people like him from doing exactly what he was doing; for another, the potential for blackmail come the day when Fitzware wanted a view of Soviet operations in Paris and threatened to denounce him if he refused to cooperate; for a third, the strong possibility that Baumann’s information was in fact supplied by the Reich Foreign Office intelligence unit and would in time poison the British estimate of German armaments. What, he wondered, were they hearing on the subject from other sources? He was to find that out, sooner than he thought.
During this period, Szara found consolation in the most unlikely places. March, he discovered, was good spying weather. Something about the fierce skies full of racing clouds or the spring rains blowing slantwise past his window gave him courage-in a climate of turbulence one could put aside thoughts of consequences. The political parties of the left and the right were to be seen daily on the boulevards, bellowing their slogans, waving their banners, and the newspapers were frantic, with thick black headlines every morning. The Parisians had a certain facial expression: lips compressed, head canted a little to one side, eyebrows raised: It meant
De Montfried, meanwhile, had appointed himself official agent runner. He was no Abramov and no Bloch, but he had long experience as a commercial trader and believed he understood intuitively how any business agent should be handled. This assumption produced, in the hushed railroad library of the Renaissance Club, some extraordinary moments. De Montfried offering money-“Please don’t be eccentric about this, it is only the means to an end”-which Szara did not care to take. De Montfried in the guise of a Jewish mother, pressing smoked fish sandwiches on a man who could barely stand to look at a cup of coffee. De Montfried handed a stack of five hundred Certificates of Emigration, clearing his throat, playing the stoic with tears of pleasure in his eyes. None of this mattered. The days of Abramov and Bloch were over; Szara had been running OPAL operations for too long not to run his own when the time came. That included making sure he didn’t know too much about details that did not directly concern him.
But de Montfried said just enough so that Szara’s imagination managed the rest. He could see them, perhaps an eye surgeon from Leipzig with his family or a tottering, old rabbi from Berlin’s Hasid community, could see them boarding a steamer, watching the coastline of Germany disappear over the horizon. Life for them would be difficult, more than difficult, in Palestine. What the Nazi Brown Shirts had started the Arab raiding bands might yet finish, but it was at least a chance, and that was better than despair.
The British operatives provided all the usual paraphernalia: a code name, CURATE, an emergency meeting signal-the same “wrong number” telephone call the Russians sometimes used-and a contact to be known by the work name Evans. This was a rail-thin gentleman in his sixties, from his bearing almost certainly a former military officer, quite possibly of colonial service, who dressed in chalk-stripe blue suits, carried a furled umbrella, cultivated a natty little white mustache, and stood straight as a stick. Contacts were made in the afternoon, in the grand cinemas of the Champs-Elysees neighborhood: silent exchanges of two folded copies of
Silent but for, on one occasion, a single sentence, spoken by Evans across the empty seat and suitably muffled by the clatter of a crowd of Busby Berkeley tap dancers on the screen: “Our friend wants you to know that your numbers have been confirmed, and that he is grateful.” He was not to hear Evans speak again.
Confirmed?
That meant Baumann was telling the truth; his information had been authenticated by other sources reporting to the British services. And that meant, what? That Dr. Baumann was betraying a German
Szara had to hurry back to his apartment, hide a hundred and seventy-five certificates under the carpet until they could be delivered to de Montfried that evening, make a five P.M. meeting in the third arrondissement, the Marais, then head out to the place d’Italie for a
The meeting in the Marais took place in a tiny hotel, at an oilcloth-covered table in a darkened room. A week earlier, Szara had been offered his very own emigration certificate to Palestine. “It’s a back door out of Europe,” de Montfried had said. “The time may come when you’ll have no other choice.” Szara had politely but firmly declined. There was no doubt a reason he did this, but it wasn’t one he wanted to name. What he did ask of de Montfried was a second identity, a good one, with a valid passport that would take him over any border he cared to cross. His intention was not flight. Rather, like any efficient predator, he simply sought to extend his range. De Montfried, his favors refused again and again, was eager to oblige. “Our cobbler,” he’d said, using the slang expression for forger, “is the best in Europe. And I’ll arrange to have him paid, you’re not even to discuss it.”
The cobbler was nameless; a fat, oily man with thinning curls brushed back from a receding hairline. In a soiled white shirt buttoned at the sleeves, he moved slowly around the room, speaking French in an accent Szara could place only generally, somewhere in Central Europe. “You’ve brought a photograph?” he said. Szara handed over four passport pictures taken in a photo studio. The cobbler chuckled, chose one, and handed the rest back. “Myself, I don’t keep records-for that you’ll have to see the cops.”
He held a French passport between thick forefinger and thumb. “This,
“He does.”
“Not so smart as he thought.”
“Italian?”
The cobbler shrugged eloquently. “Born Marseille. Could mean anything. A French citizen, though. That’s important. Coming from down there you can always say you’re Italian, or Corsican, or Lebanese. It’s whatever you say, down there.”
“Why is it so good? “
“Because it’s real. Because Monsieur Bonotte will not come to the attention of the Spanish Guardia just about the time you get off the ferry in Algeciras. Because Monsieur Bonotte will not again come to anyone’s attention, excepting Satan, but the police don’t know anything about it. He’s legally alive. This document is legally alive. You understand? “
“And he’s dead.”
“Very. What’s the sense to talk, but you can have confidence he has left us and will not be dug up by some French farmer. That’s why I say it’s so good.”
The cobbler took the photo back, lit the corner with a match, and watched the blue-green flame consume the paper before he dropped it in a saucer. “Born in 1902. Makes him thirty-seven. Okay with you? The less I have to change the better.”
“What do you think?” Szara asked.
The cobbler drew his head back a little, evidently farsighted, and looked him over. “Sure. Why not? Life’s hard sometimes and we show it in the face.”
“Then leave it as it is.”
The cobbler began to glue Szara’s photo to the paper. When he was done, he waddled over to a bureau and returned with a stamper, a franking machine that pressed paper into raised letters. “The real thing,” he said proudly. He placed the device at a precise angle to the photo, then slid a scrap of cardboard atop the part of the page already incised. He pressed hard for a few seconds, then released the device. “This prevents falsification,” he said with only the slightest hint of a smile. He returned the franking device to the bureau and brought back a rubber stamp and a pad, a pen, and a small bottle of green ink. “Government ink,” he said. “Free for them. Expensive for me.” He concentrated himself, then stamped the side of the page firmly. “I’m renewing it for you,” he said. He dipped the pen into the ink and signed the space provided in the rubber-stamped legend. “Prefect Cormier himself,” he said. He applied a blotter to the signature, then looked at it critically and blew on the ink to make sure it was dry. He handed the passport to Szara. “Now you’re a French citizen, if you aren’t already.”
Szara looked through the pages of the passport. It was well used, with several recorded entries into France
