Alan Furst - Mission to Paris

Stahl grinned despite himself. ‘No, I don’t mind, I’ll just close my eyes.’

She laughed politely, then went ahead and took the measurement, exactly as his tailor, and past costume designers, had done it. ‘There,’ she said, ‘you can open your eyes now.’ Next she did the wrist, after that, the neck. Then she said, ‘We’re just about done,’ and circled the tape around his hips.

‘Bigger than you thought?’ Stahl said, a laugh in his voice.

‘Oh, normal, maybe a little bigger,’ she said. ‘But you aren’t the only one.’ She was, he knew, referring to herself. She rolled the tape back up and put it in the pocket of her smock. They returned to their chairs and Stahl, glad that the work was finished, lit a cigarette. Renate, looking at her notepad, said, ‘Colonel Vadic will also wear an old suit — all three of them will. This is when they have to get rid of their uniforms, after they’ve been arrested as deserters…’

‘And almost executed. Blindfolded, tied to the post…’

‘They buy suits in Damascus, in the souk,’ she said. ‘You know, I think Paramount might let Deschelles shoot on location. He’s trying, anyhow, wants to use Tangiers for Damascus, and do the desert scenes nearby.’

‘We can only hope,’ Stahl said. ‘Because you know what studio desert sets are like, beach sand blown around by fans, and…’

Suddenly, a man and a woman on bicycles skidded to a halt in front of the open door. ‘Renate!’ the woman called out, her voice breathless and excited. Renate rose and walked over to the door, Stahl followed her. ‘Have you heard?’ the woman said. She spoke German with a sharp Berlin accent. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said to Stahl in French, ‘but there is finally good news. Very good news.’

‘Hello, Inga,’ Renate said. ‘Hello, Klaus.’

‘They’ve made a deal with Hitler,’ Inga said, now back in German. ‘He takes the Sudetenland, but promises that’s the end of it, and he signed a paper saying so. They had to put pressure on the Czechs, of course, who were going to fight. Now they’ve agreed not to resist.’

‘This is good news, thank you for telling me,’ Renate said. Her tone was courteous, and far from elated.

Inga again apologized for the interruption, then she and Klaus pedalled away on their bicycles. ‘I suppose that’s good news,’ Stahl said. ‘Surely for this movie, it is.’

Renate said, ‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ her tone tentative and thoughtful. ‘Maybe not so good for the Czechs, though. And I have Jewish friends who settled in Karlsbad, in the Sudeten Mountains, when they fled Germany, and now they’ll have to run again. But it is good news, for me and Inga and Klaus, because if France goes to war with Germany, all the German emigres here will be interned. That’s a rumour, but it’s a rumour I believe.’

Stahl spent another fifteen minutes with Renate Steiner, then went off to find his taxi.

The driver had managed to get hold of a newspaper, a special edition with the headline WAR AVERTED, then, in smaller print, Hitler Signs Agreement in Munich with a photograph of Neville Chamberlain smiling as he waved a piece of paper. Heading away from Joinville, the driver was ambivalent — yes, his son would be demobilized, would return to his family and his taxi, and about this he felt a father’s great relief. On the other hand, he didn’t trust Hitler. ‘This man is the neighbourhood bully,’ he said, anger tightening his voice. ‘Don’t they see that, these diplomats? You appease a thug like Hitler, it just makes him greedy for more, because he smells fear.’ Distracted by his emotions, he took a route through Paris on the left bank of the Seine, entering the city via the Thirteenth Arrondissement and continuing into the Fifth on the quai by the river. To reach the Claridge, he should have taken the right bank, which Stahl noticed, without any particular concern.

But, as they reached the foot of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, traffic slowed down, and soon the taxi could move only a few feet before it had to stop. The driver swore, and with his good hand swung off the boulevard onto a side street. Here, however, the traffic barely crawled, and when he tried to return to Saint-Germain, a policeman stopped him and said, ‘You’ll have to go back the other way — they’re marching on the boulevard.’ The driver raised his hands, he surrendered. So Stahl thanked him, paid the fare, added a generous tip, then headed for the Metro station on the Place Maubert. By the time he got there he was mixed in with the marchers, students angered at the Munich agreement, with signs that said SHAME! and chants of ‘Down with Daladier!’ At last he reached the Metro, to find its grilled gate shut and a hand-lettered sign that said On Strike. Well, no surprise, the Metro-workers’ union was a communist union and would strike if angered by government policy.

With an oath that was more sigh than curse, Stahl set out for the hotel. Not a bad day for a walk: grey clouds above the city, a chill in the air, the forces of autumn were gathering. As he made his way up the boulevard, he realized that a lot of the marchers were women — many of the male students had apparently been mobilized. He then began to notice small knots of men gathered on the pavement, glaring at the marchers, sometimes turning to each other and making comments that drew a snicker from their pals. The marching students ignored the sneering crowd. Until one of them joined the march, just long enough to bump the shoulder of a student, who turned and said something as the man laughed and retreated back to the pavement.

And then, about ten feet away from Stahl, a man wearing a grey hood with eyeholes cut in it came running out of an alley waving a metal rod. Some of the marchers stopped to see what was going on, somebody shouted a warning, a second hooded man followed the first and swung his metal rod, hitting a woman in the side of the head. As she sank to her knees, a drop of blood running from beneath her hair, the man swung the rod back, preparing to hit her again. Stahl ran at him, shouting ‘Stop!’ as he grabbed at the rod. The man swore, words muffled by the hood, and Stahl barely held on, until the man stopped pulling at the rod and pushed against him, so that he stumbled into the girl on her knees, who yelped as Stahl fell over her. When the man lifted the rod over his head, Stahl kicked at him, then got himself upright. In time for the rod to hit him in the face. With salty blood in his mouth, he rushed at the man and punched him in the centre of the hood, which knocked him back a step.

This was not the only fight on the boulevard — there were hooded men with rods attacking marchers on both sides of him, people on the ground, shouting and screaming everywhere. Stahl spat the blood out of his mouth and went after the man who’d hit him. And now tried to do it again. Stahl dodged away from the rod, which landed on his shoulder, grabbed the bottom of the hood and tore it off, revealing a fair-haired teenager with the sparse beginnings of a moustache. His eyes widened as Stahl threw the hood at him and punched him again, square in the mouth. Sputtering with rage, the teenager swung the rod back over his head, but a girl student wearing broken glasses got the fingernails of both hands into the side of his face and raked him from forehead to jaw. He didn’t mind hitting women but he didn’t like women hitting back so he hesitated, turned, and ran away. Somebody grabbed Stahl from behind, somebody very strong, lifting him off his feet as he tried to fight free. ‘Calm down,’ a voice said. ‘Or else.’ The arm around his chest was wearing a police uniform, so Stahl stopped struggling.

As more police arrived, Stahl’s arms were pulled back, and handcuffs snapped on his wrists.