The Polish Officer

“Bonjour, Monsieur,” Madame Roubier said. It amused her to pretend to be his language teacher. “Comment allez-vous?” The fingernail headed back in the other direction.

He turned away from the fiery lights, looked over his shoulder. She was sprawled on her stomach, reaching out to touch him. “He ignores me,” she pouted like a little girl. “Yes he does.” He turned back to the sky. A sudden stutter, bright yellow. Then a slow, red trail, curving down toward the earth. It made his heart sick to see that. “Yes he does.”

Brasserie Heininger. 11:30.

At table, a party of seven: the Comte de Rieu and his little friend Isia. Isia had paid a visit that afternoon to the milliner Karachine, who had fashioned, for her exclusively, a hat of bright cherries and pears with a red veil that just brushed the cheekbones.

At her left, the coal dealer Stein, his mood heavy and quiet, his cigar omnipresent. His companion, the fashionable Lisette Roubier, wore emerald silk. Next to her, the art dealer Labarthe, hair shiny with brilliantine, who specialized in Dutch and Flemish masters and jailed relatives. He could, for a price, produce any loved one from any prison in France. His companion was called Bella, a circus acrobat of Balkan origins.

At her side, the amusing Willy—w pronounced v— Kappler. The silliest-looking man: a fringe of colorless hair, a long, pointed nose like a comic witch, ears to catch the wind; a face lit up by a huge melon slice of a smile, as though to say well then what can I do about it?

“Coal!” he said to Stein. “Well, that’s a lucky job these days.” Then he laughed—melodious, infectious. You couldn’t resist joining in; if you didn’t get the joke, maybe you would later.

“I can sell as much as they’ll let me have,” Stein admitted. “But,” he added, “the stocks are often low.”

“Yes, it’s true. This ridiculous war drags on—but go talk sense to the English. Then too, Herr Stein, those rascals up there in the mines don’t like to work.” With fist and extended thumb he imitated a bottle, tilted it up to his mouth and made glug-glug sounds. Stein laughed. “Oh but it’s true, you know,” Kappler said.

“And you, Herr Kappler,” Stein said. “What is it that keeps you in Paris?”

“Hah! What a way to put it. I hardly need anything to keep me here.”

“In business?”

“Jah, jah. Business, all right.”

Across the table, the Comte de Rieu could barely suppress a laugh—he knew what Kappler did.

“The truth is,” Kappler said, “I’m just an old cop from Hamburg— like my poppa was before me. I was born to it. A cop under the kaiser, a cop during the Weimar time. So now I work for Heini and Reini, but believe me, Herr Stein, it’s the same old thing.”

Heini and Reini meant Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Which put Kappler somewhere in the RSHA empire—most likely the Gestapo or one of the SD intelligence units. Stein puffed at his cigar but it had gone out.

“Here, let me,” Kappler said. He snapped a silver lighter and Stein turned the cigar in the flame before inhaling.

“Tell them what you heard today, darling,” Labarthe said to his friend Bella.

She looked confused. “In beauty salon?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

She nodded and smiled—now she knew what was wanted. She wore a military-style soft cap with a black feather arching back from one side, and theatrical circles of rouge on her cheeks.

“It was, it was . . .” She turned to Labarthe for help, whispered in his ear, he spoke a phrase or two behind his hand and she nodded with relief. “Hairdresser was telling me about death ray,” she said brightly.

“Death ray?” Madame Roubier said.

“Yes. Was made by man who invented telegraph.”

“Marconi,” Labarthe prompted.

“Yes, Marconi. Now for Mussolini he build death ray. So, war is over.” She smiled enthusiastically.

Willy Kappler shook with silent laughter, then pressed a hand against the side of his face. “People love a rumor,” he said. “The stranger it is, the better they like it. Did you hear last week? How de Gaulle was killed in an air raid in London and British spies smuggled his ashes into Paris and buried them in Napoleon’s tomb?”

“I did hear that,” said the comte. “From my dentist. And on the last visit he’d told me the British had invented a powder that set water on fire. Told me in strictest confidence, mind you.”

“Mesdames . . . et . . . monsieurs!”

The waiter made sure he had their attention, then, with a flourish, he presented a foie gras blond en bloc, at least two pounds of it. In a basket, a mountain of toast triangles, crusts trimmed off. For each person at the table a tiny chilled dish of Charentais butter. The champagne-colored aspic quivered as the waiter carved slabs off the block and slid them deftly onto monogrammed plates. “Et alors! ” said the comte, when the first cut was made and the size of the black truffle within revealed. Then the table was quiet as knives worked foie gras on toast and little sips of Beaune were taken to wash it down. “I tell you,” said Willy Kappler, eyes glazed with rapture, “the best is really very good.”

The headwaiter appeared at Stein’s chair.

“Yes?” Stein said.

“A telephone call for you, Monsieur.”

The phone was on a marble table in an alcove by the men’s toilet.

“Stein,” he said into the receiver. But the line just hissed, there was nobody on the other end.

The men’s room attendant opened the door a few inches and said, “Monsieur Stein?” Stein went into the small tiled foyer that led to the urinals. The attendant’s table held a stack of white towels, scented soaps, and combs. A little dish of coins stood to one side. The white-jacketed attendant was called Voyschinkowsky, a man in his sixties, with the red-rimmed, pouchy eyes and hollow cheeks of the lifelong insomniac. Rumor had it that he had, at one time, been one of the richest men in Paris, a brilliant speculator, known as the Lion of the Bourse. But now, with his gravel-voiced Hungarian accent and white jacket, he was just an amusing character.

“I have your message, Monsieur Stein,” Voyschinkowsky said. “A young man is waiting downstairs, looking at newspapers at the stand just east of the restaurant. He needs to see you urgently.”

De Milja peeled a hundred-franc note from a roll in his pocket and laid it in Voyschinkowsky’s dish. “What next, I wonder,” he grumbled under his breath.

Voyschinkowsky’s face remained opaque. “Thank you, Monsieur,” he said. De Milja went downstairs. It was a warmish April night, the street smelled like fish—a waiter in a rubber apron was shucking oysters over a hill of chipped ice. The young man reading the headlines at the newspaper stand wore a thin jacket and a scarf. “Yes? You’re waiting for me?” de Milja said.

The young man looked him over. “Fedin needs to see you right away,” he said.

“Where?”

“Up at Boulogne-Billancourt.” Boulogne meant the factory district at the edge of Paris, not the seaside town.

De Milja stared at the young man. It could be anything—an emergency, a trap. There was nothing he could do about it. “All right,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

The young man looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes to curfew.”

“I’ll hurry,” de Milja said. He had a pass that allowed him to be out any time he wished, but he didn’t want to go into that now.

Back at the table he said, “An emergency.”

“What happened?” Madame Roubier said.

“An accident at the yard. A man is injured.” He turned to the comte. “Would you see Madame home?”

“Yes, of course.”

“May I help?” said Willy Kappler, very concerned. “Not much I can’t do in this city.” De Milja seemed to consider. “Thank you,” he said. “I think the best thing is for me to go, but I appreciate the offer.”

Kappler nodded sympathetically. “Another time,” he said.

They rode the metro to the Quai d’Issy station. The train stopped there because the tunnel up ahead had