he was an emigre with a story to tell, left a transparently common Russian name, and was in the office an hour later. He could have done the trick at the Associated Press or Havas-Carr was a freelance journalist and filed for any paper that needed a Bucharest dateline.
When Serebin arrived, Carr was half-sitting on the wooden railing in the reception area and telling a secretary some story that made her smile. He seemed, on first impression, a standard of the breed: tall and stooped, handsome face with a touch of Anglo-Saxon decadence, lank hair, dirty blond and too long unbarbered, a clever smile and a good blazer. The trench coat, hung carelessly on the clothes tree in the corner, was certainly his. “Jamie Carr,” he said, extending a hand with fingers yellowed by nicotine.
He ushered Serebin to a room in back. “All for us,” he said ruefully. It was too quiet-no sound of typewriters or telephones. “Looks like I’m going to be the last one out.”
“You’re leaving?”
This was in French. Carr answered in English, but slowly, so that Serebin could understand. “I damn well better,” he said. “I’m only here by virtue of an Irish passport. Neutral, you see. Officially. But that’s not true and the Legion knows it.” He settled himself in a swivel chair, Serebin sat on the other side of the desk. “Would you believe, somebody shot my bed? From the apartment below mine. Came home in the morning and there was a hole in the bloody thing.”
He offered Serebin a stubby Roumanian cigarette, lit one for himself, then produced a pad and pencil. “So then, what do you have for me?”
Serebin said he’d come to Bucharest to talk to people who’d done business with a company called DeHaas.
“No! That vulgar little shit. What’d he do, put my name on a list?”
Serebin nodded.
Carr opened a drawer, peered inside, found a tin ashtray. “Must be an interesting sort of a list, care to sell it?”
No point answering that.
Carr made a face, mock horror at the perfidy of it all. “ Quid pro quo, was what that was. A private inquiry agent, so-called, and he told me a good deal more than I ever told him. But, lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. He was probably blackmailing half the sinners in Bucharest. Which is half the city.” He grinned. “Jesus Christ you only had to look at him.”
“Was it Zarrea?” The name was on the list.
Carr tapped his notepad with the pencil eraser. “Say, you know a lot.”
“Not much, just Kostyka’s apparat. Some of it, anyhow.”
“All right, so what do you want with me?”
“We might need your help, later on.”
“Oh? And who would I be helping, then?”
“Your English friends.”
Carr burst out laughing. “Jesus I hope not!” Then he stared at Serebin for a time. Puzzled. Something he couldn’t figure out. “You mean the real thing, don’t you. Out of some little office in London.”
“Yes.”
He drew a face on his pad. “Well, maybe I believe it but no matter, it’s a moot point. I won’t be here long enough to help anybody.”
Serebin started to rise, discussion over, but Carr waved him back down.
“Not oil, is it? It can’t be that.”
“Why not?”
“Been tried. And it don’t work. They sent a couple of their knights-errant out here in ’39 and they got shipped home in their underwear.” He started to say more, thought better of it, then went ahead anyhow. “You know,” he said, “they can blow it up any time they want.”
“They can?”
“Oh yes. But they haven’t, have they, and that means they don’t want to. Because, fact is, there are plenty of RAF bombers at British airfields in Greece, as we sit here, and they can go up to Ploesti and bomb the oil fields tonight. What is it, maybe five, six hundred miles? They have the range, there and back, no problem. But, somehow, it isn’t done. Now what does that mean, do you suppose? To me it means that somebody important says no. Stop the oil, sure, don’t let it reach Germany, but don’t bomb the wells. So they’ve got you sniffing around whorehouse Roumania instead, and all you’re going to get for your trouble is the clap.”
“Britain and Roumania are not at war,” Serebin said. “Not yet.”
“Balls,” Carr said. “A matter of weeks, a technicality. No, what’s going on here isn’t diplomacy, it’s money and influence, it’s business, and it happens every day. Back in 1916, for instance, the Allies were in cannon range of the steel mills at Thionville, in the Lorraine. The mills were behind the German line, at that point, the Germans were using them to make artillery shells, and we knew it. But, nothing happened. And that was thanks to the intervention of Baron de Wendel and his friends on the Comite des Forges-which meant Zaharoff and the rest of the arms merchants. These were their mills, so they wanted them back, in good condition, when the war ended.
“After the armistice, of course, there was hell to pay. Questions in Parliament, newspapers saying rude things. So up jumps Lloyd George, and he claims that the government didn’t want the war to end with a destroyed industrial base in France and mass unemployment. That leads to comm-u-nism. Which was major bloody nonsense, you know? Because what it really was, was money, getting what it wanted, which it always does. No shock to anybody over the age of five, I suppose, but British soldiers died from those shells, just like they’ll die from Panzer tanks running on Roumanian oil.”
A brief silence, in honor of the way things were, then Serebin said, “I’m sure you’re right.” Though it doesn’t matter if you are.
Which Carr perfectly understood. “Doesn’t change anything, does it.”
“No.”
It meant of course not, the way he said it, and Carr perfectly understood that as well, because in a very particular way they were the same.
“Who are you?” Carr said. “I mean, as much as you can say.”
“Russian emigre. A writer, sometimes.”
“Well,” Carr said, “I wish I could help you…”
“But?”
“But…” He hesitated, wanted to say something he knew he shouldn’t say. Finally he wheeled the swivel chair forward as far as it would go and leaned on the desk. “It’s no secret,” he said quietly, “you could ask around, the right people, and they’d tell you, because there are no secrets in this place, that I’m already doing what you want me to do.”
Serebin was amused. “The same people?”
“Maybe different offices in the same building,” Carr said. “Hell, I don’t know.”
“It’s the war.”
Serebin put his cigarette out and rose to leave.
“Want some advice?” Carr stood up and walked Serebin toward the door. “Watch out for yourself. All right?”
“Always,” Serebin said. “Story of my life.”
“No, I mean now, tonight. This whole thing, Antonescu, the Legion, it’s about to explode.”
“You’re sure?”
Carr shrugged. “Just be careful where you go. Who you’re with.” They shook hands in the reception area. The secretary was on the phone, speaking rapidly in Roumanian. She looked up at them, then went back to her conversation.
“Well, good luck.”
“Thank you,” Serebin said. “To both of us, I think.”
It was restless, the city, Serebin felt it, yet not a sight or a sound explained anything. Race of ants. Telepathic-we know, we just know. It was cold, he raised the collar of his coat, people hurried past, eyes on the ground. A policeman on the corner took a moment to admire himself in a pocket mirror. Not unusual in Bucharest, Serebin had seen it often.
