Alan Furst - Red Gold

“Casson! My God, of all the world.”

“Hello, Charne,” he said. They shook hands, then embraced. Charne was fat as an old bear, with long white hair that hung down the sides of his face like wings, and, as always, a cigarette with an inch of ash between his yellowed fingers. “Come in, come in,” he said.

They sat in the kitchen, by a little coal-burning stove. Charne had worked for him on three pictures. He was one of the best makeup people in Paris, steady and sure. “Are you doing anything?” Casson asked.

Charne shrugged. “A little. Now and then. Just to stay alive, you know.”

“You look well.”

“You also. I don’t hear your name, lately, I thought, maybe…”

“I’m-well, I don’t walk past police stations.”

From Charne, a laugh that ended in a cough. “Who does?”

“Actually,” Casson said, “it’s a little worse than that.”

Charne nodded, he understood.

“I need, I need to be out in the city. I need a disguise.”

“Ah-ha, la barbe!” The beard. Charne made a face and winked, the comic conspirator.

Casson laughed. “I know, but it’s serious.”

“Forgive me, Casson, but the idea of you in a wig, well.” He smiled at the idea. “That’s not the way, believe me. From time to time I used to have, what would you say, a private client. Once, even, a bank robber. A Belgian, or so he said. And what I said to him I’ll say to you: it’s done with small touches, as many as you can manage.”

Casson nodded.

“Come to the window.”

Charne studied his face in the light, turned it sideways, then back. “All right, then,” he said. “Grow a mustache, just a plain one will do. No muttonchops, no goatee. Some hair under the nose, to the edges of your lips, and if it comes in gray, so much the better. You can add a touch of color if it doesn’t. Go to the pharmacie, they’ll have something you can use. Then, let your hair grow, change the part, put it over on the other side. Wear a dark shirt, with a dark tie-you’d be surprised what that does, it changes your place in life, and that changes the way you look.”

He went into another room, rummaged around in bureau drawers, brought back a pair of eyeglasses with dark frames, and put them on Casson. “There. Just grow a little mustache and you’ll look like your poor cousin from Lyons.”

Casson stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He brushed his hair back the other way. Now, he thought, he was beginning to look like somebody who looked like Jean Casson. Charne came over and stood in the doorway.

“Well?”

“I think it works.”

“Of course, we can do more. I had a look around back there- you can be Madame de Pompadour by dinnertime, if you like.”

“Powdered wig?”

Charne raised his hands-of course. “Even a beauty mark on your boob.”

“I’ve always wanted that.”

“We’ll rent you a little dog.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Casson said.

“There is one thing you had better be prepared for.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll run into somebody, barely an acquaintance, it never fails. ‘Hello, Casson. You look like you’ve lost weight.’ But, even so, you’re better off keeping it simple. Stuff your cheeks with cotton wadding and it’ll wind up in the soup.”

Back in the kitchen, Charne poured two little glasses of Calvados, precious stuff. “For old times,” he said. “I liked working on your pictures, Casson. You knew what was what.”

“Sante,” Casson said.

“Sante.”

Casson drank the Calvados and was silent for a moment. “Do you ever hear anything of Citrine?” he said.

Charne thought a moment. “Somebody mentioned her,” he said. “But I don’t remember who it was.”

“I just wondered,” Casson said.

They talked for a while, old times, studios and directors, how it was before the war. Finally Casson stood to go. “Thank you for the eyeglasses,” he said.

“Oh, don’t mention it. Maybe sometime we’ll work on a picture.”

“Sometime,” Casson said.

It rained the first week in November. The streets were dark and he felt safe, invisible, head down like all the world, moving quickly, just one more shadow in the twilight. He found Fougere, from the electricians’ union, at a small office out in Sarcelles, in the Red Belt to the north and east of the city. But there was nothing for him there. They talked for a few minutes, Casson probed for an opening that he was never offered. Fougere had no reason to trust him and they both knew it. “It seems,” Casson said, “that only the FTP is fighting the Germans.”

“Yes, it does seem that way,” Fougere said. “But you know how they are.”

He retreated, asking Fougere not to mention that he’d been by. That much he thought he’d won, but nothing else. The party had always been secretive-Lenin and Dzherzhinsky and the Cheka and all the rest of it-communists didn’t chatter, not even in France.

Next he looked for Louis Fischfang, his former screenwriter. They’d said good-bye in the spring of ’41, when Fischfang disappeared into the underground, taking up full-time work for the party. Casson had wished him well, and given him money. He tried the various contacts he remembered-the owner of a newsstand, a furrier in the 13th, but nobody had seen him. One apartment he’d used had a new tenant. A woman he’d lived with had “gone away,” according to the neighbors.

A few days later, he had another meeting with Degrave. He said he’d managed to make a few contacts, but had nothing in particular to report. Degrave was understanding, it was early in the game. After ten minutes, another man joined them. Degrave’s superior, he guessed, though like Degrave he was in civilian clothing. He was introduced as “Michel,” obviously an alias. Casson thought of him as de Something. Nobility. He was older than Degrave, white and soft, with small, sharp eyes sparkling with the de Somethings’ ancient amusement at the play of human weakness, and pleasure in what it brought them. Power and privilege, Casson thought, but that sounded too much like a tract. “What you are doing is important, monsieur,” the man said to him. He had a high, gentle voice, every word beautifully formed.

Coming out of the Metro that night, Casson was approached by an older woman. “Pardon, monsieur, I believe you dropped this.” She handed him a slip of paper:

Citizens of Paris! On 4 November, three militants of the FTP were martyred on behalf of the French people. Eva Perlemere, Leon Szapera, and Natan Kohn died as heroes in action against the Wehrmacht on Route 17 outside Aubervilliers. Follow their example! For Hitler, not a grain of wheat, not a foot of railroad track or an inch of telephone cable, not one hour of peace. Vive la France!

Casson had seen this reported on the front page of Paris-Soir. TERRORIST ATTACK THWARTED ON ROUTE 17! They were Jews and communists, the story said, “social criminals,” and they didn’t care if they brought down heavy reprisals on the French people in their “blind pursuit of a Bolshevik France.” They were inspired, it turned out, “not by patriotic motives, but by slavish obedience to Article 25 of the Communist Party program drawn up at the Sixth Congress in Moscow in 1928.”

Where are you? Casson thought. Who do I know who knows where you are? He sat in his room and made lists of names. Radicals from his days at the Sorbonne. Friends from his early twenties in the Latin Quarter. People in the film business-directors, agents, actors, accountants, lawyers, producers, and more. Eventually, he wrote down the name Alexander Kovar.

Kovar was a writer. Anything you could write, plays, novels, newspaper articles, and pamphlets, Kovar had written, going back fifteen years at least. In 1936, Casson had come across one of his novels, The House on Calle Alcala, based on the outbreak of fighting between monarchists and anarchists in Madrid in 1931, fighting set off when two aristocrats beat a taxi driver to death in front of a monarchist club on the Calle Alcala-beat him for calling out “Viva la Republica!”