Alan Furst - The Foreign Correspondent

“This train? Oh no, we wouldn’t have that. I mean, you can’t talk to those guys.”

“So, you think it’s the Communists,” Gennaro said.

The waiter played a three of cups, from the forty-card Italian deck, the conductor answered with a six of coins, and the porter said, “Hah!”

Gennaro stared at his cards for a moment, then said, “But it’s not a Communist paper. That’s what they tell me.”

“Who then?”

“The GL, they say, it’s their paper.” Cautiously, he laid down a six of cups.

“Sure you want to do that?” the waiter said.

Gennaro nodded. The waiter took the trick with a ten of swords.

“Who knows,” the conductor said, “they’re all the same to me, those political types. All they do is argue, they don’t like this, they don’t like that. Va Napoli, is what I say to them.” Go to Naples, which meant fuck you.

The waiter dealt the cards for the next hand. “Maybe it’s in the baggage,” the waiter said. “We could be playing on it right now.”

Gennaro looked around, at trunks and suitcases piled everywhere. “They search that at the border,” he said.

“True,” the conductor said. “That’s not your job. They can’t expect you to do everything.”

“Bundle of newspapers,” the porter said. “Tied up with a string, you mean. We’d be sure to see something like that.”

“And you never did, right, you’re sure?”

“Seen a lot of things on this train, but never that.”

“What about you?” Gennaro said to the conductor.

“I don’t remember seeing it. A pig in a crate, once. Remember that?”

The waiter laughed, pinched his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and said, “Phew.”

“And we get a body, sometimes, in a coffin,” the conductor said. “Maybe you should look in there.”

“Maybe he’d be reading the paper, Gennaro,” the waiter said. “Then you’d get a medal.”

They all laughed, and went back to playing cards.

On the nineteenth of May, a tipster in Berlin, a telephone operator at the Hotel Kaiserhof, told Eric Wolf of the Reuters bureau that arrangements were under way for Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, to visit Berlin. Rooms had been booked for visiting officials, and feature writers from the Stefani agency, the Italian wire service. A travel agent in Rome, waiting to talk to a reservations clerk, had told the operator what was going on.

At eleven in the morning, Delahanty called Weisz into his office. “What are you working on?” he said.

“Bobo, the talking dog up in Saint-Denis. I just got back.”

“Does it talk?”

“It says”-Weisz deepened his voice to a low growl and barked-”’ bonjour, ‘ and ‘ ca va .’”

“Really?”

“Sort of, if you listen hard. The owner used to be in the circus. It’s a cute dog, a little mongrel, scruffy, it’ll make a good photo.”

Delahanty shook his head in mock despair. “There may well be more important news. Eric Wolf has cabled London, and they telephoned us-Ciano is going to Berlin, with a grand entourage, and the Stefani agency will be there in force. An official visit, not just consultations, and, according to what we hear, a major event, a treaty, called ‘the Pact of Steel.’”

After a moment, Weisz said, “So that’s that.”

“Yes, it looks like the talking’s done. Mussolini is going to sign up with Hitler.” The war on the horizon, as Weisz sat in the grimy office, had moved a step closer. “You’ll have to go home and pack, then get out to Le Bourget, we’re flying you over. The ticket’s on the way to your hotel, by messenger. A one-thirty flight.”

“Forget Bobo?”

Delahanty looked harassed. “No, leave the bloody dog to Woodley, he can use your notes. What London wants from you is the Italian view, the opposition view. In other words, give ‘em hell, if it’s what we think it is, both barrels and the cat’s breakfast. This is bad news, for Britain, and for every subscriber we have, and that’s the way you’ll write it.”

On his way to the Metro, Weisz stopped at the American Express office and wired a message to Christa at her office in Berlin. MUST LEAVE PARIS TODAY FORWARD MAIL AUNT MAGDA EXPECT TO SEE HER TONIGHT HANS . Magda was one of the whippets, Christa would know what he meant.

Weisz reached the Dauphine twenty minutes later, and checked at the desk, but his ticket had not yet arrived. He was very excited as he ran up the stairs, and his mind, caught in crosscurrents, sped from one thing to the next. He realized that Kolb had indulged, at the nightclub, in the sin of optimism-the British diplomats had failed, and had lost Mussolini as an ally. This was, to Weisz, pure heartache, his country was in real trouble now and it would suffer, would, if events played out as he believed, be made to fight a war, a war that would end badly. Yet, strange how life went, the coming political explosion meant that Liberazione, his war, might possibly be salvaged. A visit to Pompon and the Surete machine would be put in gear, because an Italian operation, soon an enemy operation, would be seen in a very different light, and what happened next would be far beyond the efforts of some yawning detective at the Prefecture.

But it also meant, to Weisz, a great deal more than that. As he climbed, affairs of state drifted away like smoke, replaced by visions of what would happen when Christa came to his room. His imagination was on fire, first this, then that. No, the other way. It was cruel to be happy that morning, but he had no choice. For if the world insisted on going to hell, no matter what he, what anyone, tried to do, he and Christa would, by evening light, steal a few hours of life in a private world. Last chance, perhaps, because that other world would soon enough come looking for them, and Weisz knew it.

Breathless from the four flights, Weisz paused at the door when he heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Was this the hotel porter, with his airplane ticket? No, the tread was strong and certain. Weisz waited, and saw he’d been right, it wasn’t the porter, it was the new tenant, down the hall and across the corridor.

Weisz had seen him before, two days earlier, and, as it happened, didn’t much care for him, he couldn’t exactly say why. He was a large man, tall and thick, who wore a rubber raincoat and a black felt hat. His face, dark, heavy, closed, reminded Weisz of southern Italy, it was the kind of face you saw down there. Was he, in fact, Italian? Weisz didn’t know. He’d greeted the man, the first time they met in the hall, but received only a curt nod in reply-the man did not speak. And now, curiously, the same thing happened.

Oh well, some people. In the room, Weisz took his valise from the armoire and, with the ease of the experienced traveler, folded and packed. Underwear and socks, a spare shirt- two -day trip? Maybe three, he thought. Sweater? No. Gray flannel trousers, which made his suit jacket into a sport coat-he liked to think it did, anyhow. In a leather case, toothbrush, toothpaste-enough? Yes. Old-fashioned straight razor, the throat-slitter, so-called, his father’s, once upon a time, kept all these years. Shaving soap. The cologne called Chypre, which Christa had said she liked. Put some on for the trip? No, she won’t be at the airport, and why smell good for the border Kontrolle ?

Ah, the ticket. He went to answer the knock, but it wasn’t the porter. It was the new tenant, still wearing his hat, one hand in the pocket of his raincoat, who stared at Weisz, then looked over his shoulder into the room. Weisz’s heart skipped a beat. He took a half step back, and started to speak. Then, on the stairs, a slow tread accompanied by wheezing. “Excuse me,” Weisz said. He slid past the man and walked toward the staircase, calling out, “Bertrand?”