As Time Goes By (9 page)

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

January 23, 1942. This is London. While the battle for the
Soviet Union rages thousands of miles away, here on the west
ern front the bombs of the Luftwaffe continue to fall almost
nightly as Adolf Hitler attempts to bring Great Britain to her
knees. Last night,
the
docks
of London's East End took a terrific
pounding from the forces of Field Marshall Goering. Bombs fell throughout the evening, ranging as far west as Cheapside and
Whttechapel, Not even the majestic dome of Christopher
Wren's
architectural masterpiece,
St.
Paul's Cathedral, was
spared the assault.

But even amid the rubble, there yet springs hope. For London is home
to every
anti-Nazi resistance movement in Europe, and
their numbers are growing daily. Led by the exiled general
Charles De Gaulle, the Free French are waging a fierce rear
guard campaign against the Germans across North
Africa and in
the
Middle East, striking first, unsuccessfully, at Dakar and then
in Syria. The Norwegian govemment-in-exile is also here, work
ing day and night to overthrow Vidkun Quisling's collaboration
ist government. Czech partisans are now calling the city home
as well. Having seen their country first partitioned by the Ger
man annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, and then de
stroyed by the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia in 1
939,
they have sworn to overthrow bath the
Protectorate and the Nazi satellite state of Slovakia.

"Let the puppetmasters in Berlin be advised," exiled Presi
dent Eduard Bene
š
has declared. "We shall not rest until our
beloved Czech homeland is fully restored."

"Shut it off, Sam."

"Don't you want to hear the news?" asked Sam.

"Not unless it's good," said Rick.

"There ain't no good news these days," Sam ob
jected.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," said Rick.

Sam switched off the radio, plopped himself into a
chair, and picked up his book. He was reading
Bleak House
by Dickens, which he had found in the hotel
library. Reading about white folks worse off than him
self made him feel better.

Over the past six years he had sometimes doubted
the wisdom of what he had done, of escaping with Rick
across the ocean, one step ahead of disaster, when he
might have sat the whole mess out in New York and
waited for the smoke to clear; there was always a mar
ket in Manhattan for a good singing pianist. . . not to mention a first-class driver. How he longed for his fa
vorite lake in the Catskills or, if he allowed his mind to drift back that far, his boyhood in the Missouri Ozarks,
where the fish were always jumping, or his young man
hood in New Orleans, where Lake Pontchartrain al
ways beckoned.

Then he remembered Paris and all those French girls
with their small bosoms and their big noses, and their
insatiable curiosity about all things
n
è
gres,
and that
was the end of that particular reverie. Who was to say
that if he had stayed in New York he wouldn't have ended up like Horowitz and Meredith and the rest of
them? All things considered, he hadn't made out so
bad. Except that he didn't care for London very much.
The buildings were monochrome, the skies were slate
gray, and there was hardly a black face in sight. He
went back to his book.

Rick, too, relaxed in reverie. With the money from
the sale of the cafe to Ferrari, he had taken a suite of
rooms at Brown's Hotel. Rick was posing as a theatrical agent, part of the fiction being that Sam was his
manservant. The funds would not last indefinitely, but
they would last long enough, or so Rick hoped, for
them to find Victor and Ilsa. More than a month had
already passed, however; despite their best efforts, neither Rick nor Renault had succeeded in locating Victor
Laszlo.

What if Laszlo had played him for a fool? He'd like
to think he'd learned a few lessons in treachery over the years, but it wouldn't be the first time he'd been
had. What if Laszlo knew that Rick would be able to
resist neither his appeals to Rick's patriotism nor his
love for Ilsa and so had conned him out of the exit
visas? Laszlo was just pigheaded enough to think he could take on the entire Third Reich all by himself.

What if that note in Lisbon had been meant to throw
him off the scent, written by Ilsa under duress from her
husband, who suspected that Rick's magnanimity was
not entirely altruistic, and who had gone to New
York—where Rick could not follow? What if the Lasz
los
weren't really in London at all? What if they really
had gone to America? Then that was that; he couldn't
go back, unless he wanted a one-way ticket to Old
Sparky at Sing Sing. But where could he go? He was
beginning to run out of places.

"How long we gonna stay here, boss?" interjected
Sam, reading his thoughts, as usual.

"Until we find Victor Laszlo."

"If
we
find Mr. Laszlo," corrected Sam.

"We will," Rick answered, smoking a cigarette and
looking down onto Dover Street. "We have to."

"If you say so," said Sam. "This sure ain't like
Paris. Or New York. I mean, a fella can't hardly get something decent to eat."

Rick turned to look at his friend. "You know those
are two places I told you not to talk about," he
growled.

"Aw shucks, boss, you can't go holdin' on to the
bad memories forever. What's done is done: you can't
change what happened back home." Sam bit his lower
lip. "Anyway, it wasn't your fault, how things turned
out."

"Of course it was my fault," snapped Rick. "Who
else's could it be?"

Sam was getting as agitated as Rick. "If that's the
way you want to be about it, fine," he said. "If you
want to drag this thing around with you for the rest of
your life, you go right ahead. But as for me, every time
I bite into one of those awful steak-and-kidney pies,
I'm gonna remember me the leg of lamb at the Tootsie-
Wootsie—"
       

"Shut up, will you?"

"—and the steak
frites
at La Belle Aurore, and—"

"I said shut up!" A knock at the door interrupted the
argument. "Get that, will you?"

Sam padded over to the door and opened it.

"Hello, Sam," said the visitor, entering. It was Re
nault. "Ah, Ricky, still living the life of a man of lei
sure, I see." The dapper little Frenchman had traded in
his Vichy uniform for a Savile Row suit, atop which
he wore an elegant homburg. He looked like a minor
diplomat, which was how he was happy to pass himself
off, especially to the English ladies. "Whereas I have been working hard, procuring useful information."

"The day will never come when you have to work
hard for a living, Louie," said Rick. "Not without a
fight."

"Work is in the eye of the beholder," Renault re
sponded. "Should I choose not to behold it, that is en
tirely my business." With a flourish he produced a
silver cigarette case and flipped it open. "A gift from one of my new admirers."

"What exactly was she admiring?"

Renault puffed out his chest. "Resourcefulness is the
hallmark of the true gentleman," he said.

"I'll bet" Rick took one of the offered cigarettes.
"What gives?"

Renault lit up, took a puff, and collected his thoughts.
He smoked like a bird pecking for worms, darting at
the cigarette rather than embracing it, whereas Rick preferred long, slow drags. Sam didn't smoke at all. It
was another of the white man's vices he had learned to
live without.

"Well, among other things, I think I may have found
a way to discover the whereabouts of our friend Victor
Laszlo—and, of course, of your friend Miss Lund as
well." Renault paused to savor the effect of this partic
ular bit of intelligence on his listeners.

Rick, however, only nodded, a barely perceptible tilt
of his head. "Go on," he said.

Renault smiled. "Not even Victor Laszlo, whose consideration of the comfort and feelings of his fellow
man is second only to his way with the fair sex, can
expect us to wait here forever. Furthermore, my sense
of duty as a Frenchman and a patriot has compelled
me to contact De Gaulle's headquarters and offer my
services in the struggle against Hitler."

That had been part of their plan all along.

"It's about time," said Rick.

Renault relaxed into a chair. One of the qualities he found most lacking in the Americans was a sense of style, of presentation, of savoir faire. He made a little
noise in his throat by way of preamble. "Seriously,
Ricky, it seems that a gentleman answering the descrip
tion of Monsieur Laszlo has recently been sighted by
one or two of my, er, new colleagues coming and going
in the district of South Kensington."

That got Rick's attention. "You got an address?"

"Not yet," Renault lied. He wasn't quite sure why
he lied. Maybe it was just out of habit. Maybe he
wanted to check the place out first, to make sure he
had the right information. Another day or two wouldn't hurt.

"Well, get one, pronto," said Rick. "By the way, just
who are these new 'colleagues' of yours?"

"Now, Ricky, we ought to be able to have a few little
secrets from each other." Nervously Louis snapped an
other cigarette out of the case and lit it. "Our countries
may be allies, but that doesn't mean we have to share every bit of intelligence. Give me some time."

"What do you mean, 'our' countries? You know I haven't got a country, and probably never will." Rick looked at Sam, who shrugged wordlessly. "And as for you, the last time I looked, France was cut in two like
a day-old baguette. Half of it is being run directly from
Berlin, and the other half only pretends not to be. In other words," he concluded, "neither of us has a coun
try, at least until we get the Germans out of Paris."

"Vive la France,"
said Renault.

"Get on with it. Tune is one thing we don't have."

"This is the way things seem to stand," began Re
nault, wondering how much of the story to tell. It was
not a question of lying, exactly, but rather of editing
judiciously and hoping the excised bits didn't come back to haunt him. "It should come as no surprise to
you that the
Résistance
does not entirely trust the Brit
ish. Part of that distrust is habitual, of course, but part
of it has to do with our different war aims. For Britain,
victory will have been achieved by defeating Hitler.
What happens to France makes no difference to the
English. Indeed, we suspect the restoration of
la gloire
de la France
to be very low on Mr. Churchill's agenda."