Alan Furst - Red Gold

“In the back.”

He did what he was told. There were wooden racks bolted to the walls of the van, holding heavy pipe wrenches and a variety of shovels and prybars. The truck smelled of lubricating grease and burnt cinders.

“Lie down,” the driver told him. An old blanket was thrown over him as he lay on his side on the metal plate of the floor. The van started and drove smoothly away. The second man stayed in the back with him, sitting propped against the door.

They drove around for a long time, Casson could hear trucks and cars, and the occasional ringing of bicycle bells. Near his head was a small hole through which he could see the pavement, sometimes stone, sometimes asphalt. When they crossed the Seine, he looked down at the river through the strutwork of a small bridge. The van made several turns after that, on what sounded like narrow lanes. The men didn’t talk. Casson tried to concentrate, to keep himself calm. He’d thought this meeting might be in a little bar somewhere, or in the office of a union local, but apparently it wasn’t going to work like that.

By the time they rolled to a stop the daylight was just about gone. The engine was turned off and someone took the blanket away and said, “You can sit up now.”

He was sore where his ribs had banged against the floor. The man now kneeling next to him reached in his pocket and brought out a black cloth. “Just stay on your knees a moment.”

The man twirled the cloth around until it lapped itself into a blindfold, which he placed across Casson’s eyes and tied firmly at the back of his neck.

“Can you see?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Nothing.”

If they didn’t want him to see where he was being taken, he didn’t want to know where he was. They took his elbow, talked him out of the van, then guided him along a street. The walk seemed to go on forever, but it was probably no more than ten minutes before he was taken into a building-a garage, he thought, with hammers pounding on metal and the smell of tires. He was led out the back and into another building. A door was closed, then barred. He was seated in what felt like an old swivel chair.

“Just stay quiet. Somebody will come for you.”

He sat there, scared. He knew that from where he was now he could disappear off the face of the earth. A few minutes crawled by. The door opened and shut, a chair leg scraped on cement, and a woman’s voice, heavily accented, said, “All right, you can take that thing off him.”

He was in a small workshop, from what he could see, with a blanket over the window. It was almost completely dark. Ten feet away from him, a woman sat at a table near a lamp with a very bright bulb. Its position made it hard for him to see her clearly, or anything beyond her, although he sensed that there were people in the darkness.

The woman was perhaps in her fifties, with gray hair pulled back and pinned up, a dark suit, and, beneath the table, lace-up shoes with low heels. A university professor or a doctor, he would have thought, seeing her on the street. “Very well,” she said, taking a few sheets of paper and squaring them up in front of her. She unscrewed a cap from a pen, making sure it worked on one corner of the paper. “You’re called Marin, these days-correct? And you stay at the Hotel Benoit?”

Probably the accent was Russian, but he wasn’t completely sure. “Yes, that’s right.”

“In fact you are Jean Casson, formerly a film producer.”

“Yes.”

“Born in Paris? Of French nationality?”

“Yes.”

“Your military service?”

“In the first war, I served as a corporal with an air reconnaissance squadron, changing film canisters on Spad aircraft and sometimes supervising the development of the negatives. In May 1940, I was reactivated and returned to service as a member of the Section Cinematographique of the Third Regiment, Forty-fifth Division. I saw action on the Meuse River, near Sedan, and was discharged from the unit later that month, when its cameras and equipment were destroyed in a bombing raid.”

“Then you eventually returned to Paris.”

“That’s right.”

“By the way, are you aware that you were followed, as you set off for this meeting?”

“Followed? No, I don’t think so.”

“It isn’t important, and we took care of it, but we wondered if you knew.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Now, monsieur, why have you been looking for us?”

“To offer you the opportunity to meet with members of a resistance group.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“To discuss matters of mutual concern.”

“Such as?”

“I have no idea.”

She stared down, read a note she’d written. “Are you sympathetic to the objectives and programs of the Communist Party?”

“Sympathetic? Well, I’m certainly aware that there are poor people, and that they suffer. On the other hand, I don’t believe in the revolution of the working masses, or the dictatorship of the proletariat.” He paused, then said, “Or, in fact, the dictatorship of anybody.”

She didn’t smile, but it crossed his mind that a young and long-ago version of her might have. “You are naive, monsieur,” she said quietly.

Casson shrugged.

“Why do you live as a fugitive?”

“Last May, I was taken in for questioning by the Gestapo, held for a few hours in a cell in the basement of the old Ministry of the Interior on the rue des Saussaies, then brought up to the top floor for questioning. I was led down a hall to use the WC and left alone. I saw that the window wasn’t barred. I crawled out on the roof, and escaped.”

“Why were you taken in for questioning?”

“I lied on a form and they caught me.” That was, technically speaking, true. But it was also the story he’d been told to follow, and he followed it.

“What lie was that?”

“That I had not returned to military service in 1940-working with a film unit would have been seen as an intelligence function.”

She read through the papers for a moment, looking over what she’d written. In the shadows behind her, somebody lit a pipe, he could see the rise and fall of the yellow flame held above the bowl.

“The people who sent you here,” she said. “Who are they?”

“Army officers.”

“Members of the intelligence service? The former Service des Renseignements?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“What do they want, information?”

“I don’t know what they want.”

“Then what do you believe their objectives are?”

“To resist the German occupation.”

“Are they in Vichy?”

“Yes.”

“Officers of the present service?”

“Yes.”

“And why did they choose you as their representative?”

“Because I’m neutral.”

“What does that mean?”

“Unaffiliated. With no aims of my own.”

“And what do you bring, Monsieur Casson, to this negotiation? What do you offer us, as an incentive for discussions, or doing business together, or whatever it might turn out to be?”

“No specific offer-but they are waiting to hear from you, and they will do whatever they can.”

“Monsieur Casson, are you a spy?”

“No, I’m not.”

“We shoot spies. Certainly you know that.”

Casson nodded.

“We’re going to send you back now. You can report this conversation to your army officers. And tell them that if they wish to pursue any kind of dialogue, the first step will be to provide evidence of good faith. What we want is this: weapons. Guns, Monsieur Casson. Do you think they will accept that condition?”

“I can’t say. But, why not?”

“What we want are automatic weapons, short-range, rapid-fire machine guns. Six hundred. With a thousand rounds of ammunition for each weapon. The terms of delivery will be spelled out when we receive your signal that the negotiation will go ahead. Do you understand?”