Eric Ambler: Epitaph for a Spy

“That’s all right, I’ll call again.”

“It will be no trouble, Monsieur.”

There was a strange note of urgency in his voice now. Mentally I shrugged. If the man had spoiled the film and was so childishly anxious not to be the bearer of the bad news it was no affair of mine. I had already resigned myself to the loss of my experiments.

“Very well.” I gave him my name and address.

He repeated them very loudly as he wrote them down.

“Monsieur Vadassy, Hotel de la Reserve.” His voice dropped a little, and he ran his tongue round his lips before going on. “It shall be sent round to you as soon as it is ready.”

I thanked him and went to the door of the shop. A man in a panama hat and an ill-fitting suit of Sunday blacks was standing facing me. The pavement was narrow, and as he did not move to make way for me, I murmured an apology and made to squeeze past him. As I did so he laid a hand on my arm.

“Monsieur Vadassy?”

“Yes?”

“I must ask you to accompany me to the Commissariat.”

“What on earth for?”

“A passport formality only, Monsieur.” He was stolidly polite.

“Then hadn’t I better get my passport from the hotel?”

He did not answer but looked past me and nodded almost imperceptibly. A hand gripped my other arm tightly. I looked over my shoulder and saw that there was a uniformed agent standing in the shop door behind me. The chemist had disappeared.

The hands propelled me forward, not too gently.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You will,” said the plain-clothes man briefly. “Allez, file!”

He was no longer polite.

The journey to the police station was accomplished in silence. After the initial demonstration of authority the agent dropped a few paces to the rear and allowed me to walk on ahead with the plain-clothes man. I was glad of this, for I had no wish to be marched through the village as though I were a pickpocket. As it was, we drew some curious glances, and I heard a jocular reference by two passers-by to the violon.

French slang is very obscure. Anything less like a violin than the Commissariat de Police would be difficult to imagine. The only really ugly building in St. Gatien, it is a forbidding cube of dirty concrete with small windows like eyes. It lies some hundreds of meters away from the village round the bay, and its size is accounted for by the fact that it houses the police administration of an area of which St. Gatien happens to be the center. The facts that St. Gatien is also one of the smallest, most law-abiding, and least accessible villages in the area were evidently disregarded by the responsible authorities.

The room into which I was taken was bare except for a table and some wooden benches. The plain-clothes man retired importantly, leaving me with the agent, who sat down on the bench beside me.

“Will this business take long?”

“It is not permitted to speak.”

I looked out of the window. Across the bay I could see the colored sunshades on the Reserve beach. There would not, I reflected, be time for a swim. I could, perhaps, have an aperitif at one of the cafes on my way back. It was all very annoying.

“Attention!” said my escort suddenly.

The door opened and an elderly man with a pen behind his ear, no cap, and an unbuttoned tunic beckoned us out. The agent with me did up his collar, smoothed out his tunic, straightened his cap and, gripping my arm with unnecessary force, marched me down the passage to a room at the end of it. He rapped smartly on the door and opened it. Then he pushed me inside.

I felt a threadbare carpet beneath my feet. Sitting facing me behind a table littered with papers was a spectacled, businesslike little man. This was the Commissaire. Beside the table, wedged in a small chair with curved arms, was a very fat man in a tussore suit. Except for a clipped mouse-colored bristle on the rolls of fat round his neck, he was bald. The skin of his face was loose and hung down in thick folds that drew the corners of his mouth with them. They gave the face a faintly judicial air. The eyes were extraordinarily small and heavily lidded. Sweat poured off his face and he kept passing a screwed-up handkerchief round the inside of his collar. He did not look at me.

“Josef Vadassy?”

It was the Commissaire who spoke.

“Yes.”

The Commissaire nodded to the agent behind me, and the man went out, closing the door softly behind him.

“Your identity card?”

I produced the card from my wallet and handed it over. He drew a sheet of paper towards him and began making notes.

“Age?”

“Thirty-two.”

“You are, I see, a teacher of languages.”

“Yes.”

“Who employs you?”

“The Bertrand Mathis School of Languages, one hundred and fourteen bis, Avenue Marceau, Paris, six.”

While he was writing this down I glanced at the fat man. His eyes were closed and he was fanning his face gently with the handkerchief.

“Attention!” said the Commissaire sharply. “What is your business here?”

“I am on holiday.”

“You are a Yugoslav subject?”

“No; Hungarian.”

The Commissaire looked startled. My heart sank. The long and involved explanation of my national status, or rather, lack of it, would have to be given yet again. It never failed to arouse officialdom’s worst instincts. The Commissaire rummaged among the papers on his table. Suddenly he gave an exclamation of satisfaction and flourished something in front of my face.

“Then how, Monsieur, do you explain this?”

With a start I realized that “this” was my own passport-the passport that I had believed to be in my suitcase at the Reserve. That meant that the police had been to my room. I began to feel uneasy.

“I am waiting, Monsieur, for your explanation. How is it that you, a Hungarian, are using a Yugoslav passport? A passport, moreover, that has not been valid for ten years?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw that the fat man had stopped fanning his face. I began to give the explanation I knew by heart.

“I was born in Szabadka in Hungary. By the treaty of Trianon in 1919 Szabadka was incorporated in Yugoslav territory. In 1921 I went as a student to the University of Buda-Pesth. I obtained a Yugoslav passport for the purpose. While I was still at the University my father and elder brother were shot by the Yugoslav police for a political offense. My mother had died during the war and I had no other relations or friends. I was advised not to attempt to return to Yugoslavia. Conditions in Hungary were terrible. In 1922 I went to England, and remained there, teaching German in a school near London until 1931, when my labor permit was withdrawn. I was one of many other foreigners who had their labor permits withdrawn at that time. When my passport had expired I had applied for its renewal to the Yugoslav legation in London, but had been refused on the grounds that I was no longer a Yugoslav citizen. I had afterwards applied for British naturalization, but when I was deprived of my labor permit I was forced to find work elsewhere. I went to Paris. I was allowed by the police to remain and given papers with the proviso that if I left France I should not be permitted to return. I have since applied for French citizenship.”

I looked from one to the other of them. The fat man was lighting a cigarette. The Commissaire flicked my useless passport contemptuously and looked at his colleague. I was looking at the Commissaire when the fat man spoke. His voice made me jump, for from those thick lips, that massive jowl, that enormous body, came a very light, husky tenor.

“What,” he said, “was the political offense for which your father and brother were shot?”