“Fernand.” Szapera didn’t know him.
“He works in the Citroen plant.”
Szapera thought for a moment, and came up with a compromise. “Take the messages now,” he said. “Decryptions and the rest of it, everything that came in tonight.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to stay for the 1:35 transmission.”
“He signaled twice,” Sylvie said.
“Here. Take it,” Szapera said. He handed her several sheets of paper, cheap stuff with brown flecks in it, covered with tiny numbers and block letters.
Sylvie put on her wool muffler, then her coat. She’d be safe enough in the streets, Szapera thought. The curfew had been moved back for Christmas and New Year, a reward from the Germans for a compliant population.
Sylvie stood by the door, her face taut and unsmiling as always. “I think you should go,” she said.
“No. I’ll be all right.”
“The rules are that you should leave.”
“I will. Fifteen minutes, plus whatever time they take to send.” Goddamn her, he thought, she won’t go. She stared at him, her hand on the doorknob. “I’ll make some tea for us,” she said. “In my room. After we drop off the papers.”
What was this? She felt nothing for him, not that way anyhow. A ruse, he thought. He wanted to mock her, but he didn’t have it in his heart to do that, not anymore.
“Wait for me then,” he said. “At the rue Lenoir apartment, then we’ll have tea together.”
For a long moment she stood there, not wanting to leave without him. Finally she said, “All right, then,” and closed the door behind her.
He heard her walk lightly down the stairs, heard the street door open and shut, then listened at the window as her footsteps receded up the street. Good. Whatever the phone signal meant, the night’s transmissions were safe. It wasn’t the first time there had been a false alarm. He paced around the room. Now, his decoding work gone, he had nothing to do, not even anything to read. Ah, Sylvie’s biology text, left on the chair. He picked it up, thumbed through it. Look at this, he thought, she’s written her name on the title page.
Smiling grimly to himself, he tore the page out, took a rag from a nail beside the stove, opened the door and threw it in. Now she’ll be mad at me for damaging her book. But, really, she should have known better.
He walked over to the table, sat in the office chair and leaned back, putting his feet up. Only a few minutes until the last transmission of the night-his work would be complete, then he could relax. He flipped through the book, stopping now and then to look at the illustrations. A long time since he’d studied this kind of stuff. The Sea Horse, fish of the genus Hippocampus (See Fig. 18-Hippocampus hudsonius), belonging to the pipefish family, with prehensile tail and elongated snout, the head at a right angle to the body. While the habitat of the Sea Horse is known to include-
He went back to the window. Checked his watch. 1:29. Quiet out, dead in this neighborhood. Footsteps? Yes, somebody coming home. No, two people. In a hurry. The street door flew open, the knob banging hard against the wall. People, several of them, pounding up the staircase. What?
His heart fluttered, but he was already moving toward the table. He grabbed the sheaf of encryption tables and shoved them in the stove, threw the rag in after them, and kicked the door closed. Let them try to grab it barehanded.
Next, the revolver. He swept it off the table as the footsteps came around the corner of the staircase and down the hall. Could there be some perfectly good explanation? No. Could he get to the roof? No, too late. He pulled back the hammer of the revolver until it cocked. He wasn’t going alone, that was certain. And they weren’t going to have him alive. A fist pounded on the door, a voice shouted in German.
He fired the first shot, was deafened by the sound. A ragged hole, chest-high, appeared in the door. From the landing, an indignant yelp. Streams of German, hysterical shouting. There was a whole crowd out there. He reminded himself to kneel down, fired a second time, and a third.
The return fusillade blew the door apart, two machine pistols firing on full automatic. Szapera was knocked backward, under the table. He worked himself around to shoot again, knees slipping in blood on the floorboards. He aimed the revolver, the room echoed with the shot, his ears rang. Again they fired through the door. Szapera was amazed, not that a bullet had gone through his heart, had killed him, but that he could still be conscious for the instant it took to know such a thing.
MAS MODELE 38
10 January, 1942.
Casson boarded the night train to Marseilles at 8:25, at the Gare de Lyons, but they didn’t get under way until 10:40-sabotage on the track at Bourg-la-Reine, according to the conductor.
The train slowed to a crawl and switched over to the north-bound track. Casson rested his forehead against the cold window, saw twisted rails that glowed for an instant in the moonlight and a crowd of railwaymen warming their hands at a fire in an iron barrel. A few minutes later they were out in the countryside; patches of snow on the hills, the rivers under the railway bridges frozen to sheets of gray ice.
Just after four in the morning they passed Moulins, on the river Allier. It had become a border town, where the Occupied Zone met the area ruled by Vichy, a few kilometers down the river. By then only one passenger, perhaps a commercial traveler, remained in the compartment. Casson had waded over a branch of the Allier a year earlier, guided by the son of a local aristocrat. April of 1941, Citrine waiting for him in a hotel in Lyons.
The German exit Kontrol, leaving what was now called Frank-reich, was located at a small station on the northern edge of the city. It was typical, Casson thought. The Germans always seemed to choose isolated, anonymous areas for their operations-you didn’t know where you were, there was nowhere to run, whatever happened there was invisible.
But, this time, not too bad. Degrave had made sure he had all the right papers. A few German noncoms boarded the train, tired at that time of night. They glanced at his identity card, peered at the underwear and socks in his valise, then stamped his passport. He was sweating by the time they left the compartment-sometimes they arrested people for no apparent reason.
The train rolled slowly into the main station in Moulins, where the French border police ordered everybody onto the platform and made them stand in line. From all the muttering and grumbling that went on it was clear to Casson that this wasn’t the usual procedure.
The line, heading to a table manned by uniformed officers, barely moved. The passengers breathed plumes of steam and stamped their feet. When Casson reached the table, he handed over his identity card with his travel and work permits folded in the middle. The officer took a long, careful look, then said, “This one out.” He was escorted to a room inside the station, where a civilian official sat at an old metal desk.
He sat down as directed, and handed over his papers. They were spread out, slowly examined, notes were made on a sheet of paper. Outside, he heard the hiss of steam, then the slow progress of the Marseilles train as it moved out of the station.
The official was young, savagely combed and brushed and shaved, wore steel-framed eyeglasses and hair freshly clipped to a perfect line across the back of the neck. He had a sulky mouth, set against the world-born angry and meant to stay that way. Perfect, Casson thought, for a petit fonctionnaire. On his desk was a framed photo of Petain, white-haired and godly. A portable icon, Casson thought. He takes it with him wherever he goes.
“Monsieur Marin,” he began.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your papers describe you as a claims investigator.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“For the Compagnie des Assurances Commerciales du Nord. ”
“Yes.”
“Your business in Marseilles?”
