one’s a diplomat, another has business here, why don’t we get together for a grand Parisian lunch? Talk over old times.’
‘From the what?’
‘Why our section at the legation — what did you think we were about?’
‘Moppi, I opened the mail.’
‘Yes you did — the so-called “Senor Rojas” writes to the consul, the so-called “Senor Blanco” requests a visa to visit his poor mother, “Senor Azul” has inherited a small house in Linz. That was what you called “the mail”, Franz, some of it, the important letters. Just the day-to-day details of a military intelligence section, quite humdrum in fact. No shooting, eh?’ He laughed.
Stahl sat there, his mind working at all this when a well-dressed woman came quickly towards them. ‘Oh, Moppi, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I could not find a taxi.’
‘Look who’s here, Hilda!’ Moppi said, then, ‘Moppi, manners. Frau Hilda Bruner, allow me to present Herr Fredric Stahl.’ He beamed.
The woman blinked and stared. ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘You’re the movie star.’
‘Yes, that’s me,’ he said, just rueful enough. They shook hands, her hand was warm and she held tight for a moment longer than usual.
Moppi looked at his watch, which was thin and gold and expensive. ‘Later than I thought,’ he said. ‘We’d better go off to the restaurant or we’ll lose our reservation.’ He put his hand out and Stahl shook it. ‘You will have a lunch with us, maybe next week, won’t you? At least say you’ll think about it.’
‘I certainly will… think about it, Moppi. Wonderful to see you. And a pleasure to meet you, Meine Frau.’
Moppi reached into the side pocket of his jacket, produced a business card and handed it to Stahl. Then he took Frau Bruner’s arm and the two of them headed for the door. Moppi looked back at Stahl and smiled, then called out, ‘See you soon!’
As Moppi and Frau Bruner left the hotel, Stahl retreated to his suite. He had no memory of any intelligence section at the Barcelona legation. He assumed that, as in any foreign outpost, the Austro-Hungarian diplomats, especially the army and naval officers, tried to learn what they could of Spanish political and military institutions, but Stahl could recollect no codes, no secret writing, no discussion of operations, nothing like that. He’d read the names of the addressees, opened the envelopes, sometimes looked at the first few lines to make sure they were going to the right person, then sorted them into the proper mailboxes, that was all. Maybe Senores Red, White, and Blue had sent letters, but that meant nothing to an eighteen-year-old clerk. When the mail was done, he’d filed papers, emptied wastebaskets, delivered envelopes in the city, run errands, did whatever they told him to do. Yet this man Moppi — good God! — wanted him to believe he’d been involved in clandestine work, because
… Because why? Because it made him vulnerable? Vulnerable to what? Some byzantine form of blackmail? Well, they could forget that. He’d never loved Austria, had disliked the smug hypocrisies of its culture, and now he hated what it had become: a land of Nazi Jew-baiters and book-burners. So he wasn’t going to have lunch or any other contact with Moppi and his pals. He would be polite, distant, and impossible to approach, and that was that.
The Claridge version of a desk, an escritoire with glassed-in bookcase above the hinged writing surface, was by a window and Stahl set Moppi’s business card down on the polished wood and had a good look at it. The address was the German embassy on the rue de Lille. The card itself was impressive, printed on heavy stock, the letters sharp black against a crisp white background. Like new, he thought. And, when he picked up the card and held it at eye level, he caught a faint whiff of fresh ink.
24 September.
Now, finally, he could go to work. He’d been invited to a one o’clock lunch with Jules Deschelles, the producer for Apres la Guerre. Deschelles had his office at 28, rue Marbeuf — just up the street from the hotel — a turn-of- the-century building with a doorway flanked by a wholesale butcher and a men’s haberdashery. Not fancy here, commercial and busy, which allowed Deschelles to pay a reasonable rent for an Eighth Arrondissement address. Crossing the first courtyard, Stahl found a second, then walked up to the fourth floor. Spotting a door with PRODUCTIONS on it he reached for the doorknob, only then noticing that it said PRODUCTIONS CASSON. Wrong producer! He knew of Jean Casson, who made dark, tasty little films about Parisian gangsters with hearts of gold and wildly stunning girlfriends. PRODUCTIONS DESCHELLES was further down the hall, past a spice importer and a travel agency.
In the office there was a tough old bird of a secretary and Deschelles himself. He was about Stahl’s age, an ascetic sort of man, tall, thin, and exceptionally pale, with a scholar’s face — a scholar of some very esoteric subject — and glasses with fine silver frames. He seemed, to Stahl, finicky, holding his head back when he spoke, pursing his lips as he listened. Without ceremony, Deschelles handed him a copy of the script, Fredric Stahl carefully written in the upper corner of the cover. ‘I thought about mailing a script to you in Hollywood,’ Deschelles said. ‘But it wasn’t any good. Do you know of Etienne Roux?’
Stahl didn’t.
‘He wrote the novel Trois Soldats, three soldiers, and a first draft of the screenplay. This is a second version, by two Parisian screenwriters who’ve been produced a dozen times.’ Deschelles stood up, retrieved a book from a pile on the windowsill, and handed it to Stahl. ‘Look it over if you have a moment, but eventually I’d like to have it back.’
Stahl opened the book to the first page: At the end of the war, three soldiers found themselves far from home and penniless. Their enlistments were up, they had long been separated from their regiment, and they were, despite all the battles they’d fought, alive. This they had not foreseen, but soon set about making plans to find their way back to their native land.
‘Roux attempted the universal,’ Deschelles said. ‘The time was modern but unspecific, there were no nationalities, and the countries they passed through were not named. Very poetic, you could say, but my screenwriters had no patience for that. They rewrote it so the war now ends in 1918, the soldiers are in the French Foreign Legion, and the movie opens with them in a Turkish prisoner-of-war camp. They try to get-’
‘Yes, that was in the synopsis.’
Deschelles went on to discuss the director, Emile Simon, who Stahl had never heard of but, as Deschelles described his career, was a familiar type — one of those dependable, competent technicians that no film studio could live without. He’d made a number of films, one of which Stahl remembered — it had played in American theatres — but had not seen. ‘He’s Belgian, from Antwerp,’ Deschelles said. ‘Not in any way the eccentric genius, far from it. Emile is good-natured, easy to work with, and he’s never made an actor look bad.’ After a moment, Des chelles added, ‘And he is very excited at the prospect of working with you, as all of us are. It will add a dimension to this film we never thought we’d have. A surprise, of course, but the best kind of surprise.’
‘A surprise?’ Stahl said. ‘What they said in California was that Paramount started this project with the idea that I’d be in it. Not so?’
Deschelles hesitated, then proceeded carefully. ‘Ah, it’s my understanding that the idea came from Warner Bros. There was negotiation as to which Paramount actor could do a film for Warner, and that turned out to be Gary Cooper.’ He paused, then said, ‘We had originally cast Pierre Langlois as the lead, Monsieur Stahl, we’d signed a contract. And Pierre wasn’t so pleased to lose the role and Paramount had to find him something else.’
‘Really,’ Stahl said, because Deschelles had gone silent and he had to say something. ‘I wasn’t aware of all this. You’re sure?’
‘I am. Well, maybe better to say as sure as anyone can be in this business. As you know, some films, by the time they reach the movie theatres, have led very complicated lives. Yet, even so, there on the screen is the most tender love story, or a great battle between a hero of the people and a wicked king.’ After a moment, he said, ‘You’re not, um, disappointed, are you?’
Stahl smiled and said, ‘Far from it.’ In his imagination he could hear Buzzy Mehlman’s voice: Just do the movie, Fredric, let me worry about what goes on behind the scenes.
Deschelles looked relieved — Stahl’s delivery of the far from it line had been persuasive. ‘You’re aware,’ he said, ‘that a French production is often chosen, by the American award committees, as the best foreign film of the year — since 1931 that’s been true. Perhaps Warners sees it from that angle; success in France, followed by success in America, and then in the international markets. Which will make you more valuable, in future productions.’
