Dark Star, page 17
Stollenbauer was, as Szara had predicted, magically relieved of much of his burden. The pending visit still made him nervous, much could go wrong, but at least he now felt he had some support. From chubby little Lötte Huber no less! Had he not always said that someday her light would shine? Had he not always sensed the hidden talent and initiative in this woman? She'd been so clever in finding the house—where his pompous assistants had shouted guttural French into the phone, cunning Lötte had taken the feminine approach, spending her very own weekend time wandering about various neighborhoods and inquiring of women in the marketplace if they knew of something to rent, not too much legal folderol required.
Meanwhile, Szara arrayed his forces and played his own office politics. Oh, Goldman was informed, he had to be, but the cable was a masterpiece of its genre—Trade Mission apparently expecting important visitor sometime in near future, item eight of seventeen items, not a chance under heaven that such a phrase would bring the greedy rezident swooping down from Brussels to snaffle up the credit.
Using a copy of the house key, Szara and Sénéschal had a look around for themselves one evening. Szara would have dearly loved to record the proceedings, but it would simply have been too dangerous, requiring a hidden operative running a wire recorder. Then too, important visitors usually had security men in attendance, people with a horror of unexplained ridges under carpets, miscellaneous wires, even fresh paint.
Instead they approached a birdlike little lady, the widow of an artillery corporal, who lived on the top floor of the house across the street and whose parlor window looked out over the garden. A troublesome affair, they told her; a wayward wife, a government minister, the greatest discretion. They showed her very official-looking identity documents with diagonal red stripes and handed over a crisp envelope stuffed with francs. She nodded grimly, perhaps an old lady but a little more a woman of the world than they might suppose. They were welcome to her window; it was a change to have something going on in this dull old street. And did they wish to hear a thing or two about the butcher's wife?
Stollenbauer summoned Lötte Huber to his office, sat her down on a spindly little chair, rested his long fingers lightly on her knee, and told her, in strictest confidence, that their visitor was an associate of Heydrich himself.
Sénéschal had walked Lötte Huber through the “discovery” of the safe house and the Rote Grütze sauce and counseled how these successes should be explained. And what thanks did he get? The young woman's new sense of pride and achievement made her shut up like a clam. Under Szara's tutelage, he applied pressure every way he could. Told her the big job was now open at the Foreign Office— would he get it, or would his sworn enemy? Only she could help him now.
He took her to dinner at Fouquet's, fed her triangles of toast covered thickly with goose liver pâté and a bottle of Pomerol. The wine made her cute, funny, and romantic, but not talkative. Finally they fought. What use, she wanted to know, had the French Foreign Office for information that an associate of Heydrich's was coming to town for an important meeting? That was the very sort of thing that interested them, he said. The big cheese in his office was secretly a great admirer of Hitler and could be counted on to help, quietly, if any more problems developed with the meeting. But he had to be told exactly what was going on. No, she said, stop, you begin to sound like a spy. That made Sénéschal pale and Szara even paler when the conversation was reported. “Apologize,” Szara said. “Tell her you were overwrought and”—he reached into a pocket and came forth with francs—“buy her jewelry.”
Szara accepted the inevitable. They weren't going to get the meeting date or the names of the other participants, surveillance was their only other option. He could not risk pressing Huber too hard and losing her as a source. It was the first time a wisp of regret floated across his view of the operation—it was not to be the last.
They drove to Puteaux in Sénéschal's car, parked in the narrow street, and watched the house—a surveillance technique that lasted exactly one hour and twelve minutes, perhaps a record for brevity. Children stared, young women pretended not to notice, an angry streetsweeper scraped the hubcap with his twig broom, and a drunk demanded money. Discomfort did not begin to describe how it felt; it just wasn't a neighborhood where you could do something like that.
Odile returned from her courier run to Berlin on 22 June (Baumann wouldn't budge), so she, Sénéschal, and Szara took turns sitting in the old lady's parlor. The wisp of regret had by now become a smoky haze that refused to dissipate. Goldman had the people to do this kind of work; Szara had to improvise with available resources. As for surveillance from the apartment, the principle was one thing, the reality another. The building, cold stone to the eye, was alive, full of inquisitive neighbors you couldn't avoid on the stairs. Szara squared his shoulders and scowled—I am a policeman— and left the old lady to deal with the inevitable tongue-wagging.
For her part, she seemed to be enjoying the attention. What she did not enjoy, however, was their company. They were, well, there. If somebody read a newspaper, it rattled; if she wanted to clean the carpet, they had to lift their feet. Odile finally saved the situation, discovering that the old lady had a passion for the card game called bezique, a form of pinochle. So the surveillance evolved into a more or less permanent card party, all three watchers contriving to play just badly enough to lose a few francs.
The smoky haze of regret thickened to a fog. What point in having Sénéschal or Odile watch the house if Szara could not be reached when something finally happened—this was his operation.
But the rules emphatically excluded contact with an agent-operator at his home or, God forbid, at the communications base. Thus he found a rooming house in Suresnes with a telephone on the wall in the corridor, gave the landlady a month's rent and an alias, and there, when he wasn't on duty in Puteaux, he stayed, waiting for Sénéschal or Odile to use the telephone in a café just down the street from the old lady's building.
Waiting.
The great curse of espionage: Father Time in lead boots, the skeleton cobwebbed to the telephone—any and all of the images applied. If you were lucky and good an opportunity presented itself. And then you waited.
July came. Paris broiled in the sun, you could smell the butcher shops half a block away. Szara sat sweating in a soiled little room, not a breath of air stirred through the window; he read trashy French novels, stared out at the street. I dared to enter the world of spies, he thought, and wound up like the classic lonely-pensioner-alone-in-a-room of a Gogol story. There was a woman who lived just down the hall, fortyish, dyed blond, and fleshy. Fleshy the first week, sumptuous the second, Rubenesque thereafter. She too seemed to be waiting for something or other, though Szara couldn't imagine what.
Actually he could imagine, and did. Her presence in the hallway was announced by a trail of scent called Cri de la Nuit, cheap, crude, sweet, which drove his imagination to absurd excesses. As did her bitter mouth, set in a permanent sneer that said to the world, and especially to him, “Well?”
Before he could answer, the phone rang.
“Can you come to dinner?” Odile said. Heart pounding, Szara found a cranky old taxi at the Suresnes Mairie and reached the Puteaux house in minutes. Odile was standing well back from the window, looking through a pair of opera glasses. With a little grin of triumph she handed them over. “Second floor,” she said. “To the left of the entryway.”
By the time he focused, they weren't where she said they were, but had moved to the top floor, two colorless men in dark suits seen dimly through the gauze curtain shielding the window. They vanished, then reappeared for a moment when they parted the drapes in an adjoining room. “A security check,” he said.
“Yes,” Odile said. “Their car is parked well down the street.”
“What model?”
“Not sure.”
“Big?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “And shiny.”
Szara felt his blood race.
The following afternoon, 8 July, they were back. This time it was Szara on duty. He'd moved the bezique table in front of the window and, having begged the old lady's pardon, removed his shirt, appearing in sleeveless undershirt, a cigarette stuck in his lips, a hand of playing cards held before him, a sullen expression on his face. This time a heavy man with a bow tie accompanied the other two and from the open gateway stared up at Szara, who stared right back. A living Brassai, he thought, Card Player in Puteaux—he lacked only a bandanna tied around his neck. The man in the bow tie broke off the staring contest, then slowly closed the door that concealed the garden from the street.
9 July was the day.
At 2:00 P.M. sharp, two glossy black Panhards pulled up at the gate. One of the security men left the first car and opened the gate as his partner drove off. The second car was aligned in such a way that Szara could identify the driver as the man with the bow tie. He also caught a glimpse of the passenger, who sat directly behind the driver and glanced out the window just before the Panhard swung through the gateway and the security man pushed the doors shut. The passenger was in his early forties, Szara guessed. The angle of sight, from above, could be misleading, but Szara took him to be short and bulky. He had thick black hair sharply parted, a swarthy, deeply lined face, and small dark eyes. For the occasion he wore a double-breasted suit, a shirt with a stiff high collar, a gray silk tie.Gestapo, Szara thought, dressed up like a diplomat, but the face read policeman and criminal at once, with a conviction of power that Szara had seen in certain German faces, especially—no matter how they preached the Nordic ideal—the dark men who ruled the nation. Important, Szara realized. The single glance out the window had asked the question Am I pleased?
“Ten of clubs,” said the old lady.
Fifteen minutes later, a gray Peugeot coasted to a stop in front of the house. A hawk-faced man got out on the side away from Szara and the car immediately left. The man looked about him for a moment, made certain of his tie, then pressed the doorbell set into the portal of the gateway.
Dershani.
Sénéschal knocked twice, then entered the apartment. “Christ, the heat,” he said. He collapsed in an armchair, set a Leica down carefully among the framed photographs on a rickety table. His suit was hopelessly rumpled, black circles at the armpits, a gray shadow of newsprint ink darkening the front of his shirt. He had spent the last two hours lying on sheets of newspaper in a lead-lined gutter at the foot of the sloped roof. The building's scrollwork provided a convenient portal for photography.
Sénéschal wiped his face with a handkerchief. “I took all the automobiles,” he said. “The security man who worked the door— several of him. Tried for the second man, but not much there I'm afraid, perhaps a one-quarter profile, and he was moving. As for the face in the back seat of the Panhard, I managed two exposures, but I doubt anything will show up.”
Szara nodded silently.
“Well? What do you think?”
Szara gestured with his eyes toward the old lady, waiting not quite patiently to resume the card game. “Too early to know much of anything. We'll wait for them to use the garden,” he said.
“What if it rains?”
Szara looked up at the sky, a mottled gray in the Paris humidity. “Not before tonight,” he said.
•
They appeared just before five—a break in the negotiation. Odile had arrived at her usual time, Szara now used her opera glasses and stood well back from the window.
The man he took to be a German intelligence officer was short and heavy, as he'd supposed. Magnification revealed a thin white scar crossing his left eyebrow, a street fighter's badge of honor. The two men stood at the garden entrance for a moment, open French doors behind them. The German spoke a few words, Dershani nodded, and they walked together into the garden. They were the image of diplomacy, strolling pensively with hands clasped behind their backs, continuing a very deliberate conversation, choosing their words with great care. Szara studied their lips through the opera glasses but could not, to his surprise, determine if they were speaking German or Russian. Once they laughed. Szara fancied he could hear it, faintly, carried on the heated air of the late afternoon amid the sound of sparrows chirping in the trees of the garden.
They made a single circuit on the gravel path, stopping once while the German pointed at an apple tree, then returned to the house, each beckoning the other to enter first. Dershani laughed, clapping the German on the shoulder, and went in ahead of him.
At 7:20, Dershani left the house. He turned up the street in the direction his car had gone and disappeared from view. A few minutes later, the security man opened the gate and, after the car had passed through, closed it again. He climbed in beside the driver and the Panhard sped away. In the garden, the setting sun made long shadows on the dry grass, the birds sang, nothing moved in the still summer air.
“Tiens,” said the old lady. “Will the government fall tomorrow?” Sénéschal was grave. “No, madame, I can in confidence inform you that, thanks to your great kindness and patience, the government will stand.”
“Oh, too bad,” she said.
Odile left first, to walk to the Neuilly Métro stop. Sénéschal disappeared into the old lady's closet and emerged a few minutes later smelling faintly of mothballs. He handed Szara a spool of film. Szara thanked the old lady, told her they might be back the following day, gave her a fresh packet of money, and went out into the humid dusk.
Sénéschal's car was parked several blocks away. They walked through streets deserted by the onset of the dinner hour; smells of frying onions and potatoes drifted through the open windows.
“Do we try again tomorrow? ” Sénéschal asked.
Szara thought it over. “I sense that they've done what they came together to do.”
“Can't be certain.”
“No. I'll contact you at your office, if you don't mind.”
“Not at all.”
“I should say, officially, that gratitude is expressed—charming the way they put these things. Personally, thank you for everything, and I'm sorry your shirt is ruined.”
Sénéschal inspected the front of his shirt. “No. My little friend is a wonder. No matter what I get into she knows a way to take care of it. Nothing is to be thrown out, it can always last ‘a bit longer.' ”
“Is she aware of your, ah, love affair?”
“They always know, Jean Marc, but it's part of life here. It's what all those sad little café songs are about.”
“You are in love, then.”
“Oh that word. Perhaps, or perhaps not. She is my consolation, however, always that, and doesn't she ever know it. L'amour covers quite some territory, especially in Paris.”
“I expect it does.”
“Have you a friend? ”
“Yes. Or I should say ‘perhaps.' ”
“She's good to you?”
“Good for me.”
“Et alors!”
Szara laughed.
“Beautiful too, I'd wager.”
“You would win, eventually, but it's not the sort of dazzle that catches the eye right away. There's just something about her.”
They reached the car; the smell of overheated upholstery rushed out when Sénéschal opened the door. “Come have a beer,” he said. “There's plenty of time for your vanishing act.”
“Thank you,” Szara said.
Sénéschal turned the ignition, the Renault came reluctantly to life as he fiddled expertly with the choke. “This whore drinks petrol,” he said sourly, racing the engine.
They wandered through the twisting streets of Puteaux, crossed the Seine on the pont de Suresnes—the tied-up barges had pots of flowers and laundry drying on lines—then the Bois de Boulogne appeared on their left, a few couples out strolling, men with jackets over their arms, an organ grinder. Sénéschal stopped by an ice cream seller. “What kind?”
“Chocolate.”
“A double?”
“Of course. Here's a few francs.”
“Keep it.”
“I insist.”
Sénéschal waved the money away and bought the cones. When he got back in the car he drove slowly through the Bois, steering with one hand. “Watch, now I really will ruin the shirt.”
Szara's double cone was a masterpiece—he ate the ice cream and looked at the girls in their summer dresses.
But what he'd seen that afternoon did not leave him. His mind was flying around like a moth in a lamp. He didn't understand what he'd witnessed, didn't know what it meant or what, if anything, to do about it. He'd seen something he wasn't supposed to see, that much he did know. Maybe it meant nothing—intelligence services talked to each other when it was in the interest of both to do so, and Paris was a good, neutral place to do it.
“If you've the time, we'll find ourselves a brasserie,” Sénéschal said.
“Good idea. Is there a place you go?” Szara wanted the company.
Sénéschal looked at him oddly. Szara realized his error, they couldn't go to a place where Sénéschal was known. “We'll just pick one that looks good,” he said. “In this city you can't go too far wrong.”
They'd drifted into the fifteenth arrondissement, headed east on the boulevard Lefebvre. “We're in the right place out here,” Sénéschal said. “They have great big ones where the whole family shows up—kids, dogs. A night like this”—the Renault idled roughly at a red light; a fat man in suspenders was picking through books at a stall—“the terraces will be …” A black Panhard rolled to a gentle stop on Sénéschal's side of the car.
Seen from a window in the old lady's apartment, he'd been a colorless man in a suit. Now, looking through the Panhard's passenger window, he was much realer than that. He was young, not yet thirty, and very bright and crisp. His hair was combed just so, swept up into a stiff pompadour above his white forehead. “Please,” he said in measured French, “may we speak a moment?” He smiled. What merry eyes, Szara thought. For a moment he was unable to breathe.
Sénéschal turned to him for help, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
