clear, this is harder than it looks.”
“Encore merde?”
“With pleasure, a Wagnerian chorus of it.”
“And, when they’re done, I have a rather simpleminded question.”
“Ask.”
“Why don’t the Germans simply double their synthetic output?”
“Certainly there is such a plan in the economic ministry, and if they could wave a magic wand, they would. However, these plants take time and resources to build, and the Bergius process demands an extraordinary tonnage of coal-you don’t want to starve the Krupp forges. No guns if you do that. They will certainly build more refineries, but they will also lose capacity to British bombing. So, today, they must have the Roumanian oil. And, tomorrow. And, I believe, for a long time to come.”
“Mademoiselle Dubon. Tell me, what would you do?”
She thought it over for a time, then said, “Well, I leave the miserable details to you and your friends, but there are only two possibilities, as far as I can see. If this is to be a secret operation, sabotage, then there must be, at some level, Roumanian complicity. The only other choice is waves of British bombers, willing to accept an obscene casualty rate from the antiaircraft protection. It took Empire Jack and his Roumanians ten days to do their work, so the small-unit commando raid isn’t an option. And then, you are surely aware that the Roumanians and their German friends know you’re coming. They are waiting for you, my dear.”
There was a silence when she stopped talking. He could hear typewriters in other offices, a telephone rang. Finally she said “So,” raised an eyebrow, and left it at that.
“You’ve been very helpful,” Serebin said. She didn’t, he could see from her expression, especially believe it.
A man appeared in the doorway, a dossier under one arm. “Ah, excuse me,” he said, “I’ll…”
Serebin stood up. Mademoiselle Dubon said, “You can come in, Jacques. This is Monsieur Blanc from the finance ministry, he was just leaving.” Over the man’s shoulder, as he shook hands with Serebin, she mouthed the words bon courage.
29 December. When Serebin returned to his hotel, in late afternoon, there was a letter waiting for him at the desk. When he saw the Turkish stamps and the handwritten address, each letter carefully drawn in blunt pencil, he knew what it meant. He took the letter up to his room and sat on the bed and, after a time, he opened it.
“ Gospodin, I am grieved to tell you that Tamara Petrovna was taken to the hospital. Doctor says it will only be a few days.” Serebin looked at the postmark, the letter had taken three weeks to get to Paris. “She wanted me to write that she says farewell to you, that you must take care, that you are right in what you do.” The words Tamara had spoken were underlined. The letter went on. Could they stay at the house, for now? They must look for work. This was life. God watched over them all.
That same afternoon, in Istanbul, on the second floor of a waterfront lokanta called Karim Bey, Janos Polanyi ate a bland stew of chicken and tomatoes. Seated across from him was an English businessman, long a resident of the city, who owned entrepots in the port of Uskudar, on the Asian shore. The Englishman was known as Mr. Brown. He was fattish and soft-spoken, a slow, comfortable man who smoked a pipe and wore, against the chill of the harbor, a slipover sweater beneath his jacket. When he spoke, his French was steady and deliberate, a fluency that, Polanyi thought, one wouldn’t have predicted on first impression. “Something’s needed right away,” he said.
“It’s always like that,” Polanyi said.
“Well, yes, I suppose it is. Still, it’s what they want.”
“We’re doing our best.”
“Naturally you are. But you will have to do it quickly.”
“You know what happens, when one does that.”
“Yes.”
“We’re not sure of Kostyka’s people-it’s been two years since he used them.”
“Who are they?”
“All sorts. Iron Guard and communist. Army officers, intellectuals. Jews. Cafe society. It wasn’t built for politics, it was built for business, for information and influence.”
“Will Kostyka involve himself?”
“No.”
“A list, then.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Indirectly. Serebin talked to him in Switzerland, then Marrano met with the homme de confiance, who gave him the list.”
“Annotated?”
“Here and there. But very briefly.”
“You may as well give me our copy.”
Polanyi handed it over. Brown looked at it briefly, then put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. “How did you get it here?”
“By hand. With Marrano-he flew from Zurich.”
“We’ve offered you a w/t set. A suitcase.” He meant wireless/telegraph.
“We’re better off without it. The German goniometry, their radio location, is too good, over there. And the Turks wouldn’t care for it here.”
“Put it out in the country.”
“Maybe on a boat, but not yet. We’re not so concerned about interception, with the Emniyet, they like to know what’s going on, and we try not to offend them. Modus vivendi. ”
“We protect you here, you know, and the rest doesn’t matter, so you needn’t be dainty about it.”
“I will lose people.”
“One does.”
“Yes, but I try not to.”
“Try what you like, but you can’t let it interfere.”
Polanyi looked at him a certain way: I’ve been doing this all my life.
“We are losing the war, Count Polanyi, do you know that?”
“I know.”
“Hope you do.” Mr. Brown’s chair squeaked as he moved it back.
He rose in order to leave, dismissed the food with a glance, then began to relight his pipe. He met Polanyi’s eyes for an instant and, through teeth clenched on the stem, said “Mmm” and strolled toward the door.
30 December. Ulzhen and Serebin went up to the edge of the 9th Arrondissement to collect the winter issue of The Harvest from the saintly printer. They were not alone-always lots of volunteers, at the IRU. Russians liked to go someplace new and do something different, it didn’t especially matter what it was, so there were three men and two women-“We can push as well as you can”-in the cinder yard behind the printer’s shop, along with a porter and handcart that Ulzhen had hired. In a slow, winter rain, they bundled The Harvest into stacks and tied them with cord, then set the bundles in the cart and covered it with a tarpaulin. They all shook hands with the printer, who had worked through the night, wished him novym godom and novym schastyem — best wishes and happy new year-and headed slowly down a narrow street toward the rue Daru, more than a mile away.
The Parisian porter wouldn’t let them help, so they ambled along behind the barrow on the wet, shiny street. “One place I never thought I’d be,” Ulzhen mused.
“The rue Trudaine?”
“The nineteenth century.”
One of the Russians had an extra Harvest, some of the pages bound upside down. He’d rescued the journal from a stack of spoiled copies, telling the printer that someone would be glad to have it. He thumbed through the pages, then began to recite. “‘In Smolensk.’” He paused to let them think about the title. “‘In Smolensk, the gas lamps warmed the snow/Petya held a pitcher of milk/We could see the white breath of a cab horse/And the beggar by the church who played the violin/Played the wolf’s song from Prokofiev/Played all that February evening/When we had nothing to give him/But some of the milk.’”
