Alan Furst - Kingdom of Shadows

“I did. Who’s Ilya?”

“A friend, he said. He wants you to meet him.” She thumbed through a stack of notes on her desk. “For a drink. At the cafe on rue Maubeuge, across from the Gare du Nord. At six-fifteen.”

Ilya? “You’re sure it was for me?”

She nodded. “He said, ‘Can you tell Nicholas.’ “

“Is there another Nicholas?”

She thought about it. “Not in this office. He sounded nice enough, very calm. With a Russian accent.”

“Well, who knows.”

“You’ll go?”

He hesitated. Unknown Russians, meetings at station cafes. “Why did he call you? ”

“I don’t know, my love.” She looked past him, to her doorway. “Is that it?”

He turned to see Leon with a sketch of a woman in a fur stole. “I can come back later, if you’re busy,” Leon said.

“No, we’re done,” Morath said.

For the rest of the day he thought about it. Couldn’t stop. Almost called Polanyi, then didn’t. Decided, finally, to stay away. He left the office at five-thirty, stood for a moment on the avenue Matignon, then waved at a taxi, intending to go back to his apartment.

“Monsieur?” the driver said.

“The Gare du Nord.” Je m’en fous, the hell with it.

He sat in the cafe, an unread newspaper beside his coffee, staring at people as they came through the door. Was it something to do with the diamond dealer in Antwerp? Somebody Balki knew? Or a friend of a friend- Call Morath when you get to Paris. Somebody who wanted to sell him insurance, maybe, or a stockbroker, or an emigre who needed a job. A Russian client? Who wanted to advertise his … shoe store?

Anything, really, but what he knew it was.

Morath waited until seven, then took a taxi to Mary Day’s apartment. They drank a glass of wine, made love, went out for steak-frites, walked home, curled up together under the blankets. But he woke up at three-thirty, and again at five.

And, when the phone rang in his office on Monday morning, waited three rings before he picked it up.

“My apology, Monsieur Morath. I hope you will forgive.” A soft voice, heavily accented.

“Who are you?”

“Just Ilya. I’ll be, tomorrow morning, at the open market at Maubert.”

“And this concerns-?”

“Thank you,” he said. In the background, somebody called out “Un cafe allonge.” There was a radio playing, a chair scraped a tile floor, then the phone was hung up.

A big market, at the place Maubert, on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Cod and red snapper on chipped ice. Cabbages, potatoes, turnips, leeks, onions. Dried rosemary and lavender. Walnuts and hazelnuts. A pair of bloody pork kidneys wrapped in a sheet of newspaper.

Morath saw him, waiting in a doorway. A spectre. Stared for a moment, got a nod in return.

They walked among the stalls, breaths steaming in the cold air.

“Do I know you?” Morath asked.

“No,” Ilya said. “But I know you.”

There was something subtly mismade about him, Morath thought, perhaps a trunk too long for the legs, or arms too short. A receding hairline, with hair sheared so close he seemed at first to have a high forehead. A placid face, waxy and pale, which made a thick black mustache even blacker. And in his bearing there was a hint of the doctor or the lawyer, the man who trained himself, for professional reasons, not to show emotion. He wore a sad old overcoat, olive green, perhaps a remnant of somebody’s army, somewhere, so soiled and frayed that its identity had long ago faded away.

“Did we meet, somewhere?” Morath asked him.

“Not quite. I know you from your dossier, in Moscow. The sort of record kept by the special services. It is, perhaps, more complete than you would expect. Who you know, what you earn. Political views, family-just the usual things. I had a choice of hundreds of people, in Paris. Various nationalities, circumstances. Eventually, I chose you.”

They walked in silence, for a time. “I am in flight, of course. I was due to be shot, in the purge of the Foreign Directorate. My friends had been arrested, had vanished, as is the normal course of things there. At the time, I was in-I can say, Europe. And when I was recalled to Moscow-to receive a medal, they said-I knew precisely what medal that was, nine grams, and I knew precisely what was in store for me before they got around to using the bullet. So, I ran away, and came to Paris to hide. For seven months I lived in a room. I believe I left the room three times in that period.”

“How did you live?”

Ilya shrugged. “The way one does. Using the little money I had, I bought a pot, a spirit stove, and a large sack of oats. With water, available down the hall from my room, I could boil the oats and make kasha. Add a little lard and you can live on that. I did.”

“And me? What do you want of me?”

“Help.”

A policeman walked past, his cape drawn around him for warmth. Morath avoided his glance.

“There are things that should be known,” Ilya said. “Perhaps you can help me to do this.”

“They are looking for you, of course.”

“High and low. And they will find me.”

“Should you be out on the street?”

“No.”

They passed a boulangerie. “A moment,” Morath said, entered the shop and emerged with a batard. He tore a piece off the end and handed the rest to Ilya.

Morath chewed on the bread for a long time. His mouth was very dry and it was hard to swallow.

“I’ve put you in danger, I know,” Ilya said. “And your woman friend. For that I must apologize.”

“You knew to call me through her, where she works?”

“I followed you, monsieur. It isn’t so very hard to do.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t.”

“You can walk away, of course. I would not bother you again.”

“Yes. I know.”

“But you do not.”

Morath didn’t answer.

Ilya smiled. “So,” he said.

Morath reached in his pocket and handed Ilya whatever money he had.

“For your kindness, I thank you,” Ilya said. “And, for anything more, if God wills, please keep in mind that I don’t have very much time.”

Morath took Mary Day to the movies that night, a gangster film, as luck would have it, detectives chasing a handsome bank robber down alleys in the rain. A noble savage, his dark soul redeemed by love in the previous reel, but the flics didn’t know that. The little scarf in his hand when he died in a puddle under a streetlamp-that belonged to dear, good, stunning, tight-sweatered Dany. No justice, in this world. A covert sniffle from Mary Day, that was all he got. When the newsreel came on-coal mine cave-in at Lille, Hitler shrieking in Regensburg-they left.

Back on the rue Guisarde, they lay in bed in the darkness. “Did you find your Russian?” she said.

“This morning. Over in the Maubert market.”

“And?”

“A fugitive.”

“Oh?”

She felt light in his arms, fragile.

“What did he want?” she said.

“Some kind of help.”

“Will you help him?”

For a moment he was silent, then said, “I might.”

He didn’t want to talk about it, slid his hand down her stomach to change the subject. “See what happens when I take my Betravix?”

She snickered. “Now that is something I did see. A week after I was hired, I think it was. You were off someplace-wherever it is you go-and this strange little man showed up with his tonic. ‘For the nerves,’ he said. ‘And to increase the vigor.’ Courtmain was anxious to take it on. We sat in his office, this green bottle on his desk, somewhere he’d found a spoon. I took the cap off and smelled it. Courtmain looked inquisitive, but I didn’t say anything-I’d only been there a few days and I was afraid to make a mistake. Well, nothing scares Courtmain, he poured himself a spoonful and slugged it down. Then he turned pale and went running down the hall.”