Kingdom of Shadows

and, when it came, warmed his hands on the bowl. “I was here, once before,” he said to the patron. “Last March, I think it was.”

The patron gave him a look. Really?

“I met an old man. I can’t recall his name, I don’t think he mentioned it. At the time, a friend of mine had difficulties with a passport.”

The owner nodded. Yes, that sort of thing did happen, now and then. “It’s possible. Somebody like that used to come here, once in a while.”

“But not anymore.”

“Deported,” the owner said. “In the summer. He had a little problem with the police. But for him, the little problem became a big problem, and they sent him back to Vienna. After that, I can’t say.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Morath said.

“He is also sorry, no doubt.”

Morath looked down, felt the height of the wall between him and the patron, and understood there was nothing more to be said. “He had a friend. A man with a Vandyke beard. Quite educated, I thought. We met at the Louvre.”

“The Louvre.”

“Yes.”

The patron began drying a glass with a cloth, held it up to the light, and put it back on the shelf. “Cold, today,” he said.

“Perhaps a little snow.”

“You think so?”

“You can feel it in the air.”

“Maybe you’re right.” He began wiping the bar with the cloth, lifting Morath’s bowl, scooping up the cat and setting it gently on the floor. “You must let me clean, Sascha,” he said.

Morath waited, drinking his coffee. A woman with a baby in a blanket went past in the street.

“It’s quiet here,” Morath said. “Very pleasant.”

“You should come more often, then.” The patron gave him a tart smile.

“I will. Perhaps tomorrow.”

“We’ll be here. God willing.”

It took a half hour, the following morning. Then a woman-the woman who had picked up the money and, Morath remembered, kissed him on the steps of the Louvre, appeared at the cafe. “He’ll see you,” she told Morath. “Try at four-fifteen tomorrow, in the Jussieu Metro station. If he can’t get there, try the next day, at three-fifteen. If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to find another way.”

He wasn’t there on the first try. The station was crowded, late in the day, and if somebody was taking a look at him, making sure there were no detectives around, Morath never saw it. On the second day, he waited forty-five minutes, then gave up. As he climbed the stairs to the street, the man fell in step with him.

Not as portly as Morath remembered him, he still wore the Vandyke beard and the tweed suit, and something about him suggested affinity with the world of commercial culture. The art dealer. He was accompanied, as before, by a man with a white, bony face who wore a hat set square on a shaven head.

“Let’s take a taxi,” the art dealer said. “It’s too cold to walk.”

The three of them got in the back of a taxi that was idling at the curb. “Take us to the Ritz, driver,” said the art dealer.

The driver laughed. He drove slowly down the rue Jussieu and turned into the rue Cuvier.

“So,” the art dealer said. “Your friends still have problems with their papers.”

“Not this time,” Morath said.

“Oh? Then what?”

“I would like to meet somebody in the diamond business.”

“You’re selling?”

“Buying.”

“A little something for the sweetheart.”

“Absolutely. In a velvet box.”

The driver turned up the hill on the rue Monge. From the low sky, a few drops of rain, people on the street opened their umbrellas. “A substantial purchase,” Morath said. “Best would be somebody in the business a long time.”

“And discreet.”

“Very. But please understand, there’s no crime, nothing like that. We just want to be quiet.”

The art dealer nodded. “Not the neighborhood jeweler.”

“No.”

“Has to be in Paris?”

Morath thought it over. “Western Europe.”

“Then it’s easy. Now, for us, it’s a taxi ride and, maybe tomorrow, a train ride. So, we’ll say, five thousand francs?”

Morath reached into his inside pocket, counted out the money in hundred-franc notes, and put the rest away.

“One thing I should tell you. The market in refugee diamonds is not good. If you bought in Amsterdam a year ago and went to sell in Costa Rica tomorrow, you’d be badly disappointed. If you think a thousand carats of value is a thousand carats of value, like currency in a normal country somewhere, and all you’ll have to do is carve up the heel in your shoe, you’re wrong. People think it’s like that but it isn’t. Since Hitler, the gem market is a good place to lose your shirt. F’shtai?”

“Understood,” Morath said.

“Say, want to buy a Vermeer?”

Morath started to laugh.

“No? A Hals then, a little one. Fits in a suitcase. Good, too. I’ll vouch for it. You don’t know who I am, and I’d rather you never did, but I know what I’m talking about.”

“You need somebody rich.”

“Not this week, I don’t.”

Morath smiled regret.

The chalk-white man took off his hat and ran his hand over his head. Then said, in German, “Stop. He’s moral.”

“Is that it?” the art dealer said. “You don’t want to take advantage of a man who’s a fugitive?”

The driver laughed.

“Well, if you ever, God forbid, have to run for your life, then you’ll understand. It’s beyond value, by then. What you’ll be saying is ‘take the picture, give the money, thank you, good-bye.’ Once you only plan to live till the afternoon, you’ll understand.”

For a time, there was silence in the cab. The art dealer patted Morath on the knee. “Forgive me. What you need today is a name. That’s going to be Shabet. It’s a Hasidic family, in Antwerp, in the diamond district. There’s brothers, sons, all sorts, but do business with one and you’re doing business with all of them.”

“They can be trusted?”

“With your life. I trusted them with mine, and here I am.” The art dealer spelled the name, then said, “Of course I need to certify you to them. What should I call you?”

“Andre.”

“So be it. Give me ten days, because I have to send somebody up there. This is not business for the telephone. And, just in case, you and I need a confirmation signal. Go to the Madine, ten days from now. If you see the woman, it’s all settled.”

Morath thanked him. They shook hands. The chalk-white man tipped his hat. “Good luck to you, sir,” he said in German. The driver pulled over to the curb, in front of a charcuterie with a life-size tin statue of a pig by its doorway, inviting customers inside with a sweep of his trotter. “Voila le Ritz!” the driver called out.

Emile Courtmain sat back in his swivel chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared out at the avenue