The World at Night

A CITIZEN OF THE EVENING

Night train to Madrid.

The air was ice, the heavens swept with winter stars, white and still in a black sky. Jean Casson had done what he’d done, there was no going back. The train pulled slowly from the Gare de Lyon, clattered through the railyards south of the city, then out into the night.

A first-class compartment; burgundy velveteen drapes, gleaming brass doorknobs. Casson pressed his forehead against the cold window and stared out into the dark countryside. Looking out train windows was good for lovers. Citrine, Citrine. They’d made love in a train once; lying on their sides in a narrow berth, looking out at the back-yards of some town, sheets hanging on wash lines, cats on windowsills, smoke from chimneys on tile roofs. It was a long autumn that year and nobody thought about war.

Staring out train windows good for lovers, not so bad for secret agents. We are all adrift in the world, we do what we have to do. Casson turned out the lamps so he could see better. Outside, the Beauce. Old, deep France—France profonde, it was said. A flat plain where they grew wheat and barley, sometimes a forest where long ago they’d hunted bear with Beauceron dogs. A knock at the door, his heart hammered. “Monsieur?” Only a steward in a white jacket, peering at a list.

“Monsieur Dubreuil?”

“No, Casson.”

“Monsieur Casson, yes. Would you wish the first or second seating?”

“Second.”

“Very good, sir.”

He closed the door, the rattle of the train subsided. A man with eyes shadowed by the brim of a fedora came down the corridor, glanced into Casson’s compartment. Calm down, Casson told himself. But he couldn’t. The tanned, smiling Colonel Guske kept forcing himself to the front of Casson’s attention. He wasn’t a smart lawyer—Simic had been right there, Casson thought—but he was the sort of man who got things done. Worked hard, full of vigor and stupefying optimism about life. Must get that spinnaker rigged! Must keep the racquet straight on my backhand! Must get to the bottom of that Casson business!

He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath. Forced himself to take comfort from the dark countryside beyond the window. The French had fought and marched across these plains for centuries. They’d fought the Moslems in the south, the Germans in the east, the British in the west. The Dutch in the north? He didn’t know. But they must have, some time or other. The War of the Spanish Succession? The Thirty Years’ War? Napoleon?

Calm down. Or they’d find him dead of fear, staring wide-eyed at the scenery. Then it would be their turn to worry about the three hundred thousand pesetas. Of course, he thought, they wouldn’t worry very long. Or, perhaps, it would just stay where it was—God only knew what would be lost forever in this war. The train slowed, and stopped. Outside, nothing special, a frozen field.

Compartment doors opening and closing, the sound of a slow train rumbling past. Something to do, anyhow. He got up and joined the other passengers, standing at the windows in the corridor. A freight train, flat cars loaded with tanks and artillery pieces under canvas tarpaulins, gun barrels pointing at the sky. He counted thirty, forty, fifty, then stopped, the train seemed to go on forever. His heart fell—what could he, what could any of them do against these people? Lately it was fashionable in Paris to avert one’s eyes when seated across from Germans in the Métro. Yes, he thought, that would do it—the French won’t look at us, we’re going home.

His fellow passengers felt it too. Not the German aviators at the end of the car, probably not their French girlfriends, drunk and giggling. But the man who looked like a butcher in a Sunday suit, and Madame Butcher, they had the same expression on their faces as he did: faintly introspective, not very interested, vague. Strange, he thought, how people choose the same mask. Tall man, head of an ostrich, spectacles. A professor of Greek? A young man and his older friend—theatre people, Casson would have bet on it. The woman who stood next to him was an aristocrat of some sort. Late forties, red-and-brown tweed suit for traveling, cost a fortune years ago, maintained by maids ever since.

She felt his eyes, turned to look at him. Dry, weatherbeaten face, pale hair cut short and plain, eight strokes of a brush would put it in place. Skin never touched by makeup. Faded green eyes with laugh wrinkles at the corners her only feature. But more than sufficient. She met his glance; gave a single shake of the head, mouth tight for an instant. How sad this is, she meant. And I don’t know that we can ever do anything about it.

He acknowledged the look, then by mutual agreement they turned back toward the windows. Tanks on flat cars crept past, canvas stiffened by white frost, at that speed the rhythm of the wheels on the rails a measured drumbeat. Then it was over, a single red lantern on the last car fading away into the distance. Casson and his neighbor exchanged a second look—life goes on—and returned to their compartments.

The train got under way slowly, dark hills on the horizon just visible by starlight. The woman reminded him of someone, after a moment he remembered. A brief fling, years ago, one of his wife’s equestrienne pals—whipcord breeches and riding crops. A long time since he’d thought of her. Bold and funny, full of prerogatives, afraid of neither man nor beast, rich as Croesus, cold as ice, victor in a thousand love affairs. She had a white body shaped by twenty years of bobbing up and down in a saddle, hard and angular, and in bed she was all business, no sentimental nonsense allowed. She did, on the other hand, have delicious, fruit-flavored breath, particularly noticeable when she had him make love to her in the missionary position.

He’d wondered about her—connections with diplomats, months spent abroad, nights in exotic clubs one heard about from friends— wondered if she wasn’t, perhaps, involved with the secret services. Just as he’d wondered what sort of hobbies she pursued with the riding crop. But he never asked, and she never offered. Her life belonged only to her; no matter if she spied, whipped, made millions, she didn’t talk about it.

Now, stupidly, he felt better—just being near a woman. But it was true. He dozed, woke up at Auxerre station. The blackout made the station ghostly, the waiting passengers shapes in the darkness. The doors opened, just enough time for people to get on the train, then closed. The locomotive vented white steam that hung still in the freezing air. He waited for the coach to jerk forward as the engine got under way.

Instead: the door at the end of the corridor was thrown open and a voice called out “Kontrol.” Casson sat up so suddenly it hurt his back. In the corridor, German voices, shouting instructions. What? This couldn’t happen. Once the train leaves Paris, nobody bothers you, the Germans can’t be everywhere. In panic, he twisted to look out on the platform: pacing shadows, silhouettes of slung rifles just visible in the darkness. The darkness. He tested the window, no give. Of course, windows in a railway coach, you had to be strong. Strong enough. A door slammed in the passageway, another opened. Jump out the window, crawl under the train. Across the track. Running full speed. Out into the street. Auxerre. Who did he know? Where did they live? Someone, there was always someone, someone would always help you. The door to his compartment opened. “Kontrol.”

He stood up.

Something in German, a wave of the hand. Sit down. He sat. There were two of them, SS officers, leather coats open to black uniforms with lightning insignia, steel-handled Lugers in high-riding leather holsters. They hadn’t been in the train very long—he could feel the cold air on them.

“Papieren.”

A gloved hand extended. Casson fumbled for his identification in the inside pocket of his jacket. His fingers had gone numb. The passport, the Ausweis, the envelope. He took them out. No, not the envelope. Clumsy, maladroit. His arm had no feeling in it, the hand thick and slow. Take back the envelope. He swallowed, there was something caught in the center of his chest.

“Was ist los?”

No, not this, this doesn’t concern you. He placed passport and travel permit on the glove, started to put the envelope back in his pocket. His hand wouldn’t work at all. He folded the envelope in half and stuffed it in, spreading his lips in what he hoped looked like a smile. Sorry to be so stupid, sorry to be trouble, sorry sir, regret, excuse.

Didn’t work.

Something interesting here. The officer now looked closely at him for the first time. Not very old, Casson thought, in his thirties, perhaps. A fleshy face—fat later on—small eyes, cunning. This job was the most important thing that had ever happened to him. Not in a shop. Not in a garage. Casson looked down. The man hooked a gloved index finger under his chin and raised his head to where he could see Casson’s eyes. What are you? What are you to me? Just one more pale Frenchman? Or a fatal error?

Lazily, the German inclined his head toward the luggage rack. “Valise,” he said softly.

Casson’s hands were shaking so badly he had a hard time getting his suitcase down from the luggage rack. The Germans waited, the heavy-faced one taking a second look at his papers and making a casual remark to his colleague. Casson recognized only one word—Guske. As in, It’s Guske who signed the travel permit, the dossier must be handled in his office. The response was brief, neutral—and something more. Respectful? As in, Well, sometimes you come across these things.

The officer turned on the lamps in the compartment. Whatever was caught in Casson’s chest now swelled, and made it hard to breathe. He fumbled with the lock, finally laying the suitcase open on the seat. It looked harmless enough; two shirts, side by side, one of them fresh from the blanchisserie, the other worn, then folded for packing. There was a nice leather case that held razor and shaving soap. Socks, shorts. The copy of Bel Ami that he’d meant to read on the train.

The heavy-faced officer picked up the book. Held it by the spine and shook it, a slip of paper used as a bookmark fell out and drifted to the floor. Next he felt the front and back covers, riffled the pages, worked a finger down between the spine and the binding and ripped it off, holding it up to the light, checking one side, then the other, then tossing it and the book onto the seat. He reached over, lifted one corner of a shirt, saw nothing very interesting beneath it—a newspaper, perhaps—and dropped it back into place.

They handed Casson back his identity papers and left. He heard them—opening the next door in the passageway, shouting orders— as though they were men in a dream. Very slowly, he slid the papers back into the inside pocket of his jacket. Next to the envelope. His fingers rested on the envelope for a moment. What they would have done to me.

In the dining car, the second seating, 10:30. The only light, flickering candles on the white tablecloths. The woman in the tweed suit was shown to his table. “Monsieur, I hope you don’t mind.” No, not at all, he was glad for the company. The waiter brought a bottle of wine, cold vegetable salad with an oily mayonnaise, nameless fish in railroad sauce—to Casson it barely mattered.

“I am called Marie-Noëlle,” she said. “Meeting on a train, you see, we don’t have to wait ten years for first names.”

He smiled, introduced himself. He would be happy to call her Marie-Noëlle, but he did wonder what the rest might be.

She sighed—it always came to this. There was, she confessed, “a thoroughly disreputable person sometimes addressed as Lady Marensohn,” but it wasn’t really her. The title was by marriage—a husband who had died long ago, something in the small nobility of Sweden, a diplomat of minor status. “Terribly concerned with jute,” she said grimly. “Morning and night.” She herself had been born into a family called de Vlaq, from the Dutch–Belgian border, “even smaller nobility, if that’s possible,” and grown up on family estates in Luxembourg—“they called it wine, but, you know, really . . .”

She smoked passionately—Gitane followed Gitane, lit with strong fingers stained yellow by nicotine—and laughed constantly, a laugh that usually ended in a cough. “To hell with everything,” she said, “that’s what it says on my family crest. Citizen of the evening, resident of Paris since time began, and the only nobility I acknowledge is in good works for friends.”

A German officer covered with medals moved down the aisle between tables, his girlfriend followed along behind, vividly rouged and lipsticked, wearing a tight cap of glossy black feathers. When they’d gone by, Marie-Noëlle made a face.

“Don’t care for them?” Casson said.

“Not much.”

“But you can leave, can’t you?”

She shrugged. “Yes. Maybe I will, but, where to go?” “Sweden?”

“Brr.”

“Switzerland, then.”

“Switzerland, Switzerland. Yes, there’s always that. Geneva, gray but possible. On the other hand, the visa. I mean, you have to know . . . God. Well. Not just to nod to. Last September, a friend of mine went through it. She tried the embassies, the Americans, the Portuguese, and the Swiss. Spent hours on the lines but in the end all she could get was a Venezuelan resident card, which cost her a fortune, and, worse yet, the only place she could go with it was Venezuela.”

She stubbed out a Gitane, lit another. “Well, she tries. She does try. She’s positive, she’s cheerful. She’s all the things you’re supposed to be. ‘So different,’ she writes. ‘The Latin culture—sunny one minute, stormy the next. And Caracas—intrigue!’ Of course it’s ghastly, and she’s miserable. It isn’t Paris, it’s a kind of horrid not-Paris. She sees the other émigrés, most of them grateful to be alive, but all they can talk about is when will it end, when can we go back, when can life be what it always was.”

The train slowed, they peered out the window, trying to see past the reflection of the candle flame in the black glass. They were at the edge of a small city, passing the cottages that lined the track. Then came the dark cathedral with tall spires, winding streets, the railway station brasserie, and finally the platform. BOURGES, the sign said. Now a port of entry for the unoccupied part of France governed by Vichy.

The French border police were waiting on the platform, holding their capes tight around them and stomping their feet to keep warm. “More police,” Marie-Noëlle said acidly.

“French, this time.”

“Yes, there’s that to be said for it.” She exhaled smoke through her nose and mouth when she talked. “Tell me,” she said, leaning over the table, her voice lowered, “they didn’t give you too bad of a time, did they? The SS? I was listening, next door, but I couldn’t hear much.”

“Not too bad,” he said.

The train jerked to a stop with a hiss of steam. The gendarmes came down the aisle, asking politely for papers. They knew they were in the first-class dining car, rolled the Madames and Monsieurs off their tongues, had a desultory glance at each passport, then left with a two-fingered salute to the visor of the cap. Only a formality, of course you understand.

“Remarkable,” Marie-Noëlle said, when the police had gone to the next table. “You are perhaps the only person I know who’s ever had a decent photograph in a passport.”

Casson held it up and said “What, this? I wouldn’t let him in my country.”

“Yes, but look here—is this not the aunt kept locked up in the attic?”

He smiled, it was even worse than that.

“Now, monsieur,” she said, a mock-serious note in her voice, “how am I going to persuade you to allow me to buy us a brandy?”

He would not allow it. He insisted on paying for the brandies, and for those that followed. Meanwhile they smoked and talked and made the dinner last as long as they could. Very late at night, after the stop at Lyons, the train started the long run down the Rhône valley, the sky cleared and the moon ran beside them, a yellow disc on the still river.

She grew tired, and reflective, not so sure about the world. “What do you think,” she asked, “in your heart. Must I leave this country?”

“Perhaps,” he said. Peut-être, could be. In diplomacy it meant yes— yes with regret. “Of course,” he went on, “it’s not something I can do, so maybe I shouldn’t be giving advice.”

“Not something you can do?”

“No.”

“What stops you?”

He looked puzzled.

“In a few hours,” she said, “you’ll be in Spain. Sunny Spain, neutral Spain. From there, ships leave daily, to every port in the world. But why wait for a booking on a ship? There is a ferry, in Algeciras, it goes across to Ceuta. One simply pays and walks on. Then, it takes less than an hour, you are in Spanish Morocco. Once there, well . . .”

It was true. Why hadn’t it occurred to him? He had three hundred thousand pesetas in a suitcase, a travel permit for Spain. A thousand stories began this way—an opportunity, a sudden decision, then freedom, a new life. It took courage, that was all. He saw himself doing it: walking off the ferry with raincoat tossed over one shoulder, hat brim turned down, valise in hand, turning to look back one last time at the dark mass of Europe. Why not? What would he be giving up— a movie that would never be made? A woman who was never going to love him again? A city that would never be the same?

But then, from somewhere deep inside, the sigh of common sense. The man with the raincoat and the hat brim turned down wasn’t him. “Perhaps,” he said, “you will join me for a drink, Madame Marie-Noëlle. At Fouquet’s, one of the tables on the boulevard.”

A corner of her mouth turned up in a grin, she flirted with him a little. “Chilly for the outdoor tables, monsieur. No?”

“I meant, in the spring.”

“Ah.” She considered it. “Probably, I will meet you there,” she said, then shook her head slowly, in gentle despair for both of them. “Charming. The last romantic.”

He sat back in the chair; it was very late at night. “It is the only trick I know,” he said. Then, after a moment, “You’re one too.”

“No, no,” she said. “I’m something else.”

Port Bou, the Spanish frontier, 4:40 P.M.

Here the passengers had to leave the train and wait on lines; customs, border formalities. Casson had been through it before, years earlier, and when he’d thought about the crossing it had seemed to him the second most likely place he might be arrested. The passengers stood quietly, nobody made jokes. Cold, thin air in the Pyrenees, jagged ridges, white mist, snowfields fading in the last light. The Guardia sentries pacing up and down the lines were like ghosts from Napoleon’s wars; leather tricorn hats, greatcoats, long, thin rifles that looked like muskets. He searched everywhere for Marie-Noëlle, but she had disappeared. Left the train, apparently. Where—Narbonne? Perpignan? Would she have said? No, probably not. But it was a loss. He’d planned on going through the frontier with her, somebody to talk to, easier to pretend that you weren’t scared.

The line marked Entrada. Two uniformed officers and a civilian sat at a plank table in a shed heated by a smoky wood stove. The line of passengers was kept back twelve feet from the table—a distance where the tension of the examination could be felt but the questions, and the follow-ups, could not be heard. The final line, Entrada. From here the passengers drifted away, in twos and threes, to a coach on the south-bound local, idling at the far end of the station, that ran on the Spanish-gauge track. They walked briskly—really, how had they allowed themselves to worry like that—and made a point of not looking back. There was one couple, elderly, well-dressed, being returned to the French train, and a young woman, being led away by two men in overcoats, but that was all. The young woman looked at Casson, trying to tell him something with her eyes. The men at her side followed the glance—an accomplice, perhaps?—and Casson had to look away. He hoped she’d had time to see that he understood, that he would remember what had happened to her.

Casson got through. They studied his papers, running an index finger under the important phrases. The civilian wore a coat with a fur collar and a pince-nez. “The reason for your visit, señor?”

“For a film, to look at possible locations.”

“What kind of film?”

“A romantic comedy.”

The man passed his papers to one of the Guardia, who stamped Entrada-27 Enero 1941 in his passport and initialed it.

The Spanish train was old and dirty, cold air flowed up through the floorboards. All the way to Barcelona he stared out the window, seeing nothing. His mouth was dry, he swallowed but it did not seem to help. The compartment was crowded; two Luftwaffe officers, two women who might have been sisters, a fat, unshaven man who slept for most of the journey. Casson told himself that nothing would happen. He simply had to believe in himself—the world would always respect a self-confident man, and nothing would happen. He was sweating, he could feel it under his arms, even in the chilly compartment, and he tried to be surreptitious about wiping it away from his hairline.

The outskirts of Barcelona. There had been fighting here in 1937. The track was elevated and he could see into apartments; rooms with black flash marks on the walls, charred beams, dressers with drawers pulled out, a bed standing on end. The passengers stared in silence as the train crawled past. Then the fat man woke up and abruptly pulled the curtains closed. Why did he do that? Casson wondered. Was he Spanish? French? Republican? Falangist? Casson swallowed. The man stared at him, daring him to say something. Casson looked at his feet, his fingers touched the envelope in his pocket.

Barcelona station, 8:10 P.M.

The train to the southern coast wasn’t due to leave until 10:20. Casson went to the station buffet, took a dry bun with a crust of pink icing and a tiny cup of black coffee, and found a table by the back wall. Of course he was watched.

For their eyes, he played the traveler. Dug into his valise, retrieved his copy of Le Matin and spread it out on the table—JAPANESE FOREIGN MINISTER WARNS U.S.A. NOT TO INTERFERE IN ASIAN AFFAIRS. Took traveler’s inventory, checking his railway ticket and passport, putting French francs in this pocket, pesetas in that pocket. In fact, he needed to change money, and reminded himself to keep the receipt from the cambio. The border police had recorded the amount of French francs he’d brought into the country and they’d want a piece of paper when he went back out.

And he was going back out.

He’d studied what he intended to do, walked through it in his mind, hour by hour, step by step. So that, if it suddenly felt wrong, he could walk away. A patriot, he reminded himself, not a fool. There would be hell to pay if he abandoned the money. But then, he was a film producer, there’d been hell to pay before in his life, and he’d paid it.

Better now, he calmed down. This was something he could do. Go out the door, if you like, he told himself. He liked hearing that, he could answer by saying no, not yet, nothing’s gone wrong.

He refolded the newspaper and returned it to his valise, next to the torn copy of Bel Ami. Made sure, one last time, of passport, money, and all the rest of it, and, oh yes, a certain envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket. He tore it open, took out a receipt with Thos. Cook Agency printed across the top, and a first-class railway ticket, Paris/Barcelona.

The watchers were probably watching—after all, that’s how they made their living—but there wasn’t very much for them to watch at Casson’s table. Just another traveler, nervous as the rest, fussing with his papers before resuming his journey. He stood, drained the last little sip of coffee, and picked up his valise. On the way out of the buffet he balled up the envelope and tossed it in the trash.

The baggage room was off by itself, at the end of a long corridor with burned-out lamps and NO PASARÁN daubed on the walls with red paint. Casson stood at the counter and waited for thirty seconds, then tapped the little bell. For a moment, nothing happened. Then he heard the deliberate, uneven rhythm of somebody walking with a pronounced limp. It went on for a long time, the office was at the other end of the room and the clerk walked slowly, with great difficulty. A short, dark man with a pencil-thin mustache, an angry face, and an eight-inch heel on a built-up shoe. On the breast pocket of his smock was a lapel pin, bright silver, a signal of membership in something, and Casson sensed that this job came from the same place the pin did, it was a reward, given in return for faith and service. To a political party, perhaps, or a government bureau.

Be normal. Casson handed over the receipt. “Baggage for Dubreuil.”

The clerk peered at the number, then said it aloud, slowly. Standing on the other side of the counter, Casson could smell clothes worn for too many days. The clerk nodded to himself; yes, he knew this one, and limped off, disappearing among the rows of wooden shelves piled to the ceiling with trunks and suitcases. Casson could hear him as he searched, up one aisle, down the next, walking, then stopping, walking, then stopping. Somewhere in the back, a radio played faintly, an opera.

It was going to work. He could feel it, and permitted himself just a bare edge of relief. It was going to work because it wasn’t complicated. He had simply gone to his customary travel agent at the Thomas Cook office on the rue de Bassano, told him an associate named Dubreuil was accompanying him to Spain, and purchased two first-class, roundtrip tickets, checking Dubreuil’s suitcase through to Barcelona. The standard procedure would have been for the agent at Cook’s to demand Dubreuil’s passport, but Casson had done a great deal of business there over seven or eight years and the travel agent wasn’t going to get fussy over details with a valued customer.

Prevailing opinion in Paris had it that checked baggage, stacked high in icy freight cars, was not searched very seriously at the Spanish frontier. If the worst happened, however, and a Spanish customs guard discovered a suitcase full of pesetas and turned it in instead of stealing it, they could look for Dubreuil all they wanted; they’d never find him because he didn’t exist. There was, for Casson, a brief moment of exposure, when he had to pretend to be Dubreuil in order to claim the suitcase, but that was going to be over in a few seconds and he would be on his way.

The clerk returned to the counter, his face bland and satisfied. He handed Casson a slip of paper, and said “Not here,” in Spanish. Casson looked at his hand, he was holding the baggage receipt.

“Pardon?” He hadn’t understood, he’d thought—

“Not here, señor.”

Casson stared at him. “Where is it?”

A shrug. “Who can say?”

Casson heard train whistles in the distance, the clash of couplings, the opera on the clerk’s radio. They would kill him for this.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

The clerk stepped back a pace. His next move, Casson realized, would be to roll down the metal shutter. The man’s face was closed: a suitcase didn’t matter, a passenger didn’t matter, what mattered was the little silver pin on his blue smock. Against that magic, this insistent Señor Dubreuil was powerless.

“The train from Port Bou . . .” Casson said.

The hand started to reach for the shutter, then decided that the moment had not quite arrived and contented itself with sliding casually into a pocket. “Good evening, señor,” the clerk said.

Casson turned away quickly. He didn’t know where to go or what to do but he felt he had to put distance between himself and the baggage room. He trotted back up the corridor, the valise bouncing in his hand, footsteps echoing off the cement walls. Breathing hard, he made himself slow down, then walked through the station buffet and found the platform where the Port Bou train had come in. The track was empty.

“Missed your train?”

English. A huge man with a huge gray beard, sitting on a baggage cart surrounded by two battered wooden boxes, an old carpetbag, and a collapsed easel tied with a cord. “Have you missed your train, monsieur?” Phrasebook French this time, plodding but correct.

Casson shook his head. “Lost baggage.” Perdu. Meant lost, all right, much more so, somehow, than in any other language. That which was perdu joined lost time, lost love, lost opportunity and lost souls in a faraway land where nothing was ever seen again.

“Damn the luck.”

Casson nodded.

“Speak English?”

“Yes.”

“Just come in from the border?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” The man looked at his watch. “Only left thirty seconds ago. Did you leave it on the train?”

“No. It was checked baggage.”

“Ah-hah! Then there’s hope.”

“There is?”

“Oh yes. Sometimes they don’t take it off. They forget, or they just don’t. They’re Spanish, you see. Life’s so bloody, conditional. ”

“It’s true,” Casson said gloomily.

“You might catch it, you know, if you don’t dawdle. It stops at a village station just south of Barcelona, that train. The 408 local.” The man glowered with conviction and took a much-thumbed little booklet from his coat. Among the English, Casson knew, were people who suffered from a madness of trains. Perhaps this was one of them.

“Yes,” the man said. “I’m right. Here it is, Puydal. A Catalonian name. Arrival, 9:21.” The man looked up. “Well,” he said, “for God’s sake hurry!”

Casson moved quickly. This didn’t happen only in Spain. In France too, your baggage popped up here, disappeared there, sometimes reappeared, sometimes was never heard from again. At the corner of the station, a long line of taxis. He jumped in the first one and said “Puydal station. Please hurry.”

The driver turned the key in the ignition. And again. Finally, the engine caught, he gave it a few seconds, then swung slowly out into the street, and accelerated cautiously. Casson glanced at his watch. 9:04. At this rate they would never get there in time.

“Please,” Casson said. Por favor.

“Mmmm—” said the driver: yes, yes, a philosopher’s sigh. Vast forces of destiny, stars and planets, the run of time itself. A candle flickered, the course of life drifted one point south. “—Puydal, Puydal.” Clearly, this was not his first trip to Puydal railroad station.

In the event, the sigh was accurate.

Puydal was where you went when all was lost, Puydal was where fate got a chance to mend its ways and the stationmaster’s spaniel bitch was sitting on the Dubreuil suitcase. Casson had gone to the Galéries Lafayette to buy one, then discovered an Arab in business on a side street selling the homely classic—pebbled tan surface with a dull green and red stripe that half the world seemed to own.

“Ah, so this is yours?” said the stationmaster. “May I just, Señor Dubreuil, have the briefest glance at your passport?”

They don’t ask for the passport, they ask for the ticket.

Casson handed over his passport. “I am Señor Casson,” he said. “The friend of Señor Dubreuil. He is sick, enfermo, I am to collect his baggage.” He dug into his pocket, took out a handful of francs, pesetas, coins of many lands. “He told me, ‘a gratuity,’ in appreciation, he is sick, it’s cold . . .”

The stationmaster nodded gravely and took the money, shooed his dog off and saluted. “Mil gracias.” Casson grabbed the suitcase and trotted out the door to find the same taxi. “Barcelona station,” he said to the driver, looking at his watch. The express to the southern coast was due to leave in seventeen minutes, they would never make it. “Please hurry,” he said to the driver.

There were no other cars, the taxi bumped along the cracked surface of the old macadam road, one headlight aimed up in the pine trees, the other a faint glow in the darkness. The engine missed, the gears whined, the driver sang to himself under his breath. Casson hoisted the suitcase onto his lap and opened it a crack. Yes, still in there. Thank God. Folded up in threadbare shirts and pants he’d bought at a used-clothes cart out in Clignancourt. He leaned back, closed his eyes, felt clammy and uncomfortable as the sweat dried on his shirt in the cold night air. It was time to admit to himself he had no idea what he was doing—he’d read Eric Ambler, he had a general idea of how it was all supposed to work, but this wasn’t it.

28 January, 1941. The Alhambra Hotel, Málaga.

A Spanish casino in winter. Cold gray sea, storms that blew rain against the window and sang in the stucco minarets. In the dining room, a string orchestra, a thé dansant, the songs Viennese, the violins flat. Still, the guests danced, staring into the private distance, the women wearing jewels and glass and Gypsy beads, the men in suits steamed over the green-stained bathtubs. Refugees, fugitives, émigrés, immigrants, stateless persons, wanted by this regime or that, rich or shrewd or lucky enough to get this far but no farther, washed up at the end of Europe, talking all night—in Bessarabian Yiddish or Alsatian French—stealing rolls from breakfast trays in the halls, trying to tip the barman with Bulgarian lev.

In the courtyard, a Moorish garden; rusty fountain, archway hung with dead ivy that rustled in the wind. Casson walked there, or by the thundering sea, ruining his shoes in the gray sand. But, anything not to be in the room. He’d placed an advertisement in ABC, the Monarchist daily, in the Noticias section. SWISS GENTLEMAN, COMMERCIAL TRAVELER, SEEKS ROOM IN PRIVATE HOME FOR MONTH OF FEBRUARY. Then, he waited. Three days, four days, a week. Nothing happened. Perhaps the operation had been canceled, and they’d just left him there. On his walks he composed long letters to Citrine, things he would never be able to write down—very beautiful things, he thought. In the casino he gambled listlessly, betting red and black at the roulette table, sticking at seventeen in blackjack, breaking even and walking away. A woman slipped a note in his pocket—Would you like to visit to me? I am in the Room 34. Maybe he would have liked to, but now he didn’t know who anybody was or what they were after.

He was shaving when the telephone rang, two long notes. He ran into the bedroom. “Yes?”

“Are you the gentleman who advertised in the newspaper?”

The number given in the newspaper had not been for the Alhambra. “Yes,” he said.

“I wonder, perhaps we could meet.”

French, spoken well by a Spaniard.

“All right.”

“In an hour? Would that be convenient?”

“It would.”

“The hotel has a bar . . .”

“Yes.”

“It’s three-twenty. Should we say, four-thirty?”

“Good.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“Good-bye.”

Casson took a table in the corner, ordered a dry sherry. Beyond the curtained window the rain drummed down. At the next table a couple in their thirties was having a conspirators’ argument. He should make the approach, say this, and tomorrow evening was the very last moment they could wait to do it. She was afraid, there was only this one chance, what if they tried and failed. Maybe it would be better not to give themselves away, not just yet.

A bellhop in hotel uniform, silver tray with an envelope on it. “A message for you, sir.”

Casson tipped him, opened the envelope. Expensive notepaper, elegant handwriting. “Please forgive the inconvenience, but the meeting has been moved. To the yacht Estancia, last slip, C dock, in the harbor. Looking forward to meeting you.” Signed with initials.

“May I send a message back?” Casson asked the boy.

“The gentleman has left, sir.”

So be it. They had looked him over in the bar, checked to see if he was alone, and now they were going to do business. He folded the note and put it in his pocket, paid for the sherry, and walked out the front door of the hotel. The rain was running brown in the cobbled street. Well, he’d get wet. No, that wouldn’t work. He’d have to go back upstairs and get a raincoat.

He’d learned to be sensitive to sudden changes of direction—he’d come back to the room unexpectedly one night and heard, thought he heard, some commotion on the balcony just as he got the door unlocked and open. There was nothing to see, the balcony door was locked when he tried it. But somebody had been in the room, then left when they heard him at the door. How did he know? He didn’t know how, he just did. And, more, it was somebody he didn’t want to catch, because he wasn’t exactly sure where that might lead.

He got off the elevator, then paused at the door. Put the key in, turned it, entered. Silent. The damp, still air undisturbed.

Outside it was dusk, low clouds scudding east, patches of yellow sky over the water out toward the African coast. The palm trees lining the Paseo were whipping in the gale, loose fronds blown up against the sea-wall. Casson put his head down, held on to his hat, and hurried toward the harbor. Two women in black shawls ran past, laughing, and a man in a cloth cap rode by on a bicycle, a straw basket hung on one arm.

The harbor, C dock; in the last slip, the Estancia. A small, compact motor yacht, elegant in the 1920s, then used hard over the years and now beginning to age—varnish worn off the teak in places, brasswork showing the first bloom of verdigris. The portholes were shuttered, the boat seemed deserted, bobbing up and down on the harbor swell amid the orange peels and tarred wood. Casson stood for a moment, rain dripping off the brim of his hat. Somewhere in his heart he turned and went back to Paris, a man who’d lived, for a moment, the wrong life. A wave broke over the end of the dock, white spray blown sideways by the wind. He took a deep breath, crossed the gangplank, rapped sharply on the door to the stateroom.

The door swung open immediately, he stepped inside and it closed behind him. The room was dark, and silent, except for creaking planks as the Estancia strained against its moorage. The man who had opened the door watched him carefully, his fingers resting on a table by a large revolver. Apparently this was Carabal—described to Casson as a Spanish army officer, a colonel. But no braid or epaulets. Pale gray suit and spectacles; sparse, carefully combed hair, and the bland face of a diplomat, reddened by excitement and winter weather. In his forties, Casson thought.

“I’m to say to you that we met, at the Prado, last April,” Casson said.

Carabal nodded, acknowledging the password. “It was July”—countersign—“in Lisbon.”

There was someone else on the boat—he changed position, and Casson could feel the shift of weight in the floorboards. Casson reached into the pocket of his raincoat, took out a key, handed it to Carabal. “It’s on the sixth floor,” he said. “Room forty-two. The suitcase is in the closet.”

Carabal took the key. “Three hundred thousand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. General Arado will contact your principals.”

“How will that happen?”

“By letter. Hand-delivered in Paris on the fifteenth of February.”

“All right.”

“We will go forward.”

“Yes.”

“Good luck to all of us,” Carabal said, opening the door.

Casson turned and left. On the dock, he raised his face to the wind-blown rain. Thank God that’s over.

The walk back along the Paseo was glorious. Shattered cloud over the sea, puddles like miniature lakes—surface water ruffled by the gusting wind, a priest on a mule, the street lamps coming on in first darkness. Golden light, fluttering palm trees. “Buenas noches,” said the priest.

Back in the Alhambra, he felt the weight lift. Thank God it was over, now he could go back to his own life. After the war, a good story. A revolver! He took his wet shoes off, jacket and pants and shirt and socks, crawled into bed in his underwear. The pillow felt cool and smooth against the skin of his face. What was it, seven in the evening? So what. He didn’t care. He would order from room service if he felt like eating.

An omelet. They could manage that. He had captured, by means of lavish tips, the allegiance of the room-service waiter, a man not without influence in the kitchen. That meant the omelet did not have to swim in oil and garlic and tomato sauce, it could be dry, with salt and parsley. He needed something like that now.

Oatmeal! He’d discovered it during a trip to Scotland. Steel-cut, they’d say, meaning the best, with yellow cream from an earthenware pitcher. He’d ordered it every morning; dense, gooey stuff—delicious, soothing. Of course down here they would never have such a thing.

Who had put the little slip of paper in his pocket? The redhead, he was almost sure of it. Pearl earrings, dancer’s legs. Haughty, the chin tilted up toward heaven. Passionate, he thought, that kind of a sneer could turn into a very different expression, an O—surprised by pleasure. Or playful indignation. How dare you. He liked that, an excellent trick. Jesus, women. They thought up all these things, a man had no chance at all. And then, like Citrine, they turned away from you. How long could he mourn? It wasn’t good not to make love. Unhealthy, there were all sorts of theories.

Tired. It scared him, what this little enterprise had taken from him in strength and spirit. Oh Lord, he was so tired. No redhead for him, not tonight. She wouldn’t do it anyhow, not now, not after he’d ignored the note. What? Monsieur! How dare you presume. Ah, but, even better, the redhead says yes, they go to his room. She likes to kiss, that hard mouth softens against his. White skin, blue veins, taut nipples. Then later he admits the note excited him. “Note?” she says.

For a moment he was gone, then he came back. A strange little dream—a hallway in a house. Somebody he’d known, something had happened. It meant nothing, and he could not stay awake any longer. He took a deep breath and let it out very slowly to tell himself that the world was slipping back into place.

Oatmeal.

The phone. Those two sustained notes, again and again. He clawed at it, knocked the receiver off the cradle, groped around the night table until he found it, finally mumbled “What? Hello?”

“Jean-Claude! Hey it’s me. I’m here. I owe you a drink, right? So now I got to pay up. Hello?”

Simic.

“Jean-Claude? What goes on there? Not asleep. Hey, shit, it’s nine-thirty. Wait a minute, now I see, you’re getting a little, right?”

“No, I’m alone.”

“Oh. So, well, then, we’ll have a drink. Say, in twenty minutes.”

Casson’s mind wasn’t working at all. All he could say was yes.

“In the bar downstairs. Champagne cocktail—what about it?”

“All right.”

“A bientôt!” Triumphant, Simic very nearly sang the words.

Don’t be a rat, Casson told himself. He’s happy, you be happy too. Not everything needs to fit in with your mood about it.

He staggered into the bathroom. What was Simic doing in Málaga? If he’d been intending to come, why hadn’t he brought the money himself? Well, there was, no doubt, a reason, he would know it soon enough. He stood in the tub, pulled the linen curtain closed, inhaled the damp-drain odor of Spanish beach hotels. Five showerheads poked from the green tile—maybe in summer you’d be splendidly doused from every side. Not now. Five tepid drizzles and the smell of sulphur. Putain de merde. He threw handfuls of water on himself, then rubbed his face with a towel.

He got dressed, tied his tie, brushed his hair. Simic wasn’t going to make a night of it, please God. Whorehouses and champagne and somebody with a bloody nose bribing a cop at dawn.

Down the hall, checked his watch, he was right on time. Pressed the bell for the elevator. It started up, humming and grinding, then stopped with a squeak. Maybe if they left some oil out of the food and put it on the elevator. All right, victory for the Alhambra, he would walk downstairs. No, here it came, slow and noisy. The door slid open, the elevator boy, about fifteen, in hotel uniform, mumbled good evening. Strange, he was pale, absolutely white. He slid the door closed. Everything smelled in this hotel, that included the elevator. Stopped on three. Bulky man in a tuxedo, who stood back against the wall and cleared his throat. Finally, the lobby.

The bar dark and very active, Spaniards having a drink before their eleven o’clock dinner hour. Fifteen minutes, then a table came open, next to a rubber plant. Casson tipped the waiter, sat down. Now, what could he order that would not do battle with the gruesome champagne cocktail he was going to be forced to drink? A dry sherry, and a coffee. A dish of salted almonds arrived as well. There was a string trio in the lobby, three elderly Hungarians who played their version of Spanish music. 10:10. Simic, where are you?

He sent the waiter to the bar for cigarettes. A brand called Estrella. Very good, he thought. Strong, but not too dry. He smoked, drank some sherry, ate an almond, took a sip of coffee. Why, he wondered, did he have to be the one to fight Hitler? Langlade was making lightbulbs, Bruno was selling cars. He ran down a list of friends and acquaintances, most of them, as far as he knew, were doing what they’d always done. Certainly it was harder now, and the money wasn’t so good, and you had to go to the petits fonctionnaires all the time for this permission and that paper, but life went on. His father used to say to him—Jean-Claude, why do you have to be the one? 10:20.

Simic hadn’t meant tomorrow night, had he? Was he in the hotel when he called? It had sounded that way, but as long as the call was local you couldn’t really tell. By now, Casson had decided that maybe a celebration was a good idea. After all, they’d done it, hadn’t they. Run money over the border, bribed a Spanish general. Despite the Gestapo and the vagaries of Spanish railroads. Strange—what was an English artist doing at Barcelona station?

10:22. Casson stood up, peered around at the other tables. That had happened to him once at Fouquet—his lunch appointment waiting at one table, he at another, both of them very irritated by the time they’d discovered what they’d done.

Well then, all right. A few minutes more and he was going back upstairs. The war was over for the night. Let the Germans rule the French for a thousand years, if they could stand it that long, he was going back to the room. Now, of course, he was hungry, but he wasn’t going to sit alone in the dining room. He ate another almond. 10:28. He watched the second hand crawl around the face of his watch, then he stood up. Just as somebody was coming toward him, weaving among the tables. Well, finally. But, not Simic. Marie-Noëlle—of all people.

What a coincidence.

She sat across from him, ordered a double brandy with soda, got a Gitane going.

“I do have somebody joining me,” he said apologetically. “A man I know from Paris.”

“No,” she said, “he isn’t coming.”

“Who isn’t?”

“Your friend. Simic.” She wasn’t joking. He tried to make sense of that but couldn’t.

She stared at him; worried, angry, tapped her index finger against the table, looked at her watch. “I’m leaving tonight,” she said. “But, before I go, it’s my job to decide about you, monsieur. As to whether you are a knave, or just a fool.”

He stared at her.

“So,” she said.

He didn’t know what to say. His first instinct was to defend himself, to say something reasonably witty and fairly sharp. But he didn’t. She wasn’t joking, to her the choice was precisely described, insulting, but not meant as an insult. And, he somehow knew, it mattered. At last he said quietly, “I am not a knave, Marie-Noëlle.”

“A fool, then.”

He shrugged. Who in this life hasn’t been a fool?

She canted her head to one side. Was this something she could believe? She searched his face. “Used?” she said. “Could be.”

“Used?”

“By Simic.”

“How?”

“To steal from us.”

“Who is ‘us’?”

“My employers. The British Secret Intelligence Service. In London.”

This was a lot to take in but, somehow, not completely a shock. At some level he had understood that she wasn’t just somebody met on a train. “Well,” he said. “You mean, the people in the business of bribing Spanish generals.”

“They thought they were, but it was a fraud. A confidence scheme— seven hundred thousand pesetas before your delivery, another million to come after that.”

Casson lit a cigarette, shook his head as if to clear it.

“Simic was an opportunist,” Marie-Noëlle said. “Apparently he’d dabbled with intelligence services before. In Hungary? Romania? France, perhaps. Who knows. He had a good, instinctive sense of how the game is played, of how money changes hands, of what kinds of things people like to hear. When the Germans took over he saw his chance—he could get rich if he came up with an operation that felt really authentic.”

“And Carabal? Is he a colonel in the Spanish army?”

“Yes. Also a thief, one of Simic’s partners.”

“General Arado?”

“A monster, but not a traitor. Credible—for Simic’s purpose. A history of support for the Bourbon monarchy. But, no inclination to overthrow the Falange. No inclination for politics at all.”

Casson scowled, stared down at the table. He had assumed he was smarter than Simic, but maybe it was simply that he was above him, socially, professionally. He’d been worse than a fool, he realized. “And me?” he said.

“You. We are treating that as an open question. You’d been mentioned by a former business associate, and when Simic asked for a name we gave him yours. But then, after that, who knows. Under occupation, people do what they feel they have to do.”

“You think I took your money.”

“Did you take it?”

“No.”

“Somebody did. Not what you brought down, we have that back, but there was an earlier payment, and some of that is missing.”

“What happens to Carabal?”

“Can’t touch him. There’s an office theory that General Arado found the whole business amusing, and that Carabal’s career will not suffer at all.”

“And Simic?”

She spread her hands, palms up. What do you think?

“We went and had a drink,” Casson said. “He explained to me the importance of Gibraltar, it was very persuasive.”

“It is important.”

“But they won’t attack it.”

“No,” she said. “Because of the wind.”

Casson didn’t understand.

“It blows hard there, changes direction—it’s tricky. You’ve seen those Greek amphoras in hotel lobbies, they plant geraniums in them. Sometimes they wash up on the beach, from the ocean floor. Well, think how they happened to be down there in the first place—obviously somebody got it wrong. A wind like that, the Germans can’t do what they did with the Belgian forts, they can’t use paratroops, or gliders. As for an attack over land, the peninsula is narrow, and heavily mined from one side to the other. The roads are terrible, and the Spanish-gauge railroad track is different, which means the Wehrmacht can’t run trains through France—they’d have to change over, and we’d know about it right away. That leaves an attack from the sea, which would have to be staged from Spanish Morocco, and the cranes at the port of Ceuta aren’t big enough to lift heavy tanks and artillery onto ships.”

“So then, why pay Spanish generals to overthrow Franco?”

“You have to understand the nature of the business. It has, like everything else, fashion, what the hemline is to the prêt-à-porter. So once an idea is, ah, born—memos written, meetings held—it takes on a life of its own. For a time, it’s the local religion, and nobody wants to be the local atheist. Erno Simic understood that, understood how vulnerable we were to big, nasty schemes, and he decided to make his fortune. He would have played us along; the general is thinking, the general is nervous, the general has decided to go ahead, send a sniper rifle and a box of exploding candy. And on, and on. But, you know, somebody found a way to see if General Arado was actually in on it, and he wasn’t.”

“So everything I did . . .”

“Meant nothing. Yes, that’s right. On the other hand, if the Seguridad or the Gestapo had caught you with the money . . .”

Casson sat back in the chair, the life in the bar was growing brighter and louder. The Spanish brandy wasn’t very expensive, after a while it inspired a certain optimism. “Tell me something,” he said. “Are you really Lady Marensohn?”

“Yes. I am pretty much who I said I was. There’s just this one little extra dimension. Of course, I’d prefer you not to talk about it. As in, not ever.”

“No, I won’t.” He thought a moment. “I hope you understand— Simic was what he was, but I believed in the scheme, I really thought it would damage Germany.”

Marie-Noëlle nodded. “Yes, probably you did. It was my job, on the train, to find out who you were. As far as I can tell, you were drawn in, used. The people I work for, on the other hand . . .”

She paused a moment, she wanted to be accurate. “The people I work for,” she said. “You have to understand, Britain is living on the edge of a cliff—and these people were never very nice people in the first place. Now the issue is survival, national survival. So they are, even more—difficult. Cold. Not interested in motive—words don’t matter, what matters is what’s done. So, perhaps, they feel it isn’t over between you and them. Because if you sat down and joined, knowingly, with Simic, what, frankly would be different in your explanation? You’d say exactly what you’ve said.”

Casson thought about it for a time, to see how that wasn’t actually the case, but it was. “What can I do?” he said.

“Go back home, Monsieur Casson. Live your life. Hope for British success in 1941, and German failure. If that happens, there is every possibility that, for you, life will simply go back to being what it always was.”