The Foreign Correspondent

“Are you sure? Because I can see that you haven’t thought this over, you haven’t seen all the possibilities, all the benefits. It would be a chance, certainly, to enhance your repuation. Your name won’t be on the book, but your bureau chief, what’s-his-name, Delahanty, would know about it. Likely he’d see it as patriotism, on your part, to take a hand in the fight against Britain’s enemies. Wouldn’t he? I know Sir Roderick would.”

This thrust went home. We’ll tell your boss, if you don’t do what we want. Sir Roderick Jones was the managing director of the Reuters bureau-a famous tyrant, a holy terror. Wore the school ties of schools he’d never attended, implied service in regiments he was too short to have joined. At night, when his chauffeured Rolls-Royce took him home from the office, an employee was sent out to jump on a rubber pad in the street, which, as the car approached, turned the traffic light to green. And he was said to have berated a servant for not ironing his shoelaces.

“How do you know he would?” Weisz said.

“Oh, he’s a friend of a friend,” Brown said. “Eccentric, sometimes, but his heart’s in the right place. Especially when it’s a matter of patriotism.”

“I don’t know,” Weisz said, searching for some way out. “If Colonel Ferrara is all the way down in Gascony…”

“Good heavens no! He’s not in Gascony, he’s right here, in Paris, up on the rue de Tournon. So, now that that’s out of our way, will you, at least, think it over?”

Weisz nodded.

“Good,” Brown said. “Better to consider these sorts of things, take some time, see how the wind blows.”

“I’ll think it over,” Weisz said.

“You do that, Mr. Weisz. Take your time. I’ll call you in the morning.”

By nine-thirty, Carlo Weisz wasn’t ready to jump into the Seine, but he did want to look at it. Brown had made a fast exit from the restaurant, tossing franc notes on the table, more than enough to pay for both dinners, sparing himself the veal kidney, and leaving Henri to gaze anxiously out the door as he went down the street. Weisz didn’t dawdle, paid for his own dinner, and left a few minutes later. So, for the waiter, a gratuity to be remembered.

There was no going back to the Dauphine, not just then. Weisz walked and walked, down to the river and onto the Pont d’Arcole, the Notre Dame cathedral looming up behind him, a vast shadow in the rain. All his life he’d gazed at rivers, from London’s Thames to Budapest’s Danube, with the Arno, the Tiber, and the Grand Canal of Venice in between, but the Seine was queen of the poetic rivers, to Weisz it was. Restless and melancholy, or soft and slow, depending on the mood of the river, or his. That night it was black, dappled with rain, and running high in its banks, just beneath the lower quay. What shall I do? he wondered, leaning on a parapet made for leaning, staring at the river as though it would answer. Why not try running down to the sea? Suits me.

But that he couldn’t do. He didn’t like being trapped, but he was. Trapped in Paris, trapped in a good job-all the world should be so trapped! But add Mr. Brown’s trap and the equation changed. What would he do if they booted him out of Reuters? He would not soon find another Delahanty, who liked him, who protected him, who had fashioned a job particularly for his abilities. In his mind, he went down the list of little jobs the giellisti had managed to acquire. Not a good list-a place to go in the morning, a little money, not much more. And, he feared, a life sentence. Hitler wasn’t going to fall anytime soon, history was ripe with forty-year dictatorships, and that made him a free man at last, at the age of eighty-one. Time to begin anew!

Perhaps he could delay the project, he thought, say yes but mean no, then disentangle himself in some clever way. But if Brown had the power to get him fired, he might also have the power to have him expelled. Weisz had to face that possibility. In the morning light, Zanzibar was not so grim as he’d feared. Or worse, the letter to Christa-a change of plans, my love. No, no, impossible, he had to survive, to stay where he was. And then, despite the cold ironic twist in Brown’s soul, such a project might in truth be good for the sorry world out there, might inspire other Colonel Ferraras to take arms against the devil. Was it, really, so different from the work he did with Liberazione?

This was enough to get him moving, to the end of the bridge, past the traditional embracing couple, and onto the upper quay of the right bank, walking east, away from the hotel. A whore blew him a kiss, a clochard got five francs, a woman with a stylish umbrella didn’t exactly give him a look, and a few lonely souls, heads down in the rain, weren’t going home, not yet. He walked for a long time, past the Hotel de Ville, past the garden shops across the street, and found himself eventually at the Canal Saint-Martin, where it met the place Bastille.

A few steps down a narrow street off Bastille was a restaurant called Le Brasserie Heininger. At the entry, stalls of crushed ice displayed lobsters and shellfish, while a waiter, dressed as a Breton fisherman, worked at opening oysters. Weisz had once written about the Heininger, in June of 1937. The political intrigues of Bulgarian emigres in Paris took a violent turn last night at the popular Brasserie Heininger, just off the place de la Bastille, near the dance halls and nightclubs of the notorious rue de Lappe. Just after 10:30 in the evening, the popular headwaiter of the brasserie, one Omaraeff, arefugee from Bulgaria, was gunned down while attempting to hide in a stall in the ladies’ WC. Then, to show they meant business, two men wearing long coats and fedoras- gangsters from Clichy, according to the police-sprayed the elegant dining room with submachine-gun fire, sparing the terrified patrons but smashing all the gold-framed mirrors, save one, which survived, a single bullet hole in its lower corner. “I will not replace that one,” said Maurice “Papa” Heininger, owner of the brasserie. “I will leave it as it is, a memorial to poor Omaraeff.” The police are investigating.

There was no going further east, Weisz realized, in that direction lay dark, empty streets, and the furniture workshops of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. So then, how to avoid going home? Maybe a drink, he thought. Or two. At the Brasserie Heininger, a refuge, bright lights and people, why not. He walked down the street, entered the brasserie, and climbed the white marble staircase to the dining room. What a crowd! Laughing and flirting and drinking, while waiters with mutton-chop whiskers hurried by, carrying silver platters of oysters or choucroute garni, the room all red plush banquettes, painted cupids, and polished wood. The maitre d’ fingered his velvet rope and gave Weisz a long look, not very welcoming. Who was this lone wolf, dripping wet, trying to come down to the campfire? “I fear it will be quite a long wait, monsieur, we are very full tonight.”

Weisz hesitated for a moment, hoping to see someone call for a check, then turned to leave.

“Weisz!”

He searched for the source of the voice.

“Carlo Weisz!”

Working his way through the crowded room was Count Janos Polanyi, the Hungarian diplomat, tall and bulky and white-haired, and, tonight, not perfectly steady on his feet. He shook Weisz’s hand, took him by the arm, and led him toward a corner table. Pushed up against Polanyi in the narrow path between chair backs, Weisz caught a strong smell of wine, mixed with the scents of bay rum cologne and good cigars. “He’ll be joining us,” Polanyi called back to the maitre d’. “At table fourteen. So bring a chair.”

At table fourteen, just beneath the mirror with the bullet hole, a sea of upturned faces. Polanyi introduced Weisz, adding, “a journalist at the Reuters bureau,” and a chorus of greetings followed, all in French, apparently the language of the evening. “So then,” Polanyi said to Weisz, “left to right, my nephew, Nicholas Morath, his friend Cara Dionello. Andre Szara, the Pravda correspondent.” Szara nodded to Weisz, they’d met, now and again, at press conferences. “And Mademoiselle Allard.” The latter was leaning against Szara, on the end of the banquette, not asleep, but fading fast. “Then Louis Fischfang, the screenwriter, and next the famous Voyschinkowsky, who you’ll know as ‘the Lion of the Bourse,’ and, by his side, Lady Angela Hope.”

“We’ve met,” Lady Angela said, with a certain smile.

“Have you? Splendid.”

The maitre d’ arrived with a chair and everybody moved closer together to make room. “We’re drinking Echezeaux,” Polanyi said to Weisz. Clearly they were, Weisz counted five empty bottles on the table, and half a sixth. To the maitre d’, Polanyi said, “We’ll need a glass, and another Echezeaux. No, better make it two.” The maitre d’ signaled to a waiter, then took Weisz’s coat and hat and headed toward the cloakroom. Moments later, a