Alan Furst - Red Gold

Casson stubbed out his cigarette and put his arms around her. “Where are you staying?”

“Same place. Today it felt like I never left-maybe I’m fated to be here.”

“Don’t say that, Helene.”

“I could find another job. In a shop, perhaps. I just have to live quietly, I’ll be all right.”

As gently as he could, Casson said, “We have to try again.”

She didn’t answer. Casson told her about Lamy and his stories, about the Dodge-em cars. Then they were quiet for a time, and Casson realized she had fallen asleep. Carefully, he slipped off the bed and covered her with a blanket. He sat by the window and read for a time. She called him softly when she woke up. “Is it curfew yet?”

“In about an hour.”

“I should go back to the room. Tonight, anyhow.”

“All right. You know you can stay with me, as long as you like.”

“I know.”

She sat up, held her face in her hands.

“I’ll take you back to the apartment,” he said.

They rode the Metro together in silence. He kissed her at the door of her building, then waited while she went upstairs.

For SS-Unterscharfuhrer Otto Albers, it was perhaps the worst day of his life. One of them, anyhow. There had been the time he was caught stealing rolls from the baker, the time caught cheating in school. He’d had the same knot in his stomach.

But he was no child now, and what had happened was his own fault. Another corporal worked alongside him in the basement vaults of the Gestapo headquarters on the rue des Saussaies, Corporal Prost. Prost had been in Russia, had fought there, had barely escaped with his life. He was missing an eye and most of a foot, and more than that, to hear him tell it. “I don’t care about it anymore,” he told Albers sadly. “It just doesn’t come to me.”

He was a good storyteller, Prost. He’d seen action around Nikopol, in the Ukraine, with a Waffen-SS unit. They’d beaten back days of Soviet counterattacks, then dealt with partizans-shot most of them, hanged the ones they caught alive. But it didn’t seem to matter-there were always more. Prost was wounded when a rigged mortar shell was set off in the latrine. Then the partizans stopped the hospital train and burned it with kerosene. Most of the wounded died, Prost crawled away. As the partizans withdrew, a little boy, maybe eleven, shot Prost in the face. Because the shot was fired at an angle, Prost survived. “Do whatever you need to do,” he told Albers. “But don’t go to that place.”

Albers didn’t want to go. But the problem he’d picked up from his “mouse” on the rue St.-Denis was getting worse. He’d considered going to the infirmary, but the penalty for catching a venereal disease was immediate transfer to the eastern front. So he asked a friend for the name of a doctor and was sent to a wretched old man out in the northern suburbs. He muttered something in French, which Albers couldn’t understand, then resorted to sign language, explaining how to apply the precious ointment. Albers returned to Paris feeling enormous relief-thank heaven that was over.

But it wasn’t. Over lunch ten days later, in a cafe near Gestapo headquarters, a young man rather boldly sat himself down at Albers’s table. He was apologetic at first-Albers thought he might be a student, but he was a few years too old for that. A fair-haired Frenchman, with cold eyes. The young man finished his soup, then leaned over and said, “ Unterscharfuhrer Albers?” Shocked, Albers nodded. “Here is a little something for you.” Excellent German, clipped and confidently spoken. Then he was gone, leaving an envelope on the table.

Albers was almost sick. They had his medical record, knew the doctor, knew everything. His choice: do what they said to do, or his superiors would be informed that he’d had a venereal disease. The letter said he had to signal his intentions immediately. If he put the envelope back on the table and left it there, he would cooperate. If he left with it, he might as well show it to his boss.

Albers looked frantically around the room but all he saw were people eating lunch. He left the envelope on the table, the waiter swept it away with the dishes. The waiter! Yes? he asked himself. Just what would he do to the waiter? It would only get him in deeper.

He spent the day frozen, terrified, trying somehow to find the courage to carry out their orders. He took no satisfaction that afternoon in the soothing rhythm of his work, rolling the metal cart up and down the endless rows of files. He replaced twenty-eight folders, took out forty new ones.

Just names, Albers told himself. French names-it took some time to get used to them, with their strange accents-and Jewish names, with difficult Polish spellings. Maybe life wouldn’t be so good for them tomorrow, or in a week, whenever the people upstairs got around to arresting them, but that wasn’t his fault.

He worked in a fury. How could he have allowed these sneaky Frenchmen to get power over him! Hitler was right, they had no sense of fair play-no instinctive, no Aryan sense of justice. You could never trust them. Albers returned the files of Levagne, Pierre and Levi, Anna to the shelf. The people upstairs were done with them.

He heard Prost, clumping along in his special shoe, as he came around the corner, pushing a file cart. He gave Albers a smile. “So, Otto, what’s for you tonight?”

“Nothing much. Tired, lately.”

“It’s the cold weather. But spring is coming, soon you’ll be bounding around like a new lamb.” He laughed.

Albers joined in as best he could. But then, Prost was right. If he took care of this, he could stay in Paris, go back to his Parisian pleasures. The mouse, cured of her malady, her friend, maybe another friend-a new character for his little theatre. Prost slipped a file back into the D section-just the end of it on the top shelf, Dybinski, a few others-then he went around the corner. “Klaus,” Albers called out, following him.

“Yes?”

“If you’re going down that way, could you take care of this?”

Prost looked at the folder Albers had given him. Vignon. “Be happy to do it,” he said.

Albers listened to the wheels of the cart, rolling over the cement floor, headed off to the other end of the alphabet.

Now.

Cascone, Caseda, Casselot, Cassignier, Cassignol.

Casson. There were several, what he needed was-

Casson, Jean.

As he’d practiced: undo three buttons of the shirt, take the dossier, slip it inside, then around under the arm, hidden beneath the uniform jacket. Button the buttons. Now, keep it there for thirty minutes, then it was time to leave the building. That wouldn’t be a problem.

Done, he thought.

28 March, 1942.

The apartment was in the 7th, on the avenue Bosquet, above a small and very expensive restaurant. It was well used; smelled of Gauloises and wet overcoats, and too much time spent indoors with the windows shut. “It belongs to a wealthy family,” Gueze explained. “They’ve left the country, but we can use it for as long as the war goes on. The best way to come in is down the hallway from a door inside the restaurant, then up the stairs.” He paused, then said, “We think it’s safe, but look around before you enter the building. It’s like everything else.”

He had a sheet of paper in front of him, which he tapped with the end of his pen. “We got hold of your dossier. Not too bad. They want to question you again, but there’s nothing about an escape.”

“How is that possible?”

“Apparently they’ve protected themselves. The Gestapo is unforgiving-in their view, accidents don’t happen. So, they called you in for questioning, then you left.”

“A man chased me. Fell off the roof into the courtyard.”