The Foreign Correspondent

They walked together, past clusters of men, who glanced at Kolb, then looked away. When they were alone, Ferrara turned, faced Kolb, and said, “First of all, Monsieur Kolb, you can tell me who sent you here.”

“Friends of yours, in Paris.”

“I have no friends in Paris.”

“Carlo Weisz, the Reuters journalist, considers himself your friend.”

For a time, Ferrara thought about it. “Well, maybe,” he said.

“I’ve arranged your release,” Kolb said. “You can come back to Paris with me, if you like.”

“You work for Reuters?”

“Sometimes. My job is to find people.”

“A confidential agent.”

“Something like that.”

After a moment, Ferrara said, “Paris.” Then: “Perhaps by way of Italy.” His smile was ice cold.

“No, it isn’t that,” Kolb said. “There’d be three or four of us, if it was. There’s just me. From here we go to Tarbes, then to Paris by train. I have a car, outside the gate, you can drive it if you want.”

“You said ‘arranged,’ what did that mean?”

“Money, Colonel.”

“Reuters paid for this?”

“No, Weisz and his friends. Emigres.”

“Why would they do that?”

“For politics. They want you to tell your story, they want you to be a hero against the fascists.”

Ferrara didn’t quite laugh, but he stopped walking and met Kolb’s eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you.”

“I am. And so are they. They’ve found you a place to stay, in Paris. What kind of papers do you have?”

“An Italian passport,” Ferrara said, the irony still in his voice.

“Good. So then, let’s be going, these things work better if you move quickly.”

Ferrara shook his head. Here was a sudden turn of fate, yes, but what sort of fate? So, stay? Go? Finally, he said, “Allright, yes, why not.”

As they walked back toward the barracks, Ferrara turned and gestured to his friend, who’d been following them, and the two men spoke for a time, the friend staring at Kolb as though to memorize him. Ferrara, in the stream of Italian, mentioned Kolb’s name, and his friend repeated it. Then Ferrara went into the barracks and emerged with a bundle of clothing, tied with a string. “It’s long past being worn,” he said, “but it does for a pillow.” When they reached the car, Kolb offered him the food he’d bought. Ferrara gathered up almost all of it, except for half a bread, said, “I’ll just be a minute,” and walked back through the gate.

As it happened, Ferrara did drive the automobile, after he got a taste of Kolb behind the wheel, thus it took only twenty minutes to reach the village, and then, an hour later, they left the car at the garage and took a taxi into Tarbes. Near the station, they found a haberdashery, where Ferrara selected a suit, shirt, underwear, everything but shoes-his army boots had survived well in the camp-and Kolb paid for it. As Ferrara changed, in the back of the store, the owner said, “He was in the camp, I imagine, they often come here, if they’re lucky enough to get out.” After a moment, he said, “A disgrace, for France.”

By late afternoon, they were on the train to Paris. In the last light of day, the arid south gave way slowly to patches of snow on plowed fields, to the soft hill country of the Limousin-pollarded trees lining little roads that wound away into the distance. Invitations, Kolb thought. They spoke, now and again, about the times they lived in. Ferrara explained that he’d learned French in the camp, to pass the empty hours, and for his new life as an emigre-if the government let him stay. He’d been in Paris once before, years earlier, but Kolb could tell from his voice that he remembered it and that now, for him, it meant refuge. He was, at times, still suspicious of Kolb, but then, this was not unusual. Somehow, Kolb’s work lingered in his presence, the cast shadow of a secret life, and could, however faintly, be apprehended. “Have you really,” Ferrara said, “been sent by the-how to say, what we call the fuorusciti?” Which meant-and it took both of them a few minutes to figure out the words-“those who have fled,” the Italian emigres’ preferred description of themselves.

“Yes. They know all about you, of course.” Surely they did, so at least that much was true, though everything else that Kolb had said was pure lies. “And that’s what they want, your story.” Anyhow, that’s what we want.

But let’s not concern ourselves with such things, Kolb thought, there would be plenty of time, later on, for the truth, better just then to watch the winter valleys, in their faded colors, as they drifted by to the rhythm of the wheels on the track.

It was just breaking dawn when they reached Paris, red streaks of light in the eastern sky, the street sweepers, old women, mostly, at work with twig brooms and water trucks. At the Gare de Lyon, Kolb found a taxi, which took them up to the Sixth Arrondissement and the Hotel Tournon, on the street of the same name.

The SIS had likely thought a long time, Kolb suspected, about where to put Ferrara. In superb accommodations? Overawe their newest pawn? Knock him senseless with luxury? With war coming, the treasury had perhaps opened its fist a little, but the Secret Intelligence Service had been starved all through the thirties, and they’d had to think hard about money-only Hitler could really open the bank, and, for the moment, though he’d snatched Czechoslovakia, it didn’t really matter all that much. Therefore, the Hotel Tournon-get him a decent room, Harry, nothing too grand. And the neighborhood was also, for their purposes, rather convenient, because Pawn Two lived there, and would be able to walk to work. Make it easy, keep them both happy, life went better that way.

Still, SIS rich or poor, the night clerk had been well greased. She rose from her couch in the lobby when Kolb hammered on the door, then appeared, in frightful housedress, wild auburn hair, and magnificent breath, to let them in. “Ah, mais oui! Le nouveau monsieur pour numero huit!” Yes, here’s the new roomer in number eight, such generous friends, surely he would be, too.

Up a flight of creaky wooden stairs, the room was spacious, with a tall window. Ferrara walked around, sat on the bed, opened the shutters so he could look out on the sleeping courtyard. Not bad, not bad at all, certainly not a tiny room in the apartment of some fuorusciti, and not a dirt-cheap hotel packed with Italian refugees. “Emigres?” Ferrara said, clearly skeptical. “They paid for this?”

From Kolb, a shrug, and the most angelic of smiles. May all your abductions be so sweet, my little lamb. “You like it?” Kolb said.

“Of course I like it.” Ferrara left the rest unsaid.

“Well then,” Kolb replied, himself no slouch at leaving things unsaid.

Ferrara hung his jacket up on the hanger in the armoire, and took from his pockets his passport, a few papers, and a sepia photograph of his wife and three children in a cardboard frame. It had, at some point, been bent, and straightened out, so the photograph was broken across the upper corner.

“Your family?”

“Yes,” Ferrara said. “But their lives go on a long way from mine-it’s been more than two years since I last saw them.” He put the passport in the bottom drawer of the armoire, closed the door, and rested the photograph on the windowsill. “And that’s that,” he said.

Kolb, who knew too well what he meant, nodded in sympathy.

“I left a lot behind, crossing the Pyrenees on foot, at night, then the people who arrested me took pretty much everything else.” He shrugged and said, “So, I’m forty-seven years old, and that’s what I have.”

“The times we live in, Colonel,” Kolb said. “Now, I think, we’ll go to the cafe downstairs, for coffee with hot milk, and a tartine.” Which was a long, skinny bread. Cut in half. And amply buttered.

19 March.

The seers of weather predicted the rainiest spring of the century, and so it was when Carlo Weisz returned to Paris. It dripped off the brim of his hat, ran in the gutters, and did nothing to improve his state of mind. From train to Metro and then to the Hotel Dauphine, he thought up a dozen useless schemes to bring Christa von Schirren to Paris, not one of which was worth a sou. But he would, at least, write her a letter-a disguised letter, as though it came from an aunt, or an old school friend, perhaps, traveling in Europe, pausing in Paris, and collecting mail at the American Express office.