The Foreign Correspondent

The Pact of steel

20 APRIL, 1939.

Il faut en finir.

“There must be an end to this.” So said the customer in the chair next to Weisz, at Perini’s barbershop in the rue Mabillon. Not the rain, the politics-a popular sentiment that spring. Weisz had heard it at Mere this or Chez that, from Mme. Rigaud, proprietor of the Hotel Dauphine, from a dignified woman, to her companion, at Weisz’s cafe. The Parisians were in a sour mood: the news was never good, Hitler wouldn’t stop. Il faut en finir, true, though the nature of the ending was, in a particularly Gallic fashion, obscure-somebody must do something, and they were fed up with waiting for it.

“It cannot continue,” the man in the next chair said. Perini held up a mirror so the man, turning left and right, could see the back of his head. “Yes,” he said, “looks good to me.” Perini nodded to the shoe-shine boy, who brought the man his cane, then helped him maneuver himself out of the chair. “They got me the last time,” he said to the men in the barbershop, “but we’ll have to do it all over again.” With a sympathetic murmur, Perini undid the protective sheet fastened at the customer’s neck, whipped it away, handed it to the shoe-shine boy, then took a whisk broom and gave the man’s suit a good brushing.

Weisz was next. Perini tilted the chair back, nimbly drew a steaming towel from the metal heater and wrapped it around Weisz’s face. “As usual, Signor Weisz?”

“Just a trim, please, not too much,” Weisz said, his voice muffled by the towel.

“And a nice shave, for you?”

“Yes, please.”

Weisz hoped the man with the cane was wrong, but feared he wasn’t. The last war had been pure hell for the French, slaughter followed slaughter, until the troops could stand it no longer-there had been sixty-eight mutinies in the hundred-and-twelve French divisions. He tried to relax, the wet heat working its way into his skin. Somewhere behind him, Perini was humming opera, content with the world of his shop, believing that nothing could change that.

On the twenty-first, a phone call at Reuters. “Carlo, it’s me, Veronique.”

“I know your voice, love,” Weisz said gently. He was startled by the call. It had been ten days or so since they’d parted, and he’d expected that he’d never hear from her again.

“I must see you,” she said. “Immediately.”

What was this? She loved him? She couldn’t bear for him to leave her? Veronique? No, this was not the voice of lost love, something had frightened her. “What is it?” he said cautiously.

“Not on the telephone. Please. Don’t make me tell you.”

“Are you at the gallery?”

“Yes. Forgive me for…”

“It’s allright, don’t apologize, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

As he passed Delahanty’s office, the bureau chief looked up from his work, but said nothing.

When Weisz opened the door to the gallery, he heard heels clicking on the polished floor. “Carlo,” she said. She hesitated-an embrace? No, a brush kiss on each cheek, then a step back. This was a Veronique he’d never seen; tense, agitated, and vaguely hesitant-not entirely sure she was glad to see him.

Standing to one side, a spectre of old, bygone Montmartre, with graying beard, and suit and cravat from the 1920s. “This is Valkenda,” she said, her voice implying great fame and stature. On the walls, swirling portraits of a dissolute waif, almost nude, covered here and there by a shawl.

“Of course,” Weisz said. “Pleased to meet you.”

As Valkenda bowed, his eyes closed.

“We’ll go back to the office,” Veronique said.

They sat on a pair of spindly gold chairs. “Valkenda?” Weisz said, with half a smile.

Veronique shrugged. “They jump off the walls,” she said. “They pay the rent.”

“Veronique, what’s happened?”

“Ouf, I’m glad you’re here.” The words were followed by a mock shudder. “I had, this morning, the Surete.” She emphasized the word, of all things. “A dreadful little man, who showed up and, and, interrogated me.”

“About what?”

“About you.”

“What did he ask?”

“Where did you live, who did you know. The details of your life.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea, you tell me.”

“I meant, did he say why?”

“No. Just that you were a ‘subject of interest’ in an investigation.”

Pompon, Weisz thought. But why now? “A young man?” Weisz said. “Very neat and correct? Called Inspector Pompon?”

“Oh no, not at all. He wasn’t young, and anything but neat-he had greasy hair, and dirt under his fingernails. And his name was something else.”

“May I see his card?”

“He didn’t leave a card-is that what they do?”

“Generally, they do. What about the other one?”

“What other one?”

“He was alone? Usually, there are two of them.”

“No, not this time. Just Inspector…something. It started with a D, I think. Or a B.”

Weisz thought it over. “Are you sure he was from the Surete?”

“He said he was. I believed him.” After a moment, she said, “More or less.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, it’s just, snobisme, you know how that goes. I thought, is this the sort of man they employ, this, I don’t know, something crude, about him, about the way he looked at me.”

“Crude?”

“The way he spoke. He was not, overly educated. And not a Parisian-we can hear it.”

“Was he French?”

“Oh yes, certainly he was. From down south somewhere.” She paused, her face changed, and she said, “A fraud, you think? What then? Do you owe somebody money? And I don’t mean a bank.”

“A gangster.”

“Not the movie sort, but his eyes were never still. Up and down, you know? Maybe he thought it was seductive, or charming.” From the expression on her face, the man had not been anything like “charming.” “Who was he, Carlo?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please, we’re not, strangers, you and I. You think you know who he was.”

What to tell her? How much? “It may have something to do with Italian politics, emigre politics. There are people who don’t like us.”

Her eyes widened. “But wouldn’t he be afraid you’d figure it out? That he’d said he was from the Surete when he was, an imposter?”

“Well,” Weisz said, “to these people, it wouldn’t matter. It might be better. Did he say you had to keep it to yourself?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Of course not, I had to tell you.”

“Not everybody would, you know,” Weisz said. He was silent for a moment. She had been courageous, on his behalf, and the way he met her eyes let her know he appreciated that. “You see, it works either way-I’m suspected of something criminal, so your feelings about me are changed, or you tell me, and I have to worry about the fact that I’m being investigated.”

She thought about what he’d said, puzzled for a moment, then understanding. “That is, Carlo, a very ugly thing to do.”

His smile was grim. “Yes, isn’t it,” he said.

Heading back to the office, Weisz stood swaying in a crowded Metro car, the faces around him pale and blank, and private. There was a poem about that, by some American who loved Mussolini. What was it-faces like, like “petals on a wet, black bough.” He tried to remember the rest of it, but the man who’d questioned Veronique wouldn’t leave him alone. Maybe he was exactly who he’d said he was. Weisz’s experience of the Surete went no further than the two inspectors who’d interrogated him, but there were others, likely all sorts. Still, he’d come alone, and left no card, no telephone number. Never mind the Surete, this was not the way police anywhere operated. Information was often best recollected in private, later on, and flics all the world over knew it.

He didn’t want to face what came next. That this was the OVRA, operating from a clandestine station in Paris, using French agents, and launching a new attack against the giellisti. Getting rid of Bottini hadn’t worked, so they’d try something else. The timing was right, they’d seen the new Liberazione a week earlier, and here was their response. It worked. From the time he’d left the gallery he’d been apprehensive, literally and figuratively looking over his shoulder. So, he told himself, they got what they came for. And he knew it wouldn’t stop there.

He left work at six, saw Salamone at the bar and told him what had happened, and was at the Tournon, with Ferrara, by seven-forty-five. All he’d had to do was forget about dinner, but, the way he felt by nightfall, he wasn’t all that hungry.

Being with Ferrara made him feel better. Weisz had begun to see Mr. Brown’s point about the colonel-the antifascist forces weren’t all fumbling intellectuals with eyeglasses and too many books, they had warriors, real warriors, on their side. And Soldier for Freedom was moving along swiftly, had now reached Ferrara’s flight to Marseilles.

Weisz sat on one chair, with the new Remington they’d bought him on the other, between his knees, while Ferrara paced about the room, sitting sometimes on the edge of the bed, then pacing again. “It was strange to be on my own,” he said. “The military life keeps you occupied, tells you what to do next. Everybody complains about it, makes fun of it, but it has its comforts. When I left Ethiopia…we talked about the ship, the Greek tanker, right?”

“Yes. Big, fat Captain Karazenis, the great smuggler.”

Ferrara grinned at the memory. “You mustn’t make him out too much of a scoundrel. I mean, he was, but it was a pleasure to be around him, his answer to the cruel world was to steal it blind.”

“That’s how he’ll be, in the book. Called only ‘the Greek captain.’”

Ferrara nodded. “Anyhow, we had engine trouble off the Ligurian coast. Somewhere around Livorno. That was a bad day-what if we had to put into an Italian port? Would one of the crew give me away? And Karazenis liked to play games with me, said he had a girlfriend in Livorno. But, in the end, we made it, just made it, into Marseilles, and I went to a hotel in the port.”

“What hotel was that?”

“I’m not sure it had a name, the sign said ‘Hotel.’”

“I’ll leave it out.”

“I never knew you could stay anywhere for so little money. Bed bugs, yes, and lice. But you know the old saying: ‘Filth, like hunger, only matters for eight days.’ And I was there for months, and then-“

“Wait, wait, not so fast.”

They worked away at it, Weisz hammering on the keys, churning out pages. At eleven-thirty, they decided to call it quits. The air in the room was smoky and still, Ferrara opened the shutters, then the window, letting in a rush of cold night air. He leaned out, looking up and down the street.

“What’s so interesting?” Weisz said, putting on his jacket.

“Oh, there’s been some guy lurking about in doorways, the last few nights.”

“Really?”

“We’re being watched, I guess. Or maybe the word is guarded.”

“Did you mention it?”

“No. I don’t know that it has anything to do with me.”

“You should tell them about it.”

“Mm. Maybe I will. You don’t think it’s some kind of, problem, do you?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, maybe I’ll ask about it.” He went back to the window and looked up and down the street. “Not there now,” he said. “Not where I can see him.”

The streets were deserted as Weisz walked back to the Dauphine, but he had an imagined Christa for company. Told her about his day, a version made entertaining for her amusement. Then, back in his room, he fell asleep and found her in his dreams-the first time they’d made love, on a yacht in Trieste harbor. She had worn, that late afternoon, a pair of oyster-colored pajamas, sheer and cool for a summer week at sea. He’d sensed that she had some kind of sensual affinity for the pajamas, so he did not take them off, the first time. Unbuttoned the top, slid the bottoms down her thighs. This inspired both of them, and, when the dream woke him, he found himself again inspired, and then, in the darkness, lived those moments once more.

The editorial meeting for the new Liberazione was at midday on the twenty-ninth of April. Weisz hurried to get to the Europa, but he was the last one there. Salamone had waited for him, and began the meeting as he was sitting down. “Before we discuss the next issue,” he said, “we have to talk a little about our situation.”

“Our situation?” the lawyer said, alert to a note in Salamone’s voice.

“Some things are going on that have to be discussed.” He paused, then said, “For one thing, a friend of Carlo’s was questioned by a man who represented himself as an inspector of the Surete. There’s reason to believe that he wasn’t who he said he was. That he came from the opposition.”

A long silence. Then the pharmacist said, “Do you mean the OVRA?”

“It’s a possibility we have to face. So take a minute, and think about how things are going in your own lives. Your daily lives, anything not normal.”

From the lawyer, a forced laugh. “Normal? My life at the language school?” But nobody else thought it was funny.

The art historian from Siena said, “It all goes on as usual, with me.”

Salamone, a sigh in his voice, said, “Well, what’s happened to me is that I’ve lost my job. I’ve been discharged.”

For a moment, dead silence, broken only by the muted sounds of cafe life on the other side of the door. Finally, Elena said, “Did they tell you why?”

“My supervisor wouldn’t quite say. Something about not enough work, but that was a lie. He had some other reason.”

“You think that he, too, had a visit from the Surete,” the lawyer said. “And not the real one.”

From Salamone, spread hands and raised eyebrows. What else can I think?

This was immediately personal. Every one of them worked at whatever they could find-the lawyer at Berlitz, the Sienese professor as a meter reader for the gas company, Elena selling hosiery at the Galeries Lafayette-but that was common emigre Paris, where Russian cavalry officers drove taxis. Around the table, the same reaction: at least they had jobs, but what if they lost them? And as Weisz, perhaps the luckiest of them all, thought about Delahanty, the rest thought about their own employers.

“We survived Bottini’s murder,” Elena said. “But this…” She could not say, out loud, that it was worse, but, in its way, it was.

Sergio, the businessman from Milan, who’d come to Paris with the passage of the anti-Semitic laws, said, “For the moment, Arturo, you won’t have to worry about money.”

Salamone nodded. “I appreciate that,” he said. He left it there, but what didn’t need to be said was that their benefactor couldn’t support them all. “This may be the time,” he went on, “for all of us to consider what we want to do now. Some of us may not want to continue with this work. Think it over, carefully. Leaving for a few months won’t mean you can’t return, and leaving for a few months might be what you should do. Don’t say anything here, telephone me at home, or stop by. It may be for the best. For you, for the people who depend on you. This isn’t a question of honor, it’s practical.”

“Is Liberazione finished?” Elena said.

“Not yet,” Salamone said.

“We can be replaced,” the pharmacist said, more to himself than anybody else.

“We can,” Salamone said. “And that goes for me, too. The Giustizia e Liberta in Turin was destroyed in 1937, all of them arrested. Yet here we are today.”

“Arturo,” the Sienese professor said, “I work with a Roumanian man, at one time a ballet master in Bucharest. The point is, is that I think he’s leaving, in a few weeks, to go to America. Anyhow, that’s one possibility, the gas company. You have to go down into the cellars, sometimes you see a rat, but it’s not so bad.”

“America,” the lawyer said. “Lucky man.”

“We can’t all go to America,” the Venetian professor said.

Why not? But no one said it.

Report of Agent 207, delivered by hand on 30 April, to a clandestine OVRA station in the Tenth Arrondissement:

The Liberazione group met at midday on 29 April at the Cafe Europa, the same subjects attending as in previous reports. Subject SALAMONE reported his discharge from the Assurance du Nord company and discussed the possibility that a clandestine operative had defamed him to his employer. SALAMONE suggested that a friend of subject WEISZ had been similarly approached, and warned the group that they may have to reconsider their participation in the Liberazione publication. An editorial meeting followed, with discussion of the occupation of Albania and the state of Italo-German relations as possible subjects for the next issue.

The following morning, with a hesitant spring day, the real Surete was back in Weisz’s life. The message came this time, thank heaven, to the Dauphine, and not to Reuters, said simply, “Please contact me immediately,” had a telephone number, and was signed “Monsieur,” not “Inspector,” Pompon. Looking up from the slip of paper, he said to Madame Rigaud, on the other side of the reception desk, “A friend,” as though he needed to explain the message. She shrugged. One has friends, they telephone. For your room rent, as long as you pay it, we take your messages.

He’d worried about her, lately. It wasn’t that she’d stopped being nice to him, just, lately, not quite so warm. Was this simply another Gallic shift of mood, common enough in this moody city, or something more? There had always been, in her demeanor, a night visit on the horizon. She was playful, but she’d let him know that her black dress could, at some point, be removed, and that beneath it lay a lovely treat for a good boy like him. This bothered Weisz, the first few weeks of his tenancy-what if something went wrong? Was lovemaking a covert condition of room rental?

But that wasn’t true, she simply liked to flirt with him, to tease him into the bawdy landlady fantasy, and, in time, he began to relax and enjoy it. She was hatchet-faced, hatchet-minded, and henna-dyed, but the accidental brush or bump-“Oh pardon, Monsieur Weisz!”-revealed the real Madame Rigaud, curved and firm, and all for him. Eventually.

That was, the last week or so, gone. Where did it go?

On the way to the Metro, he stopped at a post office and telephoned Pompon, who suggested a meeting at nine the following morning, at a cafe across from the Opera-the lobby floor of the Grand Hotel-and conveniently close to the Reuters office. These arrangements were, oh no, considerate, and, uh-oh, thoughtful, and led to one more day of trying to work while fighting off the urge to speculate. Britain and France Offer Guarantees to Greece: calls to Devoisin at the Quai d’Orsay, then to other sources, swimming deeper in the tidal pools of French diplomacy, as well as contact with the Greek embassy, and the editor of an emigre Greek newspaper-the Paris side of the news.

Weisz worked hard. Worked for Delahanty, to show how truly crucial he was to the Reuters effort, worked for Christa, so he wouldn’t be driving a delivery van when she came to Paris, worked for the giellisti-the paper was on the edge of mortality and losing his job might very well be the last straw. And for his own pride-not money, pride.

A long night. And then, the cafe meeting, and a topic he should have, he realized, foreseen. “We have come into possession of a document,” Pompon said, “originally mailed to the Foreign Ministry. A document that should be made public. Not directly, but in a covert manner, in, perhaps, a clandestine newspaper.”

Oh?

“It contains information that the newspaper Liberazione mentioned, as rumor, in its last issue, but that was rumor, and what we’ve got our hands on now is specific. Very specific. Of course we know you have contact with these emigres, and someone like you, in your position, would be a realistic source for such information.”

Maybe.

“The document reveals German penetration of the Italian security system, a massive penetration, in the hundreds, and revealing it could create antagonism toward Germany, toward these sorts of tactics, which are dangerous to any state. The rumor, as published in Liberazione, was provocative, but the actual list, now that could really cause problems.” Did Weisz see what he was getting at?

Well-what the French called un petit oui, a little yes-yes.

“I have a copy of the document with me, Monsieur Weisz, would you care to see it?”

Ah, naturally.

Pompon unbuckled his briefcase and withdrew the pages, folded so that they would fit into an envelope, and handed them to Weisz. It wasn’t the list he’d typed, but a precise copy. He unfolded the pages and pretended to study them; at first puzzled, then interested, finally fascinated.

Pompon smiled-the pantomime had evidently worked. “Quite a coup for Liberazione, no? To publish the real evidence?”

He certainly thought so. But…

But?

The present condition of that journal was uncertain. Some members of the editorial board had come under pressure-he’d heard that the paper might not survive.

Pressure?

Lost jobs, harassment by fascist agents.

A silent Pompon stared at him. Amid tables of chattering Parisians, who’d been shopping at the nearby Galeries Lafayette, hotel guests with guidebooks, a pair of newlyweds from the provinces, arguing about money. All in clouds of smoke and perfume. Waiters flew past-who on earth was ordering eclairs at this time of the morning?

Weisz waited, but the inspector did not bite. Or maybe bit in some way that Weisz could not observe. “Fascist agents” pestering emigres was not the subject for today, the subject for today was inducing a resistance organization to do a little job for him. Or for the Foreign Ministry, or God only knew who. That other business, a different department handled that, down the hall, one flight up, and who’d want their inquisitive snouts poking into his carefully tended emigre garden? Not Pompon.

Finally, Weisz said, “I will talk to them, at Liberazione.”

“Do you wish to keep that copy? We have others, though you must be very careful with it.”

No, he knew what it was, he would prefer to leave the document with Pompon.

As he’d earlier said to Salamone: hot potato.

The taxi sped through the Paris night. A soft May evening, the air warm and seductive, half the city out on the boulevards. Weisz had been happy enough in his room, but the night manager at Reuters had sent him off, pad and pencil in hand, to the Hotel Crillon. “It’s King Zog,” he’d said on the Dauphine telephone. “The local Albanians have discovered him, and they’re gathering on the place Concorde. Go and have a look, will you?”

Weisz’s driver took the Pont Royal bridge, turned on Saint-Honore, drove ten feet down the rue Royale, and stopped behind a line of cars that disappeared into a crowd. There they were stuck, and were now honking their horns, making sure that nobody got out of their way. The driver threw his taxi into reverse, waving at the car behind him to back up. “Not me,” he said to Weisz, “not tonight.” Weisz paid, jotted down the fare, and got out.

What was Zog, Ahmed Zogu, former king of Albania, doing there? Thrown out by Mussolini, he’d wandered through various capitals, the press keeping track of him, and had apparently landed at the Crillon. But, local Albanians? Albania was the lost mountain kingdom of the Balkans-and that was very lost indeed-independent in 1920, then snatched at, north and south, by Italy and Yugoslavia, until Mussolini grabbed the whole thing a month earlier. But, as far as Weisz knew, there was not much of a political emigre community in Paris.

There was certainly a crowd on the rue Royale, mostly curious passersby, and, when Weisz finally pushed his way through, on Concorde, where he realized that however many Albanians had made their way to Paris, they’d showed up that night. Six or seven hundred, he thought, with a few hundred French supporters. Not the Communists-no red flags-because what you had in Albania was a little dictator eaten up by a big dictator, but those who thought it was never a good idea for one nation to occupy another, and, on a lovely May night, why not take a stroll over to the Crillon?

Weisz worked toward the front of the hotel, where a bedsheet nailed to a pair of poles, swaying with the motion of the crowd, said something in Albanian. Up here they were also chanting-Weisz caught the words Zog and Mussolini, but that was about it. At the Crillon entry, a score of porters and bellmen were ranged protectively in front of the door and, as Weisz watched, the flics began to show up, truncheons tapping their legs, ready for action. All across the face of the hotel, guests were looking out, pointing here and there, enjoying the show. Then a window on the top floor opened, a light went on in the room, and a matinee idol, with dashing mustache, leaned out and gave the Zogist salute: hand flattened, palm forward, over the heart. King Zog! From behind the drape, someone reached out, and now the king wore a general’s hat, heavy with gold braid, above his Sulka bathrobe. The crowd cheered, Queen Geraldine appeared at the king’s side, and both waved.

Now some idiot-anti-Zogist elements in the crowd, Weisz wrote-threw a bottle, which shattered in front of a bellboy, who lost his little cap as he leapt away. Then the king and queen stepped back from the window, and the light went off. Next to Weisz, a bearded giant put his hands beside his mouth and shouted, in French, “That’s right, run away, you little pussy.” This drew a snicker from his tiny girlfriend, and an angry Albanian shout from somewhere in the crowd. On the top floor, another window opened, and a uniformed army officer looked out.

The police began to advance, barring their truncheons and forcing the crowd back from the front of the hotel. The fighting started almost immediately-surging knots of people in the crowd, others pushing and shoving, trying to get out of the way. “Ah,” said the giant with some satisfaction, “les chevaux.” The horses. The cavalry had arrived, mounted police with long truncheons, advancing down the avenue Gabriel.

“You don’t like the king?” Weisz said to the giant-he had to get some kind of quote from somebody, jot down a few lines, find a telephone, file the story, and go out for dinner.

“He doesn’t like anybody,” said the giant’s girlfriend.

What was he, Weisz wondered. A Communist? Fascist? Anarchist?

But this he was not to learn.

Because the next thing he knew, he was on the ground. Someone behind him had hit him in the side of the head, with something, he had no idea what, hit him hard enough to knock him over. Not a good place to be, down here. His vision blurred, a forest of shoes moved away, and a few indignant oaths followed somebody, whoever’d hit him, as the man sliced his way through the crowd.

“You are bleeding,” said the giant.

Weisz felt his face, and his hand came away red-maybe he’d cut himself on the sharp edge of a cobblestone-then he started groping around for his glasses. “Here they are.” A hand offered them, one lens cracked, the temple piece gone.

Somebody put his hands beneath Weisz’s armpits and hauled him to his feet. It was the giant, who said, “We better get out of here.”

Weisz heard the horses, in a swift walk, advancing toward him. He got a handkerchief from his back pocket and held it to the side of his head, took a step, almost toppled over. Only one eye, he realized, saw properly, the other had everything out of focus. He went down on one knee. Maybe, he thought, I’m hurt.

The crowd broke around him as it ran away, pursued by the mounted police, swinging their truncheons. Then a tough old Parisian flic appeared at his side-he was now alone on a vast stretch of the place Concorde. “Can you stand up?” the flic said.

“I think so.”

“Because, if you can’t, I have to put you in an ambulance.”

“No, it’s allright. I’m a journalist.”

“Try and stand.”

He was very wobbly, but he managed. “Maybe a taxi,” he said.

“They don’t stick around, when these things happen. How about a cafe?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea.”

“See who hit you?”

“No.”

“Any idea why?”

“No idea.”

The flic shook his head-saw too much of human nature and didn’t like it. “Maybe just for fun. Anyhow, let’s try for the cafe.”

He held Weisz up on one side and walked him slowly over to the rue de Rivoli, where a tourist cafe had emptied out as soon as the fighting started. Weisz sat down hard, a waiter brought him a glass of water and a bar towel. “You can’t go home like that,” he said.

Weisz invited Salamone out for dinner the following night-by way of encouraging a friend in difficulties. They met at a little Italian place out in the Thirteenth, the second-best Italian restaurant in Paris-the best owned by a well-known supporter of Mussolini, so there they could not go. “What happened to you?” Salamone said, as Weisz arrived.

Weisz had gone to his doctor that morning, and now wore a white gauze bandage on the left side of his face, badly scraped by the rough surface of a cobblestone, and a puffy red mark below his temple on the other side. His new glasses would be ready in a day or two. “A street demonstration last night,” he told Salamone. “Somebody hit me.”

“I’ll say they did. Who was it?”

“I have no idea.”

“No confrontation?”

“He was behind me, ran away, and I never saw him.”

“What, somebody followed you? Somebody, ah, we know?”

“I thought about it all night. With a handkerchief tied around my head.”

“And?”

“Nothing else makes sense. People don’t just do that.”

Salamone’s oath was more in sorrow than in anger. He poured red wine from a large carafe into two straight-sided glasses, then handed Weisz a bread stick. “It can’t go on like this,” he said, an Italian echo of il faut en finir. “And it could have been worse.”

“Yes,” Weisz said. “I thought about that, too.”

“What do we do, Carlo?”

“I don’t know.” He gave Salamone a menu, and opened his own. Cured ham, spring lamb with baby artichokes and potatoes, early greens-from the south of France, he supposed-then figs preserved in syrup.

“A feast,” Salamone said.

“That’s what I intended,” Weisz said. “For morale.” He raised his glass, “Salute.”

Salamone took a second sip. “This isn’t Chianti,” he said. “It’s, maybe, Barolo.”

“Something very good,” Weisz said.

They looked over at the proprietor, by the cash register, whose nod and smile acknowledged what he’d done: Enjoy it, boys, I know who you are. Saying thank-you, Weisz and Salamone raised their glasses to him.

Weisz signaled the waiter and ordered the grand dinners. “Are you managing?” he said to Salamone.

“More or less. My wife is angry with me-this politics, enough is enough. And she hates the idea of taking charity.”

“And the girls?”

“They don’t say much-they’re grown, and they have their own lives. They were in their twenties when we came here in ‘thirty-two, and they’re getting to be more French than Italian.” Salamone paused, then said, “Our pharmacist is gone, by the way. He’s going to take a few months off, as he put it, until things cool down. Also the engineer, a note. He regrets, but goodby.”

“Anyone else?”

“Not yet, but we’ll lose a few more, before this is over. In time, it could be just Elena, who’s a fighter, and our benefactor, you and me, maybe the lawyer-he’s thinking it over-and our friend from Siena.”

“Always smiling.”

“Yes, not much bothers him. He takes it all in stride, Signor Zerba.”

“Anything about the job, at the gas company?”

“No, but I may have something else, from another friend, at a warehouse out in Levallois.”

“Levallois! A long way-does the Metro go out there?”

“Close enough. You take a bus, or walk, after the last stop.”

“Can you use the car?”

“The poor thing, no, I don’t think so. The gasoline is expensive, and the tires, well, you know.”

“Arturo, you can’t work in a warehouse, you’re fifty…what? Three?”

“Six. But it’s just a checker’s job, crates in and out. A friend of ours pretty much runs the union, so it’s a real offer.”

The waiter approached with plates bearing slices of brick-colored ham. “Basta,” Salamone said, enough. “Here’s our dinner, so we’ll talk about life and love. Salute, Carlo.”

They kept work out of it for the duration of the dinner, which was very good, the leg of young lamb roasted with garlic, the early greens fresh and carefully picked over. When they’d finished the figs in syrup, and lit cigarettes to go with their espressos, Salamone said, “I guess the real question is, if we can’t protect ourselves, who is there to protect us? The police-the people at the Prefecture?”

“Not likely,” Weisz said. “Oh officer, we’re engaged in illegal operations against a neighbor country, and, as they’re attacking us, we’d like you to help us out.”

“I guess that’s right. It is, technically, illegal.”

“Technically nothing, it’s illegal, period. The French have laws against everything, then they pick and choose. For the moment we’re tolerated, for political expediency, but I don’t think we qualify for protection. My inspector at the Surete won’t even admit I’m the editor of Liberazione, though he surely knows I am. I’m a friend of the editor, the way he puts it. Very French, that approach.”

“So, we’re on our own.”

“We are.”

“Then how do we fight back? What do we use for weapons?”

“You don’t mean guns, do you?”

Salamone shrugged, and his “No” was tentative. “Maybe influence, favors. That too is French.”

“And what do we do for them in return? They don’t do favors here.”

“They don’t do favors anywhere.”

“The inspector at the Surete, as I told you, asked us to publish the real list, from Berlin. Should we do that?”

“Mannaggia no!”

“So then,” Weisz said, “what?”

“How do the English feel about you, lately?”

“Christ, I’d rather publish the list.”

“Could be we’re fucked, Carlo.”

“Could be. What about the next edition? Farewell?”

“That hurts my heart. But we have to think about it.”

“Fine,” Weisz said. “We’ll think.”

After dinner, walking from the Luxembourg Metro to the Hotel Tournon for his evening session with Ferrara, Weisz passed a car, parked facing him, on the rue de Medicis. It was an unusual car for this quarter-it would not have been remarkable over in the Eighth, on the grand boulevards, or up in snooty Passy, but maybe he would have noticed it anyhow. Because it was an Italian car, a champagne-colored Lancia sedan, the aristocrat of the line, with a chauffeur, in proper cap and uniform, sitting stiff and straight behind the wheel.

In back, a man with carefully brushed silver hair, gleaming with brilliantine, and a thin silver mustache. On the lapels of his gray silk suit, an Order of the Crown of Italy, and a silver Fascist party pin. This was a type of man that Weisz easily recognized: fine manners, scented powder, and a certain supercilious contempt for anyone beneath him in the social order-most of the world. Weisz slowed for a moment, didn’t quite stop, then continued on. This momentary hesitation appeared to interest the silvery man, whose eyes acknowledged his presence, then pointedly looked away, as though Weisz’s existence was of little concern.

It was almost nine by the time Weisz arrived at Ferrara’s room. They were still working on the colonel’s time in Marseilles, where he’d found a job at a stall in the fish market, where he’d been discovered by a French journalist, then defamed in the Italian fascist press, and where, in time, he’d made contact with a man recruiting for the International Brigades, a month or so after Franco’s military insurrection against the elected government.

Then, beginning to worry about page count, Weisz took Ferrara back to his 1917 service with the arditi, the elite trench raiders, and the fateful Italian defeat at Caporetto, where the army broke and ran. A national humiliation, which, five years later, was more than a little responsible for the birth of fascism. In the face of poisoned-gas attacks by German and Austro-Hungarian regiments, many Italian soldiers had thrown away their rifles and headed south, shouting, “Andiamo a casa!” We’re going home.

“But not us,” Ferrara said, his expression dark. “We took the losses, and retreated because we had to, but we never stopped killing them.”

As Weisz typed, a timid knock at the door.

“Yes?” Ferrara said.

The door opened, to admit a seedy little man, who said, in French, “So, how goes the book tonight?”

Ferrara introduced him as Monsieur Kolb, one of his minders, and the operative who had extracted him from the internment camp. Kolb said he was pleased to meet Weisz, then looked at his watch. “It’s eleven-thirty,” he said, “time for all good authors to be in bed, or out raising hell. It’s the latter we have in mind for you, if you like.”

“Raising what?” Ferrara said.

“An English expression. Means to have a good time. We thought you might like to go up to Pigalle, to some disreputable place. Drink, dance, who knows what. You’ve earned it, Mr. Brown says, and you can’t just sit in this hotel.”

“I’ll go if you will,” Ferrara said to Weisz.

Weisz was exhausted. He was working at three jobs, and the steady grind was beginning to get to him. Worse, the espresso he’d drunk earlier in the evening had had absolutely no effect on the Barolo he’d shared with Salamone. But their conversation was still on his mind, and an informal chat with one of Mr. Brown’s people might not be a bad idea, better than approaching Mr. Brown himself. “Let’s go,” Weisz said. “He’s right, you can’t just sit here.”

Kolb had evidently sensed they would agree, and had a taxi idling in front of the hotel.

Place Pigalle was the heart of it, but the strip of nightclubs, neon-lit, marched up and down the boulevard Clichy, suggesting bountiful sin for every taste. There was plenty of real sin to be had in Paris, in well-known bordellos thoughout the city, whipping rooms, harems with veiled girls in balloon pants, high erotic-instructive Japanese prints on the walls-or low and beastly, but up here it was more the promise of sin, offered to wandering crowds of tourists sprinkled with sailors, thugs, and pimps. Gay Paree. The famous Moulin Rouge and the flipped skirts of its cancan dancers, the La Boheme at Impasse Blanche, Eros, Enfants de la Chance, El Monico, the Romance Bar, and Chez les Nudistes-Kolb’s, and likely Mr. Brown’s, choice for the evening.

The nudist colony. Which described the women, dressed only in high heels and powdery blue light, but not the men dancing with them, to the slow strains of Momo Tsipler and his Wienerwald Companions-according to a sign at the corner of a raised platform. Five of them, including the oldest cellist in captivity, a tiny violinist, cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, wings of white hair fluffed out above his ears, Rex the drummer, Hoffy on the clarinet, and Momo himself, in a metallic green dinner jacket, astride the piano stool. A weary orchestra, drifting far from their hometown Vienna on the nightclub sea, playing a schmaltz version of “Let’s Fall in Love” as the couples shuffled about in circles, doing whatever dance steps the male patrons could manage.

Weisz felt like an idiot, Ferrara caught his eye and looked to heaven, what have we done? They were led to a table, and Kolb ordered champagne, the only available beverage, delivered by a waitress dressed in a money pouch on a red sash. “You don’t want no change, do you?” she said.

“No,” Kolb said, accepting the inevitable. “I suppose not.”

“Very good,” she answered, her blue behind wobbling as she plodded away.

“What is she, Greek, you think?” Kolb said.

“Somewhere down there,” Weisz said. “Maybe Turkish.”

“Want to try another place?”

“Do you?” Weisz said to Ferrara.

“Oh, let’s have this bottle, then we’ll like it better.”

They had to work at it, the champagne was dreadful, and barely cool, but did in time elevate their spirits, and kept Weisz from falling dead asleep with his head on the table. Momo Tsipler sang a Viennese love song, and that got Kolb talking about Vienna, in the old days, before the Anschluss-the tiny Dollfuss, not five feet tall, the chancellor of Austria until the Nazis killed him in 1934-and the infinitely bizarre personality-high culture, low lovelife-of that city. “All those high-breasted fraus in the pastry shops, noses in the air, proper as the day is long, well, I knew a fellow called Wolfi, a salesman of ladies’ undergarments, and he once told me…”

Ferrara excused himself and disappeared into the crowd. Kolb went on with his story, for a time, then wound down to silence when the colonel emerged with a dancing partner. Kolb watched them for a moment, then said, “Say this for him, he certainly picked the best.”

She was. Brassy blond hair in a French roll, a sulky face accented by a heavy lower lip, and a body both lithe and fulsome, which she clearly liked to show off, all of it alive and animated as she danced. The two of them made, in fact, an attractive couple. Momo Tsipler, his fingers walking up and down the keyboard, swiveled around on his piano stool for a better view, then gave them a grand Viennese wink, somewhere well beyond lewd.

“There is something I want to ask you,” Weisz said.

Kolb wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be asked-he’d perfectly heard a certain note in Weisz’s voice, he’d heard it before, and always it preceded inquiries that touched on his vocation. “Oh? And what is that?”

Weisz laid out a condensed version of the OVRA attack on the Liberazione committee. Bottini’s murder, the interrogation of Veronique, Salamone’s lost job, his own experience on the place Concorde.

Kolb knew exactly what he was talking about. “What is it you want?” he said.

“Can you help us?”

“Not me,” Kolb said. “I don’t make decisions like that, you’d have to ask Mr. Brown, and he’d have to ask someone else, and the final answer would be, I expect, no.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Pretty much, I am. Our business is always quiet, to do what has to be done, then fade into the night. We aren’t in Paris to pick a fight with another service. That’s bad form, Weisz, that’s not the way this work is done.”

“But you oppose Mussolini. Certainly the British government does.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“You’re having an antifascist book written, creating an opposition hero, and that’s not fading into the night.”

Kolb was amused. “Written, yes. Published, we’ll see. I have no special information, but I would bet you ten francs that the diplomats are hard at it to bring Mussolini over to our side, just like last time, just like 1915. If that doesn’t work, then, maybe, we’ll attack him, and it will be time for the book to appear.”

“Still, no matter what happens politically, you’ll want the support of the emigres.”

“It’s always nice to have friends, but they’re not the crucial element, by far, not. We’re a traditional service, and we operate on the classic assumptions. Which means we concentrate on the three C‘s: Crown, Capital, and Clergy. That’s where the influence is, that’s how a state changes sides, when the leader, king, premier, whatever he calls himself, and the big money-captains of industry-and the religious leaders, whatever God they pray to, when these people want a new policy, then things change. So, emigres can help, but they’re famously a pain in the ass, every day some new problem. Forgive me, Weisz, for being frank with you, but it’s the same with journalists-journalists work for other people, for Capital, and that’s who gets to tell them what to write. Nations are run by oligarchies, by whoever’s powerful, and that’s where any service will commit its resources, and that’s what we’re doing in Italy.”

Weisz wasn’t so very good at hiding his reactions, Kolb could see what he felt. “I’m telling you something you don’t know?”

“No, you aren’t, it all makes sense. But we don’t know where to turn, and we’re going to lose the newspaper.”

The music stopped, it was time for the Wienerwald Companions to take a break-the drummer wiped his face with a handkerchief, the violinist lit a fresh cigarette. Ferrara and his partner walked over to the bar and waited to be served.

“Look,” Kolb said. “You’re working hard for us, never mind the money, and Brown appreciates what you’re doing, that’s why you’re being treated to a big night. Of course, this doesn’t mean he’ll get us into a war with the Italians, but-by the way, we never had this conversation-but, maybe, if you come up with something in return, we might talk to somebody in one of the French services.”

Ferrara and his new friend came over to the table, champagne cocktails in hand. Weisz stood up to offer her his chair, but she waved him off and settled on Ferrara’s lap. “Hello everybody,” she said. “I am Irina.” She had a heavy Russian accent.

After that, she ignored them, moving around on Ferrara’s lap, toying with his hair, giggling and carrying on, whispering answers to whatever he was saying in her ear. Finally, he said to Kolb, “Don’t bother looking for me when you go back to the hotel.” Then, to Weisz: “And I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“We can take you wherever you’re going, in the taxi,” Kolb said.

Ferrara smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll find my way home.”

A few minutes later, they left, Irina clinging to his arm. Kolb said good night, then gave them a few minutes, enough for her to get dressed. He looked at his watch as he stood up to leave. “Some nights…” he said with a sigh, and left it at that. Weisz could see he wasn’t pleased-now he would have to spend hours, likely till dawn, sitting in the back of the taxi and watching some doorway, God only knew where.

11 May. Salamone called an editorial committee meeting for midday. As Weisz arrived, hurrying up the street, he saw Salamone and a few other giellisti standing silent in front of the Cafe Europa. Why? Was it locked? When Weisz joined them, he saw why. The entry to the cafe was blocked by a few scrap boards nailed across the door. Inside, shelves of broken bottles rose above the bar, in front of a charred wall. The ceiling was black, as were the tables and chairs, tumbled this way and that on the tile floor, amid puddles of black water. The bitter smell of dead fire, of burnt plaster and paint, hung in the air on the street.

Salamone didn’t comment, his face said it all. From the others, hands in pockets, a subdued greeting. Finally, Salamone said, “I guess we’ll have to meet somewhere else,” but his voice was low and defeated.

“Maybe the station buffet, at the Gare du Nord,” the benefactor said.

“Good idea,” Weisz said. “It’s just a few minutes’ walk.”

They headed for the railway station, and entered the crowded buffet. The waiter was helpful, found them a table for five, but there were people all around them, who glanced over as the forlorn little group settled themselves and ordered coffees. “Not an easy place to talk,” Salamone said. “But then, I don’t think we have much to say.”

“Are you sure, Arturo?” the professor from Siena said. “I mean, it’s a shock, to see something like that. No accident, I think.”

“No, not an accident,” Elena said.

“It’s maybe not the moment to make decisions,” the benefactor said. “Why not wait a day or two, then we’ll see how we feel.”

“I’d like to agree,” Salamone said. “But this has gone on long enough.”

“Where is everybody?” Elena said.

“That’s the problem, Elena,” Salamone said. “I spoke to the lawyer yesterday. He didn’t resign, officially, but when I telephoned, he told me his apartment had been robbed. A terrible mess, he said. They’d spent all night trying to clean it up, everything thrown on the floor, broken glasses and dishes.”

“Did he call the police?” the Sienese professor said.

“Yes, he did. They said such things happened all the time. Asked for a list of stolen items.”

“And our friend from Venice?”

“Don’t know,” Salamone said. “He said he would be here, but he hasn’t shown up, so now it’s just the five of us.”

“That’s enough,” Elena said.

“I think we have to postpone the next issue,” Weisz said, to spare Salamone from saying it.

“And give them what they want,” Elena said.

“Well,” Salamone said, “we can’t go on until we can find a way to fight back, and nobody’s come up with a way to do that. Suppose some detective from the Prefecture agreed to take the case, what then? Assign twenty men to watch all of us? Day and night? Until they caught somebody? This is never going to happen, and the OVRA perfectly well know it won’t.”

“So,” the Sienese professor said, “it’s finished?”

“Postponed,” Salamone said. “Which is perhaps a nice word for finished. I suggest we skip a month, wait until June, then we’ll meet once more. Elena, do you agree?”

She shrugged, unwilling to say the words.

“Sergio?”

“Agreed,” the benefactor said.

“Zerba?”

“I’ll go along with the committee,” the Sienese professor said.

“And Carlo.”

“Wait until June,” Weisz said.

“Very well. It’s unanimous.”

Agent 207 was precise, in a report to the OVRA delivered in Paris the following day, on the decision and the vote of the committee. Which meant, once the report reached the Pubblica Sicurezza committee in Rome, that their operation was not yet complete. Their objective was to finish Liberazione-not postpone its publication-and make an example, to let the others, Communist, socialist, Catholic, see what happened to those who dared to oppose fascism. Then, too, they were great believers in the seventeenth-century English adage, coined in civil war, which said, “He that draws his sword against his prince must throw away the scabbard.” Thus inspired, they determined that the Paris operation, as planned, with dates and targets and various actions, would continue.

The conductor on the 7:15 Paris/Genoa Express was approached on the fourteenth of May. After the train left the station at Lyons, the passengers slept, or read, or watched the springtime fields passing by the windows, and the conductor headed for the baggage car. There he found two friends: a dining-car waiter, and a sleeping-car porter, playing two-handed scopa, using a steamer trunk turned on its side for a card table. “Care to join us?” the waiter said. The conductor agreed, and was dealt a hand.

They played for a time, gossiping and joking, then the sound of the train, the beat of the engine and the wheels on the track, rose sharply as the door at the end of the car was opened. They looked up, to see a uniformed inspector of the Milizia Ferroviaria, the railway police, called Gennaro, who they’d known for years.

The railway police were Mussolini’s way of enforcing his most noted achievement, making the trains run on time. This was the result of a determined effort in the early 1920s, after a train headed for Turin arrived four hundred hours behind schedule, much too late. But that was long ago, when Italy seemed to be following Russia into Bolshevism, and the trains often stopped, for long periods, so the trainworkers could participate in political meetings. Those days were over, but the Milizia Ferroviaria still rode the trains, now investigating crimes against the regime.

“Gennaro, come and play scopa,” the waiter said, and the inspector pulled a suitcase up to the steamer trunk.

Fresh cards were dealt and they started a new game. “Tell me,” Gennaro said to the conductor, “you ever see anybody on this train with one of those secret newspapers?”

“Secret newspapers?”

“Oh come on, you know what I mean.”

“On this train? You mean a passenger, reading it?”

“No. Somebody taking them down to Genoa. Bundled up, maybe.”

“Not me. Did you ever see that?” he asked the waiter.

“No. I never did.”

“What about you?” he asked the porter.

“No, not me either. Of course, if it’s the Communists, you’d never know about it, they’d have some secret way of doing it.”

“That’s true,” the conductor said. “Maybe you should look for the Communists.”

“Are they on this train?”

“This train? Oh no, we wouldn’t have that. I mean, you can’t talk to those guys.”

“So, you think it’s the Communists,” Gennaro said.

The waiter played a three of cups, from the forty-card Italian deck, the conductor answered with a six of coins, and the porter said, “Hah!”

Gennaro stared at his cards for a moment, then said, “But it’s not a Communist paper. That’s what they tell me.”

“Who then?”

“The GL, they say, it’s their paper.” Cautiously, he laid down a six of cups.

“Sure you want to do that?” the waiter said.

Gennaro nodded. The waiter took the trick with a ten of swords.

“Who knows,” the conductor said, “they’re all the same to me, those political types. All they do is argue, they don’t like this, they don’t like that. Va Napoli, is what I say to them.” Go to Naples, which meant fuck you.

The waiter dealt the cards for the next hand. “Maybe it’s in the baggage,” the waiter said. “We could be playing on it right now.”

Gennaro looked around, at trunks and suitcases piled everywhere. “They search that at the border,” he said.

“True,” the conductor said. “That’s not your job. They can’t expect you to do everything.”

“Bundle of newspapers,” the porter said. “Tied up with a string, you mean. We’d be sure to see something like that.”

“And you never did, right, you’re sure?”

“Seen a lot of things on this train, but never that.”

“What about you?” Gennaro said to the conductor.

“I don’t remember seeing it. A pig in a crate, once. Remember that?”

The waiter laughed, pinched his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and said, “Phew.”

“And we get a body, sometimes, in a coffin,” the conductor said. “Maybe you should look in there.”

“Maybe he’d be reading the paper, Gennaro,” the waiter said. “Then you’d get a medal.”

They all laughed, and went back to playing cards.

On the nineteenth of May, a tipster in Berlin, a telephone operator at the Hotel Kaiserhof, told Eric Wolf of the Reuters bureau that arrangements were under way for Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, to visit Berlin. Rooms had been booked for visiting officials, and feature writers from the Stefani agency, the Italian wire service. A travel agent in Rome, waiting to talk to a reservations clerk, had told the operator what was going on.

At eleven in the morning, Delahanty called Weisz into his office. “What are you working on?” he said.

“Bobo, the talking dog up in Saint-Denis. I just got back.”

“Does it talk?”

“It says”-Weisz deepened his voice to a low growl and barked-”’bonjour,‘ and ‘ca va.’”

“Really?”

“Sort of, if you listen hard. The owner used to be in the circus. It’s a cute dog, a little mongrel, scruffy, it’ll make a good photo.”

Delahanty shook his head in mock despair. “There may well be more important news. Eric Wolf has cabled London, and they telephoned us-Ciano is going to Berlin, with a grand entourage, and the Stefani agency will be there in force. An official visit, not just consultations, and, according to what we hear, a major event, a treaty, called ‘the Pact of Steel.’”

After a moment, Weisz said, “So that’s that.”

“Yes, it looks like the talking’s done. Mussolini is going to sign up with Hitler.” The war on the horizon, as Weisz sat in the grimy office, had moved a step closer. “You’ll have to go home and pack, then get out to Le Bourget, we’re flying you over. The ticket’s on the way to your hotel, by messenger. A one-thirty flight.”

“Forget Bobo?”

Delahanty looked harassed. “No, leave the bloody dog to Woodley, he can use your notes. What London wants from you is the Italian view, the opposition view. In other words, give ‘em hell, if it’s what we think it is, both barrels and the cat’s breakfast. This is bad news, for Britain, and for every subscriber we have, and that’s the way you’ll write it.”

On his way to the Metro, Weisz stopped at the American Express office and wired a message to Christa at her office in Berlin. MUST LEAVE PARIS TODAY FORWARD MAIL AUNT MAGDA EXPECT TO SEE HER TONIGHT HANS. Magda was one of the whippets, Christa would know what he meant.

Weisz reached the Dauphine twenty minutes later, and checked at the desk, but his ticket had not yet arrived. He was very excited as he ran up the stairs, and his mind, caught in crosscurrents, sped from one thing to the next. He realized that Kolb had indulged, at the nightclub, in the sin of optimism-the British diplomats had failed, and had lost Mussolini as an ally. This was, to Weisz, pure heartache, his country was in real trouble now and it would suffer, would, if events played out as he believed, be made to fight a war, a war that would end badly. Yet, strange how life went, the coming political explosion meant that Liberazione, his war, might possibly be salvaged. A visit to Pompon and the Surete machine would be put in gear, because an Italian operation, soon an enemy operation, would be seen in a very different light, and what happened next would be far beyond the efforts of some yawning detective at the Prefecture.

But it also meant, to Weisz, a great deal more than that. As he climbed, affairs of state drifted away like smoke, replaced by visions of what would happen when Christa came to his room. His imagination was on fire, first this, then that. No, the other way. It was cruel to be happy that morning, but he had no choice. For if the world insisted on going to hell, no matter what he, what anyone, tried to do, he and Christa would, by evening light, steal a few hours of life in a private world. Last chance, perhaps, because that other world would soon enough come looking for them, and Weisz knew it.

Breathless from the four flights, Weisz paused at the door when he heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Was this the hotel porter, with his airplane ticket? No, the tread was strong and certain. Weisz waited, and saw he’d been right, it wasn’t the porter, it was the new tenant, down the hall and across the corridor.

Weisz had seen him before, two days earlier, and, as it happened, didn’t much care for him, he couldn’t exactly say why. He was a large man, tall and thick, who wore a rubber raincoat and a black felt hat. His face, dark, heavy, closed, reminded Weisz of southern Italy, it was the kind of face you saw down there. Was he, in fact, Italian? Weisz didn’t know. He’d greeted the man, the first time they met in the hall, but received only a curt nod in reply-the man did not speak. And now, curiously, the same thing happened.

Oh well, some people. In the room, Weisz took his valise from the armoire and, with the ease of the experienced traveler, folded and packed. Underwear and socks, a spare shirt-two-day trip? Maybe three, he thought. Sweater? No. Gray flannel trousers, which made his suit jacket into a sport coat-he liked to think it did, anyhow. In a leather case, toothbrush, toothpaste-enough? Yes. Old-fashioned straight razor, the throat-slitter, so-called, his father’s, once upon a time, kept all these years. Shaving soap. The cologne called Chypre, which Christa had said she liked. Put some on for the trip? No, she won’t be at the airport, and why smell good for the border Kontrolle?

Ah, the ticket. He went to answer the knock, but it wasn’t the porter. It was the new tenant, still wearing his hat, one hand in the pocket of his raincoat, who stared at Weisz, then looked over his shoulder into the room. Weisz’s heart skipped a beat. He took a half step back, and started to speak. Then, on the stairs, a slow tread accompanied by wheezing. “Excuse me,” Weisz said. He slid past the man and walked toward the staircase, calling out, “Bertrand?”

“Coming, monsieur,” the porter answered. “As fast as I can.” Weisz waited as a panting Bertrand-these errands would kill him yet-struggled up the last few steps, a white envelope in his trembling hand. Down the corridor, a door was slammed shut, hard, and Weisz turned and saw that the new tenant had disappeared. The hell with him, discourteous fellow. Or worse. Weisz told himself to calm down, but something about the man’s eyes had scared him, had made him remember what happened to Bottini.

“This just arrived,” Bertrand said, handing Weisz the envelope.

Weisz reached into his pocket for a franc piece, but his money was on the desk, with his glasses and wallet. “Come in for a moment,” he said.

Bertrand entered the room and sat heavily in the chair, fanning his face with his hand. Weisz thanked him and gave him his tip. “Who’s the new tenant?” he said.

“I couldn’t say, Monsieur Weisz. I believe he is from Italy, a commercial gentleman, perhaps.”

Weisz took a last look around, closed his valise, buckled his briefcase, and put his hat on. Looking at his watch, he said, “I have to get out to Le Bourget.”

The franc piece in Bertrand’s pocket had evidently hastened his recovery. He rose nimbly and, as the two of them chatted about the weather, accompanied Weisz down the stairs.

In the spring twilight, as the Dewoitine airplane began its descent to Berlin, the change of pitch in the engines woke Carlo Weisz, who looked out the window and watched the drifting cloud as it broke over the wing. On his lap, an open copy of Dekobra’s La Madone des Sleepings-the Madonna of the Sleeping Cars-a 1920s French spy thriller, wildly popular in its day, which Weisz had brought along for the trip. The dark adventures of Lady Diana Wynham, siren of the Orient Express, bed-hopping from Vienna to Budapest, with stops at “every European watering-place.”

Weisz dog-eared the page and stowed the book in his briefcase. As the plane lost altitude, it broke through the cloud, revealing the streets, the parks and church steeples, of small towns, then a squared patchwork of farm fields, still faintly green in the gathering dusk. It was very peaceful, and, Weisz thought, very vulnerable, because this was the bomber pilot’s view, just before he set it all on fire. Weisz had been in the Spanish towns, when the German bombers were done with them, but who down there hadn’t seen them, set to heroic music, in the Reich’s newsreels. Did the people at supper, below him, realize it could happen to them?

At Tempelhof airport, the passport Kontrolle was all smiles and courtesy-the dignitaries and foreign correspondents, streaming in for the Ciano visit, must see the amiable face of Germany. Weisz took a taxi into the city, and asked for messages at the Adlon desk, but there was nothing for him. By nine-thirty, he had eaten dinner and, up in his room, spent a few minutes standing over the telephone. But it was late, Christa was home. Perhaps she would come tomorrow.

By nine the next morning he was at the Reuters office, greeted warmly by Gerda and the other secretaries. Eric Wolf peered out of his office and beckoned Weisz inside. Something about him-perpetual bow tie, puzzled expression, myopic eyes behind round-framed eyeglasses, made him look like a friendly owl. Wolf said hello, then, his demeanor conspiratorial, closed his office door. Anxious to tell a story, he leaned forward, his voice low and private. “I’ve been given a message for you, Weisz.”

Weisz tried to seem unconcerned. “Oh?”

“I don’t know what it means, and you don’t have to tell me, of course. And maybe I don’t want to know.”

Weisz looked mystified.

“Last night, I left the office at seven-thirty, as usual, and I was walking back to my apartment when this very elegant lady, all in black, falls in beside me and says, ‘Herr Wolf, if Carlo Weisz should come to Berlin, would you give him a message for me? A personal message, from Christa.’ I was a bit startled, but I said yes, of course, and she said, ‘Please tell him that Alma Bruck is a trusted friend of mine.’”

Weisz didn’t answer immediately, then shook his head and smiled: don’t worry, it isn’t what you think. “I know what this is about, Eric. She’s, like that, sometimes.”

“Oh, well, naturally I wondered. It was, you know, rather sinister. And I hope I got the name right, because I wanted to repeat it, but we’d reached the corner and she took a sharp turn down the street and disappeared. The whole thing took only seconds. It was, how to say, perfect spy technique.”

“The lady is a friend of mine, Eric. A very good friend. But a married friend.”

“Ahh.” Wolf was relieved. “You’re a lucky chap, I’d say, she is stunning.”

“I’ll tell her you said so.”

“You can understand how I felt. I mean, I thought, maybe it’s a story he’s working on, and, in this city, you have to be careful. But then, it could have been something else. Lady in black, Mata Hari, that sort of thing.”

“No.” Weisz smiled at Wolf’s suspicions. “Not me, it’s just a love affair, nothing more. And I appreciate your help. And your discretion.”

“Happy to do it!” Wolf relaxed. “Not often one gets to play Cupid.” With an owlish smile, he pulled back a pretend bowstring, then opened his fingers to let the arrow fly.

The invitation arrived while Weisz and Wolf were out for the morning press conference at the Propaganda Ministry. Inside the envelope of a messenger service, an envelope with his name in script, and a folded note: “Dearest Carlo, I’m giving a cocktail party, at my apartment, at six this evening, I’d be so pleased if you could come.” Signed “Alma,” with an address in the Charlottenstrasse, not far from the Adlon. Curious, Weisz went to the clipping file and, German efficiency at work, there she was. Small, slim, and dark, in a fur coat, smiling for the photographer at a benefit given for war widows on 16 March, the German Memorial Day.

On the Charlottenstrasse, a block of elaborate limestone apartment buildings, upper windows with miniature balconies. Time and soot turned the Parisian versions black, but the Prussians of Berlin kept theirs white. The street itself was immaculate, with well-scrubbed paving stones bordered by linden trees behind ornamental iron railings. The buildings, to Weisz’s intuitive geometry, much larger inside than they looked from without. Across a white brick courtyard, and up two floors in a curlicue-caged elevator, Alma Bruck’s apartment.

Had the invitation said six? Weisz swore to himself that it had, but, listening at the door, he heard no evidence of a cocktail party. Tentatively, he knocked. The unlocked door opened an inch. Weisz gave it a gentle push, and it opened further, revealing a dark foyer. “Hello?” Weisz said.

No answer.

Weisz took a cautious step inside and closed the door, but not all the way. What was going on? A dark, empty apartment. A trap. Then, from somewhere down the long hallway, he heard music, a swing band, which meant either a phonograph or a radio tuned to some station outside Germany, where such music was verboten. Again, he said, “Hello?” No answer, only the music. Christa, are you in here? Was this romantic, playful theatre? Or something very different? For a moment, he froze, the two possibilities at war inside him.

Finally, he took a deep breath. She was in here somewhere, and, if she wasn’t, well, too bad. Slowly, he walked down the hallway, the old parquet flooring creaked with every step. He passed an open door, a parlor, its heavy drapes drawn, then stopped and said, “Christa?” No answer. The music was coming from the room at the end of the hall, its door wide open.

He stopped at the threshold. Inside a dark bedroom, a white shape was stretched full length on the bed. “Christa?”

“Oh my God,” she said, sitting bolt upright. “I fell asleep.” Slowly, she lay back down. “I meant to answer the door,” she said. “Like this.”

“I would have liked that,” he said. He went and sat beside her, bent over and kissed her briefly, then stood and began to undress. “Next time, my love, leave a note on the door, or a garter, or something.”

She laughed. “Forgive me.” She propped her head on her hand and watched as he took off his clothes. Then she put a hand out, he took it in his, and she said, “I am so happy you’re here, Carlo.” He kissed her hand, then went back to unbuttoning his shirt.

“I did wonder,” he said. “I thought I was going to a party.”

“But my dear, you are.”

Done with his clothes, he lay down on the bed and stroked her side. “I thought you might call, last night.”

“Better for me now not to go to a hotel,” she said. “That’s why all of this, your friend Wolf, and dear Alma. But, no matter.” She put her arm around his shoulders and embraced him, her breasts against his chest. “I have what I want,” she said, her voice softening.

“The front door is ajar,” he said.

“Don’t worry, you can close it later. Nobody comes here, it’s a building of ghosts.”

The skin of her legs was cool, and smooth to the touch. His hand moved slowly, up and back, he was in no hurry, took such pleasure in anticipation that what came next seemed somewhere in a distant future.

Finally, she said, “Perhaps you’d better close the door, after all.”

“Allright.” Reluctantly, he stood and headed for the door.

“Ghosts might hear things,” she said as he left the room. “We wouldn’t want that.”

He was back in a moment. “Poor Carlo,” she said. “Now we’ll have to begin all over again.”

“I guess I must,” he said, his voice elated. After a time, she moved her legs apart, and guided his hand. “God,” she said, “how I love this.”

He could tell that she did.

Sliding down the bed, so that her head was level with his waist, she said, “Just stay where you are, there is something I have wanted to do for a long time.”

“May I have one of those?” she said.

He took a cigarette from his pack of Gitanes, handed it to her, then lit it with his steel lighter. “I don’t recall you smoking.”

“I’ve taken it up. I used to, in my twenties, then I stopped.”

She found an ashtray on the night table and put it between them on the bed. “Everybody smokes now, in Berlin. It helps.”

“Christa?”

“Yes?”

“Why can’t you go to the Adlon?”

“Too public. Somebody would tell the police.”

“Are they after you?”

“They’re interested, in me. They suspect I might be a bad girl, I have a few of the wrong friends. So, I asked Alma for a favor. She was very enthusiastic.” After a moment, she said, “I wanted to make it exciting. Answer the door, all bare-assed and perfumed.”

“You can do it tomorrow. Can we come here tomorrow?”

“Oh yes, we shall. How long can you stay?”

“Two days more, I’ll find a reason.”

“Yes, find some Nazi bastard and interview him.”

“That’s what I do.”

“I know, you’re strong.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

She inhaled her cigarette, letting the smoke come out with her words. “You are, though. One reason I like you.”

He put his cigarette out and said, “There are more?”

“I love to fuck you, that’s another.” In her husky, aristocratic voice, the vulgarity was no more than casual.

He leaned over and put his lips on her breast. Surprised, she drew in her breath. Then she stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray, reached down, and held him in her hand. Which was slightly cold, at first, but, not long after, warmed. “I have one nice thing to tell you,” she said.

“What’s that?” His voice wavered.

“We can stay here tonight. The official version is ‘at Alma’s.’ So we can go to a charity breakfast, before work.”

“Mm,” he said. “Probably I’ll wake you up, at some point.”

“You better,” she said.

It was nearly dawn, when that happened. He’d almost forgotten how much he liked to sleep beside her, spoon fashion, her legs drawn up. After they made love, they heard clinking bottles out in the corridor. The milkman.

“Apparently, the ghosts drink milk,” Weisz said. “Why do you call them ghosts?”

“The rich used to live here. According to Alma, some of them were Jews, and some of the others find it opportune, lately, to be in Switzerland.”

“Where is Alma?”

“She lives in a big house in Charlottenburg. She used to live here, now it’s her place in town.”

“What do we do about the sheets?”

“Her maid will change the bed.”

“Is she dependable, the maid?”

“God knows,” Christa said. “You can’t think of everything, you have to trust in fate, sometimes.”

22 May. The signing of the Pact of Steel took place at eleven in the morning, at the sumptuous Ambassadors Hall of the Reich Chancellery. In the press gallery, Weisz sat next to Eric Wolf. On his other side, Mary McGrath of the Chicago Tribune, who he’d last seen in Spain. As they waited for the ceremonies to begin, Weisz made notes. The scene had to be set, because here was the power of the state, its wealth and strength, expressed in splendor: immense chandeliers of glittering crystal, marble walls, vast red drapes, miles of heavy carpet, brown and rose. Stationed by the doors, prepared to admit the cream of fascist Europe, were footmen dressed in black with gold braid, white stockings, and slipperlike black pumps. To one side of the room, the newsreel cameras and a crowd of photographers.

The journalists had been given handouts, with highlights of the treaty. “Look at the last paragraph,” Mary McGrath said. “‘Finally, in case of war involving one partner, no matter how started, full mutual support with all military forces, by land, sea, and air.’”

“That’s the deadly phrase,” Wolf said, “‘no matter how started.’ It means if Hitler attacks, Italy has to follow. Four little words, but enough.”

The footmen walked the doors open, and the parade began. In the most splendid uniforms, set off by ranks of medals, a steady stream of generals and foreign ministers entered the hall, walking slowly, stately and dignified. Only one stood out, in the simplicity of his plain brown uniform, Adolf Hitler. There followed an endless procession of speeches, and, ultimately, the signing itself. Two groups, of four officials from the foreign department, carried large books, bound in red leather, to the table, where Count Ciano and von Ribbentrop awaited them. The officials set the books down and, with great ceremony, opened them, to reveal the treaties, then handed each man a gold pen. When the treaties were signed, they picked up the books and set them down for countersignature. Two powerful states were now joined together, and an elated Hitler, with a huge grin, took Count Ciano’s hand in both of his and shook it so violently that he nearly lifted him off the floor. Then, Hitler presented Ciano with the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Reich’s highest honor. In the handout, the press was informed that, later in the day, Ciano would bestow on von Ribbentrop the Collar of the Annunciata, Italy’s supreme decoration.

Amid the applause, Mary McGrath said, “Is it over?”

“I think that’s it,” Weisz said. “The banquets are tonight.”

“Think I’ll skip those,” McGrath said. “Let’s get the hell out of this.”

They did, but it wasn’t so easy. Outside the hall, thousands of Hitler Youth filled the streets, waving flags and singing. As the three journalists worked their way across the boulevard, Weisz could feel the fearful energy of the crowd, intense eyes, rapturous faces. Now, he thought, there will surely be war. The people in the street would demand it, would kill relentlessly, and, in time, would have to be killed. These children would not surrender.

Christa was true to her word. When Weisz arrived at the apartment that evening, she made him wait-he had to knock a second time-then answered the door wearing only a modestly depraved smile and clouds of Balenciaga perfume. His eyes swept over her, then he ran his hands up and down before pulling her to him, for, even though it was no surprise, it had the effect she wanted. As she led the way down the hall to the bedroom, she swung her hips for him-his very own merry trollop. And so she was. Inventive, hungry, flushed with excitment, starting over again and again.

Eventually, they fell asleep. When Weisz woke up, he had, for a moment, no idea where he was. On a table by the bedroom door, the radio was tuned to a live broadcast of dance music from a ballroom in London, the orchestra faint and distant amid the crackling static. Christa was sleeping on her stomach, mouth open, one hand on his arm. He moved slightly, but she didn’t wake up, so he touched her. “Yes?” Her eyes were still closed.

“Should I look at the time?”

“Oh, I thought you wanted something.”

“I might.”

She made a kind of sigh. “You could.”

“Can we stay here tonight?”

She moved her head sufficiently for him to understand she meant they could not. “Is it late?”

He reached over her to the night table, retrieved his watch, and, by the light of a small lamp in the corner, left on so they could see, told her that it was eight-twenty.

“There is time,” she said. Then, a moment later: “And, it seems, interest.”

“It’s you,” he said.

“Now, if I could move.”

“You are very tired, aren’t you?”

“All the time, yes, but I don’t sleep.”

“What will happen, Christa?”

“So I ask myself. And there’s never an answer.”

He didn’t have one either. Idly, he trailed a finger from the back of her neck down to where her legs parted, and she parted them a little more.

At ten, they collected their clothes, from a chair, from the floor, and began to get dressed. “I’ll take you home in a taxi,” he said.

“I would like that. Let me off a block away.”

“I wanted to ask you…”

“Yes?”

“What’s become of your friend? The man we met at the carnival.”

“You’ve been waiting to ask me that, haven’t you.”

“Yes, as long as I could.”

Her smile was bittersweet. “You are considerate. What’s the French? C’est gentil de votre part? They put it so nicely, a kindness of you. And also, I think, and not so nice, you sensed what I would have to say, and left it for our last night.”

He had, and showed it.

“That he’s gone. That he left for work one morning, a month ago, and was never seen again. Even though some of us, the ones who could, made telephone calls, talked to people, former friends, who might be able to find out, for the sake of old friendship, but even they were unsuccessful. Too deep, even for them, in the Nacht und Nebel, night and fog, Hitler’s very own invention-that people should simply vanish from the face of the earth, a practice dear to him for its effect on friends and family.”

“When are you leaving, Christa? What date, what day?”

“And, worse, much worse, in its way, is that when he disappeared, nothing happened to the rest of us. You wait for a knock on the door, for weeks, but it doesn’t come. And then you know that, whatever happened to him, he didn’t tell them anything.”

The taxi stopped a block from her house, in a neighborhood at the edge of the city, a curving street of grand homes with lawns and gardens. “Come with me for a moment,” she said. Then, to the driver: “You’ll wait, please.”

Weisz got out of the taxi and followed her to an ivy-covered brick wall. In the house, a dog knew they were there and began to bark. “There’s one last thing I must tell you,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I didn’t want to say it in the apartment.”

He waited.

“Two weeks ago, we went to a dinner party at the house of von Schirren’s uncle. He’s a general in the army, a gruff old Prussian, but a good soul, at heart. At one point in the evening, I remembered I had to call home, to remind the maid that Magda, one of my dogs, was to be given her medicine, for her heart. So I went into the general’s study, to use the telephone, and on his desk, I couldn’t help seeing it, was an open book, with a sheet of paper he’d used to make notes. The book was called Sprachfuhrer Polnisch fur Geschaftsreisende, a guide to Polish for the business traveler. And he’d copied out phrases to memorize, ‘How far is it to,’ put in the name, ‘Where is the railway station?’ You know the sort of thing I mean, questions for the local population.”

Weisz glanced back at the idling taxi and the driver, who’d been watching them, turned away. “It seems he’s going to Poland,” Weisz said. “And so?”

“So the Wehrmacht is going with him.”

“Maybe, it’s possible,” Weisz said. “Or maybe not, he could be going as a military attache, or for some kind of negotiation. Who knows?”

“Not him. He’s not the attache type. A general of infantry, pure and simple.”

Weisz thought about it. “Then it will be before winter, in the early summer, after spring planting, because half the army works on farms.”

“That’s what I think.”

“You know what this means, Christa, for you. In two months, at the latest. And, once it starts, it will spread, and it will go on for a long time-the Poles have a big army, and they’ll fight.”

“I will leave before that happens, before they close the borders.”

“Why not tomorrow? On the plane? You don’t know the future-tonight you can still go, but, the day after tomorrow…”

“No, not yet, I can’t. But soon. We have one more thing we must do here, it’s in progress, please don’t ask me to tell you more than that.”

“They’ll arrest you, Christa. You’ve done enough.”

“Kiss me, and say goodby. Please. The driver is watching us.”

He embraced her, and they kissed. Then he watched her walk away until, at the corner, she waved to him, and disappeared.

Forever.

On the twelve-thirty flight to Paris, as the plane taxied down the runway, Weisz stared out the window at the fields bordering the tarmac. His spirits were very low. He’d worked his way around to the belief that Christa’s passionate lovemaking had been her way of saying farewell. Remember me as I am tonight. She was certainly capable of that. Just as she was capable of pursuing whatever clandestine business had hold of her until the operation collapsed and she, like her friend at the carnival, vanished into the Nacht und Nebel. He would never know what happened. Could he have said something that would have persuaded her to leave? No, he knew better than that, there were no words in the world that would change her mind. It was her life to live, her life to lose, she would stay in Berlin, she would fight her enemies, and she would not run away. The more Weisz thought about it, the worse he felt.

What helped, in the end, was that Alfred Millman, a New York Times correspondent, was seated next to him. He and Weisz had met before, and had exchanged nods and mumbled greetings when they’d taken their seats. Tall and stocky, with thinning gray hair, Millman had the presence of a man swimming always upstream, who, accepting that as his natural element, had early in life become a strong swimmer. Not a star of his newspaper, he was, like Weisz, a tireless worker, assigned to this or that crisis, filing his stories, then going on to the next war, or fallen government, wherever the fires broke out. Now, done with his Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, he flipped it closed and said to Weisz, “Okay, that’s enough horse manure for today. Care to have a look?”

“No thanks.”

“I saw you at the signing ceremony. Must’ve been hard for you, as an Italian, to watch that.”

“Yes, it was. They think they’re going to rule the world.”

Millman shook his head. “They’re living in a dream. Pact of Steel my foot, they don’t have any steel-they have to import. And they don’t have much coal, not a drop of oil, and their chief of military procurement is eighty-seven years old. How the hell are they going to fight a war?”

“They’re going to get what they need from Germany, that’s what they’ve always done. Now they’ll trade soldiers’ lives for coal.”

“Yeah sure, until Hitler gets pissed off at ‘em. And he always does, you know, sooner or later.”

“They won’t win,” Weisz said, “because the people don’t want to fight. What war will do is ruin the country, but the government believes in conquest, and so they signed.”

“Yes, I saw it happen, yesterday. Pomp and circumstance.” Millman’s sudden smile was ironic. “Do you know the old Karl Kraus line? ‘How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.’”

“I know the line,” Weisz said. “Actually, Kraus was a friend of my father.”

“You don’t say.”

“They were colleagues, for a time, at the university in Vienna.”

“He’s supposed to be the smartest guy in the world, you ever meet him?”

“When I was young, a few times. My father took me up to Vienna, and we went to Kraus’s personal coffeehouse.”

“Ah yes, the coffeehouses of Vienna, feuilletons and feuds. Kraus surely had his share-the only man ever beaten up by Felix Salten, though I forget why. Not so good for one’s public image, getting knocked around by the author of Bambi.”

They both laughed. Salten had become rich and famous with his fawn, and Kraus had famously hated him.

“Still,” Millman said, “it’s troublesome, this Pact of Steel. Between Germany and Italy, a population of a hundred and fifty million, which makes, by the rule of ten percent, a fighting force of fifteen million. Somebody’s going to have to deal with that, because Hitler’s looking for a brawl.”

“He’ll have his brawl with Russia,” Weisz said. “Once he’s done with the Poles. Britain and France are counting on that.”

“I hope they’re right,” Millman said. “‘Let’s you and him fight,’ as they say, but I have my doubts. Hitler is the worst bastard in the world, but one thing he isn’t is dumb. And he isn’t crazy either, never mind all that screaming. What he is, if you watch him carefully, is a very shrewd man.”

“So is Mussolini. Former journalist, former novelist. The Cardinal’s Mistress, ever read it?”

“No, I haven’t had the pleasure. Actually a pretty good title, I’d say, makes you want to find out what happens.” He thought for a moment, then said, “It’s a damn shame, really, this whole business. I liked Italy. My wife and I were there, a few years ago. In Tuscany, her sister took a villa for the summer. It was old, falling apart, nothing worked, but it had a courtyard with a fountain, and I’d sit out there in the afternoon, the cicadas going a mile a minute, and read. Then we’d have drinks, and it would cool down as night came on, there was always a little breeze, about seven in the evening. Always.”

The Dewoitine’s wings tilted as the airplane turned toward Le Bourget, and Paris lay suddenly below them, a gray city in its twilit sky, strangely isolated, an island amid the wheat fields of the Ile-de-France. Alfred Millman leaned over so he could see the view. “Glad to be home?” he said.

Weisz nodded. It was his home, now, but not so welcoming. As they’d neared Paris, he’d begun to wonder if he shouldn’t maybe find some other hotel-for that night, anyhow. Because his thoughts were occupied by the new tenant, with his hat and raincoat, up on the fourth floor. Who, perhaps, was waiting for him. Was this simply foolish anxiety? He tried to tell himself it was, but his intuition would not be stilled.

When they rolled to a stop-“Let’s have a drink, next time I’m in town,” Millman said as they walked down the aisle-Weisz had still not come to a decision. That was left for the moment when he was seated in the back of a taxi and the driver turned around, one eyebrow aloft. “Monsieur?” You have to go somewhere.

Finally, Weisz said, “The Hotel Dauphine, please. It’s in the rue Dauphine, in the Sixth.” The driver jammed his taxi into gear and sped away from the airfield, driving nobly, with swerving panache, in expectation of a juicy tip from a customer so grand as to descend from the heavens. And, in the event, he wasn’t wrong.

Madame Rigaud was behind the hotel desk, writing tiny numbers on a pad as she scanned the reservation book. Counting her money? She looked up when Weisz came through the door. No secret smile for him now, only lingering curiosity-what goes on with you, my friend? Weisz countered with an extremely polite greeting. This tactic never failed, jarred the preoccupied French soul from its reverie and forced it into equal, if not greater, courtesy.

“I was wondering,” Weisz said. “About the new tenant, up on my floor. Is he still there?”

Such questions were not polite, and Madame’s face let him know it, but she was in a good mood at that moment, perhaps inspired by the numbers on her pad. “He’s moved out.” If you must know. “And his friend as well,” she said, waiting for an explanation.

Two of them. “I was curious about him, Madame Rigaud, that’s all. He knocked on my door, and I never did find out why, because Bertrand arrived with my ticket.”

She shrugged. Who could say, about guests in hotels, what they did, or why, twenty years of it.

He thanked her, politely, and climbed the stairs, valise bumping against his leg, heart flooded with relief.

30 May. It was Elena who telephoned and told Weisz that Salamone was in the hospital. “They’ve got him in the Broussais,” she said. “The charity hospital up in the Fourteenth. It’s his heart, maybe not a heart attack, technically, but he couldn’t catch his breath, at the warehouse, so they sent him home, and his wife took him up there.”

Weisz left work early, for the five o’clock visitors’ hour, stopping on the way for a box of candy. Could Salamone have candy? He wasn’t sure. Flowers? No, that didn’t seem right, so, candy. At the Broussais, he joined a crowd of visitors led by a nursing nun to Men’s Ward G, a long white room with rows of iron beds, inches apart, and the strong smell of disinfectant. Midway down the row, he found G58, a metal sign, much of the paint flecked off, hanging on the rail at the foot of the bed. Salamone was dozing, one finger keeping his place in a book.

“Arturo?”

Salamone opened his eyes, then struggled to sit upright. “Ah, Carlo, you came to see me,” he said. “What a fucking nightmare, eh?”

“I thought I better come before they kicked you out.” Weisz handed him the candy.

“Grazie. I’ll give it to Sister Angelique. Or maybe you want some.”

Weisz shook his head. “Arturo, what happened to you?”

“Not much. I was at work, all of a sudden I couldn’t catch my breath. A warning, the doctor calls it. I’m fine, I should be out in a few days. Still, like my mother used to say, ‘Don’t ever get sick.’”

“My mother too,” Weisz said. He paused for a moment, amid the ceaseless coughing, and the low murmur of visitors’ hour.

“Elena told me you were away, on assignment.”

“I was. In Berlin.”

“For the pact?”

“Yes, the formalities. In the grand hall of the Reich Chancellery. Strutting generals, starched shirts, and little Hitler, grinning like a wolf. The whole filthy business.”

Salamone looked glum. “We would have had a thing or two to say about that. In the paper.”

Weisz spread his hands; some things were lost, life went on. “Bad as it is, this pact, it’s hard to take them seriously, when you see who they are. You keep waiting for Groucho to show up.”

“Do you think the French will stand up to them, now that it’s official?”

“They might. But, the way I feel lately, they can all go to hell. What we have to do now is take care of ourselves, you and me, Arturo. Which means we have to find you another job. At a desk, this time.”

“I’ll find something. I’ll have to, they tell me I can’t go back to what I was doing.”

“Making check marks on a tally sheet?”

“Well, maybe I had to push a few boxes around.”

“Just a few,” Weisz said. “Now and then.”

“But, you know, Carlo, I’m not so sure it was that. I think it was everything else; what happened to me at the insurance company, what happened to the cafe, what happened to all of us.”

And it continues. But Weisz wasn’t going to tell the story of the new tenant to a friend in a hospital bed. Instead, he turned the conversation to emigre talk-politics, gossip, how life would get better. Then a nun appeared and told them that Madame Salamone was in the waiting room, since the patient could have only one visitor. As Weisz turned to go, he said, “Forget all that other business, Arturo, just think about getting better. We did a good job, with Liberazione, but now it’s in the past. And those people know it. So, they got what they wanted, and now it’s done with, over.”

31 May. At the Galeries Lafayette, a big spring sale. What a mob! They’d descended on the department store from every Arrondissement in Paris-bargains galore, buy it today, every price reduced. In the office at the back of the ground floor, an assistant manager, “the Dragon,” nicknamed for her fire-breathing temper, tried to cope with the onslaught. Poor little Mimi, from the millinery counter, had fainted. Now she was sitting in the reception area, white as a sheet, as a floorwalker fanned her with a magazine. Nearby, two children, both in tears, had lost their mothers. The toilet in the ladies’ WC on the second floor had overflowed, the plumber had been called, where was he? Lilliane, from cosmetics, had called in sick, and an old woman had tried to leave the store wearing three dresses. In her office, the Dragon closed her door, the tumult in the reception area was more than she could bear. So she would take a minute, sit quietly, by the telephone that would not stop ringing, and regain her composure. All sales ended, eventually. And everything that could possibly go wrong, had.

But not quite. What foolish soul was knocking on her door? The Dragon rose from her desk and wrenched the door open. To reveal a terrified secretary, old Madame Gros, her brow damp with perspiration. “Yes?” the Dragon said. “What now?”

“Pardon, madame, but the police are here. A man from the Surete Nationale.”

“Here?”

“Yes, madame. In the reception.”

“Why?”

“He’s here about Elena, in ladies’ hosiery.”

The Dragon shut her eyes, took yet one more deep breath. “Very well, one must respect the Surete Nationale. So go to the hosiery counter and bring Elena here.”

“But madame…”

“Now.”

“Yes, madame.”

She fled. The Dragon looked out into the reception area, a vision of hell. Now, which one was-over there? The man in the hat with a little green feather in the band? Nasty mustache, restless eyes, hands in pockets? Well, who knew what they looked like, she certainly didn’t. She walked over to him and said, “Monsieur l’inspecteur?”

“Yes. Are you the manager, madame?”

“An assistant manager. The manager is up on the top floor.”

“Oh, I see, then…”

“You’re here to see Elena Casale?”

“No, I don’t wish to see her. But to speak with you about her, she is the subject of an investigation.”

“Will this take long? I don’t mean to be rude, monsieur, but you can see what’s going on here today. And now I’ve sent for Elena, she’s on her way to the office. Shall I send her back?”

This news did not please the inspector. “Perhaps I should return, say, tomorrow?”

“It would be much better, tomorrow, for our discussion.”

The inspector tipped his hat, said goodby, and hurried off. Strange sort of man, the Dragon thought. And, even stranger, Elena the subject of an investigation. Something of an aristocrat, this Italian woman, with her sharp face, long, graying hair worn back in a clip, ironic smile-not a criminal type, not at all. What could she have done? But, who had time to wonder about such things, for here, at last, was the plumber.

Elena and Madame Gros forced their way down the center aisle. “Did he say what he wanted?” Elena asked.

“Only that he wished to speak with the manager. About you.”

“And he said he was from the Surete Nationale?”

“Yes, that’s what he said.”

Elena was growing angrier by the minute. She remembered Weisz’s story about the interrogation of his girlfriend, who owned an art gallery, she remembered how Salamone had been defamed, and discharged from his job. Was it now her turn? Oh, this was infuriating. It had not been easy, as a woman in Italy, to take a degree in chemistry; finding work, even in industrial Milan, had not been any easier, having to give up her position and emigrate had been harder still, and working as a sales clerk in a department store hardest of all. But she was staunch, she did what had to be done, and now these fascist bastards were going to try and take even that meager prize away from her. What would she do for money? How would she live?

“There he is,” Madame Gros said. “Say, I think you’re in luck, he appears to be leaving.”

“That’s him? In the hat with the green feather?” They watched it, bobbing up and down as he tried to make his way through the mass of determined shoppers.

“Yes, just by the cosmetics counter.”

Elena’s mind worked quickly. “Madame Gros, would you please tell Yvette, at the hosiery counter, that I have to go away for an hour? Would you do this for me?”

Madame Gros agreed. After all, this was Elena, who always worked on Saturday, Elena, who never failed to come in on her day off when somebody was home with the grippe. How could you, the first time she’d ever asked for a favor, say no?

Keeping well behind him, Elena followed the man as he left the store. She was wearing a gray smock, like all the clerks at the Galeries. Her purse and coat were in a locker, but she’d learned, early on, to keep her wallet, with identification and money, in the pocket of her smock. The man in the hat with the green feather strolled along, not especially in a hurry. An inspector? He could be, but Weisz and Salamone thought otherwise. So, she would see for herself. Did he know what she looked like? Would he be able to identify her, as she followed him? That was surely a possibility, but if he were a real inspector, she was already in trouble, and walking down the same street-well, was that even a crime?

The man wound his way through the crowds at the store display windows, then entered the Chausseed’Antin Metro station and put a jeton in the turnstile. Hah, he paid! A real inspector would simply show his badge at the change window, no? Had she not seen such things in the movies? She thought she had. Hands in pockets, he stood idly on the platform, waiting for the Line Seven train, Direction La Courneuve. That would, she knew, take him out of the Ninth Arrondissement and into the Tenth. Where was the Surete office? At the Interior Ministry, over on rue des Saussaies-you couldn’t get there on this line. Still, he might be headed off to investigate some other poor creature. Hiding behind a pillar, Elena waited for the train, sometimes taking a small step forward to keep an eye on the green feather. Who was he? A confidential agent? An OVRA operative? Did he enjoy spending his days doing such miserable business? Or was it simply to earn a living?

The train rolled in, Elena positioned herself at the other end of the car, while the man took a seat, crossed his legs, and folded his hands on his lap. The stations rolled by: Le Peletier, Cadet, Poissoniere, deeper and deeper into the Tenth Arrondissement. Then, at the station for the Gare de l’Est, he stood and left the car. Here he could transfer to Line Four or take a train. Elena waited as long as she dared, then, at the last minute, stepped onto the platform. Damn, where was he? Just barely in time, she spotted him climbing the stairs. She followed as he went through the grilled turnstile and headed for the exit. Elena paused, pretending to study a Metro map on the wall, until he disappeared, then left the station.

Vanished! No, there he was, heading south, away from the railway station, on the boulevard Strasbourg. Elena had never been in this part of the city, and she was grateful that it was mid-morning-she would not have wanted to come here at night. A dangerous quarter, the Tenth; grim tenements for the poor. Dark men, perhaps Portuguese, or Arabs from the Maghreb, gathered in the cafes, the boulevards lined with small, cluttered stores, the side streets narrow, silent, and shadowed. Amid the crowds at the Galeries, and in the Metro, she’d felt invisible, anonymous, but not now. Walking alone on the boulevard, she stood out, a middle-aged woman in a gray smock. She did not belong here, who was she?

Suddenly, the man stopped, at a shop window displaying piles of used pots and pans, and, as she slowed down, he glanced at her. More than glanced-his eyes acknowledged her as a woman, attractive, perhaps available. Elena looked through him and kept walking, passing within three feet of his back. Find a way to stop! Here was a patisserie, a bell above the door jingled as she entered. From the back, a girl, wiping her hands on a flour-dusted apron, walked to the other side of the counter, then waited patiently while Elena stood before a case of soggy pastries, looking sideways, every few seconds, out into the street.

The girl asked what madame might desire. Elena peered into the case. A Napoleon? A religieuse? No, there he was! She mumbled an apology and left the shop. Now he was thirty feet away. Dear God, let him not turn around, he’d noticed her earlier, and if he saw her again, he would, she feared, approach her. But he did not turn around-he looked at his watch and walked faster, for half a block, then turned sharply and entered a building. Elena dawdled a moment at the entry to a pharmacie, giving him time to leave the ground floor of the building.

Then she followed. To 62, boulevard de Strasbourg. Now what? For a few seconds, she hesitated, standing in front of the door, then opened it. Facing her was a stairway, to her right, on the wall, a row of open wooden letter boxes. From the floor above, she could hear footsteps moving down the old boards of a hallway, then a door opened, and clicked shut. Turning to the letter boxes, she found 1 A-Mlle. Krasic printed in pencil across the base, and 1 B-with a business card tacked below it.

A cheaply printed card, for the Agence Photo-Mondiale, worldwide photo agency, with address and telephone number. What was this? Perhaps a stock house, selling photographs to magazines and advertising agencies, or a photojournalism organization, available for assignment. Could he have gone into the Krasic apartment? Not likely, she was sure he’d gone down the hall to Photo-Mondiale. Not an uncommon sort of business, where just about anybody might turn up, perhaps a false business, from which one could run a secret operation.

She had a pencil in the pocket of her smock, but no paper, so she took a ten-franc note from her wallet and wrote the number on it. Was she making the right assumption? She thought so-why would he go to the apartment of Mlle. Krasic? No, she was almost certain. Of course, the way to be absolutely sure was to go to the top of the stairway and turn left, in the direction of the footsteps, cross back over the entryway, and take a fast look at the door. Elena folded the note and tucked it away in her pocket. In the vestibule, it was very still, the building seemed deserted. Up the stairs? Or out the door?

The staircase was uncarpeted, made of wood covered with worn-out varnish, the steps hollowed by years of traffic. She would take, anyhow, one step. No creak, the thing was solid. So, another. Then, another. When she was halfway up, the door above opened, and she heard a voice-two or three muffled words, then footsteps headed along the corridor, a man whistling a tune. Elena stopped breathing. Then, light on her feet, she turned and scampered down the stairs. The footsteps came closer. Did she have time to get out of the building? Maybe, but the heavy door would be heard as it shut. Looking down the hallway, she saw open shadow beneath the staircase and ran for it. There was room enough to stand beneath the stairs. Inches away, the undersides of the steps gave as weight fell on them. But the door did not open. Instead, the man who’d come down the stairs, still whistling, was waiting in the vestibule. Why? He knew she was there. She froze, forced herself against the wall. Then, above her head, someone else, walking down the staircase. A voice spoke-a mean, sarcastic voice, the way she heard it-and another voice, deeper, heavier, laughed and, briefly, answered. Hey, that was a good one! Or, she thought, something like that-she couldn’t understand a single word. Because it was a language she had never in her life heard spoken.

He’d be late for Ferrara, Weisz realized, because Elena was waiting for him on the street outside the Reuters bureau. It was chilly, the first night in June, with a damp mist that made him shiver as he stepped out the door. A new Elena, Weisz thought as they said hello; her eyes alive, voice charged with excitement. “We’ll walk down to Opera and take a taxi,” he told her. Her nod was enthusiastic: thrift be damned, this night is important. On the way, she told him the story she’d promised on the telephone, her pursuit of the false inspector.

It was slow going, in the evening traffic, as the taxi made its way toward an art gallery in the Seventh Arrondissement. Every driver beeped his horn at the idiot in front of him, and swarms of bicyclists rang their bells, as the idiots in their cars came too close. “You no longer see her?” Elena said. “I didn’t know.”

“We’re good friends,” Weisz said. “Now.”

From Elena, in the darkened back of the taxi, one of her half smiles, a particularly sharp one.

“It’s possible,” Weisz said.

“I’m sure it is.”

Veronique came hurrying to the door of the gallery as they entered. She kissed Weisz on each cheek, one hand on his arm. Then Weisz introduced her to Elena. “Just a minute while I lock the door,” Veronique said. “I’ve had Americans all day long, and not one sale. They think it’s a museum.” On the walls, Valkenda’s dissolute waifs were still staring at the cruel world. “So,” she said, closing the bolt, “no art tonight.”

They sat in the office, gathered around the desk. “Carlo tells me we have something in common,” Veronique said to Elena. “He was at his most mysterious, on the phone.”

“Apparently we do,” Elena said. “A very unpleasant man. He showed up at the Galeries Lafayette, where I work, and tried to see the manager. But I was lucky, and, in the confusion, he tried to leave, and I followed him.”

“Where did he go?”

“Out into the Tenth. To a photo agency.”

“So, not from the Surete, you think.” Veronique glanced at Weisz.

“No. He’s a fraud. He had friends, in that office.”

“That’s a relief,” Veronique said. Then, thoughtfully, she added, “Or maybe not. You’re sure it was the same man?”

“Of medium height. With a slim mustache, face pitted on one side, and something about his eyes, the way he looked at me, I didn’t like. He wore a gray hat, with a green feather in the band.”

“The man who came here had dirty fingernails,” Veronique said. “And his French was not Parisian.”

“I never heard him speak, although I can’t be sure of that. He went up to the office, then one man came out, followed by two others, who spoke, not French, I’m not sure what it was.”

Veronique thought it over. “The mustache is right. Like Errol Flynn?”

“A long way from Errol Flynn, the rest of him, but, yes, he tries for the same effect. What to call it, ‘dashing.’”

Veronique grinned, men. “The mustache just makes it worse-whatever it is, about him.” She scowled with distaste at the image in her memory. “Smug, and sly,” she said. “What a vile little man.”

“Yes, exactly,” Elena said.

Weisz looked dubious. “So what shall I tell the police? Look for ‘a vile little man’?”

“Is that what we’re going to do?” Elena said.

“I suppose we will,” Weisz said. “What else? Tell me, Elena, was the language you heard Russian?”

“I don’t think so. But perhaps something like it. Why?”

“If I said that to the police, it would stir their interest.”

“Better not,” Elena said.

“Let’s go to the cafe,” Veronique said. “I need a brandy, after this.”

“Yes, me too,” Elena said. “Carlo?”

Weisz stood, smiled, and waved a gallant hand toward the door.

2 June, 10:15 A.M.

Weisz dialed the number on the ten-franc note. After one ring, a voice said, “Yes?”

“Good morning, is this the Agence Photo-Mondiale?”

A pause, then: “Yes. What do you want?”

“This is Pierre Monet, from the Havas wire service.”

“Yes?”

“I’m calling to see if you have a photograph of Stefan Kovacs, the Hungarian ambassador to Belgium.”

“Who gave you this number?” The accent was heavy, but Weisz’s ear for French wasn’t sharp enough to go beyond that.

“I think somebody here wrote it on a piece of paper, I don’t know, maybe from a list of photo agencies in Paris. Could you take a look? We used to have one, but it’s not in the files. We need it today.”

“We don’t have it. Sorry.”

Weisz spoke quickly, because he sensed the man was about to hang up. “Maybe you could send somebody out-Kovacs is in Paris today, at the embassy, and we’re very pressed, over here. We’ll pay well, if you can help us out.”

“No, I don’t think we can help you, sir.”

“You’re a photo agency, aren’t you? Do you have some specialty?”

“No. We’re very busy. Goodby.”

“Oh, I just thought…Hello? Hello?”

10:45.

“Carlo Weisz.”

“Hello, it’s Elena.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at a cafe. They don’t let us make personal calls at the store.”

“Well, I called them, and whatever they do, they don’t sell photographs, and I don’t believe they take assignments.”

“Good. Then that’s done. Next we have to meet with Salamone.”

“Elena, he’s only home a few days from the hospital.”

“True, but imagine what he’ll think when he finds out what we’re doing.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“You know I am. He’s still our leader, Carlo, you can’t shame him.”

“Allright. Can we meet late tonight? At eleven? I can’t take another night off from, from the other work I’m doing.”

“Where should we meet?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call Arturo, see how he wants to do it. Can you call me back? Can I call you?”

“No, you can’t. I’ll call after work, I get off at six.”

Weisz said goodby, hung up the phone, and dialed Salamone’s number.

At the Hotel Tournon, Colonel Ferrara was a new man. Smiling, relaxed, living in a better world and enjoying his life there. The book had moved to Spain, and Weisz pressed the colonel for details of the fighting. What was commonplace to Ferrara-night ambushes, sniping from the cover of stone walls, machine-gun duels-would be exciting for the reader. Liberal sympathies could be invoked, but when it came to bullets and bombs, to putting one’s life on the line, here was the ultimate reality of idealism.

“And so,” Weisz said, “you took the school?”

“We took the first two floors, but the Nationalists held the top floor and the roof, and they wouldn’t surrender. We climbed the stairs and threw hand grenades up on the landing, and the plaster, and a dead soldier, came down on our heads. There was a lot of yelling, commands, and a lot of ricochet….”

“Bullets whining…”

“Yes, of course. It is very awkward fighting, nobody likes it.”

Weisz worked away on his typewriter.

A productive session, most of what Ferrara described could go directly into print. When they were almost done, Ferrara, still telling battle stories, changed his shirt, then combed his hair, carefully, in the mirror.

“You’re going out?” Weisz said.

“Yes, as usual. We’ll drink somewhere, then go back to her room.”

“Is she still at the nightclub?”

“Oh no. She’s found something else, at a restaurant, a Russian place, Gypsy music and a cossack doorman. Why not come along? Irina may have a friend.”

“No, not tonight,” Weisz said.

Kolb arrived as they were finishing up. When Ferrara hurried off, he asked Weisz to stay for a few minutes. “How’s it going?” he said.

“As you’ll see,” Weisz said, nodding toward that night’s pages. “We’re doing war scenes, from Spain.”

“Good,” Kolb said. “Mr. Brown and his associates have been reading right along, and they’re pleased with your progress, but they’ve asked me to suggest that you emphasize-and you can go back in the manuscript, of course-the German role in Spain. The Condor Legion-pilots bombing Guernica in the morning, then playing golf in the afternoon. I think you know what they’re after.”

So, Weisz thought, the Pact of Steel has had its effect. “Yes, I know. And I’d imagine they’d want more about the Italians.”

“You’re reading their minds,” Kolb said. “More about the alliance, what happens when you get into bed with the Nazis. Poor Italian boys slaughtered, Blackshirts strutting in the bars. As much as Ferrara remembers, and make up what he doesn’t.”

“I know the stories,” Weisz said. “From when I was there.”

“Good. Don’t spare the details. The worse the better, yes?”

Weisz stood and put on his jacket-he had his own, far less appealing, night meeting ahead of him.

“One more thing, before you go,” Kolb said. “They’re concerned about this affair Ferrara’s having, with the Russian girl.”

“And?”

“They’re not really sure who she is. You know what goes on here, femmes galantes“-the French expression for female spies-“behind every curtain. Mr. Brown and his friends are very concerned, they don’t want him in contact with the Soviet spy services. You know how it is with these girls”-Kolb used a squeaky voice to imitate a woman-“‘Oh here’s my friend Igor, he’s lots of fun!’”

Weisz gave Kolb a who’s-kidding-who look. “He’s not going to break it off because he might meet the wrong Russian. He could well be in love, or damn close to it.”

“In love? Sure, why not, we all need somebody. But maybe she’s the wrong somebody, and you’re the one who can talk to him about that.”

“You’ll just make him mad, Kolb. And he won’t let her go.”

“Of course he won’t. He may be in love, who can say, but he’s definitely in love with getting laid. Still, all they’re asking is that you raise the issue, so, why not. Make me look good, let me do my job.”

“If it makes you happy…”

“It’ll make them happy-at least, if something goes wrong, they tried. And making them happy, right now, wouldn’t be the worst thing for you, for both of you. They’re thinking about the future, Ferrara’s future, and yours, and it’s better if they think good thoughts. Believe me, Weisz, I know.”

The eleven P.M. meeting with Salamone and Elena was held in Salamone’s Renault. He picked Weisz up in front of his hotel, and stopped for Elena at the building, not far from the Galeries, where she rented a room in an apartment. Then Salamone drove, aimlessly, winding through the back streets of the Ninth, but, Weisz noted, heading always east.

Weisz, in the backseat, leaned over and said, “Let me give you some money for gas.”

“Kind of you, but no thanks. Sergio is more the benefactor than ever, he sent a messenger to the house with an envelope.”

“Your wife didn’t mind? Coming out this time of night?” Weisz knew Signora Salamone.

“Of course she minded. But she knows what happens to people like me-if you go to bed, if you leave the world, you die. So she gave me her worst glare, told me I better be careful, and made me wear this hat.”

“She’s just as much an emigree as we are,” Elena said.

“True, she is, but…Anyhow, I wanted to tell you that I’ve telephoned the entire committee. All but the lawyer, who I couldn’t reach. I was, however, rather careful. I said only that we had some new information, about the attacks, and we may need help, over the next few days. No mention of you, Elena, or what happened. Because who knows, with the telephone, who’s listening.”

“Probably better,” Weisz said.

“Just being careful, that’s all.”

Salamone took the rue La Fayette, to the boulevard Magenta, then turned right onto the boulevard de Strasbourg. Dark, and almost deserted; metal shutters over the storefronts, a group of men loitering on one corner, and a crowded, smoky cafe, lit only by a blue light above the bar.

“Say where, Elena.”

“Sixty-two. It’s a little way yet. There’s the patisserie, a little further, further, there.”

The car rolled to a stop. Salamone turned off the one working headlight. “First floor?”

“Yes.”

“No lights on.”

“Let’s go and have a look,” Elena said.

“Oh wonderful,” Salamone said. “Breaking and entering.”

“What then?”

“We’ll watch it, for a day or two. Maybe you could come at lunchtime, Carlo. For you, Elena, after work, just for an hour. I’ll come back tomorrow morning, in the car. Then Sergio, in the afternoon. There’s a shoemaker across the street, he can get new heels, wait while they’re put on. We can’t be here every minute, but we might get a look at who goes in and out. Carlo, what do you think?”

“I’ll try. But I don’t believe I’ll see anything. Will this help, Arturo? What would we see, that could be reported to the police? We can describe the man who came to the gallery, we can say we don’t believe it’s a real photo agency, we can tell them about the Cafe Europa, maybe arson, and the burglary. Isn’t that enough?”

“We have to try, is what I think,” Salamone said. “Try anything. Because we can go to the Surete only once, and we have to give them as much as we can, enough so they can’t ignore it. If they see us as whining, nervous emigres, maybe bullied by other emigres, political enemies, they’ll just fill out a form and put it in a file.”

“Would you go in there, Carlo?” Elena said. “On some pretext?”

“I could.” The idea scared Weisz-if they were any good at their job, they would know who he was, and there was a fairly good chance he might never come out.

“Very dangerous,” Salamone said. “Don’t do that.”

Salamone shifted the car into gear. “I’ll make up a schedule. For a day or two. If we don’t see anything, then we’ll just use what we have.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” Weisz said. The light of day would make a difference, he thought. And then, he’d see how he felt. What pretext?

3 June.

For Weisz, a bad morning at the office. Wandering attention, a knot in the stomach, a look at his watch every few minutes. At last, lunchtime, one o’clock. “I’ll be back at three,” he told the secretary. “Maybe a little later.” Or never. The Metro took forever to come, the car was empty, and he emerged from the Gare de l’Est station into a light, steady rain.

It didn’t help the neighborhood, grim and desolate, and not much improved by daylight. He strolled along the side of the boulevard opposite to number 62, just to get his bearings, then crossed over, visited the patisserie, bought a pastry, and, back out on the street, got rid of it-there was no way in the world he could eat the thing. He paused at 62, as though searching for an address, walked by, crossed back over the boulevard, stood at a bus stop until the bus came, then left. All of which absorbed twenty minutes of his assigned surveillance time. And not a soul had entered or left the building.

For ten minutes, he paced back and forth on the corner where the boulevard met the rue Jarry, looking at his watch, a man waiting for a friend. Who never arrived. Arturo, this is a ridiculous idea. He was getting soaked out here, why on earth had he not brought his umbrella? The sky had been cloudy and threatening when he left for work. What if he said he was looking for a job? He was, after all, a journalist, and Photo-Mondiale would be a logical place for such employment. Or, maybe better, he could say he was looking for a friend. Old Duval? Who’d once said he worked there? But then, what would he see? A few men in an office? So what? Damn, why did it have to rain. A woman who’d passed him a few minutes earlier now came back with a string bag full of potatoes, and gave him a suspicious glance as she walked by.

Well then, the hell with it-go up there, or go back to the office. Do something. Slowly, he approached the building, then stopped short. Because here came the postman, limping along, the heavy leather bag at his side hung by a strap from his opposite shoulder. He stopped in front of 62, looked inside his bag, and entered the building. Less than a minute later, he reappeared, and headed off to number 60.

Weisz waited until he’d worked his way to the end of the street, then took a deep breath and walked up to the door of 62, pushed it open, and went inside. For a moment, he stood there, heart racing, but the vestibule was hushed and still. Go find old Duval, he told himself, and don’t be furtive. He walked quickly up the stairs, then, at the landing, listened again, and, recalling Elena’s description, turned left down the corridor. The door at the end of the hallway had a business card tacked below the stenciled 1 B. Agence Photo-Mondiale. Weisz counted to ten, and raised his hand to knock, then held back. Inside, a telephone, a soft double ring. He waited to hear it answered, but heard only a second ring, a third, and a fourth, followed by silence. They’re not in! Weisz knocked twice on the door, the sound loud in the empty hallway, and waited for footsteps. No, there’s nobody in there. Cautiously, he tried the doorknob. But the door was locked. Salvation. He turned away and walked quickly toward the other end of the corridor.

He hurried down the staircase, anxious for the safety of the street, but, just as he reached for the door, the envelopes in a wooden mailbox caught his attention. The box labelled 1 B held four. Watching the door, prepared to put them back in an instant if it so much as moved, he took a fast look. The first was a bill from the electric company. The second came from the Marseilles office of the Banque des Pays de l’Europe Centrale. The third had a typed address on a brown manila envelope. With, to Weisz’s eyes, an exotic stamp: Jugoslavija, 4 Dinars, a blue-toned image of a peasant woman in a scarf, hands on hips, staring solemnly at a river. The cancellation, first in Cyrillic, then Roman letters, said Zagreb. The fourth letter was personal, penciled script on a small, cheap envelope, and addressed to J. Hravka, with a return address, I. Hravka, also in Zagreb. With one eye on the door, Weisz dug into his pocket, came up with pen and pad, and copied the two Zagreb addresses-the French bank, for the countries of Central Europe, he would remember.

As Weisz hurried toward the Metro, he was excited, and elated. It had worked, Salamone had been right. Zagreb, he thought, Croatia.

Of course.