Alan Furst - Red Gold

“The Russians retaliated. An SS Obergruppenfuhrer heard a rumor about buried gold at the Polyakovo state farm. He led a unit to the farm and they started to rip the buildings apart, looking for it. The manager begged them to stop, explained that without shelter the peasants would die of cold when winter arrived. Please, he said, give me twenty-four hours to produce the gold. The SS officer agreed, and left a detachment of four men there to ensure the manager didn’t make a run for the forest. The next day, the SS unit returned. All the buildings had been burned down, only the office was left standing. Inside, on a desk, was a large leather box with the word Gelb, gold, written on it in white paint. When they opened the box, they found the heads of the four soldiers they’d left on guard.”

Degrave paused, waited for Casson to respond.

“And this is just the beginning,” he said.

“That’s right, and it may go on for twenty years. The FTP leadership is certainly under intense pressure from Moscow-do something, anything-which is why we feel they can be approached.”

He went for a walk after the meeting, to clear his head in the night air, and thought about what Degrave hadn’t said. The war between the secret services and the French communists went back a long way-maybe all the way to 1789. The working class and the aristocracy had been at it for at least that long. Casson remembered a time when he was at university, at the Ecole Normale Superieure. Some of the conservative normaliens, wearing white gloves, had taken over the running of the buildings to break a strike by the maintenance workers. Degrave, and no doubt his colleagues, came from that class, which had always provided officers for military service. Not so much rich as old, very old, a landed aristocracy that took its names from the villages it had named in the Middle Ages. What, Casson wondered, were they doing with somebody like him? He wasn’t a leftist, but he wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a Jew, but he’d worked in a Jewish profession. He was, when all was said and done, a Parisian. And not a Parisian from the deux-cents familles.

He stopped at a cafe, stood at the bar, and ordered a beer-it would do for dinner. He’d told Degrave the story of his escape from the Gestapo office. “Don’t worry about it,” Degrave said. “Their list of wanted suspects runs into the thousands. We think you’ll be safe if you stay out of trouble-most of the people arrested these days are betrayed. Jealous neighbors, jilted mistresses, that kind of thing.”

No danger there, Casson thought.

More than likely, the communists would kill him. These people didn’t spend time brooding about your motives. If they sensed a threat, they shot you. They were idealogues, at war with anyone who stood in their way. One of Casson’s university friends used to say, with a flicker of contempt, “They believe everything they can prove, and they can prove everything they believe.” True. But they’d fought in Spain, and they died for what they believed in.

He left the cafe, headed away from the hotel. He was restless, wanted to avoid the small, silent room as long as he could. Suddenly, the streets were familiar, somehow he had worked his way back to his old neighborhood, the Passy district of the 16th. He crossed the rue de l’Assomption, where his wife, Marie-Claire, lived with her boyfriend, Bruno, the owner of an automobile dealership. Casson stared up at the blackout curtains. Were they home? You could usually tell if there was a light on. No, he thought not. They were out, probably at a dinner party. He moved on. Coming toward him, a Luftwaffe officer with a Frenchwoman on his arm. A handsome man, hawk-nosed, with proud bearing, the brim of his hat shadowing his eyes. “Oh but no,” the woman said, “that can’t possibly be true.” Then she laughed-apparently it was true.

The rue Chardin. His old building, his apartment on the fifth floor with a small balcony. Through the glass doors he had looked out at the top third of the Eiffel Tower. From the telltale glow at the edge of the curtains he was pretty sure somebody was home.

A silhouette moved toward him through the darkness. A woman, bent over slightly, walking quickly. “Madame Fitou!” It was out before he could stop it-his old concierge.

She stopped, peered at him, then clapped a hand over her heart and breathed, “Monsieur Casson?”

He crossed the street. Madame Fitou, in a long black coat with a black kerchief tied under her chin, clearly dressed for night raiding. A string bag of potatoes suggested a visit to the black-market grocer, or maybe one of her countless sisters, all of whom lived in the country and grew vegetables. As he approached she said, “Can it be you?”

“Bon soir, madame,” he said.

“I knew you would return,” she said.

“As you see.”

“Oh, monsieur.”

“Everything going well, madame? With you and your family?”

“I cannot complain, monsieur, and, if I did…”

“Not so easy, these days.”

“No, we must-Monsieur Casson, you are here for the shirts!”

“Shirts?”

“I told… well, it was a year ago, but I thought, well certainly Monsieur Casson will hear of it.”

“Madame?”

She came closer. “When the German came, Colonel Schaff- Schuff-well, something.” She snorted with contempt-these foreigners and their bizarre names! “However you say it, he had his driver throw your things out in the street. I was able to save, well monsieur, it was raining that day, but I did manage to save some shirts, two of them, good ones. I kept them for you. In a box.”

“Madame Fitou, thank you.”

“But a moment!” she said, very excited, disappearing into the building. Casson stepped back against the wall. He could hear keys in locks, doors opening, then closing. Overhead, a flight of aircraft-no air-raid sirens had sounded so they must be German, he thought. Heading west, to bomb Coventry or the Liverpool docks. The bombers droned away for what seemed like a long time, then Madame Fitou reappeared, very excited still and breathing hard. “Yes,” she said in triumph. “Here they are.”

He took the package, wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, and thanked her again. “Madame Fitou, you must not tell anybody you’ve seen me. It would be very dangerous if you did. For both of us. Do you understand?”

“Ahh”-she said, her expression conspiratorial-“of course.” A secret mission. “You may depend on me, monsieur. Not a word.”

He wished her good evening, then hurried off into the night, damning himself for a fool. What was the matter with him? A few blocks away, in the shadows, he peeled back the newspaper. His dress shirt, for a tuxedo-he used to wear it with mother-of-pearl studs and cufflinks that came to him when his father died. Well, it didn’t matter, he could sell it, there was a used-clothing market on the rue des Francs-Bourgeois. And then, a soft gray shirt he’d worn with sweaters on weekends. It smelled of the cologne he used to wear.

Evreux. 27 October.

Six-thirty in the morning, the night shift at Manufacture d’Armes d’Evreux rode through the factory gates on their bicycles, heading home to the workers’ districts at the edge of the city. Weiss moved along with them, pedaling slowly, his briefcase under one arm. Down a cobbled street-mostly dirt now-past a few ancient buildings and into a small square with a church and a cafe. He chained his bicycle to the fence in front of the church and went into the cafe. It was crowded, wet dogs asleep under the tables, a smoky fire in the fireplace, two women, their makeup much too bright, served chicory infusions to the men at the bar.

Weiss looked around the room and spotted Renan in the corner, playing chess. A hard head with a fringe of gray hair, a worn face, maybe handsome long ago. He rested his chin on folded hands and concentrated on the board. When he saw Weiss, he spoke quietly to his opponent, who rose and left the table. Weiss sat down and studied the board for a moment. “So, Maurice,” he said, “it looks like I’ve just about got you.”