business of oil, but, Serebin suspected, perhaps well beyond that. “So, monsieur,” she said, “you are an old friend of the baron’s.”
“We’ve met, here and there, over the years. Moscow, Paris. A conference, a dinner party.” Oh, you know.
She knew. “I’ve had a note from his Paris office, hand-delivered, that suggests someone like you would call, and that I am to be, informative.” A dark cloud passed in front of the sun. “So I shall be. But, monsieur, if you are not discreet, we shall both be shot, or whatever it is that the Boche do these days. Beheading, is it?”
“So they say.”
“Well, I’d prefer that mine stay where it is, if it’s all the same to you.”
Serebin’s smile was meant to reassure. “I wonder if you could tell me,” he said, “what happened to him, in London?”
“Nobody knows, not really. He was forcing his way up the ladder, as always, but it’s thought he pushed a bit too hard, perhaps bested somebody who was better left unbested. They have rules there-they don’t tell you what they are, but they have them. And, if you break them, doors close, people are out when you call, invitations don’t come. A summer frost, it’s all quite magical.”
“Nothing like Paris, of course.”
The irony was clear, but she said, “We’re perhaps more tolerant here, but you may be right. In any event, the British find themselves in difficulty, and perhaps not so particular about their friends. That’s also in the rules, no doubt.”
“A footnote. But they will prevail, in the end.”
“God and Roosevelt willing, they shall. And sooner would be better. Now, that said, how can I be of service to you?”
“Friends of mine have an interest in the disruption of Roumania’s oil exportation to Germany.”
“Oh do they? Well, I suppose it can be tried. Again.”
“If it will end the war it has to be tried, no?”
She thought for a moment before she answered. “Oil is critical for Germany, especially in time of war. So, it excites them, inspires them to heroic effort. For example, during the evacuation of Dunkirk, the British bombed the oil storage facilities near Hamburg. The hits were not direct, but the tanks were punctured, and three thousand tons of oil leaked out. Almost all of it, however, was recovered, pumped back into the tanks. That, monsieur, that level of determination, is what your friends ought to be thinking about.”
“We know this, in Russia. The last, oh, three hundred years or so, when the moment was right, we would invite them to come over and help us out.”
She knew the history. “National character,” she said. “They fix things. For example, the last time the British went after Roumanian oil, they were quite successful. Have you ever heard the name Empire Jack?”
“No.”
“Colonel John Norton-Griffiths, member of Parliament, no less, and one of those delicious madmen produced by a rather sane race of people. Griffiths showed up in Bucharest in 1916, just ahead of the German cavalry. He came from Russia, in a two-seater Rolls which carried him, his valet, and several crates of champagne. He got the Roumanians to agree that the Ploesti oil fields had to be destroyed and, under his direction, they wrecked. I mean, they wrecked. Blew up the derricks, plugged the wells, broke into the pipelines, flooded the fields with oil and set it on fire. Griffiths worked alongside them, lit off the gas in an engine house and was blown out the door with his hair on fire. Didn’t stop him for a minute. He got hold of a sledgehammer and went for the derricks and the pipes like a demon. In the end, they smashed seventy refineries, burned up eight hundred tons of crude oil and petroleum products. The flames didn’t die down for weeks.”
Serebin acknowledged the magnitude of the adventure but could sense the ending, the homily.
“But, by 1918, the Germans had production back up to eighty percent of the 1914 level.”
“Still, two years.”
“Oh yes, it hurt them. When the war ended, Ludendorff was headed for Baku after Caspian oil, with Turkey, Germany’s ally, trying to break in from the south. At that moment, the army had only a two-month supply, the defense industries were out of lubricants, and the navy was barely able to function.”
“It worked.”
“With Roumanian help, I emphasize that, it did. The Allies held a conference, about ten days after the armistice, where a man named Berenger, a French senator, made a speech that we don’t, in this building, tend to forget. Oil, he said, ‘the blood of the earth,’ had become, in war, ‘the blood of victory.’”
“A dramatic image.”
“The Germans certainly thought it was. ‘Of course he’s right,’ they told each other. ‘So now we’ll find a way to make our own oil.’”
“Synthetics.”
“The hydrogenation of German coal. The process developed by Bergius in the 1920s, acquired by IG Farben in 1926. Bergius got the Nobel Prize in chemistry, Farben sold a share of the process to Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Germany had oil. Some of it, anyhow. At the present moment-and here I remind you of that man in the top hat, raising his axe-the Bergius process provides ninety-five percent of the Luftwaffe’s aviation gasoline. Still, they must have Roumanian oil. At the moment, they import a high volume from Russia but, if that should stop, they’ll need Roumania. Even with fourteen synthetic fuel plants at work, the Ploesti field would account for fifty-eight percent of the German oil supply. Thus the Blitzkrieg: rapid invasion, no long-term demand for fuel. But, even if the Russian imports end, and even if the tanks stop, down on the roads, Germany can fight the air war, can bomb Britain every night.”
Mademoiselle Dubon studied the look on Serebin’s face-it was not, apparently, unamusing. Her tone was gentle: “You may say merde, monsieur, if you wish.”
“Merde.”
“And I agree. For war in these times, only partial solutions, and not very satisfying. Nonetheless…”
Serebin rose, walked to the window, looked out at the cold, empty park. Before the war, he would have seen British nursemaids and two-year-old French aristocrats, but they’d gone away. When he lit a Sobranie, Mademoiselle Dubon produced an ashtray.
“Have you met the tempestuous Elsa?” she said.
“I have. But no tempests, at least not while I was around.”
“They occur, I’ve heard, but Kostyka is smitten, she can do no wrong. And, adding spice to the gossip, there are those who say she is a Russian spy.”
Serebin returned to his chair. What would that mean? “Is she, do you think?”
“Who knows. A man like Ivan Kostyka serves a life sentence of suspicion, he must assume that everyone he meets is trying to get to him. Sex, love, friendship, gratitude, respect, you name it-those are the tools of the trade. So, if she is a Soviet agent, he suspects it, he goes to bed with it, and worries about it in the morning.”
She paused to let that sink in, then said, “And, speaking of Russia, you should keep in mind the events of last May and June. When Roumania chose Germany over Russia as her patron state-she had to pick one or the other- Stalin became very irritated and took Roumania’s provinces of Bessarabia and the northern Bucovina. That made Hitler nervous, it put the USSR just on the doorstep of ‘his’ oil. So, don’t be surprised if Hitler goes east, maybe sooner than you think.”
“Let’s hope he does, because that will be the end of him.”
“Likely it will, but you can’t count on it. Now, you must be aware of what the British have already tried.”
“Some, certainly not everything.”
“In the fall of 1939, Britain and France offered the Roumanians money, as much as sixty million dollars, to destroy the oil fields, but they could never settle on a price. Then, that same winter, the British secret service sent a force of men from the British navy, posing as art students, up the Danube, to sink a line of barges and block the river. Since almost all Roumanian oil is barged to Germany, a logical solution.”
“That was in the newspapers. A loud snicker from Dr. Goebbels.”
“A justified snicker. The Germans fooled them-got them to go ashore, then stole their fuel. A debacle. And there were other attempts; a plan to bribe fifty river pilots, to disappear, and murder the other ten. A guerrilla raid on the Tintea field, which is the high-pressure field, thwarted by diplomatic concerns. Some other plot, betrayed by an oil executive in London. There may have been more, that I don’t know about and never will, but the lesson is
