Alan Furst - The Foreign Correspondent

For the 10 April Liberazione, there was plenty to write about, and both the Roman lawyer and the art historian from Siena contributed articles. Mussolini had issued an ultimatum to King Zog of Albania, demanding, essentially, that he give his country to Italy. Britain was asked to intercede, but declined and, on 7 April, the Italian navy bombarded the Albanian coast, and the army invaded. This invasion violated the Anglo-Italian agreement signed a year earlier, but the Chamberlain government was silent.

Not so Liberazione.

A New Imperial Adventure, they said. More dead and wounded, more money, all for Mussolini’s frantic competition with Adolf Hitler, who, on 22 March, had taken the port of Memel by sending a registered letter to the Lithuanian government, then sailing into the port, to grinding newsreel cameras and popping flashbulbs, on a German warship. Very saucy, as Hitler liked to say, with the sort of panache guaranteed to infuriate Mussolini.

But, just in case it didn’t, the April Liberazione surely did-if the palace stooges allowed him to see it. For there was not only the editorial about German agents but also a cartoon. Talk about saucy. It’s nighttime, and here’s Mussolini, as usual, on a balcony. This balcony, however, is off a bedroom, the outline of a bed barely visible in the darkness. It’s the familiar Il Duce; big jaw thrust out, arms folded, but he’s wearing only a pajama top-with medals, of course-revealing hairy, knobby cartoon legs, while, from behind the French door, a pair of woman’s eyes, very alarmed, are peering out of the gloom, suggesting that all has not gone well in the bedroom. A suggestion confirmed by the old Sicilian proverb used as the caption: “Potere e meglio di fottere.” Nice rhyme, there, the sort of thing that made it fun to say, and easy to remember. “Power is better than fucking.”

It had been three weeks since Weisz’s return from Berlin, and he had to call Veronique-casual as the love affair had been, he couldn’t just vanish. So, on a Thursday afternoon, he telephoned and asked her to meet him after work at a cafe near the gallery. She knew. Somehow she knew. And, Parisian warrior that she was, had never looked so lovely. So soft-her hair soft and simple, eyes barely made up, blouse falling softly over her breasts, with a new perfume, sweet, not sophisticated, clouds of it. Three weeks’ absence and a meeting at a cafe made words practically pointless, but decency demanded an explanation. “I have met, somebody,” he said. “It is, I think, serious.”

There were no tears, only that she would miss him, and he realized, just at that moment, how much he’d liked her, what good times they’d had together, in bed and out.

“Someone you met in Berlin, Carlo?”

“Someone I met a long time ago.”

“A second chance?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Very rare, the second chance.” You won’t get one here.

“I will miss you,” he said.

“You’re sweet, to say that.”

“It’s true, I’m not just saying it.”

A melancholy smile, a lift of the eyebrows.

“May I call you, sometime, to see how you’re doing?”

She put a hand, also soft, and warm, on his, by way of telling him what a jackass he’d just been, then stood up and said, “My coat?”

He helped her on with her coat, she turned, shook out her hair so that it fell properly over her collar, rose to give him a dry kiss on the lips, and, hands in pockets, walked out the door. When, later, he left the cafe, from the woman behind the cash register, another melancholy smile, another lift of the eyebrows.

The following day, he forced himself to deal with the list he’d brought out of Berlin. Leaving the office at lunchtime, he took an endless Metro ride out to the Porte de Clignancourt, wandered through the flea market, and bought a valise. It had been born cheap-cardboard covered with pebbled fabric-then lived a long, hard life; a tag on the handle evidence of a stay at a railway baggage room in Odessa.

That done, he walked and walked, past stalls of prodigious furniture and racks of old clothes, until, at last, he found an old gent with a goatee and a dozen typewriters. He tried them all, even the red Mignon portable, and finally chose a Remington with a French, AZERTY, keyboard, haggled a little, put it in the valise, dropped it off at the hotel, and returned to the office.

Long hours, the spy business. After an evening with Ferrara-the troop transport to Ethiopia, the misgivings of a fellow officer-Weisz walked back to the Dauphine, took the list from its hiding place, beneath the bottom drawer of his armoire, and went to work. The thing was a bear to retype, the old ribbon had barely any ink, and he had to do it twice. Finally, he typed two envelopes, one to the French Foreign Ministry, the other to the British embassy, added stamps, and went to bed. They would know what had been done-French keyboard, umlauts put in by hand, local mailing-but Weisz didn’t so much care, by that point, what anybody did with it. What he did care about was keeping his word to the man in the park, if he was still alive, and especially if he wasn’t.

It was very late by the time he finished, but he wanted badly to be done with the whole business, so he burned the list, flushed the ashes down the toilet, and set out to dispose of the typewriter. Valise in hand, he walked down the stairs and out into the street. Harder than he thought, to lose a valise-people everywhere, and the last thing he wanted was some Frenchman running after him, waving his arms and crying, “Monsieur!” At last he found a deserted alley, set the valise by a wall, and walked away.

14 April, 3:30 A.M. Weisz stood at the corner where the rue Dauphine met the quay above the Seine and waited for Salamone. And waited. Now what? It was the fault of that accursed Renault, old and mean. Why did nobody in his world ever have anything new? Everything in their lives was worn-out, used up, hadn’t really worked right for a long time. Fuck this, he thought, I’ll go to America. Where he would be poor again, in the midst of wealth. That was the old story, for Italian immigrants-the famous postcard back to Italy saying, “Not only are the streets not paved with gold, they are not paved, and we are expected to pave them.”

The line of thought was interrupted by the coughing engine of Salamone’s car, and darkness pierced by one headlight. Butting the door open with his shoulder, Salamone said, by way of greeting, “Che palle!” What balls! Meaning, what balls life has to do this to me! Then, “You have it?”

Yes, he had it, the 10 April Liberazione, a sheaf of paper in his briefcase. They drove along the Seine, then turned and took the bridge across the river, working through small streets until they came to the all-night cafe near the Gare de Lyon. The conductor was waiting for them, drinking an aperitif and reading a newspaper. Weisz brought him to the car, where he sat in the backseat and spent a few minutes with them. “Now that cazzo “-that prick-“has us in Albania, ” he said, sliding the Liberazione into a trainman’s leather case he wore over his shoulder. “And he’s got my poor nephew there, with the army. A kid, seventeen years old, a very good kid, sweet-natured, and they’ll surely kill him, those fucking goat thieves. Is that in here?” He tapped the leather case.

“Very much in there,” Weisz said.

“I’ll read it on my way down.”

“Tell Matteo we’re thinking about him.” Salamone meant their Linotype operator in Genoa.

“Poor Matteo.”

“What’s gone wrong?” Salamone’s voice was tight.