The World at Night

THE ESCAPE

18 June, 1941.

He met Mathieu at dusk, in the waiting room of the Gare d’Austerlitz. They walked in the Jardin des Plantes.

“They know what happened,” Casson said. “That an agent was brought in.”

Mathieu walked in silence for a moment. “Who is it?” he said at last.

Eddie Juin? Lebec? Angier? “I don’t know.”

“It will have to be shut down.” Mathieu was very angry.

“Yes. Perhaps it’s only—you know, the French talk too much. Somebody told somebody, they told somebody else. Each time, ‘now, don’t tell anybody.’ Or, just maybe, it could have happened in London. People in offices, people who work at airfields.”

“Yes, it could have,” Mathieu admitted. Too many people, too many possibilities. “At least we found out. They would have taken over the network and run it.”

The gravel path was bordered by spring beds, tulip and daffodil, poet’s narcissus, the air heavy with manure and perfume.

“They want me to go to Strasbourg,” Casson said.

“Did they say why?”

“No.”

“Will you go?”

“I have to think about it, probably I will.”

They walked in silence for a minute or two, then Casson said, “Mathieu, how long does this go on?”

“I can’t say.”

“There’s a record being built—a wire recording they made in Vernouillet, I’ve been seen with them. What if the war ends?”

“We’ll vouch for you.”

They reached the end of the path, a wire fence. Beyond were rakes and shovels and wheelbarrows. Mathieu took his hat off, ran a thumb around the lining to secure it, then put it back on, pulling the brim down with thumb and forefinger. “Don’t do anything until the twenty-third, then we’ll talk again. That’s the night—all hell’s going to break loose and we’re using that to get our job done. Meanwhile, you should go on as usual.”

They came to the gate, shook hands. “Be careful,” Mathieu said.

Casson couldn’t sleep the night of the twenty-third. He went to an after-curfew bar and drank wine. The bar was in a cellar off an alley, it had a packed-earth floor and stone walls. A long time ago, some madman had managed to coax an upright piano down the narrow staircase—perhaps he’d taken it apart. Clearly it was never going anywhere again, and that gave somebody the idea for a nightclub. The piano’s sounding board was muffled with a blanket, and an old woman in a gown played love songs and sang in a whispery voice. The cigarette smoke was thick, the only light from a single candle. Casson paused at the bottom of the stairs, then a woman took him in her arms and danced with him.

She smelled of cleaning bleach and brilliantine, had stiff hair that scratched against his cheek. They never spoke. She didn’t press herself into him as they danced, just brushed against him, touched him enough so he could feel everything about her. When the sirens started up, she froze. A man nearby called out in a hushed voice, “No, please. One must continue,” as though that were a rule of the house.

The rumbling went on for a long time, sharply felt in the cellar because stone foundations built in the Middle Ages carried the vibrations of the bombs and the gunnery beneath the city. A plane went down that night on the rue St.-Honoré, a Lancaster bomber made a fiery cart-wheel along the street, sliced through a jeweler’s and a millinery shop, then came to rest in the workroom of a dress designer.

Walking home after curfew, Casson stayed alert for patrols, kept to the walls of the buildings. The streets rang with sirens and ambulance bells, searchlights swept the sky, there was a second wave of bombers, then a third. The southern horizon flickered orange just as he slipped into the rue Chardin, and he felt the concussions in the marble stairs as he climbed to his apartment.

Later the telephone rang. He’d fallen asleep on top of the covers, still dressed. “Yes?” he said, looking at his watch. It was twenty minutes past five.

“Jean-Claude?”

“Yes?”

“It’s me.” It was Marie-Claire, she was crying. He waited, finally she was able to speak. “Bernard Langlade is dead, Jean-Claude.”

He went to the Langlades’ apartment at seven, the smell of burning was heavy in the air. At the newspaper stands, thick headlines: VILMA AND KAUNAS TAKEN, WEHRMACHT ADVANCES IN RUSSIA. Then, just below, PARIS BOMBED, REPAIRS TO FACTORIES ALREADY BEGUN.

He was the last to arrive. Arnaud opened the door, Casson could see the Pichards, Véronique, a few friends and relatives talking in quiet voices. The Langlades’ two grown children were said to be en route to Paris but the bombing had caused havoc on the railroads and they weren’t expected until nightfall. When Casson entered the living room, Marie-Claire hugged him tight. Bruno was in the kitchen, he shook his head in sorrow. “This is a rotten thing, Jean-Claude,” he said. “Believe me, there will be something important done in his memory, a subscription. I’ll be calling you.”

Yvette Langlade sat on the end of the couch. She was white, a handkerchief gripped tight in her fist, but very self-possessed. Casson pulled a chair up next to her and took her hand, “Jean-Claude,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad you could be here, Jean-Claude.”

“What happened?”

“He went out to Montrouge, to the factory.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Something went wrong earlier in the evening—a door left open, or maybe an alarm went off. I’m not sure. A detective called, demanded that Bernard come out to Montrouge and make sure everything was secure. Because of the defense work, the police are very sensitive about things like that. So, he went—”

She stopped for a moment, looked away. The friends who’d arrived first were busy, had claimed the small jobs for themselves: Marie-Claire and her sister making coffee, Françoise Pichard straightening up the living room, her husband answering the telephone.

“He had to do what they told him,” Yvette said. “So he changed his clothes and went back out to Montrouge. Then, then they called. This morning. And they told me, that he was gone.” She waited a moment, looked away. “They asked a lot of questions.” She shook her head, unable to believe what had happened. “Did Bernard store explosives in the factory, they wanted to know. I didn’t know what to say.” She took a deep breath, pressed her lips together, squeezed Casson’s hand. “It’s madness,” she said. “A man like Bernard. To die in a war.”

Véronique brought him a cup of coffee—real coffee, courtesy of Bruno—and they exchanged a private look. He didn’t know exactly what part she played in the British operation, but she could have known that sabotage was planned under cover of an air raid. Now, he thought, her look suggested that she did know. He read sympathy in her eyes, and sorrow. But, also, determination. “Careful with this,” she said, handing him a cup and saucer. “It’s very hot.” She turned to Yvette. “Now,” she said, “I’m going to bring you some.”

“No, dear. Please, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. I’m going to go and get it. And Charles Arnaud has just gone out for fresh bread.”

After a moment of resistance, Yvette nodded, accepting, giving in to the inevitable. Véronique went off to get the coffee.

My fault, Casson thought. His heart ached for a lost friend. Not that he would survive him very long. They would meet in heaven, Langlade would explain what was what, the best way to deal with it all. Casson wiped his eyes. Merde, he thought. They’ll kill us all, with their stupid fucking wars.

24 June, 9:10 A.M.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning. I’m looking for a copy of the Decameron, by Boccaccio.”

“Any particular edition?”

“No. Whatever you have.”

“I’ll take a look, I’m sure we have something.”

“I’m at 43 09 19.”

He was in a café on the boulevard St.-Germain, noisy and crowded and anonymous. The phone rang a moment later.

“Yes?” It was Mathieu on the line.

“I’ve decided to go to Strasbourg. Right away, because I need to be in Lyons on the first of July.”

“Please understand, about Strasbourg, that we really don’t know what’s going on there.”

“Perhaps I can find out.”

“It will help us, if you can.”

“I’ll call Millau this morning, let him know I’m ready to go.”

“All right.” There was a pause, a moment’s hesitation. “You have to walk very lightly, just now. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I know.”

All day he felt numb and lifeless. He went to the office, though it seemed to him now a dead place, abandoned, without purpose. He looked in the bottom drawer of his desk, found the notebook with the last version of Hotel Dorado and began to read around in it. A few days earlier he’d tried to locate Fischfang, but now he really had disappeared. Perhaps gone underground, or fled to Portugal. Maybe arrested, or dead. Perhaps, Casson thought, he would never know what happened.

He began to clean up his files—this actually made him feel better, so he made some meaningless telephone calls to settle meaningless problems. Soon it was time for lunch; he went to the bank for cash, then returned and took Mireille to the Alsatian brasserie on the corner, slipping black-market ration stamps to the waiter, ordering the grandest choucroute on the menu. Bernard, he thought, you used to eat this with me even though you hated it. Warm sauerkraut, garlic sausage, it made him feel better, and he silently apologized to Langlade because it did.

He flirted with Mireille all through lunch. How it used to be when they were young. Going out dancing in the open pavilions in the early days of spring, falling in love, secret affairs, stolen hours. The bones in the backs of her hands sharply evident, Mireille worked vigorously with knife and fork, delicately removing the rind from a thick slice of bacon as she talked about growing up in a provincial city. “Of course in those days,” she said, “men didn’t leave their wives.”

It was still light when he got home. Trudged up the stairs, put the key in the lock, and opened the door. Standing at the threshold, he smelled cigarette smoke and froze. It is now, he thought. Inside, a board creaked, somebody moving toward the door.

“Well, come in.” Citrine.

He put his hand on his heart. “My God, you scared me.” He closed the door, put his arms around her, and hung on tight, inhaling her deeply, like a dog making sure of somebody from a long time ago. Gauloises and a long train ride on her breath, along with the licorice drop she’d eaten to hide it, very good soap, her skin that always smelled as though she’d been in the sun, some kind of clove and vanilla perfume she’d discovered—the cheaper the better, the way Citrine saw it.

“It’s all right I came?” she said. She could feel his head nod yes. “I thought, oh, he’s alone long enough. I’ll just go up there and throw the schoolgirls out—probably he’s tired of them by now.”

He walked her down the hall and back into the living room. They sat close together on the couch. “How did you get in?”

“Your concierge. She will not stand in the way of true love. Especially when it’s movie actresses. Also, she knew me from before. Also, I bribed her.”

“That’s all it took?”

She laughed. “Yes.”

He kissed her, just a little. She was wearing a tight brown sweater, chocolate, with her yellow scarf tied to one side. A pair of very expensive nylon stockings caught the early evening light.

“I don’t care if you’re mad,” she said.

“I’m not mad.”

She studied him a moment. “Tired,” she said. “What is it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t even look in the mirror.”

“A long time by the sea, I think.”

“Yes.”

“Under the palm trees.”

“Yes. With you.”

She lay on her side on the couch and he did the same—there was just room. “Do you want to make love right away?” she said.

“No. I want to lie here. Later, we can.”

The evening came, birds sang on the roof across the street, the sky darkening to the deep Parisian blue. She took the stockings off and put them carefully aside. He could just see her in the living-room dusk as she put one foot at a time on a chair and rolled each stocking down.

She headed back to the couch, he held up his hand.

“Yes?”

“Why stop?”

“What?”

He smiled.

“You can’t mean—” Her “puzzled” look was very good; heavy lips apart, head canted a little to one side. “Well,” she said. She understood now, but was it the right thing? She reached around behind her for the button on the waistband of her skirt. “This?”

“Yes.”

The telephone rang. It startled him—nobody called at night. It rang again.

“They’ll go away,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, but he sat upright on the couch. Answer the phone. On the third ring he stood up.

She didn’t like it.

“I have to,” he said.

He walked into his bedroom and picked up the receiver. “Casson!”

Mathieu screamed. “Get out! Get out!” The connection was broken.

“Citrine.”

She ran into the bedroom.

“We have to leave.”

She disappeared into the living room, swept up coat, valise, handbag. Stockings in hand, she forced her feet into her shoes. Casson went to the balcony, opened the doors, looked out. Two black Citroëns were just turning into the rue Chardin. He slammed the doors, ran back into the living room. “Right now,” he said.

They ran out the door, then down the stairs, sliding on the marble steps. Citrine slipped, cried out, almost fell as they flew around the mid-floor landing, but Casson managed to pull her upright. What were they doing? They had no chance, none at all, of beating the Citroëns to the street door. They reached the fourth floor, he pulled Citrine after him, down to the end of the hallway, a pair of massive doors. There was a buzzer in a little brass plate, but Casson swung his arm back and pounded his fist against the wood. Eight, nine, ten times. The door was thrown open, the baroness stood there, wide-eyed with fright, hand pressed between her breasts. “Monsieur!” she said.

Casson was out of breath. “Please,” he said. “Will you hide her?”

The baroness stared at him, then at Citrine. Slowly, the surprise and shock on her face turned to indignation. “Yes,” she said, her elegant voice cold with anger. “Yes, of course. How could you think I would not?” She took Citrine by the hand and gently drew her into the apartment.

As the door swung closed, Citrine stepped toward him, their eyes met. She had time to say “Jean-Claude?” That was all.

Casson did try, tried as hard as he could. Raced down four flights of stairs, footsteps echoing off the walls. When he reached the street, the men in raincoats were just climbing out of their cars. They shouted as he started to run, were on him almost immediately. The first one grabbed the back of his shirt, which ripped as he fought to pull free. He punched the man in the forehead and hurt his hand. Then somebody leaped on top of him and, with a yell of triumph, barred a thick forearm across his throat. Casson started to choke. Then, a cautionary bark in harsh German, and the arm relaxed. The man who seemed to be in charge was apparently irritated by public brawling. A word from him, they let Casson go. He stood there, rubbing his throat, trying to swallow. The man in charge never took his hands out of the pockets of his belted raincoat. A sudden kick swept Casson’s feet from under him and he fell on his back in the street. From there, he could see people looking out their windows.

24 June, midnight.

Midnight, more or less—they’d taken his watch. But from the cell in the basement of the rue des Saussaies he could hear the trains in the Métro, and he knew the last one ran around one in the morning.

He was in the basement of the old Interior Ministry—he’d had no idea they had cells down here, but this one had been in use for a long time. It was hard to read the graffiti on the walls, the only light came from a bulb in a wire cage on the ceiling of the corridor, but much of it was carved or scratched into the plaster, and by tracing with his finger he could read it—the earliest entry 16 October, 1902, Tassot. And who was Tassot, and what had he done, in the autumn of 1902? Well, who was Casson, and what had he done, in the spring of 1941?

The wall was covered with it. Phrases in cyrillic Russian, in Polish, what might have been Armenian. There was Annamese, and Arabic. Faces front and profile. Crosses. Hearts—with initials and arrows. Cocks and cunts, with curly hairs. Somebody loved Marguerite—in 1921, somebody else Martine. This one wrote Au revoir, Maman. And that one—a tall one, Casson had to stand on his toes—was going to die in the morning for freedom.

When he heard a deep rumbling sound, he thought for a moment that the RAF was attacking the factory districts at the edge of the city. And under cover of the bombing, said Wing Commander Smith-Wilson, our commando team will attack the Gestapo office on the rue des Saussaies and rescue our valiant agent from his basement prison. But it wasn’t bombing, it was thunder. Rain pattering down in a courtyard above him somewhere. A spring rainstorm, nothing more.

“One thing I will tell you.” A deep voice, from a cell some way up the corridor. Good, educated French, the melancholy tone of the intellectual. Not exactly a whisper, but the voice low and private, confidential. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you injured?”

“No.”

“Then I will tell you one thing: sooner or later, everyone talks. And it’s easier on you if it’s sooner.”

He waited, heart pounding, but that was all.

There was no bed, he sat on the stone floor, back against the damp wall. The last Métro train faded away, the hours passed. Perhaps he could have hidden with the baroness, but then, not finding him, they would have searched the building. They had, no doubt, searched his apartment, but there was nothing for them to find there. Now, what remained was a final scene, he’d manage it as well as he could. The post in the courtyard, the blindfold. Farewell, my love.

What worried him came before that—“sooner or later everyone talks.” I don’t want to tell them, he thought. But he had no choice, and he knew it.

They came for him an hour later.

A functionary, and his helper, an SS corporal in a black uniform. The functionary was a small man in his twenties, wearing a mole-colored suit with broad lapels. Hair parted in the middle; weak, sulky mouth. He said to the corporal, “Unlock this door.” Disdainful, chin in the air—you see, I run things around here. Casson stood, they walked on either side of him, down the corridor, then up long flights of stairs.

Somebody’s son, Casson thought. A high official in the Nazi party— what shall we do with poor X? Well, this is what they’d done with him. They reached the top floor, Casson had been here before, for his meetings with Guske. All around him, office life: people talking and laughing and rushing about with papers in their hands. Typewriters racketing, telephones ringing. Of course, he thought, the Gestapo worked a night shift just like the police. A clock on the wall said 3:20. They took him to Guske’s office, made him stand against a wall at attention. “Could I have some water?” he said. He had a terrible, burning thirst—was that something they were doing to him on purpose?

“Nothing for you,” said the functionary. He picked up the phone, dialed two digits. A moment later: “We have him ready for you now, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”

Guske arrived a few minutes later, all business and very angry. He gave Casson a savage glare—very much the honest fellow betrayed by his own good nature. Well, they’d see about that. He was dressed for an important evening; dark suit and tie, cologne, sparse hair carefully arranged for maximum effect. On his pocket, a decoration—swastika and ribbon. To Casson’s guards he said “Get out,” in a voice only just under control. Then paced the office until a heavy woman in SS uniform rushed in with a file. Guske took it from her and slammed it on his desk, and she ran out of the office.

Guske walked slowly over to him and stood there. Casson looked away. Guske drew his hand back and slapped him in the face as hard as he could, the sound was a crack like a pistol shot. Casson’s face was hot, and tears stood in the corners of his eyes.

“It’s nothing,” Guske said. “Just so we understand each other.” He went back to his desk and settled in, still breathing hard. He thumbed through the file for a moment but he really didn’t have his concentration back. He looked up at Casson. “I’m the stupid one. I gave you my hand in friendship, and you turned around and gave me the Dolchstoss—the stab in the back. So, good, now it’s clear between us and we’ll go on from there. And, when I’m finished with you, Millau gets what’s left.” He sniffed, turned one page, then another. “The trouble is, we have not come to a true understanding of this country. The Mediterranean type is unfamiliar to us—it does not hesitate to lie, because, the way it sees the world, honor means nothing. But then, when it thinks nobody is looking, it runs out of its burrow, where it hides, and gives somebody a vicious little bite.”

Guske read a note pinned to the inside cover of the dossier. “What is HERON? Code for what?”

“I don’t know.”

Guske’s face was mottled with anger. “And who is Laurent?”

Casson shook his head.

Guske stared at him. Casson heard the typewriters and the telephones, voices and footsteps. The rain outside the window. It seemed very normal. “I need,” Casson said, “to use the bathroom.”

Guske thought about it for a moment, then opened the door and called out, “Werner, come and take him down the hall.”

The functionary came on the run. Took him past offices, a long way it seemed. Around a corner. Then to an unmarked door, which he opened, saying “Be quick about it.” He closed the door. Casson stood in front of a urinal.

On the wall above the sink, a window. Gray, frosted glass. Probably barred, but not so Casson could see. But then, he thought, why would they have bars? This is the Interior Ministry. The top floor. For the French, the most important people would be housed on the second floor. In former times, the top floor would have served the Ministry’s minor bureaucrats—what would they want with bars in a bathroom? Casson walked to the sink and turned it on, drank some water, put his hand on the glass of the window. Top floor, he thought, six stories down to a courtyard.

You’ll die.

But then, what did that matter? Better now, he thought, before they go to work on me.

“Just a minute.”

He put his index fingers under the two handles and very gently pushed up. Nothing. Locked. He could back up to the door, take a run, and jump through it, smashing the glass, tumbling six stories to the courtyard below. He pushed harder, the window moved. Opened an inch. The night air rushed in, it was black outside, and pouring rain.

Lower the window. Go back to Guske’s office. Explain everything to him. Try to talk your way out of it—crawl, do whatever you have to do.

He listened, held his breath. Against the background hum of office business he could just make out Werner’s voice. It spoke German, but Casson could easily understand the tone of it. He was explaining something—he was being important. Casson raised the window, perhaps a foot. A damp, sweet wind blew in on him and he could hear distant thunder, a storm up the Seine somewhere, the sound rolling down across the wheatfields into Paris.

He put one knee on the edge of the sink, pulled himself through the window, then froze, terrified, unable to move. The night swirled around him, the courtyard a thousand feet below, the wet cobblestone gleaming in the faint spill of light from blacked-out windows. He forced himself to look around: the window was set out a little from the slanted plane of the roof, slate tile angled sharply up to the peak— copper sheathing turned green with age. To the left: a cascade of white, foamy water. He followed it, found an ancient lead gutter, eaten through by time and corrosion, water pouring through the hole, spilling off the edge of the roof and splashing into the courtyard below.

If he stood on the window ledge . . .

He had to force his body to move—he was trembling with fear. He got himself turned around, feet dangling into space, pulled himself to his knees by using the inside handles of the window, then stood up, back to the courtyard. The rain was cold on his face, he took a deep breath. The gutter ran to a perpendicular roof. He could inch over—feet on the gutter, body pressed flat against the slate—and climb the angle. He would then be—he would then be somewhere else.

He heard the bathroom door open, heard Werner cry out. He let go of the window handles, lifted his right foot from the ledge and placed it on the gutter. Werner ran toward the window, Casson left the ledge and let his weight shift to the gutter. It rolled over, dumping its water, then dropped three inches. Casson bit down against a scream and clawed at the wet slate for traction.

Werner’s head appeared through the window. He was pale with terror, his carefully combed hair hanging lank from its center parting. Suddenly he leaned out, took a swipe at Casson’s ankle. Casson crabbed sideways along the gutter.

From Werner, a taut little laugh—just kidding. “Tell me, what on earth do you think you’re doing out there?”

Casson didn’t answer.

“Mm?”

Silence.

“Perhaps you will end it all, eh?” His voice was low, and edged with panic. It was, at the same time, hopeful. To allow an escape was unthinkable, but suicide—maybe they wouldn’t be quite so angry with him.

Casson couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes, felt the rain on his hair and skin, heard the storm in the distance. From the darkness, from the very root of his soul, he said slowly, “Leave me alone.”

A minute passed, frozen time. Then Werner gave an order, his voice a shrill whisper. “You come back in here!” Casson could hear a life in the words—all the failures, all the excuses.

Casson moved another step, the gutter sagged. He stretched his arms as high as they would go, discovered a mossy crack between the slate tiles. He tried it—it was possible, just barely and not for long.

Now Werner saw everything he’d worked for about to fall apart. “One more step,” he said, “and I call the guards.”

Casson counted to twenty. “All right,” he said. “I’m coming back.” But he didn’t move. He could imagine Guske in his office, looking at his watch.

“Well?”

“I can’t.”

“You must try!”

“My feet won’t move.”

“Ach.”

Teeth clenched with fury, Werner wriggled through the window then stood on the ledge. “Just stay still,” he said. “I’ll help you.”

Casson drove the tips of his fingers through the moss, into the shallow crack. Werner stepped daintily off the ledge, made sure of his balance, then, leaning his weight on the roof, began to move slowly sideways. Casson shifted his weight to his hands, lifted his right leg as high as it would go and rammed it back down against the gutter.

Nothing happened.

Until Werner’s next step—then he mewed with fear as the gutter came away. Then he vanished. For part of a second he thought it over, at last allowed himself a loud whine of indignation that ended, briefly, in a scream. The lead gutter hit the cobbles with a dull clatter.

Thirty seconds, Casson thought, no more. The crack between the tiles deepened, and he moved along it quickly. Reached the corner where the two wings of the building met, shinned up the angle to the peak, lay flat on the copper sheathing and tried to catch his breath. As he looked over the other side he saw a row of windows—the same type he’d just crawled out of. The only difference was a narrow spillway, wedged between the slanted roof and a stone parapet.

Now they discovered Werner.

He heard shouts from the courtyard, somebody blew a police whistle, flashlight beams swept everywhere, across the façades of the building and the roof. He rolled off the peak and let himself slide down to the spillway. There he stayed on his knees, looked over the parapet, saw a sheer drop to a narrow street. He had no idea what it might be, the city was a maze—secret courtyards, blind alleyways, sense of direction meant nothing.

He ran along the the spillway, looked in the first window. Blackout curtain. At the next, the curtain was slightly askew. He could see an office in low light, a cleaner in a gray smock was polishing the waxed parquet with a square of sheepskin tied to a broom. Casson tapped on the window.

The man looked up. Casson tapped again. The man walked slowly to the window and tried to see out. The Lost King, Casson thought. An old man with snow-white hair and thin lips and rosy skin. He moved the blackout curtain aside and cranked the casement window open a few inches. “What are you doing out there?” he asked.

“I escaped. Over the roof.”

“Escaped? From the Gestapo?”

“Yes.”

“Bon Dieu.” He ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it back, thinking. “Well, over here we’re the National Meteorological office, but, we have our Germans too, of course.” He stopped, the shouts from the courtyard on the other side of the building could just be heard. “Well, then, monsieur, I expect you may want to climb in here, and permit us to hide you.”

25 June, 1941.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning. I was wondering if you have, a certain book.”

“Yes? What would that be?”

“An atlas.”

“Yes? Of what country?”

“France.”

“Perhaps, we could call you back?”

“No. I’ll be in later.”

“But sir . . .”

He hung up.

Not the same person, and, he thought, not French.

German.

25 June, 1941.

The baroness answered the phone in a cool, distant voice. “Hello?”

“Hello. This is your neighbor, from upstairs.”

“Oh. Yes, I see. Are things going well? For you?”

“Not too badly. My friend?”

“Your friend. Has returned to Lyons. I believe, without difficulties.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“You are, you know, very fortunate to have such a friendship.”

“Yes, I do know that.”

“In that case, I hope you are careful.”

“I am. In fact, I ought to be going.”

“Good-bye, then. Perhaps we’ll meet again, some day.”

“Perhaps we will. And, madame, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, monsieur.”

25 June, 1941.

“Galéries Lafayette.”

“Good morning. I’m calling for Véronique, in the buyers’ office.”

“One moment, please.”

“Hello?”

“Hello, may I speak with Véronique, please.”

“I’m sorry, she hasn’t come in today, perhaps she’ll be in tomorrow. Would you care to leave a message?”

“No, no message. I’ll call back tomorrow.”

“Very well. Good-bye,”

“Good-bye.”

A café in the Tenth, busy and crowded. Casson went back to his table. Took a sip of his chicory-laced coffee. The Lost King and his colleagues had been very generous, had given him a shirt, a cap, an old jacket, and a few francs. They had even hit upon a scheme to persuade the Gestapo that their intensive search of the building was likely to prove fruitless— one of the men who took care of the furnace had snuck upstairs to the street floor of the Interior Ministry and, simply enough, left a door open.

Still, kind as they’d been, Casson was in some difficulty. Everything was gone: apartment, office, business, friends, bank accounts, passport. He was down to fourteen francs and Citrine—who would be safe, he thought, as long as she stayed in Lyons and didn’t call attention to herself.

So then, he asked himself, what next? He imagined Fischfang, sitting across the table, ordering the most expensive drink on the menu. Now that the hero has given his pursuers the slip, what becomes of him? His uncle dies, he inherits. Casson looked at his watch, but there was nothing on his wrist.

He drank up his coffee, left a tip, and went out to the street. A clock in the window of a jewelry store said 10:10, Casson started walking. A long walk, from the 10th Arrondissement all the way across the river to the Fifth. He had no identity papers, so the Métro, with its snap searches, was dangerous. Besides, he thought, he really couldn’t afford the five sous it cost for a ticket.

A warm day, the city out in its streets. Casson hadn’t shaved, he pulled the worker’s cap down over one eye, walked with hands in pockets. Good camouflage, he thought. Women going off to the shops gave him the once-over—a little worn, this one, could he be refurbished? He took the rue Pavée in the Jewish district, past a chicken store with feathers floating in the air. He saw a tailor at work through an open shop door, the man felt his eyes, looked up from a jacket turned back over its lining, and returned Casson’s wry smile.

He crossed the Seine on the Pont d’Austerlitz, stopped for a time, as he always did, to stare down at the river. Still swollen and mud-colored from the spring rains, it rubbed against the stone piers of the bridge, mysterious in the rolls and swirls of its currents, opaque and dirty and lovely—the soul of its city and everybody who lived there knew it.

He worked his way around the rough edges of the Fifth, avoiding the eyes of Wehrmacht tourists, taking the side streets. The place Maubert was hard on him—the smell of roasting chicken and sour wine was heavy on the air, and Casson was hungry.

The café where he’d met Véronique earlier that spring was deserted, the proprietor rubbing a dry glass with a towel and staring hypnotized into the street. Casson stood at the bar and ordered a coffee. The owner jiggled the handle on the nickel-plated machine, produced a loud hiss and a column of steam, the smell of burnt chicory, and a trickle of dark liquid.

“Seen Véronique today?” Casson asked.

In return, an eyebrow lifted in the who-wants-to-know look. “Not today.”

“Think she might be in later?”

“She might.”

“Mind if I wait?”

“Fine with me.”

He waited all day. He took his coffee to the last table in the back, kept the cup in front of him, pored over yesterday’s newspaper, and, at last, broke down and spent three francs in a tabac for a packet of Bulgarian cigarettes.

A workers’ café, Véronique had called it. Yellow walls dyed amber with smoke, slow, steady stream of customers—a red wine, a beer, a coffee, a marc, a fine, elbows on the bar. At six, some students came down the hill and stood in a crowd by the door, imitating one of their professors and having a good loud laugh. Casson looked a second time, and there was Véronique, in the middle of it, getting an envelope from the owner.

She was startled when he appeared next to her. Then she nodded her head toward the square. “Let’s go for a walk, Jean-Claude.”

They walked from cart to cart in the Maubert market, pretending to shop, staring at baskets of eels and mounds of leeks. Casson told her what had happened to him, Véronique said he’d been lucky. As for her, she’d been warned in person, at the office. “I’m leaving tonight, Jean-Claude. I just stopped at the café for a final message.”

“Leaving for where?”

“South. Over the mountains.”

They were standing in front of a mound of spring potatoes, red ones, the smell of wet earth still on them.

“Jean-Claude,” she said. “I want you to go to number seven, in the rue Taine. Immediately. The man there will take care of you. You know where it is?”

“No.”

“Bercy. Near the wine warehouses.”

“All right.”

An old man in an ancient, chalk-striped suit strolled over to the potato cart and stood near them, just close enough to overhear what they might be saying. Casson wanted to bark at him, Véronique took his arm and walked him away. “Oh this city,” she said in a low voice.

They stood in front of a barrow filled with dusty beets, the little girl minding the store was no more than eleven. “Ten sous, ’sieur et ’dame,” she said hopefully.

Véronique took a breath and let it out slowly. Casson could tell she sensed danger. “So now,” she said quietly, “we’ve done this shopping, and, old friends that we are, it’s time to part. We’ll kiss each other farewell, and then we’ll go.”

Casson turned to her and they kissed left and right. He saw that her eyes were shining. “Good-bye, my friend,” she said.

“Au revoir, Véronique.”

The last he saw of her, she was walking quickly through the crowd in a narrow lane between market stalls. Just as she turned the corner, she gave him a sudden smile and a little wave, then she vanished.

It was the sharp edge of the war on the rue Taine—an apartment of little rooms, all the blinds drawn, above a dark courtyard. There was a .45 automatic on the kitchen table, and a Sten gun in the parlor, candlelight a dull sheen on its oiled barrel. The operative was British, but nothing like Mathieu—this man was born to the vocation, and 1941 was the year of his life.

“You’re going to England,” he said. “We’re closing down the network, saving what we can, but you can’t stay here.”

It was the right, probably the only, thing to do, but Casson felt something tear inside him.

“You’ll like England,” the operative said. “We’ll see you don’t starve, and you’ll be alive. Not everybody is, tonight.”

Casson nodded. “A telephone call?”

“Impossible. Sorry.”

“Perhaps a letter. There’s somebody, in Lyons.”

It was the wrong thing to say. “Help us win the war,” the operative said. “Then you’ll go home. Everything will be wonderful.”

An hour later they brought in a wounded British airman, face the color of chalk. Casson sat with him on a battered sofa and the man showed him a photograph of his dog.

At midnight, two French railwaymen came for the airman.

At 1:30, Casson was escorted to another apartment in the building. His photograph was taken, then, at 2:10, he was handed a new identity—passport with photo, Ausweis, work permit—a thousand francs and a book of ration stamps.

Back at the first apartment, he dozed for a time. The operative never slept, worked over coded transmissions—there was a clandestine radio in another building in the neighborhood, Casson guessed—and listened to the BBC at low volume. Sometimes he made a note of the time— the Messages Personnels were long over for the night, but Casson thought he was being signaled by what songs were played, and the order they were played in.

Casson left at dawn. The woman who took him out was in her fifties, with dark red hair and the hard accents of northeast France. A Pole, perhaps, but she didn’t say. He sat silent in the passenger seat as she drove. The car was a battered old Fiat 1500, but it was fast, and the woman made good time on the empty roads. She swung due east from Bercy, and was out of Paris in under a minute. They stopped for a German control at the porte de Charenton, and a French police roadblock in Montreuil. Both times the driver was addressed—as the passports were handed back by the officers—as “Doctor.”

After that, they virtually disappeared, curved slowly north and west around the city on the back streets of small towns and secondary roads. By eight in the morning they were winding their way toward Rouen on the east—much less traveled—bank of the Seine. Outside a small village the driver worked her way down a hillside of packed dirt streets to the edge of the river, just across from the town of Mantes. The car rolled to a stop at the edge of a clearing, two black-and-white spaniels ran barking up to the driver and she rumpled their ears and called them sweethearts.

Beyond a marsh of tall reeds, Casson could see a houseboat— bleached gray wood with a crooked piece of pipe for the stove—tied up to a pole dock. A young man appeared a moment later, asked the driver if she wanted coffee. “No,” she sighed. “I can’t stop.” She had to be somewhere in an hour, was already going to be late. To Casson she said, “You’ll remain here for thirty hours, then we’ll move you north to Honfleur. These people are responsible for you—please do what they ask.”

“Thank you,” Casson said.

“Good luck,” the driver said. “It won’t be long now.”

A family lived on the houseboat, a young man and his wife and their three little girls. Casson was taken to a bedroom with heavy drapes on the windows. The woman brought him a bowl of lentils with mustard and a piece of bread. “It’s better if you stay inside when it’s daylight,” she said. He spent the day dozing and thumbing through a stack of old magazines. At dusk, they said he could take the air for a half-hour. He was happy for that, sat on the sagging dock and watched birds flying over the river. There was a mackerel sky just before dark, the last red of the sun lighting the clouds, then a dark, starless evening, and a breeze that rustled in the leaves of the willow trees that grew on the river bank.

His heart ached—he could only unwind the past, looking for another road that might have led to a better place, but he could not find it. He tried to tell himself that Citrine would understand, would sense somehow that he’d escaped from the Germans and would come back to her in time.

He really did try.

He went back out again at dawn. Cruel of this countryside, he thought, to be so beautiful when it was being taken from him. The Vexin— above Paris along the river—was fighting country, rather bloodsoaked if you knew the history. But then, people fought over beautiful things, a side of human nature that didn’t quite have a name. The oldest of the little girls, seven perhaps, came out to the dock and said “Maman says the sun is coming up now, and will the monsieur please take coffee with us.”

As good a moment as any to say good-bye, he thought, the little girl standing close to him on the dock. Just a bend in a river, and dawn was always good to a place like this, gray light afloat on the water, a bird calling in the marsh.

Later that day they took him up to the port of Honfleur in a truck. The driver was in charge of the final stage of the escape line and briefed Casson as they drove. “You’ll go out on a fishing boat. We leave at dawn, sail to the mouth of the river with the rest of the fleet and stand to for German inspection. You will be hidden below decks—your chances of passing through the inspection are good, the Germans search one boat in four, and use dogs only now and then. After the inspection the fleet will be fishing—for conger eel—in a group. A German plane flies over periodically, and we are permitted only enough fuel for thirty-five miles of cruising. Sometime during the afternoon, you will be transferred to a trawler allowed to work farther out at sea, a trawler with an overnight permit. These boats are sometimes searched by German minesweepers. At the midpoint of the Channel, between French and British waters, you’ll be taken on a British navy motor launch, and put ashore at Bournemouth.”

He stayed that night in another bedroom with heavy curtains—this time in a house on the outskirts of a coastal village. Then, at 4:30 A.M. on the morning of 28 June, he was taken to a small fishing boat in the port of Honfleur, and led to a secret compartment built behind the belowdecks cabin—entered by removing a section of wall from the back of a storage locker.

He was joined first by a young woman, exhausted but calm, clearly at the end of a long and difficult assignment. They were never to speak, but did exchange a smile—bittersweet, a little hopeless—that said virtually everything there was to say. What sort of world was it, where they, where people like them, did the things they had done?

Moments later, the arrival of an important personage; a tall, distinguished man, his wife, his teenaged sons, and three suitcases. Casson guessed this was a diplomat or senior civil servant, being brought to London at de Gaulle’s request. The man looked around the tiny space with a certain muted displeasure—he’d clearly not been informed that he was going to have to share a hiding place, and it was not at all to his taste.

The compartment was sealed up and they got under way almost immediately, the throb of the engine loud in the small space. Casson, his back resting against the curved wood of the hull, could feel the water sliding past. There was no light, it was very hot, he could hear the others breathing. The boat slowed, then stopped for inspection, and as the engine idled the smell of gasoline grew stronger and stronger in the compartment. Above them, boots stamping on the deck. The Germans were talking, laughing with each other—they felt really good today, they’d had a triumph of some kind. Time crawled, the boat rising and falling on the heavy swell in the harbor. Casson felt sweat gather at his hairline and run down his face.

Then it ended. The German patrol boat started up with a roar, their own engine accelerated, and the boat moved forward; somebody on the other side of the wall said, “All right, that’s over. We’ll let you out as soon as we clear the harbor.”

On deck, Casson breathed the salt air, gripped the railing, and watched the land fall away as the boat moved out to sea. It was the end of the night, hills dark against the sky, faded moon, white combers rolling in to shore.

Good-bye.

Forever—he knew that. This was what life cost you, you lost what you loved. He closed his eyes and saw her, felt her breath on his face, felt her skin against him. Then he was in the sea.

Cold. The shock of it made him gasp, then swim for his life. Behind him, great volleys of angry threats and curses. Ahead of him, now he could see it, the beach.

Citrine.