Red Gold

MAS MODÈLE 38

10 JANUARY, 1942 .

Casson boarded the night train to Marseilles at 8:25, at the Gare de Lyons, but they didn’t get under way until 10:40—sabotage on the track at Bourg-la-Reine, according to the conductor.

The train slowed to a crawl and switched over to the north-bound track. Casson rested his forehead against the cold window, saw twisted rails that glowed for an instant in the moonlight and a crowd of railwaymen warming their hands at a fire in an iron barrel. A few minutes later they were out in the countryside; patches of snow on the hills, the rivers under the railway bridges frozen to sheets of gray ice.

Just after four in the morning they passed Moulins, on the river Allier. It had become a border town, where the Occupied Zone met the area ruled by Vichy, a few kilometers down the river. By then only one passenger, perhaps a commercial traveler, remained in the compartment. Casson had waded over a branch of the Allier a year earlier, guided by the son of a local aristocrat. April of 1941, Citrine waiting for him in a hotel in Lyons.

The German exit Kontrol, leaving what was now called Frank-reich, was located at a small station on the northern edge of the city. It was typical, Casson thought. The Germans always seemed to choose isolated, anonymous areas for their operations—you didn’t know where you were, there was nowhere to run, whatever happened there was invisible.

But, this time, not too bad. Degrave had made sure he had all the right papers. A few German noncoms boarded the train, tired at that time of night. They glanced at his identity card, peered at the underwear and socks in his valise, then stamped his passport. He was sweating by the time they left the compartment—sometimes they arrested people for no apparent reason.

The train rolled slowly into the main station in Moulins, where the French border police ordered everybody onto the platform and made them stand in line. From all the muttering and grumbling that went on it was clear to Casson that this wasn’t the usual procedure.

The line, heading to a table manned by uniformed officers, barely moved. The passengers breathed plumes of steam and stamped their feet. When Casson reached the table, he handed over his identity card with his travel and work permits folded in the middle. The officer took a long, careful look, then said, “This one out.” He was escorted to a room inside the station, where a civilian official sat at an old metal desk.

He sat down as directed, and handed over his papers. They were spread out, slowly examined, notes were made on a sheet of paper. Outside, he heard the hiss of steam, then the slow progress of the Marseilles train as it moved out of the station.

The official was young, savagely combed and brushed and shaved, wore steel-framed eyeglasses and hair freshly clipped to a perfect line across the back of the neck. He had a sulky mouth, set against the world—born angry and meant to stay that way. Perfect, Casson thought, for a petit fonctionnaire. On his desk was a framed photo of Pétain, white-haired and godly. A portable icon, Casson thought. He takes it with him wherever he goes.

“Monsieur Marin,” he began.

“Yes, sir.”

“Your papers describe you as a claims investigator.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“For the Compagnie des Assurances Commerciales du Nord. ”

“Yes.”

“Your business in Marseilles?”

“A fire in a storage shed owned by a steamship company.”

“And what will you do, precisely?”

“I will obtain the reports of the police and fire inspectors, will interview the client’s representative, visit the site of the event, then make a determination as to the extent of the damage, and write a report for the central office with my recommendations.”

“Where is that office?”

“22, rue de La Boétie. In the 8th Arrondissement.”

“And your supervisor?”

“Monsieur Labatier.”

“And your address?”

“I live at 8, rue Fortuny.”

As Casson talked, the official made notes with a scratchy pen he dipped in an inkwell. “Please step outside, monsieur,” he said.

Casson did as he was told. The official, in plain view, picked up the telephone on his desk, dialed the operator, requested a number, and waited for the connection. Casson could not hear the conversation, but he guessed that a call to another region probably meant Paris, and almost certainly the préfecture—who else did business on the telephone at that time of the morning? The call went through almost immediately, and the official began reading off information.

He glanced up at Casson, back to the paper, then again.

Behind Casson, in the empty station, a flight of birds took off, he could hear the beating of their wings.

“You will return, monsieur.”

He went back into the little room, closing the door behind him. The official picked up the telephone, and dialed two numbers. “Lieutenant, please station somebody outside my door.” Next, he reread what he’d written, underlining notes he’d taken during his interrogation of Casson and others made during the telephone call. When he was satisfied he had everything he needed, he looked up at Casson, checked the identity card one last time, then tossed it aside.

“Fake,” he said. “The documents don’t check out with the Paris registry.”

Casson looked puzzled. “How can that be?”

“You tell me.”

Casson shrugged, amused by his own confusion. “Well . . .” for a moment, no idea what to say. “I don’t know—the spelling of the name, maybe.”

“There’s a possibility you and I can work this out right here, and you can go wherever you’re going, but you have to tell me everything. If you do, I might, might, be able to help you.”

Casson shook his head. “A fault in the records? I don’t have any idea what it could be.”

The official stared at him. Casson waited.

Thirty seconds, an eternity of silence. The official slid the permits inside the folded identity card and pushed it back across the desk. Casson hesitated, unsure of himself, what was going on? Finally he took the card and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

“You may go,” the official said, pure hatred in his eyes.

He rose and left the room.

There was, in fact, a soldier stationed by the door. Casson walked across the platform and stood staring at the empty track. Looking around, he saw that the ticket window was shuttered. A baggage porter trudged past, pushing a two-wheeled cart piled with trunks and suitcases.

“The next train for Marseilles?” Casson said.

The man stopped, lowered the cart, pressed his hand against the small of his back. “Marseilles?”

“Yes.”

“At noon, monsieur. If it’s on time.”

“Thank you,” Casson said. “Cold, this morning.”

“Yes. My wife says it will snow.”

The man thrust his weight against the baggage cart until it started moving. Casson sat on a bench and settled down to wait. Suddenly he was grateful for the whole pirate ship of characters his life had stirred up—lawyers, studio executives, actors’ agents. Forgive me, my friend, he thought, but I have been down that road too many times.

January in Marseilles. Gray cloud scudding in from the sea and a cold rain that dripped from the eucalyptus trees. In the Old Port, oil tankers and fishing boats rose on the swell. Casson took a trolley that swayed and clattered along the Corniche, then he climbed an endless staircase to a nest of winding streets where he found Le Pension Welcome. The old ladies who ran the place fussed over him—a wretched day, so cold, so triste. They took him to his room, damp as a dungeon with a view of the sea. Citrine, in these places, would say, “Ah, but cool in summer.” He took off his clothes, washed at the sink, rolled up in a blanket, was glad to be alive.

A day later, a message was delivered to the hotel. He took a taxi for a half-hour ride to the village of Cassis. They worked their way up a winding road into the hills above the town, to a villa called La Rosette—the driver had to get out and ask directions along the way.

Degrave met him at the door, wearing a blazer and flannels and looking very much the country squire. Madame Degrave was waiting for him in the hallway, calling to the maid to get him a kir vin blanc. Casson remembered what Hélène had said about her— “mean as a snake,” according to Degrave’s girlfriend—but what a snake. Casson was impressed and she knew it. Golden hair turning coppery as she crossed forty, swept around her ears just above the pearl earrings. A thin, twitchy little nose, and the smile they taught in the rich girls’ academies. She gave him her hand when Degrave introduced them, dry and fragile and cooperative.

They’d had the villa for years, Degrave explained later, and when the Germans occupied the northern part of the country and the office moved to Vichy, they’d found it prudent to leave the house in the Chevreuse, just outside Paris, for the time being. When Vasilis had specified delivery in Marseilles—well, one should profit from coincidence.

Casson agreed. Only, washing his hands in the bathroom, staring into the mirror—mustache, glasses, all the rest of it—he hated playing the shabby little man. Because, for the moment, he was back in the 16th. Not really the same crowd, of course, but an outsider wouldn’t have known the difference.

A dinner party. Monsieur and Madame this, Monsieur and Madame the other. One was the local something, another a former diplomat, somebody else painted divinely. There was a macedoine of vegetables and mayonnaise to start, Bellet to drink—one bottle followed another. To clear his head, Casson excused himself and stepped outside. A small swimming pool, a hedge of evergreen shrubs dripping rain, and, beyond, the dark sea.

He wondered if she would show up. Not that he would do anything, Degrave was his friend. He was just curious. It wasn’t hard to figure out what went on with Degrave and his wife. He had sinned and was not forgiven. What sin? Simply, he had failed to rise. He was not Colonel Degrave and he never would be. Too aloof, too independent for his own good and, in his way, an idealist. His rich wife was disappointed, she made that clear, whenever she felt like it, and Degrave had a girlfriend to make him feel better.

He could see the dining room through the window. Madame, a silhouette in candlelight, got up to do something and glanced out the window. Casson closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Down below somewhere, the sea broke on a rocky beach. He threw the cigarette away and went back inside.

As he sat down at the table, she smiled, omniscient and amused. The woman on his left leaned close to him. “So, Monsieur Marin, what are they talking about, up in Paris?”

Degrave filled his glass from the new bottle. “They’re cold,” Casson said, “and miserable, and tired of waiting for it all to go away.”

A plate appeared in front of him, a slice of veal roast and a square of meat jelly, two potatoes, and a mound of those pale little canned peas the French secretly adored.

From the former diplomat: “Yes? And de Gaulle? What will he do about it?”

“Oh, that man!”

“Pompous ass.”

“How does it go—‘He has the character of a stubborn pig—but at least he has character.’ ”

“Well, I agree with the first part.”

“Who said that?”

“Reynaud. Before the boches got him.”

“Reynaud!”

“Really.”

“De Gaulle has his friends.”

“Yes, and what friends to have! Poets and professors, philosophers, the whole St.-Germain-des-Près crowd, gossiping in the cafés day and night. Resistance indeed! Resistentialists, somebody called them.”

“Oh Michel, that’s funny!”

“It won’t be so funny when the war ends and they end up running the country.”

“Well, better than the British.”

“My dear husband sees always the bright side.”

“Damn it, Yvonne . . .”

“Conchita, dear? Yoo-hoo! Would you bring Monsieur Marin a little more of the veal?”

When everybody had gone home, Casson and Degrave had a last glass of wine in the living room. “By the way,” Degrave said quietly, “I talked to some people about Hélène. They can get her out in March—she has to see a man called de la Barre. He lives in Paris, in the Seventh. You’ll tell her when we get back to the city.”

Casson said he would.

“I just wish it could be sooner.”

“Only two months. She’ll get through it,” Casson said.

14 JANUARY.

Tuesday morning, the mistral blowing hard, sea ruffled to white-caps. Casson walked down to the little store that sold everything and bought a copy of La Méditerranée. The Wehrmacht had retaken Feodosiya, in the Crimea, submarines had torpedoed an oil tanker off the coast of North Carolina, the Japanese advanced toward Singapore. Fighting the wind, Casson managed to turn to the Petits Annonces. Widows to marry, a ladder for sale. And, down the column: To sell—small apartment above garage. Inquire at Café des Marchands, rue de Rome. Which meant, your guns have arrived.

Later that morning he went to the address the lawyer had given him, the second floor of a building in the Old Port. Inside a highceilinged room with fans and tall shutters was one of the Frères Caniti, chandlers, dealing in rope, tar, varnish, and brass fittings.

A strange face, from another century. A black line for a mouth, eyes so deep-set they hid in shadow, sharp cheekbones, a monk’s fringe of dark hair. Like a medieval Pardoner in a Book of Hours, Casson thought. A face lit with saintly corruption. “You’re the one come for the shipment?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve had to go back out to sea. Off Cap Ferrat this morning.”

“Why is that?”

“There’s a problem.”

“Our understanding was that there wouldn’t be any problems.”

“Well, even so.”

“What’s gone wrong?”

“The customs service. Our person there has gone away.”

“And?”

“The new person will need to be compensated.”

“How much?”

“Forty thousand francs.”

Once this starts, he thought, it doesn’t stop. “I’ll have to see if it’s possible.”

“That’s up to you. But I wouldn’t waste too much time just now.” He nodded at the shutters, which banged and rattled in the wind. “They can’t stay out there forever, not in this. If they have to come into port, and the customs isn’t taken care of, the cargo goes over the side.”

“A few hours, then.”

“As you like, monsieur. We stand ready to assist you.”

Casson tried the telephones at the central post office, but there were too many detectives—dressed variously as sailors and businessmen—standing around the cabinets. He went to a smaller post office. Not perfect, but better.

The lawyer answered immediately.

“What the hell is going on?” Casson said.

“Take it easy, will you? Tell me what happened.”

“We’re being held up for money. ‘Oh yes, one last thing.’ ”

“That’s impossible.”

“No, it just happened.”

“Who’s involved?”

“Someone in the Old Port.”

“Merde.”

“Do something or it’s finished. We’ll send people to get the money back.”

“Let me try to take care of it.”

“Please understand—we don’t have a lot of time.”

“How’s it being put?”

“Somebody who used to help us isn’t helping anymore. Now, a new person has to be taken care of.”

“Hmm. Help in, uh, getting things stamped?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Where can I reach you?”

“I’ll call you. How late are you there, tonight?”

“Seven-thirty. Eight.”

“I’ll call back then. Maybe a little earlier.”

“All right. Don’t worry, I’ll get it taken care of.”

“Let’s hope so. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Good-bye.”

The Paris workshop of Robes Juno was on the second floor of a firetrap factory on the rue de Turenne, in the garment district. Marcel Slevin sat on a stool at his worktable, while up and down the aisles, women worked away at clattering sewing machines.

At twenty, a cutter, an aristocrat of the trade. If he didn’t get the pattern just right, nothing fit, the stores shipped the stuff back, end of season, end of Robes Juno. He took a used piece of yellow tracing paper from the wastebasket, tore off a corner. A little note to Comrade Weiss, he needed to see him.

Tough at twenty, he’d been on his own since he was sixteen and his father threw him out. No use for school, ran with the wrong crowd, gambled, drank, screwed—“Out!” That was all right with him. From then on, he did what he liked and made sure he had the fric to pay for it. He got a job as a delivery boy at Robes Juno, worked hard, played hard, and joined the garment workers’ local of the CGT, the communist labor union.

The family wasn’t completely gone, he had an uncle he kept in touch with, his mother’s brother, who saw life the same way he did. “We’re two of a kind, you and me,” he’d say. Slevin père was a Talmudic scholar, too holy and righteous to soil his hands making a living. Now and then he would buy and sell used office equipment, but mostly they lived on little bits of money that came their way, which Slevin’s mother managed so ferociously that they never quite starved. The evening of the Big Fight, Slevin had spent his savings to buy a Zazou coat, long and narrow, très gangster, much in favor among the guys who hung around the Pam-Pam and the Colisée. He wore it home from the store, they told him to take it back, he told them what he thought of them, and out he went.

Well, that was that. But he’d survived, had worked his way up to cutter, and Uncle Misch kept an eye on him. Smart, Uncle Misch. December of 1940, he’d found a way the family could get out of France, an old friend in South Africa was willing to help. But they couldn’t go—his father’s mother and aunt, in their eighties and frail, had to be taken care of, would never have survived the journey. So now they were all stuck.

His uncle always had a few francs. He played the markets, bought and sold goods “that fell off a truck,” and eventually came to own five or six little buildings around the ragged southern edge of Paris. Most of his tenants were Arabs, or Russian refugees from 1917, but one of his apartments wasn’t all that bad. Now he had a German renting it. “He lives in the barracks, down near Orly airfield, but he wanted a place in Paris.” A bomber pilot, his uncle said, who used the place for relaxation when he wasn’t busy setting London on fire. “A very refined gentleman,” his uncle said, “with a Von in front of his name. Goes out in a tuxedo.”

A bomber pilot. Slevin thought about that for a long time. Like thoroughbred horses, he figured. Hard to replace—you lost one of them, it mattered. Right about then, the guys in the union had put the word out—it’s time to deal with these assholes. For a year and a half they’d swaggered around the city, had free run of the place, made themselves at home. That had to stop. The message was clear: Uncle Joe needs you to break some heads.

A kid named Isidor Szapera, somebody Slevin knew to say hello to from the old neighborhood, had gotten there ahead of him. He’d never thought much of Szapera, with his good grades in school and his rich, zaftig girlfriend. Mr. Perfect. But Slevin had to admit, coming across the name in the newspapers—a hunted terrorist, thought to have been wounded—he felt a sharp little stab of jealousy. So now, it was his turn. And he wasn’t after clerks, or payroll trucks. Bomber pilots.

Now, for the note. Mon cher Monsieur Weiss? No. Cher comrade, then. No. Still too flowery. Just Comrade would do. That was straightforward, man-to-man. He went on to request a meeting, and suggested an answer could reach him at the factory. He slipped the note in an envelope, put his jacket on, and headed for the door.

On the way out he passed the new Polish girl, a whirlwind at her sewing machine. “Hey,” he said.

She looked up, startled. He was beetle-faced and small, his eyebrows grew together, and when he stood still he seemed to tremble with something held tight inside him, energy or anger.

“You like to go dancing?” he said.

Now she got it. “Well, sometimes.”

“Want to go with me? Thursday?”

“I can’t, Thursday.”

“How about Friday?”

“Well, all right.” She shook her hair back and smiled at him.

“I have to go out for a minute, when I come back we’ll make a time and place to meet.”

Whistling, he headed down the factory floor and out into the office. “Back in twenty minutes,” he called to the receptionist. The boss, drinking a cup of tea at his desk, looked up at him, but didn’t say anything. Bosses were a dime a dozen, the way Slevin saw it, but good cutters were hard to find.

Hunched over, hands in pockets, he hurried down Turenne, then turned on Ste.-Anastase. The street was blocked by trucks picking up racks of coats and dresses—it might be winter everywhere else but it was spring on the rue Ste.-Anastase. Florals, green and red, big patterns. And big sizes. For the big German bitches, he thought. Just once before he died he’d like to—

“Hey, mec.”

Louis, a guy he knew from party meetings. They shook hands, talked for a minute. “I’ve got to run,” Slevin said.

Louis punched him on the shoulder. “Sunday night.”

“I’ll be there.”

Two models came toward him, holding their arms around themselves to keep warm; wool hats pulled down over their ears. No modesty in these girls, he thought. They walked around in their slips all day while the buyers and the salesmen used them as mannequins. He gave them a look, but they pretended he didn’t exist. Snobs.

He cut over to Thorigny, then went down Elzévir. A nice laundress owned a shop there, sweet if you got on her good side. It was closed now—any reason? Stupid war, you never knew what was what. Over to Francs-Bourgeois, a narrow street but a main thoroughfare. Sometimes a German patrol came through here. He walked another minute, then stopped at an open stall where they sold dried fruit and nuts and took bets on horse races. He looked over the bins and his mouth watered; figs and dates and almonds and raisins. “Fifty grams of dried apricots,” he said. He hadn’t meant to do this, but he couldn’t resist.

He got the fruit and ate an apricot while waiting to pay. Fresh inside, soft, sharp, and delicious. He handed over the money, then the envelope. “This is for Monsieur Gris.”

The boy nodded. He was about fifteen, kept his yarmulke on with a bobby pin. The envelope disappeared into the fold of his apron.

“Thanks,” Slevin said.

Tuesday night, Casson called the lawyer in Paris. “It’s been straightened out,” the lawyer said.

“You’re sure?”

“Very sure. Go back tomorrow morning, everything is arranged.”

“All right.”

“I don’t know what gets into people. Enough is never enough.”

Casson went back on Wednesday morning—it was as though nothing had happened. We tried to cheat you, but you refused to be cheated, so now life goes on in the ordinary way. Business is business, we know you’ll understand.

“We’ll bring it in tonight. Around 1:30, but it could be later if the weather stays like this.”

“Delivered to the pier.”

“Yes, as specified. We’d like it moved before daylight.”

“Of course.”

A clerk knocked at the door and brought in demitasse cups of strong coffee, the real thing.

“I hope you’ll take a coffee with me.”

Nervous, Casson thought. Maybe even scared. The lawyer had found a way to be very persuasive.

“I wonder,” Casson said, “if we could buy some kind of merchandise, a normal Marseilles–Paris shipment, to cover up our crates?”

“What did you have in mind? Something in bulk, like jute? We ship it in burlap sacks.”

“No, we’ll want boxes of some kind. What about salt cod?”

“It would work, but we don’t have it. Closer to Easter we have it all the time.”

“What, then?”

“Sardines,” he said. “Tins packed in crates.”

“All right, sardines. How many crates would we need?”

“Tiens.” He took a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper from a drawer. “Your shipment from Syria is packed six to a crate—a hundred crates, thirty-eight pounds each, with the accompanying merchandise taking eight crates. So, a hundred and eight crates total, approximately . . . say, two tons.”

He jotted down a few numbers. “So then,” he said, “if you stack ten high, let’s see, eighty inches, say you go two by five, six by eleven feet. Put your eight additional boxes on their sides, about a foot. Then, to cover, you need a height of ten inches—sardine crates—times eight, then, also, you’ll want a double row in the back, given the way they operate at road blocks. So then, multiply by eleven, ten up. I would say . . . it looks to me like two hundred crates will do it. Which I can let you have at my price—ninety-six tins to a case, two hundred cases—call it a hundred and twenty thousand francs. Of course the jute would be less expensive, I’ll be happy to give you a price. But if you put the sardines on the black market in Paris, you’ll make that back easily. They aren’t bad, by the way. Packed in oil.”

“Olive oil?”

“Oil.”

Casson nodded. “I can give you the money tonight.”

“You see, if you have the two hundred crates, and you have a double stack in the rear of the truck, it won’t be a problem if you have to tell somebody, a policeman, ‘and while you’re back there, make sure and take a couple of crates for your family.’ ”

“You’ll have them delivered to the dock?”

“Our pleasure, monsieur.”

15 JANUARY.

The mistral sharpened after midnight and it started to rain in sudden gusts that drummed on the roof of the Pension Welcome and spattered the open shutters. Casson stared down at the waterfront; a set of slow-moving headlights, amber blurs in the rain-drops on the window. He put out a cigarette, lit another, looked at his watch. Paced the room, went back to the window.

A knock at the door.

“Yes?”

“Monsieur, your taxi.”

One last look around the room. He put on a sweater, a wool jacket, a peaked cap.

The dock was hidden away on the north side of the waterfront, beyond a long row of warehouses at the Bassin National. Just about abandoned, he thought. Built in Napoleon’s reign of quarried block, with an old customs shed about halfway out and a green warning light at the far end. The night sea was heavy and black, it rammed into the stone, broke across it, and ran back in small rivers. Even in the wind, Casson could smell dead fish and diesel oil.

The Pardoner was already there, wearing an oilcloth slicker, and Degrave showed up twenty minutes later. They stood inside the shack and smoked as rain blew sideways through the broken windows.

It was 2:40 before somebody spotted a bow light, dim in the mist and spray, bobbing up and down as it tried to work its way into shore. It took a half hour before the boat managed to dock, the old tires roped to its bow slamming against the stone as they tied up. The captain was very good, Casson realized, but it helped that the old hulk he commanded, two boom derricks angled up from amidships, had powerful engines hidden down below. He jumped easily onto the dock, younger than Casson expected, with a thin line of beard tracing his jaw and a Luger automatic worn in a shoulder holster over an old sweater. He shouted to the crew in a language Casson didn’t know, and they ran extra lines from the boat to iron rings set in the stone. He shook his head and said something to the Pardoner, who smiled sympathetically and patted him on the shoulder. The crew, barefoot, began to unload the crates, stacking them in the shed. Degrave set one of the crates on the floor and prised up the lid with a crowbar. The Pardoner took a flashlight from beneath his slicker, switched it on, then peeled back a sheet of oiled paper. “As ordered,” he said. The light revealed six submachine guns packed side by side, the black steel gleaming with Cosmoline.

It didn’t take long to finish unloading. And if, at some point, a customs officer was supposed to have played a part in this, he never showed up. They had paid for that, of course, along with everything else. When the crates were counted, everyone shook hands. The captain jumped back on deck, the engines growled as the lines were cast off, the bow light moved out to sea, then vanished.

Just after four in the morning, the truck showed up. Degrave had bought it in Nice a week earlier. Old and solid, it seemed to Casson, with a square radiator grille and a canvas tarpaulin stretched over metal hoops. Degrave paid the hired driver, who took his bicycle from the back and pedaled off into the rain.

Casson and Degrave loaded the truck by flashlight. A fifty-five-gallon drum of gasoline rode just behind the cab. Slowly, they packed the sardine crates around and on top of the guns. Not much camouflage, but better than nothing.

It was almost dawn by the time Degrave got the truck started. “There is one thing I promised to do,” he said. “Not much out of our way.” He jiggled the shift lever, then slowly let the clutch out. Right away it was clear that the weight of the load was not insignificant, not for this truck. They moved, but they could feel the engine strain. The truck had obviously lived a long, hard life—the speedometer frozen at thirty-eight, the other gauges long gone, leaving empty holes with a few wires hanging out. The engine sang, hauling the load up the hill from the dock. At the top they got out, unlatched the hood, and felt the radiator. Hot, but not boiling over. Degrave nodded with grim satisfaction.

“We’ll get there,” he said.

Degrave’s errand was in Cassis, an hour away. They pulled up in front of the villa and Degrave left the engine running and went inside. He came back almost immediately, his wife at his side. They said a few words, kissed, and held each other for a time. When they moved apart she rested her hands on his arms, spoke to him, then kissed him quickly. Degrave nodded, he would, and walked back to the truck. His wife waited at the doorway while Degrave started the engine. The wind was blowing hard and she held her hair back with one hand and watched them until they drove away from the house.

The truck rumbled down the hill, through Cassis, and north on Route 8.

Degrave was very quiet. “You’ve been married, I think,” he said at last.

“Yes,” Casson said. “For a few years, anyhow.”

“Then you understand.”

Casson said he did.

With morning, the rain fell back to a drizzle. The black surface of the road glistened in the winter light. They passed a road marker, thirty kilometers to Aix-en-Provence, PARIS—772.

There was a checkpoint north of Marseilles, where a few trucks and cars were pulled over by the side of the road. Most of the fish and wine moving up to Paris went by train, so the sardines were supposedly headed for Avignon. A gendarme glanced at the permit and waved them through without looking in the back.

Degrave took the main roads, kept a steady speed of fifty kilometers an hour, and reached Salon by midmorning. Then he drove northeast through the countryside, into the foothills of the Vaucluse and across the river Durance, where he turned into a country lane. “They hunt around here,” he said. “Mostly rabbits and birds, ducks sometimes, but every farmer has a shotgun.”

He parked under a plane tree, tight-mouthed as he turned off the ignition—maybe it starts again, maybe it doesn’t—then pulled a valise from beneath the seat. He unbuckled the straps and took out an automatic pistol. “Ever use one of these?”

“No. I shot a rifle—for a morning—when I was in the air service in 1916. The only time I’ve been around pistols is making movies.”

“It’s a Walther,” Degrave said. “German officer’s side arm.” The pistol had a bare snout, like a Luger, but the barrel was shorter. He broke the magazine free, handed it to Casson with a box of 9mm bullets, and showed him how to load it.

They climbed down the embankment of a stream. Degrave found a rock, smooth black basalt, and propped it up at the edge of the water. He paced off a distance down the stream and turned to Casson.

“All right, try to hit it.”

Casson pointed the gun, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand, the impact blew some dirt around a few inches from the rock.

He tried again, this time he hit the water.

“Once more.”

He held his breath, squeezed off the shot, same result.

“Let me try,” Degrave said. He took the gun from Casson, held it loosely at his side, brought it up level and, without coming to a full stop, pulled the trigger. A white chip appeared on the rock.

“Should I keep trying?”

Degrave handed the gun back. “Just keep it with you,” he said.

They drove into the late afternoon, Casson behind the wheel for a time, following the edges of the Rhône valley into the hills of Provence. There were two routes to Paris from the south: straight up to Lyons and Dijon, the ancient trade route; or west into the Massif Centrale, the Auvergne, then due north into the city. The mountain route had hairpin turns and steep grades, the valley route had police. Degrave’s idea was to work just east of the Rhône, village to village, on back roads.

They stopped in Carpentras and bought bread and cheese and pears and a few bottles of mineral water, enough for three days. When the sun was low on the horizon, they parked the truck and sat on the running board. Degrave cut up some of the bread and cheese and spread it on a sheet of newspaper. “We dine in style, chez nous,” he said. He carved a bad piece out of a pear, sliced a half off, and handed it to Casson.

“Not too bad,” Casson said. It was hard and burned by frost, but very sweet.

Degrave finished his share and wiped his hand on the newspaper. “I hope this is all worth it,” he said.

“There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about,” Casson said. “We’re giving them a thousand rounds for each of these guns but, according to Vasilis, the cartridge is hard to find. So, when they’ve used up the ammunition, that’s that.”

“Maybe, maybe not. You never know what they’re going to come up with—or they may have to come back to us for more. Fact is, we don’t want them to go to war. A thousand rounds doesn’t mean much in a military action—the Modèle 38 empties a thirty-two-round magazine in a few seconds. What you can use it for is assassination, attacks on convoys or banks. At that level of résistance, a submachine gun with a thousand rounds will raise hell.”

Degrave cut up another pear and handed a piece to Casson. “The sad fact is, the FTP is the best fighting group in France. They’re organized, disciplined, they have clandestine experience, and they control the unions. They’re brave. And cold-blooded— reprisals don’t concern them. We know what they can do, we’ve been enemies for twenty years.”

“And now, allies.”

Degrave smiled. “Raison d’état, as old as the world. I’ll tell you something, Casson. People in my trade have to live with some hard truths. One of them is that sometimes you want men and women to fight for freedom, sometimes you don’t.”

Degrave finished his pear, worked the porcelain cap free on one of the bottles, took a long drink, and handed it to Casson.

The water was cold, and tasted good despite the bitter mineral. “I’m going to sleep for a while,” Degrave said. “Four hours, then wake me up. You have guard duty until then.”

Casson tucked the Walther in his belt, back where it couldn’t be seen. Then he leaned against the door of the truck and watched the sun set.

16 JANUARY.

He woke up suddenly, cold and stiff, with no idea where he was or what he was doing—for a moment he thought he was on location, making a film. No, he was lying across the front seat of a truck, breathing gasoline vapor, the night beyond the windshield black and starless. He forced himself to a sitting position, cranked the window down. Degrave was standing by the front fender. “Almost dawn,” he said.

Casson took a sip from the water bottle, spit it out, then drank. He lit a cigarette, and rubbed his eyes. “My turn to drive,” he said.

The narrow dirt roads zigzagged northwest, northeast. Sometimes they had to drive south. The villages got darker and quieter as they neared the center of the country, people stared from doorways. There were no cars on the road, sometimes a horse and cart, once a wagon loaded down with cut lavender.

At seven in the morning they stopped so Degrave could probe the gas tank with a stick. “Not good,” he said, checking the level against a mark he’d made the day before. “Let’s go another hour, then fill up.”

Casson tried to save gas, pushed the clutch in going downhill, which worked until he tried to slow down. Third gear screamed as the pedal came up, and he had to double-clutch to ram the thing into second. Still too fast. A sudden curve, he fought the wheel, the back end started to swing. He hit the brake, the pedal went to the floor. Degrave swore. Casson tried again, pumping gently until he felt it grab. At last the road flattened out and Casson let the truck coast to a stop. His hands were shaking.

Degrave stared out his window, into the gorge at the bottom of the hill. “Probably all kinds of old trucks down there,” he said. He turned to Casson. “I’ll drive, if you like.”

“Next village,” Casson said.

The next village was Beaufort-St.-Croix. An old woman in a shawl hobbled past the parked truck, a basket over her arm. She stared at them—who are you? Don’t stop here.

Degrave drove to the other end of the village and pulled over. By the road was a wayfarer’s shrine, a cross of woven willow twigs on a wooden box atop a post; inside, a carved saint, his white robes and red wounds faded by snow and sunlight.

Degrave unscrewed the cap on the gasoline drum, ran a rubber hose from the drum to the gas tank, sucked on the line, and eventually got it to flow—siphoning worked better in theory than in practice. He spat gasoline on the ground when he was done, then got behind the wheel and started up the mountain road. Carefully, he maneuvered the truck over a long patch of black ice, then stood on the brake as they sped down a steep grade. “Another day of this and it’s behind us,” he said.

Casson leaned over to get a better angle in the rearview mirror. On the way into Beaufort he’d seen a black Citroën appear and disappear as the road curved. It could certainly go faster than ten miles an hour, but didn’t bother to pass.

“You still have the Citroën?” he said a few minutes later.

Degrave looked up at the mirror. “Yes.”

“What’s he want?”

“Maybe nothing.”

He accelerated, a minute went by, then he sped up a little more. “Stays right there,” he said. “Since Beaufort.”

“Earlier,” Casson said.

The road widened and Degrave let the truck roll to a stop. “Get out for a minute,” he said.

Casson stood by the side of the road, unbuttoning his fly. As he stared down at the weeds, the Citroën went by, very slow and determined. When he got back in the truck Degrave said, “About nineteen, the driver. There are three of them, they’re wearing armbands.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

They waited twenty minutes, plenty of time for the Citroën to go on its way, to disappear.

Degrave threw his cigarette away and looked at his watch. “Enough,” he said. “If they are actually going somewhere, we’ll never see them again.” He got behind the wheel, coaxed the engine to life, and raced it in neutral a few times.

“It sounds to me,” Casson said, “like we have unwatered gasoline.”

“We do. You wouldn’t believe what I had to pay in Nice to get it. Nowadays it’s like buying wine, you have to know the vintage.”

Degrave turned the truck onto the road and moved off slowly. Almost immediately they began to climb, past sloping meadows used to graze livestock in the spring and summer. Five minutes passed, then ten more. Casson kept looking at his watch. The road crested a hill, then turned left. The truck slowed as they climbed a steep curve past stone barns on the mountainside.

“I like this better than the south,” Degrave said.

“So do I.”

“Ever make a movie here?”

“No.”

“Nobody bothers with it, the Dauphine.”

“What would you do—lovers on the run?”

“Why not?”

Casson shrugged. “You ever know any lovers on the run?”

Degrave laughed. “No, now that you mention it.”

“And, if they ran, they wouldn’t run here.”

“They’d run to Paris.”

“That’s right,” Casson said. “And there goes the scenery.”

Fifteen minutes. Casson had another look in the mirror. Black and low, long hood, flat top on the passenger compartment, running boards swept gracefully into panels that curved over the front wheels. A Citroën 7C—you saw them everywhere.

“Still with us,” Casson said.

Degrave sighed. “I know,” he said.

The Citroën followed them around another curve, then, when the road ran level, it sped up and drove alongside the truck. From the passenger seat window, an arm waved for them to pull over.

Degrave took his foot off the gas. “All right,” he said, sounding tired. “Let’s get it over with.”

The truck rolled to a stop. On both sides of the road were hay fields cut down in autumn; up ahead, an old forest with large, bare oak trees. The Citroën pulled up a few feet away, blocking a sudden escape.

Nineteen was about right, Casson thought as the driver got out. The second might be a little older—tall and fat, wearing a ski sweater with a snowflake pattern. The third was younger, maybe the driver’s younger brother. They all wore armbands, white initials stitched on a blue field—MF, for Milice Française. The driver, clearly the leader, was working on a mustache and goatee, but he was fair-haired and it was going to take a long time. Village lothario, Casson thought. The others waited by the car while the leader approached the truck. He had his hand in the pocket of his jacket—more than a hand, a revolver, from the way he strutted. Perhaps something Papa brought home from the war.

“Milice,” Degrave said. One of Pétain’s militia units—La Jeunesse de Maréchal, La Jeunesse Patriote, they had all sorts of names. Dedicated foes of France’s enemies: Jews, Bolsheviks—outriders for the Tartar hordes from the east, just waiting to sweep across Europe.

The leader stood at the door of the truck and stared up at Degrave.

“Good morning,” Degrave said. He said it well, Casson thought. You’re a kid and I’m a grown man and there can only be courtesy between us.

Casson saw the leader’s chin rise. “We’re on patrol up here,” he said. “We watched you in Beaufort.”

“Yes?”

“That’s right. Saw you put gas in your truck.”

“And so?”

“We could use some ourselves.”

“Hey, look,” Degrave said, man-to-man. “We’re taking some stuff up to Paris—you understand what I mean? We don’t mind donating some money to the cause, but gasoline is hard to get, and we have to go all the way up north.”

“What stuff?”

“Sardines, this trip. We won’t miss a couple of cases.”

“I guess you won’t.” He laughed. It meant he wanted money and the sardines and the gasoline too. All of it.

“Take a look in the back,” Degrave said. Then, to Casson, “Show him what we have.”

The leader made a gesture with his head and said “Allez, Jacquot.” His pal in the ski sweater walked toward the back of the truck. Casson jumped down to the road and went around the other side. He started to untie the rope that held the tarpaulin together. Jacquot stood next to him, too close. “Get a move on,” he said. “We don’t have all day.”

Casson pulled the tarpaulin open. “See for yourself,” he said. Jacquot put a foot on the iron step, climbed onto the truck bed, and started to inspect the merchandise. The crates were stenciled CON-SERVERIE TEJADA—BEZIERS. Sardines en Boîtes.

Suddenly the leader started talking—Casson couldn’t hear the words but the tone was tough and impatient. Degrave’s answer was soothing. From inside the truck, Jacquot called, “You better get up here and help me unload this stuff.” He was standing in shadow, one hand resting on the stacked crates.

“I’ll be right there.”

Casson never knew who shot first or why, but there were five or six reports from the front of the truck. Somebody shouted, a car door opened, somebody screamed “Maurice!” When Casson saw Jacquot’s hand move, he grabbed for the Walther, pulled it free of his belt, and forced the hammer back with his thumb. In front, a shot, then another, from a different gun. Jacquot’s hand came out from under his sweater, Casson fired twice, then twice more. Jacquot grunted, there was a flash in the shadows. Casson ducked away and ran around to the front of the truck. On the road by the Citroën, somebody lay on top of a rifle.

Casson crouched down, edged around the hood until he could see the other side. He heard somebody cough. It sounded strange in the silence. He leaned out as far as he dared, the gun ready in his hand. The leader was sitting with his back propped against the rear tire, breathing hard, one hand inside his shirt.

“Casson?” That was Degrave, his voice hoarse and thick. Casson stepped out from behind the hood. The leader stared at him, then turned away and closed his eyes. Casson could see his chest rise and fall as he tried to breathe.

Casson opened the door, there were two holes in the metal. Degrave was white. He swallowed once, then said, “I need help, I think.” There was blood on his shirt. For a moment he stared out into the distance. “We have to go,” he said. “But first, make sure here.”

Casson went to the back of the truck. Jacquot lay curled up on his side, eyes wide open. Casson could smell sardines, and an oil stain had spread across the wood flooring. Casson tugged at the body, dragging it back until its weight toppled it over the edge and onto the road.

He walked over to the car. The man he’d thought was a younger brother still lay sprawled across the rifle, his blood a dark patch in the dirt. Casson returned to the truck. The leader seemed to be resting, almost asleep. He opened his eyes and saw Casson standing beside him. “I surrender,” he said, raised one hand, then let it fall.

Casson aimed carefully and shot him in the temple. The report echoed over the fields and faded away.