The World at Night

THE NIGHT VISITOR

24 April, 1941.

4:20 A.M., the wind sighing across the fields, the river white where it shoaled over the gravel islands. Jean Casson lay on his stomach at the top of a low hill, wrapped up in overcoat and muffler, dark hat worn at an angle, a small valise by his side. The damp from the wet earth chilled him to the bone but there was nothing he could do about it. At the foot of the hill, standing at the edge of the river, two border guards, the last of the waning moonlight a pale glow on their helmets, rifles slung over their shoulders. They were sharing a cigarette and talking in low voices, the rough German sounds, the sch and kuh, drifting up the hillside.

The boy lying next to him, called Andre, was fifteen, and it was his job to guide Casson across a branch of the river Allier into the Zone Non-Occupee. Andre stared intensely, angrily, at the sales Boches below him. These were his hills, this was his stream, these teenagers below him-nineteen or so-were intruders, and he would, in time, settle with them. By his side, his brown-and-white Tervueren shepherd waited patiently-Tempete he called her, Storm-her breath steaming as she panted in the icy morning air.

These were in fact his hills-or would be. They belonged to his family, the de Malincourts, resident since the fifteenth century in a rundown chateau just outside the village of Lancy. He raised his hand a few inches, a signal to Casson: be patient, I know these two, they chatter like market ladies but they will, eventually, resume their rounds. Casson gritted his teeth as the wet grass crushed beneath him slowly soaked his clothing. Had they left the chateau as planned, at two in the morning, this would not have happened.

But it was the same old story. He was scheduled to go across with another man, a cattle-dealer from Nevers who couldn’t or wouldn’t get a permit to enter the Vichy zone. The cattle-dealer arrived forty minutes late, carrying a bottle of cognac that he insisted on opening and sharing with various de Malincourts who had chosen to remain awake in honor of the evening crossing-the father, an aunt, a cousin and the local doctor, if Casson remembered correctly. Everybody had some cognac, the fire burned low, then, at 3:20, a telephone call. It was the cattle-dealer’s wife, he’d received a message at his house in Nevers and he didn’t have to go across the line after all. That left Casson and Andre to make the crossing later than they should have, almost dawn, and that invited tragedy.

The sentries had themselves a final laugh, then parted, heading east and west along the stream. The dog made a faint sound, deep in her throat-sentries leaving. No, Casson told himself, it wasn’t possible. But then, he thought, dogs understand war, its memory lived in them, and this one’s traditional business was herding stock to safety. A small cold wind, just enough to lift the soft hair on the dog’s neck, made Casson shiver. He’d been offered an oilskin, hanging amid shotguns and fishing baskets and rubber boots in the gunroom of the chateau, but he had declined. Well, next time he’d know better.

Andre, in short pants and sweater, seemed not to notice. “Please, sir,” he whispered, “we will go down the hill now. We will stay low to the ground, and we will run. Now I count one, and two, and three.”

He rose and scrambled down the hill in the classic infantry crouch, the Tervueren in a fast trot just behind his left heel-dogs were always trained left, thus the right side, the gun side, remained unhampered. Casson did the best he could, shocked at how stiff he’d gotten just lying on the damp earth for thirty minutes.

At the foot of the hill, Andre took his shoes off, tied them at the laces, hung them around his neck, then stuffed his socks in his pockets. Casson followed his example, turning up his trouser cuffs as far as the knee. Andre stepped into the stream, Casson was right behind him. The water was so close to ice that it was barely liquid. “My God,” he said. Andre shushed him. Casson couldn’t move, the water washed over his shins. Andre grabbed his elbow with a bony hand and shoved him forward. The dog turned to make sure of him, soft eyes anxious-did this recalcitrant beast require a nip to get it moving? No, there it went, swearing beneath its breath with every step. Relieved, the Tervueren followed, close by Andre. For Casson, the sharp gravel of the midstream island was a relief for a few yards, then the water was even deeper and the dog had to swim, her brown ruff floating on the surface. At last, the far bank. The Tervueren shook off a great cloud of icy spray-just in case some part of Casson’s clothing had accidentally remained dry. “Ah, Tempete,” Andre said in mock disappointment, and the dog smiled at the compliment.

Andre sat in the grass to put his shoes and socks back on, Casson did the same. Then they ran up the side of a low hill until they reached a grove of poplar trees on the skyline. Andre stopped to catch his breath. “Ca va, monsieur?”

“Ca va, Andre.”

He was a wiry kid with black hair that fell over his forehead, the latest in a long line of pages and squires that had been going off on one mission or another since the crusades. This was, after all, not really knight’s business, conduction of a fugitive. The knight, red-faced, ham-fisted de Malincourt, was back at the chateau, where he’d settled in to wait for his son with a night-long discussion on the advantages of Charolais over Limousin steers, the price of rye seed, and the national disposition of Americans, who would, he thought, take their time before they got around to deciding they needed to come back over the sea and kill some more Germans.

Casson stayed quiet for a moment, hands on knees. Then a whip cracked the air in the poplar grove. Instinctively, Andre and Casson flinched. Then two more cracks, close together, this time a spring twig clipped from a branch. The dog-fear had been bred out of her many generations earlier-gave them an inquiring look: Is this something you’d like me to see about? Andre raised the bottom of his sweater, revealing the cross-hatched wooden grip of a huge, ancient revolver, but it was Casson’s turn to take somebody by the elbow and before this particular war could get fairly underway they were galloping down the reverse slope of the hillside. They took cover for a moment, then headed south, toward a little road that would, eventually, take Casson to Lyons. At the next hilltop there was a view back to the river, a dull silver in the first light of dawn, and very beautiful.

He had a fantasy about how it would be in Lyons-the lover as night visitor. Long ago, when he’d been sixteen and in his next-to-last year at lycee, he’d had his first real love affair. In a world run by parents and teachers and maids it wasn’t easy to find privacy, but the girl, Jeanette-eyes and hair a caramel shade of gold, dusting of pale freckles across the bridge of the nose-was patient and cunning and one day saw an opportunity for them to be alone. It could happen, thanks to a complicated fugue of family arrangements, very early one Sunday morning at the apartment of her grandmere in the 7th Arrondissement. Casson found the door open at dawn, went to a room where a slim shape lay buried beneath heavy comforters. Perhaps asleep, or just pretending-on this point he’d never been certain. He undressed quietly, stealthily, and slid in next to her. Then, just at that moment, she woke up, her smooth body warm and naked next to his, and breathed “mon amour” as she took him in her arms.

So he calculated his arrival at the Hotel du Parc for just after midnight. But no sleeping maiden awaited his caress. The hotel, high on the bank of the promontory formed by the Saone and the Rhone, was a Victorian horror of chocolate-colored brick, turrets and gables, off by itself in a small park behind a fence of rusted iron palings, with a view over a dark bridge and a dark church. Brooding, somber, just the place for consumptive poets or retired generals. Just the place for the night visitor.

However.

When Casson climbed the stone stairway that went from the street to the little park, he discovered every light in the hotel ablaze and the evening air heavy with the scent of roasting chickens. A trio-bass, drums, accordion-was pounding away at the Latin rhythm of the dance called the Java. There were shouts of encouragement, and shrieks of laughter-in short, the noisy symphony that can be performed only on the instrument of a hundred drunken wedding guests.

In the middle of it, Sleeping Beauty. She was barefoot, wearing a sash improvised from a tablecloth and shaking a tambourine liberated from the drum kit. She also had-a moment before he could believe his eyes-a rose clenched firmly between her teeth. “Hey!” she cried out. “Hey, hey!” She was leading a long line of dancers, first the groom- in his late thirties with a daring set of muttonchop whiskers, next his bride-some few years older, black hair pinned up, a dark mole on her cheek, bright red mouth, and eyes like burning coals.

The line-little kids and grandparents, friends of the groom, the bride’s sisters, assorted hotel guests, at least one waiter-snaked from the dining room through the lobby, around an island of maroon velvet sofas, past the desk and the night manager wearing a wizard hat with a rubber band under his chin, and back to the dining room, hung with yards of pink crepe paper. Casson stood by the door, taking it all in. A fireman performed on the French horn. A man beckoned a woman to sit on his lap and they roared with pleasure as the spindly chair collapsed beneath them. Four feet protruded from the drape of a tablecloth, the people under the table either dead asleep or locked in some static, perhaps oriental, version of coition-it would have been hard to say and nobody cared.

The line reappeared in the lobby, Citrine in the lead, cheeks flushed, long hair flying, a particular expression on her face as she capered- the “savage dancer” of every Gypsy movie MGM had ever made. Then she saw him-“Jean-Claude!”-and ran to hug him. Her small breasts were squashed against his chest, she smelled like wine and chicken and perfume. She pulled back a little, her eyes shone, she was drunk and happy and in love.

Much later, they went up the stairs to her room on the top floor. Very slowly, they went up. On a table in the dining room he had discovered a bowl of red-wine punch, a single lemon slice floating on top, a glass ladle hung on the rim. Therefore, one took this step, then this. Many of these old hotels had been built with a tilting device that operated after midnight, so one had to go upstairs very, very deliberately. It helped to laugh.

The room was small, but very safe-the door secured by what appeared to be a simple lock that took a primitive iron key. But this turned out to be a deeply complicated system, to be used only by cellists or magicians-people with clever fingers. Probably Casson and Citrine could have opened the door themselves, at some future date, but a Good Samaritan happened to walk down the hall in a bathrobe and insisted on coming to their aid.

A small room, dark patterns on the wallpaper and the rug and the bedspread and the chair. Cold; rain a steady patter on the roof, and damp. Casson managed to get his tie off-over his head-threw his shirt and pants at a chair, turned to find Citrine looking sultry, wearing one stocking and an earring. They met somewhere on the bed; stupid, clumsy and hot, bawdy and shameless and prone to laugh. So drunk they weren’t very good at anything, hands and mouths working away, too dizzy with getting what they wanted to be graceful or adept. But, maybe better that way: nothing went right, nothing went wrong, and they were too excited to care.

It was like being a kid again, he wanted her too much to be seductive. Her fault, he thought-the way she was, so many shadows and creases, angles and dark alleys; inside, outside, in between. She crawled around, as hot as he was, knees spread or one foot pointing at the ceiling. They didn’t stay in one place very long, would find some position that made them breathe hard and fast but then, something else, something even better.

On and on it went. He didn’t dare to finish, just fell back now and then to a condition of lazy heat. Not her; from time to time she gasped, shuddered, would stop for a moment and hang on to to him. Just the way, he thought, women were. They could do that. So, she came for both of them. Until, very late at night, she insisted-whispering to him, coaxing-and then he saw stars.

Of course he forgot to give her the letter. Nearly dawn when he remembered; watching her while she slept, in the gray light he could see the color of her hair and her skin, rested a hand on her hip, she woke up and they smoked a cigarette. Out the window, the Lyonnais moon a white quarter-slice from a children’s book-it looked like a cat ought to be sitting on it. He rolled off the bed, dug around in his valise, gave her the letter and lit a candle so she could read it. She kissed him, touched his face, and yawned. Well, he thought, when you’ve been fucking all night it’s not really the best time for a love letter.

Five days, they had.

After that there would be too much moonlight for crossing the line back into occupied France. They walked by the gray river, swollen in the spring flood. Late in the afternoon they had a fire in the little fireplace in Citrine’s room and drank wine and made love. At night she had to go to the theatre. Casson came along, sat in the wings on a folding chair. He liked backstage life, the dusty flats, paint smells, stagehands intent on their business-plays weren’t about life, plays were about curtains going up and down-actresses in their underwear, the director making everybody nervous. Casson enjoyed being the outsider.

It was a romantic comedy, a small sweet French thing. The cousin from the country, the case of mistaken identity, the secret message sent to the wrong person, well, actually the right person but not until the third act. Citrine played the ingenue’s best friend. The ingenue wasn’t bad, a local girl with carefully done-up hair and a rich father and good diction. But, next to Citrine, very plain. That didn’t matter so much- it only made the boyfriend come off a little more of an idiot than the playwright really intended.

The audience was happy enough. Despite rationing they’d eaten fairly well, a version of traditional Lyonnais cooking, rich and heavy, not unlike the audience. They settled comfortably into the seats of the little theatre and dozed like contented angels through the boring parts.

Five days.

Dark, cool, spring days, sometimes it rained-it was always just about to. The skies stayed heavy; big, slow clouds moving south. Casson and Citrine sat on a bench by the river. “I could come to Paris,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “But the life I live now is going bad.”

She didn’t understand.

“My phone’s no good. I’m followed, sometimes.”

“If the Germans are after you, you better go.”

He shrugged. “I know,” he said. “But I had to come here.”

They stared at the river, a long row of barges moving south, the beat of the tugboat’s engine reaching them over the water. Going to places far away.

She recited in terrible English: “The owl and the pussycat, it went to the sea, in the beautiful pea-green boat.”

He laughed, rested the tips of two fingers against her lips.

The tugboat sounded its horn, it echoed off the hillsides above the river, a fisherman in a rowboat struggled against the current to get out of the way.

Citrine looked at her watch and sighed. “We better go back,” she said.

They walked along the quay, people looked at them-at her. Almond eyes, wide, wide mouth, olive-brown hair with gold tints, worn loose, falling over her shoulders. Long brown leather coat with a belt tied at the waist, cream-colored scarf, brown beret. Casson had his hands shoved deep in the pockets of a black overcoat, no tie, no hat, hair ruffled by the wind. He seemed, as always, a little beat-up by life-knowing eyes, half-smile that said it didn’t matter what you knew.

They walked like lovers, shoulders touching, talking only now and then. Sometimes she put her hand in the pocket of his coat. They wore their collars up, looked theatrical, sure of themselves. Some people didn’t care for that, glanced at them a certain way as they passed by.

They turned into a narrow street that wound up the hill toward the hotel. Casson put his arm around her waist, she leaned against him as they walked. They stopped to look in the window of a boulangerie. Between the panniers of baguettes were a few red jam tarts in flaky crust. He went in and bought two of them, in squares of stiff bakery paper, and they ate them as they climbed the hill.

“How did you find the passeur?” she asked. It meant someone who helped you cross borders.

“Like anything else,” he said. “Like looking for a travel agent or a doctor, you ask friends.”

“Did it take a long time?”

She had crumbs in her hair, he brushed them out. “Yes,” he said. “I was surprised. But then, it turned out my sister-in-law knew somebody. Who knew somebody.”

“Perhaps it’s dangerous now, to ask friends.”

“Yes, it could be,” he said. “But you do what you have to.”

Their last night together he couldn’t sleep.

He lay in the darkness and listened to her breathing. The hotel was quiet, sometimes a cough, now and then footsteps in the hall as somebody walked past their door. Sometimes he could hear a small bird in the park below the window. He smoked a cigarette, went from one part of his life to another, none of it worked, all of it scared him. Careful not to wake her, he got out of bed, went to the window, and stared out into the night. The city was silent and empty, lost in the stars.

He wanted to get dressed and go out, go for a long walk until he got tired. But it wasn’t wise to do that any more, the police would demand to see your papers, would ask too many questions. When he got tired of standing, he sat in a big chair. It was three in the morning before he slid back under the covers. Citrine woke up, made a little noise of surprise, then flowed across the bed and pressed tight against him. At last, he thought, the night visitor.

“I don’t want you to go away,” she said by his ear.

He smoothed her hair. “I have to,” he said.

“Because, if you do, I will never see you again.”

“No. It isn’t true.”

“Yes it is. I knew this would happen. Years ago. Like a fortune-teller knows things-in dreams.”

After a time he said, “Citrine, please.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She took his hand and put it between her legs. “Until we go to sleep,” she said.

29 April, 1941.

She insisted on going to the train with him. A small station to the north of Lyons, they took a cab there. He had to ride local trains all day, to Chassieu and Loyettes and Pont-de-Cheruy, old Roman villages along the Rhone. Then, at dusk, he would join the secret route that ran to a village near the river Allier, where one of the de Malincourts would meet him.

The small engine and four coaches waited on the track. “You have your sandwiches?” she said.

“Yes.”

She looked at her watch. “It’s going to be late.”

“I think it’s usual,” he said.

Passengers waited for the doors to open. Country people-seamed faces, weatherbeaten, closed. The men wore old mufflers stuffed down the fronts of buttoned suit jackets, baggy pants, scuffed boots. The women wore shawls over their heads, carried baskets covered with cloths. Casson stood out-he didn’t belong here, and he wasn’t the only one. He could pick out three others, two men and a woman. They didn’t live in Chassieu either. Taking the little trains was a good idea- until four or five of you tried it at the same time. Well, too bad, he thought, there’s nothing to be done about it now.

“What if you came down here,” she said quietly.

“To live, you mean.”

“Yes.”

He paused a moment. “It isn’t easy,” he said. Clearly he had worked on the idea.

“Maybe you don’t want to,” she said.

“No. I’m going to try.”

She took his arm, there was not much they could say, now. The engine vented steam, a door opened in one of the coaches and a conductor tossed his cigarette away and stationed himself at the bottom of the steps. The people on the platform began to board the train.

“Remember what we talked about last night,” he said, leaning close so she could hear him. “If you have to move, a postcard to Langlade’s office.”

She nodded.

“You’re not to call me, Citrine.”

The conductor climbed to the bottom step and shouted “All aboard for Chassieu.”

He took her in his arms and she held on to him, her head on his chest. “How long?” she said.

“I don’t know. As soon as I can manage it.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said.

He kissed her hair. The conductor leaned out of the coach and raised a little red flag that the engineer could see. “All aboard,” he said.

“I love you,” Casson said. “Remember.”

He started to work himself free of her arms, then she let him go. He ran for the train, climbed aboard, looked out the cloudy window. He could see she was searching for him. He rapped on the glass. Then she saw him. She wasn’t crying, her hands were deep in her pockets. She nodded at him, smiled a certain way-I meant everything I said, everything I did. Then she waved. He waved back. A man in a raincoat standing nearby lowered his newspaper to look at her. The train started to pull out, moving very slowly. She couldn’t see the man, he was behind her. She waved again, walked a few paces along with the train. Her face was radiant, strong, she wanted him to know he did not have to worry about her, together they would do what had to be done. The man behind Citrine looked toward the end of the station, Casson followed his eyes and saw another man, with slicked-down hair, who took a pipe out of his mouth, then put it back in.

All day long he rode slow trains that rattled through the countryside and stopped at little stations. Sometimes it rained, droplets running sideways across the window, sometimes a shaft of sunlight broke through a cloud and lit up a hillside, sometimes the cloud blew away and he could see the hard blue spring sky. In the fields the April plowing was over, crumbled black earth ran to the trees in the border groves, oaks and elms, with early leaves that trembled in the wind.

Casson stood in the alcove at the end of the car, staring out the open door, hypnotized by the rhythm of the wheels over the rail points. His mind was already back in Paris, holding imaginary conversations with Hugo Altmann, trying to win him over to some version of Rene Guillot’s strategy. The objective: move Hotel Dorado to the unoccupied zone, under the auspices of the committee in Vichy rather than the German film board. It would have to be done officially, it would take Guske, or somebody like him, to stamp the papers. But, with Altmann’s help, it might be possible.

On the other hand, Altmann liked the film, really liked it, probably he’d want to keep it in Paris. Was there a way to ruin it for him? Not completely-could they just knock off a corner, maybe, so it wasn’t quite so appealing? No, they’d never get away with it. Then too, what about Fischfang? As a Jew, nobody was going to give him the papers to do anything. But that, at least, could be overcome-he’d have to enter the Zone Non-Occupee, the ZNO, just as Casson had, then slip into a false identity, down in Marseilles perhaps.

No, that wouldn’t work. Fischfang couldn’t just abandon his assorted women and children to the mercies of the Paris Gestapo, they’d have to come along. But not across the river, it probably couldn’t be done that way. New papers. That might work-start the false identity on the German side of the line. How to manage that? Not so difficult- Fischfang was a communist, he must be in contact with Comintern operatives, people experienced in clandestine operations-forging identity papers an everyday affair for them.

Or, the hell with Hotel Dorado. He’d let Altmann have it, in effect would trade it for Citrine. Of course he’d have to find some way to live, to earn a living in the ZNO, but that wouldn’t be impossible. He could, could, do any number of things.

The train slowed, a long curve in the track, then clattered over a road crossing. An old farmer waited on a horse cart, the reins held loosely in his hand, watching the train go past. The tiny road wound off behind him, to nowhere, losing itself in the woods and fields. In some part of Casson’s mind the French countryside went on forever, from little village to little village, as long as you stayed on the train.

Back in Paris, he telephoned Altmann.

“Casson! Where the hell have you been? Everybody’s been looking for you.”

“I just went off to the seashore, to Normandy, for a couple of days.”

“Your secretary didn’t know where you were.”

“That’s impossible! I told her-if Altmann calls, give him the number of my hotel.”

“Well, she didn’t.”

“Hugo, I’m sorry, you’ll have to forgive me. You know what it’s like, these days-she does the best she can.”

“Well …”

“Anyhow, here I am.”

“Casson, there are people who want to meet you. Important people.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I have organized a dinner for us. Friday night.”

“All right.”

“Do you know the Brasserie Heininger?”

“In the Seventh?”

“Yes.”

“I know it.”

“Eight-thirty, then. Casson?”

“Yes?”

“Important people.”

“I understand. That’s this Friday, the fourth of May.”

“Yes. Any problem, let me know immediately.”

“I’ll be there,” Casson said.

He hung up, wrote down the time and place in his appointment book.

The Brasserie Heininger-of all places! What had gotten into Altmann? He knew better than that. The Heininger was a garish nightmare of gold mirrors and red plush-packed with Americans and nouveaux riches of every description before the war, now much frequented by German officers and their French “friends.” Long ago, when he was twelve, his aunt-his father’s charmingly demented sister-would take him to the Heininger, confiding in a whisper that one came “only for the creme anglaise, my precious, please remember that.” Then, in the late thirties, there’d been some sort of wretched murder there, a Balkan folly that spread itself across the newspapers for a day or two. His one visit in adult life had been a disaster-a dinner for an RKO executive, his wife, her mother, and Marie-Claire. A platter of Heininger’s best oysters, the evil Belons, had proved too much for the Americans, and it was downhill from there.

Well, he supposed it didn’t matter. Likely it was the “important people” who had chosen the restaurant. Whoever they were. Altmann hadn’t been his usual self on the telephone. Upset about Casson’s absence-and something else. Casson drummed his fingers on the desk, stared out the window at the rue Marbeuf. What?

Frightened, he thought.

A bad week.

Spring in the river valleys-tumbled skies and painters’ clouds- seemed like a dream to him now. In Paris, the grisaille, gray light, had descended over the city and it was dusk from morning till night.

He went out to the Montrouge district, beyond the porte de Chatillon and the old cemetery, to the little factory streets around the rue Gabriel, where Bernard Langlade had the workshop that made lightbulbs. The nineteenth century; tiny cobbled streets shadowed by brick factory walls, huge rusted stacks with towers of brown smoke curling slowly into a dead sky.

He trudged past foundries that seemed to go on for miles; the thudding of machines that hammered metal-he could feel each stroke in his heart-the smell, no, he thought, the taste, of nitric acid on brass, showers of orange sparks seen through wire mesh, a man with a mask of soot around his eyes, hauling on a long wrench, sensing Casson’s stare and giving it back to him. Casson looked away. His films had danced on the edges of this world but it was a real place and nobody made movies about these lives.

He got lost in a maze of smoked brick and burnt iron and asked directions of two workmen who answered in a Slavic language he couldn’t understand. He walked for a long time, more than an hour, where oil slicks floated on a canal, then, at last, a narrow opening in a stone wall and a small street sign, raised letters chiseled into the wall in the old Paris style, IMPASSE SAVIER. At the end of the alley, a green metal door-Compagnie Luminex.

Inside it was a beehive, workers sitting at long assembly tables, the line served by a young boy in a cap who, using every ounce of his weight, threw himself against the handle of an industrial cart piled high with metal fittings of various shapes and sizes. In one corner, a milling machine in operation, its motor whining from overuse. It was hot in the workroom-the roar of a kiln on the floor below explained why- and there were huge noisy blowers that vibrated in their mounts.

“Jean-Claude!”

It was Langlade, standing at the door of a factory office and beckoning to him. He wore a gray smock, which made him look like a workshop foreman. In the office, three women clerks, keeping books and typing letters. They were heavily built and dark, wearing old cardigan sweaters against the damp factory air, and had cigarettes burning in ashtrays made from clamshells. Langlade closed the half-glass door to the workshop floor, which reduced the flywheel and grinding noises to whispered versions of themselves. They shook hands, Langlade showed him into a small, private office and closed the door.

“Jean-Claude,” he said fondly, opening the bottom drawer of his desk, taking out a bottle of brandy. “I can only imagine what would get you all the way out here.” He gave Casson a conspiratorial smile- clearly an affair of the heart was to be discussed. “Business?” he said innocently.

“A little talk, Bernard.”

“Ahh, I thought-maybe you just happened to be in the neighborhood.” They both laughed at this. Langlade began working on the cork.

“Well, in fact I called your office, three or four times, and they told me, Monsieur is out at Montrouge, so I figured out this is where I’d have to come. But, Bernard, look at all this.”

Langlade smiled triumphantly, a man who particularly wanted to be admired by his friends. “What did you think?”

“Well, I didn’t know. What I imagined-three or four workmen, maybe. To me, a lightbulb. I never would have guessed it took so much to make a thing like that. But, really, Bernard, the sad fact is I’m an idiot.”

“No, Jean-Claude. You’re just like everybody else-me included. When Yvette’s Papa died, and she told me we had this odd little business, I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do about it. Sell it, I supposed. And we tried, but the country had nothing but labor trouble and inflation that year, and nobody in France would buy any kind of industrial anything. So, we ran it. We made Christmas-tree lights and we had small contracts with Citroen and Renault for the miniature bulbs that light up gas gauges and so forth on automobile dashboards. Actually, Jean-Claude, to make a lightbulb, you have to be able to do all sorts of things. It’s like a simple kitchen match, you never think about it but it takes a lot of different processes, all of them technical, to produce some stupid little nothing.” He grunted, twisted the cork, managed to get it free of the bottle.

“Bernard,” Casson said, gesturing toward the work area, “Christmas-tree lights? Joyeux Noel!”

Langlade laughed. He searched the bottom drawer, found two good crystal glasses. He held one up to the light and scowled. “Fussy?”

“No.”

“When I’m alone, I clean them with my tie.”

“Fine for me, Bernard.”

Langlade poured each of them a generous portion, swirled his glass and inhaled the fumes. Casson did the same. “Well, well,” he said.

Langlade shrugged, meaning, if you can afford it, why not? “When the Germans got here,” he said, “they began to make big orders, for trucks, and those armored whatnots they drive around in. We did that for five months, then they asked, could you buy some more elaborate equipment, possibly in Switzerland? Well, yes, we could. There wasn’t much point in saying no, the job would just go across the street to somebody else. So, we bought the new machinery, and began to make optical instruments. Like periscopes for submarines, and for field use also, a type of thing where a soldier in a trench can look out over the battlefield without getting his head blown off. We don’t make the really delicate stuff-binoculars, for instance. What we make has to accept hard use, and survive.”

“Is there that much of it?”

Langlade leaned over his desk. “Jean-Claude, I was like you. A civilian, what did I know. I went about my business, got into bed with a woman now and then, saw friends, made a little money, had a family. I never could have imagined the extent of anything like this. These people, army and navy, they think in thousands. As in, thousands and thousands.” Langlade gave him a certain very eloquent and Gallic look-it meant he was making money, and it meant he must never be asked how much, or anything like that, because he was making so much that to say it out loud would be to curse the enterprise-the jealous gods would overhear and throw down some bad-luck lightning bolts from the top of commercial Olympus. Where the tax people also kept an office.

Casson nodded that he understood, then smiled, honestly happy for a friend’s success.

“Now,” Langlade said, “what can I do for you?”

“Citrine,” Casson said.

A certain smile from Langlade. “The actress.”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

“We have become lovers, Bernard. It’s the second time-we had a petite affaire ten years ago, but this is different.”

Langlade made a sympathetic face; yes, he knew how it was. “She’s certainly beautiful, Jean-Claude. For myself, I couldn’t stop looking at her long enough to go to bed.”

Casson smiled. “We just spent a week together, in Lyons-that’s between you and me by the way. Now, I’ve had some kind of problem in the Gestapo office on the rue des Saussaies. Bernard, it’s so stupid- I went up there to get an Ausweis to go to Spain, and they asked me about military service and something told me not to mention that I’d been reactivated in May and gone up to the Meuse. You know, there are thousands of French soldiers still in Germany, in prison camps. I decided it would be safer not to admit anything. So, I didn’t. Well, time went by, somebody sent a paper to somebody else, and they caught me in a lie.”

Langlade shook his head and made a sour face. The Germans were finicky about paper in a way the Latin French found amusing-until the problem settled on their own doorstep.

“The next thing was, they started reading my mail and listening to my phone. So, when I was with Citrine down in Lyons, I told her that if she wanted to get in touch with me she could send a postcard to your office, your law office in the 8th is the address I gave her.”

He waited for Langlade to smile and say it was all right, but he didn’t. Instead, his expression darkened into a certain kind of discomfort.

“Look, Jean-Claude,” he said. “We’ve known each other for twenty years, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. If Citrine sends me a postcard, well, I’ll see that you get it. On the other hand, next time you have a chance to talk to her, would it be too much to ask for you to find some other way of doing this?”

Casson wasn’t going to show what he felt. “No problem at all, Bernard. In fact, I can take care of it right away.”

“You can understand, can’t you? This work I’m doing matters to them, Jean-Claude. It isn’t like they’re actually watching me, but, you know, I see these military people all the time, from the procurement offices, and all it would take would be for my secretary over in the other office to decide she wasn’t getting enough money, or, or whatever it might be. Look, I have an idea, what about Arnaud? You know, he’s always doing this and that and the other, and it’s just the sort of thing that would appeal to him.”

“You’re right,” Casson said. “A much better idea.”

“So now, here’s what we’ll do. Let’s go back to Paris-I can call a driver and car-and treat ourselves to a hell of a lunch, hey? Jean-Claude, how about it?”

Friday, 4 May. 4:20 P.M.

End of the week, a slow day in the office, Casson kept looking at his watch. Seven hours-and the dinner at Brasserie Heininger would be over. Of course, he lied to himself, he didn’t have to go, the world wouldn’t come to an end. No, he thought, don’t do that. “Mireille?” he called out. “Could you come in for a minute?”

“Monsieur?”

“Why don’t you go home early, Mireille-it won’t be so crowded on the train.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Casson.”

“Could you mail this for me, on the way?”

Of course.

A postcard-the people who watched the mail supposedly didn’t bother with postcards-telling Citrine to write him care of a cafe where they knew him. He had to assume Mireille wasn’t followed, that she could mail a postcard without somebody retrieving it. It meant he could save an anonymous telephone he’d discovered, in an office at one of the soundstages out at Billancourt, for a call he might want to make later on.

Mireille called out good night and left, Casson returned to the folder on his desk. Best to prepare for an important meeting. The folder held various pencil budgets for Hotel Dorado, a list of possible changes to the story line, names of actors and actresses and scenic designers-they were just now reaching the stage where certain individuals were, almost mystically, exactly right for the film. Also in the folder, a list of new projects Altmann had mentioned over the last few months; you never knew when one of these “ideas” was going to leap out of its coffin and start dancing around the crypt.

Casson read down the page and sighed out loud. Ah yes, the Boer War. The whole industry was planning movies about the noble Boers that spring, somebody in Berlin-Goebbels? — had decided to make them fashionable. A group of farmers, not exactly German but at least Dutch, thus Nordic and sincere, had carried out guerrilla actions and given the British army fits in South Africa. A war, according to German thinking, that made England look bad: imperialist, power-hungry, and cruel. One German company, Casson had heard, was about to go into production on something called President Kruger, a Boer War spectacle employing 40,000 extras.

The phone.

Now what?

Maybe he shouldn’t answer. No, it might be Altmann, some change of plans, or even, gift from heaven, dinner canceled. “Hello?”

“Monsieur Casson?”

“Yes?”

“Maitre Versol here.”

What? Who? Oh Jesus! The lawyer for the LeBeau company!

Versol cleared his throat, then continued. “I thought I would telephone to see if any progress has been made on locating our missing inventory. You will recall, monsieur, some four hundred beards, fashioned from human hair and of a superior quality, provided for your use in the film Samson and Delilah.”

“Yes, Maitre Versol, I do remember.”

“We feel we have been very patient, monsieur.”

“Yes,” Casson said. “That is true.”

He let Versol go on for a time, as he always did, until the lawyer felt honor had been satisfied and he could hang up.

Casson looked at his watch again. Almost five. He lifted the top from a fancy yellow box, unfolded the tissue paper, studied the tie he’d bought on the boulevard earlier that day. Navy blue with a beige stripe, very austere and conservative. Just the thing, he hoped, for the “important people” who had inspired that strange little note in Altmann’s voice. Probably it wouldn’t matter at all, it would simply mean he had done the best he could.

On the way home, between the La Muette Metro and the rue Chardin, he stopped at the busy cafe where they saw him every morning. He leaned on the copper-covered bar and drank a coffee. “I may get a postcard here,” he confided to the proprietor. “It’s from somebody-you understand. I’d rather my wife didn’t see it.”

The proprietor smiled, rubbing a glass with a bar towel. “I understand, monsieur. You may depend on me.”

8:40 P.M.

The Brasserie Heininger, throbbing with Parisian life on a Friday night. Once past the blackout curtains: polished wood, golden light, waiters in fancy whiskers and green aprons. Very fin-de-siecle, Casson thought. Fin-de-something, anyhow.

Papa Heininger, the fabled proprietor, greeted him at the door, then passed him along to the maitre d’. The man said good evening with a certain subtle approval, more to do with what he wasn’t than what he was-he wasn’t Romanian, wasn’t wearing a bright-blue suit, wasn’t a coal merchant or a black-market dealer or a pimp.

“Monsieur Altmann’s table, please.”

A polite nod. A German, true, but a German executive. Not so bad, for that spring. Party of four, all men, thus ashes on the tablecloth but at least a vigorous attack on the wine list. “That will be table fourteen, monsieur. This way, please.”

Not the best table but certainly the most requested: a small hole in the mirror where an assassin had fired a submachine gun the night the Bulgarian headwaiter was murdered in the ladies’ WC. The table where an aristocratic Englishwoman had once recruited Russian spies. The table where, only a few nights earlier, the companion of a German naval officer had been shooting peas at other diners, using a rolled-up carte des vins as a blowpipe.

The three men at the table rose, Altmann made the introductions. Clearly they’d been there for a while, most of the way through a bottle of champagne. Herr Schepper-something like that-gestured to the waiter for another to be brought. He had fine white hair and a fine face, a pink shave and shining eyes. One of a class of men, Casson thought, who are given money all their lives because people don’t really know what else to do with them. This one was, if Casson understood Altmann correctly, a very senior something at UFA, the Continental Film parent company in Berlin.

The other man waited his turn, then smiled as he was introduced. They shook hands, shared a brief reniflement-the term came from the world of dogs, where it meant a mutual sniff on first meeting-then settled back down at the table. Herr Franz Millau. Something in the way Altmann articulated the name enabled Casson to hear it perfectly.

He was-nobody exactly said. Perhaps he was “our friend” or “my associate” or one of those. Not a particularly impressive exterior. High domed forehead; sandy hair. An old thirty-five or a young forty-five. Eyeglasses in thin silver frames, lawyer eyeglasses, worn in a way that suggested he only took them off before he went to sleep. And a small, predatory mouth, prominent against a fair complexion that made his lips seem brightly colored. He was not unpleasant in any way Casson could put a name to, so, what was wrong with him? Perhaps, Casson thought, it was a certain gap, between an unremarkable presence, and, just below, a glittering and pungent arrogance that radiated from him like the noonday sun. Herr Millau was powerful, and believed it was in the natural order of things that he should be.

Herr Schepper did not speak French. That kept them busy, with Altmann as translator, discovering that he loved Paris, had attended the opera, was fond of Monet, liked pate de foie gras. A fresh bottle of Veuve Clicquot arrived, and, a moment later, an astonishing seafood platter. Everyone said ah. A masterpiece on a huge silver tray: every kind of clam and oyster, cockle and mussel, whelk and crayfish-Judgment Day on the ocean floor. “Bon appetit!” the waiter cried out.

One small complication.

Altmann and Schepper had to go on to a certain club in a distant arrondissement, where they were to have a late supper with a banker. Schepper said something in German. “He says,” Altmann translated, ” ‘you must take good care of the people with the money.’ ” Schepper nodded to help make the point.

“That’s certainly true,” Casson said.

“Well then,” Millau said, “you two should be going. Perhaps Monsieur Casson will be kind enough to keep me company while I eat my supper.”

Merde. But everybody else seemed to agree that this was the perfect solution, and Casson was effectively trapped. A glass of champagne, a few creatures from the sea, some additional travelogue from Herr Schepper, then everybody stood up to shake hands and begin the complicated business of departure.

At which moment, from the corner of his eye, Casson spotted Bruno. A party of six or seven swept past like ships in the night, Casson had only a blurred impression. Some German uniforms, a cloud of perfume, a woman laughing at something that wasn’t funny, and, in the middle of it-Bruno in a silk tie and blinding white shirt, a young woman- blonde, green-eyed-on his arm. Their eyes met, Bruno winked. Good to see you getting about with the right people, at last-glad you’ve seen the light. Then they went around the corner of a wall of banquettes and disappeared.

Altmann and Schepper left.

“Friend of yours?” Millau said.

“Acquaintance.”

“Some more champagne?”

“Thank you. How do you come to speak French like that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“No, I don’t mind. As a youngster I lived in Alsace-you know, un, deux, trois, vier, funf.”

Casson laughed politely.

“That’s the way to learn a language, as a child,” Millau said.

“That’s what they say.”

“What about you, Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

“No, not at all.”

“Maybe some English, then?”

“A little. I can get along in a commercial situation if everybody slows down.”

Millau took a heavy black cigar from his pocket, stripped off the band and the cellophane. “Perhaps you’d care to join me.”

“No, thank you.”

Millau took his time lighting up, made the match flame jump up and down, at last blew out a stream of smoke, strong, but not unpleasant. He shook his head. “I like these things too much.”

Casson lit a Gauloise.

Millau leaned on the table, spoke in a confidential tone. “Let me begin by telling you that I’m an intelligence officer,” he said. “Reasonably senior, here in Paris.”

“I see,” Casson said.

“Yes. I work for the Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, in the counterespionage office up on the avenue Foch. We started out as the SS foreign service, and in a sense we still are that, though success has brought us some broader responsibility.”

Millau paused, Casson indicated he understood what had been said.

“We’ve been getting to know you for a few months, Monsieur Casson, keeping an eye on you, and so forth, to see who we were dealing with.”

Casson laughed nervously.

“Ach, the way people are! I assure you, we can’t be surprised or offended by all these little sins, the same thing, over and over. We’re like priests, or doctors.”

He stopped for a moment to inhale on the cigar, making the tip glow red, to see if it was still lit. “We got on to you down in Spain-the British were interested in you, and that was of interest to us. We were … nearby, when you met with a woman who calls herself Marie-Noelle, Lady Marensohn, a representative of the British Secret Intelligence Service who we believe attempted to recruit you for clandestine operations. She is, by the way, residing with us at the moment.”

Casson felt the blood leave his face. Millau waited to see if he might want to comment, but he said nothing.

“Our view, Monsieur Casson, is that you did not accept recruitment.”

Casson waited a beat but there was nowhere he could hide. “No,” he said, “I didn’t.”

Millau nodded, confirming a position held in some earlier discussion. “And why not?”

There wasn’t any time to think. “I don’t know.”

“No?”

Casson shrugged. “I’m French-not British, not German. I simply want to live my life, and be left in peace.”

From Millau’s reaction Casson could tell he’d given the right answer. “And who would blame you for that, eh?” Millau said with feeling. “What got us into this situation in the first place was all these people meddling in politics. All we ever wanted in Germany was to be left alone, to get on with our lives. But, sadly, that was not to be, and you see what happened next. And, more to come.”

Casson’s expression was sympathetic. He realized that Millau possessed a very dangerous quality: he was likeable.

“We have no business fighting with England, I’ll tell you that,” Millau said. “Every week-I’m sure I’m not saying something you find surprising-there’s some kind of initiative; diplomatic, private, what have you. At the Vatican or in Stockholm. It’s just a matter of time and we’ll settle things between us. Our real business is in the east, with the Bolsheviks, and so is Britain’s business, and we’re just sorry that certain individuals in London are doing everything they can to keep us apart.”

“Hmm,” Casson said.

“So, that’s where you come in. My section, that is, AMT IV, is particularly concerned with terrorist operations, sabotage, bombing, assassination. We fear that elements within the British government plan to initiate such acts in France, a carefully organized campaign-and if a number of people die it is of no particular concern to them, they tend to be very liberal with French life.”

Millau made sure this had sunk in, then he said, “This isn’t a fantasy. We know it’s going to happen, and we believe they will contact you again. This time, we want you to accept. Do what they ask of you. And let us know about it.”

The brasserie was noisy, people talking and laughing, somebody was singing. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the aroma of grilled beef. Casson took his time, stubbing out the Gauloise in an ashtray. “Well,” he said.

“How about it?”

“Well, I don’t think they’ll actually approach me again,” Casson said. If Marie-Noelle talked to them, he realized, he was finished. Would she? Considering what they did to people, would she? “I made it clear to them it wasn’t something I was going to do.”

“Yes,” Millau said softly, meaning that he understood. “But I’ll tell you what.” He smiled, conspiratorial and knowing. “I’ll bet you anything you care to name that they come back to you.”

3:20 A.M.

The music on his radio faded in and out-if he held the aerial he could hear it. Adagio for Strings, Samuel Barber. Coming in from far away. Outside it rained on and off, distant thunder muttering up in Normandy somewhere. The worst of the storm had come through earlier- on the way home from the Brasserie Heininger he’d had to take shelter in the Metro to avoid getting soaked, standing next to a woman in a sweater and skirt. “Just made it,” he’d said as the rain poured down.

“A little luck anyhow,” she’d agreed. “I have to go see somebody about a job tomorrow and this is what I have to wear.”

Oh, what kind of job-but he didn’t.

They stood quietly, side by side, then the rain stopped and she left, swinging her hips as she climbed the staircase just so he would know what he’d missed. He knew. He lay on top of the covers in the darkness and listened to the violin. It would have been nice to have her with him; big, pale body rising and falling. But Citrine, I didn’t.

Good times they’d had in the Hotel du Parc. He’d been leaning against a wall, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. She told him he looked like a place Pigalle tough guy and he’d given her back the classic line, “Tiens, montrez-moi ton cul.” Show me your ass. In lycee, they used to wonder if M. Lepic, the Latin teacher, said that to Mme. Lepic on Saturday night.

Casson peered at his watch on the table beside the bed. A few minutes after three. What if he went out somewhere and called the hotel in Lyons-let it ring and ring until an infuriated manager answered. This is the police. I want to speak with the woman in Room 28. Now!

Sirens. Air-raid sirens. Now what? Antiaircraft fire-to the north of the city, he thought. Like a drum, in deliberate time. Then he heard airplanes. He swung his legs off the bed, made certain the apartment was dark, went out on the terrace.

Searchlights, north of him, across the river. The AA guns working away, four or five beats to the measure, little yellow lights climbing to heaven. And, then, planes overhead, a lot of them, flying low, the drone hammering off the walls in the narrow rue Chardin. Across the street and down a little way, a couple in nightshirts out on their balcony, the woman with a fur stole thrown around her shoulders, gazing up at the sky. Then he saw others, the whole neighborhood was out.

To the north, bombs, close enough to hear the articulated explosions. Orange light stuttered against the sky-he could see clearly the dark undersides of rain clouds, like frozen smoke, lit by fires. The British are at work, he thought. Among the factories on the outskirts of the city. When the bombing faded to a rumble, fire sirens joined the air-raid sirens. Then the all-clear sounded, and the fire engines were joined by ambulances.

Casson got tired of standing on the terrace, sat against the wall just inside his living room. First edge of false dawn in the spring, the sky not so dark as it was, a few birds singing on the rooftops. The sirens had stopped, now there remained only a certain smell on the morning air. The smell of burning. He was falling asleep. Now that it was dawn, he could sleep, since whatever might come in the night would have to wait another day.

Then, Monday morning, when he got to the office at ten, Mireille had a message for him. “A woman telephoned, a Madame Detweiler.”

“Who?”

“The secretary of an officer called Guske. From the rue des Saussaies.”

“And?”

“She said to tell you that your Ausweis to go to the Vichy zone is under consideration, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a problem, and they will have a determination for you by May fifteenth. If you have any questions, you are encouraged to call Obersturmbannfuhrer Guske.”

“Thank you, Mireille,” he said, and went into his office.

Was that good news, he wondered, or bad? After a moment he realized it wasn’t good or bad, it wasn’t anything. It was simply their way of talking to him. It was simply their way of telling him that they owned him.

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 cafes, 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 Galeries Lafayette, the huge department store just north of Opera. He found the buyers’ offices on the top floor and knocked on Veronique’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.”

Veronique 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.

“Veronique,” 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,” Veronique 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 cafe, 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 Francoise 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 Carne’s Le Jour Se Leve at the Madeleine theatre, script by Jacques Prevert, 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 Trinite 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 Citroen 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 Citroen 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, Andre, Bernard, Claudine, Daniel-Medecin, 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. Veronique. 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 Veronique 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 cafe 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’ cafe. 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.”

Veronique 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 cafe smelled like sour wine and wet dogs, a quiet place, people spoke in low voices. “Merde,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I think, Veronique, 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, Veronique 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-Etienne-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 Genevieve, 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-Mutualite Metro. 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-Noelle 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 allee 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 cafe 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 Metro, 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 lycee. 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, Cafe 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 Alencon. 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 Alencon; 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.

“Alencon 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 Alencon, 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-etre, 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, Brezolles, Laons-Casson drove east toward Paris in the spring dawn.

The end of the operation had been complicated. Systeme D, Casson thought, always Systeme 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 Alencon 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 Fougeres. 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 cafe. 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 Notre-Dame de Secours, then walked in the Pere-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 Metro.

It was Singer who picked him up in a black Traction Avant Citroen 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 Alencon 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 cremerie-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.