The Foreign Correspondent

The train rolled in, Elena positioned herself at the other end of the car, while the man took a seat, crossed his legs, and folded his hands on his lap. The stations rolled by: Le Peletier, Cadet, Poissoniere, deeper and deeper into the Tenth Arrondissement. Then, at the station for the Gare de l’Est, he stood and left the car. Here he could transfer to Line Four or take a train. Elena waited as long as she dared, then, at the last minute, stepped onto the platform. Damn, where was he? Just barely in time, she spotted him climbing the stairs. She followed as he went through the grilled turnstile and headed for the exit. Elena paused, pretending to study a Metro map on the wall, until he disappeared, then left the station.

Vanished! No, there he was, heading south, away from the railway station, on the boulevard Strasbourg. Elena had never been in this part of the city, and she was grateful that it was mid-morning-she would not have wanted to come here at night. A dangerous quarter, the Tenth; grim tenements for the poor. Dark men, perhaps Portuguese, or Arabs from the Maghreb, gathered in the cafes, the boulevards lined with small, cluttered stores, the side streets narrow, silent, and shadowed. Amid the crowds at the Galeries, and in the Metro, she’d felt invisible, anonymous, but not now. Walking alone on the boulevard, she stood out, a middle-aged woman in a gray smock. She did not belong here, who was she?

Suddenly, the man stopped, at a shop window displaying piles of used pots and pans, and, as she slowed down, he glanced at her. More than glanced-his eyes acknowledged her as a woman, attractive, perhaps available. Elena looked through him and kept walking, passing within three feet of his back. Find a way to stop! Here was a patisserie, a bell above the door jingled as she entered. From the back, a girl, wiping her hands on a flour-dusted apron, walked to the other side of the counter, then waited patiently while Elena stood before a case of soggy pastries, looking sideways, every few seconds, out into the street.

The girl asked what madame might desire. Elena peered into the case. A Napoleon? A religieuse? No, there he was! She mumbled an apology and left the shop. Now he was thirty feet away. Dear God, let him not turn around, he’d noticed her earlier, and if he saw her again, he would, she feared, approach her. But he did not turn around-he looked at his watch and walked faster, for half a block, then turned sharply and entered a building. Elena dawdled a moment at the entry to a pharmacie, giving him time to leave the ground floor of the building.

Then she followed. To 62, boulevard de Strasbourg. Now what? For a few seconds, she hesitated, standing in front of the door, then opened it. Facing her was a stairway, to her right, on the wall, a row of open wooden letter boxes. From the floor above, she could hear footsteps moving down the old boards of a hallway, then a door opened, and clicked shut. Turning to the letter boxes, she found 1 A-Mlle. Krasic printed in pencil across the base, and 1 B-with a business card tacked below it.

A cheaply printed card, for the Agence Photo-Mondiale, worldwide photo agency, with address and telephone number. What was this? Perhaps a stock house, selling photographs to magazines and advertising agencies, or a photojournalism organization, available for assignment. Could he have gone into the Krasic apartment? Not likely, she was sure he’d gone down the hall to Photo-Mondiale. Not an uncommon sort of business, where just about anybody might turn up, perhaps a false business, from which one could run a secret operation.

She had a pencil in the pocket of her smock, but no paper, so she took a ten-franc note from her wallet and wrote the number on it. Was she making the right assumption? She thought so-why would he go to the apartment of Mlle. Krasic? No, she was almost certain. Of course, the way to be absolutely sure was to go to the top of the stairway and turn left, in the direction of the footsteps, cross back over the entryway, and take a fast look at the door. Elena folded the note and tucked it away in her pocket. In the vestibule, it was very still, the building seemed deserted. Up the stairs? Or out the door?

The staircase was uncarpeted, made of wood covered with worn-out varnish, the steps hollowed by years of traffic. She would take, anyhow, one step. No creak, the thing was solid. So, another. Then, another. When she was halfway up, the door above opened, and she heard a voice-two or three muffled words, then footsteps headed along the corridor, a man whistling a tune. Elena stopped breathing. Then, light on her feet, she turned and scampered down the stairs. The footsteps came closer. Did she have time to get out of the building? Maybe, but the heavy door would be heard as it shut. Looking down the hallway, she saw open shadow beneath the staircase and ran for it. There was room enough to stand beneath the stairs. Inches away, the undersides of the steps gave as weight fell on them. But the door did not open. Instead, the man who’d come down the stairs, still whistling, was waiting in the vestibule. Why? He knew she was there. She froze, forced herself against the wall. Then, above her head, someone else, walking down the staircase. A voice spoke-a mean, sarcastic voice, the way she heard it-and another voice, deeper, heavier, laughed and, briefly, answered. Hey, that was a good one! Or, she thought, something like that-she couldn’t understand a single word. Because it was a language she had never in her life heard spoken.

He’d be late for Ferrara, Weisz realized, because Elena was waiting for him on the street outside the Reuters bureau. It was chilly, the first night in June, with a damp mist that made him shiver as he stepped out the door. A new Elena, Weisz thought as they said hello; her eyes alive, voice charged with excitement. “We’ll walk down to Opera and take a taxi,” he told her. Her nod was enthusiastic: thrift be damned, this night is important. On the way, she told him the story she’d promised on the telephone, her pursuit of the false inspector.

It was slow going, in the evening traffic, as the taxi made its way toward an art gallery in the Seventh Arrondissement. Every driver beeped his horn at the idiot in front of him, and swarms of bicyclists rang their bells, as the idiots in their cars came too close. “You no longer see her?” Elena said. “I didn’t know.”

“We’re good friends,” Weisz said. “Now.”

From Elena, in the darkened back of the taxi, one of her half smiles, a particularly sharp one.

“It’s possible,” Weisz said.

“I’m sure it is.”

Veronique came hurrying to the door of the gallery as they entered. She kissed Weisz on each cheek, one hand on his arm. Then Weisz introduced her to Elena. “Just a minute while I lock the door,” Veronique said. “I’ve had Americans all day long, and not one sale. They think it’s a museum.” On the walls, Valkenda’s dissolute waifs were still staring at the cruel world. “So,” she said, closing the bolt, “no art tonight.”

They sat in the office, gathered around the desk. “Carlo tells me we have something in common,” Veronique said to Elena. “He was at his most mysterious, on the phone.”

“Apparently we do,” Elena said. “A very unpleasant man. He showed up at the Galeries Lafayette, where I work, and tried to see the manager. But I was lucky, and, in the confusion, he tried to leave, and I followed him.”

“Where did he go?”

“Out into the Tenth. To a photo agency.”

“So, not from the Surete, you think.” Veronique glanced at Weisz.

“No. He’s a fraud. He had friends, in that office.”

“That’s a relief,” Veronique said. Then, thoughtfully, she added, “Or maybe not. You’re sure it was the same man?”

“Of medium height. With a slim mustache, face pitted on one side, and something about his eyes, the way he looked at me, I didn’t like. He wore a gray hat, with a green feather in the band.”

“The man who came here had dirty fingernails,” Veronique said. “And his French was not Parisian.”

“I never heard him speak, although I can’t be sure of that. He went up to the office, then one man came out, followed by two others, who spoke, not French, I’m not sure what it was.”

Veronique thought it over. “The mustache is right. Like Errol Flynn?”

“A long way from Errol Flynn, the rest of him, but, yes, he tries for the same effect. What to call it, ‘dashing.’”

Veronique grinned, men. “The mustache just makes it worse-whatever it is, about him.” She scowled with distaste at the image in her memory. “Smug, and sly,” she said. “What a vile little man.”

“Yes, exactly,” Elena said.

Weisz looked dubious. “So what shall I tell the police? Look for ‘a vile little man’?”

“Is that what we’re going to do?” Elena said.

“I suppose we will,” Weisz said. “What else? Tell me, Elena, was the language you heard Russian?”