged in the curve of a quarter moon, smiling down on a street of bars and women in doorways. The hotel of the moon. Serebin paused in the doorway and stared up at the wench. Like a mermaid with legs, he thought; rosy, prominent tummy, cascade of golden hair that covered her breasts, and a certain smile—demanding and forgiving, yes, both, and mysterious. The model was probably the artist’s girlfriend, but Serebin knew a muse when he saw one.

Marie-Galante, waiting at the door, said, “Somebody you know?”

The desk was in the vestibule. To the clerk, they were only one more couple, coming in out of the night. Marie-Galante in her Persian lamb hat, Serebin dark and studious in his steel-rimmed glasses, maybe from different worlds but Eros couldn’t care less about that and, for a few hundred lei, neither did the clerk at the hotel of the moon. No bag for the porter to carry, key for Room 38, staircase over there, carpet as far as the first floor.

It had been a leisurely flight from the Athenée Palace. In the room, Marie-Galante made two calls to the number that never answered, counting on her fingers as it rang. One last look around, then a ride in the elevator, and a casual walk through the lobby. They stopped at the desk, picked up a letter, and strolled out the door. Next they took trams and taxis, here and there, into quiet neighborhoods with empty streets. Once they were sure they weren’t being followed, they went to a café where, in the WC, Serebin picked up an envelope from the young officer. Inside, a new identity: Carlsen, a Danish passport with travel permissions from the Gestapo office in Copenhagen. Finally, a visit to a post office in the strada Traian for the wire to Polanyi—Marie-Galante explaining that 188 meant it was time for them to get out. From there, they walked to the Hotel Luna.

Small room, sagging bed, rust-stained sink, and a line of pegs on the back of the door where they hung their clothes. Beneath the window, an ancient radiator hissed and banged, warming the room to a point where they could walk around in their underwear.

“Your best?” Serebin said. Her bra and panties were ivory silk, snug and expensive-looking, that favored the warm color of her skin.

“From Paris, I think. Can you see?”

He turned the hem down in back and squinted at the label. “‘Suzi,’ it says.”

“Rue St.-Honoré.”

He stretched out on the bed and clasped his hands beneath his head. “How long do we stay here?”

“We’ll know when the wire comes.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

She settled herself beside him. “We languish.”

“Oh.”

“Forever, ours. A new life, just you and me.”

Serebin was taken by a sudden fit of elation. He stared up at the yellowed ceiling; lightbulb on a cord, cracks in the plaster, spiderweb in the corner. Nobody in the world knew where they were.

“You’re having thoughts,” she said.

True.

With the light out and the window shade up, Room 38 was lit blue by the neon sign of a bar across the street. There was a jazz band playing in the bar, guitar and violin, maybe the local Django and Stéphane, who never made it to Paris.

“Do you know this song?” she said.

He waited a moment for the refrain. “Yes. ‘I don’t stand, a ghost of a chance, with you.’” He almost sang, the English words rough in his Russian accent.

“Ghost? A specter?”

“An idiom. Almost no chance.” The band spent a long time with the song, the guitar improvised, then the violin.

“What’s it like for you,” Serebin said, “in Neuilly?”

She thought for a while. “The apartment is just so. Very proper, everything exactly as it should be. It seems cold, to me, haute bourgeois, stuffy, but that’s by necessity. Labonniere has to entertain there, diplomatic dinners, things like that.”

“Boring?”

She nodded. “One says nothing, but it must be said cleverly.”

“And the Germans?”

“Of course they’re included, but it’s not so bad. They’ve worked out a kind of unspoken courtesy for the occupation, a sort of wistful regret. Now and then, of course, you get a real Nazi, and that makes for a long evening, especially when they drink.”

The song ended, there was applause and a drunken shout or two from across the street. “Not so bad, the Luna,” she said. “Comes with free nightclub.”

He moved so that his lips were on her shoulder. She put her hand on the back of his neck and, very gently, began to comb his hair up with her fingers.

By wireless telegraph:

09:40 15 January, 1941

Helikon Trading / Akdeniz 9 / Istanbul / Turkiye

Carlsen / Poste Restante / Buro di Posta e Telegramma/

Strada Traian / Bucuresti / Romania

Shipment arrives 18 January / Pier 5 port of Constanta

Saphir

The owner of the Hotel Luna had a brother-in-law who, it turned out, drove a taxi and he, for a thick wad of lei, took them ten miles east of the city to the town of Branisti, where they could catch the 8:22, the last train to Constanta. “One place we cannot go is the Gara de Nord in Bucharest,” Marie-Galante explained. “You may be sure that, since last night, when we didn’t return to the hotel, Petrescu and all the little Petrescus are looking for us, and that is the one place they are sure to look.”

In Branisti, they sat in the taxi, across the street from the station, until 9:50, when the 8:22 finally showed up, then ran for the train. A bribe to the conductor in the first-class car produced tickets and a reserved compartment which they shared with a well-dressed woman and an elderly cat in a wicker basket. The woman was exceptionally polite, and spoke to them, and to the cat, in a language that neither Serebin nor Marie-Galante could identify. This, however, did not deter her for a moment, and she continued the conversation for quite some time. Eventually, she wrote the number three, and a word that could have been January, with her finger, in the film of grime that covered the window. She had, apparently, been traveling for two weeks, and Serebin and Marie-Galante were relieved when she got off the train at the next stop, leaving them alone in the compartment for the five-hour trip to Constanta.

The train moved slowly across the plains of Dobrudja, the waning moon hidden by cloud, the fields dusted with snow, a long way from everywhere. When they asked for something to eat, the conductor summoned a dining car steward, who brought them coffee and wine and warm brisket sandwiches on thickly buttered rolls. The man seemed apologetic, perhaps wanted to serve them a grand Roumanian supper, but Serebin and Marie-Galante ate like wolves and had to fight hard not to fall asleep once the dishes were taken away.

They talked idly, for a time, then Serebin said, “By the way, I don’t think you ever told me what was in the letter.”

“What letter?”

“That came to the hotel.”

Marie-Galante swore, horrified at the lapse.

“There was a lot going on,” Serebin said.

“No excuse,” she said, hunting through her purse. She took it out, a thick envelope that implied invitations to formal dinners or weddings, tore it open, then turned on the lamp by the window in order to read it. “From Valentina,” she said. “She’s performing tomorrow night at the Tic Tac Club and has reserved a table for us.”

“That’s it?”

She turned the letter over to reveal blank paper. “That’s it.”

“What could she want?”

“I can’t imagine. Maybe she liked you. Anyhow, we’ll never know.” Deliberately, she ripped the letter and the envelope into smaller and smaller pieces, saying, “Better not to have this with us.”

Serebin took the handful of torn paper off down the corridor, walked silently past the snoring conductor, opened the door at the end of the car and stood over the coupling. The steady hammering of the locomotive was loud in the open space between the cars, and the icy air, scented with coal smoke, felt good on his face and woke him up. They passed a village, a cluster of shadows by a dirt road, gone in a moment. Then he extended his arm and opened his hand, the bits of paper were taken by the wind, and fluttered away into the darkness.

18 January.

At dawn, in the port of Constanta, gulls circled the winter sky, their cries sharp and insistent in the morning silence. There was a heavy sea running, out beyond the jetty, and the yacht Néréide rocked gently on the harbor swell. In the forward cabin, the writer I. A. Serebin opened his eyes, took a moment to figure out where he was, then sat up in bed and lit a Sobranie cigarette.

His life, he realized, had come round again, circling back to the Constanta waterfront, where he’d boarded a Bulgarian freighter some two months earlier, and he once more found himself in a ship’s cabin with the woman who slept beside him. Carefully, he slid out of bed, retrieved his glasses from the night table, put on his shirt and pants and shoes, and climbed a stairway to the upper deck.

To Serebin, the day was familiar. Rolling cloud in gray light, stiff wind, sea breaking white against the jetty rocks. He knew this weather, it meant he was home. Or as close as he was ever going to get. Rust-dappled freighters, broad-beamed fishing boats—nets slung over their bows, seagoing tug, Arab dhow, oil tanker; a Black Sea harbor, an Odessa harbor. Not quite the same, of course; two patrol boats, gunmetal gray, flew the swastika. And, also different, the lone figure leaning on the Néréide’s railing. It struck him as odd, somehow, a Hungarian count wrapped in a sailor’s duffel coat, his hair blowing in the breeze. Polanyi turned toward him and nodded, Serebin joined him, they shook hands in silence.

The gulls were fishing. One of them landed on the rocks with a herring and had company right away.

“How was it?” Polanyi said.

“Bordel.” Whorehouse.

“It’s the war.”

“Is it.”

Polanyi spread his hands. “Not so good for your view of human nature, this work.”

“There were exceptions.”

“Well, one, anyhow.”

“More.”

Polanyi reached into a flap pocket on his coat and handed Serebin a telegram, wired care of André Bastien, with an Istanbul address. It had been sent to Marie-Galante a week earlier, and it was from Labonniere. Dry and to the point: he had been appointed second secretary at the French legation in Trieste, he needed her by his side.

Serebin handed the telegram back to Polanyi.

“Officially, you haven’t seen that,” Polanyi said. “But I thought you should see it.”

“When will you give it to her?”

“Right away.”

Serebin watched a fishing boat in the channel, its engine pounding as it fought the incoming tide.

“Working together like that,” Polanyi said. He looked over at Serebin, wondering if he needed to say more and saw that he didn’t. “She’ll have to come back to Istanbul with us.”

“When?”

“Late tonight, I think. We plan for you to leave Constanta tomorrow, by train.”

“Yes?”

“Back to Bucharest.”

Serebin nodded.

“You can say no, of course.”

He didn’t bother to answer.

“You should buy clothing, whatever you need, in Constanta. We’ll have someone take you to the store. But, before you do that, we’ll talk about everything that went on. You’ll find it tiresome, everybody does, but that can’t be helped. Would eleven suit you?”

“Eleven,” Serebin said.

Polanyi put both hands on the railing, hesitated, then walked away, heading toward the staircase that went to the cabins below.

Serebin spent a half hour on deck, then returned to the cabin. Marie-Galante was seated at the dressing table, putting on lipstick. She wore a slip and stockings, a towel wrapped around her hair. He saw that she’d made the bed, emptied the ashtrays, neatened up as best she could.

“Hello, ours.” She meant good-bye, her voice deeper than usual, tired, resigned.

He sat in a chair in the corner.

“I have to go away.” She pressed her lips together, turned them in for a moment, studied her image in the mirror. Not so good, but she didn’t care. “I have a wire from Labonniere. He’s been promoted, sent to the legation in Trieste. Ever been there?”

“Once or twice.”

“What’s it like?”

“Italian, Slovene, Croatian—everything, really. Very sunny and bright, at least when I was there.”

“Sunny and bright.”

“Yes.”

“That’s always good. Cheerful.”

She met his eyes in the mirror.

“I have to go,” she said. She undid the towel and began to rub her wet hair.

“I know.”

He walked over to her, she rose and put her arms around him, her damp hair against his cheek. They stayed like that for a time, then she let him go.

They sat around a table in the salon: Polanyi, Marrano, Serebin, Marie-Galante, and a young man in a silvery gray suit worn over a black sweater, with a sharp face and water-combed hair, introduced as Ibrahim. As Marrano began his report on Bucharest, both he and Polanyi took notes.

Serebin watched Marrano as he spoke. The Renaissance assassin. Dark eyes, pitted face, a thin line of beard that traced his jaw. His story did not sound so very different from theirs. A woman who slept with important men—lately, Marrano said, a German general. The manager of a telegraph office. A gossip columnist. A Siguranza officer. The last, after agreeing to meet with Marrano, had disappeared. Marrano telephoned late at night and talked to the man’s sister, who, very agitated, said nobody knew where he was.

“I did manage to see an assistant to Kobas, who was the oil minister until Antonescu took over. He was terrified, but brave. We met after midnight, in an abandoned building. He guessed right away what we were up to. ‘Don’t try anything,’ he said. ‘The fields are closely guarded. They’re just waiting for somebody to show up.’”

Polanyi nodded, he knew.

Marrano went on. Editor of a newspaper, who said that only the Legion could save Roumania from the Jews. A retired diamond merchant, in a wheelchair. A mystery woman, contacted through a Gypsy vendor at a street market. “Ilona, that’s all I know. I had to book an entire compartment on the train for Ruse, in Bulgaria. She appeared after the first stop, we talked for, maybe, five minutes, then she left. Very curious. Long, black hair, worn loose, dressed all in black, a scar by one eye, a gold wedding band on her right ring finger. She wore a purse on a shoulder strap, the way it hung I thought, something in there, am I to be shot? I think, maybe, if I’d said the wrong thing, it might’ve happened. She was very determined.”

Polanyi raised an eyebrow.

“She was paid a great deal of money,” Marrano said, “according to the list. And no last name, not even there. I believe DeHaas may not have known who she was.”

“Political?”

Slowly, Marrano shook his head. “‘If the job is worthy of me,’ she said, ‘I will do it.’”

Polanyi looked at Serebin.

“She did not say very much. Mostly she made me talk, and stared into my soul. Then she left at Daia station, suddenly, just as the train was about to leave. And I got off at the last stop in Roumania, Giurgiu.”

“The pipeline from Ploesti ends in Giurgiu,” Polanyi said.

“I knew that, so I decided to take a little walk, just to see what I could see. What I saw was the inside of a police station. For a very long hour, then a man in a suit showed up. A man who spoke French. Who was I? What was I doing there? Who did I know?”

“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 Néréide 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 Athenée 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 émigré 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 Roumania 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 Comité 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 émigré. 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 Athenée 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 alley 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 café 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.”

“Can I contact Gulian?”

“Do you have something to write with?”

Serebin found a pencil and gave it to her. She tore a corner off the gold paper on the bouquet and began writing. “I give you his home and his office. But please, be careful.”

“Why is he doing this?”

“He hates them. Since ’33, when Hitler took over. Hates what they’ve done to the Jews, what they’ve done to Europe. It’s just the way he is.”

She handed him the scrap of paper. She’d written two addresses and two telephone numbers. No name.

“Can you read it?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“All right, good. Go with God.” She kissed him on the cheek and walked quickly across the alley to the door of the nightclub.

Serebin needed the Number Six tram to reach his apartment. He walked north until he found a boulevard, then east to a tram stop—a bench on an island in the middle of a broad avenue. A small crowd of men waited impatiently, stamping their feet to keep warm, peering down the track into the snow. Serebin stood next to a tall, spindly man with professorial briefcase and umbrella. A narrow face, ascetic and prim. The professor, he thought. A conjecture supported, perhaps, by the fact that the man spoke reasonably good French.

“Waiting a long time?” Serebin said.

“Almost an hour,” the man said. “It’s later than usual, tonight.” He took an apple from his briefcase and began to eat it. Somewhere in the distance a bell rang. Once. A church bell, Serebin thought, its voice deep and heavy as the echo faded away.

“Did you hear that?” Serebin said.

The professor chewed his apple for a moment, then swallowed. “Excuse me,” he said. “It’s called the Great Black Bell.”

“A church bell?”

“Yes. The church is occupied by the Legion, and one ring means that one legionnaire has died in battle.” He ate another bite of his apple. “A huge bell,” he said, “it takes twenty-nine men to make it ring.”

A man standing nearby said, “They must be fighting.”

“Somebody said they were. This afternoon, in Vacaresti.”

“Oh.”

“Where is that?” Serebin said.

“The south end of the city,” the professor said.

Looking down the track, Serebin thought he saw the dim glow of a light. Somebody said, “Here it comes.”

The light grew brighter, and Serebin could hear the motor.

“It’s about time.”

On the other side of the boulevard, a figure appeared from the shadow of the buildings, walking quickly, almost running, toward the tram stop. He paused to let a car go by, its wheels sliding in the snow as it passed, then crossed the street. An older man, with a full beard, and the broad-brimmed hat and tight leggings worn by Orthodox Jews. He was breathing hard, and his face was white. He stood at one end of the island, pressed a hand to his side, then examined it, squinting as though he had lost his glasses.

The tram approached going full speed, swaying around a curve, its bell ringing wildly. Serebin stepped back from the track as it rushed past, half empty, to angry shouts and curses from the crowd.

Serebin watched it disappear. “Maybe there’s another one.”

Some of the men began to leave.

“Doubtful,” the professor said.

“Are you far from home?”

“Far enough.”

Serebin looked around for the bearded man, but he was gone. “I guess we’ll have to walk,” he said.

They set out together, following the tram track in the middle of the boulevard. “Where do you live?” the professor said.

“Out this way. About a mile or so.”

“My wife will be frantic,” the professor said.

“Can you telephone? From a café, perhaps.”

“I tried earlier, but the phones aren’t working.”

They trudged along in silence. The snow was well over the tops of Serebin’s shoes and his socks were wet and cold against his skin. All along the boulevard, people were walking home—apparently the city’s buses and trams had stopped running. Sometimes a car passed, very slowly, its hood and roof capped with snow. The amber light of a café appeared in the darkness, but the owner was closing up for the night. “Sorry, gentlemen,” he said.

A block further on, Serebin stopped. “Is that, singing?” They were men’s voices, a lot of them, strong and confident.

The professor muttered something that Serebin didn’t hear, sped up for a moment, then began to run. Serebin ran after him, saw that he was headed for the cover of the buildings. Christ, he’s fast. The professor ran with stiff back and long strides, snow flying in his wake. He pumped his arms, briefcase in one hand, furled umbrella in the other, his hat bobbing precariously on his head, finally tumbling off. They were both breathing hard when they reached the brick wall of an apartment house.

“My hat.”

“Leave it.”

He was infuriated, could see the hat lying forlorn in the street, was barely able to keep himself from retrieving it.

Across the boulevard, some fifty or sixty men, marching in formation with rifles held across their bodies. They sang well, Serebin thought, liked doing it and were good at it.

The song stopped. Replaced by the throb of a heavy engine and clanking treads. The reaction was immediate; frantic, chaotic. And, Serebin thought, comic—the Men’s Chorus of the Iron Guard run for their lives. The riflemen broke ranks and fled into a narrow street off the boulevard. But not quick enough—the tank jolted to a halt and the turret traversed as the cannon tracked the running shadows. The professor said, “My God.” Serebin threw himself on the snow. A long flame lit the street, and the flat crump deepened as it rolled back to them off the sides of the buildings.

Serebin shouted, “Get down.”

The professor wasn’t so sure. He wore a good tweed overcoat, there would be hell to pay if he ruined it. Compromise: he dropped to one knee and rested the briefcase by his side.

In silhouette, the hatch on the top of the turret was flung open and a man with a submachine gun began to work the street, the flare at the barrel flickering on and off with each burst. The cannon shell had meant nothing, zooming away into an unlucky wall, but now the legionnaires were in trouble, and pinpricks of light sparkled from the doorways. Serebin heard it, the air ripped like cloth above his head and he burrowed into the snow as a sliver of brick stung him on the neck and flew away.

Suddenly, the machine gun went silent. Serebin looked up and saw only darkness above the open hatch. The cannon fired again, and again, right and left, broken glass showered down from the windows and a shop began to glow with orange light.

The rifle fire from the legionnaires thinned, then stopped. Serebin managed to get himself turned around so that he could see the professor. He lay on his back, one leg folded beneath itself. Serebin slid closer, but there was nothing he could do. The man had a red hole beneath one eye, the other stared up at the falling snow.

Why wouldn’t you lie down?

Serebin heard the tank move off down the boulevard and, very slowly, got to his feet. The man’s arm had jerked savagely when he’d been hit and his briefcase had come open and stood on end. Inside, there was only a newspaper.

All night long the Black Bell rang as Serebin worked his way across the city, the smell of burning stronger and stronger as the hours passed. At one point, the air-raid sirens went off, whining up and down for an hour. He walked, mostly, sometimes ran, and crawled when he had to. Once down a street where the twelve-story telephone exchange faced an eight-story apartment building, the former occupied by the Legion, the latter by the army and police. In between, the bodies of three legionnaires who’d tried to rush the army position. He waited as they fought, exchanging fire window to window, the ricochets singing off into the night, then circled through a park where two soldiers were carrying a third to a taxi with a red cross painted on its side. He was not alone, he saw others, caught out in the storm, bent low, running from cover to cover, trying to go home.

There was no sunrise. The street simply turned gray, the low sky heavy with winter cloud. He was then at a large square, the piata Obor, and not far from the apartment. He started to cross, then thought better of it and slid beneath a car. The square was held by men wearing the green armbands of the Legion. They had a Model A Ford pickup with a machine gun mounted on a tripod, and had built a barricade of overturned cars and buses, dressers, desks, and beds, across one end of the square. Two of the men sat on a red couch.

Which way to go? Back out, try another street. He was almost finished, he thought, exhausted and soaked and cold, and he had to wait for a minute and gather his strength.

Before he could leave, the barricade was smashed open by a huge tank with a swastika on its side. The tank was followed by an armored car, the commander standing behind the driver, a pair of binoculars hanging down the front of his leather coat. He raised his arm and waved it forward, and a motorized Wehrmacht unit advanced into the square and sealed off all but one street.

The legionnaires thought the Germans had come to help them, and shouted, “Sieg Heil” and “Heil Hitler” and “Duce! Duce!” but the Germans did not respond. When the square was fully controlled, the commander shouted an order and, after a few moments of shocked silence, the Legion began to leave, walking slowly away down the open street.

When Serebin finally turned his key in the door, the woman who owned the apartment was sitting in her bathrobe, listening to the radio. She leapt up, a hand pressed to her heart, threw her arms around him and wept. When he’d put on dry clothes, she told him the news. The Legion had held the city all night, had murdered hundreds of Jews, at the Straulesti abattoir and in the Jilava forest, and looted and burned the Jewish quarter. Then, at dawn, Antonescu’s forces, supported by German units, had beaten them back; had retaken the radio station, the palace, the railyards—all of Bucharest.

“It’s over,” she said. “The Legion is finished. I cannot believe my own words, but, for this night at least, thank heaven for Adolf Hitler.”

At nightfall on 22 January, Serebin took a train to Giurgiu and crossed the river into Bulgaria.