‘It’s been a while since I’ve had it.’
‘Myself I like it.’
‘I like it too.’
‘Good. Want some more?’
‘Please.’
‘Aren’t you getting cold?’
‘Not at all. I don’t mind being undressed.’
‘Hm. Well…’ She took the undershirt back to her table and said, ‘You’ve been very patient.’
He put his shirt back on, buttoning it as he walked over and stood next to her, their shoulders almost touching. For a moment, neither of them moved, then Stahl said, ‘I guess I should go.’
‘I will need another fitting once it’s been resewn.’
‘When is that?’
‘Oh, tomorrow. Can you stop by when the filming’s over?’
‘I’ll see you then.’
Stahl found a taxi on the street that bordered the studio and, settled in the back seat, felt the excitement of a man who’d found treasure. He’d been drawn to her the first time they met but she was married, off-limits. He had wondered what it would be like with her, then let it go. But when she’d told him she was free, when she’d flirted with him… She had, hadn’t she? He hoped so because now he really wanted her, he wanted to fuck her — it was the same heat he’d felt as a schoolboy. What was it that reached him? What? She was no pinup girl, more the opposite: the minister’s prim daughter, the well-curved spinster beneath the spinster skirt. In fact, Renate Steiner wasn’t anything like that, she was a sophisticated, intellectual woman. That was her inner self, no secrets there, but her outer self, her face with its pointy nose and pale forehead, her concealed shape, was that of the fantasy spinster. And Stahl, after weeks of Parisian glamour, after the erotic tricks of Kiki de Saint-Ange, discovered that, at least for the moment, he was again sixteen, and hot for one of the plainer girls in the school. Would she do it with him? In the back seat of the taxi it was already tomorrow night and his imagination undressed her: she would touch not one button, one popper, one waistband of her clothing.
There was a crowd of people in the street as they drove up the Champs-Elysees and the driver had to slow down and work his way through them. A few held signs, NEVER AGAIN and SAVE THE PEACE, and Stahl realized it was 11 November, Armistice Day, celebrating the end of ‘the war to end all wars’. There’d no doubt been a military parade, an official parade, earlier in the day; this was just a crowd of people — workers, students, middle-class Parisians — who’d made a few signs. The driver asked Stahl what he thought about the march and Stahl said, ‘Who doesn’t want peace?’ The driver turned halfway round and said, ‘Amen to that, monsieur.’ But to Stahl it was a dream, a hope. He’d seen Germany, and he knew there would be war.
The night of his return to Paris he’d met J. J. Wilkinson, as planned, in the waiting room of the American Hospital in Neuilly and, in the hallway by the WC, handed him Orlova’s notes. They were together only a moment, but Wilkinson had said, ‘You’ll be invited to a party on the night of the eleventh, please be there if you can manage it and we’ll have a chance to talk.’ Stahl’s time with Renate Steiner had, until this moment, undone his memory but now he realized he would have to go. The party was being given by an American woman, her name sometimes in the society columns, a longtime expatriate married to a French aristocrat. Oh well, he would at least have his hot shower at the Claridge. His heart sank a little, at the idea of going to a party, but the people marching in the street cured that. Going to a dinner party was the least he could do.
Wilkinson wasn’t at the party. A dozen well-dressed people and a vast centerpiece of white gladioli, but no diplomat. A disappointed Stahl did the best he could, chatting right and left, telling a few movie stories, getting a laugh or two, resisting the urge to look at his watch. After dessert, as he headed dutifully off to the library for brandy and cigars, the hostess appeared by his side and said, ‘There’s a staircase behind that door at the end of the hall. Your friend is waiting upstairs.’ She smiled at him and her eyes twinkled — nothing quite like a little intrigue.
The apartment was a duplex — there were a few of these in the Sixteenth Arrondissement — and J. J. Wilkinson, drink in hand, tie pulled down, was waiting for him in what had once been a small bedroom for a child — a model aeroplane, a Spad fighter, hung on a cord from the ceiling light fixture, and boys’ books, Poppy Ott and the Stuttering Parrot, filled the bookcase. Wilkinson was sitting on a narrow cot covered with a camp blanket and rose to give Stahl his powerful handshake. ‘First of all, thank you,’ he said.
Stahl sat on the other end of the cot and told the story of his time in Berlin. Wilkinson made notes, interrupting only to make sure he had the names right. Stahl tried to be thorough, and hesitated only when it came time to tell Wilkinson about Rudi — was it wise to confess he’d helped to commit a murder? But to keep it secret wasn’t a possibility — he had to trust Wilkinson. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘this next part is difficult, but it happened, and you ought to know about it.’
Wilkinson nodded, took a sip of his drink, and said, ‘Might as well.’ What could be so bad? But when Stahl described what had gone on in room 802, Wilkinson sat bolt upright, his eyes widened and he said, ‘Good God.’
Stahl shrugged. ‘She had to do it, she said something about “this will never end”, and she was right.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘I know,’ Stahl said. ‘I saw it, but I couldn’t believe it was happening.’
Wilkinson reached over to the windowsill, took a half-smoked cigar from a clamshell and, after several tries, got it lit. ‘I’m shocked,’ he said, ‘but maybe not that shocked, now that I think about it. People talk about tough women, “a tigress” and all that, but Orlova is the real thing.’
‘You’ve met her?’
Wilkinson shook his head. ‘She sent a friend to see someone else at the embassy. Everything after that was in letters carried by hand. But, to do what she does, under the nose of the Gestapo…’
‘Anyhow,’ Stahl said, ‘I trust her report was worth it.’
‘Not up to me, Fredric. But I suspect it’ll be useful.’
Useful? ‘I mean, fifty thousand dollars — I assume the government wouldn’t spend money like that unless it was very important.’
Now Wilkinson stopped. He took a puff on his cigar, blew the smoke out, and stared at Stahl, trying to make up his mind. ‘Very well, I think you’ve earned the right to hear a little more about this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell you, or what stays secret — the truth is I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I have to make it up, to improvise, as I go along. Just promise me you’ll keep your mouth shut — I don’t mean to be rude, but no point in mincing words.’
‘You have my promise,’ Stahl said. ‘I am not going to talk about it.’
Wilkinson nodded, but he was clearly uncomfortable. ‘First of all, this is not government money. The USA doesn’t spend money like that, maybe it should, but it doesn’t. The money is, umm, donated? I guess that’s the word. The Department of State and the military spend a little money for information but nothing like this. With Orlova, we don’t even know where it goes — it’s not some kind of sale, she demanded the money and we found a way to get it into Germany. Maybe she keeps it, maybe she pays agents of her own, maybe she gives it to the Reds.’
‘The Reds? She’s a Russian spy?’
‘Who knows. Circumstantial evidence says she could be. She’s got family, prominent family, still in Russia, I can’t believe the Bolsheviks just let her pal around with Hitler and his crowd.’
‘She works for you, she works for them…’
‘And God knows who else.’
‘But she doesn’t get caught.’
‘No she doesn’t, and you just saw why.’
‘I guess I did,’ Stahl said. ‘But still, the information is important.’
‘Very important. We don’t have a political spy service, but, um, people have to know what’s going on.’
‘People?’
Wilkinson pointed up at the ceiling with his index finger. ‘People who live in a big, white, house, those people. Oh what the hell, that person.’
‘The President.’
‘Yeah, him.’
Stahl was sufficiently impressed that he had no idea what to say. At last, he managed a quiet ‘Oh.’
