Alan Furst - Mission to Paris

Trudi prattled away, a waitress served a pot of tea and a plate of cream-filled pastries, Orlova smiled or frowned on cue, but her mind was far away. One of her couriers, a Swiss attorney called Wendel, was en route to some godforsaken village in the Moroccan desert, and would eventually return to Berlin with payment for the list of Polish names she’d photographed while Trudi was in the bathtub. This list she’d copied — eighteen typed pages! — and sold to the Americans and the British. As for the photographs themselves, they’d gone immediately to her superiors in Moscow, who believed that she was fairly compensated for her work. Very quietly, she disagreed, and sold her stolen secrets to those who would pay dearly to get their hands on them. Orlova had starved in Russia during the civil war that followed the revolution, but now she made sure that would never happen again. She did wonder, sometimes, how long that kind of thing could go on, but put the thought out of her head. In fact, she would have an answer soon enough.

Orlova took a bite of a pastry and, to avoid a cream moustache, was dabbing at her mouth with a pink napkin, when she saw the jolly proprietor making his way across the room. But when he reached Orlova’s table, he wasn’t so jolly. ‘Excuse me, Frau Orlova,’ he said, ‘but there is a call for you on our telephone.’ His voice was professionally courteous but his manner was stiff and uncertain — this sort of thing was unusual and he didn’t care for it, even with a customer who was very much a local celebrity.

To Trudi, Orlova said, ‘Well, I suppose I must answer the telephone,’ and laid her napkin on the table. Orlova the actress seemed mildly surprised and bemused by this intrusion, but Orlova the spy was terrified. The tearoom telephone was a contact point designated for extreme emergencies only, it had never been used before. She followed the proprietor back to the cashier’s counter, picked up the receiver and said, ‘Good afternoon, this is Frau Orlova.’

The chatter in the tearoom was loud and she pressed the receiver to her ear. On the other end of the line: a man’s voice speaking German with a Slavic accent, a man’s voice almost breathless with tension. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Right away. Now. This minute. There are Gestapo officers in your apartment.’ Then there was a click as the man disconnected. Orlova saw that the proprietor was hovering nearby so, for his benefit, she spoke to the dead line. ‘Oh yes?’ she said. Then waited as though someone were speaking. After a few seconds she said, ‘Ahh, I see, I’m sorry to hear that.’ Then she said goodbye and replaced the receiver. To the proprietor, who was still standing there, she apologized for the inconvenience. ‘All is well?’ he said.

‘I’m afraid there’s something I must attend to,’ she said, asked for the bill and paid it, her heart hammering inside her.

Back at the table, she said, ‘Trudi dear, please forgive me but I must leave immediately.’

Trudi’s eyes, usually tender and caring, were suddenly wide with alarm. ‘You’ve gone pale,’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’

Orlova took her fur coat from the back of the chair and put it on. ‘I’ve had bad news, I’m afraid I must go to the railway station.’

‘Then let me drive you, I have the car today, Freddi is in Potsdam.’

Orlova started to say no, then realized it would be faster than looking for a taxi and said yes.

Dusk came early to Berlin in December, yet many drivers were stubborn about turning on their headlights and it was hard to see them. At Orlova’s direction, Trudi, knuckles white as she gripped the wheel, worked her way towards the Lehrter Bahnhof, Berlin’s international railway terminal. Watching the traffic as it came at them, Orlova fought for control of her mind, fought to suppress the sharp little flashes of panic so she could concentrate. She doubted she would survive a search of her apartment — the Leica camera, the Walther automatic — and she realized that her time in Berlin was over. Now she had to run, to some other country and, wherever in the world she went, she knew they would take her if they found her.

‘Are you worrying, Olga dear?’

‘What?’

‘Are you worrying, I said. You’re being very quiet.’

‘Yes, I am worried.’

‘Don’t, please don’t. Everything will turn out for the best, I promise.’

Trudi had taken at least two wrong turns, each time provoking loud blasts from the horns of irritated drivers, which made her visibly flinch. Her car was a small Opel and, given the rules of the road in Berlin, drivers of fancier models bullied the cheaper car. But, at last, they reached the Lehrter Bahnhof. Naturally there were crowds of SS men at the entries, and to Orlova’s eyes they looked particularly grim and determined. They were, she thought, waiting for her. The Opel jerked to a stop as Trudi stamped on the brakes and said, ‘Sorry.’ Then, ‘Well, here we are. Where are you going? Can you tell me?’

‘Zurich.’

‘Is there someone in Zurich…’ Trudi didn’t quite know how to finish this question but Orlova understood what she meant: a lover, perhaps a secret lover. For Trudi, a rival.

Possible answers tumbled across Orlova’s mind; my beloved aunt, who has only days to live, my oldest friend, who has only days to live, but none of them sounded credible. Heavy traffic moved about the station, busy this time of night with travellers coming and going. Finally, Orlova said, ‘Trudi, I think I had better tell you something. The fact is, I’m in trouble.’

‘I knew it! I felt it!’

‘Trouble with the Gestapo.’

‘My God! What have you done?’

‘Nothing. But I have enemies, vicious enemies who are jealous of my connections with important people, and they’ve spread terrible rumours about me. I didn’t think that anyone would believe such things, but I was wrong.’

‘You’re running away, Olga, aren’t you.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘They’ll catch you if you try to get on a train, that’s where they look for people, it’s in the newspapers all the time.’

‘I know,’ Orlova said. She had with her two passports, one her own, the other a false passport, a Swiss passport, with a different name. She always carried a lot of money, that was a basic rule of clandestine life. What she had to do was become that other woman, and get out of Germany. ‘Trudi,’ she said, ‘can you find a small hotel somewhere?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ Trudi said, pressed the clutch to the floor and forced the shift into first gear.

Driving away from the station, she took side streets, until they came upon a small building with a sign over the door, HOTEL LUXURIA. Trudi parked the car and the two women entered the hotel. Yes, they had a room available. When asked about luggage, Orlova explained that they’d missed their train and left their luggage in the baggage room. And, by the way, was there a pharmacy nearby? There was, a block away on the Bernauer Strasse.

It was a tired little room, a commercial traveller’s room: twin beds with thin, floral coverlets, a single chair, a rusty sink, WC down the hall. Orlova described what she needed and, once Trudi headed off to the pharmacy, she lay down on one of the beds and stared up at the lightbulb in the ceiling. If she did manage to get away, what would she do with her life? She had money in Switzerland, enough to last for a few years if she lived frugally. As a fugitive, her movie star days were over. But then, her spying days were also over. What would it be like to live in obscurity, quiet as a mouse, always waiting for a knock on the door? A German knock, or a Russian knock. My God, she thought, they will all come looking for me.

Twenty minutes later, Trudi returned, with scissors and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Orlova said, ‘Trudi, you are going to cut my hair. Short, very short, above the ears, like a boy.’