As Time Goes By (15 page)

"My father was from Vienna," Laszlo responded.
"But I feel myself Czech. Czech was my mother tongue. I was raised with the stories of Czech he
roes, of Sarka and of the great rock at Vysehrad, and
of Hrad
č
any Castle, the ancient residence of the Kings
of Bohemia. In Czechoslovakia, we have been strug
gling against the Germans for hundreds of years. They
tried to destroy our language, they tried to destroy our
people. They colonized Bohemia and Moravia, they
forbade our music to be played in our theaters. Al
though we are Slavs, they have dragooned our
blondest, most blue-eyed women into their evil
Lebens
born
program, and the rest of us they would enslave,
as they would enslave all the Slavs whom they do not
kill. Where, in fact, does your English word 'slave'
come from, if not from 'Slav'?"

He turned to Rick. "Yes, Mr. Blaine, it is personal.
It has always been personal. And you dare criticize
me—you, who have never spent one minute enjoying
the hospitality of Reinhard Heydrich and his ilk! You,
who have never seen your loved ones killed—simply
for being your loved ones...."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," Rick said under his
breath.

Laszlo, however, had not heard him. "You, from a
country which has never suffered in wartime, never
seen the slaughter of its people, never been challenged
upon the international stage. You, with your jazz music
and your skyscrapers and your Negroes and your Chicago gangsters. You, safe and secure behind your At
lantic Ocean barrier. While we Czechs sit in the heart
of Europe, surrounded by enemies and yearning for
freedom!" Laszlo wrung his hands. "You say this is
personal with me? I say—it should also be personal
with you!"
          

"Maybe it is," said Rick.

Laszlo fell silent for a moment. Then he spoke:
 
"You
mean my wife." It was a statement, not a question.

"Gentlemen," said Major Miles, "if we could please
return to the business at hand."

"With pleasure," Renault agreed. "Business is
something we French understand. But have we consid
ered the question of retaliation?"

Everyone was still, even Major Miles.

"It seems to me," said Renault, taking advantage of
the silence, "that the Germans are not going to take the
assassination of Heydrich lying down. Indeed, they've
never shown the slightest inclination to do so in the past. When Tito's partisans shoot a Nazi in the Bal
kans, a hundred innocent people die in response. Our
plot to blow up his cabrio as he tools through the streets
of Prague may well succeed. But what about the inno
cent lives that may be lost? What about reprisals?"

Silence all around. Laszlo looked uncomfortable.
Major Miles looked annoyed. Renault looked on.

"Now who's the sentimentalist?" Rick asked Louis.

"Not sentimentalist," Renault replied. "Pragmatist
There's a difference."

Sir Harold cleared his throat. "Do you suppose," he
asked Renault in a tone that suggested he'd been in
sulted, "that we have not considered that eventuality?"

"That, Major," said Renault, "is exactly what worries me."

A knock at the door brought an adjutant with some papers for Miles to sign. When the major turned back
to the group, Rick spoke up.

"Did you think this up all by yourselves, or did you
get it from Rube Goldberg?" he said. "I mean, this is
the dumbest thing I ever heard of. It's too complicated, for one thing. Too many people are involved, which
means there's going to be leaks. The element of surprise will be gone."

Agitated, he lit another cigarette. "It's also far too
dangerous. You're talking about infiltrating a team led
by Laszlo here behind Nazi lines. If the slightest thing
goes wrong, we'll be rolled up in a matter of hours.
Worse, you've got Ilsa, Miss Lund, stuck in Prague,
where they'll probably execute her as soon as the oper
ation goes sour. If Laszlo were captured alive, even if
he was somehow able to hold out in the face of the
worst kind of torture, how long would it be before they
figured out that they had his beloved wife as well?
Laszlo may not want to sing to save his own hide, but
he'll croon like Crosby to save hers."

He wished he could get a drink. "It just won't
work," he concluded. "Major Miles, I've been in
volved in some crazy schemes in my time, but this one
takes the cake."

"Monsieur Blaine . . . ," Laszlo started to say, but
Rick turned on him.

"And you—I should have left with Ilsa on that plane
and left you to rot in Casablanca," he said angrily. "I
thought we had a deal, and in my book you've just
welshed on it." He sat down. "There, I've made my
speech," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's that
simple."

"No, Richard," Ilsa said softly. "It isn't."

All eyes turned to her as she spoke.

"Richard," she said, "I want you to listen to me.
Really listen." The intensity of her glance left him no
alternative.

"Every time I do, I get a different story," said Rick, trying to fight her allure, and failing.

"This is no time for games!" she exclaimed. "I'm
not doing this because Victor has asked me to, or be
cause the British have asked me to. I'm doing this be
cause I
want
to. For me, for my family. For my father."

Her eyes were flashing, as they hadn't since Paris.
Then, they'd flashed with the passion of love. Now,
they flashed with another kind of passion.

"Remember back in Paris, when you asked me
where I was ten years ago?"

"Yeah," said Rick. "You said you were having
braces put on your teeth."

"So I was," Ilsa replied. "Braces paid for by my
parents, whom I loved very much. I was just a silly girl,
only fifteen, but already I knew what a great man my
father was, about the important work he was doing for my King and for my country. During the next decade I
only grew prouder of him, as he rose in the cabinet, all
the way to Minister of Defense. To be Edvard Lund's
daughter was the greatest honor I could imagine—
until, in Paris, I became Mrs. Victor Laszlo."

Laszlo picked up the thread. "A few weeks after the
Germans marched into Prague, I fled to France," he
said. "I tried to keep the presses running as long as
possible, but it was no use. The Underground begged
me to leave, to tell the world what the Germans were
really like, about what they were planning for the rest
of Europe. I didn't want to go to England, because of
Chamberlain and the Munich Pact. Sweden might have
been safer. But France seemed as committed as I to the
struggle against Hitler."

Ilsa resumed her narrative. "I never worried about
my parents back home in Oslo. Who would have imag
ined that the Nazis would invade Norway? Then, in
April of 1940, they did. Everyone was taken com
pletely by surprise.
Yes,
the British had mined our har
bors, but we thought that would discourage the
Germans, not provoke them. That false sense of secur
ity lasted right up to the moment they kicked the door
to my father's house down, roused him and Mother
from their beds, and forced them downstairs at gunpoint."

She shivered at the recollection. Rick wanted to put his arms around her. Laszlo sat immobile.

" 'Are you Edvard Lund?' " one of the soldiers demanded. When my father answered yes, the officer
drew a pistol and shot him dead on the spot. They left
my mother there, on the floor of her house, weeping
over his body.

"I do not make this decision lightly," Ilsa informed
the gathering, but looking directly at Rick. "Richard,
you think this is Victor's idea, because he wants revenge for what they did to him in Mauthausen, and
you're right. But this is my revenge, too. Don't try to
take it away from me."

Rick Blaine was amazed by what he had just learned
about Ilsa Lund. Back in Paris they had said no ques
tions. Back in Paris he'd thought he was the one with
the bad memories. Back in Paris he'd thought he was
the only hard-luck case in the world.

"I still don't see why you have to risk your life by going to Prague," he objected. "Why don't you leave that to Victor and Louie and me?" He turned to Sir
Harold. "Major, why can't we send a man to infiltrate
Heydrich's operation? Surely there must be a Czech in
London who speaks the lingo and knows the territory and—"

Victor Laszlo waved away his protests. "Monsieur B
laine," he said, "I'm sure you do not mean to insult
me by implying that I would willingly place my wife
in unnecessary danger if there were another way.
Allow me to explain to you why Ilsa, and Ilsa alone, must go."

"No, Victor!" commanded Ilsa. "Let me."

She looked at Rick the same way she had the last
time they were together in Paris—at his club, La Belle
Aurore, dancing to the strains of "Perfidia" with the
sounds of the big guns thundering in the distance. With tenderness, and love, and worry, and distraction, and a
secret knowledge of what she was about to do. Only
this time she was sharing that knowledge with him in
advance.

"Richard," she began, speaking to him, the tough
guy from New York, as if he were a child, "you don't
know these people as we do. If we were to send a Ger
man-speaking Czech from the Resistance here in Lon
don, the chances that he would be recognized,
informed upon, denounced, and shot within the first
week are more likely than not. No one knows me there.
With a little help from British Intelligence, I can be
whoever I say I am. . . .
    

"Thanks to Victor"—she nodded at her husband—
"our marriage, indeed our whole relationship, has been
kept a secret from everyone. This was to protect me.
But now I can wield it like a weapon against them.
They will never suspect that I am the wife of Victor Laszlo." She let out a little laugh of nervous excite
ment. "Besides, a man could never get as close to Hey
drich as a woman could."

"Why not?" asked Rick. In his experience, no gang
ster worth a damn ever let a dame get close enough to
see the color of his folding money except when he was
out on the town with her. Women and business didn't
mix.

"Because they don't think about women, that's why not!" said Ilsa. "Because to the Germans, a woman is
all but invisible except in the kitchen and, from time to
time, in the bedroom. They would never have a room
full of male secretaries handling top-secret documents
because eventually they would have to shoot every one
of them, just to be on the safe side. Why do you think Hitler has six secretaries—and except for Martin Bormann
every one of them is a woman?". . .
 
        

He hadn't thought of it that way.

"Also," she went on, "there is the obvious. Reinhard
Heydrich is notorious for his, shall we say, fondness, for attractive women, and I—"

"And Ilsa is a very beautiful woman," said Laszlo, finishing the sentence for her. "As you have noticed yourself, Monsieur Blaine."

"You just can't wait to make her a part of your war,
can you?" Rick snapped.

"You still don't understand, do you, Richard?" cried
Ilsa. "I've always been a part of it! Why do you think
we went to Casablanca? Certainly not for me to meet
you again! You remember Berger, the jewel dealer who
was often in your cafe? He was
my
contact—not Vic
tor's. I was trying to get my husband out of danger, not
the other way around."

"What?" said Rick.

"Yes, my contact," Ilsa repeated. "Berger was work
ing for the Norwegian resistance. He was trying to get
exit visas for us, and when he heard about the murder of the two German couriers and the existence of the
letters of transit, he was going to try to purchase them
from Ugarte. And then ..."