professor of social sciences, particularly anthropology, at the University of Dresden. He appeared, as always, in civilian clothes, a dark-blue suit, and he was exceptionally bright. A little young for his senior position, a smart, sharp-witted fellow on the way up in the Nazi administration.
The warm air in the room was thick with cigarette smoke, a grey November drizzle outside, and the men at the cluttered table — stacks of dossiers, notepads, ashtrays — made slow but steady progress as they worked their way down the alphabetized list; it was almost five by the time they reached the names beginning with the letter S. They disposed of the first three quickly, then came to the priest Pere Sebastien, Father Sebastien, who preached fervently against Nazi atheism at an important church in the city of Lyons. Over the past few months, the bureau had made sure he was besieged by letters from the pious in various parts of France, negative — though gravely respectful — commentary had appeared in the Lyonnais newspapers, and the Vatican had been contacted by German diplomats in Rome. Why, they asked, was Pere Sebastien so obsessed with the religious institutions of a foreign nation? Was he not using the pulpit to advance his own, rather leftist, political agenda? Should he not, the Lord’s Shepherd, be paying more attention to the tending of his own local flock?
‘The Vatican doesn’t exactly disagree,’ said the man who saw to operations in the Rhone Valley, ‘but the administration is slow as a snail, very tentative, and very cautious.’
‘Are our Italian friends willing to help?’ said the Deputy Director.
‘To date they are useless. They say they will intervene, but then they do nothing.’
‘Can we prod him?’
‘No, no, let’s not. He has a true sense of mission, that will only inspire him.’
The Deputy Director thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. Priests!’
Here and there at the table, an appreciative laugh.
‘Perhaps I can do something,’ said the Deputy Director. ‘I will have a word with our Vatican diplomats, they might just have to insist — it’s the lepers on Martinique who require such a passionate fellow.’
The man in charge of Lyons made a note — though a secretary seated on one of the chairs kept a record of the meeting in shorthand — and work on the list continued. The journalist Sablier had died in a motoring accident — ‘Ours?’ ‘No, the hand of fate, a mountain road’ — and the owner of a small chain of radio stations, Schimmel, a Jew, had put his business up for sale and was going to emigrate to Canada.
‘The emigration papers are truly filed?’
‘Yes, we checked.’
‘That brings us to’ — he ran his finger down the list — ‘Monsieur Sicot.’ Sicot was the publisher and editor of a small socialist newspaper in the city of Bordeaux.
‘He rants and raves,’ said the man in charge of Sicot. ‘“The Maginot Line will not save us!” On and on he goes, calls for fleets of fighter planes. He was highly decorated in the Great War and is a fanatic patriot.’
‘Who won’t listen to reason.’
‘Not Sicot. Not ever.’
‘Then he’ll have to have business problems. Perhaps the advertisers, perhaps the unions, perhaps the bank that holds his notes. Can this be done?’
‘I’ll go to work immediately, it will take some research.’
‘Use the SD’ — the intelligence service of the SS — ‘and see what you can do. I’ll expect a report at our meeting the first week of December. Now then’ — he paused, again consulted the list — ‘to Fredric Stahl, the movie actor.’
‘No good news, I’m afraid,’ said the man in charge of Stahl. Called Hoff, he was a plain, middle-aged man who’d served twenty years in the Foreign Ministry with very little distinction — but no serious missteps — then made his way to a position in the bureau through seniority, longtime alliances, and a rather late but practical membership in the Nazi party. ‘He moved a little,’ Hoff said, ‘attended a luncheon, but there he stopped.’
‘He’s an actor, no? What’s the problem? Nervous about his career? Studio control?’
‘Some of that, but we suspect he’s concerned about his, um, we can call it integrity — being faithful to his political beliefs.’
‘His what?’
‘Integrity.’
The Deputy Director was a very smooth man, but he had a temper, and it was getting towards the time when he wanted a drink and dinner. ‘And so?’ he said, voice rising. ‘And so we kiss him goodbye?’
‘We may have to.’
‘Somebody give me the goddamn file.’
Hoff shuffled through the dossiers in front of him, where was it? Not this, not this…
‘ Now, Hoff. Now! ’
‘Yes, sir. Here it is.’
The Deputy Director opened the dossier by slamming the cover against the table, then, using his index finger, searched through the typed reports of contacts and surveillance. ‘We want him to visit the Reich, for a day, for a single day, to judge some little movie festival, is that correct?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Herr Hoff.’ By now the Deputy Director was almost shouting. ‘He will visit the Reich. And we will take his photograph for the newspapers, with fucking Goebbels we’ll take his photograph, and he will pick some idiot as a winner and we will take another photograph as they both hold a fucking bouquet! Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, sir. Very clear.’
The Deputy Director read further, slapping each page down as he turned it over. ‘So, he was visited in his hotel room. What a blow! Is anything else planned?’
‘Not for the moment. I thought it best to seek your counsel.’ Hoff had moved his hands off the table and hidden them in his lap because they were shaking.
‘Seek my counsel? Oh, very flattering, Hoff, you’re seeking my counsel. Well, here’s my counsel: you think up something to make this man behave, and you send me a memorandum before you do it. Is that understood, Herr Hoff?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And, if you cannot persuade him to put aside this saintly integrity — Christ! What a word! — and do what we want, you can have somebody get in touch with, ah, Heinrich, and instead of visiting the Reich he can visit the devil. Oh, excuse me, I forgot he’s a saint, so he can visit the angels.’
From down the table, a small, hesitant voice: ‘It’s not Heinrich, sir, the man who does these things for us is called Herbert.’
3 November. At 7.15, Stahl decided to stop worrying and go out for dinner. Too often that day he’d caught himself brooding about the man who’d entered his room, and all the rest of it, which he suspected was exactly what they wanted him to do. Therefore, he wouldn’t. He could have gone down to the hotel restaurant, but the food there was rich and elaborate, living up to its price, and really much fancier than he liked. So he put on a pair of corduroys and a comfortable jacket, with a wool scarf and a pair of leather gloves to keep him warm, walked over to the Champs-Elysees, then down to a big Alsatian brasserie that served the commercial residents of the quarter — butchers from the wholesale meat markets on the rue Marbeuf, office workers, and shop clerks. It was a big, rough, loud sort of place, where you could eat cheaply by ordering the plat du jour, or in grander fashion, oysters, lobster, champagne, if you were in the mood and had the money. For Stahl, always steak au poivre, a tough, delicious steak, barely cooked, and more frites — crisp, golden, and brown at the edges — than you thought you could eat, though you were usually wrong about that.
He was just seated at a table when Kiki de Saint-Ange walked through the door, peered about, discovered Stahl, and came hurrying towards him. She was very good to look at that evening, a black afternoon dress beneath her raincoat — a vivid memory from their night at the movies — and a violet and grey scarf arranged in the complicated style Parisian women were taught at birth, arty gold earrings, and her little knitted cap. Stahl was delighted to see her, a friend welcome when one thinks one will be dining alone, but for the question what’s she doing here? The more contact he had with his German enemies, the more sensitive he became to coincidence.
‘I hoped it was you,’ she said, slightly breathless. ‘I saw you on the boulevard, from a distance, and I thought, ‘Is that Fredric?’ My eyesight is terrible — it wouldn’t have been the first time I chased down a stranger. May I join you? Maybe you’re expecting somebody.’
