Dark Star

downstairs, sitting in handmade pine chairs and smoking Maltsaev’s Belomors, talking among themselves. Szara was part of every activity, taking his turn with the shovel, struggling with Abramov’s weight as they put him in the ground. He had no choice; he became a temporary member of the unit. They talked about what they could buy in Geneva before they went back to Kiev, they talked about other operations; something in Lithuania, something in Sweden, though they were oblique with a stranger in their midst. The only ceremony for Abramov was Szara’s silent prayer, and he made very sure his lips did not move as he said it. Yet, even at that moment, in the dark meadow, he planned further memorials.

Early in the morning, standing on the platform of the railroad station in Geneva and waiting for the Paris train, Maltsaev was blunt: “The usual way in these affairs is to send the accomplice along on the same journey, innocent or not doesn’t matter. But, for the moment, somebody considers you worth keeping alive. Personally I don’t agree- you are a traitor in your heart-but I just do what they tell me. That’s a good lesson for you, Szara, come to think of it. Being smart maybe isn’t so smart as you think-you see where it got Abramov. I blame it on the parents, they should have made him study the violin like all the rest of them.” The train pulled in. Maltsaev, after a contemptuous bow and a sweep of the hand toward the compartment door, turned and walked away.

Staring at Voyschinkowsky across the table, pretending to listen as the man told a story about his childhood, Szara for the first time understood the chain of events that had led to the night of 7 February. It had started with Lotte Huber’s romance with Seneschal and from there moved, seemingly driven by fate, to its conclusion. Inevitable, he thought. The champagne was cunning; the opposite of vodka in that it didn’t numb, it revealed. One could say, he realized, that a Nazi official’s appetite for red berry sauce had two years later led to the death of a Russian intelligence officer in a Swiss meadow. He shook his head to make such thoughts go away. Remember, he told himself silently, this must be done with a cold heart.

Voyschinkowsky paused to take a long sip of champagne. “The Lion of the Bourse” was in his early sixties, with a long, mournful face marked by the chronically red-rimmed eyes and dark pouches of the lifelong insomniac. He was reputed to be one of the richest men in Paris. “I wonder whatever became of her? ” he said. He had a thick Hungarian accent and a heavy, hoarse voice that seemed to come from the bottom of a well.

“But Bibi,” Ginger Pudakis said, “did you make love?”

“I was twelve years old, my dear.”

“Then what?”

One side of Voyschinkowsky’s mouth twisted briefly into a tart grin. “I looked at her breasts.”

“Finis?”

“Let me tell you, from one who has lived a, a rich and varied cosmopolitan life, there was never again a moment like it.”

“Oh Bibi,” she breathed. “Too sad!”

Lady Angela whispered in Szara’s ear, “Say something clever, can you?”

“Not sad. Bittersweet,” he said. “Not at all the same thing. I think it is a perfect story.”

“Hear, hear,” said Roddy Fitzware.

They went on to a nightclub to watch Apache dancing. A young dancer, her skirt bunched up around her waist, slid across the polished floor into the audience and accidentally drove a spike heel into Szara’s ankle. He winced, saw a momentary horror on her face amid the black and violet makeup, then her partner, in the traditional sailor’s shirt, whisked her away. Now I am wounded in the line of duty, he thought, and should receive a medal, but there is no nation to award it. He was very drunk and laughed out loud at the thought.

“Were you stabbed?” Lady Angela asked quietly, evidently amused.

“A little. It’s nothing.” “What a very, very nice man you are.” “Hah.”

“It’s true. Next week, you’re to have supper with me, tete-a-tete. Can you?”

“I shall be honored, dear lady.”

“Mysterious things may happen.”

“The very thing I live for.”

“I expect you do.”

“You’re right. Will there be a violinist?”

“Good God no!”

“Then I’ll come.”

The dinner was at Fouquet’s, in a private room with dark green curtains. Gold-painted cherubs grinned from the corners of the ceiling. There were two wines, and langoustines with artichokes and turbot. Lady Angela Hope was in red, a long, shimmering silk sheath, and her upswept hair, a color something like highly polished brass, was held in place by two diamond butterflies. He thought her presentation ingenious: glamorous, seductive, and absolutely untouchable-the culmination of the private dinner was … that one would have dined privately.

“What am I to do with my little place in Scotland? You must advise me,” she said.

“Could anything be wrong?”

“Could anything be wrong-could anything be right! This dreadful man, a Mr. MacConnachie if you will, writes that the northwest cornice has entirely deteriorated, and …”

Szara was, in a way, disappointed. He was curious, and the street imp from Odessa in him would have liked the conquest of a titled English lady in a private room at Fouquet’s. But he’d understood from the beginning that the evening was for business and not for love. While they dawdled over coffee, there was a discreet knock on the doorframe to one side of the curtain. Lady Angela playfully splayed her fingers at the center of her chest. “Why whoever can that be?”

“Your husband,” Szara said acidly.

She suppressed a giggle. “Bastard,” she said in English. Her upper-class tone made a poem of the word and he noted that it was absolutely the most honestly affectionate thing she had ever said, or likely ever would say, to him. Underneath it all, he thought her splendid.

Roger Fitzware slipped between the curtains. Something in the way he moved meant he was no longer the slightly effeminate and terribly amusing Roddy that the Brasserie Heininger crowd so adored. Short and quite handsome, with thick reddish-brown hair swept across a noble forehead, he was wearing a tuxedo and smoking a little cigar. “Am I de trop?” he said.

Szara stood and they shook hands. “Pleased to see you,” he said in English.

“Mm,” Fitzware said.

“Do join us, dear boy,” Lady Angela said.

“Shall I have them bring a chair?” Fitzware said, just to be polite.

“I think not,” said Lady Angela. She came around the table and kissed Szara on the cheek. “A very, very nice man,” she said. “You must ring me up-very soon,” she called as she vanished through the curtain.

Fitzware ordered Biscuit cognac and for a time they chatted about nothing in particular. Szara, a student of technique, found considerable professional satisfaction in watching Fitzware work; intelligence people, no matter their national origin, always had a great deal in common, like people who collected stamps or worked in banks. But the approach, when it came, was no surprise, since it turned out to be the same one favored by the Russian services, one that created an acceptable motive and solicited betrayal in the same breath.

Fitzware conducted the conversation like a maestro: The concierge situation in Paris- and here he was quite amusing: his apartment house groaned beneath the heel of a ferocious tyrant, un vrai dragon in her eighties with a will of iron-led gracefully to the political situation in Paris-here Fitzware implicitly acknowledged the concerns of his guest by citing, with a grim expression, the slogan chalked on walls and bridges, Vaut mieux Hitler que Blum, a fascist preference for the Nazis over Leon Blum, the Jewish socialist who’d led the government a year earlier. Then it was time for the political situation in France, followed closely by the political situation in Europe. Now the table was set and it only remained for dinner to be served.

“Do you think there can be peace?” Fitzware asked. He lit a small cigar and offered Szara one. Szara declined and lit a Gitane.

“Of course,” Szara said. “If people of good will are determined to work together.”