Red Gold

AUTUMN RAINS

Paris. 4 November.

At dawn, a few snowflakes drifted past the window of the Hotel Benoit. In the park across the street, piles of wet leaves had mounded up against the trunks of the chestnut trees. Casson stared out at the gray sky, no point in going to bed now. On the table by the bed a Remarque novel, a battered copy he’d bought at a bouqiniste’s stall by the river. He had been reading for most of the night-late summer in Paris, war on the way, a doomed love affair.

He got dressed, hating the clothes he put on every day. Life without money, he thought, shuddering at the cold, damp shirt against his skin. Out in the street it was busy, a sharp wind moving people along. He trotted down the Metro steps, waited on the platform, and worked his way into a crowded car. Silent, nobody talked, just the rumble echoing off the tiled walls.

He got off in a nondescript district in the 15th. Just outside the exit, an arrest in progress. The Gestapo at work, he suspected. The men in suits, standing to one side, were Germans. They watched as French policemen led a line of men and women out of an apartment house, a long chain encircled their waists and they wore handcuffs. The Gestapo men were silent; speculative, watchful. It wasn’t quite so easy as it used to be, being German in Paris.

He found the building and pressed the outside buzzer but the concierge didn’t come. He had to wait for somebody to leave, then held the door, went inside, walked up three flights, and rang a doorbell.

“Casson! My God, of all the world.”

“Hello, Charne,” he said. They shook hands, then embraced. Charne was fat as an old bear, with long white hair that hung down the sides of his face like wings, and, as always, a cigarette with an inch of ash between his yellowed fingers. “Come in, come in,” he said.

They sat in the kitchen, by a little coal-burning stove. Charne had worked for him on three pictures. He was one of the best makeup people in Paris, steady and sure. “Are you doing anything?” Casson asked.

Charne shrugged. “A little. Now and then. Just to stay alive, you know.”

“You look well.”

“You also. I don’t hear your name, lately, I thought, maybe…”

“I’m-well, I don’t walk past police stations.”

From Charne, a laugh that ended in a cough. “Who does?”

“Actually,” Casson said, “it’s a little worse than that.”

Charne nodded, he understood.

“I need, I need to be out in the city. I need a disguise.”

“Ah-ha, la barbe!” The beard. Charne made a face and winked, the comic conspirator.

Casson laughed. “I know, but it’s serious.”

“Forgive me, Casson, but the idea of you in a wig, well.” He smiled at the idea. “That’s not the way, believe me. From time to time I used to have, what would you say, a private client. Once, even, a bank robber. A Belgian, or so he said. And what I said to him I’ll say to you: it’s done with small touches, as many as you can manage.”

Casson nodded.

“Come to the window.”

Charne studied his face in the light, turned it sideways, then back. “All right, then,” he said. “Grow a mustache, just a plain one will do. No muttonchops, no goatee. Some hair under the nose, to the edges of your lips, and if it comes in gray, so much the better. You can add a touch of color if it doesn’t. Go to the pharmacie, they’ll have something you can use. Then, let your hair grow, change the part, put it over on the other side. Wear a dark shirt, with a dark tie-you’d be surprised what that does, it changes your place in life, and that changes the way you look.”

He went into another room, rummaged around in bureau drawers, brought back a pair of eyeglasses with dark frames, and put them on Casson. “There. Just grow a little mustache and you’ll look like your poor cousin from Lyons.”

Casson stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He brushed his hair back the other way. Now, he thought, he was beginning to look like somebody who looked like Jean Casson. Charne came over and stood in the doorway.

“Well?”

“I think it works.”

“Of course, we can do more. I had a look around back there- you can be Madame de Pompadour by dinnertime, if you like.”

“Powdered wig?”

Charne raised his hands-of course. “Even a beauty mark on your boob.”

“I’ve always wanted that.”

“We’ll rent you a little dog.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Casson said.

“There is one thing you had better be prepared for.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll run into somebody, barely an acquaintance, it never fails. ‘Hello, Casson. You look like you’ve lost weight.’ But, even so, you’re better off keeping it simple. Stuff your cheeks with cotton wadding and it’ll wind up in the soup.”

Back in the kitchen, Charne poured two little glasses of Calvados, precious stuff. “For old times,” he said. “I liked working on your pictures, Casson. You knew what was what.”

“Sante,” Casson said.

“Sante.”

Casson drank the Calvados and was silent for a moment. “Do you ever hear anything of Citrine?” he said.

Charne thought a moment. “Somebody mentioned her,” he said. “But I don’t remember who it was.”

“I just wondered,” Casson said.

They talked for a while, old times, studios and directors, how it was before the war. Finally Casson stood to go. “Thank you for the eyeglasses,” he said.

“Oh, don’t mention it. Maybe sometime we’ll work on a picture.”

“Sometime,” Casson said.

It rained the first week in November. The streets were dark and he felt safe, invisible, head down like all the world, moving quickly, just one more shadow in the twilight. He found Fougere, from the electricians’ union, at a small office out in Sarcelles, in the Red Belt to the north and east of the city. But there was nothing for him there. They talked for a few minutes, Casson probed for an opening that he was never offered. Fougere had no reason to trust him and they both knew it. “It seems,” Casson said, “that only the FTP is fighting the Germans.”

“Yes, it does seem that way,” Fougere said. “But you know how they are.”

He retreated, asking Fougere not to mention that he’d been by. That much he thought he’d won, but nothing else. The party had always been secretive-Lenin and Dzherzhinsky and the Cheka and all the rest of it-communists didn’t chatter, not even in France.

Next he looked for Louis Fischfang, his former screenwriter. They’d said good-bye in the spring of ’41, when Fischfang disappeared into the underground, taking up full-time work for the party. Casson had wished him well, and given him money. He tried the various contacts he remembered-the owner of a newsstand, a furrier in the 13th, but nobody had seen him. One apartment he’d used had a new tenant. A woman he’d lived with had “gone away,” according to the neighbors.

A few days later, he had another meeting with Degrave. He said he’d managed to make a few contacts, but had nothing in particular to report. Degrave was understanding, it was early in the game. After ten minutes, another man joined them. Degrave’s superior, he guessed, though like Degrave he was in civilian clothing. He was introduced as “Michel,” obviously an alias. Casson thought of him as de Something. Nobility. He was older than Degrave, white and soft, with small, sharp eyes sparkling with the de Somethings’ ancient amusement at the play of human weakness, and pleasure in what it brought them. Power and privilege, Casson thought, but that sounded too much like a tract. “What you are doing is important, monsieur,” the man said to him. He had a high, gentle voice, every word beautifully formed.

Coming out of the Metro that night, Casson was approached by an older woman. “Pardon, monsieur, I believe you dropped this.” She handed him a slip of paper:

Citizens of Paris! On 4 November, three militants of the FTP were martyred on behalf of the French people. Eva Perlemere, Leon Szapera, and Natan Kohn died as heroes in action against the Wehrmacht on Route 17 outside Aubervilliers. Follow their example! For Hitler, not a grain of wheat, not a foot of railroad track or an inch of telephone cable, not one hour of peace. Vive la France!

Casson had seen this reported on the front page of Paris-Soir. TERRORIST ATTACK THWARTED ON ROUTE 17! They were Jews and communists, the story said, “social criminals,” and they didn’t care if they brought down heavy reprisals on the French people in their “blind pursuit of a Bolshevik France.” They were inspired, it turned out, “not by patriotic motives, but by slavish obedience to Article 25 of the Communist Party program drawn up at the Sixth Congress in Moscow in 1928.”

Where are you? Casson thought. Who do I know who knows where you are? He sat in his room and made lists of names. Radicals from his days at the Sorbonne. Friends from his early twenties in the Latin Quarter. People in the film business-directors, agents, actors, accountants, lawyers, producers, and more. Eventually, he wrote down the name Alexander Kovar.

Kovar was a writer. Anything you could write, plays, novels, newspaper articles, and pamphlets, Kovar had written, going back fifteen years at least. In 1936, Casson had come across one of his novels, The House on Calle Alcala, based on the outbreak of fighting between monarchists and anarchists in Madrid in 1931, fighting set off when two aristocrats beat a taxi driver to death in front of a monarchist club on the Calle Alcala-beat him for calling out “Viva la Republica!”

Casson had liked the story-almost unconsciously blanking out the political posturing and the straw men-in the way that film producers like certain novels. He had persuaded himself he might buy it, at least take an option if he could get it for a good price. There was rioting, plotting, passionate conspiracy in the back rooms of cafes and, by the time the book was published and Casson got interested, the novel had proved to be prophetic-it was 1936 and Spain was truly on fire. In fact, and Casson was honest with himself, he was more than anything curious about the writer, who had a knowing hand with action scenes. In the end, however, lunch and a meeting and life went on.

But he’d liked Kovar. And he knew how to find him. If he was alive, if the communists or the fascists or the Germans or the street girls hadn’t already done for him, because they’d certainly all tried it. If he was alive, Casson thought, and not locked up in some dungeon.

He took a train ride to Melun, a little way south of Paris. Found the shoe-repair shop, left a message, for “Anton,” that he was an old friend and could be found by calling at the Hotel Benoit and asking for “Marin.” The following night, a young woman came to his room. “I’m a friend of Anton,” she said. “Who are you?”

“I used to be a film producer, called Casson.”

She glowered at him. “Oh. And now?”

“A fugitive.”

“For a fugitive,” she said, looking around the hotel room, “you don’t do too badly.”

“Quand meme,” he said. Even so.

As she left, Casson was reminded of a rather casual remark Degrave had made in one of their discussions. “When you’re looking for somebody, and you find yourself in contact with people you’ve never met, you’re getting close.”

The next morning he found a message waiting for him at the desk: Gare du Nord, 5:15 P.M., Track 16. He waited there for fifteen minutes, took a few steps toward the exit, then the young woman from the day before appeared at his side and said, “Please come with me.”

He followed her through the rain to a run-down office building a few blocks behind the station on the rue Petrelle. She turned, came back to him and said, “On the third floor, turn left. It’s at the end of the hall.”

The building was ice-cold and dark. And silent-when he left the staircase at the third floor, his footsteps echoed down the corridor. On the door at the end of the hall, the former tenant’s name, the ghost of lettering scraped off the pebbled glass.

Casson knocked, then entered. Kovar was sitting in a swivel chair behind a desk piled with account ledgers. On the pull-out shelf was an old Remington typewriter.

“Nice to see you again,” Casson said.

Kovar inclined his head and smiled to acknowledge the greeting. He indicated a chair, Casson sat down. “A surprise,” Kovar said. There was faint irony in his voice but, as Casson remembered it, that was true of everything he said. “Sorry I can’t offer you anything. This is somebody else’s office by day, I only use it at night.” His chair creaked as he leaned forward. “You can’t really be a fugitive, can you?” The idea seemed to amuse him.

“I escaped from the rue des Saussaies. Last June.” The address was that of the Gestapo administrative headquarters. “Then I was staying up in place Clichy, here and there, until a week ago.”

Kovar nodded-it might be true. “And now?”

“I’ve been asked to make contact with the FTP.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

Kovar smiled. Casson could just manage to see him in the dark office. He hadn’t changed, had been fifty years old all his life. A shaggy, tobacco-stained mustache on the face of a mole, receding hairline, slumped shoulders. His body small, meager, almost weightless-a rag doll to be punched and kicked and thrown against the wall, which pretty exactly described what had been done to it. Gray shirt, green tie, a shabby jacket. Years earlier, Fischfang had told him Kovar’s story: his father a French citizen of Russian birth, his mother, born in Bratislava, died when he was twelve. He’d been in and out of prison in France, for political crimes, had broken with Stalin, then with Trotsky. The NKVD had tried to assassinate him after he’d been thrown out of the party. He’d essentially raised himself, educated himself, trained himself to write, got himself into trouble, found misfortune wherever he went, and somehow survived it all. “He’s worse than a Marxist,” Fischfang had said in 1936, “he’s an idealist.”

Kovar sighed. “You weren’t such a bad sort,” he said. “A romantic, maybe. But now you’ve gone and-I mean, who asked you to find the FTP?”

“Army officers. A resistance group.”

“They know you’re talking to me?”

“No.”

“But you believe what they tell you.”

Casson thought about that for a moment. “When the occupation began, I tried to do nothing. It worked for a time, then it didn’t. So I decided to do whatever I could, and very quickly came to understand that you can never be sure. Either you put your life in the hands of people you don’t entirely trust, or you hide in a corner.”

“Yes-but army officers?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. For one thing, they probably hold the FTP responsible, the entire Left for that matter, for what happened here in 1940. What do they want with them now?”

“To talk. A marriage of convenience, perhaps. We’re in trouble, Kovar, that much I know. My friends, the crowd I knew before the war, either do nothing or collaborate. They’ve adapted. It’s reported in the newspapers that one of the city’s most prominent hostesses gives dinner parties for German officers. At each place, for table decoration, are crossed French and German flags. Her toast to the commandant of Paris, the paper said, was dedicated to ‘the most charming of our conquerors.’ Well, it’s not news that some of us are whores in this country. But it’s just possible that some of us aren’t.”

“You’ll pay for that, you know,” Kovar said, rather gently. “If they find out you feel that way.”

“Then I’ll pay.” He paused, then said, “Can you help? Will you?”

Kovar thought it over. “I understand what you’re doing, looking for party combat units. What your army officers see is action- blood spilled for honor, and that they understand better than anything in the world. Problem is, I don’t think I’m the one to help you. These people, the FTP, are Stalinists, Casson, and they don’t like me. They don’t like anarchists-they were killing them in the fall of ’17, in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. They murdered the POUM leadership in Spain-NKVD operatives did that-and I’m no different. I grew up with a copy of Verhaeren in my pocket. ‘Drunk with the world, and with ourselves, we bring hearts of new men to the old universe.’ By all odds I shouldn’t even be alive, I’ve been living on borrowed time since 1927. I’m sure you know, Casson, I tried being a communist, I managed for ten years but in the end it didn’t work. They saw, finally, that they couldn’t tell me what to do, and that was the end of that.”

“You have friends,” Casson said.

A long pause, and a reluctant nod of the head. “Maybe,” he said. “I have to think about it.”

“Petit conard!” You little jerk. A woman’s voice, furious, held, barely, just below a full-blooded scream, thundered through Casson’s wall.

“No, wait, now look, we never said…” The whine of the falsely accused.

“I hate you.”

“Now look…” He lowered his voice as he told her where to look.

Casson had fallen asleep, face down on Remarque. He looked at his watch, 2:20 in the afternoon.

The middle of the day, offices closed for lunch, a busy time at le Benoit.

Degrave took him to dinner, brought along his mistress, Laurette, and her friend, Helene. Laurette blonde and soft, Helene the prettier one, dark, with a lot of mascara, glossy black hair cut stylishly-expensively-short, wearing bijoux fantasie, gold-painted wooden bracelets, that clacked as she ate. Fortyish, Casson thought. She was tense at first, then talkative and bright. Casson liked her. While Degrave and Laurette were busy with each other, he told her how he’d once been hounded by lawyers when his production company had misplaced four hundred false beards meant for a musical version of Samson and Delilah. She hooted, covered her mouth, then put a hand on his arm and said, “Forgive me, I haven’t done that for a long time.”

Generous of Degrave to take them out, Casson thought. A black-market restaurant, one the Germans hadn’t yet discovered. Roast chicken: months since Casson had tasted anything like that. He wanted to tear it apart and eat it with his fingers, maybe rolling around with it under the table. And a ’27 Meursault. From beneath the table, excited growling and snarling, then silence, then a hand appears, holding an empty glass.

“Je vous remercie,” Casson said, the nicest way to say thank you. Degrave shrugged and smiled. “Why not,” he said.

When the chicken bones were taken away, the owner came to the table. “Mes enfants,” she said.

They looked up expectantly.

“I can make an egg custard for you.”

“Yes, of course,” Degrave said.

“Twenty minutes.”

“All right.”

“Are you going back tonight?” Helene said to Degrave.

“I’m staying over,” he said. “If I can get a train reservation for Friday.”

“He can,” Laurette said. She had moved her chair so she could be close to him. “If he likes.”

Degrave’s smile was tart. “I can do anything.” He rested a hand on Laurette’s shoulder and kissed her on the forehead.

“Salaud,” she said.

Degrave and Laurette went off in a bicycle taxi, Casson and Helene stood in the drizzle. “Can I take you home?” Casson said.

She hesitated.

“See you to the door, then.”

“Could we go to your room?”

Tiens. “Of course.”

The hotel was not far from the restaurant, so they walked. She lived, she explained, in a maid’s room in an apartment owned by an old woman, a family friend. “I am an Alsatian Jew,” she said, “from Strasbourg. Ten years ago I moved to Paris and rented a small apartment. Then, a few weeks after the Germans came, the landlord told me I had to find someplace else-his sister wanted the apartment. I don’t think he has a sister, but at least he was polite about it. I went to see my mother’s old friend, a widow for many years. She was lonely, she said, would I come and stay with her?

“For a few months, everything went well. This woman-who is not Jewish, by the way-had been a teacher in a lycee. We talked about books and music, we were good company for each other. But then, she changed. She was ill in the winter of ’41, and she became obsessed with the Germans. She made it clear that she’d like me to leave. The problem is, when they said Jews had to register, I didn’t-something told me not to. Now I can’t get a change of residence permit from the prefecture-if she throws me out I have nowhere to go. So, I stay. I’m very quiet. I don’t cause trouble. She has made a point of telling me not to bring strangers there. She’s afraid of being robbed, or murdered, I don’t know exactly what.”

“Why not move to a hotel?”

“Can’t afford it. I work in a travel agency, a good one, on the Champs-Elysees. The offices are splendid, but the pay is low.”

“Can your family help?”

“I don’t think so. The family’s been in Strasbourg since the Middle Ages, but when my parents heard the stories of the refugees coming from Germany, they became frightened. The Germans have always claimed that Alsace rightfully belongs to them. My parents feared, after Chamberlain gave away the Sudetenland in ’38, that France might use it to buy off Hitler. So they sold everything and went to live in Amsterdam. My brother and his family had emigrated just after the first war-he went into business with his in-laws in Montreal. My mother pleaded with me to come to Holland with them, but I wouldn’t. I liked the life in Paris, I was seeing someone, and nothing was going to happen to France and its glorious army.”

It had been a long time, Casson thought, back at the Benoit. For her too, apparently-trembling as he undid her bra and her breasts tumbled out. He almost fell asleep afterward, warm in a way he barely remembered. He propped himself up on one elbow and smoothed the damp hair back off her forehead.

“It’s funny,” she said, “how things happen. Laurette asked me to come along. I said no, she insisted. She’s been kind to me, more than kind, so finally I had to come. I’m going to hate it, I thought. But then…” Idly, she ran a fingernail up and down the inside of his thigh. “See?” she said. “I’m flirting with you.”

“Mm.”

“Is your name really Jean?”

“I’m called Jean-Claude.”

“A film producer.”

“Yes, before the war. But I shouldn’t talk about the past.”

“It doesn’t matter. Laurette told me all this has to be kept quiet.” She laid her head on his chest, heavy and warm. “Poor Laurette,” she said. “Degrave’s wife is rich. And mean as a snake. Laurette used to dream of marriage, but it’s not to be.”

Casson put a hand on her hip, smooth down there. “I shouldn’t talk about these things,” she said. “But it all seems like nothing now, with the world the way it is. I never imagined what it would all come to. Never imagined.”

His fingers traced idly along the curve, up and back. “Yes,” she said, “I like that.”

They stopped Weiss at a Kontrol, the early evening of 15 November, in the Saint-Michel Metro station. Pulled him out of line and made him open his briefcase. “What’s all this?” the German sergeant said, holding a sheaf of blank paper. “For leaflets, maybe, huh?”

Weiss studied the hands; thick fingers, with cracked nails and callus. “I’m a printing salesman,” he explained. “See, it’s the same name and address on each piece of paper, but the lettering is different. Personal stationery. Maybe, ah, maybe you’d like to have something like this for yourself?”

“Me?” the sergeant said. This was something that had never occurred to him. “Well, I don’t know. I mean-what could I have? I stay at a barracks.” He paged through the sheets. “But my wife, in Germany, she would be thrilled to have such a thing.”

Weiss took a pen from his pocket. “Here, just write down your name and address, and I’ll get it made up for you.”

“French stationery?”

“Yes.”

The sergeant began writing, slow but determined, carving the letters onto the paper, then handed it over to Weiss. “Jurgenstrasse,” Weiss said.

“Yes. And it must look exactly that way. Can you print the German alphabet?”

“Oh yes. We have all the German fonts.”

“Well.” He was very pleased. “Could I have it by the twentieth, to send to her?”

“Of course. I’ll see to it.”

“It’s her birthday.”

“You may count on it, sir.”

“It must be quite costly, this kind of thing.”

“With my compliments.”

“Ah, all right then.”

“If you write down your name and address in Paris, I’ll have it sent over in a day or two.”

“Yes, of course.” He started writing. “Meanwhile, maybe I’d better have a look at your work permit.”

Weiss thumbed through the papers in his wallet, took out his work permit, and showed it to the sergeant.

“Good,” the sergeant said. Then, in a stern voice, “Alles in Ordnung.” He gave Weiss a friendly wink and a smile, then whispered “She will be so happy.”

Paris. 16 November.

He had a second meeting with Kovar, this time in response to a note slipped under his door at the Benoit. Late at night he thought he heard something, then decided he didn’t and went back to sleep. They met in the same office, in the early evening. The weather had turned cold, he could see his breath when he talked. This time the shade was up and the moon, in the upper corner of the tall window, cast silver shadows on the walls.

“I found a way to talk to some friends,” Kovar said.

“Good.”

“Old friends. We were in the streets together, marching, fighting, and we were in the jails together. One doesn’t toss that away so easily. They follow the line, of course, they are good communists. But then, they are also Frenchmen, some of them anyhow, and for the French, having one’s own opinion is a kind of religion.”

Casson smiled.

“There’s one in particular-he made no promises, simply said he’d see what he could do. I hope you understand that he’s putting himself in danger. The Paris apparat is under intense pressure right now, because the Germans are about to take Moscow, they’re close enough to see the last stop on the tram line.”

“Will Stalin fight in the city?”

“To the end. Then he’ll burn it to the ground. But, so what? The reality is, all they have now is the weather. The rasputitsa, the autumn rains. The earth turns to mud-some days they have to maneuver their tanks with shovels and logs. And, soon enough, it will snow. Not German snow. Russian snow.”

“General Winter.”

Kovar shrugged. “So-called. But the signs are all bad. The Moscow factories have been moved to the Urals, and the NKVD has packed up and left town. Sometime last week, wireless transmissions broken off in midsentence. What does that say to you?”

“Nothing good.”

Kovar thought for a moment. “Of course, Russian wars always seem to go like this. Chaos and defeat and slaughter. Followed by the execution of those who tried to sound the warning. It’s just the way they are. But then something happens. In Napoleon’s campaign it was winter, and some kind of tick that killed thousands. In 1917 it was revolution. The Russian land defends itself-that’s the mystics’ version.”

“I’ve read it can be sixty below zero in December.”

“And colder. The Wehrmacht will have to heat their machine-gun barrels over a fire before they can use them.” Kovar smiled. “Only the Russians could get themselves into a position, in 1941, where sabers and horses really matter.”

“How do you know all this?” Casson said.

“Oh, it’s talk,” Kovar said. “But it’s good talk.”

Casson was cold; he got up, walked around, rubbed his hands together. “Your friend,” he said. “When do you think he might try?”

“Who knows? He’s a survivor, he’ll wait for the right moment. Of course, he might move a little faster if he knew a little more.”

“I don’t think it’s all laid out. Just French army officers, a center of resistance. I don’t know what they intend to do-spy for the British? Blow up power stations? It could be anything.”

He walked to the window and stared out. “We’re just attorneys, Kovar. We represent two principals who may need to cooperate but cannot be seen to do so. A few years ago I worked with a Swiss lawyer. This man had a particular specialty, back-to-back negotiations. Two parties negotiate entirely through a third party so that they don’t ever know who they’re talking to. We may, eventually, come to something a lot like that-the parties will be known, the individuals invisible.”

Casson could see that this made sense to Kovar. “On the other hand, it may just be a matter of setting up a single meeting, then gracefully leaving the stage.”

Kovar shook his head slowly. “Somehow I doubt it will be that easy.”

Casson laughed. “No, it never is.”

They were silent for a time, then Casson said, “How do you make a living these days?”

“Oh, I survive. Always under false ID, always in some lost corner of the world. For a time I had the perfect job, at Samaritaine, the big department store. Every night, after hours, they wax the floors. First it’s the cleaners, then the waxers and polishers. The wax is rubbed in with cloths and left to dry for a half hour or so. The best way to polish it is with felt slippers-shuffling along from one end of the room to the other. I’m sure somebody used to do it at your house.”

“Yes,” Casson said. “Once a week.”

“What they do at Samaritaine is hire people to wear the felt slippers, a dozen or so. The usual crowd who work the night in Paris, each one a little more cracked than the next, ‘the princess,’ ‘the Albanian,’ I suppose I was ‘the novelist.’ The boss wasn’t a bad guy, lost an arm in the 1914 war, he’d play music on a Victrola, usually waltzes, but you could do any step you liked as long as you stayed in contact with the floor. It’s hypnotic, of course. The wood is dull to start with, then glows as you polish. We’d work our way from floor to floor, skating around the towels and the blankets and the brooms. On the sixth, we’d each put on a lady’s hat from the display trees-a little joke-the violins sawing away on The Vienna Woods. Well, I used to think, Cocteau really ought to see this. Truth is, I liked it, it suited me.

“But eight months for somebody in my position was too long, I had to quit. For the moment, I’m writing the occasional newspaper feature, under an alias, of course. It gets me a few francs, mostly from old friends I’ve known for years, mostly the socialists, a very tolerant crowd. Articles on soccer, on sound health, tips for cooking turnips. And then, I’ve always got a novel going.”

“Will you stay in France?”

“Maybe. For one thing, it’s not so easy to get out, now. And you have to find a country that will take you. I can’t go near Spain. Switzerland is out. Hard to say, maybe Mexico. For the moment, I’m here. If I vanish, it’ll mean somebody’s police finally stumbled over me and that was that. What about you?”

“I take it a day at a time,” Casson said. “Count myself lucky to have a roof over my head and something to eat. Beyond that, God only knows.”

This is the BBC, broadcasting from London. Here is the news in French. The Comite Francais de Liberation National announced today in London that, after a trial in absentia and review by the Judicial Section, Hauptsturmfuhrer Karl Kriegler, an SS official at the Sante prison in Paris, has been condemned to death. He was sentenced for the torture and murder of prisoners-of-war under confinement at the Sante, specific instances are cited in the indictment. The sentence is to be carried out at the discretion of the CFLN, at any time after the official declaration of the verdict, by any means necessary, or at the end of the war. Other personnel at French prisons are reminded that all wars eventually do come to an end, records are being kept, and they will be held to account for their actions. In other news…

Damn their eyes.

In a cellar on the outskirts of Paris, Weiss had to acknowledge that he had nothing like the powerful BBC at his disposal, and de Gaulle’s people were using it to full effect. Not that he disagreed with the strategy-the sentence in absentia might have a sobering effect on the Hauptsturmfuhrer, as it had in other cases. It was just that he had an executive’s view of the world, and as an executive he was stung when competitors had resources he didn’t. He could turn out endless editions of the underground Humanite, his best writers storming and threatening, but it didn’t begin to add up to the power of the BBC.

This in a week when things were not going well. He had been reprimanded by Moscow Center for the Aubervilliers raid-dear comrade. They might have moved their wireless operation back to the Urals, but they’d only been out of contact for two days and then-he suspected he was now receiving from a relay station in Sweden-then they’d let him have it. Operational rules specified a second automobile, to provide a getaway after an attack. How could he not have known that the Germans would use a chase car? Why wasn’t it spotted during surveillance?

A second car? From where? How?

They’d obviously seen the French police report, and he hadn’t sent it to them. Somebody after his job, maybe. He leaned on the table he used as a desk and closed his eyes. Just ten minutes. The BBC droned on-a lycee class in Belfort had come to school wearing Cross of Lorraine armbands, the Gaullist symbol. He could do that, out in Montreuil or Boulogne, and tell the world in leaflets, but it would never have the impact of a BBC broadcast. Above his head, the floorboards creaked as people cooked dinner and the aromas drifted down into the cellar; museau-jellied beef muzzle- and cabbage.

A knock at the door. “Comrade Weiss?”

“Yes?”

“Dinner?”

“Maybe later.”

“Comrade Somet is waiting to see you.”

“All right. Five minutes.”

What was this, he wondered. Narcisse Somet had been in party work for twenty years. A journalist, cheeks and nose colored by the broken blood vessels of the longtime drinker, eyeglasses with tinted lenses, gray hair cut en brosse. He had always worked for trade weeklies, especially those that covered the mining and metals industries. Secretly, he wrote for Humanite, at one time contributing to its most popular feature-L’Huma consistently picked more winners at the Paris racetracks than any other newspaper.

Weiss went to the door and called upstairs, Somet shuffled in a moment later.

They shook hands. Somet settled himself in a chair, coughed a few times into his fist. They made small talk for a while, then Somet said, “I’ve been contacted by Alexander Kovar.”

Casson took his nightly meal at a small cafe on the place Maillart. The plane trees on the square were bare now, and the branches dripped, but it was at least something to look at. He ate at a table by the front window, a newspaper folded beside his plate. He’d run out of ration coupons for meat or fish, which left him with the only nonrationed dish on the menu, soup. Thin and yellowish, a few lentils, some onion, and a small piece of carrot. Served lukewarm, with a slice of coarse gray bread. The trick was to think about lentils as he used to know them, in a salad with mustard sauce and lean bacon. His father used to say, “You can’t eat dreams!” But, in a way, you could.

He turned to the entertainment section of the newspaper; reviews, ads, and a few brief news stories. Such as-FILM STAR WEDS IN SOUTH. In Villefranche, to be precise, the actress Citrine (Danielle Aubin) had married the director Rene Guillot (The Shoemaker’s Wedding, Blackbeard the Pirate). The newlyweds to honeymoon on Cap Ferrat, then, early next year, to work on Guillot’s new project, Hotel de la Mer. With a photo of the happy couple.

He felt, at that moment, not very much. A flash of sorrow, an iron band around his throat, a small voice saying what did you expect? He paid for dinner, clamped the paper beneath his arm, and headed back to the hotel. Just hope you aren’t in for a night of Wagnerian orgasms from the room next door. See? A joke. He wasn’t going to let this hurt him, he had too many other things to worry about.

It did occur to him to go back up to the little bistro on place Clichy, where he might find the girl who called herself Julie. But that was asking for trouble and he knew it. So he went home, turned the light out, crawled under the thin blanket on the bed in the unheated room, and lay there.

It doesn’t matter, he told himself, you fall in love more than once in life. You’re lucky to have had what you did. Cold. He was already wearing underwear and socks, trousers, and shirt, only one more step he could take. A week earlier, in the Ternes Metro station, he’d managed to buy an overcoat. This one in about the same condition as the one he’d pawned. Shivering, he got out of bed, took the coat down from a peg behind the door, put it on, pulled it tight around himself, and crawled back under the blanket. Not much better. Outside, the wind moaned around the corner of the building, it rained in sheets, then abated.

The first time he kissed her he’d thought she’ll never let me do this. But she did, and kissed him back, passionate, almost a little crazy. That confused him. She seemed desperate, as though she felt somebody like him could never fall for someone like her. What was she then, nineteen? On location for Night Run, down in Auxerre, in a room in the inevitable stucco hotel by the railroad station.

He undressed her, she helped, both of them desperate to get it done. Then it was his turn, and they’d stood there, staring at each other.

Married. It was the intimacy of it that stung him-how could she? With Rene Guillot? A crocodile with a winter tan and fine white hair. Famously arrogant, selfish, successful. Who no doubt courted her when he was given the director’s job for the movie that Casson had thought up and Fischfang had written-given the director’s job at the insistence of one Jean Casson.

Thanks for the movie, I’ll just take the woman you love too, as long as I’m at it. He didn’t blame Guillot, a force of nature, an homme de la gauche who swam cleverly through Parisian life and took whatever he wanted. He blamed Citrine. Bitch! Connasse!

Cold, the window rattled in the driving rain. Cold outside, cold inside. Casson rolled out of bed, tore off his overcoat, put on his jacket and shoes. The curfew was in force, he couldn’t actually go anywhere. He went down to the lobby, a gloomy nest of velveteen love seats and occasional chairs, now lit by a single ten-watt bulb in an iron floor lamp that appeared to have been built as a gallows for mice.

Another lost soul had preceded him, a tall man in a blue overcoat, who looked up from his magazine and stood when Casson entered the room. He had the face of a hound; sunken eyes, a drooping mustache. “Da Souza,” he said, handing Casson a card, “fine linens.”

On the card was the name of a large company and an address in Lisbon. After a moment da Souza said, “How are you tonight?”

“I’ve been better.”

“Not too bad, I hope.”

Casson shrugged. “It’s nothing. An histoire de coeur.”

“Oh that.”

Casson nodded.

“What did she do, go off with someone else?”

“Well, yes, that’s what she did.”

Da Souza shook his head, yes, that’s what they did, then went back to reading. After a few minutes he yawned, tossed the magazine aside, and stood up. “I’d offer to buy you a drink, but the curfew…”

“Some other time.”

Da Souza nodded, then gave Casson a gloomy smile. “Still,” he said. He meant it had all happened before and would happen again. “You might as well keep the card.”

Paris. 20 November.

Casson returned from lunch a little after three. The woman at the desk said, “Monsieur, a friend of yours came by. He’s going to wait for you at the Ternes Metro.”

He went back out, taking the rue Poncelet, head down against the sharp wind. The rain had stopped, wet leaves were plastered to the sidewalk. Halfway between the hotel and the Metro station, a van pulled up to the curb, both doors opened.

“Yes?”

“You are Marin?”

“Yes.”

“You’re to come along with us.”

There was no question as to who they were, or where they came from. Heavily built, with battered faces, one had a white scar cutting through both lips. They wore oil-grimed coveralls, and the van was marked as a Metro maintenance vehicle.

“In the back.”

He did what he was told. There were wooden racks bolted to the walls of the van, holding heavy pipe wrenches and a variety of shovels and prybars. The truck smelled of lubricating grease and burnt cinders.

“Lie down,” the driver told him. An old blanket was thrown over him as he lay on his side on the metal plate of the floor. The van started and drove smoothly away. The second man stayed in the back with him, sitting propped against the door.

They drove around for a long time, Casson could hear trucks and cars, and the occasional ringing of bicycle bells. Near his head was a small hole through which he could see the pavement, sometimes stone, sometimes asphalt. When they crossed the Seine, he looked down at the river through the strutwork of a small bridge. The van made several turns after that, on what sounded like narrow lanes. The men didn’t talk. Casson tried to concentrate, to keep himself calm. He’d thought this meeting might be in a little bar somewhere, or in the office of a union local, but apparently it wasn’t going to work like that.

By the time they rolled to a stop the daylight was just about gone. The engine was turned off and someone took the blanket away and said, “You can sit up now.”

He was sore where his ribs had banged against the floor. The man now kneeling next to him reached in his pocket and brought out a black cloth. “Just stay on your knees a moment.”

The man twirled the cloth around until it lapped itself into a blindfold, which he placed across Casson’s eyes and tied firmly at the back of his neck.

“Can you see?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Nothing.”

If they didn’t want him to see where he was being taken, he didn’t want to know where he was. They took his elbow, talked him out of the van, then guided him along a street. The walk seemed to go on forever, but it was probably no more than ten minutes before he was taken into a building-a garage, he thought, with hammers pounding on metal and the smell of tires. He was led out the back and into another building. A door was closed, then barred. He was seated in what felt like an old swivel chair.

“Just stay quiet. Somebody will come for you.”

He sat there, scared. He knew that from where he was now he could disappear off the face of the earth. A few minutes crawled by. The door opened and shut, a chair leg scraped on cement, and a woman’s voice, heavily accented, said, “All right, you can take that thing off him.”

He was in a small workshop, from what he could see, with a blanket over the window. It was almost completely dark. Ten feet away from him, a woman sat at a table near a lamp with a very bright bulb. Its position made it hard for him to see her clearly, or anything beyond her, although he sensed that there were people in the darkness.

The woman was perhaps in her fifties, with gray hair pulled back and pinned up, a dark suit, and, beneath the table, lace-up shoes with low heels. A university professor or a doctor, he would have thought, seeing her on the street. “Very well,” she said, taking a few sheets of paper and squaring them up in front of her. She unscrewed a cap from a pen, making sure it worked on one corner of the paper. “You’re called Marin, these days-correct? And you stay at the Hotel Benoit?”

Probably the accent was Russian, but he wasn’t completely sure. “Yes, that’s right.”

“In fact you are Jean Casson, formerly a film producer.”

“Yes.”

“Born in Paris? Of French nationality?”

“Yes.”

“Your military service?”

“In the first war, I served as a corporal with an air reconnaissance squadron, changing film canisters on Spad aircraft and sometimes supervising the development of the negatives. In May 1940, I was reactivated and returned to service as a member of the Section Cinematographique of the Third Regiment, Forty-fifth Division. I saw action on the Meuse River, near Sedan, and was discharged from the unit later that month, when its cameras and equipment were destroyed in a bombing raid.”

“Then you eventually returned to Paris.”

“That’s right.”

“By the way, are you aware that you were followed, as you set off for this meeting?”

“Followed? No, I don’t think so.”

“It isn’t important, and we took care of it, but we wondered if you knew.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Now, monsieur, why have you been looking for us?”

“To offer you the opportunity to meet with members of a resistance group.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“To discuss matters of mutual concern.”

“Such as?”

“I have no idea.”

She stared down, read a note she’d written. “Are you sympathetic to the objectives and programs of the Communist Party?”

“Sympathetic? Well, I’m certainly aware that there are poor people, and that they suffer. On the other hand, I don’t believe in the revolution of the working masses, or the dictatorship of the proletariat.” He paused, then said, “Or, in fact, the dictatorship of anybody.”

She didn’t smile, but it crossed his mind that a young and long-ago version of her might have. “You are naive, monsieur,” she said quietly.

Casson shrugged.

“Why do you live as a fugitive?”

“Last May, I was taken in for questioning by the Gestapo, held for a few hours in a cell in the basement of the old Ministry of the Interior on the rue des Saussaies, then brought up to the top floor for questioning. I was led down a hall to use the WC and left alone. I saw that the window wasn’t barred. I crawled out on the roof, and escaped.”

“Why were you taken in for questioning?”

“I lied on a form and they caught me.” That was, technically speaking, true. But it was also the story he’d been told to follow, and he followed it.

“What lie was that?”

“That I had not returned to military service in 1940-working with a film unit would have been seen as an intelligence function.”

She read through the papers for a moment, looking over what she’d written. In the shadows behind her, somebody lit a pipe, he could see the rise and fall of the yellow flame held above the bowl.

“The people who sent you here,” she said. “Who are they?”

“Army officers.”

“Members of the intelligence service? The former Service des Renseignements?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“What do they want, information?”

“I don’t know what they want.”

“Then what do you believe their objectives are?”

“To resist the German occupation.”

“Are they in Vichy?”

“Yes.”

“Officers of the present service?”

“Yes.”

“And why did they choose you as their representative?”

“Because I’m neutral.”

“What does that mean?”

“Unaffiliated. With no aims of my own.”

“And what do you bring, Monsieur Casson, to this negotiation? What do you offer us, as an incentive for discussions, or doing business together, or whatever it might turn out to be?”

“No specific offer-but they are waiting to hear from you, and they will do whatever they can.”

“Monsieur Casson, are you a spy?”

“No, I’m not.”

“We shoot spies. Certainly you know that.”

Casson nodded.

“We’re going to send you back now. You can report this conversation to your army officers. And tell them that if they wish to pursue any kind of dialogue, the first step will be to provide evidence of good faith. What we want is this: weapons. Guns, Monsieur Casson. Do you think they will accept that condition?”

“I can’t say. But, why not?”

“What we want are automatic weapons, short-range, rapid-fire machine guns. Six hundred. With a thousand rounds of ammunition for each weapon. The terms of delivery will be spelled out when we receive your signal that the negotiation will go ahead. Do you understand?”

The trip back to Paris took forty-five minutes. It was dark when he was let out, and for a moment he had no idea where he was, somewhere in the streets of eastern Paris. He eventually found a Metro, and rode back to the place des Ternes. He wanted to walk, to think, but it was too cold, so he headed down the rue Poncelet toward the Benoit. Out on the boulevards, the street lamps had been painted blue, to make them less visible to aircraft, but in the narrow rue Poncelet it was almost completely dark.

Midway down the street, a man was sleeping in a doorway. This was not something Casson was accustomed to seeing, the police didn’t allow it, certainly not in that arrondissement. Casson stopped and peered through the darkness. The man’s back was to the street, his overcoat hiked up, the tails moving in the wind. His hat was halfway off, the brim caught between his head and his forearm. His other arm was flung out behind him.

He was dead, Casson knew that. By the way, are you aware that you were followed? It isn’t important, and we took care of it.

Casson stood there, staring, holding his coat around him. Then he started walking, heading back to the hotel.