Alan Furst: Dark Star

18 October 1940.

Andre Szara stood among the autumn-colored trees of a forest in the Alpine foothills and watched the waters of the Rhine curl white at the pillars of a bridge. On the other side of the river he could see the German village of Hohentengen; the red and black flag moved lightly in the wind above the town hall. A pretty place, at the southern extremity of the Black Forest, and quiet. On Szara’s side of the Rhine, a few miles away, was the Swiss village of Kaiserstuhl, also pretty, also quiet. It was a peaceful border; not much happened there. At the German end of the bridge, two sentries stood guard over a wooden gate. A few log-and-barbed-wire barriers had been positioned at the edge of the village to thwart escape by a speeding car, but that was all.

He looked at his watch and saw that it was not yet four o’clock. Shifted his weight to lean against an oak tree, the dead leaves rustling at his feet as he changed position. It was deserted here. Only fifteen miles from Zurich, but another world. In his imagination he tracked the courier: from Berlin south toward Munich, crossing the Danube in the province of Wurttemberg, heading for Lake Constance, then drifting toward Basel, where the Rhine turned north, at last a left at Hohentengen, and across the Hohentengen bridge. Again he looked at his watch; the minute hand hadn’t moved. A wisp of smoke curled from the chimney of a woodsman’s hut that housed the Swiss border guard. They, unlike their German counterparts across the bridge, did not have to stand guard with rifles in the chill mountain air.

Now it came.

Szara stiffened when he saw it. A huge, shiny black automobile with long curves up the front fenders and little swastika flags set above the headlamps. It moved carefully around the barriers, rolled to a stop at the gate. One of the guards leaned down to the driver’s window, then stood to attention and saluted briskly. The other guard lifted the latch, then walked the gate open until he stood against the railing of the bridge. The car moved forward; Szara could just hear it bump across the uneven wooden boards of the surface. The door of the woodsman’s hut opened, and a guard came halfway out and casually waved the automobile forward into Switzerland.

Szara, hands thrust in pockets, set off on a dirt path that ran along the hillside, then descended to the road at a point where it left the view of the border guards. He had surveyed all the little bridges along this part of the Rhine and finally chosen the Hohentengen, walking through the operation a week earlier. He was now certain the meeting would be unobserved. Skidding on wet leaves, he reached the surface of the road and moved toward the idling automobile, which had stopped by a road marker showing the distance to Kaiserstuhl. Through the windshield Szara could just make out-the October light was fading quickly and the oblique angle made it difficult to see-the silhouette of a driver in uniform and military cap. The glass of the passenger windows was tinted for privacy. He saw only a reflected hillside, and then his own image, a hand reaching to open the back door, a face cold and neutral, entirely at war with what went on inside him.

The door swung open smoothly, but he did not find what he expected. He blinked in surprise. These were not pale blue eyes, and there was no affection in them. Curiosity, perhaps. But not much of that. These were the eyes of a hunter, a predator. They simply stared back at him, without feeling, without acknowledgment, as though he were no more than a moving shape in a world of moving shapes.

“Oh, Seryozha!” she said, and pulled the borzoi back on his silver chain.

Szara must have looked surprised because Nadia said, “Why are you staring? I couldn’t very well leave him in Berlin, now could I?”

They leaned across the dog’s back to embrace. Szara’s heart glowed within him. Seryozha’s presence meant she had no intention of going back to Berlin. For her, life in the shadows was over.

Of that he was absolutely certain.