and visits to Tangier, Oran, Istanbul, Bucharest, Sofia, and Athens. The home address was in the rue Paradis in Marseille. He checked the new date of expiry, March of 1942.
“When the time comes to renew again, just walk into any police station in France and tell them you’ve been living abroad. A French embassy in a foreign country is even better. You know the man who sent you to me?”
“No,” Szara said. De Montfried wouldn’t, he knew, make such a contact directly.
“Just as well,” the cobbler said. “You’re a gentleman, I’d say. You’re happy? “
“Yes.”
“Use it in good health,” said the cobbler. “Me I’d go and pick up a
It was after six when he left the hotel. The St.-Paul Metro platform was packed solid. When the train rolled in, he had to force his way on, jamming himself against the back of a young woman who might have been, from the way she was dressed, a clerk or a secretary. She said something unpleasant that he didn’t quite catch as the train pulled away, but he got a good strong breath of the sausage she’d eaten for lunch. He could see the place on her neck where her face powder stopped. “Sorry,” he muttered. She said something in slang he didn’t understand. When the crowd surged on at the Hotel-de-Ville station he was pressed against her even harder; her stiff, curly hair rubbing against his nose. “Soon we’ll be married,” he said, trying to make light of the situation. She was not amused and pointedly ignored him.
After a change of trains he reached his stop, Sevres-Babylone, and went trotting up the rue du Cherche-Midi toward his apartment. No matter how hard he might be pressed, he could not meet with Valais while a second passport was in his pocket. The concierge said good evening through her little window as he rushed toward his entryway in the dark courtyard. He pounded up three flights of stairs, jiggled the lock open with his key, tucked the Bonotte passport under the carpet with the certificates, then took off downstairs. The concierge raised an eyebrow as he hurried past-very little bothered or surprised her, but in general she did not approve of haste.
Back to the Sevres Metro, dodging housewives returning from the markets and hurtling a dog leash stretched between an aristocratic gentleman and his Italian greyhound squatting at the curb.
The Metro was even worse as the hour of seven approached. Valais was forbidden to wait more than ten minutes for him; if he were any later they’d have to try for the fallback meeting the following day. The first train that stopped revealed an impenetrable wall of dark coats when the door opened, but he managed to force his way onto the next. After a change at Montparnasse, with almost no time to make sure he wasn’t being followed, he left the station a minute after seven, ran around the first corner, then went tearing back the way he’d come. It was primitive, but the best he could manage under the pressure of time.
With thirty seconds to spare, he entered a women’s clothing shop-long racks of cheap dresses and a dense cloud of perfume- just off the place d’Italie. The shop was owned by Valais’s girlfriend, a short, buxom woman with a hennaed permanent wave and crimson lipstick. What Valais, a contemplative, pipe-smoking lawyer, and she saw in each other he couldn’t imagine. She was a few years older than Valais and hard as nails. Szara was breathless as he strode toward the back of the store. The curtain at the entrance of the dressing room hung open, and a woman in a slip was thrashing her way into a pea green dress that was tangled about her head and shoulders.
Valais was waiting in a small workroom where alterations were done. When Szara entered he was about to leave, his overcoat buttoned and his gloves on. He looked up from his watch, clenched his pipe in his teeth, and shook hands. Szara collapsed in a chair in front of a sewing machine and put his feet up on the treadle.
Valais launched into a long, determined, cautiously phrased description of his activity over the past ten days. Szara pretended to pay attention, his mind returning to what Evans had said in the movie theater that afternoon, then found himself thinking about the woman he’d stood with on the Metro. Had she pressed back against him? No, he thought not. “And then there is LICHEN,” Valais said, waiting for Szara to respond.
Valais put a black briefcase on the sewing machine stand. “She, ah, met a German gentleman in the bar of a certain hotel where she sometimes has a drink. He proposed an arrangement, she agreed. They went off to a cheaper hotel, nearby, where she sometimes entertains clients. He forgot his briefcase. She brought it to me.”
Szara opened the briefcase: it was stuffed with a package of pamphlet-size booklets, perhaps two hundred of them, bound with string. Clipped to the cover of the one on top was a slip of paper with the word WEISS printed in pencil. He worked one of the booklets loose and opened it. On the left-hand side of the page were German phrases, on the right the same phrases in Polish:
“She demanded additional money,” Valais said.
Szara’s hand automatically went to his pocket. Valais told him how much and Szara counted it out, telling himself he’d surely remember later how much it was and forgetting almost instantly. “WEISS must be the name of the operation,” he said to Valais. The word meant white.
“The invasion of Poland,” Valais said. He made a sucking noise, and a cloud of pipe smoke drifted to the ceiling of the dress shop. From the front of the store, Szara heard the ring of the cash register. Had the woman in the slip bought the pea green dress?
“Yes,” he said. “These are intended for Wehrmacht officers who will be transferred from attache duty in Paris, a few of them anyhow, back to their units in Germany before the attack. Then some for the Abwehr, military intelligence. Still, seems quite a few. Maybe he was on his way to other cities after Paris.”
“More Polish sorrow,” Valais said. “And it puts Hitler on the frontier of the Soviet Union.”
“If he’s successful,” Szara said. “Don’t underestimate the Poles. And France and England have guaranteed the Polish border. If the Germans aren’t careful they’re going to take on the whole world again, just like 1914.”
“They are confident,” Valais said. “They have an unshakable faith in themselves.” He smoked his pipe for a time. “Have you read Sallust? The Roman historian? He speaks of the Germanic tribes with awe. The Finns, he says, in winter find a hollow log to sleep in, but the Germans simply lay down naked in the snow.” He shook his head at the thought. “I am, perhaps you don’t know, a reserve officer. In an artillery unit.”
Szara lit a cigarette and swore silently in Polish-
Back on the Metro with the briefcase. Running up the stairs on the rue du Cherche-Midi. Looking in the mirror and combing his hair back with his fingers, he discovered a white streak of plaster dust on the shoulder of his raincoat-he’d rubbed up against a wall somewhere. He brushed at it, then gave up, put the briefcase in the back of his closet, and went out the door. Raced halfway down the stairs, reversed himself, and climbed back up. Reentered his apartment, snatched the pile of emigration certificates from under the carpet, put them in his own briefcase, and went out a second time.
The streets were crowded: couples going out for dinner, people coming home from work. The wind was ferocious, swirling up dust and papers. People held their hats on and grimaced; waves of chalk-colored cloud were speeding across the night sky. He’d take the Metro to Concorde, then change to the Neuilly line. From there it was a half-hour walk at least if he couldn’t find a taxi. It would certainly rain. His umbrella was in the closet. He’d arrive at the Cercle Renaissance late, looking like a drowned rat, with a white streak on his shoulder. He held tightly to the briefcase with its hundred and seventy-five certificates inside. Had she pressed back against him? A little?
When Szara entered the library de Montfried was reading a newspaper. He looked up, his face flushed with anger. “He’s going into Poland,” he said. “Do you know what that will mean?”
“I think so.” Uninvited, Szara sat down. De Montfried closed the paper emphatically and took off his reading glasses. His eyes seemed the color of mud in the half light of the small room.
“All this ranting and raving about the
“Yes.”
