The Foreign Correspondent

you have contact with these emigres, and someone like you, in your position, would be a realistic source for such information.”

Maybe.

“The document reveals German penetration of the Italian security system, a massive penetration, in the hundreds, and revealing it could create antagonism toward Germany, toward these sorts of tactics, which are dangerous to any state. The rumor, as published in Liberazione, was provocative, but the actual list, now that could really cause problems.” Did Weisz see what he was getting at?

Well-what the French called un petit oui, a little yes- yes.

“I have a copy of the document with me, Monsieur Weisz, would you care to see it?”

Ah, naturally.

Pompon unbuckled his briefcase and withdrew the pages, folded so that they would fit into an envelope, and handed them to Weisz. It wasn’t the list he’d typed, but a precise copy. He unfolded the pages and pretended to study them; at first puzzled, then interested, finally fascinated.

Pompon smiled-the pantomime had evidently worked. “Quite a coup for Liberazione, no? To publish the real evidence?”

He certainly thought so. But…

But?

The present condition of that journal was uncertain. Some members of the editorial board had come under pressure-he’d heard that the paper might not survive.

Pressure?

Lost jobs, harassment by fascist agents.

A silent Pompon stared at him. Amid tables of chattering Parisians, who’d been shopping at the nearby Galeries Lafayette, hotel guests with guidebooks, a pair of newlyweds from the provinces, arguing about money. All in clouds of smoke and perfume. Waiters flew past-who on earth was ordering eclairs at this time of the morning?

Weisz waited, but the inspector did not bite. Or maybe bit in some way that Weisz could not observe. “Fascist agents” pestering emigres was not the subject for today, the subject for today was inducing a resistance organization to do a little job for him. Or for the Foreign Ministry, or God only knew who. That other business, a different department handled that, down the hall, one flight up, and who’d want their inquisitive snouts poking into his carefully tended emigre garden? Not Pompon.

Finally, Weisz said, “I will talk to them, at Liberazione.”

“Do you wish to keep that copy? We have others, though you must be very careful with it.”

No, he knew what it was, he would prefer to leave the document with Pompon.

As he’d earlier said to Salamone: hot potato.

The taxi sped through the Paris night. A soft May evening, the air warm and seductive, half the city out on the boulevards. Weisz had been happy enough in his room, but the night manager at Reuters had sent him off, pad and pencil in hand, to the Hotel Crillon. “It’s King Zog,” he’d said on the Dauphine telephone. “The local Albanians have discovered him, and they’re gathering on the place Concorde. Go and have a look, will you?”

Weisz’s driver took the Pont Royal bridge, turned on Saint-Honore, drove ten feet down the rue Royale, and stopped behind a line of cars that disappeared into a crowd. There they were stuck, and were now honking their horns, making sure that nobody got out of their way. The driver threw his taxi into reverse, waving at the car behind him to back up. “Not me,” he said to Weisz, “not tonight.” Weisz paid, jotted down the fare, and got out.

What was Zog, Ahmed Zogu, former king of Albania, doing there? Thrown out by Mussolini, he’d wandered through various capitals, the press keeping track of him, and had apparently landed at the Crillon. But, local Albanians? Albania was the lost mountain kingdom of the Balkans-and that was very lost indeed-independent in 1920, then snatched at, north and south, by Italy and Yugoslavia, until Mussolini grabbed the whole thing a month earlier. But, as far as Weisz knew, there was not much of a political emigre community in Paris.

There was certainly a crowd on the rue Royale, mostly curious passersby, and, when Weisz finally pushed his way through, on Concorde, where he realized that however many Albanians had made their way to Paris, they’d showed up that night. Six or seven hundred, he thought, with a few hundred French supporters. Not the Communists-no red flags-because what you had in Albania was a little dictator eaten up by a big dictator, but those who thought it was never a good idea for one nation to occupy another, and, on a lovely May night, why not take a stroll over to the Crillon?

Weisz worked toward the front of the hotel, where a bedsheet nailed to a pair of poles, swaying with the motion of the crowd, said something in Albanian. Up here they were also chanting-Weisz caught the words Zog and Mussolini, but that was about it. At the Crillon entry, a score of porters and bellmen were ranged protectively in front of the door and, as Weisz watched, the flics began to show up, truncheons tapping their legs, ready for action. All across the face of the hotel, guests were looking out, pointing here and there, enjoying the show. Then a window on the top floor opened, a light went on in the room, and a matinee idol, with dashing mustache, leaned out and gave the Zogist salute: hand flattened, palm forward, over the heart. King Zog! From behind the drape, someone reached out, and now the king wore a general’s hat, heavy with gold braid, above his Sulka bathrobe. The crowd cheered, Queen Geraldine appeared at the king’s side, and both waved.

Now some idiot-anti-Zogist elements in the crowd, Weisz wrote-threw a bottle, which shattered in front of a bellboy, who lost his little cap as he leapt away. Then the king and queen stepped back from the window, and the light went off. Next to Weisz, a bearded giant put his hands beside his mouth and shouted, in French, “That’s right, run away, you little pussy.” This drew a snicker from his tiny girlfriend, and an angry Albanian shout from somewhere in the crowd. On the top floor, another window opened, and a uniformed army officer looked out.

The police began to advance, barring their truncheons and forcing the crowd back from the front of the hotel. The fighting started almost immediately-surging knots of people in the crowd, others pushing and shoving, trying to get out of the way. “Ah,” said the giant with some satisfaction, “les chevaux.” The horses. The cavalry had arrived, mounted police with long truncheons, advancing down the avenue Gabriel.

“You don’t like the king?” Weisz said to the giant-he had to get some kind of quote from somebody, jot down a few lines, find a telephone, file the story, and go out for dinner.

“He doesn’t like anybody,” said the giant’s girlfriend.

What was he, Weisz wondered. A Communist? Fascist? Anarchist?

But this he was not to learn.

Because the next thing he knew, he was on the ground. Someone behind him had hit him in the side of the head, with something, he had no idea what, hit him hard enough to knock him over. Not a good place to be, down here. His vision blurred, a forest of shoes moved away, and a few indignant oaths followed somebody, whoever’d hit him, as the man sliced his way through the crowd.

“You are bleeding,” said the giant.

Weisz felt his face, and his hand came away red-maybe he’d cut himself on the sharp edge of a cobblestone- then he started groping around for his glasses. “Here they are.” A hand offered them, one lens cracked, the temple piece gone.

Somebody put his hands beneath Weisz’s armpits and hauled him to his feet. It was the giant, who said, “We better get out of here.”

Weisz heard the horses, in a swift walk, advancing toward him. He got a handkerchief from his back pocket and held it to the side of his head, took a step, almost toppled over. Only one eye, he realized, saw properly, the other had everything out of focus. He went down on one knee. Maybe, he thought, I’m hurt.

The crowd broke around him as it ran away, pursued by the mounted police, swinging their truncheons. Then a tough old Parisian flic appeared at his side-he was now alone on a vast stretch of the place Concorde. “Can you stand up?” the flic said.

“I think so.”

“Because, if you can’t, I have to put you in an ambulance.”