Alan Furst - The Foreign Correspondent

Meanwhile, at small restaurants in Berlin neighborhoods, open the menu and find a slip of red paper with black printing: Juden Unerwunscht. Jews not welcome here. Weisz saw it in shop windows, taped to barbers’ mirrors, tacked to doors. He never got used to it. Great numbers of Jews had joined the Italian Fascist party in the 1920s. Then, in 1938, German pressure on Mussolini had finally prevailed, articles appeared in the papers suggesting that Italians were in reality a Nordic race, and Jews were anathematized. This was new, for Italy, and generally disliked-they weren’t like that. Weisz stopped going to the restaurants.

12 March.

On Tuesday morning, at eleven-twenty, a telephone call at the Reuters office. “Herr Weisz?” Gerda called from the reception area. “It is for you, a Fraulein Schmidt.”

“Hello?”

“Hello, it’s me. I need to see you, my love.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Oh, a domestic stupidity, but we must talk.”

A pause. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“It isn’t your fault, don’t be sorry.”

“Where are you? Is there, a bar? A cafe?”

“I’m up at Eberswalde, something for work.”

“Yes…”

“There’s a park, in the center of the town. Maybe you can take the train, it’s, oh, forty-five minutes.”

“I can take a taxi.”

“ No. Forgive me, better to take the train. Easier, really, they run all the time, from the Nordbahnhof station.”

“Allright. I can leave immediately.”

“There’s a carnival here, in the park. I’ll find you.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I must talk to you, to, to deal with this. Together, maybe it’s for the best, I don’t know, we’ll see.”

What was this? It sounded like a lovers’ crisis but it was, he sensed, some form of theatre. “Whatever it is, together…” he said, playing his part.

“Yes, I know. I feel the same.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Hurry, my love, I can’t wait to see you.”

He was in Eberswalde by one-thirty. In the park, several carnival rides had been set up and calliope music played from a staticky loudspeaker. He wandered over to the merry-go-round and stood there, hands in pockets, until, five minutes later, she appeared, having been watching, apparently, from some vantage point. The day was icy, with a sharp wind, and she wore a beret and a trim gray ankle-length coat with a high collar buttoned at the throat. On a long lead she held two whippets, with wide leather collars on their slim necks.

She kissed him on the cheek. “Sorry to do this to you.”

“What is it? Von Schirren?”

“No, nothing like that. The phones aren’t safe, so this had to be a, a rendezvous.”

“Oh.” He was relieved, then not.

“There’s somebody I want you to meet. Just for a moment. You don’t need to know a name.”

“Allright.” His eyes wandered, looking for surveillance.

“Don’t be furtive,” she said. “We’re just star-crossed lovers.”

She took his arm and they walked, the dogs straining at their lead.

“They’re beautiful,” he said. They were: fawn-colored, lean and smooth, with tucked bellies and strong chests, built for speed.

“Hortense and Magda,” she said fondly. “I’m coming from home,” she explained. “I threw them in the car and said I was taking them out for a run.” One of the dogs looked over her shoulder when she heard the word run.

They walked past the merry-go-round to a ride with a brightly painted sign above the ticket booth: THE LANDT STUNTER. LEARN TO DIVE-BOMB! Attached to a heavy steel centerpiece was a pole bearing a miniature airplane, a black Maltese cross on its fuselage, which flew in a circle, sweeping close to the grass, rising twenty feet into the air, then plunging back toward the ground. A young boy, maybe ten years old, was flying the plane. He sat in the open cockpit, his face intense with concentration, his hands white as he clutched the pilot’s controls. When the plane dove, toy guns on the wings rattled and the mouths of the barrels sparkled like Roman candles. A long line of boys, eyes rapt with envy, some in Hitlerjugend uniforms, some holding their mothers’ hands, waited for their turn to fly, watching the plane as it fired its machine guns, then came around for another attack.

A middle-aged man in a brown overcoat and hat moved slowly through the crowd. “He’s here,” Christa said. He had the face, Weisz thought, of an intellectual-deeply lined, with deep-set eyes; a face that had read too much, and brooded about what it read. He nodded to Christa, who said, “This is my friend. From Paris.”

“Good afternoon.”

Weisz returned the greeting.

“You are the journalist?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Christa suggests you might help us.”

“If I can.”

“I have an envelope in my pocket. In a minute, the three of us will walk away from the crowd, and, as we approach the trees, I’m going to hand it to you.”

They watched the ride, then began to walk, Christa leaning back against the pull of the dogs.

“Christa tells me you’re Italian,” he said.

“I am, yes.”

“This information concerns Italy, Germany and Italy. We cannot mail it, because our mail is read by the security forces, but we believe it should be made known to the public. Perhaps by a French newspaper, though we doubt they will publish it, or by a newspaper of the Italian resistance. Do you know such people?”

“Yes, I know them.”

“And will you take it?”

“How do you come to have it?”

“One of our friends copied it, from documents in the finance office of the Interior Ministry. It is a list of German agents, operating in Italy with Italian consent. There are people, in Berlin, who support our work, and they would want to see it, but this information does not directly concern them, so it should be in the hands of people who understand that it must be revealed, not just filed.”

“In Paris, these newspapers are issued by people of various factions, do you have a preference?”

“No, we don’t care about that, though centrist parties are more likely to be believed.”

“That’s true,” Weisz said. “The extreme left is known to improvise.”

Christa let the dogs take her around in a circle, so that she faced the other way. “It’s good now,” she said.

The man reached in his pocket and handed Weisz an envelope.

Weisz waited until he was back at the office, then made sure he was not observed as he opened the envelope. Inside, he found six pages, single-spaced, a list of names, typed on thin paper, like airmail stationery, on a machine that used a German font. The names were principally, though not entirely, German, numbered from R100 to V718, thus six hundred and nineteen entries, preceded by various letters, R, M, T, and N predominant, with a scattering of several others. Each name was followed by a location, offices or associations, in a specific city- R for Rome, M for Milan, T for Turin, N for Naples, and so on-and a payment in Italian lire. The heading said, “Disbursements-January, 1939.” The copying had been done hastily, he thought, mistakes x-ed over, the correct letter or number handwritten above the entry.

Agents, the man in the park had called them. That covered a lot of ground. Were they spies? Weisz thought not; the names might be aliases, but they weren’t code names-CURATE, LEOPARD-and, studying the locations, he found no armament factories, no naval or army bases, no laboratories or engineering firms. What he did find was a surveillance organization, built into the Italian Ministry of the Interior, its Direzione della Pubblica Sicurezza, Department of Public Security, and, in turn, its branches of national police, called Questura, situated in every Italian town and city. In addition, these agents were attached to the offices of the Auslandsorganisation and Arbeitsfront in various cities, the former for German professionals and businessmen, the latter for salaried employees working in Italy.