Her phone rang, the office intercom. “Yes?”
“Helene, there’s a couple waiting in the reception.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“You’re going to give up, aren’t you,” Natalie said.
Helene nodded.
She saw Casson that night-waited for him in the park across from the Benoit. He came over and sat next to her on the bench, sensed right away that something was wrong. “What is it?” he said. She told him everything. He sighed at the end, a fatalist, a realist-he didn’t want her to know what went on inside him. “Well,” he said, “of course you had to give her what she wanted.”
“I know. It just made me sick to do it.”
“Now that she’s got the job, will she shut up?”
“I think so. The triumph should be enough for her, that, and rubbing my nose in it.”
Casson sat back against the bench and put his hands in his pockets. “The war will end, Helene. And, when it does, a lot of scores will be settled.”
“Yes, that’s what I keep telling myself. Oh, if you could just see her. She has the shape of a hen.”
“How did she find out?”
Helene shook her head. “Guessed, maybe. Do I look Jewish?”
He didn’t think so. She had dark, glossy hair, deep eyes, strong features, a face that was, at times, seductive for no reason he could think of. Like half the women in Paris, he thought. “Not to me,” he said.
She stood and took his hand; despite the cold her skin was hot and damp. “Let’s walk,” she said.
They walked through the park. The bare branches of the chestnut trees were stark against the sky. At the entrance there was a bust of Verlaine.
“I’ve talked to Degrave,” he said. “He told me he might be able to get you out in February, or maybe March. Until then, the important thing is to survive. Whatever you have to do.”
“You must survive, you must survive.” She stared down at the ground for a time. “I’ll tell you something I discovered, Jean-Claude. You can be scared for only so long, then a day comes when you don’t care anymore.”
Belgium in December. Through the cloudy window of a slow train. Like a pastoral drawing from the nineteenth century, he thought. Black and white and a hundred shades of gray; cows by a stream in a field, cows by a stream in a field, cows… A lone elm in the mist, a farmer in rubber boots, his dog by his side.
Casson dozed off, then woke up suddenly and made sure the paper-wrapped parcel was still on the seat next to him. Expensive, almost very expensive. What seemed like a mindless errand had sent him deep into the heart of his old neighborhood, where every passing stranger threatened to turn into somebody he knew.
The train rattled along, stopping at every village. He shared the first-class compartment-the German border guards tended to go easy on first-class passengers-with a Belgian couple and two French businessmen. The lawyer was riding in another car, a safety precaution. The Belgian couple started eating in Cambrai and never quite stopped. Slow and determined, unsmiling, they opened a wicker basket and worked their way from radishes to salted beef tongue, to some kind of white, waxy cheese, then to small, dried-out winter apples, demolishing a loaf of bread in the process. They didn’t talk, or look out the window. Just chewed, from Valenciennes to Mons. Casson pretended not to notice. It made him hungry, but he was used to that. When the couple got off the train, one of the businessmen, in an aside to his friend, said something about vaches, cows. But it was just bravado, Casson realized, they were hungry too.
The guards at Esschen, on the Dutch-Belgian border, were looking for somebody. They made all the passengers get out and stand by the train. The package. He made a fast decision, fumbled with his coat until everyone had left the compartment, then slid it under the seat across from his.
On the platform, the border guards were angry, Casson was shoved with a rifle. “You. Get over there.” It hurt more than it should have. There was an old Frenchman next to him, a dignified little man in a white goatee, who stood at attention, shoulders back, waiting for the Germans to let them go.
Casson could hear the guards searching the railroad car. Stomping down the aisles, slamming doors. He heard glass breaking, somebody laughed. An hour later, when they got back on, his package was where he’d left it. The train crawled north. Night fell. Casson could see the evening star. The old man, now sitting across from him, fell sound asleep, mouth wide open, breath whistling through his nose.
The prison was in Zunderdorp, across the Nordzee Canal from the main part of Amsterdam. They walked through silent streets for a long time, showed their papers to various guards, and finally to a prison official in a gray suit. They climbed an iron staircase to the top floor and were led past a tier of cells to a small, private room in the hospital.
Captain Vasilis rose from a hospital bed, embraced his lawyer, and shook Casson’s hand. He wore a robe over silk pajamas and good leather slippers. He had red-rimmed eyes set in heavy pouches, two days’ growth of gray beard on a face that ended in three chins, a voice like a rake drawn through gravel.
“Forgive us a minute,” he said to Casson. The accent was so heavy it took Casson a moment to realize the man had spoken French. The three of them sat at a small table. Vasilis and the lawyer leaned close to each other and spoke in low voices.
Casson could hear what they were saying, but it didn’t matter. “Did he go over there?” Vasilis asked.
“Not yet. His friend wasn’t ready.”
“When will it happen?”
“A week, maybe. The new figure is a little higher.”
“We don’t care.”
“No.”
“You can say something?”
“It won’t help.”
“Let it go, then.”
Eventually, Vasilis turned to him and said, “Sorry, business.”
“I understand,” Casson said. He handed over the package.
Vasilis tore the paper off and cradled the melon in both hands. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” He smelled the soft end, then pressed it expertly with his thumbs. “Very nice,” he said. He took a pair of glasses from the breast pocket of his bathrobe, looked at Casson for a moment, then put them away. “What are you?”
“I’m in the insurance business.”
“Ouay?” He drew the oui out to form the slang oh yeah? Then nodded in a way that meant and if my grandmother had wheels she would’ve been a cart.
“Yes, that’s what I do.”
“D’accord.” If that’s the way you want it, fine. He turned to the lawyer and said, “What time?”
“Almost noon.”
“Hey!” the captain shouted. “Van Eyck!”
The door opened, a guard peered into the room.
“Bring trays!”
“Yes, Captain,” the guard said, closing the door politely behind him.
Vasilis met Casson’s eyes and shook his head sorrowfully-you can barely imagine what this is costing me.
“Sir,” he said to Casson, “what you want?”
“Submachine guns. Six hundred of them. And ammunition.”
“Guns?” Vasilis sucked in his breath like a man who just burned his fingers. The expense!
“Yes,” Casson said. “We know.”
“Very difficult.”
Casson nodded, sympathetic.
“What for?”
Casson didn’t answer immediately-wasn’t it obvious? — but Vasilis waited. Finally he said, “Freedom.”
Vasilis sighed, the sound of a doomed man. Now he had to involve himself in difficulties. He turned to the lawyer. “You tell him what cost?”
“No.”
“I can get MAS 38 for you. French gun. You know problem?”
