Alan Furst - The Foreign Correspondent

DeFranco himself wasn’t sure why he’d put the information aside. He could, if he applied himself, probably find the rifle and arrest the Cuozzo brothers-glum, pugnacious little men who worked from dawn to dusk. But he hadn’t done this. Why not? Because he wasn’t sure what they had in mind. He doubted they meant to use it for some simmering feud, he doubted they intended to resell it. Something else. They were forever, he’d heard, grumbling about the government. Could they be so foolish as to contemplate an armed uprising? Could such a thing actually happen?

Maybe. There was, certainly, a fierce opposition. Only words, for the moment, but that could change. Look at this Liberazione crowd, what were they saying? Resist. Don’t give up. And they were not angry little vegetable merchants, they’d been important, respectable people, before Mussolini. Lawyers, professors, journalists-one didn’t rise to such professions by wishing on a star. In time, they might just prevail-they surely thought they would. With guns? Perhaps, depending how the world went. If Mussolini changed sides, and the Germans came down here, the best thing to have would be a rifle. So, for the moment, let the Cuozzo brothers keep it. Wait and see, he thought. Wait and see.

20 APRIL, 1939.

Il faut en finir.

“There must be an end to this.” So said the customer in the chair next to Weisz, at Perini’s barbershop in the rue Mabillon. Not the rain, the politics-a popular sentiment that spring. Weisz had heard it at Mere this or Chez that, from Mme. Rigaud, proprietor of the Hotel Dauphine, from a dignified woman, to her companion, at Weisz’s cafe. The Parisians were in a sour mood: the news was never good, Hitler wouldn’t stop. Il faut en finir, true, though the nature of the ending was, in a particularly Gallic fashion, obscure- somebody must do something, and they were fed up with waiting for it.

“It cannot continue,” the man in the next chair said. Perini held up a mirror so the man, turning left and right, could see the back of his head. “Yes,” he said, “looks good to me.” Perini nodded to the shoe-shine boy, who brought the man his cane, then helped him maneuver himself out of the chair. “They got me the last time,” he said to the men in the barbershop, “but we’ll have to do it all over again.” With a sympathetic murmur, Perini undid the protective sheet fastened at the customer’s neck, whipped it away, handed it to the shoe-shine boy, then took a whisk broom and gave the man’s suit a good brushing.

Weisz was next. Perini tilted the chair back, nimbly drew a steaming towel from the metal heater and wrapped it around Weisz’s face. “As usual, Signor Weisz?”

“Just a trim, please, not too much,” Weisz said, his voice muffled by the towel.

“And a nice shave, for you?”

“Yes, please.”

Weisz hoped the man with the cane was wrong, but feared he wasn’t. The last war had been pure hell for the French, slaughter followed slaughter, until the troops could stand it no longer-there had been sixty-eight mutinies in the hundred-and-twelve French divisions. He tried to relax, the wet heat working its way into his skin. Somewhere behind him, Perini was humming opera, content with the world of his shop, believing that nothing could change that.

On the twenty-first, a phone call at Reuters. “Carlo, it’s me, Veronique.”

“I know your voice, love,” Weisz said gently. He was startled by the call. It had been ten days or so since they’d parted, and he’d expected that he’d never hear from her again.

“I must see you,” she said. “Immediately.”

What was this? She loved him? She couldn’t bear for him to leave her? Veronique ? No, this was not the voice of lost love, something had frightened her. “What is it?” he said cautiously.

“Not on the telephone. Please. Don’t make me tell you.”

“Are you at the gallery?”

“Yes. Forgive me for…”

“It’s allright, don’t apologize, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

As he passed Delahanty’s office, the bureau chief looked up from his work, but said nothing.

When Weisz opened the door to the gallery, he heard heels clicking on the polished floor. “Carlo,” she said. She hesitated-an embrace? No, a brush kiss on each cheek, then a step back. This was a Veronique he’d never seen; tense, agitated, and vaguely hesitant-not entirely sure she was glad to see him.

Standing to one side, a spectre of old, bygone Montmartre, with graying beard, and suit and cravat from the 1920s. “This is Valkenda,” she said, her voice implying great fame and stature. On the walls, swirling portraits of a dissolute waif, almost nude, covered here and there by a shawl.

“Of course,” Weisz said. “Pleased to meet you.”

As Valkenda bowed, his eyes closed.

“We’ll go back to the office,” Veronique said.

They sat on a pair of spindly gold chairs. “Valkenda?” Weisz said, with half a smile.

Veronique shrugged. “They jump off the walls,” she said. “They pay the rent.”

“Veronique, what’s happened?”

“Ouf, I’m glad you’re here.” The words were followed by a mock shudder. “I had, this morning, the Surete. ” She emphasized the word, of all things. “A dreadful little man, who showed up and, and, interrogated me.”

“About what?”

“About you.”

“What did he ask?”

“Where did you live, who did you know. The details of your life.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea, you tell me.”

“I meant, did he say why?”

“No. Just that you were a ‘subject of interest’ in an investigation.”

Pompon, Weisz thought. But why now? “A young man?” Weisz said. “Very neat and correct? Called Inspector Pompon?”

“Oh no, not at all. He wasn’t young, and anything but neat-he had greasy hair, and dirt under his fingernails. And his name was something else.”

“May I see his card?”

“He didn’t leave a card-is that what they do?”

“Generally, they do. What about the other one?”

“What other one?”

“He was alone? Usually, there are two of them.”

“No, not this time. Just Inspector…something. It started with a D, I think. Or a B. ”

Weisz thought it over. “Are you sure he was from the Surete ?”

“He said he was. I believed him.” After a moment, she said, “More or less.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, it’s just, snobisme, you know how that goes. I thought, is this the sort of man they employ, this, I don’t know, something crude, about him, about the way he looked at me.”

“Crude?”

“The way he spoke. He was not, overly educated. And not a Parisian-we can hear it.”

“Was he French?”

“Oh yes, certainly he was. From down south somewhere.” She paused, her face changed, and she said, “A fraud, you think? What then? Do you owe somebody money? And I don’t mean a bank.”

“A gangster.”

“Not the movie sort, but his eyes were never still. Up and down, you know? Maybe he thought it was seductive, or charming.” From the expression on her face, the man had not been anything like “charming.” “Who was he, Carlo?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please, we’re not, strangers, you and I. You think you know who he was.”

What to tell her? How much? “It may have something to do with Italian politics, emigre politics. There are people who don’t like us.”

Her eyes widened. “But wouldn’t he be afraid you’d figure it out? That he’d said he was from the Surete when he was, an imposter?”