Alan Furst - Mission to Paris

As night fell on the following day, the cast and crew arrived from Budapest. ‘We only just made it,’ Avila told Stahl. ‘There were trucks waiting for us at the railway station, but we had to stop and dig them out of the snow every few miles.’ In the morning, the last day of December, the last day of 1938, they once again began work on Apres la Guerre.

In the movie it was autumn, but in Komarom it was winter, so two of the count’s stablemen shovelled the snow off the castle’s courtyard. The prop man had brought large burlap bags of dead leaves and, with the help of a fan, these blew across the ancient sett stones. Stahl, in his legionnaire’s uniform, and Piro, in black kerchief and a man’s torn coat, sat on a low wall, where the leaves swirled past their feet — to be gathered at the far end of the courtyard and sent across again, though the rough surface did them no good. Once Avila had the camera properly angled, so that it captured the profile of the black tower above them, the day’s shooting began.

‘I think,’ Ilona says, ‘before we go in there, I must tell you the truth about myself.’

‘What truth is that?’ says Vadic, his hair ruffled handsomely by the leaf fan.

‘I am no countess, Colonel Vadic. It was all… a lie.’

‘Are you Ilona? Are you Hungarian?’

‘I am Ilona and, at least on my mother’s side, Hungarian. I was afraid you wouldn’t take me along, so I made up a story.’

‘Oh well, it was nice to have a countess with us. I suppose that if we go in there, they won’t greet you with open arms.’

A rueful smile. ‘They will stare at me, they will wonder, “who is this ragged woman, pretending to be a countess?”’

‘Beautiful woman, I’d say.’

‘You flatter me, but I don’t believe they’ll care. They will have the servants throw us out, or worse.’

They will — a reluctant nod from Colonel Vadic. ‘So, no jewels, no loyal lady’s maid.’

‘No, colonel. Not even dinner. It was only my daydream of a different life.’

‘Well, all is not lost. We shall just be wayfaring strangers, going home after the war. They still might feed us.’

‘Are you angry with me? I wouldn’t blame you.’

‘I can’t be angry, Ilona, not with you. And beautiful women are allowed a few lies.’

As they sit for a moment in silence, a noisy flock of crows — no part of the script — lands on the tower above the wall. Then Ilona says, ‘Why do you keep saying I am beautiful? Just look at me.’

‘To me you have always been beautiful, from the first moment I saw you.’

She looks up at him and in her eyes, in the subtle alteration of her face, is the slow comprehension of what he’s been trying to say. Slowly, he leans towards her, he is going to kiss her but a voice from a window shouts ‘Get out of here, you filthy tramps.’

‘Cut!’ Avila said. ‘Let’s try another take, that can’t have been as good as I thought it was.’ Then, to the soundman, ‘Gerard, let’s keep those crows. Have somebody throw a stone up there, maybe we can get them to caw for the next take.’

Count Janos Polanyi arrived late in the afternoon and, by way of Csaba, let Avila, Stahl, and Justine Piro know they were expected for dinner at 8.30. The dining room had a long table of polished walnut and vases of fresh flowers. In December, fresh flowers. Polanyi was well into his sixties, a large, heavy man with thick white hair, who smelled of bay rum, cigar smoke, and wine, and wore a blue suit cut by a London tailor. He had the easy warmth of a wealthy host, and the distance of power and privilege.

The main course was a spit-roasted haunch of venison. In response to the exclamations of delight at the first taste, the count said, ‘I would like you to think this came from a great stag, that I brought down with a single shot. But the truth is, I picked it up at my Paris butcher on the way to the airport.’ Thus Polanyi. A brief rumble of a laugh followed, joined by the guests at the table.

With the pears and local cheese, and having drunk more than his share of Echezeaux Burgundy, Polanyi became reflective. ‘My poor old battered castle,’ he said. ‘It’s the border of northern Hungary now — the treaty that followed the Great War turned the other side of the river into Czech territory. But for this castle, it was just one more war. It began life as a Roman fortification, was taken by the Hungarian Grand Duke Arpad in 895 — legend has it that the Milky Way was formed from the dust raised by his army’s horses. Then it was destroyed in 1241 by the Mongolian Tartars — a costly invasion, half the people of Hungary were murdered. Rebuilt, it was besieged by the Turks in 1683, then recaptured by Charles of Lorraine in 1684. History has always been bloody in this part of the world, and is about to be once again. But, what can we do. Now we’ll have to sign some sort of treaty with Hitler and his thugs and, once the French and the British have dealt with them, oh how we shall suffer for that.’ He paused for a time, then said, ‘Well, here comes the brandy, would anyone care to join me for a cigar?’

1 January, 1939.

New Year’s Day for much of the world, but there were no holidays for film crews on location. But Stahl didn’t mind. As long as production went smoothly, the reality of a good location inspired the cast, so Stahl was eager to work. At breakfast, on trestle tables set up in the entry hall, the company raised their cups of coffee or tea and drank to a better year in 1939, peace on earth, good will towards men.

But not just yet.

As Stahl rose to leave, the cameraman came running down the stairway, his face blank with shock. ‘Jean!’ he shouted. ‘The cameras have been stolen!’

The room had gone dead silent. Avila stood up and said, ‘What?’

‘They were taken from the room we’re using for storage. Sometime last night.’

‘We’ll have to find cameras in Budapest,’ Avila said. ‘How could this happen?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ He was frantic, close to tears.

‘Calm down, Jean-Paul. Was the door locked?’

‘No, there’s no lock. All I found was…’ He gave Avila a piece of paper. Avila read it twice, then handed it to Stahl. ‘What do you make of this?’

The note was in German, hand-printed in ink, and said, ‘If you want your cameras back it will cost you a thousand American dollars.’ Then went on to describe an inn, outside the town of Szony. ‘If you alert the police,’ it went on, ‘you will never see your cameras again. Come to this place promptly at 5.15 tonight.’ There was no signature.

‘Jean,’ Stahl said, ‘I must speak with you in private.’

They went out into the hallway, where Stahl told Avila what was going on. Not all of it, there wasn’t time, but enough. German secret police, he said, were after him because of a suspected connection with a woman who had been spying on the Nazi leadership. ‘This could be a coincidence, Jean, just a simple robbery, but I don’t believe in coincidence. This theft is my fault, and I will be the one to go to the inn, pay the ransom, and get the cameras back.’

Avila, too well aware of conspiracy and its strategies, wasn’t slow to see the implications of the note: Stahl lured to some isolated place and abducted. ‘You are the target, Fredric, and so you can’t be the one to go — I will take care of this. However, we can do nothing without telling Polanyi, it happened in his house, he’ll never forgive us if we don’t tell him.’

‘But he will involve the police, and we’ll lose the cameras.’

‘Then we’ll have to insist. It’s our equipment, and we’re responsible for retrieving it. That means me and one other person, because you can’t go anywhere near that inn.’