The World at Night

THE SECRET AGENT

Casson stood on the balcony, just after midnight, and stared out over the jagged line of rooftops. The city was ghostly in blue lamplight, and very quiet. He could hear distant footsteps, and night birds singing in the parks. The preparation of an escape, he thought, whatever else it did, showed you your life from an angle of profound reality. Where to go. How to get there. Friends and money must be counted up, but then, which friends—who will really help? How much money? And, if you can’t get that, how much? And then, most of all, when? Because these doors, once you went through them, closed behind you.

There’s no question when, he told himself, the time is now. If it isn’t already too late.

A few things had to be settled before he left. He started Tuesday morning, getting in touch with Fischfang. This lately was not easy— messages left with shopkeepers, calls returned from public telephones—but by the end of the week they met at a vacant apartment out in the 19th, that looked out on the railyards.

The apartment was for rent, the landlord’s agent a plump little gentleman wearing an alpine hat with a brush. “Look around all you like, boys,” he said as he opened the door. “And as to the rent, they say I’m a reasonable man.” He winked, then trotted off down the staircase.

Fischfang was tense, shadows like bruises beneath his eyes, but very calm. Different. It was, Casson thought, the revolver. No longer kept in a drawer, perhaps worn under the arm, or in the belt—it had a certain logic of its own and changed the person who carried it.

And Fischfang hadn’t come alone, he had a friend—a helper or a bodyguard, something like that. Not French, from somewhere east of the Oder, somewhere out in Comintern land. Ivanic, he called himself. In his twenties, he was dark-eyed and pale, with two days’ growth of beard, wore a cap tilted down over sleepy eyes. He waited in the kitchen while Casson and Fischfang talked, hands clasped behind his head as he sat against a wall.

Casson gave Fischfang a lot of money, all he could. But, he thought, maybe it didn’t matter any more. Now that it was time to meet in vacant apartments, now that Ivanic had showed up, maybe the days of worrying about something as simple as money were over. Fischfang put the packet of francs away, reached inside his jacket, handed Casson a school notebook with a soft cover.

“New draft,” Fischfang said. “Though I somehow get the feeling,” he added ruefully, “that our little movie is slipping away into its own fog.”

Casson paged through the notebook. The scenes had been written in cafés, on park benches, or at kitchen tables late at night—spidery script densely packed on the lined paper, coffee-stained, blotted, and, Casson sensed, finely made. He could feel it as he skimmed the lines. It was autumn, a train pulled into a little station, the guests got off, their Paris clothes out of place in the seaside village. They went to the hotel, to their rooms, did what people did, said what they said—Casson looked up at Fischfang. “Pretty good?”

Fischfang thought a moment. “Maybe it is. I didn’t have too much time to think about it.”

“Not always the worst thing.”

“No, that’s true.”

Casson paced around the room. The apartment was filthy—it smelled like train soot, the floor was littered with old newspaper. On the wall by the door somebody had written in pencil, E. We’ve gone to Montreuil. In the railyard below the window, the switching engines were hard at work, couplings crashed as boxcars were shunted from track to track, then made up into long trains, Casson peered through the cloudy glass. Fischfang came and stood by his side. One freight train seemed just about ready to go, Casson counted a hundred and twenty cars, with tanks and artillery pieces under canvas, cattle wagons for the horses, and three locomotives. “Looks like somebody’s in for it,” he said.

“Russia, maybe. That’s the local wisdom. But, wherever it’s going, they won’t like it.”

“No.” Directly below them, a switching engine vented white steam with a loud hiss. “Who’s your friend?” Casson said quietly.

“Ivanic? I think he comes from the NKVD. He’s just waiting for the fighting to start, then he can go to work.”

“And you?”

“I’m his helper.”

Casson stared out at the railyard, clouds of gray smoke, the railwaymen in faded blue jackets and trousers.

“We all thought,” Fischfang said slowly, his voice almost a whisper, “that life would go on. But it won’t. Tell me, so much money, what does it mean, Jean-Claude?”

“I have to go away.”

Fischfang nodded slowly, he understood. “It’s best.”

“They’re after me,” Casson said.

Fischfang turned and stared at him for a moment. “After you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you do something?”

“Yes,” Casson said, after a moment. “Nothing much—and it didn’t work.”

Fischfang smiled. “Well then, good luck.”

They shook hands. “And to you.”

There was nothing else to say, Casson left the apartment, Ivanic watched him go.

That afternoon he went up to the Galéries Lafayette, the huge department store just north of Opéra. He found the buyers’ offices on the top floor and knocked on Véronique’s door. “Jean-Claude!” she said, pleased to see him. A tiny space, costume jewelry everywhere; spread across a desk, crowded on shelves that rose to the ceiling— wooden bracelets painted lustrous gold, shimmering glass diamonds in rings and earrings, ropes of glowing pearls. “The sultan’s treasure,” she said.

For herself she had great honesty of style—wore a black shirt with a green scarf tied at the neck. Short hair, clear eyes, a great deal of intelligence and a little bit of expensive perfume. “Let’s take a walk around the store,” she said.

They walked from room to room, past bridal gowns and evening gowns, floral housedresses and pink bathrobes. “Have you heard about Arnaud and his wife?” she said.

“No. What’s happened?”

“I had lunch with Marie-Claire yesterday, she told me they weren’t living together. He moved out.”

“Why is that? They always seemed to have, a good arrangement.”

Véronique shrugged. “Who knows,” she said gloomily. “I think it’s the Occupation. Lately the smallest thing, and everything comes apart.”

It was busy in the luggage department—fine leather and brass fittings from the ancient saddlery ateliers of Paris. A crowd of German soldiers, businessmen with their wives, a few Japanese naval officers.

“Véronique,” he said. “I need to go south again.”

“Right now the moon is full, Jean-Claude.”

“So it would be, what, fourteen days?”

“Well, yes, at least. Then there are people who have to be talked to, and, all the various complications.”

A woman in traditional Breton costume—black dress, white hat with wings—was demonstrating a waffle iron, pouring yellow batter from a cup into the iron, then heating it over a small gas burner.

“All right,” he said. “There’s a chance I’ll get an Ausweis. In a few weeks. Maybe.”

“Can you wait?”

“I’m not sure. Things, things are going on.”

“What things, Jean-Claude? It’s important to tell me.”

“I’m under pressure to work for them. I mean, really work for them.”

“Can you refuse?”

“Perhaps, I’m not sure. I’ve been over it and over it, probably the best thing for me is to slip quietly into the ZNO, pick up Citrine, then go out—to Spain or Portugal. Once we’re there, we’ll find some country that will take us. I can remember May of last year—then it mattered where you went. Now it doesn’t.”

They stood together at a railing, looking out from the dress department over the center of the store. Two floors below, the crowds shifted slowly through a maze of counters packed with gloves, belts, and handbags. Silk scarves were draped on racks, and womens’ hats, with veils and bows and clusters of cherries or grapes, were hung on the branches of wooden trees. “If you leave before the Ausweis comes,” Véronique said, “and there’s some way you can arrange to have it sent over to your office, it would be very important for us to have it. For somebody, it could mean everything.”

“I will try,” he said.

“About the other, situation, I’ll be in touch with you. Soon as I can.”

They kissed each other good-bye, one cheek then the other, and Casson walked away. Looking back over his shoulder he saw her smile, then she waved to him and mouthed the little phrase that meant have courage.

It rained. Thirty-three Wehrmacht divisions advanced in Yugoslavia. Others crossed the border into Greece. Stuka bombers destroyed the city of Belgrade. An interzonal card from Lyons arrived at a Paris café, addressed to J. Casson. “Waiting, waiting and thinking about you. Please come soon.” Signed with the initial X. A dinner party at the house of Philippe and Françoise Pichard. His brother, wounded a year earlier in the fighting in Belgium, had never returned home, but they had word of him, a prisoner of war, doing forced labor in an underground armaments factory in Aachen. Bruno was trying to pull strings in order to get him out.

It cleared. Fine days; windy, cool, sunny. Zagreb taken. The RAF blew up the Berlin opera house. Bulgarian and Italian troops joined the attack on Yugoslavia. Casson had lunch with Hugo Altmann at a black-market restaurant called Chez Nini, in an alley behind a butcher shop out in Auteuil. Fillets of lamb with baby turnips, then a Saint-Marcellin. Now that he was in contact with SD officers, Altmann was afraid of him—that meant money, replacing what he’d given Fischfang, and a meaningful contribution to the escape fund. Altmann gave his tenth hearty laugh of the afternoon. “My secretary will have a check for you tomorrow, it’s no problem, no problem at all. We believe in this picture, that’s what matters.”

It rained. Dripped slowly from the branches of the trees on the boulevards. Casson went to see Marcel Carné’s Le Jour Se Lève at the Madeleine theatre, script by Jacques Prévert, Jean Gabin playing the lead. The Occupation authority announced the opening of the Institute of Jewish Studies. The inaugural exhibition, to be presented by a well-known curator, would show how Jews dominated the world through control of newspapers, films, and financial markets. Marie-Claire telephoned, Bruno was impossible, she didn’t know what to do. “Some afternoon you could come for tea,” she said. “It rains like this and I am so sad. I walk around the apartment in my underwear and look at myself in the mirrors.” Fighting around Mount Olympus in Greece. Bulgarian troops in Macedonia. On a small errand he went out to the Trinité quarter, a street of fortune-tellers and dusty antique shops. He walked head down through the rain, dodging the puddles, staying under awnings when he could. A black Citroën swung sharply to the curb, Franz Millau climbed out of the passenger side and opened the back door. “Come for a ride,” he said with a smile. “It’s no good walking today, too wet.”

They drove to a small villa in the back streets of one of the drearier suburbs, Vernouillet, squat brick houses with little gardens. The driver was introduced as Albert Singer, a blunt-headed, fair-haired man so heavy in the neck and shoulders his shirt collar was pulled out of shape around the button. At the villa, Millau asked him to make a fire. He tried, using wooden crates broken into kindling, newspapers, and two wet birch logs that were never going to burn anything. Stubborn, he squatted in front of the fireplace, lighting match after match to the corner of a damp section of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. For a time, Millau watched him with disbelief. Finally he said, “Singer, isn’t there any dry paper?”

“I’ll look,” Singer said, struggling to his feet.

“What can you do?” said Millau, resigned. “He does what I tell him, so I have to keep him around.”

Casson nodded sympathetically. The room smelled of disuse, of mildew and old rugs; something about it made his heart beat faster. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No. In fact I will join you.” Millau got out a cigar and went to work on it. With the lights off and shutters closed, the parlor was in shadow. “Did you see the papers this morning?” Millau said.

“Yes.”

“Awful, no?”

“What?”

“The bombing. Out at the Citroën plant. Three hundred dead—and to no particular purpose. The assembly line was up and running again by ten in the morning. Casson, no matter your politics, no matter what you think of us, you have a moral obligation to stop such things if it is in your power to do so.”

Casson made a gesture—the world did what it did, it didn’t ask him first.

“I’ll let you in on one secret—we have a special envoy in London now, trying to work out, at least a cease-fire. At least let the horror stop for a moment, so we can think it over, so we can maybe just talk for a time. You can’t find that wrong, can you?”

“No.”

“I mean, we must be honest with each other. We’re fellow human beings, maybe even fellow Europeans—certainly it’s something we could discuss, but I won’t insist on that.”

“Europeans, of course.”

“Now look, Casson, we need your help or this whole thing is going to blow up in our faces. The people I work for in Berlin have taken it into their heads that you’re willing to cooperate with us and they’ve stuck me with the job of making that cooperation a reality. So, I don’t really have a choice.”

Singer returned with some newspaper, crumpled up a few pages and wedged them under the grate. He lit the paper, the room immediately smelled like smoke.

“Flue open?”

“Ja.”

Millau made a face. Reached into an inside pocket, took out an identity card, handed it over. Casson swallowed. It was his passport photograph. Underneath, the name Georges Bourdon. “Now this gentleman was to be used by the English, and I mean used, to assist a terrorist action that is planned to take place in the Paris region. The bombing last night killed three hundred Frenchmen—what these people want to do, and we aren’t sure exactly what that is, will no doubt kill a few hundred more. What we need from you is to play the part of this Bourdon person for a single night, then we’re quits. You will spend a few hours in a field, is all that is required, then I can report back to Berlin that all went well, that you tried but didn’t do much of a job, and in future we’re going to work with somebody else.

“I’m an honorable man, Monsieur Casson, I don’t care if you want to sit out this war and make movies—after all, I go to the movies—as long as you don’t do anything to hurt us. Meanwhile, if things turn out as I believe they will, Europe is going to be a certain way for the foreseeable future, and those people who have helped us out when we asked for their help are going to be able to ask for a favor some day if they need to. We have long memories, and we appreciate civilized behavior. Now, I’ve said everything I can say—”

There was a wisp of white smoke floating along the ceiling. Singer gazed upward from where he was squatting in front of the fire.

“You stupid ass,” Millau said.

“I’m sorry,” Singer said, standing and rubbing his hands. “It’s too wet to burn, sir.”

Millau put a hand against the side of his head as though he were getting a headache. “Now look,” he said to Casson. “In a few days we’ll be in contact with you, we’ll tell you where and when and all the rest of it. Keep the card, you’ll need it. Somebody will ask you if you’re Georges Bourdon, and you’ll say that you are, and show them your identity card. So, now, you know most of what I can tell you. Don’t say yes, don’t say no, just go home and think it over. What’s best for you, what’s best for the French people. But I would not be wholly honest if I didn’t tell you that we need a French person, somebody approximately of your age and circumstance, to be at a certain place on a certain date in the very near future.”

He paused a moment, trying to decide exactly how to say what came next. “You have us in a somewhat difficult position, Monsieur Casson, I hope you understand that.”

He took a train back to Paris, got off at the Gare St.-Lazare at twenty minutes after six. For a time he was not clear about what to do next, in fact stood on the platform between tracks as the crowds flowed around him. Finally there was a man’s voice—Casson never saw him— saying quietly, “Don’t stand here like this, they’ll run you in. Understand?”

Casson moved off. To a rank of telephone booths by the entry to the station. Outside, people were hurrying through the rain in the gathering dusk. Casson stepped into a phone booth, put the receiver to his ear and listened to the thin whine of the dial tone. Then he began to thumb through the Paris telephone book on a shelf below the telephone. Turned to the B section. Bois. Bonneval. Bosquet. Botine. Boulanger. Bourdon.

Albert, André, Bernard, Claudine, Daniel—Médecin, Georges.

18, rue Malher. 42 30 89.

Seeing it in the little black letters and numbers, Casson felt a chill inside him. As though hypnotized, he put a jeton in the slot and dialed the number. It rang. And again. A third time. Once more. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Casson put the receiver back on its hook. Outside, a woman in a green hat tapped on the door of the booth with a coin. “Monsieur?” she said when he looked at her.

He left. Walked east on the rue de Rome. The street was crowded, people shopping, or going home from work, faces closed and private, eyes on the pavement, trying to get through one more day. Casson came to a decision, turned abruptly, hurried back to the telephones at the Gare St.-Lazare. Véronique. He didn’t remember exactly where she lived—he’d dropped her off the night of Marie-Claire’s dinner party a year ago—but it was in the Fifth somewhere, the student quarter. He remembered Marie-Claire telling him, eyes cast to heaven in gentle despair at the curious life her little sister had chosen to live. Yes, well, Casson thought.

It took more than the polite number of rings for Véronique to answer.

“Yes?”

“It’s Jean-Claude.”

Guarded. “How nice to hear from you.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Very well.”

“Where should we meet?”

“There’s a café at the Maubert market. Le Relais. In a half-hour, say.”

“See you then.”

“Good-bye.”

She wore a trenchcoat and a beret, a tiny gold cross on a chain at the base of her throat. She was cold in the rain, sat hunched over the edge of a table at the rear of the workers’ café. Casson told her what had happened, starting with Altmann’s dinner at the Heininger. He handed her the Georges Bourdon identity card.

She studied it a moment. “Rue Malher,” she said.

“Just another street. He could be rich, poor, in between.”

“Yes. And for profession, salesman. Also, anything.”

Véronique handed the card back.

“What do you think Millau meant when he said I’d put them in a difficult position?”

She thought a moment. “Perhaps—you have to remember these people work for organizations, and these places have a life of their own. Department stores, symphony orchestras, spy services—at heart the same. So, perhaps, this man told a little fib. Claimed he had somebody who could be used a certain way. Thinking, maybe, that such a situation could be developed, in the future, so he’d just take credit for it a little early. On a certain day, perhaps, when he needed a success. Then, suddenly, they’re yelling produce the goods! Well, now what?”

Casson stubbed out a cigarette. The café smelled like sour wine and wet dogs, a quiet place, people spoke in low voices. “Merde,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I think, Véronique, I had better talk to somebody. Can you help?”

“Yes. Do you know what you’re asking?”

“Yes, I know.”

She looked in his eyes, reached out and squeezed his forearm. She was strong, he realized. She got up from the table and went to the bar. A telephone was produced from beneath the counter. She made a call—ten seconds—then hung up. She stood at the bar and talked to the proprietor. Laughed at a joke, kidded with him about something that made him shake his head and tighten his mouth—what could you do, any more, the way things were, a pretty damn sad state of affairs is what it was. The phone on the bar rang, Véronique answered it, said a word or two, hung up, and returned to the table.

“It’s tomorrow,” she said. “Go to the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, that’s just up the hill here. You know it?”

“Across from the school.”

“That’s it. You go to the five o’clock mass. Take a seat near the crypt of Sainte Geneviève, one seat in from the center aisle. Carry a raincoat over your left arm, a copy of Le Temps in your right hand. You will be approached. The man—he uses the name Mathieu—will be holding his hat in his left hand. He will ask you if he might have a look at your newspaper if you’re done reading it. You will tell him politely no, your wife hasn’t read it yet.” She paused a moment. “Do you have it?”

“Yes.”

She leaned over the table, coming closer to him. “For the best, Jean-Claude,” she said. Then, “Really, it’s time. Not just for you. For all of us.”

They said good-bye. He left first, walked to the Maubert-Mutualité Métro. There was a Gestapo control after 8:00 P.M. at the La Motte-Picquet correspondance, where he normally would have changed trains for his own station, so he got out two stops early and walked to a station on Line Six.

“Excuse me, may I see the paper if you’re done with it?”

He was quite ordinary, a plain suit over a green sweater, raincoat, hat—held in left hand, as promised. But there was something about him, the skin of his face rough and weathered a certain way, hair a deep reddish brown, mustache a little ragged—that made it immediately apparent that he was British. Thus something of a shock when he spoke. He opened his mouth and perfect native French came out. Later he would explain: mother from Limoges, father from Edinburgh, he’d grown up in the Dordogne, where his family owned a hotel.

They left the church, walked down the hill, crossed boulevard St.-Michel and entered the Luxembourg Gardens. Handed over a few sous to the old lady in black who guarded the park chairs, and sat on a terrace. It was crowded, couples holding hands, old men with newspapers, just below them boys launching sailboats in the fountain, keeping them on course with long sticks.

They were silent for a moment, Casson got a sense of the man sitting beside him. He was scared, but bolted down tight. He’d done what he’d done, signed up for clandestine service in time of war. Hadn’t understood what that meant until he got to Paris, saw the Germans in operation, at last realized how easy it was going to be to make the wrong mistake—only a matter of time. After that, he woke up scared in the morning and went to bed scared at night. But, he wasn’t going to let it finish him. Something else would, not that.

“Well,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll tell me what happened.”

Casson had taken the time to think it through and had the answer rehearsed. Simic. The money taken to Spain. The period of surveillance. Finally, the two contacts with Millau. Mathieu listened attentively, did not react until Casson repeated what he’d been told about Marie-Noëlle being in German custody.

“And you didn’t tell anybody,” Mathieu said.

“No.”

For a moment there was nothing to be said, only the sound of the park, the birds in late afternoon, the boys by the fountain shouting to one another.

“I’m sorry,” Casson said. “It didn’t occur to me to tell someone about it—I really don’t know anything about how this works.”

“Was that all—they had her in custody?”

“Yes.”

“Well, at least we know now.”

“You’d met her?”

“No. I suspect she was with the other service, not mine. They’re the intelligence people, we’re operational. We blow things up. So, what we do isn’t exactly secret. Rather the opposite.”

“You’re in the army, then.”

“No, not really. I was a university teacher. Latin drama—Plautus and Terence, mostly. Seneca, sometimes. But I heard they were looking for people who spoke native French, and I was the right age—old enough to know when to run, young enough to run fast when the time came. So, I applied. And then, a stroke of luck, I got the job.”

Casson smiled. “When was that?”

“The autumn after the invasion here.”

“Eight months.”

“Yes, about that.”

“Not very long.”

Mathieu took off his hat, smoothed his hair back. “Well, they did have training, especially the technical part. But for the rest of it, they taught us the classic procedures but they also let us know, in so many words, that people who have done well at this sort of thing tend to make it up as they go along.”

Mathieu stared at something over Casson’s shoulder, Casson turned around to see what he was looking at. Down a long allée of lime trees, a pair of French policemen were conducting a snap search—a dark-haired couple handing over various passes and identity cards.

“Let’s take a little walk,” Mathieu said. They moved off casually, away from the search.

“I’m going to have to ask London what they want to do with you,” Mathieu said. “It will take a few days—say, next Thursday. Now, in a minute I’m going to give you a telephone number. Memorize it. It’s a bookstore, over in the Marais. You call them up—use a public phone, of course—and ask them some question with an Italian flavor. Such as, do you have two copies of Dante’s Vita Nuova? Leave a number. If a call doesn’t come back in twenty minutes, walk away. You may be contacted at home, or at your office, or en route. If nothing happens, return to that phone at the same time the following day, also for twenty minutes. Then once again, on the third day.”

“And then, if there’s still no response?”

“Hmm, they say Lisbon is pleasant, this time of year.”

28 May, 1941. 4:20 P.M.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon. Do you have a tourist guide for Naples?”

“I’ll take a look. Can I call you back?”

“Yes. I’m at 41 11 56.”

“Very good. We’ll be in touch.”

“Good-bye.”

29 May, 1941. 4:38 P.M.

“Hello?”

“Did you call about a guidebook for Naples?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I have an answer for you. I spoke with my managing director, he wants you to go ahead with the project.”

“What?”

“Do what they ask.”

“Agree to what they want—is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yes.”

“Can we get together and talk about it?”

“Later, perhaps. What we will want to know is what they ask you to do. That’s important. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I’m on their side.”

“That’s correct—but don’t overdo it.”

“I won’t.”

“Are you going to be able to do this?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“You will have to be very careful.”

“I understand.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

5 June. 2:20 P.M.

“Monsieur Casson?”

“Yes.”

“Franz Millau. Have you thought over our discussion?”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about it now?”

“If there’s a way I can help—it’s best.”

“Will you be at your office for an hour or so?”

“Yes.”

“An envelope will be delivered. Monsieur Casson?”

“Yes?”

“I will ask you one time only. Did you mention, or allude to, the discussion we had, to anybody, in any way whatsoever? Think for a moment before you answer me.”

“The answer is no.”

“Can you tell me please, why is that?”

“Why. It might take a long time to explain. Briefly, I was raised in a family that understood that your first allegiance is to yourself.”

“Very well. Expect the envelope, and we’ll be in touch with you soon. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Herr Millau.”

“And good luck.”

“Yes, always that. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

9 June, 3:20 P.M.

On his way to the Gare de Lyon to catch the 4:33 to Chartres, he stopped at the café where he had his morning coffee. The proprietor went back to his office and returned with a postcard. Greetings from Lyons—View of the Fountain, place des Terreaux. “All is well, monsieur?”

“Yes. Thank you, Marcel. For keeping the card for me.”

“It’s my pleasure. Not easy, these times.

“No.”

“It’s not only you, monsieur.”

Casson met his glance and found honest sympathy: liaisons with lovers or with the underground, for Marcel what mattered were liaisons, and he could be counted on. Casson reached across the copper-covered bar and shook his hand. “Thank you again, my friend,” he said.

“De rien.” It’s nothing.

“I’m off to the train.”

“Bon voyage, monsieur.”

He read it on the train, sweaty and breathing hard from having jumped on the last coach as it was moving out of the station. A control on the Métro, a long line, French police inspectors peering at everyone’s identity cards as the minutes marched past and Casson clenched his teeth in rage.

The writing on the card was careful, like a student in lycée. It touched his heart to look at it.

My love, it’s 3:40 in the morning, and it feels and sounds the way it does late at night in these places. My chaos of a life is right here by my side—it likes to stay up late when I do, and it won’t go to bed. You would say not to care, so, maybe, I don’t. I write to say that spring is going by, that nothing changes in this city, and I wonder where you are. I am very alone without you—please try to come. I know you are trying, but please try. I do love you. X

He looked up to find green countryside, late afternoon in spring among the meadows and little aimless roads. Citrine. For just a moment he was nineteen again—to go to Lyons you took the Lyons train. Or you went to a town along the ZNO line and found somebody to take you across. Then you found your lover and together you ran to a place where they would never find you. No. That didn’t work. Life wasn’t like that. And it didn’t matter how much you wanted it to be.

The sun low in the sky, long shadows in a village street, a young woman in a scarf helping an old woman down the steps of a church, Café de la Poste, an ancient cemetery—stone walls and cypress trees, then the town ended and the fields began again.

As it turned out, he could have let the express to Chartres leave without him. A long delay, waiting for the 6:28 local that would eventually find its way to Alençon. He used the time to buy paper and an envelope at a stationer’s shop across from the terminal, then wrote, sitting on a bench on the platform as the sun went down behind the spires of the cathedral.

He loved her, he was coming, life in Paris was complicated, he had to extricate himself.

He stopped there, thought for a time, then wrote that if there had to be a line drawn it would be a month from then, no more. Say, July 1. A voice inside him told him not to write that but he didn’t listen to it. He couldn’t just go on and on about soon. She needed more than that, he did the best he could.

The train was two hours late, only three passengers got off at Alençon; a mother and her little boy, and Casson, feeling very much the dark-haired Parisian, lighting a cigarette as he descended to the platform, cupping his hands to shield the match flare from the evening wind.

“You must be Bourdon.” He’d been leaning against a baggage cart, watching to see who got off the train. He was barely thirty, Casson thought. Leather coat, longish—artfully combed hair, the expectantly handsome face of an office lothario.

“That’s right.”

“I’m Eddie Juin.”

They walked into a maze of little lanes, three feet wide, wash hanging out above their heads. Turned left, right, right, left, down a stairway, through a tunnel, then up a long street of stairs to a garage. It was dark inside, fumes of gasoline and oil heavy in the air, cut by the sharp smell of scorched metal. “I wonder if you could let me have a look at your identity card,” Juin said.

“Not a problem.”

Casson handed over the Bourdon card, Juin clicked on a flashlight and had a look. “A salesman?”

“Yes.”

“What is it you sell, if I can ask?”

“Scientific equipment—to laboratories. Test tubes, flasks, Bunsen burners, all that sort of thing.”

“How do you do, with that?”

“Not too badly. It’s up, it’s down—you know how it is.”

Juin handed the card back, went to a stained and battered desk with a telephone on it, dialed a number. “Seems all right,” he said. “We’re leaving now.”

He hung up, opened a drawer, took out several flashlights, put them in a canvas sack and handed it to Casson.

“Is this your place?” Casson asked.

“Mine? No. Belongs to a friend’s father—he lets us use it.” He ran the beam of the flashlight over the steel tracks above the pit used to work under cars, then a stack of old tires, then showed Casson what he meant him to see. “Better button up your jacket,” he said, voice very proud.

It was beautiful. A big motorcycle, front and rear fenders stripped, the paint worn away to a color that was no color at all. “What year?” Casson said.

“1925. It’s English—a Norton ‘Indian.’ ”

Juin climbed on, jiggled the fuel feed on the right handlebar, then rose in the air and drove his weight down hard on the kick starter. The engine grumbled once and died. Juin rose again. Nothing on the second try, or the third. It went on, Juin undaunted. At last, a sputtering roar, a volley of small-arms fire and a cloud of smoke from the trembling exhaust pipe. Casson hauled up the metal shutter, then closed it again after Juin was out, and climbed on the flat seat meant for the passenger. “Don’t try to lean on the curves,” Juin shouted over the engine noise.

They flew through the streets, bouncing over the cobbles, bumping down a stairway, the explosive engine thundering off the ancient walls, announcing to every Frenchman and German in the lower Normandy region that that idiot Eddie Juin was out for a ride.

They sped over a bridge that spanned the Sarthe, then they were out in the countryside, Casson imagining that he could actually smell the fragrant night air through the reek of burned oil that traveled with the machine. They left the Route Nationale for a route departmentale, then turned onto a packed dirt road that didn’t have a number but probably had a local name, then to a cowpath, five miles an hour over rocks and roots, across a long hillside on a strip of beaten-down weed and scrub, over the hill to a valley spread out in the moonlight. Juin cut the engine and they rolled silently for a long time, coming to a stop at last on the edge of a flat grassy field.

It seemed very quiet, just a few crickets, once the engine was off. Casson climbed off the motorcycle, half frozen, blowing on his hands. “Where are we?” he asked.

Eddie Juin smiled. “Nowhere,” he said triumphantly. “Absolutely nowhere.”

1:30 A.M. Three-quarter moon. They sat by the motorcycle, smoking, waiting, watching the edge of the woods at the other end of the field.

“Alençon doesn’t seem so bad,” Casson said.

“No, not too bad, and I’m an expert. I grew up in at least six different places, one of those families that never stopped moving. Saves money, my dad said—some bills would never quite catch up with us— and, he’d say, it’s an education for life!” Juin laughed as he remembered. “It’s Lebec who’s from Alençon, and his uncle, who’s called Tonton Jules. Then there’s Angier, and that’s it. Tonton Jules farms over in Mortagne, the rest of us met up in Paris.”

“At the office.”

“Yes, that’s it. We all worked for the Merchant Marine Ministry, first in Paris, then over on the coast, in Lorient. We didn’t have it too bad—snuck out early on Friday afternoons, chased the girls, caught our share. But when the Germans came they tossed us out, of course, because they put their submarine pens in over there, for the blockade on the English. So that left us, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis from the fourth floor, with time on our hands. Well, what better than to find a way to fuck life up for the schleuh? Return the favor, right? And as for Tonton Jules, they captured him on the Marne in 1915, sent him to Germany in a cattle car. Apparently he didn’t care for it.”

He paused for a moment and they both listened for engines but it was very quiet. “So,” he said, “how is it in Paris these days?”

“You miss it?”

“Who wouldn’t.”

“People are fed up,” Casson said. “Hungry, tired, can’t get tobacco, there’s no coffee. In the beginning they thought they could live with it. Then they thought they could ignore it. Now they want it to go away.”

“Wait a minute.” Juin stood up. Casson heard the faint throb of a machine in the distance. Juin reached inside his coat and took out a snub-nosed automatic.

A farm tractor towing a haywagon materialized at the end of the field, Casson and Eddie Juin went to meet it. Tonton Jules swayed in the driver’s seat. He was a fat man with one arm, and he was drunk. His nephew Lebec was dark and clever, could have been Eddie Juin’s brother. Angier had an appealing rat face, Casson guessed he would go anywhere, do anything. Easy to imagine him as a kid jumping off railway trestles on a dare. “Salut, Eddie,” he said. “Are we on time?”

Juin just laughed.

They heard the plane at 3:12 A.M., headed south of east. They each took a flashlight and stood in a line with Juin to one side to make the letter L. This showed wind direction when, as the plane came closer, they turned on the lights. Juin then blinked the Morse letter J—a recognition signal for that night only, which meant we’re not a bunch of Germans trying to get you to land in this field. The plane did not respond, flew straight ahead, vanished. Then, a minute later, they heard him coming back. Juin tried again, and this time the pilot confirmed the signal, using the airplane’s landing lights to flash back a Morse countersign.

The plane touched down at the other end of the field, then taxied toward them, bouncing over the uneven ground. No savoir-faire now, they ran to meet it, Tonton Jules wheezing as he tried to keep up. It wasn’t much to look at, a single propeller, fixed landing wheels in oversized hubs, biplane wings above and below the pilot’s compartment. On the fuselage, next to a freshly painted RAF roundel, was a black flash mark and a peppering of tiny holes. With difficulty the pilot forced back the Perspex window panel, then tore the leather flying cap from his head. He allowed himself a single deep breath, then called out over the noise of the engine. “Can somebody help? Ahh, peut-être, can you—aidez-mah?”

“You are hurted?” Lebec said.

“No. Not me.”

He was very young, Casson thought, not much more than nineteen. And he certainly didn’t look the hero—tall and gangly, unruly hair, big ears, freckles. The man sitting behind him grabbed the edge of the cockpit with his left hand and clumsily struggled to his feet. Clearly his right arm had been damaged. He appeared to be cursing under his breath. Angier used the tail fin to scramble up on the back of the plane, then slid himself forward to a point where he could help the man get down to the ground.

The pilot looked at his watch. “We should move along,” he said to Casson. “I’m to leave here in three minutes.”

“All right.”

“You’ll have to help me get the tail swung round. And, don’t forget, n’oublah thing, the two, uh—deux caisses, deux valises.” The last burst forth with the fluency of the determinedly memorized.

Lebec climbed onto the wing, then helped the pilot work two suitcases and two small wooden crates free of the cockpit. “Damned amazing, what you can get in here,” the pilot said. Lebec smiled—no idea what the pilot was saying but an ally was an ally.

They handed down the cargo—carried off to Tonton Jules’s wagon—then Lebec jumped to the ground and saluted the pilot, who returned the salute with a smile, then tossed his flying cap back on and tried a parting wave, devil-may-care, as he revved the engine. “Best of luck, then,” he shouted. “Bonne shan!”

He reached up, pulled the housing shut. Eddie Juin took hold of the tail assembly and started to turn the plane into the wind, everybody else ran to help him. The plane accelerated suddenly, there was a blast of hot exhaust as it pulled away, then a roar of fuel fed to the engine as it struggled into the air. It flopped back down, bounced off the field, touched one wheel a second time, then caught the wind and climbed into the darkness. The people on the ground listened for a time, peering into the dark sky, then lost the whine of the receding engine among the night sounds of the countryside.

Verneuil, Brézolles, Laons—Casson drove east toward Paris in the spring dawn.

The end of the operation had been complicated. Système D, Casson thought, always Système D, make do, use your ingenuity, improvise— it was simply the way life was lived. They’d left the field headed for a small village nearby, where a man who drove a milk truck to Paris twice a week was supposed to pick up the supplies delivered from England, leaving Casson and the operative free to take the train into the city. But the truck never appeared, so Eddie Juin had to come up with an alternative. Off they went to another village, where a barn on the outskirts hid a Renault—a four-year-old Juvequatre model, slow, steady, inexpensive, a family car.

Casson drove through first light, staying on the 839. The two crates and two valises were in the trunk. Next to him, the man he had come to think of as the sergeant—though he used the name Jerome—bled slowly into the pale-gray upholstery.

“It’s not so bad,” he said. “You could hardly call it shrapnel. More like, specks. But, iron specks, so I’ll have to see a doctor, sooner or later. Still, not bad enough for me to go back to England—no point at all to that.”

“What happened?”

“Well, at first everything went perfectly. We came in at eight thousand feet over the coast at St.-Malo—no problem. Picked up the rail line to Alençon a minute later—we spotted the firebox on a locomotive going east and we just flew along with him. Next we had yellow signal lights, for ten miles or so, coming out of the big freight junction in Fougères. After that, the track was between us and the moon and we just followed the glow on the rails. But somebody heard us, because ten minutes later a searchlight came on and they started shooting. Nothing very serious, a few ack-ack rounds, and Charley thought maybe a machine gun. Then it was over, but my arm had gone numb and I realized we’d been hit.”

Casson slowed down for a hairpin turn at the center of a sleeping village, then they were back among the fields.

He saw now how they worked it. First came Mathieu, the university man, getting the system organized. Next came the sergeant—almost certainly a technician. Why else bring him in? Short and muscular, working-class face, speaking French in a way that would fool nobody. Not his fault, Casson thought. Likely something he’d taken up years ago in hopes it would advance him in the military. So he’d put in his time in classrooms, dutifully rolled his r’s and nasalized his n’s, but finally to very little purpose—he might as well have worn a derby with a Union Jack stuck in the band and whistled “God Save the King” for all the good it was going to do him.

Casson slowed for a one-lane bridge, the stream below running full in spring flood, water dark blue in the early light. The sergeant had winced when he tapped the brake. “Sorry,” Casson said.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Twenty minutes with a doctor and I’ll be fine.”

“It won’t be a problem,” Casson said.

Well, he didn’t think it would be. What doctor? He only knew one doctor, his doctor. Old Dr. Genoux. What were his politics? Casson had no idea. He was brusque, forever vaguely irritated by something or other, and smelled eternally of eucalyptus. He’d been Casson’s doctor for twenty years, since university. One day Casson had noticed his hair was white. Good heavens! He couldn’t be a Vichyite or a Fascist, could he? Well, if not him, who else? The dentist? The professor at the Sorbonne faculty of medicine who lived across the street? Arnaud had once had a girlfriend who was a nurse. No, that wasn’t going to work, old Genoux would just have to do the job.

He worked his way through the medieval town of Dreux, intending to pick up the 932 that wound aimlessly into the Chevreuse valley. But then he somehow made a mistake and, a little way beyond the town, found himself instead on the N 12, with a sprinkling of early traffic headed for Paris. Well, all the roads went to the capital, the N 12 was as good as any other.

Going over a rail crossing, the springs plunged and the cargo gave a loud thump as it shifted in the trunk. The sergeant opened his eyes and laughed. “Don’t worry about that,” he said confidently.

An explosion, is what he meant. The shipment from England included radio crystals, which would allow clandestine wireless-telegraph sets to change frequencies, 200,000 francs, 20,000 dollars, four Sten carbines with 4,000 rounds of ammunition, time pencil detonators, and eighty pounds of the explosive cyclonite, chemically enhanced to make it malleable—plastique.

“The trick,” he added, “is actually getting it to go off.”

The town of Houdan. A place Casson had always liked, he’d come here with Marie-Claire for picnics in the forest—long ago and far away. They’d owned a set of chairs and a table that could be folded up and carried in the trunk of the car. She always brought a cloth for the table, he would pick up a pair of langoustes with green mayonnaise from Fauchon, and they’d sit by a field for hours and watch the day.

The road turned north, the sun was up now, light glistening on the wet fields, the last of the ground mist gathered over the streams. The sky had turned a delicate, morning blue, with a rose blush on the horizon. Something world-weary about these dawns in the country around Paris, he’d always felt that—well, all right, one more day if you think it’s going to do you any good. The next village on the road seemed closed up tight, the shutters still pulled down over the front of the café. Casson spotted a road marker and decided to take the 839. The town ended, there was a bridge, then a sharp left-hand curve through a wood, which straightened out to reveal some cars and trucks and guards with machine pistols.

Control.

They had a moment, no more. Casson hit the brake, rolled past five or six policemen who waved him on, down a lane formed by portable barriers—crossbraced x’s of sawn logs strung with barbed wire. Coming up on the control, Casson and the sergeant had turned to each other, exchanged a look: well, too bad. That was all. Then Casson said, “Close your eyes. You’re injured, unconscious, almost gone.”

A young officer—Leutnant—in Wehrmacht gray appeared at the window. “Raus mit uns.” He was impatient, holster unsnapped, hand resting on his sidearm.

Casson got out and stood by the half-open door, nodded toward the passenger side of the car. “There’s a man hurt,” he said.

The Leutnant walked around to have a look, bent over and peered into the car. The sergeant’s eyes were closed, mouth open, head back. A bloody rag around his arm, a dark stain on the upholstery. The Leutnant hesitated, looked in Casson’s direction. Casson saw a possibility. “I don’t really know exactly how he got himself in this condition but it’s important that he see a doctor as soon as he can.” He said it quickly.

The Leutnant froze, then squared his shoulders and walked away.

The road lay in shadow—six in the morning, shafts of sunlight in the pine forest. Five cars had been stopped, as well as two rickety old trucks taking pigs to market. Amid the smell and the squealing, a German officer was trying to make sense of the drivers’ papers while they stood to one side looking sinister and apprehensive. By the car ahead of Casson, four men, dark, unshaven, possibly Gypsies, were trying to communicate with a man in a raincoat, perhaps a German security officer. Suddenly angry he yanked the door open, and a very pregnant, very frightened woman struggled out with hands held high in the air.

The young Leutnant came striding back to Casson’s car, a policeman in tow—an officer of the Gendarmerie Nationale, French military police with a reputation for brutality. The gendarme was angry at being asked to intervene. “All right,” he said to Casson, “what’s going on?”

“This man is injured.”

“How did it happen?”

“I’m taking him to a doctor.”

The gendarme gave him a very cold look. “I asked how.”

“An accident.”

“Where?”

“Working, I believe. In a garage. I wasn’t there.”

The gendarme’s eyes were like steel. Salaud—you bastard—trying to play games with me? In front of a German? I’ll take you behind a tree and break your fucking head. “Open the trunk,” he said.

Casson fumbled with the latch, then got it open. The intense odor of almonds, characteristic of plastic explosive, came rolling out at them. The Leutnant said “Ach,” and stepped back. “What is it?” the gendarme said.

“Almonds.”

The two valises were in plain sight, packed with francs, dollars, radio crystals, and explosive. Tonton Jules, just before they left, had tossed an old blanket over the two crates holding the sten guns and ammunition. Casson, at that moment, had thought it a particularly pointless gesture.

“Almonds,” the gendarme said. He didn’t know it meant explosive. He did know that Casson had been caught in the middle of something. Parisians of a certain class had no business on country roads at dawn, and people didn’t injure their upper arms in garage accidents. This was resistance of some kind, that much he did know, thus his patriotism, his honor, had been called into question and now he, a man with wife and family, had to compromise himself. He stared at Casson with pure hatred.

“You had better be going,” he said. “Your friend ought to see a doctor.” For the benefit of the Leutnant he made a Gallic gesture—eyes shut, shoulders up, hands in the air: Who knows what these people are doing, but it’s clearly nothing that would interest men of our stature.

He waved Casson on, down the road toward Paris.

Salaud. Don’t come back here.

10 June, 1941.

“Hello?”

“Good morning. I was wondering if you might have a life of Verdi, something nice, for a gift.”

“The composer?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure, we may very well have something. Can we call you back?”

“Yes. I’m at 63 26 08.”

“All right. We’ll be in touch.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

This time they met in the church of Nôtre-Dame de Secours, then walked in the Père-Lachaise cemetery. At the gate, Mathieu bought a bouquet of anemones from an old woman.

They walked up the hill to the older districts, past the crumbling tombs of vanished nobility, past the Polish exiles, past the artists. They left the path at the Twenty-fourth Division and stood before the grave of Corot.

“Are you sure of the doctor?” Mathieu asked.

“No. Not really.”

“But the patient, can return to work?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll want him to work on the twenty-third.”

“It won’t be a problem.”

“His arrangements?”

“He’s up in Belleville, in the Arab district. Above a Moroccan restaurant—Star of the East on rue Pelleport. If he can stand the couscous, from dawn to midnight, he’ll be fine. I suggested to the owner that the wound was received in an affair of family honor, in the south, somewhere below Marseilles.”

“Corsica.”

“Yes.”

Mathieu gave a brief, dry laugh. “Corsica, yes. That’s very good. The owner is someone you know?”

“No. A newspaper advertisement, room for rent. I put on a pair of dark glasses, paid three months in advance.”

Mathieu laughed again. “And for the rest?”

“Hidden. Deep and dark, where it will never be found.”

“I’ll take your word for it. When are you going to make contact?”

“Today.”

“That sounds right. Difficult things—the sooner the better.”

“Difficult—” Casson said. It was a lot worse than difficult.

Mathieu smiled a certain way, he meant it was no easier for him, that he was just as scared as Casson was.

Making sure that nobody was looking at them, Mathieu took a folded square of paper from his pocket and slipped it among the stems of the anemones. Then he leaned over, placed the flowers on the tomb.

“Corot,” Casson said.

“Yes,” Mathieu said. “He’s off by himself, over here.”

They walked back down the hill together, then shook hands at the boulevard corner and said good-bye. “They’ll make you go over it, you know. Again and again. From a number of angles,” Mathieu said.

Casson nodded that he knew that, then turned and walked to the Métro.

It was Singer who picked him up in a black Traction Avant Citroën on the evening of 15 June and drove him out to the brick villa in Vernouillet. The parlor, even as the weather warmed up, still felt dark and damp and unused. Millau had a technician with him, a man who wore earphones and operated a wire recorder to take down what Casson said.

Millau had just shaved—a tiny nick freshly made on the line of the jaw. He worked in shirtsleeves, his jacket hung in a closet, but despite the suggestion of informality the shirt was freshly pressed and laundered a sparkling white. He was, evidently, going to meet someone important later that evening. Only after they’d greeted each other and made small talk did Casson realize he’d been wrong about that. Jean Casson was the someone important—the shave and the white shirt were for, well, not so much him as an important moment in Millau’s life.

Mathieu had been right. He was made to go over the story again and again. He was comfortable with plots and characters, had spent much of his professional life in meetings where people said things like what if Duval doesn’t return until the following evening? That gave him a slight advantage but not all that much, and the mistakes were always there, waiting for him. Perhaps they wouldn’t be noticed. He’d changed the Alençon names to code names—fish. Merlan drove the car, Rouget the truck, Angouille sat beside him, the shotgun on his lap.

It ran, he hoped, seamlessly into the truth: the single-engine Lysander a single-engine Lysander, the pilot young and gangling and rather awkward, and the navigation guides were as they’d been: signal lights along the track, locomotive fireboxes, and the glow of moonlight on the steel rails. They had come in at 8,000 feet over St.-Malo, were later hit by an antiaircraft burst—Millau nodded at that. The copilot was slightly wounded. The shipment included radio crystals and money, Sten guns and plastique.

“And where is it now?” Millau asked.

“In the store room of an empty shop, down among the old furniture workshops in the faubourg St.-Antoine. I bought the droit de bail— the lease—from an old couple who retired to Canada just at the beginning of the war. It was for a long time a crémerie—you can still smell the cheese. The address is eighty-eight, rue des Citeaux, just off the avenue St.-Antoine, about a minute’s walk from the hospital. In the back of the shop is a storage locker, lead lined, no doubt for cold storage using blocks of ice. The shipment is in there, I’ve padlocked the door, here are the keys.”

“You bought it direct? From Canada?”

“From a broker in Paris. LaMontaine.”

“Who is expected to come there?”

“They haven’t told me that. Only that it must be kept safe and secure.”

“Who said that, exactly?”

“Merlan.”

“Beard and spectacles.”

“No, the tall one who drove the car.”

“When did he say it?”

“The last thing, before I left. I would be contacted, he said.”

“How?”

“At home.”

“The Bourdon address?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That simplifies things for us. It will be of great interest, of course, to see who collects the explosive and spends the money, who uses the radio crystals—to send what information. It’s like a complicated web, that reaches here and there, and grows constantly. It may be a long time before we do anything. In these operations you must be thorough, you have to get it all. You’ll see—before it’s done it will involve husbands and wives, lovers and childhood friends, brothers and sisters, and the local florist. Love finds a way, you see. And we find out.”

“Clearly, you are experienced.”

Millau permitted himself a brief, tight smile of pleasure in his achievement. “Practice makes perfect,” he said. “We’ve been taking these networks apart since 1933, in Germany. Now in France, we’ve had one or two—we’ll have more. No offense meant, my friend, but the French, compared to the German communist cells, well, what can one say.”

He would remember the evening as a certain moment, almost a freeze-frame; three men looking up at him from a table on the crowded terrasse of a restaurant, Fouquet as it happened, on a warm evening. All around them, a sea of faces, the world at night—desire and cunning, love and greed, the usual. A Brueghel of Paris in the second spring of the war.

Casson had been driven back to the city by Singer, asked by Millau to join him “and some friends” for a drink. As he approached, the men at the table—Millau with his fine eyeglasses and cigar, and two pale bulky northern men, Herr X and Herr Y, looked up and smiled. Ah, here he is! Superbly faked smiles—how much we admire you.

They chatted for a time, nothing all that important, a conversation among men of the world, no fools, long past idealism. Poor Europe, decadent and weak, very nearly gobbled up by the Bolshevik monster. But for them. Not said, but clearly understood.

The champagne arrived, brought by a waiter who had served him many times in the past. “Good evening, Monsieur Casson.” Three menus in German, one in French.

Herr X wore a small pin, a black-and-gold swastika, in his lapel. “One thing we wonder,” he said, leaning forward, speaking confidentially. “We were talking to Millau here before you arrived and you told him that there was a copilot on the flight. We hear it a little differently, that the Lysander brought in an agent. Can you see any reason why somebody would say that?”

“No,” Casson said. “That’s not what happened.”

Millau raised his glass. “Enough work!” he said.

For a time it was true. Herr Y was from East Prussia, the Masurian lakes, where stag was still hunted from horseback every autumn. “And then, what a feast!” Herr X worked over in Strasbourg. “Some problems,” he said reflectively, “but it is at heart a reasonable part of the world.” Then, a fine idea: “I’ll tell you what, I’ll get in touch with you through Millau and you’ll come over there for a day or two. Be a change of pace from Paris, right?”

It was after midnight when Casson got home. He tore his jacket off and threw it on the bed. He’d sweated through his shirt, it was wringing wet. He took it off, then went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. God. It was black under his eyes. A dark, clever, exhausted man.