He opened it up and looked at the photograph. Saw himself sitting on a wooden bench, wearing only a towel, with a naked boy on his knee.
“Shocking, eh? Not to worry, Nick. Your little secret is safe with me.
Khristo smiled. Stopped himself just short of open laughter. “Omaraeff is yours? “
“Oh, who is anybody’s anymore, really. Just that friends do each other favors now and again. Makes the wheels run smooth.”
He handed the photograph to Fitzware. “To remember me, you keep this,
“Don’t you realize …?”
“This trick works, Mr. Fitzware, only if there is somebody to show the picture to. Who will you show? Omaraeff? Papa Heininger-what would he think of you, to take such a picture? — or perhaps my lover? She would be surprised, perhaps, or a little sad maybe, or she might laugh. With her, you see, it’s hard to tell. Goodbye.”
He got out of the car and closed the door carefully. Walked away leisurely down the street.
“Damn your eyes,” he heard behind him. Again, not the usual nasal whine, not at all. Real British fury-a voice he’d never in fact heard before. The heat of it surprised him.
At Heininger, a few minutes after five, he saw Omaraeff enter the restaurant, a newspaper folded under his arm. His face was rigid. Khristo stared at him, but he refused to make eye contact. The regular patrons, who filtered in just before midnight, were excited by the news of the moment and the waiters found themselves momentary celebrities. “Uh-oh, here comes Nick. Quick everybody, under the table!” He grinned at them tolerantly and shook his head-these grinning aristocrats who kidded him with their hands formed into children’s revolvers. In honor of the assassination they called out
As Khristo hurried to and from the kitchen, his mind wandered among the small, insignificant events of the past week. Simply, there were too many of them-he felt like a blind man in a room full of cobwebs. There was Dodin, the new lodger. The blind veteran in the Parc Monceau with an educated, cultured voice-wearing a
At three-thirty in the morning he went home, walking quickly, head down. Reaching his building, he felt a stab of panic-foreknowledge-and rushed up the stairs to the room. He threw open the door to find darkness and silence. He was silhouetted, framed in the doorway, and he flinched, moved sideways against the wall just as the timed light in the hallway went off with a pop. In total blackness, he closed his eyes in concentration and raised his hands before him. He could hear, faintly, the sound of labored breathing. A match flared and a candle came to life. Aleksandra, dark-under-white skin glowing amber in the tiny flame, moved toward him in a trance. A piece of rope was knotted low on her waist. She stared at him blindly, lips drawn back, teeth exposed. As in a dream, her hand reached out, fingers curved into talons, and she spoke very slowly, in English shaded by the harsh accents of the Balkans. “Velcome to my castle,” she said.
Later, as he lay awake in the tangled bedding, he heard the heavy footsteps of the new lodger as he walked down the corridor.
The next day, and for a week thereafter, in the section of
He received four responses. The first three were handwritten notes on inexpensive formal paper. Annette scented hers with
Moving down the gravel paths among the black-clad French families, a small bunch of anemones in his hand, he saw Ilya Goldman standing contemplatively by the Walewska tomb, a small, gray temple-like structure with an iron railing across the front. Even from a distance, Khristo could see the changes. Formerly boyish and exuberant, Ilya had grown older than his years. He wore a well-cut suit with a white handkerchief in the breast pocket, a soft gray fedora, and a black mourner’s armband. His hands were clasped behind his back. Up close, there were lines of fatigue around his eyes, and when Ilya greeted him-they spoke Russian, as always-he seemed to animate his face with effort. They shook hands warmly, embraced, then spent a moment without words staring together at the Walewska tomb.
“Well then,” Ilya said at last, “what is the report from SHOEMAKER?”
“SHOEMAKER? “
“Yes, we are using professions, lately, for operational names. Even Banker and Moneylender. Out of deference to me, I think, the latter is not simply Jew.”
“Ah. Who am I, then?”
“A countess, of obscure origin and terribly poor, alas. With a French fascist for a lover, naturally. Very gamy stuff. Their views on lovemaking are quite … unusual. You would enjoy reading about it.”
“You’ve had somebody watching the Matrimonials all this time?”
“Oh yes. Since the day after you left Spain, in fact. Don’t be too flattered, though. We have many hands, and the busier they are kept, the less mischief they cause us.”
“Ilya, I must ask you. Are they getting close to me?”
He didn’t answer for a time. “They are looking, I can promise you that. Looking hard. But I am not in the Paris residency, you see, and I don’t know what they’re doing here. For the purposes of SHOEMAKER I am permitted to travel. Now, at my
“And you? How safe are you?”
He shrugged. “Who can say, who can say. They’ve shot ninety percent of the army generals, eighty percent of the colonels.”
“Who will fight the war?”
“There won’t be one. Stalin will keep us out of it, I can promise you that. We haven’t the officers to fight a war. There are some who say that the doubt cast on the loyalty of the army-generals’ plots and what have you-was in fact the work of German intelligence, Reinhard Heydrich and his so-called intellectual thugs. Quite good they are, quite, quite good. Meanwhile, on our side, the old guard is just about gone. Berzin, who ran things so well in Spain, was recalled ‘for discussions.’ He went, thinking that all could be
“Will they purge Romanians?”
“Like me, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“One would suppose so, though here I am. Hard to say for how long. However, I do not intend to die. And that’s where you come in, my friend. The time may come when I will need your help. I sleep a little better having a friend on the outside, someone I can trust, for the day when I have to scamper.”
