Alan Furst: The Foreign Correspondent

“So, what will it be?” he said, pink hands folded on the desk.

“Can you get paper? Newsprint, in big rolls?”

This amused him. “I can get, oh, you’d be surprised.” Then: “Newsprint? Sure, why not.” Is that all?

“We’ll want a steady supply.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. As long as you pay. You’re starting a newspaper?”

“We can pay. What would it cost?”

“That I couldn’t tell you, but by tomorrow night, I’ll know.” He leaned back in his chair, which didn’t like it and squeaked. “Ever try this?” He reached into a drawer and rolled a black ball across the desk. “Opium. Fresh from China.”

Weisz turned the sticky little ball over in his fingers, then handed it back, though he’d always been curious. “No, thank you, not today.”

“Don’t like sweet dreams?” Grassone said, returning the ball to his drawer. “Then what?”

“Newsprint, a dependable supply.”

“Oh, I am dependable, Mr. X. Ask around, they’ll tell you, you can count on Grassone. The rule down here, on the docks, is what goes on a truck, comes off. I was just thinking, since you made the trip, you might want a little something more. Parma hams? Lucky Strikes? No? Then what about, a gun. These are difficult times, everybody is nervous. You’re a little nervous, Mr. X, if you don’t mind my saying so. Maybe what you need is an automatic, a Beretta, it’ll fit right in your pocket, and the price is good, best in Genoa.”

“You said tomorrow night, a price for the paper?”

Grassone nodded. “Stop by. You want the big rolls, maybe you need a truck.”

“Maybe,” Weisz said, standing up to leave. “See you tomorrow night.”

“I’ll be here,” Grassone said.

Back at the via Corvino, Weisz had too much time to think-haunted by the ghosts of the apartment, troubled by visions of Christa in Berlin. And troubled, as well, by a telephone call he would have to make in the morning. But if Liberazione was to have its own printing plant, there was one contact he had to make before he left, a contact he’d been warned about. “Not unless absolutely necessary,” Brown had said. This was a man known as Emil, who, according to Brown, could handle “anything that needs to be done very quietly.” Well, after his conversation with Matteo, it was necessary, and he would have to use the number he’d memorized. Not an Italian name, Emil, it might be from anywhere. Or perhaps it was an alias, or a codename.

Restless, Weisz wandered from room to room; closets filled with clothing, empty drawers in the desk. No photographs, nothing personal anywhere. He couldn’t read, he couldn’t sleep, and what he wanted to do was go out, get away from the apartment, even though it was after midnight. At least, out in the street, there was life. Which seemed, to Weisz, to be going on much as it always had. Fascism was powerful, and it was everywhere, but the people abided, bent with the wind, improvised, got by, and waited for better times. Ahh, one more rotten government, so what. They weren’t all like that; Matteo wasn’t, the girls who distributed the newspapers weren’t, and neither was Weisz. But, the way the city felt to Weisz, nothing had really changed-the national motto was still do what you have to do, keep your mouth shut, keep your secrets. That was the way life went on here, no matter who ruled. People spoke with their eyes, with small gestures. Two friends meet a third, and one of them signals to the other-eyes closed, a fast, subtle shake of the head. Don’t trust him.

Weisz went into the kitchen, the study, finally the bedroom. He turned out the light, lay down on the spread, and waited for the night to pass.

At noon, he called home again, and this time his mother answered. “It’s me,” he said, and she gasped. But she did not ask where he was, and she did not use his name. A brief, tense conversation: his father had retired, quietly, unwilling to sign the teacher’s loyalty oath, but not making a point of it. They lived now on his pension, and her family money, thank God for that. “We don’t talk on the phone, these days,” she said to him, a warning. And, a minute later, she said she missed him terribly, and then said goodby.

In the cafe, he had a Strega, then another. Maybe he shouldn’t have called, he thought, but he’d probably gotten away with it. He believed he had, he hoped he had. Done with the second Strega, he summoned the number for Emil from his memory and returned to the telephone. A young woman, foreign, but fluent in Genoese Italian, answered immediately, and asked him who he was. “A friend of Cesare,” he said, as Mr. Brown had directed. “Hold the line,” she said. By Weisz’s watch, it took more than three minutes to return to the phone. He was to meet Signor Emil at the Brignole railway station, on the platform for track twelve, at five-ten that afternoon. “Carry a book,” she said. “What tie will you wear?”

Weisz looked down. “Blue with a silver stripe,” he said. Then she hung up.

At five, the Stazione Brignole swarmed with travelers-everyone in Rome had come to Genoa, where they pushed and shoved the population of Genoa, which was trying to get on the 5:10 for Rome. Weisz, holding a copy of L’Imbroglio, Moravia’s short stories, was swept along in the crowd until an approaching traveler waved at him, then grinned, so happy to see him, and took his elbow. “How is Cesare?” Emil said. “Seen him lately?”

“Never saw him in my life.”

“So,” Emil said, “we’ll walk a little.”

He was very smooth, and ageless, with the ruddy face of the freshly shaved-he was always, Weisz thought, freshly shaved-a face without expression beneath light brown hair combed back from a high forehead. Was he Czech? Serb? Russian? He’d spoken Italian for a long time and it came naturally to him, but it wasn’t native, a slight foreign accent touched his words, from somewhere east of the Oder, but, beyond that, Weisz couldn’t guess. And there was something about him-the smooth, blank exterior with its permanent smile-that reminded Weisz of S. Kolb. They were, he suspected, members of the same profession.

“How can I help you?” Emil said. They’d paused before a large signboard where a uniformed railway employee, standing on a ladder, wrote times and destinations in chalk.

“I need a place, a quiet place. To set up some machinery.”

“I see. For a night? A week?”

“For as long as possible.”

A telephone on a table by the ladder rang, and the railway employee wrote the departure time for the train to Pavia, which drew a low murmur of approval, almost an ovation, from the waiting crowd.

“In the country, perhaps,” Emil said. “A farmhouse-isolated, private. Or maybe a shed somewhere, in one of the outlying districts, not the city, but not quite the countryside. We are talking about Genoa, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are.”

“What do you mean, machinery?”

“Printing presses.”

“Ahh.” Emil’s voice warmed, his tone affectionate, and nostalgic. He had fond memories of printing presses. “Pretty good-sized, and not silent.”

“No, it’s a noisy process,” Weisz said.

Emil pressed his lips together, trying to think. Around them, dozens of conversations, a public-address system producing announcements that made everyone turn to his neighbor: “What did he say?” And the trains themselves, the drumming of locomotive engines echoing in the domed station.

“This kind of operation,” Emil said, “should be in a city. Unless you’re contemplating armed insurrection, and that hasn’t come here yet. Then you move everything out to the countryside.”

“It would be better in the city. The people who are going to run the machines are in the city-they can’t be going up into the mountains.”