Alan Furst - Kingdom of Shadows

“A little something for the sweetheart.”

“Absolutely. In a velvet box.”

The driver turned up the hill on the rue Monge. From the low sky, a few drops of rain, people on the street opened their umbrellas. “A substantial purchase,” Morath said. “Best would be somebody in the business a long time.”

“And discreet.”

“Very. But please understand, there’s no crime, nothing like that. We just want to be quiet.”

The art dealer nodded. “Not the neighborhood jeweler.”

“No.”

“Has to be in Paris?”

Morath thought it over. “Western Europe.”

“Then it’s easy. Now, for us, it’s a taxi ride and, maybe tomorrow, a train ride. So, we’ll say, five thousand francs?”

Morath reached into his inside pocket, counted out the money in hundred-franc notes, and put the rest away.

“One thing I should tell you. The market in refugee diamonds is not good. If you bought in Amsterdam a year ago and went to sell in Costa Rica tomorrow, you’d be badly disappointed. If you think a thousand carats of value is a thousand carats of value, like currency in a normal country somewhere, and all you’ll have to do is carve up the heel in your shoe, you’re wrong. People think it’s like that but it isn’t. Since Hitler, the gem market is a good place to lose your shirt. F’shtai? ”

“Understood,” Morath said.

“Say, want to buy a Vermeer?”

Morath started to laugh.

“No? A Hals then, a little one. Fits in a suitcase. Good, too. I’ll vouch for it. You don’t know who I am, and I’d rather you never did, but I know what I’m talking about.”

“You need somebody rich.”

“Not this week, I don’t.”

Morath smiled regret.

The chalk-white man took off his hat and ran his hand over his head. Then said, in German, “Stop. He’s moral.”

“Is that it?” the art dealer said. “You don’t want to take advantage of a man who’s a fugitive?”

The driver laughed.

“Well, if you ever, God forbid, have to run for your life, then you’ll understand. It’s beyond value, by then. What you’ll be saying is ‘take the picture, give the money, thank you, good-bye.’ Once you only plan to live till the afternoon, you’ll understand.”

For a time, there was silence in the cab. The art dealer patted Morath on the knee. “Forgive me. What you need today is a name. That’s going to be Shabet. It’s a Hasidic family, in Antwerp, in the diamond district. There’s brothers, sons, all sorts, but do business with one and you’re doing business with all of them.”

“They can be trusted?”

“With your life. I trusted them with mine, and here I am.” The art dealer spelled the name, then said, “Of course I need to certify you to them. What should I call you?”

“Andre.”

“So be it. Give me ten days, because I have to send somebody up there. This is not business for the telephone. And, just in case, you and I need a confirmation signal. Go to the Madine, ten days from now. If you see the woman, it’s all settled.”

Morath thanked him. They shook hands. The chalk-white man tipped his hat. “Good luck to you, sir,” he said in German. The driver pulled over to the curb, in front of a charcuterie with a life-size tin statue of a pig by its doorway, inviting customers inside with a sweep of his trotter. “Voila le Ritz!” the driver called out.

Emile Courtmain sat back in his swivel chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared out at the avenue Matignon. “When you first think about it, it should be easy. But then you start to work, and it turns out to be very difficult.”

There were forty wash drawings set out around the office-pinned to the walls, propped up on chairs. French life. Peasant couples in the fields, or in the doorways of farmhouses, or sitting on wagons. Like Millet, perhaps, a benign, optimistic sort of Millet. Then there were Parisian papas and mamans out for a Sunday stroll, by a carousel, at the Arc de Triomphe. A pair of lovers on a bridge over the Seine, holding hands, she with bouquet, he in courting suit- facing the future. A soldier, home from the front, seated at the kitchen table, his good wife setting a tureen in front of him. This one wasn’t so bad, Morath thought.

“Too gentle,” Courtmain said. “The ministry will want something with a little more clenched fist in it.”

“Any text?”

“A word or two-Mary’s going to join us in a minute. Something like, ‘In a dangerous world, France remains strong.’ It’s meant to dispel defeatism, especially after what happened at Munich.”

“Exhibited where?”

“The usual places. Metro, street kiosk, post office.”

“Hard to dispel defeatism in a French post office.”

Morath sat down in a chair across from Courtmain. Mary Day knocked lightly on the frame of the open door. “Hello, Nicholas,” she said. She pulled up a chair, lit a Gitane, and handed Courtmain a sheet of paper.

” ‘France will win,’ ” he read. Then, to Morath, “That’s not poor Mary’s line.” From Courtmain, an affectionate grin. Mary Day had the smart person’s horror of the fatuous phrase.

“It’s the little man at the interior ministry,” she explained. “He, had an idea. ”

“I hope they’re paying.”

Courtmain made a face. Not much. “Advertising goes to war-you can’t say no to them.”

Mary Day took the paper back from Courtmain. ” ‘France forever.’ “

“ Bon Dieu, ” Courtmain said.

” ‘Our France.’ “

Morath said, “Why not just ‘La France’?”

“Yes,” Mary Day said. “The Vive understood. That was my first try. They didn’t care for it.”

“Too subtle,” Courtmain said. He looked at his watch. “I have to be at RCA at five.” He stood, opened his briefcase and made sure he had what he needed, then adjusted the knot of his tie. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” he said to Morath.

“About ten,” Morath said.

“Good,” Courtmain said. He liked having Morath around and wanted him to know it. He said good-bye to each of them and went out the door.

Which left Morath alone in the room with Mary Day.

He pretended to look at the drawings and tried to think of something clever to say. She glanced at him, read over her notes. She was the daughter of an Irish officer in the Royal Navy and the French artist Marie d’Aumonville-an extraordinary combination, if you asked Morath, or anybody. A light sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of the nose; long, loose brown hair; and pleading brown eyes. She was flat-chested, amused, impish, absentminded, awkward. “Mary’s a certain type,” Courtmain had once told him. When she was sixteen, he suspected, all the boys wanted to die for her, but they were afraid to ask her to go to the movies.

She sat back in the chair and said, “Well, I suppose we have to go back to work.”

Morath agreed.

“And then, you’ll take me for a drink.” She started to gather up her papers. “Right?”

Morath stared, did she mean it? “With pleasure,” he said, retreating into formality. “At seven?”

Her smile was, as always, rueful. “You don’t have to, Nicholas.” She was just teasing him.

“I want to,” he said. “Fouquet, if you like.”

“Well,” she said. “That would be nice. Or the place around the corner.”

“Fouquet,” he announced. “Why not?”

A comic shrug-don’t know why not. “Seven,” she said, a little startled at what she’d done.

They hurried through the crowds, up the Champs Elysees, a few flakes of snow in the night air. She walked with big strides, shoulders hunched over, hands thrust in the pockets of what Morath thought was a very odd coat-three-quarter length, maroon wool with big buttons covered in brown fabric.