them.” Kovar smiled. “Only the Russians could get themselves into a position, in 1941, where sabers and horses really matter.”
“How do you know all this?” Casson said.
“Oh, it’s talk,” Kovar said. “But it’s good talk.”
Casson was cold; he got up, walked around, rubbed his hands together. “Your friend,” he said. “When do you think he might try?”
“Who knows? He’s a survivor, he’ll wait for the right moment. Of course, he might move a little faster if he knew a little more.”
“I don’t think it’s all laid out. Just French army officers, a center of resistance. I don’t know what they intend to do-spy for the British? Blow up power stations? It could be anything.”
He walked to the window and stared out. “We’re just attorneys, Kovar. We represent two principals who may need to cooperate but cannot be seen to do so. A few years ago I worked with a Swiss lawyer. This man had a particular specialty, back-to-back negotiations. Two parties negotiate entirely through a third party so that they don’t ever know who they’re talking to. We may, eventually, come to something a lot like that-the parties will be known, the individuals invisible.”
Casson could see that this made sense to Kovar. “On the other hand, it may just be a matter of setting up a single meeting, then gracefully leaving the stage.”
Kovar shook his head slowly. “Somehow I doubt it will be that easy.”
Casson laughed. “No, it never is.”
They were silent for a time, then Casson said, “How do you make a living these days?”
“Oh, I survive. Always under false ID, always in some lost corner of the world. For a time I had the perfect job, at Samaritaine, the big department store. Every night, after hours, they wax the floors. First it’s the cleaners, then the waxers and polishers. The wax is rubbed in with cloths and left to dry for a half hour or so. The best way to polish it is with felt slippers-shuffling along from one end of the room to the other. I’m sure somebody used to do it at your house.”
“Yes,” Casson said. “Once a week.”
“What they do at Samaritaine is hire people to wear the felt slippers, a dozen or so. The usual crowd who work the night in Paris, each one a little more cracked than the next, ‘the princess,’ ‘the Albanian,’ I suppose I was ‘the novelist.’ The boss wasn’t a bad guy, lost an arm in the 1914 war, he’d play music on a Victrola, usually waltzes, but you could do any step you liked as long as you stayed in contact with the floor. It’s hypnotic, of course. The wood is dull to start with, then glows as you polish. We’d work our way from floor to floor, skating around the towels and the blankets and the brooms. On the sixth, we’d each put on a lady’s hat from the display trees-a little joke-the violins sawing away on The Vienna Woods. Well, I used to think, Cocteau really ought to see this. Truth is, I liked it, it suited me.
“But eight months for somebody in my position was too long, I had to quit. For the moment, I’m writing the occasional newspaper feature, under an alias, of course. It gets me a few francs, mostly from old friends I’ve known for years, mostly the socialists, a very tolerant crowd. Articles on soccer, on sound health, tips for cooking turnips. And then, I’ve always got a novel going.”
“Will you stay in France?”
“Maybe. For one thing, it’s not so easy to get out, now. And you have to find a country that will take you. I can’t go near Spain. Switzerland is out. Hard to say, maybe Mexico. For the moment, I’m here. If I vanish, it’ll mean somebody’s police finally stumbled over me and that was that. What about you?”
“I take it a day at a time,” Casson said. “Count myself lucky to have a roof over my head and something to eat. Beyond that, God only knows.”
This is the BBC, broadcasting from London. Here is the news in French. The Comite Francais de Liberation National announced today in London that, after a trial in absentia and review by the Judicial Section, Hauptsturmfuhrer Karl Kriegler, an SS official at the Sante prison in Paris, has been condemned to death. He was sentenced for the torture and murder of prisoners-of-war under confinement at the Sante, specific instances are cited in the indictment. The sentence is to be carried out at the discretion of the CFLN, at any time after the official declaration of the verdict, by any means necessary, or at the end of the war. Other personnel at French prisons are reminded that all wars eventually do come to an end, records are being kept, and they will be held to account for their actions. In other news…
Damn their eyes.
In a cellar on the outskirts of Paris, Weiss had to acknowledge that he had nothing like the powerful BBC at his disposal, and de Gaulle’s people were using it to full effect. Not that he disagreed with the strategy-the sentence in absentia might have a sobering effect on the Hauptsturmfuhrer, as it had in other cases. It was just that he had an executive’s view of the world, and as an executive he was stung when competitors had resources he didn’t. He could turn out endless editions of the underground Humanite, his best writers storming and threatening, but it didn’t begin to add up to the power of the BBC.
This in a week when things were not going well. He had been reprimanded by Moscow Center for the Aubervilliers raid-dear comrade. They might have moved their wireless operation back to the Urals, but they’d only been out of contact for two days and then-he suspected he was now receiving from a relay station in Sweden-then they’d let him have it. Operational rules specified a second automobile, to provide a getaway after an attack. How could he not have known that the Germans would use a chase car? Why wasn’t it spotted during surveillance?
A second car? From where? How?
They’d obviously seen the French police report, and he hadn’t sent it to them. Somebody after his job, maybe. He leaned on the table he used as a desk and closed his eyes. Just ten minutes. The BBC droned on-a lycee class in Belfort had come to school wearing Cross of Lorraine armbands, the Gaullist symbol. He could do that, out in Montreuil or Boulogne, and tell the world in leaflets, but it would never have the impact of a BBC broadcast. Above his head, the floorboards creaked as people cooked dinner and the aromas drifted down into the cellar; museau- jellied beef muzzle- and cabbage.
A knock at the door. “Comrade Weiss?”
“Yes?”
“Dinner?”
“Maybe later.”
“Comrade Somet is waiting to see you.”
“All right. Five minutes.”
What was this, he wondered. Narcisse Somet had been in party work for twenty years. A journalist, cheeks and nose colored by the broken blood vessels of the longtime drinker, eyeglasses with tinted lenses, gray hair cut en brosse. He had always worked for trade weeklies, especially those that covered the mining and metals industries. Secretly, he wrote for Humanite, at one time contributing to its most popular feature-L’Huma consistently picked more winners at the Paris racetracks than any other newspaper.
Weiss went to the door and called upstairs, Somet shuffled in a moment later.
They shook hands. Somet settled himself in a chair, coughed a few times into his fist. They made small talk for a while, then Somet said, “I’ve been contacted by Alexander Kovar.”
Casson took his nightly meal at a small cafe on the place Maillart. The plane trees on the square were bare now, and the branches dripped, but it was at least something to look at. He ate at a table by the front window, a newspaper folded beside his plate. He’d run out of ration coupons for meat or fish, which left him with the only nonrationed dish on the menu, soup. Thin and yellowish, a few lentils, some onion, and a small piece of carrot. Served lukewarm, with a slice of coarse gray bread. The trick was to think about lentils as he used to know them, in a salad with mustard sauce and lean bacon. His father used to say, “You can’t eat dreams!” But, in a way, you could.
He turned to the entertainment section of the newspaper; reviews, ads, and a few brief news stories. Such as-FILM STAR WEDS IN SOUTH. In Villefranche, to be precise, the actress Citrine (Danielle Aubin) had married the director Rene Guillot (The Shoemaker’s Wedding, Blackbeard the Pirate). The newlyweds to honeymoon on Cap Ferrat, then, early next year, to work on Guillot’s new project, Hotel de la Mer. With a photo of the happy couple.
He felt, at that moment, not very much. A flash of sorrow, an iron band around his throat, a small voice saying what did you expect? He paid for dinner, clamped the paper beneath his arm, and headed back to the hotel.
