Night Soldiers

specialty-then took another fourteen minutes to return. During the forty-eight-minute round trip, other couriers sometimes started off on their routes, but all four had never yet operated simultaneously. He studied the covert photographs his operatives had taken. Four unremarkable men in baggy suits. Probably armed. To take one of them would not be too difficult-a kidnapping off the street by hooded toughs. If they found a safe place to hold him, they might reasonably wait the remainder of the forty-eight minutes to see if another courier started out, but each variation on the theme would, of course, substantially increase the danger. There would be police, a lot of them, and they would arrive quickly.

For the finale of the surveillance, old Ivan was sent to the top floor of the building with a pair of gold candlesticks while one of the Russians was subjected to the clerical hocus-pocus. Ivan attempted to haggle over the price and made a thorough pest of himself for a time sufficient to observe an exchange through the security grille, then took his candlesticks and went off in a huff. The banknotes were delivered en paquet, but the Russian-the sorrowful Boris, as it happened-insisted on counting the money, and Ivan had silently counted right along with him. It came out to more than ninety thousand francs. At the equivalent of $14.28 U.S. an ounce, the European standard, he had converted almost twenty pounds of gold.

One wet afternoon, Khristo walked with Omaraeff in the Parc Monceau-two black umbrellas moving slowly along the graveled path-and reported to him at length. Gave him a summary of his findings and a set of photographs. After some desultory conversation, they shook hands and parted. At the gate to the park a blind veteran, the breast of his old corporal’s tunic covered with medals, stood silently in the drizzle holding a mess-kit plate before him. Khristo put a one-franc coin in the plate and the man thanked him solemnly in an educated voice.

He had an hour before work, so he bought a Figaro and stopped in a cafe and ordered a coffee. He put a sugar lump on the miniature spoon, lowered it just beneath the layer of tan foam, and watched it break into tiny crystals. He was glad the business for Omaraeff was done with; he believed he’d carried it off reasonably well, without getting his hands too dirty. From here on, they were on their own. The surfaces of the cafe windows were steamy, people going by in the streets looked like shadows.

The front pages of Le Figaro were dense with reports of a world in flames: Japanese bombers taking a terrible toll of the Chinese population in Manchuria, the Spanish city of Guernica virtually obliterated by the German pilots of the Condor Legion, Nazi storm troopers in Berlin, standing outside Jewish-owned department stores with rubber stamps and inkpads and forcing shoppers to have their foreheads stamped. Mussolini had made a major speech in Libya, voicing Italian support for Islamic objectives. Bertrand Russell had advised the British public to treat German invaders as tourists, stating, “The Nazis would find some interest in our way of living, I think, and the starch would be taken out of them.”

The local news concentrated on the particularly horrible murder of an Austrian refugee up in Montmartre. The refugee, Hugo Leitzer, had been a resident of one of the cheap hotels in the district used almost exclusively by prostitutes. At four in the afternoon he was seen to stagger through the lobby with an icepick driven fully into his chest. He had managed to run out into the street, where he’d collapsed to his knees and pulled the weapon out as cars swerved around him. A “heavy man in his forties, wearing a sailor’s sweater,” had run out of the hotel, retrieved the icepick, and stabbed Leitzer “at least six times” before the eyes of horrified onlookers. By the time police arrived, the man had disappeared and Leitzer had bled to death.

The story was accompanied by a passport photo of Leitzer. It was Kerenyi, the blond Hungarian from Esztergom known as Plow-boy, who had trained with Khristo at Arbat Street.

He was exhausted when he got back to the room the following morning. He peeled off his clothes and dropped them on a chair, then slid carefully under the covers so as not to wake Aleksandra. But she was only pretending to sleep.

“You are so late,” she said. “I fell asleep waiting.”

“It’s madness there. Everyone orders champagne at dawn. With strawberries. Of course the old man doesn’t chase them away-he shakes them by the ankles to make the last sou fall out.”

“Strawberries? In April?”

“From a greenhouse.”

“Like roses.”

“Yes. The price, too, is like roses.”

“Did you bring me some? You may feed them to me in bed.”

“Sorry. The patrons ate every last one.”

“Swine!”

“They pay the rent.”

“Little enough. They live like kings-we crawl in the dust.”

“Aleksandra …”

“I’ll say anything I like.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes.”

“Final warning.”

“I tremble with fear.”

“You shall.”

“No! Get your-”

“Bad … little … girls …”

“Help! Stop!”

He very nearly did. Would have, had she not let him know, silently, that she wished to be courteously ravaged. How she owned him! He marveled at it. Rejoiced in it even as their mood, their simultaneous appetite, began to shift.

Next, she was hungry. It meant they had to get dressed all over again and go out in the rain, joining the early workers in the cafe on the corner. Every eye went to Aleksandra as they entered. She peered out at the world from beneath a yellow straw hat-a “boater,” with circular crown and flat brim-wore a green wool muffler looped around her neck, and was lost in the immensity of Khristo’s sheepskin jacket while he made do with a heavy sweater. To top it off, she was smoking a thin, gold Turkish cigarette. The workingmen in the cafe acknowledged her entrance with great affection. She was so titi- the classic Parisian street urchin, given to storm- blown passions yet impossibly adorable-towing her coat-less lover into a cafe so early in the rainy morning, so delighted with her own eccentricity yet so vulnerable-blond shag hanging down to her eyes-that every one of them felt obliged to desire her. For she was, if only for a moment, some girl they’d once loved.

Khristo and Aleksandra seated themselves at a small table by the window, shivering as the warm air drove out the chill, inhaling the luxurious morning fog of strong coffee, tobacco smoke and bread.

“Two breakfasts, please,” Khristo said to the owner when she came out from behind the bar.

She was back in a moment with bowls of milky coffee, a flute- the slimmest loaf with the most crust-cut into rounds, and saucers of white butter and peach jam. It took both hands to hold the coffee.

They polished that off in short order and ordered two more. “Pauvres!” said the owner from behind the bar, meaning you poor starving things, a fine Parisian irony twinkling in her tight smile. It was her divine right as proprietaire of the cafe to make fun of them a little-I know why you’re so hungry.

To the second breakfast she added, unbidden, two steaming bowls of soup. Last night’s, no doubt, and all the better for having aged. When these did not appear on the bill, Khristo began to thank her but she tossed his gratitude away with a flip of the hand. It was her right to feed them, to play a small role in their love affair. These were some of the sacred perquisites of the profession, to be dispensed at her whim.

Aleksandra took his hand on the way back to the room, tugged him off in a new direction just before they reached the door of their building. Steered him to a small park in the neighborhood, but it was too wet to sit down.

When he pointed this out, she accused him of being unromantic. He sighed and went off to a tabac and returned with a newspaper, which he divided and placed on the wet bench. She took his hand again as they sat with the rain misting down on them. “We will certainly catch cold,” he said.

“Lovers don’t care about a little rain,” she said.