They went on to a nightclub to watch Apache dancing. A young dancer, her skirt bunched up around her waist, slid across the polished floor into the audience and accidentally drove a spike heel into Szara's ankle. He winced, saw a momentary horror on her face amid the black and violet makeup, then her partner, in the traditional sailor's shirt, whisked her away.Now I am wounded in the line of duty, he thought,and should receive a medal, but there is no nation to award it. He was very drunk and laughed out loud at the thought.


'Were you stabbed?' Lady Angela asked quietly, evidently amused.


'A little. It's nothing.'


'What a very, very nice man you are.'


'Hah.'


'It's true. Next week, you're to have supper with me,tęte-ŕ-tęte.Can you?'


'I shall be honoured, dear lady.'


'Mysterious things may happen.'


"The very thing I live for.'


'I expect you do.'


'You're right. Will there be a violinist?'


'Good God no!'


'Then I'll come.'


The dinner was at Fouquet's, ina prívateroom with dark green curtains. Gold-painted cherubs grinned from the corners of the ceiling. There were two wines, andlangoustineswith artichokes andturbot.Lady Angela Hope was in red, a long, shimmering silk sheath, and her upswept hair, a colour something like highly polished brass, was held in place by two diamond butterflies. He thought her presentation ingenious: glamorous, seductive, and absolutely untouchable-the culmination of the private dinner was. . .that one would have dined privately.


'What em I to do with my little place in Scotland? You must advise me,' she said.


'Could anything be wrong?'


'Could anything be wrong-could anything be right! This dreadful man, a MrMacConnachie if you will, writes that the northwest cornice hasentirely deteriorated, and. . .'


Szara was, in a way, disappointed. He was curious, and the street imp from Odessa in him would have liked the conquest of a titled English lady in a private room at Fouquet's. But he'd understood from the beginning that the evening was for business and not for love. While they dawdled over coffee, there was a discreet knock on the doorframe to one side of the curtain. Lady Angela playfully splayed her fingers at the centre of her chest. 'Why, whoever can that be?'


'Your husband,' Szara said acidly.


She suppressed a giggle. 'Bastard,' she said in English. Her upper-class tone made a poem of the word and he noted that it was absolutely the most honestly affectionate thing she had ever said, or likely ever would say, to him. Underneath it all, he thought her splendid.


Roger Fitzware slipped between the curtains. Something in the way he moved meant he was no longer the slightly effeminate and terribly amusing Roddy that the Brasserie Heininger crowd so adored. Short and quite handsome,with thick reddish-brown hair swept across a noble forehead, he was wearing a dinner jacket and smoking a little cigar. 'Am Ide trop?'he said.


Szara stood and they shook hands. 'Pleased to see you,' he said in English.


'Mm,' Fitzware said.


'Do join us, dear boy,' Lady Angela said.


'Shall I have them bring a chair?' Fitzware said, just to be polite.


'I think not,' said Lady Angela. She came around the table and kissed Szara on the cheek. 'A very, very nice man,' she said. 'You must ring me up-very soon,' she called as she vanished through the curtain.


Fitzware ordered Biscuit cognac and for a time they chatted about nothing in particular. Szara, a student of technique, found considerable professional satisfaction in watching Fitzware work; intelligence people, no matter their national origin, always had a great deal in common, like people who collected stamps or worked in banks. But the approach, when it came, was no surprise, since it turned out to be the same one favoured by the Russian services, one that created an acceptable motive and solicited betrayal in the same breath. Fitzware conducted the conversation like a maestro:The concierge situation in Paris-and here he was quite amusing: his apartment house groaned beneath the heel of a ferocious tyrant,un vraidragonin her eighties with a will of iron-led gracefully tothe political situation in Paris-here Fitzware implicitly acknowledged the concerns of his guest by citing, with a grim expression, the slogan chalked on walls and bridges,Vaut mieuxHitlerqueBlum,a fascist preference for the Nazis overLéonBlum, the Jewish socialist who'd led the government a year earlier. Then it was time forthe political situation in France, followedclosely bythe political situation in Europe. Now the table was set and it only remained for dinner to be served.


'Do you think there can be peace?' Fitzware asked. He lit a small cigar and offered Szara one. Szara declined and lita Gitane.


'Of course,' Szara said. 'If people of good will are determined to work together.'


And that was that.


Fitzware had hoisted a signal flag of inquiry, and Szara had responded. Fitzware took a moment to swirl his cognac and exhale a long, satisfied plume of cigar smoke. Szara let him exult a little in his victory; for somebody in their line of work, recruitment was the great, perhaps the only, victory. Now it was settled, they wouldwork together for peace. As who wouldn't? They both knew, as surely as the sun rose in the morning, that there would be war, but that was entirely beside the point.


'We're terribly at sea, you know, we British,' said Fitzware, following the script. 'I fear we haven't a clue to the Soviet Union's intentions regarding Poland-or the Baltics, or Turkey. The situation is complex, a powder keg ready to go up. Wouldn't it be dreadful if the armies of Europe marched over a simple misunderstanding?'


'It must be avoided,' Szara agreed. 'At all cost. You'd think we would have come to understand, in1914,the price of ignorance.'


'Sorrowfully, the world doesn't learn.'


'No, you're right. It seems we are destined to repeat our mistakes.'


'Unless, of course, we have the knowledge, the information, that permits us to work these things out between diplomats-in the League of Nations, for instance.'


'Ideally, it is the answer.'


'Well,' said Fitzware, brightening, 'I believe there's still a chance, don't you?'


'I do,' Szara said. 'To me personally, the critical information at this time would concern developments in Germany. Would you agree with that?'


Fitzware did not respond immediately; simply stared as though hypnotized. He'd led himself some way down a false trail, assuming that Szara's information concerned Soviet operations-intelligence; political or otherwise. Now he had to shift to a completely different area. Quickly, it dawned on him that what he was being offered was, on balance, even better than he'd realized. Offers of Soviet secrets were, in many cases, provocations or dangles-attempts to involve a rival service in deluding itself or revealing its own resources. One had to wear fire-proof gloves in such cases. Offers ofGerman secrets, on the other hand, coming from a Russian, would very likely be hard currency. Fitzware cleared his throat. 'Emphatically,' he said.


'To me, the key to a peaceful solution of the current difficulties would be a mutual knowledge of armaments, particularly combat aircraft. What would be your view on that?'


In Fitzware's eyes Szara glimpsed the momentary light of elation, as though an inner voice cried out,I'd dance naked on me fookin' birthday cake! In fact, Fitzware permitted himself a civilized grunt. 'Hm, well, yes, of course I agree.'


'With discretion, Mr Fitzware, it's entirely possible.'


An unspoken question answered: Fitzware was not in communication with the USSR, was not being drawn into the occluded maze of diplomatic initiatives achieved by intelligence means. He was in communication withAndréSzara, a Soviet journalist operating on his own. That was the meaning of the worddiscretion. Fitzware considered carefully; matters had reached a delicate point. 'Your terms,' he said.


'I have great anxiety on the question of Palestine, particularly with the St James's Conference in session.'


At this, Fitzware's triumphant mood slightly deflated. Szara could not have raised a more difficult issue. 'Thereare easier areas in which we might work,' he said.


Szara nodded, leaving Fitzware to tread water.


'Can you be specific?' Fitzware said at last.


'Certificates of Emigration.'


'Real ones?'


'Yes.'


'Above the legal limit, of course.'


'Of course.'


'And in return?'


'Determination of the Reich's monthly bomber production. Based on the total manufacture of the cold-process swage wire that operates certain nonelectronic aircraft controls.'


'My board of directors will want to know the reason you say "total."'


'Myboard of directors believes this to be the case. It is, whatever else one might say, Mr Fitzware, a very good, a veryeffective, board of directors.'


Fitzware sighed in agreement. 'Don't suppose, dear boy, you'd consider taking something simple, like money.'


'No.'


'Another Cognac, then.'


'With pleasure.'


'We have a good deal of work yet to do, and I can't promise anything. All the usual, you understand,' Fitzware said, pressing the button on the wall that summoned a waiter.


'I understand perfectly,' Szara said. He paused to finish his Cognac. 'But you must understand that time is very important to us. People are dying, Great Britain needs friends, we must make it all work out somehow. If you will save lives for us, we will save livesfor you. Surely that's world peace, or damn close to it.' 'Close enough,' Fitzware said.


In the violent, changeable weather of early March, Szara and Fitzware got down to serious negotiation. 'Call it what you like,' Szara was later to telldeMontfried, 'but what it was was pushcart haggling.' Fitzware played all the traditional melodies: it was his board of directors that wanted something for nothing; the mandarins in Whitehall were a pack of blind fools; he, Fitzware, was entirely on Szara's side, but making headway through the bureaucratic underbrush was unspeakably frustrating.


Much of the negotiating was done at the Brasserie Heininger. Fitzware sat with Lady Angela Hope and Voyschinkowsky and the whole crowd. Sometimes Szara joined them, other times he took one of hiscafégirls out for dinner. He would meet Fitzware in the men's WC, where they would whisper urgently back and forth, or they would go out on the pavement for a breath of fresh air. Once or twice they talked in a corner at the social evenings held in various apartments. Over the course of it, Szara realized that being a Jew made bargaining difficult. Fitzware was eternally proper, but there were moments when Szara thought he caught a whiff of the classical attitude: why are you people so difficult, so greedy, so stubborn?


And of course Fitzware's board of directors tried to do to him what his own Directorate had done toDrJuliusBaumann.Who are we really dealing with? they wanted to know. We need to have a sense of the process; where is the information coming from? More, give us more! (And why areyou people so greedy?)


But Szara was like a rock. He smiled at Fitzware tolerantly, knowingly, as the Englishman went fishing fordeeper information, a smile that said,We're in the same business, my friend. Finally, Szara made a telling point: this negotiation is nothing, he admitted ruefully to Fitzware, compared to dealings with the French, who had their own Jewish communities in Beirut and Damascus. That seemed to work. Nothing, in love and business, quite like a rival to stimulate desire.


They struck a deal and shook hands.


Baumann's figures, from1January1937to February1939,brought an initial payment of five hundred Certificates of Emigration-up from Fitzware's offer of two hundred, down from Szara's demand for seven hundred. One hundred and seventy-five certificates a month would be provided as the information was exchanged thereafter. The White Paper would produce seventy-five thousand legal entries through1944,fifteen thousand a year, one thousand two hundred and fifty a month. Szara's delivery of intelligence from Germany would increase that number by a factor of fourteen per cent.Thus the mathematics of Jewish lives, he thought.


He told himself again and again that the operation had to be run with a cold heart, told himself to accept a small victory, told himself whatever he could think of, yet he could not avoid the knowledge that his visits to the cornertabacseemed much more frequent, his ashtrays overflowed, he took more empty bottles to the garbage can in the courtyard, his bistro bills rose sharply, and he ate aspirin and splashed gallons of cold water on his eyes in the morning.


There was too much to think about: for one, unseen Soviet counterintelligence work that was meant to keep people like him from doing exactly what he was doing; for another, the potential for blackmail come the day when Fitzware wanted a view of Soviet operations in Paris and threatened to denounce him if he refused to cooperate; fora third, the strong possibility that Baumann's information was in fact supplied by the Reich Foreign Office intelligence unit and would in time poison the British estimate of German armaments. What, he wondered, were they hearing on the subject from other sources? He was to find that out, sooner than he thought.


During this period, Szara found consolation in the most unlikely places. March, he discovered, was good spying weather. Something about the fierce skies full of racing clouds or the spring rains blowing slantwise past his window gave him courage-in a climate of turbulence one could put aside thoughts of consequences. The political parties of the left and the right were to be seen daily on the boulevards, bellowing their slogans, waving their banners, and the newspapers were frantic, with thick black headlines every morning. The Parisians had a certain facial expression: lips compressed, head canted a little to one side, eyebrows raised: It meantwhere does all this lead1} and impliednoplace very good. In Paris that spring of1939,one saw it hourly.


DeMontfried, meanwhile, had appointed himself official agent runner. He was no Abramov and no Bloch, but he had long experience as a commercial trader and believed he understood intuitively how any business agent should be handled. This assumption produced, in the hushed railway library of the Renaissance Club, some extraordinary moments.DeMontfried offering money- 'Please don't be eccentric about this, it is only the means to an end'-which Szara did not care to take.DeMontfried in the guise of a Jewish mother, pressing smoked fish sandwiches on a man who could barely stand to look at a cup of coffee.DeMontfried handed a stack of five hundred Certificates of Emigration, clearing his throat, playing the stoic with tears of pleasure in his eyes. None of this mattered. The days of Abramov and Bloch were over; Szara had been runningopaloperations for too long not to run his own when the time came. That included making sure he didn't know too much about details that did not directly concern him.


Butde Montfriedsaid just enough so that Szara's imagination managed the rest. He could see them, perhaps an eye surgeon from Leipzig with his family or a tottering, old rabbi from Berlin's Hasid community, could see them boarding a steamer, watching the coastline of Germany disappear over the horizon. Life for them would be difficult, more than difficult, in Palestine. What the Nazi Brown Shirts had started the Arab raiding bands might yet finish; but it was at least a chance, and that was better than despair.


The British operatives provided all the usual paraphernalia: a code name,curate, an emergency meeting signal-the same 'wrong number' telephone call the Russians sometimes used-and a contact to be known by the work name Evans. This was a rail-thin gentleman in his sixties, from his bearing almost certainly a former military officer, quite possibly of colonial service, who dressed in chalk-stripe blue suits, carried a furled umbrella, cultivated a natty little white moustache, and stood straight as a stick. Contacts were made in the afternoon, in the grand cinemas of theChamps-Elyséesneighbourhood: silent exchanges of two folded copies ofLeTempsplaced on an empty seat between Szara and the British contact.


Silent but for, on one occasion, a single sentence, spoken by Evans across the empty seat and suitably muffled by the clatter of a crowd of Busby Berkeley tap dancers on the screen: 'Our friend wants you to know that your numbers have been confirmed, and that he is grateful.' He was not to hear Evans speak again.


Confirmed?


That meantBaumann wastelling the truth; his information had been authenticated by other sources reporting to the British services. And that meant, what? ThatDrBaumannwas betraying a GermanFunkspieleoperation, all by himself and just because? ThatMartaHaecht's boss had been mistaken: it wasn't Von Polanyi having lunch withBaumannat theKaiserhof? Szaracould have gone on and on; there were whole operas of possibilities to be drawn from Fitzware's message. But there was no time for it.


Szara had to hurry back to his apartment, hide a hundred and seventy-five certificates under the carpet until they could be delivered tode Montfriedthat evening, make a fivep.m. meeting in the thirdarrondissement,theMarais,then head out to the placed'Italiefor atreff withValais,the new group leader of thesilo network, a little after seven.


The meeting in theMaraistook place in a tiny hotel, at an oilcloth-covered table in a darkened room. A week earlier, Szara had been offered his very own emigration certificate to Palestine. 'It's a back door out of Europe,'deMontfried had said. "The time may come when you'll have no other choice.' Szara had politely but firmly declined. There was no doubt a reason he did this, but it wasn't one he wanted to name. What he did ask ofdeMontfried was a second identity, a good one, with a valid passport that would take him over any border he cared to cross. His intention was not flight. Rather, like any efficient predator, he simply sought to extend his range.DeMontfried, his favours refused again and again, was eager to oblige. 'Our cobbler,' he'd said, using the slang expression for forger, 'is the best in Europe. And I'll arrange to have him paid, you're not even to discuss it.'


The cobbler was nameless; a fat, oily man with thinning curls brushed back from a receding hairline. In a soiledwhite shirt buttoned at the sleeves, he moved slowly around the room, speaking French in an accent Szara could place only generally, somewhere in Central Europe. 'You've brought a photograph?' he said. Szara handed over four passport pictures taken in a photo studio. The cobbler chuckled, chose one, and handed the rest back. 'Myself, I don't keep records-for that you'll have to see the cops.'


He held a French passport between thick forefinger and thumb. 'This,this, you don't see every day.' He sat down and flattened the passport out on the table and began removing its photograph by rubbing on chemical solvent with a piece of sponge. When he was done he handed the damp picture to Szara. 'Jean Bonotte,' he said. The man looking back at him was vain, with humorous dark eyes that caught the light and a devil's beard that ran from sideburn tight along the jawline and then swept up to join the moustache, the sort of beard kept closely pruned, trimmed daily with scissors. 'Looks smart, no?'


'He does.'


'Not so smart as he thought.'


'Italian?'


The cobbler shrugged eloquently. 'Born Marseille. Could mean anything. A French citizen, though. That's important. Coming from down there you can always say you're Italian, or Corsican, or Lebanese. It's whatever you say, down there.'


'Why is it so good?'


'Because it's real. Because Monsieur Bonotte will not come to the attention of the SpanishGuardiajust about the time you get off the ferry in Algeciras. Because Monsieur Bonotte will not again come to anyone's attention, excepting Satan, but the police don't know anything about it. He's legally alive. This document is legally alive. You understand?'


'And he's dead.'


'Very. What's the sense to talk, but you can have confidence he has left us and will not be dug up by some French farmer. That's why I say it's so good.'


The cobbler took the photo back, lit the corner with a match, and watched the blue-green flame consume the paper before he dropped it in a saucer. 'Born in1902.Makes him thirty-seven. Okay with you? The less I have to change the better.'


'What do you think?' Szara asked.


The cobbler drew his head back a little, evidently farsighted, and looked him over. 'Sure. Why not? Life's hard sometimes and we show it in the face.'


"Then leave it as it is.'


The cobbler began to glue Szara's photo to the paper. When he was done, he waddled over to a bureau and returned with a stamper, a franking machine that pressed paper into raised letters. 'The real thing,' he said proudly. He placed the device at a precise angle to the photo, then slid a scrap of cardboard atop the part of the page already incised. He pressed hard for a few seconds, then released the device. 'This prevents falsification,' he said with only the slightest hint of a smile. He returned the franking device to the bureau and brought back a rubber stamp and a pad, a pen, and a small bottle of green ink. 'Government ink,' he said. 'Free for them. Expensive for me.' He concentrated himself, then stamped the side of the page firmly. 'I'm renewing it for you,' he said. He dipped the pen into the ink and signed the space provided in the rubber-stamped legend. 'Prefect Cormier himself,' he said. He applied a blotter to the signature, then looked at it critically and blew on the ink to make sure it was dry. He handed the passport to Szara. 'Now you're a French citizen, if you aren't already.'


Szara looked through the pages of the passport. It was well used, with several recorded entries into France andvisits to Tangier,Oran,Istanbul, Bucharest, Sofia, and Athens. The home address was in therue Paradisin Marseille. He checked the new date of expiry, March of1942.


'When the time comes to renew again, just walk into any police station in France and tell them you've been living abroad. A French embassy in a foreign country is even better. You know the man who sent you to me?'


'No,' Szara said.De Montfriedwouldn't, he knew, make such a contact directly.


'Just as well,' the cobbler said. 'You're a gentleman, I'd say. You're happy?'


'Yes.'


'Use it in good health,' said the cobbler. 'Me I'd go and pick up acarted'identité-say you lost it-and a health card andauthe rest of it, but that's up to you. And don't put your hand in your pocket, it's all taken care of.'


It was after six when he left the hotel. The St-PaulMétroplatform was packed solid. When the train rolled in, he had to force his way on, jamming himself against the back of a young woman who might have been, from the way she was dressed, a clerk or a secretary. She said something unpleasant that he didn't quite catch as the train pulled away, but he got a good strong breath of the sausage she'd eaten for lunch. He could see the place on her neck where her face powder stopped. 'Sorry,' he muttered. She said something in slang he didn't understand. When the crowd surged on at theHôtel-de-Villestation he was pressed against her even harder; her stiff, curly hair rubbing against his nose. 'Soon we'll be married,' he said, trying to make light of the situation. She was not amused and pointedly ignored him. After a change of trains he reached his stop,Sčvres-Babylone, and went trotting up therue du Cherche-Miditoward his apartment. No matter how hard he might be pressed, he could not meet withValaiswhile a secondpassport was in his pocket. The concierge said good evening through her little window as he rushed toward his entryway in the dark courtyard. He pounded up three nights of stairs, jiggled the lock open with his key, tucked the Bonotte passport under the carpet with the certificates, then took off downstairs. The concierge raised an eyebrow as he hurried past-very little bothered or surprised her, but in general she did not approve of haste.


Back to theSčvres Métro,dodging housewives returning from the markets and hurdling a dog leash stretched between an aristocratic gentleman and his Italian greyhound squatting at the kerb.


TheMétrowas even worse as the hour of seven approached.Valaiswas forbidden to wait more than ten minutes for him; if he were any later they'd have to try for the fallback meeting the following day. The first train that stopped revealed an impenetrable wall of dark coats when the door opened, but he managed to force his way onto the next. After a change atMontparnasse,with almost no time to make sure he wasn't being followed, he left the station a minute after seven, ran around the first corner, then went tearing back the way he'd come. It was primitive, but the best he could manage under the pressure of time.


With thirty seconds to spare, he entered a women's clothing shop-long racks of cheap dresses and a dense cloud of perfume-just off the placed'Italie.The shop was owned by Valais's girlfriend, a short, buxom woman with a hennaed permanent wave and crimson lipstick. WhatValais, acontemplative, pipe-smoking lawyer, and she saw in each other he couldn't imagine. She was a few years older thanValaisand hard as nails. Szara was breathless as he strode toward the back of the store. The curtain at the entrance of the dressing room hung open, and a woman in a slip was thrashing her way intoa pea green dress that was tangled about her head and shoulders.


Valaiswas waiting in a small workroom where alterations were done. When Szara entered he was about to leave, his overcoat buttoned and his gloves on. He looked up from his watch, clenched his pipe in his teeth, and shook hands. Szara collapsed in a chair in front of a sewing machine and put his feet up on the treadle.


Valaislaunched into a long, determined, cautiously phrased description of his activity over the past ten days. Szara pretended to pay attention, his mind returning to what Evans had said in the cinema that afternoon, then found himself thinking about the woman he'd stood with on theMétro.Had she pressed back against him? No, he thought not. 'And then there islichen,'Valaissaid, waiting for Szara to respond.


Who the hell islichen?Szara experienced a horrible moment of dead memory. At last it came: the young Basque prostituteHélčneCauxa, virtually inactive the past two years but collecting a monthly stipend nonetheless. 'What's she done now?' Szara asked.


Valais put ablack briefcase on the sewing machine stand. 'She, ah, met a German gentleman in the bar of a certain hotel where she sometimes has a drink. He proposed an arrangement, she agreed. They went off to a cheaper hotel, nearby, where she sometimes entertains clients. He forgot his briefcase. She brought it to me.'


Szara opened the briefcase: it was stuffed with a package of pamphlet-size booklets, perhaps two hundred of them, bound with string. Clipped to the cover of the one on top was a slip of paper with the wordweiss printed in pencil. He worked one of the booklets loose and opened it. On the left-hand side of the page were German phrases, on the right the same phrases in Polish:




Where is the mayor (head) of the village?


Tell me the name of the chief of police.


Is there good water in this well?


Did soldiers come through here today?


Hands up or I'll shoot!


Surrender!




'She demanded additional money,'Valaissaid.


Szara's hand automatically went to his pocket.Valaistold him how much and Szara counted it out, telling himself he'd surely remember later how much it was and forgetting almost instantly.'weissmust be the name of the operation,' he said toValais.The word meant white.


'The invasion of Poland,'Valaissaid. He made a sucking noise,and a cloud of pipe smoke drifted to the ceiling of the dress shop. From the front of the store, Szara heard the ring of the cash register. Had the woman in the slip bought the pea green dress?


'Yes,' he said. 'These are intended forWehrmachtofficers who will be transferred fromattachéduty in Paris, a few of them anyhow, back to their units in Germany before the attack. Then some for theAbwehr,military intelligence. Still, seems quite a few. Maybe he was on his way to other cities after Paris.'


'More Polish sorrow,'Valaissaid. 'And it puts Hitler on the frontier of the Soviet Union.'


'If he's successful,' Szara said. 'Don't underestimate the Poles. And France and England have guaranteed the Polish border. If the Germans aren't careful they're going to take on the whole world again, just like1914.'


'They are confident,'Valaissaid. 'They have an unshakable faith in themselves.' He smoked his pipe for a time. 'Have you read Sallust? The Roman historian? He speaks of the Germanic tribes with awe. The Finns, he says, in winter find a hollow log to sleep in, but the Germans simply lay down naked in the snow.' He shook his head at thethought. 'I am, perhaps you don't know, a reserve officer. In an artillery unit.'


Szara lit a cigarette and swore silently in Polish-psia krew,dogs' blood. Now everything was going straight to hell.


Back on theMétrowith the briefcase. Running up the stairs on therue du Cherche-Midi.Looking in the mirror and combing bis hair back with his fingers, he discovered a white streak of plaster dust on the shoulder of his raincoat-he'd rubbed up against a wall somewhere. He brushed at it, then gave up, put the briefcase in the back of his cupboard, and went out the door. Raced halfway down the stairs, reversed himself, and climbed back up. Reentered his apartment, snatched the pile of emigration certificates from under the carpet, put them in his own briefcase, and went out a second time.


The streets were crowded: couples going out for dinner, people coming home from work. The wind was ferocious, swirling up dust and papers. People held their hats on and grimaced; waves of chalk-coloured cloud were speeding across the night sky. He'd take theMétroto Concorde, then change to the NeuillyUne.From there it was a half-hour walk at least if he couldn't find a taxi. It would certainly rain. His umbrella was in the cupboard. He'd arrive at theCercle Rénaissancelate, looking like a drowned rat, with a white streak on his shoulder. He held tightly to the briefcase with its hundred and seventy-five certificates inside. Had she pressed back against him? A little?


When Szara entered the libraryde Montfriedwas reading a newspaper. He looked up, his face flushed with anger. 'He's going into Poland,' he said. 'Do you know what that will mean?'


'I think so.' Uninvited, Szara sat down.DeMontfried closed the paper emphatically and took off his reading glasses. His eyes seemed the colour of mud in the half light of the small room.


'All this ranting and raving about thepoor, suffering German minority in Danzig-that's what it means.'


'Yes.'


'My God, the Jews in Poland are living in the ninth century. Do you know? They're. . .when the Hasid hear of the possible invasion they dance to show their joy-the worse it gets, the more they are certain that Messiah is coming. Meanwhile, it's already started, the Poles themselves have started it. No pogroms just yet but beatings and knifings-the gangs are running free in Warsaw.'He glared angrily at Szara. His face was twisted with pain but, at the same moment, he was an important man who had the right to demand explanations.


'I was born in Poland,' Szara said. 'I know what it's like.'


'But why is he alive, this man, this Adolf Hitler? Why is he permitted to live?' He folded the newspaper and put it down on a small marquetry table. The club's dinner hour was approaching and Szara could smell roasting beef.


'I don't know.'


'Can nothing be done?'


Szara was silent.


'An organization like yours, its capacities, resources for such things...I don't understand.'


Szara opened his briefcase and passed the stack of certificates todeMontfried, who held them in his hands and stared at them vacantly. 'I have another engagement,' Szara said, as gently as he could.


DeMontfried shook his head to clear it. 'Forgive me,' he said. 'What I feel is like an illness. It will not leave me.'


'I know,' Szara said, rising to leave.






* * *




Back to therue du Cherche-Midi.Briefcases exchanged. Szara headed out into the windy night and slowly made his way to the rue Delesseux house. The Directorate, he thought, would want physical possession of the pamphlets, would have a special courier bring them to Moscow. Still, he believed it was best to transmit the contents and theWeiss code name as soon as possible. He began to switch fromMétro UnetoMétro Une,now following procedures closely; rue Delesseux was not to be approached by a direct route. At theLa Chapellestation there was fighting. Perhaps communists and fascists, it was hard to tell. A crowd of workingmen in caps, all mixed together, three or four of them down on the floor with blood on their faces, two holding a third against a wall while a fourth worked on him. The motor-man didn't stop. The train rolled slowly through the station with white faces staring from the windows. They could hear the shouts and curses over the sound of the train, and one man was hurled against the side of the moving carriage and bounced hard, the shock felt by the passengers as he hit-several people gasped or cried out when it happened. Then the train returned to the darkness of the tunnel.


Schau-Wehrli was at work in the rue Delesseux. Szara handed her a pamphlet and stood quietly while she looked it over. 'Yes,' she said reflectively, 'everything points to it now. My commissary people in Berlin, who work for the German railway system, say the same thing. They've heard about requests for a traffic analysis on theUnesthat go to the PoUsh border. That means troop trains.'


'When?'


'Nobody knows.'


'Is it a bluff?'


'No, I think not. It most certainly was with the Czechs,but not now. The Reich industrial production is meeting quotas, the war machinery is just about in place.'


'And what will we do?'


'Stalin alone knows that,' Schau-Wehrli said. 'And he doesn't tell me.'


It was well after midnight when Szara finally got home. He'd never managed to eat anything, but hunger was long gone, replaced by cigarettes and adrenaline. Now he just felt cold and grimy and used up. There was a large tin bathtub in the kitchen, and he turned on the hot water tap to see what might be left. Yes, there was one good thing in the world that night, a bath, and he would have it. He stripped off his clothes and threw them on a chair, poured himself a glass of red wine, and turned the radio dial until he found some American jazz. When the tub was ready he climbed in and settled back, drank a little wine, rested the glass on the broad part of the rim, and closed his eyes.


Poorde Montfried,he thought. All that money, yet he could do little, at least that was the way he saw it. The man had virtually humiliated him in the library, had been so angry that the certificates, bought at a cost he could not imagine, seemed a small and insufficient gesture. Oh the rich. Would any of the café girls still be about? No, that was hopeless. There was one he could telephone-full of understanding, that one, she loved what she called adventures of the night. No, he thought, sleep. The music ended and a man began to announce the news. Szara reached for the dial, his arm dripping water on the kitchen floor, but the radio was just a little too far. So he had to hear that the miners were on strike in Lille, that the minister of finance had denied all allegations, that the little girl missing in the Vosgeshad been found, that Madrid continued to hold out, factions fighting each other in the besieged city. Stalin had issued an important political statement, referring to the current crisis as 'the Second Imperialistic War.' He stated he would 'not allow Soviet Russia to be drawn into conflicts by warmongers who are accustomed to having others pull their chestnuts out of the fire/ and attacked those nations who wanted 'to arouse Soviet anger against Germany, to poison the atmosphere, and to provoke a conflict with Germany without visible reason.'


Then the music returned, saxophones and trumpets from a dance hall on Long Island. Szara rested his head against the tub and closed his eyes. Stalin claimed that England and France were plotting against him, manoeuvring him to fight Hitler while they waited to pounce on a weakened winner. Perhaps they were. Aristocrats ran those countries, intellectuals and ministers of state, graduates of the best universities. Stalin and Hitler were scum from the gutters of Europe who'd managed to float to the top. Well, one way or another, there would be war. And he would be killed. Marta Haecht as well. The Baumanns, Kranov,the operative who'd driven him away from Wittenau on Kristallnacht, Valais,Schau-Wehrli, Goldman, Nadia Tscherova. All of them. The bath was cooling much too fast. He pulled the plug and let some of it gurgle out, then added more hot water and lay back in the steam.


In London, on the fourth floor at 54 Broadway-supposedly the headquarters of the Minimaz Fire Extinguisher Company-MI6 officers analysed the curate product, packaged it alongside information from a variety of other sources, then shipped it off to intelligence consumers in quiet little offices all over town. It travelled by car and bicycle, by messenger and pneumatic tube, sometimes down long, damp corridors, sometimes to panelled rooms wanned by log fires. The product came recommended. Confirming data on German swage wire manufacture was independently available, and German bomber production numbers were further supported by factory orders, in Britain itself, for noninterference technology that protected aviation spark plugs, and by engineers and businessmen who had legitimate associations with German industry. The material arrived, for example, at the Industrial Intelligence Centre, which played the key role in analysing Germany's ability to fight a war. The centre had become quite important and was connected to the Joint Planning subcommittee, the Joint Intelligence subcommittee, the Economic Pressure on Germany subcommittee, and the Air Targets committee.


Thecurate story also floated upwards, sometimes unofficially, into the precincts of Whitehall and the Foreign Office, and from there it wandered even further. There was always somebody else who really ought to hear about it; knowledge was power, and people liked to be known to have secret information because it made them seem important:secret, but not secret from them. Simultaneously, in a very different part of the civil service, the bureaux that dealt in colonial affairs had been stirred up like hornets' nests when the espionage types had come poaching on their territory. British Mandate Palestine was their domain and-love the Arabs or love the Jews or hate them all-the brawl over legitimate Certificates of Emigration had been bloody and fierce. And it was discussed.


So people knew about it, this curate, a Russian in Paris feeding the odd morsel to the British lion in return for a subtle shift of the paw. And some of the people who knew about it were, privately, rather indignant. To begin with, their hearts' passion lay elsewhere. From the time of their undergraduate days at Cambridge they'd thrown in their lot with the idealists, the progressives, the men of conscience and good will at the Kremlin. Precisely who did the work it would be difficult to say-Anthony Blunt or Guy Burgess, Donald MacLean or H. A. R.Philby, or others unknown; they all traded on the information exchanges of the intelligence and diplomatic bureaucracies-but one or more of them thought it worthwhile to let somebody know, and so they did. Spoken over supper at a private club or left in a dead-drop in a cemetery wall, the code name curate and the very general outline of what it meant began to move east.


It did not move alone-many other facts and all sorts of gossip needed to be passed along-and it did not move with great speed; alarms were not raised. But it did, in time, reach Moscow and, a little later, the proper office in the appropriate department. It fell among cautious people, survivors of the purge who lived in a dangerous, undersea twilight of predators and their prey, people who moved carefully and with circumspection, people who knew better than to catch a fish that might be too big for their nets-that way one might wind up at the bottom of the ocean; it had happened. In the beginning, they contented themselves with pure research, with trying to find out who it was, where it was, and why it was. Action would follow at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way. It has been said that counterintelligence people are by nature voyeurs. They like to watch what goes on because when the moment finally comes to rush out of the shadows and kick down the doors, the fun is really over, the files are taken away, the wheels begin to grind, and then it's time to start all over again.


One morning in early May the Paris newspapers soberly reported a change of Soviet foreign ministers:M. M.Litvinov replaced by V. M.Molotov.


Some went on to read the article beneath the headline; many did not. These were the redemptive hours of spring-Paris was leafy and soft and full of girls, life would go on forever, the morning light danced on the coffeecup and thebud vase, and sun streaming into a room turned it into a Flemish painting. Russian diplomats came and went. Who, really, cared.


André Szara,true to his eternally divided self, did both: read on and didn't care. He judged the story rather incomplete, but that was nothing new.M. M.Litvinov was in fact Maxim MaximovichWallach,a pudgy, Jewish, indoor gentleman of the old school, a thorough intellectual, myopic and bookish. How on earth had he lasted as long as he had? V. M.Molotov, infact Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Skryabin, had changed his name for a rather different reason. As Djugashvili became Stalin, Man of Steel, so Skryabin becameMolotov,the Hammer.So, thought Szara,between them they'll make a sword.


Szara's flip commentary turned out to be just the truth, but he had a lot to think about that day. He contemplated a good deal of rushing about here and there, and he was no less receptive to spring breezes than any other man or woman in Paris, so the weight of the news didn't quite reach him-he didn't hear the final piece of a complex machine snap into its housing. He heard the birds singing, the neighbour flapping her bedding before she hung it over the windowsill to air, the scissors grinder ringing his bell out on therue du Cherche-Midi-but that was all.


Adolf Hitler heard it, certainly, but then he had very sharp ears. He was later to say 'Litvinov's dismissal was decisive. It came to me like a cannon shot, like a sign that the attitude of Moscow towards the Western powers had changed.'


The French intelligence services heard it, though probably not so loud as a cannon shot, reporting on7May that unless great diplomatic effort was exerted by England and France, Germany and the USSR would sign a treaty of nonaggression by the end of the summer.




Szara was summoned to Brussels on the tenth of May.


'We're going to have to make an arrangement with Hitler,' Goldman said with sorrow and distaste. 'It's Stalin's own damn fault-the purges have weakened the military to a point where we simply cannot fight and expect to win. Not now. So time is going to have to be bought, and the only way to buy it is with a treaty.'


'Good God,' Szara said.


'Can't be helped.'


'Stalin and Hitler.'


'The European communist parties aren't going to be happy, our friends in America aren't going to like it, but the moment has come for them to learn a littlerealpolitik.The hand-wringers and the crybabies will go off in a great huff. Them we'll have to kiss good-bye. And good riddance. The ones who decide to remain faithful will be true friends, people who can be depended on to see things the way we see them, so maybe all is for the best. We've been sweating and bleeding since1917to build a socialist state; we can't let it all go down the river in the service of starry-eyed idealism. The factories, the mines, and the collective farms; those are the reality-and to protect that investment we'll make a deal with the devil himself.'


'We're evidently to do just that.'


'Can't be helped. Most of the intelligence services have already got it figured out, the public will know by the summer, July or August. That gives us a few weeks to do the work.'


'Not much time.'


'It's what we have, so we'll manage. First, and most important, the networks themselves. Don't waste your time on the mercenaries, work with the believers. You're letting them in on the secret life at the top, where strategic decisions are made. The Nazis will never be anybody's friends, and not ours either, but we need time to arm forthe confrontation and this is the way to buy it. Anybody who doesn't accept this line-1 am to be informed. Is that understood?'


'Yes.'


'With our German informants nothing changes. In war we fight our enemies, in peace we fight our friends. So now we'll have a form of peace, but operations continue as before. We want, now more than ever, to know what goes on with the Germans-their thinking, their planning, their capacities, and their military dispositions. Times are perilous and unstable,AndréAronovich,and that is when networks must operate at their maximum capability.'


'If we have a, a misfortune. If somebody gets caught, what does that do?'


'God forbid. But I don't expectReferatVI?will send everybody home to tend their rose gardens, so neither will we. The way to handle what you call "a misfortune" is to make sure it doesn't happen. Does that answer your question?'


Szara made a wry face.


'Second, get busy with your personal connections.Ohmeoh-my the world is a terrible place, whatever is to be done? Howevershall we find peace? There must be a compromise, someone must be willing to budge an inch and let the other fellow see he means no harm. Only the USSR is strong enough to do that. Let the British and the French rattle their swords and wheel their cannons about; we mean to relieve the pressure on Hitler's eastern border, we mean to sign trade agreements and cultural exchanges-let the folk dancers fight this out between them-we mean to find a way we can all live together in a world where not everything is as we'd wish it to be. No more mobilizations! No more1914!'


'Hurrah!'


'Don't be clever. If you don't believe it, nobody else will. So find a way.'


'And the Poles?'


'Too stubborn to live, as usual and as always. They'll stand on their honour and make pretty speeches and wake up one morning speaking German. There is nothing to be done for the Poles. They've chosen to go their own way. Good, now let them.'


'Should they give up Danzig?'


'Give up yoursister. We sit here in this little shop and we happen to know that once the German bombers get busy, Warsaw will turn into a blazing hell. That's the reality. Now, for number three, pick up your ingenious pen and go to work. Try one of those intellectual French journals guaranteed to give you a headache and start shaping the dialogue. If there were some way to coopt the argument itself-you know, by stating the initial questions- Ufewould be perfect. To that we can't aspire-every writer under the sun is going to have a say on this, but at least you can give them a nudge. As in: what must world socialism do to survive? Must we all die, or is there an alternative? Is diplomacy truly exhausted? Could the bloodbath in Spain have been avoided if everybody had been a little more willing to negotiate?


'You'll be crucified by the doctrinaire Marxists, of course, but so what. The important thing is to get the discussion rolling by claiming some territory. There's bound to be somebody who'll rush to defend you-there always is, no matter what you say. And if, no,when people come up to you at parties and tell you that Lenin's spinning in his display case, you'll have the right answers: remember, the USSR is the hope of progressive mankind and the only ongoing remedy to fascism. But it must survive. Stalin is a genius, and this pact will be a work of genius, a diplomatic side step to avoid the crippling blow. And the minute thepact becomes public, that's what I want to read under your byline, without hauling you all the way up to Belgium. Is everything clear?'


'Oh yes,' Szara said. 'England and France want war to satisfy their imperialist aspirations, Russia stands alone in seeking peace. Subtext, with a wink and a poke in the ribs, that sly old fox from the Caucasus is doing what he has to in order to gain time. We'll settle with Hitler whenwe're ready. Is that about it?'


'Exactly. You're not alone in this, of course. All the Soviet writers will take a hand-they'll likely have a play onstage in Moscow in ninety days. Your participation was directly ordered, by the way: "You've got Szara over there, put him to work!" is exactly how it was said. It's a broad effort now-they've broughtMolotov into negotiate with Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, in case you wondered about that. We can't be sending a chubby little Jewish man off to deal with the Nazis, you agree?'


'Realpolitik,as you said.'


'That is the word. By the way, I suggest you pack a bag and keep it by the door. If the situation evolves the way we think it might, there's a possibility you may be travelling on short notice.'


'Onopal business?'


'No, no. As the journalist Szara, the voice of Russia speaking out from foreign lands. You really ought to treat yourself to a grand dinner,AndréAronovich,I see great professional advancement in your future.'


TheMolotovappointment-on the surface no more than a piece of diplomatic business during a time when there was more than an ample supply of it-induced in Paris, and evidently in other European capitals, a change of chemistry.AndréSzara found himself doing things he didn't quite understand but felt compelled to do anyhow. As Goldmanhad suggested, he prepared to travel on a moment's notice. Climbed up on a chair, took his suitcase down from the top of thearmoire,blew some of the dust off it, and decided he needed something else. His twelve-year-old suitcase, its pebbled surface a soiled ochre colour with a maroon stripe, had seen hard service in hisPravda days. It was nicked and scratched and faded and made him look, he thought, like a refugee. All it needed was the knotted rope around the middle. So he went off to the luggage stores, but he didn't really like what he found-either too fashionable or too flimsy.


He passed a custom leathergoods shop one day in the seventharrondissement-saddles and riding boots in the window-and, on the spur of the moment, went inside. The owner was a Hungarian, a no-nonsense craftsman in a smock, his hands hard and knotted from years of cutting and stitching leather. Szara explained what he wanted, a kind of portmanteau like a doctor's bag, an old-fashioned but enduring form, made of long-wearing leather. The Hungarian nodded, produced some samples, and quoted an astonishing price. Szara agreed nonetheless. He hadn't wanted anobject so badly for a long while. Oh, and one last thing: from time to time he carried confidential business papers, and what with the sort of people one finds working in hotels these days. . .The Hungarian was entirely understanding and indicated that Szara was not the only customer to express such concerns. The traditional false bottom was as old as the hills, true, but when properly crafted it remained effective. A second panel would be fashioned to fit precisely on the bottom; papers could be safely stored between the two layers. 'It is, sir, naturally safest if you were to have it sewn in place. Not so much for light-fingered hotel staff, you understand, for the bag will be provided with an excellent lock, but more a matter of, one might say, frontiers.' The delicate word hung in theair for a moment, then Szara made a deposit and promised to return in June.


A week later he decided that if he was to travel, he didn't want to leave the Jean Bonotte passport in his apartment. Robberies were rare but they did occur, especially when people went away for an extended period. And from time to time the NKVD might send a couple of technicians around, just to see whatever there was to see. So he opened an account in the Bonotte name, using the passport for identification, ata Banque duNordoffice on the boulevardHaussmann,then rented a safe deposit box for the passport itself. Three days later he returned, on a perfect June morning, and put an envelope holding twelve thousand francs on top of the passport.What are you doing? he asked himself. But he really didn't know; he only knew he was uncomfortable, in some not very definable way, like a dog that howls on the eve of a tragedy. Something, somewhere, was warning him. His ancestry, perhaps. Six hundred years of Jewish life in Poland, of omens, signs, portents, instincts. His very existence proved him to be the child of generations that had survived when others didn't, perhaps born to know when the blood was going to run.Hide money, something told him.Arm yourself, said the same voice, a few nights later. But that, for the moment, he did not do.


A strange month, that June. Everything happened.Schau- Wehrliwas contacted by a group of Czechémigréswho lived in the town of Saint-Denis, in the so-called Red Belt north of Paris. They were communists who'd fled when Hitler took over the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March, and the contact withopal was made through the clandestine apparatus of the French Communist party. The group was receiving intelligence by means of secret writing on the backs of bank envelopes, which contained receipts for funds mailed to Prague and Brno for the support ofrelatives. They were using an invisible ink concocted in a university chemistry laboratory. Like the classics, lemon juice and urine, application of a hot iron brought up the message. The information itself was voluminous, ranging fromWehrmachtorder of battle, numbers and strengths of German units, to financial data, apparently stolen by the same bank employees who prepared the envelopes, as well as industrial information-almost all the renowned Czech machine shops were now at work on Reich war production.


This group required a great deal of attention. There were eight of them, all related by blood or marriage, and though motivated by a passionate loathing of the Nazis, they perceived their contribution as a business and knew exactly what this kind of information was worth. Three of the Saint-Denis members had intelligence experience and had created a network in Czechoslovakia, after Hitler took theSudetenland,with the goal of supporting themselves and their families when they resettled in France. The two bank employees were the daughters of sisters, first cousins, and their husbands worked at acquiring information through friendships maintained at men's sports clubs. Such an in-place network, already functioning efficiently, was almost too good to be true, thus the Directorate in Moscow was simultaneously greedy for the product and wary ofReferatVI?counterintelligence deception. This ambivalence created a vast flow of cable traffic and exceptional demands on the time of the deputy director,Schau-Wehrli,so that Goldman eventually ordered theraven network transferred to Szara's care.


He nodded gravely when given the new assignment, but the idea of working withNadia Tscherovadid not displease him. Not at all.


At the rue Delesseux he read his way through theraven file,which included Tscherova's most recent reports in theiroriginal format: an aristocratic literary Russian printed in tiny letters, on strips of film that had been earned over the border in Odile's shoulder pads, then developed in an attic darkroom. Previous reports had been retyped, verbatim, and filed in sequence.


Szara read with pure astonishment. After the tense aridity ofDrBaumannand the lawyer's precision ofValais,it was like a night at the theatre. What an eye she had! Penetrating, malicious, ironic, as though Balzac were reborn as a Russianémigrée in1939Berlin. Read serially,raven's reports worked as a novel of social commentary. Her life was made up of small roles in bad plays, intimate dinners, lively parties, and country house weekends in the Bavarian forest, with boar hunting by day and bed hopping by night.


Szara had tender feelings for this woman, even though he suspected she was a specialist in the provocation of tender feelings, and he would have expected himself to read of her never-quite-consummatedliaisonsintimeswith a leaden heart. But it just wasn't so. She'd told him the truth that night in her dressing room: she protected herself from the worst of it and was unmoved by what went on around her. This casual invulnerability was everywhere in her reports, and Szara found himself, above all else, amused. She had something of a man's mind in such matters, and she characterized her fumbling, half-drunken, would-be lovers and their complicatedrequests with a delicate brutality that made him laugh out loud. By God, he thought, she was no better than he was.


Nor did she spare hersubagents. LaraBrozina she described as writing 'a kind of ghastly, melancholy verse that Germans of a certain level adore.' Brozina's brother, Viktor Brozin, an actor in radio plays, was said to have 'the head of a lion, the heart of a parakeet.' And of theballetmaster Anton Krafic she wrote that he was 'sentenced every morning to live another day.' Szara could positively see them-the languid Krafic, the leonine Brozin, theterribly sensitive Brozina-amusing frauds making steady progress along the shady underside of Nazi society.


And Tscherova did not spare the details. During a weekend in a castle near the town of Traunstein, she entered a bathroom after midnight 'to discover B. [that meantbrewer, Krafic] drinking champagne in the bathtub withSSHauptsturmführerBrackmann, who was wearing a cloche hat with a veil and carmine lipstick.' What in heaven's name, Szara wondered, had the Directorate made ofthis?


Referring to the file of outgoing reports he discovered the answer:Schau-Wehrli had reprocessed the material to make it palatable. Thus her dispatch coveringraven's description of the jolly bath said only that'brewer reports thatSS Hauptsturmführerbruckmannhas recently been with his regiment on divisional manoeuvres in marshy, swamplike terrain near the Masurian Lakes in East Prussia.' Another pointer, Szara noted, toward the invasion of Poland, where such conditions might be encountered.


A rich, rewarding file.


He worked his way through the last of it on the afternoon of the summer solstice,the day the sun is said to pause, he thought. Pleasing, that idea. Something Russian about it. As though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down: the weather light and sunny, rather aimless, a bird twittering away on a neighbouring balcony, Kranov coding at his desk, humming a Russian melody, the little bell on the door of the ground-floortabactinkling as a customer entered.


Then the warning buzzer went off beside Kranov's table-a danger signal operated from beneath the counter in thetabac.This was followed, a moment later, by a knock on the door at the bottom of the stairs, a door shielded by a curtain on the back wall of the shop.


Szara had absolutely no idea what to do, neither did Kranov. They both froze, sat dead still like two hares caught in a winter field. They were literally surrounded byincrimination-files, flimsies, stolen documents, and the wireless telegraph itself, with its aerial run cleverly up the unused chimney by way of the attic. There was no getting rid of anything. They could have run down the stairs and rushed out the back door, or jumped the three storeys and broken their ankles, but they did neither. It was three-thirty on a bright summer afternoon and not a wisp of darkness to cover their escape.


So they sat there and presently heard a second knock, perhaps a bit more insistent than the first. Szara, not knowing what else to do, walked down the stairs and answered it. To find two Frenchmen waiting politely at the door. They were Frenchmen of a certain class, wore tan summerweight suits of a conservative cut, crisp shirts, silk ties not terribly in fashion but not terribly out. The brims of their hats were turned down at precisely the same angle. Szara found himself thinking in Russian,My God, the hats are here. The two men had a particular coloration that a Frenchman of the better sort will assume after lunch, a faint, rose-tinted blush on the cheeks which informs the knowledgeable that the beef was good and the wine not too bad. They introduced themselves and presented cards. They were, they said, fire inspectors. They would just have a brief look around, if it wasn't terribly inconvenient.


Fire inspectors they were not.


But Szara had to go along with the game, so he invited them in. By the time they'd climbed to the third floor,Kranov had pulled the blanket off the window and flung it over the wireless, turning it into a curious dark hump on an old table from which a wire ran up the corner of the wall and disappeared into the attic through a ragged hole in the ceiling. Kranov himself was either in a closet or under the bed in Odile's apartment on the second floor-one of those truly inspired hiding places found amid panic-but in the event he was unseen. The Frenchmen didn't look, they didn't strip the blanket off the wireless, and they didn't even bother to enter Odile's apartment. One of them said, 'So much paper in a room like this. You must be careful with your cigarettes. Perhaps a bucket of sand ought to be placed in the corner.'


They touched the brims of their hats with their forefingers and departed. Szara, his shirt soaked at the armpits, collapsed in a chair. Somewhere on the floor below he heard a bump and a curse as Kranov extricated himself from whatever cranny he'd jammed himself into.A comedy, Szara said to himself,a comedy. He pressed his palms against his temples.


Kranov, swearing under his breath, threw the blanket into a corner and flashed Goldman a disaster signal. For the next two hours messages flew back and forth, Kranov's pencil scratching out columns of figures as he encoded responses to Goldman's precise questions. Somewhere, Szara was certain, the French had a receiver and were taking note of all the numbers crackling through the summer air.


By the end of the exchange Szara realized that the game was not actually over, the network was not blown. Not quite. They had, evidently, been warned, probably by theDeuxičmeBureau-diplomatic and military intelligence-using agents of the Paris Prefecture of police or the Directiondela Surveillancedu Territoire,the DST, theFrench equivalent of the American FBI. The warning came in two parts:We know what you're doing, went the first.


This was no great surprise, when Szara had a moment to think about it. The French police had always insisted, sinceFouchéserved Napoleon, on knowing exactly what went on in their country, and most particularly in their capital. Whether they actually did anything about what they knew was treated as a very different matter-here political decisions might be involved-but they were scrupulously careful in keeping track of what went on, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, village by village. So their knowledge of the existence ofopal was, finally, no great surprise.


From their point of view it did not hurt them that the Russians spied on Germany, the traditional enemy of France. They may have received, at a very high level, compensation for allowingopal a free hand, compensation in the form of refined intelligence product. Always, there were arrangements that did not meet the eye.


But the second part of the warning was quite serious: if you truly mean to become an ally of Germany, we may decide that your days here are numbered, since such an alliance might damage French interests, and that will not be permitted to happen. So here, gentlemen, are a pair of fire inspectors, and we send them to you in a most courteous and considerate fashion, which is to say before anything actually starts burning.


We're sure you'll understand.


In July, theotter operation ended. They would hear fromDrBaumannno more. So that month's exchange of information for emigration certificates was the last. Szara signalledde Montfriedfor a meeting, he responded immediately.DeMontfried was driven in from his country house, achâteaunear Tours. He was wearing a cream-coloured suit, a pale blue shirt, and a little bow tie. He carefully placed his straw hat on the marquetry table in the library, folded his hands, and looked expectantly at Szara. When told the operation was over, he covered his face with his hands, as though in great fatigue. They sat for some time without speaking. Outside it was oppressively quiet; a long, empty, summer afternoon.


Szara felt sorry forde Montfriedbut could find no words of consolation. What was there to say? The man had discovered himself to be rather less powerful than he'd thought. Yet, Szara realized, how little would change for him. He would present the same image to the world, would live beautifully, move easily in the upper realms of French society; the haughtyCercle Rénaissancewould still be the place where a library of railway books was maintained for his pleasure. Certainly he was to be envied. He had simply found, and rather late inUfe,the limits of his power. Perceiving himself to be a wealthy and important man,deMontfried had attempted to exert influence on political events and, based on Szara's understanding of this world, had succeeded. He simply did not understand how well they'd done. He simply did not understand that he'd imposed himself on a world where the wordvictory was hardly to be heard.


Together, he and Szara had been responsible for the distribution of one thousand three hundred and seventy-five Certificates of Emigration to Mandate Palestine. As these covered individuals and their families, and were so precious that marriages and adoptions were arranged, sometimes overnight, the number of salvaged lives was perhaps three thousand. What, Szara wondered, could he say?You bloody fool, you want to save the world-now you know what it takes to save three thousand lives!No, he could not say that. And had he said it he would havebeen wrong. The true price of those lives was yet to be paid and would turn out to be higher, for Szara and others, than either of them could have realized at that moment.


De Montfrieddropped his hands heavily to the arms of his chair and sat back, his face collapsed with failure. 'Then it's finished,' he said.


'Yes,' Szara said.


'Can anything be done? Anything at all?'


'No.'


Szara had certainly thought about it-thoughtwasn't really the word; his mind had spun endless scenarios, reached desperately for a solution, any solution at all. But to no avail.


It was Szara's opinion that Evans had told him the truth that afternoon in the cinema: the British serviceswere able to confirm the figures from other sources. That meant he could not simply lie, offer numbers that would appear to be logical. They would know. Not at first-for a month or two it might be managed, and a month or two meant another three hundred and fifty certificates, at least seven hundred lives. Seven hundred lives were worth a lie-in Szara's calculus they certainly were. But it was worse than that.


When he'd first gone to the British, he'd believed his figures to be false, part of a German counterintelligence attack. It had not mattered, then. But the world had shifted beneath his feet; Germany would take Poland, and Russia would agree to a treaty that left Britain and France isolated. False figures delivered now might deform the British armament effort in unforeseen ways, false figures could well help the Nazis, false figures could cost thousands of lives, tens of thousands, once the Luftwaffe bombers flew. So those seven hundred lives were lost.


'Have you told them?'deMontfried asked.


'Not yet.'


'Why not?'


'On the possibility that you and I, sitting here, might invent something, discover something, find another way. On the possibility that you have not been forthcoming with me and that you have resources I don't know about, perhaps information of some kind that can be substituted.'


DeMontfried shook his head.


They sat in silence.


'What will you tell them?'deMontfried said at last.


'That there has been an interruption at the source, that we wish to continue until a new method can be worked out.'


'And will they accept that?'


'They will not.'


'Not even for one month?'


'Not even that.' He paused for a moment. 'I know it's difficult to understand, but it's like not having money. Lenin said that grain was "the currency of currencies." That was in1917.For us, it might now be said that information is the currency of currencies.'


'But surely you know other things, things of interest.'


'For the people I deal with directly, that might very well work. But we are asking for something I'm certain they-MI6-had to fight for, and only the magnitude of what we were offering made it possible for them to win that battle. I don't think they'll go back to war for other material I might offer. I'm sure they won't. Otherwise, believe me, I would try it.'


Slowly,deMontfried gathered himself to face the inevitable. 'It is very hard for me to admit to failure, but that is what's happened, we've failed.'


'We've stopped, yes.'


DeMontfried withdrew a leather case and a fountain pen from the inside pocket of his jacket, unscrewed the top of the pen, and began to write a series of telephone numbers on the back of a business card. 'One of these will find me,'he said. 'I am almost never out of touch with my office-that's the number you've been using-but I've included several other numbers, places where I'm to be found. Otherwise we'll leave it as it's been, simply sayMonsieur B. is calling. I'll leave instructions for the call to be put through to me directly. Day or night, any time. Whatever I have is at your disposal should you need it.'


Szara put the card in his pocket. 'One can never be sure what might happen. One has to hope for the best.'


De Montfriednodded sadly.


Szara stood and offered his hand. 'Good-bye,' he said.


'Yes,'deMontfried said, rising to shake hands. 'Good luck.'


"Thank you,' Szara said.


The card joined the money and the Jean Bonotte passport that afternoon.


Theotter operation had ended suddenly and badly.


Odile musthave activated an emergency signal available in Berlin, because Goldman called a special meeting, to take place just after she got off the train. Szara andSchau-Wehrli were summoned to a place called Arion, in Belgium, an iron mining town just over the Luxembourg border a few kilometres north of the French city of Longwy. It was hot and dirty in Arion. Coal smoke from the mills drifted through the soot-blackened streets, the sunset was a dark, sullen orange, and the night air was dead still. The meeting was held in a worker's tenement near the centre of town, the home of a party operative, a miner asked to spend the night with relatives. They sat in the cramped parlour with the shutters closed amid the smells of sweaty clothes and boiled food.


Odile wasshaken-her face an unnatural white-but determined. She had got off a local train from the German border only a few minutes before they arrived. Goldmanwas there with another man Szara did not know, a short, heavy Russian in middle age, with wavy fair hair and extremely thick glasses that distorted his eyes. At first Szara thought he might be asthmatic: his breath rasped audibly in the little room. After they'd settled down, Szara noticed that the man was staring at him. Szara met his glance but the'man did not look away. He put an oval cigarette between his lips, creased the head of a wooden match with his thumbnail, and lit the cigarette from the flare. Only then did he turn to faceOdile. Ashe shook the match out, Szara saw that he wore a large gold watch on his wrist.


By the time Szara andSchau-Wehrli arrived,Odilehad told her story to Goldman and the other man and produced Baumann's message. Goldman handed it to Szara. 'Have a look.' he said.


Szara took the slip of paper, read quickly over the production numbers, then discovered a terse sentence scrawled along the bottom of the sheet:You should be aware that rumours of a rapprochement between Germany and the USSR have angered members of the diplomatic and military class.


'What is your opinion?' Goldman asked.


'My opinion,' Szara said. 'It seems he's trying to supply additional information. We've been after him for months to do that. Do such rumours exist?'


'Perhaps. In the class of people he refers to, they could easily be more than rumours,' Goldman said. 'But how wouldBaumannknow such things? Who is he talking to?'


Szara said he didn't know.


Goldman turned toOdile.'Please tell us again what happened.'


'I always clear the drop early in the morning,'Odilesaid, 'when the maids go to work in the neighbourhood. I went to the wall by the little wood, made certain I was


35not observed, reached over the wall and felt around until I found the loose rock, then withdrew the paper and putirin the pocket of my raincoat. There was no message from the network, so I was next going to the telephone pole to acknowledge reception by turning the bent nail. I went about ten steps when a woman came out of the woods. She was approximately fifty years old, wearing a house-dress, and extremely agitated and nervous. "He has been taken," she said to me in German. I pretended not to understand what it was all about. "He is in a camp, inSachsenhausen,"she said, "and his friends can't help him." I stared at her and started to hurry away. "Tell them they must help him," she called after me. I walked very fast. She came a few steps after me, then stopped and went back into the woods. I did not see her do this, but I looked over my shoulder a few seconds later and she was gone. I heard a dog barking, a little dog, from the woods somewhere. I made my way to theRingbahnstation at Hohenzollern-Damm, went into the public toilet, and hid the message in my shoulder pad. I was out of Berlin on a local train about one hour later. I saw nobody unusual on the train, had no other experience out of the ordinary.'


'Friends?'Schau-Wehrli said. 'Hisfriends can't help? Did she mean the Jewish community? Lawyers, people like that?'


'Or work associates,' Szara mused. 'People at the German companies he deals with.'


"The point is,' Goldman said, 'has he been arrested as a Jew? Or a spy?'


'If they caught him spying, they would have taken her as well,'Schau-Wehrli said. 'And the Gestapo would have him-that means Columbia House, notSachsenhausen.'


'Perhaps,' Goldman said. 'It's hard to know.'


'Can he be helped?' Szara asked.


"That's a question for the Directorate, but yes, it hasbeen done before. For the time being, the Berlin operatives are going to try and contact him in the camp and let him know we're aware of what's happened and that we're going to get him out. We're trying to help him to resist interrogation. Do you think he can?'


Szara sensed that Baumann'sUfehung on his answer: 'If anyone can, he will. He's a strong man, psychologically. His physical condition is another matter. If the interrogation is extreme, he may die on them.'


Goldman nodded at the answer. 'At your meeting in Berlin, was anything said that can help explain either his message, the "members of the diplomatic and military classes" business, or his wife's reference to "friends"? Are those, perhaps, the same people?'


'They could be,' Szara lied. 'I can't say.'


'Is that your answer?' the man in the glasses asked.


Szara faced him. The eyes behind the thick lenses were watery and lifeless. 'My answer is no. Nothing was said that would explain either of those statements.'


Travelling back to Paris on a succession of local trains they had to sit in separate compartments. That gave Szara time to think while the sombre towns of northeastern France rolled past the window.


He felt old. It was the business withNadia Tscherovaagain, only worse. He was tormented by what had happened toBaumann,and by his own part in the man's destruction, yet what he had seen onKristallnachtwent a long way toward justifying what they had done together. A sacrifice of war. A machine gun position left to delay an enemy's progress down a road while the rear guard retreats. All very well, he thought, until you're the machine gunner. In his not so secret heart he thought it might be for the best ifBaumannwere to die. Peacefully. A death of mercy. But his instinct told him that would not happen.


Baumann wasfrightened, exhausted, beaten down and humiliated, but also strong. A hard soul lived in that old grey man.


Of course the Russian-German treaty explained it all. From the beginning, Von Polanyi's intelligence unit in the German Foreign Office had fathered Baumann's approach to the Sovietapparat:a communications channel had been opened up. Baumann's production figures were probably being traded for information coming back the other way, but moving along an entirely different path. At this very moment, he speculated, some Russian in Leningrad was being told to have no further contact with a certain Finnish ferry captain. That's how things were done, agreements made and kept.We will keep you informed, they'd said to somebody in1937,of our bomber production.Secretly, by intelligence means, because neither our countries, nor our leaders, Hitler and Stalin, may be seen by the world to accept each other's existence. We are officially mortal enemies, yet it is to our mutual advantage to have certain understandings. Thus, Szara realized, Baumann's numbers were confirmed by the British because he wasnot being run by Nazi counterintelligence, Schellenberg's office in theReferatVI?.


In another month the pact between Hitler and Stalin would be revealed to the world. Thus they'd shut down theBaumannoperation because they no longer needed to communicate in this way. Henceforth such figures would travel by telex from foreign office to foreign office. Meanwhile somebody-notVon Polanyi, based on whatFrau Baumannhad said toOdile-had decided to throwBaumannintoSachsenhausen.Their way of saying thank you, evidently.


No, Szara told himself, you may not think that way. Germans do things for reasons. It was more likely their way of sayingnow get out of Germany, Jew. And here's alittle taste of something unpleasant to help you remember to keep your mouth shut.


Maybe, Szara told himself. Just maybe. Something in Goldman's statement aboutSachsenhausenhad been hopeful, as though Baumann's extrication could be achieved and he knew it.


Oh, but that clever little bastard was.sma/t! He'd sniffed all around the truth. Which was that the 'friends' and the 'diplomats' were one and the same and that 'you' meant Szara and nobody else. What hadBaumannactually intended? That would bear thinking about, but there was a nugget to be mined somewhere in those formal words, something he wanted to give to Szara-a present to his case officer. Why? Because he knew Szara, and, despite endless orders and urgent requests for more information-requests unheeded, orders ignored-Szara had not abandoned him or threatened him. Now he said: Please help me, and I'll help you.


Meanwhile that other one, with the glasses, who was he?


Oh Russia, he said to himself, what strange humans you grow.


And now he had to follow Goldman's orders, given a month ago in Brussels and repeated as he left Arion:write something. Now he had to go home and do it. Of all the things in the world he didn't want to do, that was near the top of the list.In these turbulent days, people of good will ought to be asking themselves certain difficult questions. Close the window, shut out the noise of the crowds marching in the streets, and face the issue squarely and without emotion: What can be the future of socialism in today's world? How shall it best survive?


At somebody's intellectualsoiréehe'd met an editor. What was his name? A proud little rooster crowing on his own little dunghill of a magazine. 'Come and see me,AndréAronovich,'the man had crooned. Now aren't you, Szara thought at the time, just the most clever fellow to address me by my patronymic, you oily little bore. Ah, but look here, here's fate with a swift kick in the backside-the rooster was going to get what he wanted, a fat scoop of corn tossed into his yard. Would Szara perhaps get paid? Hah! A meagre lunch maybe-'I always order the daily special here,AndréAronovich,I recommend it.' Do you? Well, myself I think I'll have the peacock in gold sauce.


He'd better get it done, he thought. He'd collected his port-manteau from the Hungarian in the seventharrondissementand expected to get his travel orders any day. Where, he wondered, would they send him.


He woke as in a dream. For a moment he wasn't anywhere at all, adrift in no place he knew but, as in a dream, it did not matter, there was nothing to fear. He lay on top of his raincoat in the loft of a barn, the smell of the hay beneath him sweet, freshly cut. High above him was a barn roof, silvery and soft with age, early light just barely glowing between the cracks where the boards had separated. Sitting up, he faced a broad, open window-it was what they used, standing on their wagons, to pitch forkfuls of hay into the loft. He crawled across the hay in order to look out and saw that it was just after dawn: a shaft of sunlight lay across a cut field, strands of ground mist rising through it. Beside a narrow road of packed, sandy soil stood a great oak; its leaves rattled softly in the little wind that always comes with first light.


There were three men on the road. Men from a dream. They wore black shoes and black leggings and long black coats and black hats with broad brims. They were bearded, and long sidelocks curled from beneath the brims of then-hats. Hasidim, he thought, on their way toshul. Their faces were white as chalk. One of them turned and looked athim, a look without curiosity or challenge; it took note of a man watching from the window of a barn, then it turned away, back toward the road. They made no sound as they walked, and then, like black and white ghosts in a dream, they vanished.


Poland.


His mind came to life very slowly. The previous day, when he tried to recall it, had broken into fragments, blurred images of travel. He had flown to an airfield near Warsaw on an eight-seater plane that bumped across a ridged tar surface after it landed. There was deep forest on three sides of the airfield, and he'd wondered if this were the main field that served the city. All day he'd never really known exactly where he was. There was a taxi. A train. No, two trains. A ride in a wagon on a hot day. A dog who growled deep in his throat yet wagged his tail at the same moment. A pedlar met on a road. The slow apprehension that he would not arrive anywhere in particular any time soon, that he was where he was, that travellers slept in barns. An old woman, a kerchief tied around her seamed face, said that he was welcome. Then there was a mouse, a moon, the slow, swimming dreams of sleep in an unknown place.


He leaned against the worn barnwood and watched the day break. There was still a quarter moon, white against the blue-black morning sky. A band of storm clouds moved east, edges stained red by the rising sun. Here and there light broke through the clouds, a pine wood appeared on the horizon, a rye field took colour, a sharp green, as he watched. This ghostly, shining light, wet smell of morning earth, crows calling as they flew low along the curve of a field, he could remember. He had once lived in this part of the world, a long time ago, and sometimes they had ventured beyond the winding streets of Kishinev and he'd witnessed such mornings, when he was a little boy whowoke up long before anyone else did in order not to miss any of the miracles. He could see himself, kneeling on a bed in front of a window, a blanket around his shoulders. He could see the sun climbing a hill on a morning in late summer.


'Hey up there,pan, are you asleep still?'


He leaned out the window and peered down to find the old woman looking up at him from the yard. She stood, with the aid of a stick, like a small, sturdy pyramid, wearing sweaters and jackets on top, broad skirts below. Her dogs, a big brown one and a little black and white one, stood by her side and stared up at him as well. 'Come along to the house,' she called up to him. 'I'll give you coffee.'


She hobbled away without waiting for an answer, the dogs romping around her, sniffing the bushes, lifting a leg, pressing the earth with their extended forepaws to have a morning stretch.


On the way to the farmhouse, Szara saw that she'd left two large, wooden buckets by the well and, like any tramp worth his salt, he knew she wanted him to bring the water in. First he took off his Paris shirt, worked the squeaky pump handle, and splashed himself with surges of icy water from the spout. He shivered in the early morning air and rubbed himself dry with the shirt, then put it back on and combed his wet hair back with his fingers. When he rinsed his mouth, the cold water made his teeth ache. Next he filled the buckets and staggered into the kitchen, absolutely determined not to slop water on the floor. The farmhouse was an old drystone building with a low ceiling, a tile stove with a large crucifix on the wall above it, and glass windows. The smell of the coffee was strong in the close air of the kitchen.


She brought it to him in a china cup-the saucer was apparently no more-that must have been a hundred yearsold. 'Thank you,matrushka,' he said, taking a sip. 'The coffee is very good.'


'I always have it. Every morning,' she said proudly. 'Except when the wars come. Then you can't get it for any money. Not around here, you can't.'


'Where am I, exactly?'


'Where are you? Why you're in Podalki, that's where!' She cackled and shook her head at such a question, made her way to the stove, and, using her skirt as a potholder, withdrew a pan of bread from the oven. This she placed by the side of his coffee, went off to the pantry and returned with a bowl of white cheese covered with a cloth. She put a knife and a plate before him, then stood by the stove while he ate. He wanted to ask her to sit with him, but he knew that such a request would offend her sense of propriety. She would eat when he was done.


He sawed off the heel of the loaf and covered the steaming slab with white cheese. 'Oh, this is very good,' he said.


'You must be on your way to the city,' she said. 'To Czestochowa.'


'I'm on my way to Lvov.'


'Lvov!'


"That's right.'


'Blessed Mother, Lvov. You're a long way from there,' she said with awe at the distance he contemplated travelling. 'That's a Ukrainian place, you know,' she told him.


'Yes. I know.'


'They say it's in Poland, but I don't think so, myself. You'll want to watch your money, over there.'


'Have you been there,matrushkaV


'Me?' She laughed at the idea. 'No,' she said. 'People from Podalki don't go there.'


When he was done with the breakfast he put a fewzlotysunder the rim of the plate. Back in the barn loft he spreadhis map out on the hay, but the village of Podalki wasn't to be found. One of the Tass men from Paris who'd been on the plane with him had a much more detailed map, but they'd become separated at the railway station in Warsaw. He found Czestochowa easily enough. If that was the next town of any size, he'd crossed the river Warta the day before. The man driving the cart had called it something else, and it was just a wide expanse of water, sluggish and shallow at summer's end. The man in the wagon had driven up a tiny path, and Szara was taken across the river by an old Jewish ferryman with a patch over one eye. He had a wooden raft and pulley system, hauling on a rope until they were on the other bank. The ferryman told him that the little road would, if he were patient and lucky, eventually take him to Cracow. 'From there you can go anywhere at all, if you want,' the man had said, pocketing the tiny fare with a shrug that questioned why anybody bothered going anywhere at all.


Szara folded the map, returned it to his satchel, put his soft felt hat on, and slung his jacket over his shoulder. When he came out of the barn, the old lady and her dogs were taking the cow out to pasture. He thanked her again, she wished him a safe journey, made the sign of the cross to protect him on his way, and he headed down the narrow, sandy road in the direction of Podalki village.


Twenty minutes later he was there. It wasn't much. A few log houses scattered on both sides of a dirt street, a man with shaven head and cavalry moustache, sleeves rolled up on the hot day, thumbs hooked in braces as he lounged in the doorway of what Szara took to be the Podalki store. There was a tiny, Jewish ghetto on the other side of the village: women in wigs, a Hasid, yarmulke pinned to his hair, chopping wood in the little yard of his house, pale children with curly sidelocks who watched him, cleverly, without actually staring, as he wentpast. Then Podalki was no more, and he was alone again on the broad Polish steppe, amid endless fields that ran to the forest on the horizon.


He walked and walked, the sun grew hotter, the valise heavier; he started to sweat. The fields on either side of the narrow road were alive; insects buzzed and whirred, the black, moist earth had a certain smell to it, rotting and growing, sweet and rank at once. Sometimes a clump of white birch stood by a small stream, the delicate leaves flickering in the slightest breeze. From this perspective, his life in the city looked frantic and absurd. The intensity of his work, the grating, fretful anxiety of it, seemed utterly artificial. How strange to care so deeply about such nonsense-codes and papers, packages exchanged in cinemas, who had lunch with who at a hotel in Berlin. It was madness. They spun around like the blindfolded It in a children's game. In early August someone had broken into a dry cleaning plant on the outskirts of Pans and stolen the uniforms of the Polish military attache's staff. A great hubbub ensued: meetings, wireless messages, questions without answers, answers without questions.


But that was nothing compared to what came next: on the twenty-third of August the Hitler/Stalin pact was announced. Oh and hadn't there been just every sort of hell to pay! Weeping and moaning and gnashing of teeth. It had been just as Goldman had predicted-the idealists wringing their hands and beating their breasts. Some people were quite literally stunned-walked about the streets of Paris and were heard to make doleful and solemn declarations: 'I have determined to break with the party.' There were even suicides. What, Szara wondered, had they thought they were playing at? Philosophy?


He heard the creak of cart wheels behind him and the clop of hooves. A wagon driven by a young boy overtook him, a vast load of hay mounded in the bed. Szara movedto one side of the road to let it pass, stepping between furrows at the edge of a field. 'Good morning,pan,' said the boy as the cart drew up beside him. Szara returned the greeting. The smell of the old horse was strong in the heat of the day. 'A pretty morning we have,' said the boy. 'Would you care to ride a way?' The wagon didn't actually stop, but Szara hauled himself up and perched on the wooden rim next to the driver. The horse slowed perceptibly. 'Ah, Gniady, now you mustn't be like that,' said the boy, clucking at the horse and flapping the reins. They rode for a time in silence; then a tiny track, two ruts wide, opened up between fields and the boy chucked the left rein to turn the horse. Szara thanked the boy and dismounted. Walking once again, he thought,Now there's the job for me. Sometimes he saw men and women at work in the fields. The harvest was only just beginning, but now and then the flash of a scythe would catch the light. The women worked with skirts tucked up, their bare legs white against the wheat or rye stalks.


Somebody, Szara realized, was going to be very annoyed with him for dropping out of sight like this, but that was just too bad. Let them go to hell and rage at the devils. He was tired of their threats-he had rejoined reality, as it happened, and they would have to get along in their dream world as best they could. Above him, the sky spread out to heaven, the morning blue growing pale and hazy as the day wore on. Well to the south there rose a low, dark shape, a distant mountain range, with white cloud building slowly above it, a thunderstorm for the humid evening to come.This was what existed: the steppe, the enormous sky, the wheat, the packed sand of the little road. For a moment he was part of it, simply a fact of nature, no more, no less. He didn't even know what day it was. He'd left Paris on the thirtieth of August, though he'd thought of it as the twenty-ninth, since it was three o'clock in the morning, still'last night,' when he'd taken a taxi toLe Bourgetairport. The long day of meandering through eastern Poland had been, in fact, the thirtieth. That made it the very end of summertime.


Summer would actually continue, he realized, for a long while yet, well into September, when the harvest would occupy almost everybody in the countryside, when people would sleep in the fields in order to start work at first light. At night they'd sit around and talk in low voices, they'd even have a small fire once a field was cleared, and couples would go off into the shadows to make love. Still, for him, the summer had just about run its course. He had a schoolboy's sense of time, and the end of August was the end of liberty, just as it had been in childhood, just as, he supposed, it always would be. Strange, he thought, that he found himself once again free as the summer ended.31August1939 -that was the official date. He reckoned once again and made sure. Yes, that was it. By tomorrow he'd likely be 'himself' again, the official himself, the journalistAndré Szara,riding on trains, writing things down, doing what everyone expected of him.


But for the moment he was a lone traveller on the tiny road to Czestochowa, enjoying a perfect freedom on the last day of summer.


He reached Czestochowa by late afternoon, thanks to a ride in an ancient lorry delivering cucumbers to the markets in the city. A tram ride took him to the railway station and he bought a ticket to Cracow, where he could get another train to Lvov. 'We call it the midnight train to Lvov,' said the dignified ticket seller. 'We also say, however, that dawn in the city of Lvov is very beautiful.' Szara smiled with appreciation at the characteristically Polish bite of the description. The cities were a hundred and eighty miles apart. That meant the train from Cracow was notexpected to leave on time, that the locomotive was very slow, or both.


At the restaurant across the street from the station he prepared for the journey, eating cold beet soup, rye bread with sweet butter, a piece of boiled beef accompanied by fresh red horseradish that made tears inevitable, and several glasses of tea. He was sore from sleeping in a hayloft and from miles of walking and was covered with a fine, powdery dust from the road, but the dinner was curative, and he dozed in the first-class compartment until the6:40for Cracow chugged away from the station a little after eight. In the gathering dusk of the Czestochowa countryside he saw a lightning storm, great, white bolts of it, three and four in a row, on the southern horizon. Two hours later they were in Cracow.


He had long ago been a student at the university, but he elected to remain at the station until the 'midnight train to Lvov' actually departed. The ticket seller in Czestochowa had told him the truth-the train was very late leaving; some of the people who joined him in the compartment arrived after two in the morning. He watched the night streets of Cracow go by under flaring gas lamps, the Zydowski cemetery, the railway bridge across the Vistula, and then he dozed once more until the muttered comments of his fellow travellers woke him up. The train was barely moving on what seemed to be a branch track, people in the compartment were trying to peer out the window, and then, suddenly, they lurched to a halt. Such a stop was apparently quite unusual. One or two groans of fury were heard, others attempted to solve the mystery by lowering the window and squinting into the darkness outside. A man in a railway uniform came down the track carrying a lantern, passengers called out to him, asked him what the problem was, but he ignored them all. The compartment was dark; Szara lit a cigarette, sat backagainst the worn plush fabric of the seat, and set himself to wait. Other passengers followed his example. Newspaper crackled as a sandwich was unwrapped, a young couple spoke confidentially in low voices. From the third-class car, a violin started up. Some minutes later a troop train went past, moving very slowly. Soldiers could be seen hanging out the windows and standing packed in the aisles, some dangling their feet from open doorways. Szara could see the glow of their cigarettes. 'They go north,' said the young woman across from him. 'Away from the border. Perhaps the crisis with Hitler has been settled.'


A man sitting next to her lit a match and pointed to the front page of the evening newspaper. 'Shooting in Danzig,' he said. 'You see? I would have to say they're headed up there.'


The conductor came down the passageway, opened the door of the compartment, and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I fear I must ask you to get off the train. Please.'


This statement was greeted with general indignation. 'Yes, yes,' the conductor sympathized, 'but what's to be done?I'd tell you the problem if I knew, I 'm sure it will all be fixed quickly.' He had a drooping moustache and rather doleful eyes that gave him the look of a spaniel. He went off to the next compartment and the young man called after him, 'Do we take our baggage?'


'Why no,' the conductor said. 'Or maybe yes. I'm not sure. I leave it up to you, good ladies and gentlemen.'


Szara took his valise down from the rack above the window and helped the other passengers with their luggage. 'I tell you. . .'the man with the newspaper said forcefully, but then seemed not to have anything to tell. Slowly the train emptied and the passengers half-slipped, half-jumped, down a grassy embankment and stood about on the edge of a field of weeds. 'Now what?' Szara said to the man with the newspaper.


'I'm sure I don't know,' he said. Then he bowed slightly and extended his hand. 'Goletzky,' he said. 'I'm in soap.'


'Szara. Journalist.'


'Ah, well. Here's someone who'll know what's going on.'


'Not at all,' Szara said.


'Do you write for the Cracow papers?'


'No,' Szara said. 'I've been in Paris the last few months.'


'You're a lucky fellow, then. I count myself fortunate if I get to Warsaw once a year. Mostly I call on the southern provinces-perfumed soaps for the gentry, the old-fashioned yellow bar for the farmer,Dr Grudzen'sspecial formula for young ladies. There isn't much I don't offer.'


'What do you suppose they're going to do with us?' Szara asked. He glanced at his watch. 'It's well after four.' He looked to the east and saw a faint glow on the horizon, then he yawned.


Up the track, the engine released a long hiss of steam, then the slow march of pistons could be heard as it moved off. A cry went up from the assembled passengers: 'Oh no! It's leaving!' Some people started to climb aboard the coaches; then everybody realized that the train was standing still, only the locomotive was moving away.


'Well, that's very nice I must say,' said Goletzky angrily. 'Now they've uncoupled the engine and left us sitting here in the darkness between Cracow and Lord only knows where!'


The passengers began to realize that nothing was going to happen very quickly, and sat gloomily on their suitcases to wait for someone in the railway system to remember them. Fifteen minutes later their locomotive reappeared-they had the conductor's word that it was theirs-now pulling the troop train in the opposite direction. The engineer waved his cap: a gesture taken variously ascruelty, compassion, or an arcane signal known only to railwaymen; and the soldiers were singing, their voices strong in the early morning air. The troop train's original locomotive appeared last, ignominiously towed backwards. 'So,' Goletzky commented, 'it's army manoeuvres that have got us stranded.'


Szara didn't like what he saw, but he didn't know why. He wrote the feeling off to the sort of pointless irritation that comes with fatigue. Some of the passengers returned to their seats in the coaches. The conductor made no very great attempt to stop them. 'Really, ladies and gentlemen,' he said sadly, shaking his head at the anarchy of it all. Others remained outdoors, trying to make a holiday of it. Somebody got a fire going and the garlicky aroma of roasting sausage filled the air. Another group gathered about the violin player. Still others could be seen wandering into thefěelds, somein search of privacy, others taking the opportunity to observe the countryside.


The drone of an aeroplane caught everyone's attention. It was flying somewhere above them in the darkness, circling perhaps. Then the noise of its engine grew suddenly stronger, a drawn-out mechanical whine that climbed the musical scale and grew louder in the same instant. 'It's going to crash,' said the young woman from Szara's compartment, her voice shrill with fear, her face lifted anxiously towards the sky. She crossed herself as her lips moved. Goletzky and Szara both stood at the same instant, as though drawn to their feet by an invisible force. Somebody screamed. Goletzky said, 'Shall we ran?' Then it was too late to run-the noise swelled to an overwhelming shriek that froze the passengers in place. The plane materialized from the darkness for only a fraction of a second. Szara saw swastikas on its wings. Something made him flinch away, then the bomb exploded.


The blast wave took him off his feet-for an instant hewas adrift in the air- then threw him into the embankment. He felt the force of impact shift the teeth and bones on one side of his face and his hearing stopped, replaced by a hissing silence. When he opened his eyes they didn't work: the right half of the world was higher than the left, as though a photograph had been cut in two and pasted back together with the halves misaligned. This terrified him, and he was frantically blinking his eyes, trying to make his vision come right, when bits and pieces of things began to rain down on him and he instinctively protected his head with his forearm. Then something moved inside his face and his vision cleared. He forced himself to sit up, searching his clothing, frightened of what he might find but compelled to look. He found only dirt, bits of fabric and leaves, and a stain on the lapel of his jacket. Nearby, Goletzky sat with his head in his hands. At the bottom of the embankment the conductor lay still, face down in the earth. His feet were bare and a red line ran down one heel. Szara looked for the young woman but could not see her anywhere. An older woman he did not recognize-hair wild, tears streaming from her eyes, dress half blown away-was screaming at the sky. From the way her mouth worked and the sickened anger on her face Szara could tell she was screaming, but he could not hear any sound at all.


He was taken first to a hospital in the city ofTarnów.There he sat in a corridor while the nursing sisters cared for the injured. By then, most of his hearing had returned. By then his valise had miraculously reappeared, brought down the corridor by a soldier asking if anyone knew who it belonged to. By then he had heard that Germany had attacked Poland sometime after four in the morning. Polish soldiers, the Germans claimed, had overrun a German radio station at Gleiwitz, killed some German soldiers, and broadcast an inflammatory statement. This was no more than a classicstaged provocation, he believed. And now he knew what had become of the Polish uniforms stolen in Paris. When his turn finally came, he was seen by a doctor, told he'd possibly had a concussion. If he became nauseated he was to seek medical assistance. Otherwise, he was free to continue his journey.


But that was not quite the truth. Outside the examining room a young lieutenant politely informed him that certain authorities in Nowy Sacz wished to speak with him. Was he under arrest? Not at all, the lieutenant said. It was only that someone at the hospital had notified the army staff that a Soviet journalist had been injured in the attack on the Cracow-LvovUne.Now a certain Colonel Vyborg earnestly wished to discuss certain matters with him at the Nowy Sacz headquarters. The young lieutenant had the honour of escorting him there. Szara knew it was pointless to resist, and the lieutenant led him to an aged but functional Czechoslovakian motor car and had him safely in Nowy Sacz an hour later.


Lieutenant Colonel Anton Vyborg, despite his Scandinavian surname, seemed a vestige of the old-fashioned Polish nobility. Szara fancied the name might date from the medieval wars between Poland and Sweden, when, as in all wars, families found themselves living on the wrong side of theUnes.Whatever the story, there was something of the Baltic knight in Vyborg; he was tall and lean and thin-lipped, in his forties Szara thought, with webbedUnesat the corners of his narrow eyes and pale hair cut short and stiff in the cavalry officer style. Like a cavalry officer, he wore high boots of supple leather and jodhpur-cut uniform trousers. UnUke a cavalry officer, however, his uniform jacket was hung over the back of his chair, his collar was unbuttoned and tie pulled down, and his sleeves were folded back. When Szara entered his officehe was smoking a cigar, and a large metal ashtray held the stubs of many others. He had a handshake like steel, and looked hard at Szara with very cold blue eyes when they introduced themselves. Then, having made a rapid and intuitive judgment of some kind, he grew courtly, sent his orderly scurrying for coffee and rolls, and presented what was likely, Szara thought, the genial half of a sharply two-sided personality.


While he waited for his orderly to return, Colonel Vyborg smoked contentedly and stared into space, apparently at peace with the world. He was alone in this, however, since officers were rushing past the open door with armloads of files, telephones were jangling continuously, and the sense of the place was frantic motion, just barely below the level of panic. At one point, a young officer stuck his head in the door and said, 'Obidza'-which could only have been the name of a small town. Colonel Vyborg made the merest gesture of acknowledgment, a polite, almost ironic inclination of the head, and the man wheeled and trotted off. Szara heard him somewhere down the hall, 'Obidza,' telling someone else the news. Vyborg blew a long stream of cigar smoke into the air, rose abruptly, walked to the window, and stared down into the courtyard. The office-obviously temporary; the sign on the door read Tax Assessor-was in the Nowy Sacz city hall, an imposing monstrosity dating from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whenGaliciahad been a province of Austria. Vyborg stared onto the courtyard for a long time. 'Now we burn???,'he said.


He looked meaningfully at Szara and cocked an eyebrow, but did not seem to want to hear what a journalist might think about such events. He settled himself back at the desk and said, 'I think perhaps we ought to start our discussion without the coffee-nothing is really going to gosmoothly today, and that includes my orderly's trip to the bakery. Do you mind?'


'Not at all,' Szara said.


'Now a Soviet journalist, if he's survived the last two years, can be no fool. You certainly know who you're talking to.'


Szara had assumed from the beginning that Vyborg was the director or the deputy of a military intelligence unit. 'An, ah, information bureau,' he said.


'Yes. That's right. You're legally a neutral, Mr Szara, since last week,23August. As a Soviet citizen you are officially neither a friend nor an enemy of Poland, so I'm going to offer you an accommodation of mutual interest. For our part, we'd like to know what you're doing here. Your papers are all in order, we assume you've been assigned a specific task. We'd like to know what's of such interest thatPravda would send you here a week after the USSR has signed a treaty that's going to turn out to be this country's obituary. In return, I'll make certain that you are provided with transportation out of this region-we're forty miles north of the border, by the way-and will in general make sure you get to Lvov, if that's where you want to go.


'That's the offer. You can certainly refuse to accept it. The Germans' promise of nonaggression no doubt extends to you personally, and you may feel you want to take them up on it. If so, you needn't move very far, you may stay right here in Nowy Sacz-in two or three days they'll come to you. Or even sooner. On the other hand, you may want to leave right away. In that case I'll have my aide drive you to the railway station-or as close to it as the crowd will permit. Thousands of people are milling around down there, trying to get out any way at all, and the trains don't seem to be running. Still, you can take your chances if you like. So, how shall it be?'


'Seems a fair offer,' Szara said.


'You'll tell me, then, the nature of your assignment in Lvov.'

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