Alan Furst - The Foreign Correspondent

“Well,” Weisz said, “to these people, it wouldn’t matter. It might be better. Did he say you had to keep it to yourself?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Of course not, I had to tell you.”

“Not everybody would, you know,” Weisz said. He was silent for a moment. She had been courageous, on his behalf, and the way he met her eyes let her know he appreciated that. “You see, it works either way-I’m suspected of something criminal, so your feelings about me are changed, or you tell me, and I have to worry about the fact that I’m being investigated.”

She thought about what he’d said, puzzled for a moment, then understanding. “That is, Carlo, a very ugly thing to do.”

His smile was grim. “Yes, isn’t it,” he said.

Heading back to the office, Weisz stood swaying in a crowded Metro car, the faces around him pale and blank, and private. There was a poem about that, by some American who loved Mussolini. What was it-faces like, like “petals on a wet, black bough.” He tried to remember the rest of it, but the man who’d questioned Veronique wouldn’t leave him alone. Maybe he was exactly who he’d said he was. Weisz’s experience of the Surete went no further than the two inspectors who’d interrogated him, but there were others, likely all sorts. Still, he’d come alone, and left no card, no telephone number. Never mind the Surete, this was not the way police anywhere operated. Information was often best recollected in private, later on, and flics all the world over knew it.

He didn’t want to face what came next. That this was the OVRA, operating from a clandestine station in Paris, using French agents, and launching a new attack against the giellisti. Getting rid of Bottini hadn’t worked, so they’d try something else. The timing was right, they’d seen the new Liberazione a week earlier, and here was their response. It worked. From the time he’d left the gallery he’d been apprehensive, literally and figuratively looking over his shoulder. So, he told himself, they got what they came for. And he knew it wouldn’t stop there.

He left work at six, saw Salamone at the bar and told him what had happened, and was at the Tournon, with Ferrara, by seven-forty-five. All he’d had to do was forget about dinner, but, the way he felt by nightfall, he wasn’t all that hungry.

Being with Ferrara made him feel better. Weisz had begun to see Mr. Brown’s point about the colonel-the antifascist forces weren’t all fumbling intellectuals with eyeglasses and too many books, they had warriors, real warriors, on their side. And Soldier for Freedom was moving along swiftly, had now reached Ferrara’s flight to Marseilles.

Weisz sat on one chair, with the new Remington they’d bought him on the other, between his knees, while Ferrara paced about the room, sitting sometimes on the edge of the bed, then pacing again. “It was strange to be on my own,” he said. “The military life keeps you occupied, tells you what to do next. Everybody complains about it, makes fun of it, but it has its comforts. When I left Ethiopia…we talked about the ship, the Greek tanker, right?”

“Yes. Big, fat Captain Karazenis, the great smuggler.”

Ferrara grinned at the memory. “You mustn’t make him out too much of a scoundrel. I mean, he was, but it was a pleasure to be around him, his answer to the cruel world was to steal it blind.”

“That’s how he’ll be, in the book. Called only ‘the Greek captain.’”

Ferrara nodded. “Anyhow, we had engine trouble off the Ligurian coast. Somewhere around Livorno. That was a bad day-what if we had to put into an Italian port? Would one of the crew give me away? And Karazenis liked to play games with me, said he had a girlfriend in Livorno. But, in the end, we made it, just made it, into Marseilles, and I went to a hotel in the port.”

“What hotel was that?”

“I’m not sure it had a name, the sign said ‘Hotel.’”

“I’ll leave it out.”

“I never knew you could stay anywhere for so little money. Bed bugs, yes, and lice. But you know the old saying: ‘Filth, like hunger, only matters for eight days.’ And I was there for months, and then-“

“Wait, wait, not so fast.”

They worked away at it, Weisz hammering on the keys, churning out pages. At eleven-thirty, they decided to call it quits. The air in the room was smoky and still, Ferrara opened the shutters, then the window, letting in a rush of cold night air. He leaned out, looking up and down the street.

“What’s so interesting?” Weisz said, putting on his jacket.

“Oh, there’s been some guy lurking about in doorways, the last few nights.”

“Really?”

“We’re being watched, I guess. Or maybe the word is guarded. ”

“Did you mention it?”

“No. I don’t know that it has anything to do with me.”

“You should tell them about it.”

“Mm. Maybe I will. You don’t think it’s some kind of, problem, do you?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, maybe I’ll ask about it.” He went back to the window and looked up and down the street. “Not there now,” he said. “Not where I can see him.”

The streets were deserted as Weisz walked back to the Dauphine, but he had an imagined Christa for company. Told her about his day, a version made entertaining for her amusement. Then, back in his room, he fell asleep and found her in his dreams-the first time they’d made love, on a yacht in Trieste harbor. She had worn, that late afternoon, a pair of oyster-colored pajamas, sheer and cool for a summer week at sea. He’d sensed that she had some kind of sensual affinity for the pajamas, so he did not take them off, the first time. Unbuttoned the top, slid the bottoms down her thighs. This inspired both of them, and, when the dream woke him, he found himself again inspired, and then, in the darkness, lived those moments once more.

The editorial meeting for the new Liberazione was at midday on the twenty-ninth of April. Weisz hurried to get to the Europa, but he was the last one there. Salamone had waited for him, and began the meeting as he was sitting down. “Before we discuss the next issue,” he said, “we have to talk a little about our situation.”

“Our situation?” the lawyer said, alert to a note in Salamone’s voice.

“Some things are going on that have to be discussed.” He paused, then said, “For one thing, a friend of Carlo’s was questioned by a man who represented himself as an inspector of the Surete. There’s reason to believe that he wasn’t who he said he was. That he came from the opposition.”

A long silence. Then the pharmacist said, “Do you mean the OVRA?”

“It’s a possibility we have to face. So take a minute, and think about how things are going in your own lives. Your daily lives, anything not normal.”

From the lawyer, a forced laugh. “Normal? My life at the language school?” But nobody else thought it was funny.

The art historian from Siena said, “It all goes on as usual, with me.”

Salamone, a sigh in his voice, said, “Well, what’s happened to me is that I’ve lost my job. I’ve been discharged.”

For a moment, dead silence, broken only by the muted sounds of cafe life on the other side of the door. Finally, Elena said, “Did they tell you why?”

“My supervisor wouldn’t quite say. Something about not enough work, but that was a lie. He had some other reason.”

“You think that he, too, had a visit from the Surete, ” the lawyer said. “And not the real one.”

From Salamone, spread hands and raised eyebrows. What else can I think?

This was immediately personal. Every one of them worked at whatever they could find-the lawyer at Berlitz, the Sienese professor as a meter reader for the gas company, Elena selling hosiery at the Galeries Lafayette-but that was common emigre Paris, where Russian cavalry officers drove taxis. Around the table, the same reaction: at least they had jobs, but what if they lost them? And as Weisz, perhaps the luckiest of them all, thought about Delahanty, the rest thought about their own employers.