As Time Goes By (30 page)

"You let Laszlo get away," accused Heinze. "You
drew your pistol on the Prefect of Police and prevented
him from doing his duty. And you received the stolen
letters of transit from the criminal Ugarte and hid them
until you could sell them to Victor Laszlo. How do you
explain that?"

"Like I said, I'm a businessman," replied Rick. "It wasn't any of my concern where those letters came
from, or who I sold them to. I'm also a sporting man,
and I bet Captain Renault ten thousand francs that Vic
tor Laszlo would escape Casablanca, and I intended to
win that bet, since the only kind of bet I like to make
is a sure thing. Besides," said Rick, "America wasn't involved in the war then. Whether Victor Laszlo es
caped or was arrested right there in my club like Ugarte
made no difference whatsoever to me." He looked at Heinze, waiting to see if his bluff had gone over.

Heinze's beady eyes were glistening. "Through our
spies in London," he said, "we have been picking up a
great deal of activity between London and the Prague
underground. The quality of their intelligence about
our plans has improved enormously lately." He eyed
Rick with suspicion. "You wouldn't know anything
about that, would you?" he asked.

"Not a thing," said Rick. Inside his head, though, alarm bells were ringing. Heinze must have seen Ilsa
and Laszlo in the cafe, and Ilsa Lund was not a woman
a miserable loser like Heinze would ever forget. She
was the kind of woman a man like him could never
have and therefore would always hate. If Heinze spot
ted her here, there would be hell to pay.

"It is of course unthinkable and impossible for the
Czech rabble that calls itself an 'Underground' to have
placed an agent within Gestapo headquarters, but in
any case a major operation appears to be under way."

"It's called a counterattack," Rick told him. "You
can't expect to keep punching a guy and not have him
punch back."

Heinze looked as if the thought had never occurred
to him. Maybe it hadn't. "Unfortunately we don't
know what this operation might be," he continued.
"Now here you are, which leads me to suspect that
Victor Laszlo might not be far away, although I cannot
believe he would have the effrontery to return to his
former homeland. Which in turn leads me to suspect that whatever is being planned, it is going to happen
here."

"You know, Hermann," said Rick, inhaling the to
bacco smoke, "you're a lot smarter than you look.
You're going places, you know that?"

"I know," gloated Heinze. It was about time. He had
been rebuffed in his attempts to obtain a position at RSHA headquarters, been shunted off instead with
minor diplomatic work involving Slovakia and the inte
gration of Ruthenia into Hungary. Now a ticket to the
castle had just been handed to him. He couldn't believe
his good fortune. In his excitement, he began to pace,
taking mincing little steps.

"Of course, it is impossible that the Czechs could harm us in any way," he said. "But there are always agitators, men like this Victor Laszlo, who claims to speak for the Czech people when all he represents are
a few Communist malcontents who seek to enslave
their own people by mouthing slogans about peace and
freedom. Bah! How easily we Germans see through
them!" -

"I'll bet you do," agreed Rick. He had yet to meet a
German who didn't act like a hanging judge even when
he was just buying a loaf of bread.

Heinze missed the sarcasm in Rick's voice. He threw
away his cigarette. "What can you offer me in ex
change for your life?" he said.

Rick didn't move. Below him, the city was spread
out like a child's toy model. It was not the beauty of
Prague that had captivated him; rather, it was, of all
things, a reduced-scale version of the Eiffel Tower.
"What's that?" he asked.

Heinze turned back. "The Pet
ří
n Tower," he said. "Built in 1891. One-fifth the scale of the Eiffel Tower
in Paris. Two hundred and ninety-nine steps from top
to bottom. It was constructed out of old railroad ties in
thirty-one days for the Jubilee Exposition. Ugly, isn't
it?"

"Only to a Nazi," muttered Rick. In his mind's eye he could see her again—her in the car as they tooled
down the Champs-Élysées. Her as they dined together
that first evening at the Tour d'Argent and cruised
along the Seine in one of the
bateaux mouches.
Her as
they walked together, hand in hand, in the Luxembourg
Gardens and across the Pont des Arts. Her, always her.

Heinze hadn't heard him. "The F
ü
hrer has ordered it
torn down. Why look at a model when you already own
the real thing?" The consul threw back his head and laughed. "Perhaps we'll even tear the real Eiffel Tower
down someday as well and replace it with a proper
monument to German glory!"

Rick waited for him to stop chortling. "Well, enough
sight-seeing," he said. "It's time to get down to brass tacks." Rick nodded in the direction of the car. "In
there."
    

They got back into the car. It was time to make his
move, play his hand, spin the roulette wheel, throw the
dice. He'd gambled before with lives and lost, lost big;
now it was lucky number 22's turn to come up again.

Heinze was so dumb, he hadn't even pulled his
pistol.

That was all the break Rick needed. With his right
hand he tossed his cigarette out the window. With his
left he swung hard and caught Heinze right in the throat
with the edge of his hand. As Heinze's head came
down, Rick drove his right fist onto the point of the
man's jaw. Heinze didn't make a sound as the lights
went out.

Just like old times.
   

He started the engine and left it in neutral. Nobody had seen or heard a thing. To all intents and appear
ances, they were two men sitting in the front seat of an
expensive BMW, talking and looking out over the city.

Slowly Rick released the hand brake. The car was now in
perfect equipoise at the top of Pet
ří
n Hill; the
slightest push would set it moving.

He got out the passenger's side, went around the
front of the car, leaned in the open window on the driv
er's side, and pretended to say good-bye to the man at the wheel. With his head in the window and his shoul
der against the doorjamb, he leaned hard against the
vehicle and gave it a shove. As it began to roll down
the hill, he steered lightly with his right hand, aiming
rather than driving. He could hear Heinze starting to
come around.

A sharp curve lay just ahead as the car picked up
speed.

"Heil Hitler,"
said Rick.

The car missed the curve and went over the edge. He
thought he could hear Heinze screaming as it went
down, but that could have been his imagination.

The wreck brought people running. He walked the
other way, back up toward the monastery, not hurriedly
but briskly. From the top of the hill he looked back.
This time, with Heinze's flaming BMW in the middle foreground, the view was better than ever.

His mind raced, trying to sort out all the information,
all the suspicion. Unless Heinze had been lying to him,
Ilsa was in mortal danger. They might not be able to
pin anything on her right away, but even the Germans
could eventually put two and two together and come up
with her arrival and the beginning of the leaks. He had
to get her out of there, no matter what.

Maybe the operation was already blown. Maybe, like
Heinze's car, all it needed was a little push.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
S
EVEN

He was meeting her at a small restaurant called U
Malt
é
zsk
ý
ch Ryt
ířů
, an ancient barrel-shaped cellar
just across the river from his hotel in the Mala Strana
that had once been, or so legend had it, a hospice of
the Knights of Malta. Rick didn't know much about
Malta except what he had read in
The Maltese Falcon
by Hammett, more than a decade ago, when he still had
time to read. Despite himself, he was letting his mind
drift back over the past when he spotted Ilsa walking
down the stairs and into the dining room. Right away, he was back in the present.

How beautiful she looked! It hardly seemed possible,
but she gained in beauty each time he saw her. In Paris she had merely been exquisite; in Casablanca, ravish
ing; in London, magnificent. Here in Prague, she was
overwhelming. She put to flight the memory of every
other woman he had ever known, save one, and even
that one was finally beginning to fade.

He rose and stood stock-still as she approached. A
restaurant was no place for a display of public af
fection. There wasn't a man in the room who did not notice Ilsa as she strolled by, so different, so fresh in
her beauty compared with the heavyset German ma
trons and the rawboned Czech girls. Let Rick stick his
neck out by embracing her in the middle of the room,
as he longed to do, and the show might close before it
even opened.

"Mr. Lindquist?" she said pleasantly in Russian-
accented English.

"At your service," he replied.

They sat down, the waiter hovering as if he had just seen a miraculous apparition of the Madonna, and Ilsa
spoke to him in rapid-fire Czech. Her command of lan
guages amazed Rick, especially set next to his. The waiter's head bobbled on his shoulders like a funhouse
doll's, and then he scuttled away to fetch their drinks.

"What did you order?" Rick asked her quietly.

"Some mineral water for both of us," she said, smil
ing. He wished she wouldn't smile that smile. It re
minded him too much of Paris. But there was nothing he could do about it, even had he wanted to.

"I've also ordered some roast duck." She forced a
light laugh. "In Prague you can have anything you
want as long as it's roasted. It's all they know how to
do very well."

"Is everything in order?" he asked, dispassionately.

She kept the smile plastered to her face, but answered in the negative. "I'm very much afraid there
has been some difficulty with the business that you and
Herr Sieger"—their code name for Victor—"have
been discussing. It seems that he might no longer be
able to arrange delivery of the shipment. I'm very sorry."

"So am I," said Rick, taking a sip of the water to
conceal his surprise; today was full of surprises, all of
them bad. "This is rather sudden, isn't it?"

"Very much so, I regret to say." Although hardly
a muscle in her face had moved, to his practiced
eye her whole demeanor was now different. "Appar
ently something has come up, something very urgent. Frankly, we were hoping you might be able to explain
it."

"I'm afraid I can't," said Rick.

When the waiter produced the duck, she dug into it,
tearing it apart, and Rick noticed that her hands were
shaking as she wielded her knife. They said very little
else for the rest of the meal. Rick decided he hated roast duck. "I hope we may discuss this matter fur
ther," he said as he paid the bill.

"We would welcome that possibility," she told him.
"Perhaps, if you have time, you could accompany me
back to the office?"

"It would be my pleasure," said Rick, putting on his
hat.

They walked out into the bright sunlight. Ilsa
reached into her handbag and pulled out a pair of sun
glasses. She was wearing a broad-brimmed hat as well.
Rick pulled his fedora down tight over his brow. Un
less someone scrutinized them closely, their faces were well hidden.

They crossed over the Charles Bridge and headed
toward the broad mall of Vaclavsk
é
N
á
m
ě
st
í
. On such
a fine day, many folks were out for a stroll. The casual
observer would be hard-pressed to tell there was a war
on.

"What the hell is happening?" whispered Rick as
they walked.

"I don't know," she said, trying not to let her fear
show. "The Underground is pleading with London to
call off the operation. They seem terribly frightened of what might happen if we succeed."

"Maybe they have good reason to be." He lit a cigarette, thinking about everything Louis had been telling
him, about all the doubts the little Frenchman had been
harboring since the beginning.

"Perhaps they suspect something."

That was just what he had not wanted to hear her
say. "Maybe they suspect you."

She took his arm as if for support, but beneath the sleeve of his jacket he could feel her fingers digging
into him, hard. "Do you think so?" she whispered.
Frau Hentgen; it had to be. Frantically Ilsa raced back
over her actions of the past month as Rick spoke again.

"I've just had a chance meeting with Heinze," he
said. "You remember him—he was in the cafe with
Strasser. Anyway, it was just my luck to run into him."
He patted her arm. "Don't worry," he said. "Heinze
won't be around to trouble us anymore. However,
we've got to figure out what we're going to do, and
we've got to do it fast."

Ilsa didn't bother to ask why Heinze would no longer
trouble them. "No matter what," she began, "we have
to go through with it. You don't know this Heydrich as
I do. He is a monster—the worst kind of monster, be
cause he is so seductive. Through terror and generosity he has corrupted a nation—my husband's homeland—
and by denouncing people they hate, he has made him
self popular with the masses."

"Such as the Jews," said Rick. It was the same old
story.

"Yes, especially the Jews," said Ilsa. "Things are
only going to get worse. Heydrich told me himself that
at Wannsee they have planned nothing less than the
total extermination of the Jewish people. Already they
are building more camps, this time in the east, in Po
land. And Heydrich is in charge! He boasts, as if it
were the crowning accomplishment of his life! He says
the fools in the West have not realized their intentions
yet, and even if the word gets out, they will not believe
it It's too fantastic to be plausible; that's what he's
counting on."

That's what people like Heydrich always counted on,
thought Rick: the ability of good men to see nothing,
hear nothing, do nothing, and believe nothing they didn't want to.

"I can't ask Victor to stop now," she went on. "He
has been dreaming of this revenge since he escaped
from Mauthausen. And this is not just Victor's fight:
to kill Reinhard Heydrich would be to save thousands,
maybe millions, of people. What the Underground
fears about reprisals—well, it's only speculation, isn't it? I mean, we don't really know what will happen, do
we?"

"After Guernica, I think we can make a pretty educated guess," said Rick. They had stopped walking.

"Perhaps you're right," she said, wondering how to
broach a more immediate, personal subject. "There's
something else you should know." She looked at him through red-rimmed eyes over lowered sunglasses.
"Heydrich wants to make love to me. He tried last
night. I didn't let him, but I don't know how long I can
refuse him." She lowered her eyes. "He's not the sort
of man one can put off for very long."

He felt a rage boiling up inside him, the kind of rage he had not felt for years. He had not felt it as he rained
mortar fire down on the Italian positions in East Africa.
He had not felt it in Spain, not after Guernica, and not even at the Ebro River. He had not felt it when the
Germans marched into Paris, and he had not felt it
when, at the train station, he read her letter. He had felt
this kind of rage only once before, on October 23,
1935, the day before he fled America forever. The day
Solomon and Lois Horowitz had died. It was time for
him to face the truth: he was consumed with love for
Ilsa Lund.

"Then we really do have to hurry," Rick said flatly,
moving again. Ilsa's refusal of Heydrich, he knew,
would first arouse and then infuriate him; Nazis
weren't used to taking no for an answer.

"Yes," she agreed. "But not just for me. For Victor
and for my father and for all the people of Europe.
What are we going to do?"

"Let me think for a minute," he said.

If Heinze had heard something about a plot, and if the Underground was begging London to call a halt,
the situation must be fraught indeed. The locals were
getting cold feet, and for a very good reason: they wanted to live to fight another day. Far worse, from
his perspective, was the danger Ilsa might now be in.
He had already seen one woman he loved die because
he couldn't protect her. He would be damned before he
would let that happen again.

Mentally he ran over the situation, trying to figure
out what to do. Victor Laszlo would never be dissuaded
from attempting his mission, no matter what. Too much
was at stake to let a little thing like his wife's safety stop him. There had to be a way to make it all come
out right: there
had
to be.

The Nazis could bluster and threaten to murder the
Jews of Europe, but could they really do it? Could they
get away with it? He had to weigh the possibility of
what Heydrich
might
do if he lived against the proba
bility—no, the certainty—of what the Germans
would
do if he died. Maybe die best thing was for Reinhard
Heydrich
not
to die, that others might live. Maybe the Underground was right: maybe they should call the
whole thing off.

What had he learned in
shul
a thousand years ago?
That even in a case where his life is in danger, a Jew is
forbidden to save himself by spilling the blood of an
innocent man, forbidden to save one man or even many
by turning an innocent man over to a murderer, forbid
den to hand over even "one soul from Israel" to mur
derers. Nothing in there to address his current dilemma:
that to save the lives of countless innocent persons, a
murderer himself must be spared.

Which was the higher good? Was it better to let Hey
drich go on killing people, many of them Jews, in order
to save the lives of some Czechs, most of whom might
be anti-Semites anyway? Or would the Hangman's
death spare thousands, maybe millions, of people a hid
eous fate, at the expense of a couple of hundred innocents?