Red Gold

HOTEL DU COMMERCE

Marie-Claire was waiting for him, a little way down the street from the doorway on the rue de l’Assomption. She’d thrown a fur coat over a pair of pajamas. “Mon Dieu,” she said, when she got a look at him.

She took his arm and led him around to the side of the building, using the service entry meant for deliveries and adultery, avoiding the eagle-eyed concierge in her loge in the front hall. They took the stairs up instead of the elevator. Not the first time Casson had come this way. But then, not the first time for Marie-Claire, either.

She opened the door, Casson stepped inside. His old apartment—producer’s fees from Paramount for Night Run, development money from Pathé for The Man from Cairo, which was never made. That, and some very dire months when the bills sat in a desk drawer and steamed. But, back then, a love nest, so it didn’t matter. The dinner parties came later. And all the rest of it.

Casson took off his coat. Marie-Claire never faltered, hung the awful thing in the hall closet. “What about Bruno?” he said.

“In Rome. He’s getting the dealership for the Alfa Romeo. The 2500, I think. Is there an SS model?”

“Yes.”

“So there he is, wining and dining Mussolini’s nephew—somebody like that—to get an export permit. Anyhow, he’s not here.”

She shrugged off her coat, revealing cherry-red lounging pajamas, stepped out of her shoes, and put on matching slippers. “Jean-Claude,” she said, shaking her head in mock exasperation. “What time is it?”

“A little after six.”

She fell back on the sofa, covered her eyes with her hands. She was the same, he thought. Maybe a little blonder than usual, but the same. Not beautiful. Narrow eyes, thin lips—spite and meanness promised, though not all that often delivered. Then what, he’d always wondered, made her so deeply appetizing? She lived in clouds of perfume, sat close to you, touched you. But that was simply parisienne. There was more to her, and here he didn’t have the word. Indomitable? Strong, anyhow. And driven by grandes ardeurs—if she wanted something, she was on fire to have it.

“A shower?” he said. “Any warm water?”

“All you want. We have to pay the black-market prices, but Monsieur Krajec—you remember, the coalman—has been a magician.”

“I would like a shower,” he said.

“I’ll tell you what, just leave everything in the bathroom, and when Rosine comes in, we’ll try to do something with it. Jean-Claude?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you wear that little mustache? I had to look twice to make sure it was you.”

“It’s me.”

“It’s horrible.”

“I know.” He went into the bathroom and undressed. There was a full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door. He shuddered at the sight of himself, thinner than he realized.

Marie-Claire was standing on the other side of the door. “Jean-Claude, when you disappeared, last June—what happened to you?”

“A long story.”

He turned on the taps in the shower, let the water run down his head, his arms and back and chest. The soap was scented. The glow inside him swelled until he burst into a helpless laugh.

The bathroom door opened a crack. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

He forced himself to step out of the shower, and dried off with a large white towel. On the knob of the door, Marie-Claire had hung a pair of slacks and a shirt. “Thank you,” he called out.

He put on the clean shirt, big and soft. Then the slacks—Bruno, he thought, was fatter than he’d realized. He held them up and stepped into the bedroom. Marie-Claire was lying on a chaise longue. She moved her legs to make room for him. “Come and sit,” she said.

“What time does the maid get in?”

“Eight. Should I send her away?”

“It might be better if she didn’t know I was here.”

This was, he could see, slightly annoying.

“She doesn’t gossip.”

“Even so.”

She nodded. “A day off then,” she said. “Did you know that your actress got married?”

“Yes, I read about it.”

“Local opinion had it that you had some sort of crise, a breakdown. Over her. But then, we had Germans in suits coming around and asking about you. They were nice enough—they’re very tender where their French friends are concerned, and they consider Bruno a friend. Still, I didn’t think unrequited love was the sort of thing they investigated.”

It wasn’t unrequited. Casson smiled and shrugged.

“Your lawyer friend Arnaud thought you’d jumped in the river. Of course, I know you too well for that. You might have jumped in the river—but then you would have swum to the other side.”

“And you?”

“What did I think?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I don’t know. That you’d found a way to get involved in the war. Possibly gotten yourself shot.”

“The first part is true.”

“I thought it might be. One of the resistance groups?”

“Yes.”

“I kept telling myself, he’d never do that, but I knew you would.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

She shook her head. “No, my love. Not me.”

“You liked the idea.”

Her expression said she did.

“Then how—forgive me for asking, Marie-Claire, but how can you live with somebody like Bruno?”

She laughed. “He’s not so bad. Just ambitious. And greedy. He wants to climb, Jean-Claude, and he was busy doing just that when this very inconvenient war broke out. Now he’s determined that it mustn’t spoil everything. What he’s doing is collaboration, of course, but he doesn’t want to hurt anybody, he just means to hang on to all he’s worked for.”

“And you?”

“I don’t like the Germans. I never did like them and I like them even less since they took the country. There was a time when Bruno was bringing them here, for cocktails and dinner parties. Well, I put a stop to that. Maybe it doesn’t get me a statue in the park when the war ends, but it’s better than nothing.” She paused for a moment. “And, truth be told, there might even be a little more than that.”

“Really?”

“Nothing much. A favor for an old friend. The use of the guest room for a few days.”

“Who was the guest?”

“No idea. A woman, on her way someplace.”

“And the old friend?”

“He’s with de Gaulle. Rather high up, I would guess. When I discovered what he was doing, I told him to ask if he ever needed a favor.”

“You discovered what he was doing?”

She smiled—she’d shocked him and she was enjoying it. “Jean-Claude, my dear long-lost husband, if it goes on in this city, in this arrondissement, among people I’ve grown up with, had dinner with, gone to bed with, and will lie next to in the cemetery, I know about it.”

That was true. She came from a prominent family in the 16th, old and mean and reclusive. With staggering hauteur. They’d certainly never approved of him, in fact they’d never approved of each other. But people on that level knew what went on. And, whether she liked it or not, Marie-Claire was one of them. He stood up, wandered over to the window, and stared out at the Bois de Boulogne; bare trees in the gray morning drizzle. He looked over at Marie-Claire, now lying curled up, her head propped on her hand, watching him with cat’s eyes. “And, once you found out what he was doing, he admitted it?”

“He did.”

“Why?”

“Courtship. He wanted to go to bed with me, so he puffed himself up like a pigeon, told me how terrifically important he was, that he lived in constant danger.”

“And, did you do it?”

“No. Ech.”

“Do I know him?”

“Mm, maybe.”

“Is it somebody I . . .”

She cut him off. “Jean-Claude, you are very tired. I think you ought to sleep, we can talk later. When Rosine comes, I’ll give her money for a taxi and tell her to go home. For now, we won’t worry about clothes or anything else.”

She was right. He went over to the bed and lay down on the tumbled quilts and sheets.

“Under the covers.”

He pulled a quilt over him.

“Now, Jean-Claude,” she said, a laugh in her voice. “Nu comme un ver.” Naked as a worm. He took off the shirt and pants, dropped them on the carpet by the bed. The room swam around him, he could smell soap and Marie-Claire’s perfume and all the nice things in life that went on in that apartment. He turned on his side, the quilt cool and light against his skin. Heard a click— opened his eyes. Marie-Claire had turned off the lamp, leaving the room in twilight. He drifted off, heard footsteps coming toward him. He felt her lips on his forehead for just a moment, then slept.

He woke up to a series of refined, rather contented little snores from the woman next to him. Well, what had he thought would happen? Strange experience, dimly remembered. Somewhere, in the middle of a dream, he was no longer alone under the quilt. Marie-Claire had crept into the bed, then her bare bottom came looking for him. He’d never really woken up, not at the beginning anyhow. A luxurious twenty minutes, sliding around on the exquisite sheets. Like making love to the life he’d once lived, he thought, smooth and soft.

Very slowly, he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up. Walked to the bathroom, got back in the shower. Today was apparently his day to have everything, he’d better take advantage of it while he could. He stared absentmindedly at the water beading up, then running down the tiles. He was going to have to do something with his life—what? Maybe this.

The bathroom door opened. “Like the old days,” she said, pink and white and smiling.

She stepped under the water, handed him the soap.

At the kitchen table, an omelet, real coffee, bread. Butter. Marie-Claire, back in her red pajamas, was pensive. “Jean-Claude, why did you telephone?”

“When you live day-to-day, sooner or later you run out of luck. I got myself arrested—was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They let me go, but I knew it couldn’t go on like that.”

She thought for a moment. “So, you came to me for money.”

“Yes.”

She smiled, bittersweet—at least you’re honest. “About two years ago, when Bruno moved in here, he said this would happen, that you’d come around looking for money.”

“Bruno was right,” Casson said. “I am looking for it. But then, the fact is, you don’t have any money. At least you never had any when we were together.”

“True.” She drifted for a moment. “There was a ghastly scene, back then. I never told you about it. We were trying to buy this apartment. I went to my father.”

“Marie-Claire,” he said. They’d agreed not to do that.

“I know, I know what we said. But I thought, well, why not? They had plenty. We were having a hard time—they knew it, they’d had the pleasure of knowing it.”

Casson sighed. “I only thought, perhaps Bruno gave you money to run the household, maybe he wouldn’t miss a few hundred francs.”

“Ha!”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well then, just the, the respite. More than enough, believe me.” She was silent for a time, off in her own world. “All right,” she said, resigned. “Tell me what you need.”

“Two or three months. To find a place to stay. To find work, some kind of life that can be lived in wartime. What I was doing before, it’s over. Now, I have to figure out a way to exist on my own. I can do it, but I need a few weeks.”

She nodded, resigned to some private decision. “I suppose the time has come,” she said. “I knew it would.”

She threw on a sweater and a skirt, left the apartment for a few minutes. Perhaps went down to the cellar, he thought, to the land of steamer trunks and broken chairs. God only knew what was hidden down there, in the spiderwebs and coal dust.

She came back, face flushed, a small cotton bag in her hand. She moved the omelet plate to one side, untied the strings of the bag, turned it upside down. A necklace fell out on the tablecloth. “Tiens,” Casson said. Was it real? He picked it up, felt the weight of it in his hand. For the opera, or some grand celebration in a ball-room. Tiny diamonds, small emeralds.

“Bruno?” he said.

She shook her head. “He has no idea.”

“How’d you get it?”

“It came to me.”

“Came to you?”

“So to speak.”

“Do you wear it?”

“Oh no, there’s no way I could do that.”

Casson smiled. During the time they’d lived together, the world had thought he was the rogue, and she was long-suffering.

She took the necklace from him, turning it so it caught the light. “When my grandmother died—I was sixteen—we all went immediately to the apartment, on the avenue Ranelagh, over the gardens. Vast confusion, my father giving orders, lawyers appearing from nowhere, weeping maids, my mother shouting at the doctor. Poor Nana, the only one of the whole crew with a good heart. She once told me to look in her bureau if she died, in the corsets. I looked, and this is what I found. It was meant for me, but I knew if I took one step into the parlor it would be snatched away from me and I’d never see it again. So, down the front of my underpants it went. And not a moment too soon. One of the maids showed up just after I did it, looked at me, looked at the bureau. Said something, ‘how we shall all miss her,’ something like that, and gave me a look of pure hatred. By then I was sorry I’d done it, because I was going to get caught, when they read the will, and there was going to be hell to pay.

“Only, there wasn’t. Nobody knew about it. Nothing in the will—oh, the jewelry went to various people, but everything else she owned was terribly simple and discreet. And nobody mentioned it—and I began to understand that she’d never worn it. This thing was, I realized, a lover’s gift. If my grandfather had given it to her she would have worn it, but she didn’t. Can you imagine? A married woman, well off, from a stuffy old family. Sometime in the 1890s, probably. And, you know, she had that figure, buxom and rosy, all hips, like a Renoir lady getting in the tub. She must have done something—quite wonderful. This is gratitude, Jean-Claude. A night a man would remember all his life. That’s what I like to believe, anyhow. Do you think it’s possible?”

“What else?”

Slowly, she put it back in the bag. “I never really knew what to do with it. Of course there were moments, when you and I were starting out, when we couldn’t pay the bills, and I would say to myself: very well, Marie-Claire, it’s time for Nana’s necklace, but then, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t, and a day would go by, then a week, the huissiers about to take the furniture, and then, all of a sudden, from the sky, money. You would come home, with perfume or flowers, and I’d leave the necklace where it was.”

She handed him the bag. “Do you know how to sell such a thing?”

“This is worth tens of thousands of francs,” Casson said. “I can’t take this.”

She shrugged. “It’s the war.”

“What if,” Casson said, “what if I sold it, took, say, five thousand francs for myself, I can live on that for three months, and gave you back the rest?”

“You can live for three months on five thousand francs?”

“Of course.”

She was heartbroken, he saw. He started to give it back—they could find something else in the apartment, there had to be something.

She read his mind. “No, no. It’s done,” she said. “Just take it up to Vendôme and get the best price you can.”

“Where on Vendôme? Karabeghian?”

“Of course. Where else?” It was where the Parisian upper classes had always taken their business in troubled gems.

“I mean still, after all these years?”

“Yes, still. Nothing ever changes here, Jean-Claude.”

“All right. I’ll go this morning.”

“Jean-Claude?”

“Yes?”

“If you can get Swiss francs . . .”

He didn’t do as well as he’d hoped—everybody selling, nobody buying. The jeweler was apologetic; his eyes were, at least. After all, there wasn’t much to say: old wealth was heavy on the market, from Jews, from fugitives of all kinds, trying to find a way out of the country. And then, there were others; a senior German officer, coming out the door as Casson entered, gave him an extremely polite little bow.

In the event, the jeweler agreed to pay in Swiss francs. Casson took some of them to the back room of an umbrella shop on the rue de la Paix—used traditionally by barmen and waiters at the hotels frequented by tourists—and converted them into French Occupation francs. The rate was so good it surprised him. “Market’s going up,” the woman said. “We’ll take all you have.”

He returned to Marie-Claire’s, where they spent the day together, and, also, the night, why not. Old love, as good as it ever was, maybe a little better. “I love doing this with you,” she said, lying next to him. “I always did.” They smoked together in the dawn, really not much to say, odd how happy some things in life made you.

He left the apartment at midmorning. Fine weather—a springtime wind, brilliant, sunny light—a good day to start a new life. He would find a better hotel, move his few things. He stopped for a newspaper, found a café, and ordered coffee. “Real, if you have it.”

Then he looked at the news. ITALIAN FREIGHTER SABOTAGED. SAN LORENZO EXPLODES AT THE DOCK IN NICE HARBOR. RESISTANCE TERRORISTS SUSPECTED IN DAWN ATTACK. EIGHT DEAD, MANY INJURED.

He went first to the Benoit, but there was no postcard. Next he headed for de la Barre’s apartment, then changed his mind and walked down the Champs-Elysées to the travel agency. “I’m here to see Natalie,” he told the woman at the réception. She showed him to a desk in a small room, and Natalie appeared a moment later. “I’m Hélène’s friend,” he explained.

“Oh,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine who Monsieur Duval was.”

“Is she alive?”

For a moment, she hesitated.

“I know where she was going,” he said. “She told me she would send you a postcard when she got to Algiers.”

“She was on the ship that burned,” Natalie said.

“Is she all right?”

“Yes. She telephoned, from Nice. She was afraid to speak openly, but she let me know she’d survived—‘a bad accident.’ ”

“Did she say anything about trying again?”

“Yes, in a way. She said she’d be staying in Nice for another two or three days. Then she told me I mustn’t worry, that she would see me soon and tell me the whole story.”

“See you in Paris?”

“That’s why she called. She may have to stay with me if her land-lady won’t let her have the room.”

“You said she could?”

“Of course. And she’ll be coming back to work.”

“Not here.”

“Yes.”

“They’ll let her do that? She’s been away three weeks.”

“Well, they think she’s been in Strasbourg—a family emergency. And then, the big surprise, Victorine’s been a saint. Hélène is welcome to her old job. No problem.”

Naturally, Casson thought. A thousand francs anytime she felt like it—no problem.

“At least she’s not hurt,” Casson said.

“Thank heaven. She’ll be here by the end of the week, she wasn’t sure exactly when.”

“I’ll come by in a day or so and leave a phone number,” Casson said. “Tell her to call me as soon as she can.”

A quiet evening on the rue Pétrelle; closed shops, buildings deserted. Ivanic and Serra watched the windows for a time, but the only lights were on the second floor. The third floor, where Alexander Kovar used a friend’s office, was dark.

“What does he do up there?” Serra said.

“Who knows? Writes books, or pamphlets.”

“In the dark?”

“Why not? Perhaps it suits him.”

“A friend of mine used to read his book. In Spain.”

“I don’t know it,” Ivanic said. Why make it personal, he thought. Juron had told them what to do. And Weiss had been very specific about how he wanted it done. That was all Ivanic needed. He checked the time, 8:30. No cars about, no people. “Let’s get it over with,” he said.

Ivanic used a skeleton key to open the simple lock on the building door. As they entered, they could hear music, a scratchy old record of a single piano, the melody slow and sad. It grew louder as they climbed the stairs and came, they discovered, from the Madame Tauron School of Ballet on the second floor.

A woman’s voice—somehow hopeful and weary at the same time—rose sharply above the piano. “Allons—Bernadette? This is the afternoon of a faun, my dear, yes, that’s right, so light, so delicate . . .”

Ivanic gestured up the staircase, took the automatic from his leather coat, worked the slide.

“Won’t they hear it, from upstairs?” Serra said.

“They’ll stop what they’re doing, for a moment,” Ivanic said. “Then they’ll pretend it didn’t happen.”

They climbed to the third floor, turned left, walked slowly and silently to the office at the end of the hall, then stood on either side of the door. Serra took a revolver from his belt. He held it casually, like a familiar tool.

Very carefully, Ivanic leaned close to the pebbled glass window in the upper half of the door. But the music from the floor below made it hard to hear the small noises people make when they are alone, the sound of a chair, or a newspaper. He signaled to Serra that he couldn’t hear, then pointed to a place just below the keyhole.

“Typewriter?” Serra mouthed the word.

Ivanic shook his head.

Serra stood in front of the door, raised his leg. Ivanic gestured with his gun, Serra drove his foot against the door. A second time, a third, the glass cracked and the door flew open.

Ivanic went through the door in a crouch, turned left, then right. Nobody. Serra came in behind him. “Easy does it,” Ivanic said. “He’s not here.”

They searched the dark office, there were cigarette stubs in the ashtray, a typewriter, a few pages of scribbled notes, but no Kovar.

“Where could he go?” Serra said.

They had seen him enter the building at 7:30. As far as they knew, there was only the single door to the street, and they had watched that for an hour. Ivanic rested a finger on the receiver of a telephone on the desk. “Warned,” he said. “Otherwise, he would either be here, or he would have gone out the door to the street.”

“Still in the building?”

“He could be.” Ivanic thought it over. In the ballet studio? In some other office? Hopeless, he thought. “We can look on the roof,” he said.

They climbed the stairs to the roof, looked over the parapet into the empty street. Went down to the fifth floor, walked the endless labyrinth of hallways with titles lettered on the glass door panels; importers, detectives, matchmakers. Then, to be able to report that they’d done it, they searched all the other floors.

“The ballet studio?” Serra said.

Ivanic considered it. “Better not,” he said. “We couldn’t do it there, even if we did find him.” He checked his watch. “We’re supposed to be out of here by 9:20, we’ll just go see Weiss and tell him what happened.”

“Perhaps he went to another office.”

“Maybe. Let Weiss worry about it.”

Kovar waited until 10:20 before he left the building.

He’d been hard at work at 8:15, when the telephone rang. This had never happened before—wrong number, he thought. They’ll hang up. He let it go; ten, eleven, twelve rings. What if they heard it downstairs? He picked up the receiver, a man’s voice said “Kovar.”

The voice was measured, and without emotion.

It was a voice he didn’t recognize, certainly not Somet. It told him to leave the office immediately, to go to Room 408, the door would be unlocked. He was told to stay there until 10:00 P.M. Told he should not return to the office, told he should find a new place to live, not in Melun. “Kovar,” the voice said, “do you understand?”

He said “Yes,” the connection broke, the dial tone hummed. On the door of Room 408 it said JOUVET, below that, PROMOTIONS EX-TRAORDINAIRES. Inside, there were photos and press clippings on the wall. Later, he heard footsteps in the corridor, then saw a shadow on the glass. It paused a moment, then moved away.

Casson tried one hotel, then another, then a third. Hotel du Commerce, on the avenue Daumesnil, behind the Gare de Lyon. He was getting rather good at it now, he thought. A particular combination of seediness, anonymity, and old age—you had to develop a taste for it. Perfect—nobody would ever stay here. Except that every room was taken. He had to wait a day to get in.

4 March, a spring gale; rain blown sideways, the window rattled all night. Casson stayed awake until dawn, reading battered mysteries from the stalls on the Seine. He’d bought a radio, it crackled and hissed, but he could listen to piano concertos, sometimes jazz. A new life. Monsieur Marin, of the Hotel du Commerce, went out only rarely . . .

The next morning he walked to the railroad station, called Natalie and told her where Hélène could find him. Then—finishing up old business—he tried the contact number for the SR. As he’d expected, the phone was not answered. Just to make sure, he dialed a second time, but he knew what would happen.

Which left him with one last telephone call, and that would be that.

But the liaison girl at the FTP contact number wanted him to meet her at a newsstand in an hour. Twenty years old, he guessed when he saw her, maybe younger. Earnest and intense, prepared to die to change the world. And, Casson thought, it would probably turn out that way. “I am called Emilie,” she said.

They walked through the 12th, up to Bastille, then into the dance-hall area around the rue de Lappe. Entered a nightclub by a cellar door at the bottom of a flight of steps. Strange in midmorning, canvas flats on a tiny stage, scenes of la vie parisienne: Eiffel Towers, flics blowing whistles, their cheeks puffed out.

Weiss was waiting for him at a table in the back.

“The way it looks right now,” Casson said, “I don’t think I can be of further use to you.”

“No? Does that mean that Vichy doesn’t want to talk to us?”

“Not through me.”

“Is this final?”

“Nothing’s final,” Casson said. “But that’s the way it is right now.”

“Was it what we asked? To let our people out of prison?”

Casson shook his head. “I was wondering,” he said, “what became of Sylvie?”

Weiss didn’t answer immediately. “You can contact us through Emilie,” he said. He paused a moment, then went on. “If it should happen that you get back in touch with your contacts in the SR, I want to make sure they know we are still very much in the market for weapons—that above everything else.”

“And the MAS 38’s?”

“We’re glad to have them, but there are still a number of cells that need to be armed. The way we saw it, the first delivery was a test of good faith. On both sides.”

“I’ve been reading the newspapers, but nothing’s mentioned.”

“They’ve been used. Well used.”

“In Paris?”

“Up north,” Weiss said. “And in Paris. Remember, what the Nazis permit the newspapers to print is what they want them to print.”

“Well, yes, that’s true.”

“Casson,” Weiss said. “I need guns. Thousands of them. Ammunition. Hand grenades. I want you to know we’re willing to take on any kind of operation if we can get them. Almost anything—I hope you understand me. Of course we’ll take the blame; blood-thirsty Bolshevik beasts and so forth. People see us that way, after all, so it almost doesn’t matter what we do. And then we are held responsible for the reprisals. Somebody must see how very useful that can be.”

Casson nodded.

“Talk to them, Casson. For the moment, the real war behind the lines is in the Ukraine and in Poland. We have to make more happen right here. We don’t want these Germans walking down the streets of Paris smiling and laughing, we don’t want them walking down the street at all. We want them on special buses, with motorcycle escorts, going off to some wretched cultural program staged just for them.”

“I’ll try,” Casson said. “I’ll do what I can. But please understand my part in this is probably over.”

“It may be,” Weiss said. “If it is, I want you to know we appreciate what you’ve done.”

“There is one favor I want to ask,” Casson said.

“Yes?”

“I have a friend, a Jew. She needs to get out of France. Can you help?”

“I’m sorry,” Weiss said. “There are escape lines, some of them run by the British, but it’s not something we do. From time to time, we’ll move somebody—a senior officer, a special operative—but mostly our people stay here and fight.”

“If you think of something, you’ll let me know?”

“I will.” Weiss looked at his watch. “I have to be on my way,” he said.

They stood, shook hands.

“Another meeting,” Casson said.

“Yes. Then, another.”

“It never ends,” Casson said.

“No,” Weiss said. “It never does.”

Casson walked toward the Métro. No help from the FTP, he thought. That leaves de la Barre.

He took the Métro to the 7th and headed for de la Barre’s apartment. When he reached the street, there was a Citroën traction-avant parked at the corner, the driver behind the wheel. Casson glanced at him, then looked away. He walked down the block, went past de la Barre’s doorway. At the other end of the street, a man was standing on the corner. Casson’s heart sank.

He went to a café and called de la Barre’s number. A woman answered. “Monsieur de la Barre, please.”

“One moment.”

A man came on the line. “Yes? This is de la Barre.”

Casson couldn’t be sure. It was the voice of an older man, maybe it was de la Barre, maybe not. “I’m interested in eighteenth-century texts,” Casson said. “Particularly physiognomy and anatomy.”

“Anything in particular?”

Casson improvised. “The illustrator Matinus, in Montpellier.”

“The best thing for you, monsieur, is to come and take a look at what I have. Do you know the address?”

“I do.”

“And you are?”

“Monsieur Brun.”

“When would you like to come, Monsieur Brun?”

“Perhaps this afternoon.”

“I look forward to meeting you.”

Casson hung up. Walked away as fast as he could. A trap, he thought. They would trace the call.

The following morning he went out to Luna Park and worked on the books. Lamy sat with him, telling him stories about the Shanghai tong wars of the 1920s. Then he said, “I think I can help you out, Marin. I’d like to spend Thursday afternoons with my girlfriend—I could use somebody to keep an eye on things here. It isn’t hard. Collect the money at night, just make sure nothing goes wrong. An extra six hours a week, maybe a little more. Want to try it?” Casson said he would.

Some people went to church, Casson went to the movies. It took him most of the afternoon to decide what to do—a monologue in bits and pieces. He sat through the German newsreel, straight from the propaganda Abteilung in the Hotel Meurice. Rommel’s Afrika Korps bouncing over the sand dunes of Libya, then taking Benghazi. A shot of a British tank on fire, a shot of a sign that gave the distance to Cairo. Then, the film. Three girls from Paris take their summer vacation at the beach, each of them, it seems . . .

He sat in the comforting darkness, amid the coughs and the steady whirr of the projector, pretending to wonder what to do. He knew, of course. He just kept telling himself he was a fool. Not a realist, not shrewd. The first article of faith in French society: il faut se défendre. Gospel. You must take care of yourself, first and foremost. Because, if you don’t, nobody else will. Marie-Claire had baited him, telling him about her friend who worked for de Gaulle. Maybe if she hadn’t said anything—no, that wasn’t true. He would have found another way. On the screen, young Maurice, too shy to reveal his love, leaves a bouquet of wildflowers on the doorstep. What’s this? The milkman’s donkey. Oh no, he’s eating them!

How had they found out about de la Barre? Probably interrogated the passengers after the ship burned in the harbor. One of de la Barre’s fugitives, papers a little wrong, a forced confession. Casson looked at his watch. Twenty minutes more, he might as well see how it ended.

Why me?

He didn’t know. It didn’t have to be that way—here was Lamy, offering him a way out. A nice little job, soon enough, for Monsieur Marin of the Hotel du Commerce.

The final shot, a beach in the moonlight. Not so bad, he thought. Long white waves rolling into the shore, breaking gently on the beach.

The movie theatre had a telephone; he called Marie-Claire.

She met him at a café, just after five. Bruno was back, she explained, they were having dinner at nine. Celebrating his victory. From now on, German officers, crooked bureaucrats, butter dealers, any of the suddenly rich, would be able to buy an Alfa Romeo.

Casson ordered Marie-Claire her customary Martini Rouge, with lemon. “You don’t seem in the mood for a celebration.”

“I’m not. It’s beginning to bother me, all this.” She made a face he knew all too well.

“He is what he is,” Casson said, sympathetic.

“Yes, he is.” She paused a moment. “Our part of the world, up in Passy, is coming apart, Jean-Claude. That’s really what’s going on. Half of my friends listen to de Gaulle on the radio, the other half keep portraits of Pétain on the piano. Somehow, Bruno and I wound up on different sides.”

“That’s not so good.”

She looked sorrowful. “And it’s not just the couples, it’s everywhere, even in the same family—between sisters, between fathers and sons. It’s terrible, Jean-Claude. Terrible.”

“I know,” Casson said. “Marie-Claire, I would like to talk to the friend you mentioned. The one who has ties to the French in London.”

“Did I tell you who it was?”

“No.”

She gave him the look that meant I know you too well, Jean-Claude, you’re not going to like this. “It’s Jacques Gueze,” she said.

“Oh no.”

“That’s who it is.”

Casson knew him, had sat across from him at a dinner party back in the old days. After that, a handshake two or three times at some grande affaire. Casson hated him. Short and wide, prosperously fat, with thick glasses and tight, curly hair. He floated on waves of amour propre—boundless conceit, in measures rare even in France. He described himself as an ethnologist, no, there was more to it than that, it was better than that. Socio-ethnologist? Psycho-ethnologist? Anyhow, a hyphen. Now he remembered— gods, something about gods. He’d written a book about them.

“So,” Marie-Claire said, one eyebrow raised. “That’s it for you and the résistance?”

“Jacques Gueze? Did you think he was telling the truth?”

“Yes. I believed him.”

“All the time trying to get you in bed.”

“Trying hard. Puffed himself up like a pigeon, as I think I told you, but I declined. It seemed to me he would probably fuck like a pigeon.”

Casson laughed. “All right,” he said, a sigh in his voice. “Can you let him know?”

“Let him know what?”

“That I want to speak with him. You can say ‘confidentially.’ How can de Gaulle tolerate him?”

“De Gaulle does not exactly undervalue himself, Jean-Claude. I don’t know, but to him Jacques Gueze may seem perfectly normal.”

A message was left at the hotel the following day, a meeting at 8:20 by the St.-Paul Métro station. “We will go to dinner,” Gueze announced. “To Heininger. A choucroute, I think, for this weather.”

Casson was horrified. “I might see people who know me,” he said. “Maybe not the best idea.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Gueze said. “You’re with me.” The idea of doing without his choucroute was beneath consideration.

They walked a few blocks toward the place Bastille, to the Brasserie Heininger. Famous, infamous, a vast marble palace, glowing wood, golden light, waiters in fancy whiskers and green aprons, and scandale, as fragrant in the air as the grilled sausage.

“Table fourteen, jeune homme,” Gueze said to Papa Heininger, not at all a “young man,” who accepted the courteously rude appellation with a genial nod. Of course it was available, held nightly for customers powerful enough to know about it. Table fourteen— a small hole in the mirrored panel where an assassin had fired a machine gun on a spring evening when the Bulgarian headwaiter was murdered in the ladies’ WC. The table where an aristocratic Englishwoman had once recruited Russian spies. The table where, in the first months of the Occupation, the companion of a German naval officer had taken to shooting peas at other diners, using a rolled-up carte des vins as a blowpipe. The table where, a year earlier, Casson—in the last days of life as himself—had dined with a German film executive and his friends.

A waiter appeared, Gueze rubbed his hands. “Choucroute, choucroute,” he said with a smile. “Beer, do you think?” he asked Casson.

“All right.”

“Alsatian,” Gueze said to the waiter. “Dark. Two right away, then two more—keep an eye on us and see when we’re ready.”

Casson looked around the room—a number of Germans in uniform, and at least two people he knew, both of them very busy talking and eating.

“So then,” Gueze said. “Marie-Claire tells me you’re thinking of joining up with us. Les fous de Grand Charles.” He laughed merrily at the name—Big Charlie’s lunatics.

“Maybe,” Casson said. “I’m not sure what I could do.”

“Don’t worry about that. There’s plenty to go around.” A small cloud crossed his face. “You don’t want to go to London, do you?”

“No, it hadn’t occurred to me.”

The cloud vanished. “Good, good. People show up at the office, they all want the big desk. I was back in August—a real circus. Where we need help, of course, is right here.”

“What kind of help do you need?”

“As a government in exile, we’ve had to start from the beginning. That includes what we call the BCRA—Bureau Centrale de Renseignements et d’Action. Essentially, we’re de Gaulle’s intelligence service. The money comes from the British, along with lots of advice, most of it useless, and sometimes an order, which we usually ignore.”

“And the Americans?”

“A sore point. The people in the State Department don’t like the general. Nothing new there, all sorts of people don’t like him.”

Gueze turned gloomy for a moment—de Gaulle’s personality didn’t make his life any easier—then smiled. “In May of ’40, when de Gaulle went up to Belgium, Weygand got so mad at him he threw him out! Threatened to have him arrested if he didn’t leave the front lines.” Gueze paused to enjoy the scene. “But all for the best, all for the best. We’re rid of that now, it’s in the past. What we are, my friend, is the future.”

The waiter arrived, carrying a tray with two glasses of beer, dark brown, almost black, a thin layer of mocha-colored foam on top. “Ah-ha,” Gueze sang out. “La bonne bière. ” The good beer—real, honest, ancient, like us peasant French. Gueze beamed at the idea, pleased with himself. Even so, Casson thought, he’s no fool.

Casson’s father had taken him to the park on Sunday afternoons. Neither of them knew what they were supposed to be doing there, but his mother insisted and so they went, sitting on a bench in the Ranelagh gardens until they were allowed back in the apartment. Once, Casson remembered, his father had stared a long time at a horse and carriage. “A noble head on that animal,” he’d said at last. “But, Jean-Claude, do not underestimate the value of his backside.”

They drank the beer, cool and thick and bitter. All around them, the brasserie was getting louder as the evening went on. “This is good,” Casson said. He paused, then, “There is something I wanted to mention, it may not be of interest, but I leave that up to you.”

Gueze raised his eyebrows.

“For some months,” Casson said, “I’ve had to live underground. During that time I came across an old friend, and he asked me to help him. The work we did was political, and covert. In the process, I had conversations with people who are involved in the direction of the Communist Party. The FTP, to be exact. With jobs maybe not so different from yours. We had several meetings, some of their views became clear over time. At the last meeting, I was told they needed weapons, thousands of them, with ammunition, and hand grenades. Would this interest you? Because, if it does, there’s more. They are willing, in return, to undertake specific operations against the Germans.”

“Interesting,” Gueze said. “No doubt about it. Tell me this, are you a believer? I don’t care if you are, I happen to be a socialist, but if you look around this restaurant, at the German uniforms, you’ll see where political divisions have gotten us.”

“No,” Casson said. “And they knew that from the beginning.”

The dinner arrived. What war? Casson thought. Warm sauerkraut, thick bacon on its rind, a pork chop. And a saucisse de Toulouse— he filled the bowl of a tiny spoon with hot mustard and ran it down the burst, blackened skin.

“Not too bad for a cold March night,” Gueze said.

Casson agreed. No, not too bad.

“Of course I can’t give you an answer straight away,” Gueze said. “This will be pawed over by a committee, but something has to be worked out. Naturally we talk to the communists in London, then wait until they wire back to Moscow for permission to blow their nose. It’s terribly slow. However, if we patch something together in Paris it’s on-the-ground, not binding, but at least something will come of it. That’s the attraction of what you’ve told me.”

Gueze picked up the empty bread basket and looked around. A waiter swept it away and returned a moment later with a full one, rounds of fresh bread piled high.

“The fact is,” Gueze said, “we are making an effort to get all the resistance movements—at the moment we count fifteen or so— going in the same direction. At least now and then.” He ate a forkful of sauerkraut, washed it down with beer. “You said you had to live underground?”

“I got into trouble with the Gestapo, June of ’41. At that time, I had some contact with the British special services.”

“Which? The people who blow things up? Or the people who steal blueprints?”

“Blow things up.”

“Well, they’re a lot easier to deal with, that much I can tell you. We do both, in one service. So, the Gestapo wants you. How badly?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“We’ll have to find out. If they’re really hunting for you, you can’t be of much use to us. One thing I should say is that if you come to work for us, we’ll pay you. Not a lot, but enough. Marie-Claire seemed to think that your existence has been, well, day-to-day.”

“It has.”

“You’ll have plenty to worry about, with us, but not that.” He went back to work on the choucroute. “She is, you know, a very attractive woman.”

“I know,” Casson said.

“Do you regret, the, ah . . .”

“No. We just couldn’t get along. You know how it is.”

“Oh yes. Unfortunately, she lives with that awful man.”

They ate in silence for a time. “Communists, you know,” Gueze said, “turn out to be crucial. The British have to bleed the Germans to death—they can’t absorb the number of casualties the Russians can. Their strategy is to shut down the power stations, the railroads, the phones and the telegraph, keep the important metals away, blow up the tool-and-die works. It’s not easy, because the Germans are ingenious, they wire it all back together, and they’ve learned to put things underground. But, if you’re going to deliver the explosives by hand, rather than by plane, you need the railwaymen, the telephone workers, the lathe operators. That’s the working class—labor unions, communists. And they’ve been in clandestine operations for twenty years.”

“One thing did occur to me,” Casson said. “What if we help the FTP to get arms and then they don’t do all that much. They simply wait till the end of the war. They’re armed, and well organized. They demand a share of the government—or else.”

Gueze shrugged. “That’s what we’re doing, why shouldn’t they?”

Later, Casson mentioned Hélène, and the San Lorenzo. Gueze was waiting for the tarte Tatin he’d ordered. “Tell me what happened,” he said. Casson told the story in detail, from the beginning. Gueze listened attentively. “I’m not sure how we can help,” he said at the end. “But there may be something we can do. Let me think it over.”

Hélène called him at the hotel in the late afternoon—she’d arrived in Paris at dawn, and gone to work. Casson offered to take her out to dinner and they met at a restaurant. As she came toward the table, he could see a dark bruise on one side of her jaw, and when he embraced her she winced.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

“Not much, a little sore.”

She sat next to him on a banquette, he ordered a bottle of red wine. The trip down wasn’t bad, she said, a few identity checks and the train was cold. She’d spent two weeks in Nice, de la Barre’s people had arranged for her to stay at an apartment in the old city. “Day and night,” she said. “We were not permitted to leave.”

She didn’t get out the first time. “The next sailing was delayed but, finally, they let us on board. I was in a cabin on the deck, with eight other passengers. It was after midnight, nobody said a word, we just waited to get under way. Then there was an explosion below deck—maybe more than one—it was like a wind hit the floor. The lights went out, we heard people screaming that the boat was on fire. Everybody ran, somebody pushed me out of the way and I fell flat on my face on the steel deck, but I got up, and a sailor grabbed me by the elbow and led me down the gangplank. Then we all just stood there, watching the ship burn.”

She paused a moment. Casson poured wine in her glass and she drank some. “Finally,” she said, “the police came and took everybody to the station. We were questioned most of the night—the police were Italian, but the people asking the questions were German. Later on we heard that somebody had been arrested.”

Casson told her about his attempt to see de la Barre. “We’ll just have to find another way.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll see.”

Back at Casson’s hotel, she folded her skirt and sweater over the back of a chair and lay down on the bed in her slip. There were bruises down one side of her leg. Casson stretched out next to her. “How was work?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t change.”

“Victorine?”

“We talked about Strasbourg. She went once to Buerehiesel for dinner, she always tells me what a good time she had.”

“Did she—”

“Not today. Let’s not talk about it.”

Casson stubbed out his cigarette and put his arms around her. “Where are you staying?”

“Same place. Today it felt like I never left—maybe I’m fated to be here.”

“Don’t say that, Hélène.”

“I could find another job. In a shop, perhaps. I just have to live quietly, I’ll be all right.”

As gently as he could, Casson said, “We have to try again.”

She didn’t answer. Casson told her about Lamy and his stories, about the Dodge-em cars. Then they were quiet for a time, and Casson realized she had fallen asleep. Carefully, he slipped off the bed and covered her with a blanket. He sat by the window and read for a time. She called him softly when she woke up. “Is it curfew yet?”

“In about an hour.”

“I should go back to the room. Tonight, anyhow.”

“All right. You know you can stay with me, as long as you like.”

“I know.”

She sat up, held her face in her hands.

“I’ll take you back to the apartment,” he said.

They rode the Métro together in silence. He kissed her at the door of her building, then waited while she went upstairs.

For SS-Unterscharführer Otto Albers, it was perhaps the worst day of his life. One of them, anyhow. There had been the time he was caught stealing rolls from the baker, the time caught cheating in school. He’d had the same knot in his stomach.

But he was no child now, and what had happened was his own fault. Another corporal worked alongside him in the basement vaults of the Gestapo headquarters on the rue des Saussaies, Corporal Prost. Prost had been in Russia, had fought there, had barely escaped with his life. He was missing an eye and most of a foot, and more than that, to hear him tell it. “I don’t care about it anymore,” he told Albers sadly. “It just doesn’t come to me.”

He was a good storyteller, Prost. He’d seen action around Nikopol, in the Ukraine, with a Waffen-SS unit. They’d beaten back days of Soviet counterattacks, then dealt with partizans—shot most of them, hanged the ones they caught alive. But it didn’t seem to matter—there were always more. Prost was wounded when a rigged mortar shell was set off in the latrine. Then the partizans stopped the hospital train and burned it with kerosene. Most of the wounded died, Prost crawled away. As the partizans withdrew, a little boy, maybe eleven, shot Prost in the face. Because the shot was fired at an angle, Prost survived. “Do whatever you need to do,” he told Albers. “But don’t go to that place.”

Albers didn’t want to go. But the problem he’d picked up from his “mouse” on the rue St.-Denis was getting worse. He’d considered going to the infirmary, but the penalty for catching a venereal disease was immediate transfer to the eastern front. So he asked a friend for the name of a doctor and was sent to a wretched old man out in the northern suburbs. He muttered something in French, which Albers couldn’t understand, then resorted to sign language, explaining how to apply the precious ointment. Albers returned to Paris feeling enormous relief—thank heaven that was over.

But it wasn’t. Over lunch ten days later, in a café near Gestapo headquarters, a young man rather boldly sat himself down at Albers’s table. He was apologetic at first—Albers thought he might be a student, but he was a few years too old for that. A fair-haired Frenchman, with cold eyes. The young man finished his soup, then leaned over and said, “ Unterscharführer Albers?” Shocked, Albers nodded. “Here is a little something for you.” Excellent German, clipped and confidently spoken. Then he was gone, leaving an envelope on the table.

Albers was almost sick. They had his medical record, knew the doctor, knew everything. His choice: do what they said to do, or his superiors would be informed that he’d had a venereal disease. The letter said he had to signal his intentions immediately. If he put the envelope back on the table and left it there, he would cooperate. If he left with it, he might as well show it to his boss.

Albers looked frantically around the room but all he saw were people eating lunch. He left the envelope on the table, the waiter swept it away with the dishes. The waiter! Yes? he asked himself. Just what would he do to the waiter? It would only get him in deeper.

He spent the day frozen, terrified, trying somehow to find the courage to carry out their orders. He took no satisfaction that afternoon in the soothing rhythm of his work, rolling the metal cart up and down the endless rows of files. He replaced twenty-eight folders, took out forty new ones.

Just names, Albers told himself. French names—it took some time to get used to them, with their strange accents—and Jewish names, with difficult Polish spellings. Maybe life wouldn’t be so good for them tomorrow, or in a week, whenever the people upstairs got around to arresting them, but that wasn’t his fault.

He worked in a fury. How could he have allowed these sneaky Frenchmen to get power over him! Hitler was right, they had no sense of fair play—no instinctive, no Aryan sense of justice. You could never trust them. Albers returned the files of Levagne, Pierre and Levi, Anna to the shelf. The people upstairs were done with them.

He heard Prost, clumping along in his special shoe, as he came around the corner, pushing a file cart. He gave Albers a smile. “So, Otto, what’s for you tonight?”

“Nothing much. Tired, lately.”

“It’s the cold weather. But spring is coming, soon you’ll be bounding around like a new lamb.” He laughed.

Albers joined in as best he could. But then, Prost was right. If he took care of this, he could stay in Paris, go back to his Parisian pleasures. The mouse, cured of her malady, her friend, maybe another friend—a new character for his little theatre. Prost slipped a file back into the D section—just the end of it on the top shelf, Dybinski, a few others—then he went around the corner. “Klaus,” Albers called out, following him.

“Yes?”

“If you’re going down that way, could you take care of this?”

Prost looked at the folder Albers had given him. Vignon. “Be happy to do it,” he said.

Albers listened to the wheels of the cart, rolling over the cement floor, headed off to the other end of the alphabet.

Now.

Cascone, Caseda, Casselot, Cassignier, Cassignol.

Casson. There were several, what he needed was—

Casson, Jean.

As he’d practiced: undo three buttons of the shirt, take the dossier, slip it inside, then around under the arm, hidden beneath the uniform jacket. Button the buttons. Now, keep it there for thirty minutes, then it was time to leave the building. That wouldn’t be a problem.

Done, he thought.