“We timed other cars. German cars.”
“All right. Eight minutes.”
“What about the guns?”
Weiss unbuckled the straps of his briefcase, opened the flap, and took out three revolvers and a small box. The guns were used, six-shot models with medium-length barrels. Szapera took one and examined it. The handgrip was scarred and scratched, the front sight filed flat, so it wouldn’t snag a pocket; the chambers were empty. Below the cylinder, the name of the manufacturer was stamped into the metal, then a word in a language he didn’t know that probably meant company.
“There’s a fourth,” Weiss said. “But it can’t be picked up until tomorrow. Be here tomorrow night, same time, I’ll have somebody bring it around. As for ammunition, you have thirty rounds in the box.”
Szapera nodded. “Good,” he said. “There won’t be time for more.”
Weiss had wanted to arm the group with a submachine gun, but they would have to do the best they could with the pistols. The man he’d sent up to Evreux on Monday had returned empty-handed. “According to our friends,” he’d told Weiss, “Renan and a comrade called Bernard attempted to steal six crates of MAS 38’s from a loading dock. Somebody knew about it, because the Germans were waiting for them. Bernard is in jail. Renan tried to run away and they shot him.”
Eva came up the stairs at ten. She brought him a delicious sandwich, liverwurst with mustard between thick slices of freshly made white bread, and a jar of cold tea spiked with sugar. “Very good,” he said.
She smiled. “Somebody has to feed you.”
“Oh, I get what I need.”
She lifted an eyebrow, knew it wasn’t true. She had lank brown hair, a narrow, watchful face, and wore thick glasses. He’d never seen her with makeup. “But then she takes her clothes off,” he’d once told Leon, “and you faint.”
“You fainted?”
“I should’ve.”
“What did she look like?”
“Hey, don’t pry.”
He finished the sandwich, it was too late now for her to make it back home before curfew. They talked a little, but they couldn’t wait. She blew out the candle, stood, and undressed. A goddess, he thought. Hips swelling from a narrow waist, full breasts, long sweeps of sallow skin. She was careful with her clothing, folded everything into a neat pile, then lay down beside him. They kissed for a while, then he rolled on top of her.
He shuddered to feel her skin next to his. “Hold me,” she said. “We don’t have to hurry.”
“No, we don’t.” She excited him too much, he thought. She would encourage him to slow down and enjoy it, rest her warm hands below his shoulder blades, a gentling touch that made it happen even faster.
“Oh, my glasses,” she said. She took them off, squinted up at him through the darkness. “Put them where they won’t get broken.”
He reached out, set the glasses down by the wall, just off the edge of the blanket.
“Mm,” she said.
“I love you, Eva,” he said.
“Don’t move,” she whispered. “Just stay in me.”
Saint-Denis. 4 November.
A cold morning, the sky at dawn blue and black, trails of fiery cloud on the east horizon. The garage in Saint-Denis smelled like hay. After several tries, the engine turned over and Eva started to maneuver out of the narrow entry. Backing up was not something she did well-in fact, she’d only done it once before. Szapera’s cousin Leon stood to one side of the car, waving his arms. Szapera, turned halfway around in the passenger seat, called out directions. “Now to the left. More, he says. No, stop. Stop!”
They had less time than they’d thought. Kohn had been late. “A problem at home,” he said sheepishly. Szapera wondered what that meant.
“Everybody be quiet,” Eva said. “Let me do this by myself.” The car crawled backward. Szapera looked out the rear window. She was off to one side, but made it with inches to spare.
The courier from Weiss had shown up the night before, a young man in a seaman’s jacket. He’d handed over a fourth weapon, an automatic pistol manufactured in Spain. “Good luck, comrade,” he’d said to Szapera. “Here is something extra from Weiss. Remember, no closer than thirty feet.”
A hand grenade. Szapera held it tight in his left hand. In his belt was the revolver. He’d given Leon the automatic-none of them was exactly sure how it worked, and Leon, just turned sixteen, with glasses much thicker than Eva’s, probably couldn’t hit anything anyhow.
Eva had negotiated the garage by backing straight out, blocking traffic in both lanes. Ignoring the furious honking, she made several moves until at last she got the car headed north. She should probably drive with a cushion, Szapera thought, she could barely see over the steering wheel.
“Can you manage?” he said.
“Don’t make me nervous.” She shifted from first to third. The car rattled and jerked, then ran smoothly.
Just outside the town of Aubervilliers, Eva pulled off the road and waited. Kohn was holding a pocket watch. “7:22,” he said. Szapera had a school friend-a redhead who looked more Irish than Jewish-who worked as a clerk at one of the offices of the Banque de France in Paris. Twice a week, an armored car left the bank with bundles of occupation money, which it took to a Wehrmacht office at an army barracks near Aubervilliers. Szapera had ridden his bicycle out there, observed the armored car going through the gates, and established the time of delivery. He went out again a week later to make sure he had it right. Stalin had robbed banks in Baku to finance underground work, Szapera meant to follow his example. He had proposed the idea to Weiss, who resisted at first, then, in early October, changed his mind.
They waited. Kohn kept looking at his watch. It was quiet in the car, even the crazy Leon shut up for a change. Szapera felt it would be better if they talked, but his mind was blank. He was breathing hard, the hand grenade clutched in his fist.
7:31. 7:34. “They’re late,” Kohn said.
Just then the armored car rumbled past. A van, steel plates bordered by double lines of bolt heads. A very old van, Szapera guessed, box-shaped, tall and unwieldy, like one of those odd-looking machines in newsreels of the 1914 war.
“Let’s go,” Szapera said.
Eva pulled out into traffic, the truck driver she’d cut off thrust his arm out the window and shook his fist.
“You go to hell,” Leon sputtered.
Eva’s face was white. There were two cars between the Talbot and the armored van. A long minute ticked by. Heavy woods on both sides, then the road narrowed for a tiny village. “Now,” Szapera said.
Eva waited-for a car coming toward them in the other lane, followed by two women riding bicycles-then swung out to pass. She oversteered; a wall loomed up in front of them, Leon and Kohn shouted warnings. She managed to get straightened out, then pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The Talbot roared with power, sped past the intervening cars, ran alongside the van. Szapera looked up, the driver turned to see who was next to him. For a moment, they stared at each other.
“Cut him off,” Szapera said.
Eva hesitated-the car-then stepped on the gas and threw the wheel over to the right. But the van driver saw it coming and accelerated, so they didn’t cut in front of the van, they hit it. Just behind the driver’s door, a loud bang of metal on metal then, surprisingly, the two vehicles, tires shrieking, spun around together and slammed into the front of a building.
Side by side, the Talbot and the van faced out into the road. Szapera looked down at his lap, he was covered with broken glass. Carefully he reached over and tried his door. Jammed. Next to him, Eva was holding her head. He had to get out, the plan was to run to the passenger side of the van, threaten the guard with a pistol while Kohn kept the driver at bay, and force them to open the door. In the newspapers, armored car robberies were described in just this way. But the rest of the plan would have to be changed, he realized. They wouldn’t be driving off with the money. Through a hole in the front window he could see steam pouring from beneath the Talbot’s hood.
He turned around, the door on Leon’s side was open. He climbed over the seat, and stumbled into the road. A
