Spies of the Balkans

That wasn’t pestering the husband, was it? No, certainly not, he would never know about it, because she would never know about it. Just a little spur-of-the-moment surveillance. Just a look-see.

Hauser picked up his phone and dialed a two-digit number, which connected him with the office of Untersturmfuhrer, Lieutenant, Matzig, his partner. “Matzi?”

“Yes, Albert?”

“Let’s go for a little ride, I need some air.”

“I’ll bring the car around,” Matzig said.

So, yet another ride out to Dahlem. Lord, this neighborhood was a dissident nest! But, in the end, there wasn’t much to see. Hauser and Matzig sat in the front seat, talking idly from time to time, waiting, the principal activity of the investigative life. The winter darkness came early, a light snow began to fall, and eventually the colonel came home from work, dropped off at his door by a Wehrmacht car. The colonel disappeared into his house and, though the two officers waited another hour, that was it for the day.

They tried earlier the following day, waited longer, and were rewarded with a view of the Krebses going out for dinner. Thus Hauser and Matzig got to wait outside Horcher’s while the couple dined. No fun at all, visiting the best restaurants in Berlin, but not a morsel of food. After dinner, the couple went home. Matzig drove the Mercedes to their chosen vantage point, Hauser lit a cigar and said, “Let’s go home, Matzi. We’ll give it one more day, tomorrow.” All he could afford, really, because like any job you had to show your bosses some success, some production, and there was nothing yet to warrant even the most diffident interview.

But then there was. Patience paid off, at least sometimes, because just after five on the third day, the lovely Emilia Krebs, in sober gray coat and wide-brim gray hat, briefcase in hand, left her house, walked quickly down the path that led to the sidewalk, and turned left, toward downtown Berlin. As she passed the low hedge that bordered her property, here came a fellow in a dark overcoat: half-bald, heavy, wearing glasses-some sort of intellectual, from the look of him. For the length of a block, he matched her pace. Hauser and Matzig exchanged a look; then, no discussion required, Matzig turned on the ignition, put the car in gear, and drove past Emilia Krebs to a side street with a view of the nearest tram stop.

She arrived soon after, followed by the man in the dark overcoat. They stood at a distance from each other, mixed in with a few other people, all waiting for the trolley. Five minutes later it appeared, bell ringing, and rolled to a stop. Emilia Krebs and the others climbed on, but the man in the overcoat stayed where he was and, once the trolley moved away, he turned and walked back the way he’d come.

“Did you see what I saw?” Hauser said.

“A trailer, you think?” The function of a trailer, in clandestine practice, was to make sure the person ahead wasn’t being followed.

“What else?”

6 February. Paris. Occupied Paris: triste and broken, cold and damp, the swastika everywhere. Following the operational plan, Zannis played the role of a Greek detective in Paris, come to escort a prisoner back to Salonika. In trench coat and well-worn blue suit, heavy shapeless black shoes, and holstered pistol on his belt, he took a taxi to the commercial hotel Escovil had named-on a little street near the Gare du Nord-and slept all afternoon, recovering from days of train travel. Then, around eight in the evening, he ventured forth, found a taxi, and went off in search of Parisian food and Parisian sex. So, if anybody was watching, that’s what they saw.

He left the taxi at the Place de la Bastille, found the proper cafe on the second try, and the woman right away. She was, according to plan, reading Le Soir, the evening tabloid, and marking the classified ads with a pencil.

“Excuse me,” Zannis said, “are you waiting for Emile?” He hadn’t been in France since the time he’d worked as a Parisian antiquaire, more than ten years earlier, but the language, though halting and awkward, was still there.

“I’m waiting for my grandfather,” she said, completing the identification protocol. Then, looking at her watch, added, “We’d better be on our way. You shall call me Didi.”

Didi! Good God. For whoever she was-and she’d given Didi her best effort: neckline much too low, “diamond” earrings, scarlet lipstick-this woman had never been picked up in a cafe, she’d never met a woman who’d been picked up in a cafe. What was she, a baroness? Possible, Zannis thought: narrow head, small ears, thin nostrils, aristocratic tilt to the chin. Didi? Oh fuck, these people are going to get me killed.

“Off we go, honey,” Zannis said, with a coarse grin, a nod toward the door, and a proffered arm.

The aristocrat almost flinched. Then she recovered, stood, took his arm, pressed it to her champagne cup of a noble breast, and off they went-circling the Place Bastille, heading for a brasserie down a side street. Zannis took a deep breath. These people were brave, were resisting the Occupation, were putting their lives in jeopardy. They were, he told himself, doing the best they could.

So the Greek detective, in case anybody was watching-and there was no way to know whether they were or not-had found a girl for the evening and would now take her out for dinner. The restaurant was called the Brasserie Heininger, a man in an apron and a fisherman’s waterproof hat was shucking oysters on a bed of shaved ice by the entryway.

When Zannis opened the door, the interior hit him hard-much fancier than any place he’d been to when he’d lived in Paris. The brasserie was fiercely Belle Epoque: red plush banquettes, polished brass, and vast gold-framed mirrors lining the walls, the waiters in muttonchop whiskers, the conversation loud and manic, the smoky air scented by perfume and grilled sausage. And, as the maitre d’ led them to a table-that sexy slut Didi had reserved ahead-Zannis saw what looked to him like half the officer class of occupied Paris, much of it in Wehrmacht gray, with, just to set off the visual composition, a sprinkling of SS black. As they wove their way among the tables, the aristocrat crushed Zannis’s arm against her breast so hard he wondered why it didn’t hurt her, or maybe she was so scared she didn’t notice. At last they were seated, side by side on a banquette at a table where the number 14 was written on a card supported by a little brass stand. The aristocrat settled close to him, then took a deep breath.

“You’re all right?” Zannis said.

She nodded, gratitude in her eyes.

“Good girl,” he said. “Didi.”

She gave him a conspiratorial smile; the waiter brought menus in golden script. “Here one takes the choucroute garnie,” she said. “And order champagne.”

Sauerkraut? Oh no, not with the way his stomach felt. On the surface, Zannis showed a certain insouciant confidence, but every muscle in his body was strung tight; he was ready to shoot his way out of this restaurant but not at all prepared for sauerkraut. “Maybe they have a fish,” he said.

“Nobody orders that.”

He searched the menu. “Shellfish,” he said.

“If you like.”

He looked up for a moment, then said, “What the hell is that? Behind your shoulder, in the mirror.”

“It’s very famous,” she said. “A memorial to a Bulgarian waiter, slain here a few years ago.”

“It’s a bullet hole.”

“Yes, it is.”

“They don’t fix it? Back where I come from, they have them fixed the next day.”

“Not here.”

The waiter returned. “‘Sieur et ‘dame?”

Zannis ordered the seafood platter, which he would try to eat, followed by the choucroute, which he would not, and a bottle of champagne. As the waiter hurried off, Zannis discovered his neighbors in the adjacent booth: two SS officers with French girlfriends; puffy and blond, green eyeshadow, pouty lips. One of the SS men looked like a precocious child, with baby skin, a low forehead, and eyeglasses in tortoiseshell frames. The other-Zannis understood immediately who he was, what he was-turned to face him, rested an elbow on the plush divider, and said, “Bonsoir, mon ami.” The set of his face and the sparkle in his eyes suggested a view of the world best described by the word droll, but, Zannis saw, he was a certain kind of smart and sophisticated German who’d found, in the black uniform and death’s-head insignia, a way to indulge a taste for evil.

“Bonsoir,” Zannis said.