Red Gold (16 page)

“Yes. One last thing—of course we assume that you’re coming to see us in good faith. I should mention, however, that Captain Vasilis has friends, loyal friends, everywhere. As long as you’re legitimate, pay what we agree, take delivery, and that’s the last we hear about it, there would be no reason for you to meet them.”

“That’s understood,” Casson said. “And equally true for us.”

7:30 A.M., Hélène Schreiber walked through the morning darkness and went into the travel agency. Her friend Natalie was already at her desk and they chatted for a while. Office buildings had at least some heat, apartments were cold in the daytime—better to come to work early and stay as long as possible.

Hélène was filing carbon copies when somebody said good morning. She looked up to see Madame Oris, the supervising agent. They smiled as they said hello, had liked each other since the first day they’d met. “Can you come and see me, Hélène? Around eleven?”

Hélène agreed. Madame Oris returned to the glass-topped cubicle that went with her position. She was a tall woman, thin and worried and courtly, who had worked for the agency for thirty years, a dedicated soul who had made a career of cleaning up other people’s messes. When she’d first met Hélène she’d recognized a kindred spirit—one didn’t cut corners, one rose to emergencies. Now nearing seventy, Madame Oris had let it be known that she was going to retire.

Natalie leaned over and said, “Today is the day.”

“I think so,” Hélène said. The job was hers if she wanted it.

“What are you going to do?”

Hélène shook her head, as if she didn’t know.

Natalie’s whisper was fierce. “You can’t give in to that
garce!
” Bitch.

Hélène had an enemy in the office, a young woman named Victorine; pretty and cold, with a bright manner, and very ambitious. She wasn’t shy about going after what she wanted. “I’m sure you’ve heard that Madame Oris is leaving,” she’d said. “There’s a chance I can have her job.”

Only if Hélène turned it down. Back in May, when Madame Oris first mentioned retirement, most of the people in the office had let Hélène know they were glad she’d be taking over. But Victorine had a different view. “What a terrible day,” she’d said one evening as they were leaving the office. “A couple from Warsaw, they wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Hélène was politely sympathetic, but Victorine’s voice sharpened as she continued. “Isn’t it odd,” she’d said, “how
certain people
feel they should have whatever they want? They just grab it, not a thought for the rest of the world. What would you call such people?”

You,
Hélène thought,
would call them Jews.

How had she found out? Hélène didn’t know, but the statement was aimed directly at her, a threat, and it had to be taken seriously. Because a German decree in April had forbidden Jews to work in companies where there was contact with the public. Would Victorine turn her in? To the owner of the agency? To the Gestapo? Or was it a bluff?

In the next few weeks, a number of things went inexplicably wrong. For example, Madame Kippel’s lost steamship ticket— Hélène’s fault? Or stolen from her desk? Or, mysteriously, Monsieur Babeau in the wrong Spanish hotel; a sputtering, static-filled phone call summoning up the lower depths of Madrid, bandits and highwaymen and no flush-chain on the porcelain squatter.

“No highwayman would ever put up with
that,
” Natalie said later. But it wasn’t exactly funny. If Victorine had sabotaged Hélène’s clients, she was easily capable of denunciation.

You have until eleven,
Hélène told herself. But she’d already made a decision. “I don’t want to give in to anybody,” she explained to Natalie. “On the other hand, what I really want is peace.”

Natalie looked glum. If Victorine got the job she’d make Natalie’s life miserable, because Natalie was Hélène’s friend. “But,” she said, “what about the money?”

She’d thought about it. The raise wasn’t much, but it might be enough for her to bribe her way into a new apartment—even without a residence permit. Tempting, but Victorine could kill any chance of a paycheck. “The money’s not bad,” she said. “But money isn’t everything.”

Natalie was about to answer, then abruptly said, “
Attention!
”

Victorine was coming down the aisle, back straight, chin held high, a stack of dossiers in her hands.

“
Bonjour,
Hélène,” she said.

“
Bonjour,
Victorine.”

“Did I see Madame Oris stop by?”

“You did.”

“Oh Hélène, this is going to be such an important day for you. I hope you do the right thing.”

Behind her back, Natalie made a Victorine face—a beaming mock smile.

“I’m sure I will,” Hélène said. She could hear the defeat in her voice.

Victorine swept off, her skirt swinging. “See you later,” she sang.

Natalie shook her head in disbelief. “Hélène, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Does she
have
something on you?”

“No.”

“It’s in her voice,” Natalie said. “We’re friends, Hélène. If you need help, you should tell me.”

“I know.” The urge to confide was strong, but she fought it off. “Really, I know.”

Natalie waited a moment longer, then went back to work. Hélène stared at a pile of confirmations that had come in by teleprinter the night before. Herr and Frau Von Schaus, arriving 20 December for one week at the Plaza-Athénée. Madame Dupont, by first-class compartment to Rome.

Her phone rang, the office intercom. “Yes?”

“Hélène, there’s a couple waiting in the
réception.
”

“I’ll be right there.”

“You’re going to give up, aren’t you,” Natalie said.

Hélène nodded.

She saw Casson that night—waited for him in the park across from the Benoit. He came over and sat next to her on the bench, sensed right away that something was wrong. “What is it?” he said. She told him everything. He sighed at the end, a fatalist, a realist—he didn’t want her to know what went on inside him. “Well,” he said, “of course you had to give her what she wanted.”

“I know. It just made me sick to do it.”

“Now that she’s got the job, will she shut up?”

“I think so. The triumph should be enough for her, that, and rubbing my nose in it.”

Casson sat back against the bench and put his hands in his pockets. “The war will end, Hélène. And, when it does, a lot of scores will be settled.”

“Yes, that’s what I keep telling myself. Oh, if you could just
see
her. She has the shape of a hen.”

“How did she find out?”

Hélène shook her head. “Guessed, maybe. Do I look Jewish?”

He didn’t think so. She had dark, glossy hair, deep eyes, strong features, a face that was, at times, seductive for no reason he could think of. Like half the women in Paris, he thought. “Not to me,” he said.

She stood and took his hand; despite the cold her skin was hot and damp. “Let’s walk,” she said.

They walked through the park. The bare branches of the chestnut trees were stark against the sky. At the entrance there was a bust of Verlaine.

“I’ve talked to Degrave,” he said. “He told me he might be able to get you out in February, or maybe March. Until then, the important thing is to survive. Whatever you have to do.”

“You must survive, you must survive.” She stared down at the ground for a time. “I’ll tell you something I discovered, Jean-Claude. You can be scared for only so long, then a day comes when you don’t care anymore.”

Belgium in December. Through the cloudy window of a slow train. Like a pastoral drawing from the nineteenth century, he thought. Black and white and a hundred shades of gray; cows by a stream in a field, cows by a stream in a field, cows . . . A lone elm in the mist, a farmer in rubber boots, his dog by his side.

Casson dozed off, then woke up suddenly and made sure the paper-wrapped parcel was still on the seat next to him. Expensive, almost
very
expensive. What seemed like a mindless errand had sent him deep into the heart of his old neighborhood, where every passing stranger threatened to turn into somebody he knew.

The train rattled along, stopping at every village. He shared the first-class compartment—the German border guards tended to go easy on first-class passengers—with a Belgian couple and two French businessmen. The lawyer was riding in another car, a safety precaution. The Belgian couple started eating in Cambrai and never quite stopped. Slow and determined, unsmiling, they opened a wicker basket and worked their way from radishes to salted beef tongue, to some kind of white, waxy cheese, then to small, dried-out winter apples, demolishing a loaf of bread in the process. They didn’t talk, or look out the window. Just chewed, from Valenciennes to Mons. Casson pretended not to notice. It made him hungry, but he was used to that. When the couple got off the train, one of the businessmen, in an aside to his friend, said something about
vaches,
cows. But it was just bravado, Casson realized, they were hungry too.

The guards at Esschen, on the Dutch-Belgian border, were looking for somebody. They made all the passengers get out and stand by the train.
The package.
He made a fast decision, fumbled with his coat until everyone had left the compartment, then slid it under the seat across from his.

On the platform, the border guards were angry, Casson was shoved with a rifle. “You. Get over there.” It hurt more than it should have. There was an old Frenchman next to him, a dignified little man in a white goatee, who stood at attention, shoulders back, waiting for the Germans to let them go.

Casson could hear the guards searching the railroad car. Stomping down the aisles, slamming doors. He heard glass breaking, somebody laughed. An hour later, when they got back on, his package was where he’d left it. The train crawled north. Night fell. Casson could see the evening star. The old man, now sitting across from him, fell sound asleep, mouth wide open, breath whistling through his nose.

The prison was in Zunderdorp, across the Nordzee Canal from the main part of Amsterdam. They walked through silent streets for a long time, showed their papers to various guards, and finally to a prison official in a gray suit. They climbed an iron staircase to the top floor and were led past a tier of cells to a small, private room in the hospital.

Captain Vasilis rose from a hospital bed, embraced his lawyer, and shook Casson’s hand. He wore a robe over silk pajamas and good leather slippers. He had red-rimmed eyes set in heavy pouches, two days’ growth of gray beard on a face that ended in three chins, a voice like a rake drawn through gravel.

“Forgive us a minute,” he said to Casson. The accent was so heavy it took Casson a moment to realize the man had spoken French. The three of them sat at a small table. Vasilis and the lawyer leaned close to each other and spoke in low voices.

Casson could hear what they were saying, but it didn’t matter. “Did he go over there?” Vasilis asked.

“Not yet. His friend wasn’t ready.”

“When will it happen?”

“A week, maybe. The new figure is a little higher.”

“We don’t care.”

“No.”

“You can say something?”

“It won’t help.”

“Let it go, then.”

Eventually, Vasilis turned to him and said, “Sorry, business.”

“I understand,” Casson said. He handed over the package.

Vasilis tore the paper off and cradled the melon in both hands. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” He smelled the soft end, then pressed it expertly with his thumbs. “Very nice,” he said. He took a pair of glasses from the breast pocket of his bathrobe, looked at Casson for a moment, then put them away. “What are you?”

“I’m in the insurance business.”

“Ouay?
” He drew the
oui
out to form the slang
oh yeah?
Then nodded in a way that meant
and if my grandmother had wheels she
would’ve been a cart.

“Yes, that’s what I do.”

“D’accord.”
If that’s the way you want it, fine. He turned to the lawyer and said, “What time?”

“Almost noon.”

“Hey!” the captain shouted. “Van Eyck!”

The door opened, a guard peered into the room.

“Bring trays!”

“Yes, Captain,” the guard said, closing the door politely behind him.

Vasilis met Casson’s eyes and shook his head sorrowfully—you can barely imagine what this is costing me.

“Sir,” he said to Casson, “what you want?”

“Submachine guns. Six hundred of them. And ammunition.”

“Guns?” Vasilis sucked in his breath like a man who just burned his fingers. The expense!

“Yes,” Casson said. “We know.”

“Very difficult.”

Casson nodded, sympathetic.

“What for?”

Casson didn’t answer immediately—wasn’t it obvious?—but Vasilis waited. Finally he said, “Freedom.”

Vasilis sighed, the sound of a doomed man. Now he had to involve himself in difficulties. He turned to the lawyer. “You tell him what cost?”

“No.”

“I can get MAS 38 for you. French gun. You know problem?”

“No.”

“Cartridge is 7.65. You still want it?”

“We’re buying a thousand rounds per gun.”

“Yes, but after that,
pfft.
”

“That’s our problem.”

“A hundred and fifty American dollars for each. Ninety thousand dollars. Three million six hundred thousand in French francs—premium sixty percent if you want to pay that way. Four hundred fifty thousand Swiss. We prefer.”

“What about ammunition?”

“Six hundred thousand rounds—a box of two hundred is three American, so nine thousand dollars, forty-five thousand Swiss. Still good?”

“Yes.”

“For guns, all paid before we ship.”

“All?”

“Yes. You want figs, or shoes, it’s different.”

“All right. Agreed.”

“You sell to somebody?”

“No.”

“Four hundred ninety-five thousand Swiss. It’s made?”

“Yes. When can it be done?”

“These guns are in Syria. In the armories of the French Occupation force. We bring them in caïque—fishing boat. Two tons, a little more. You know Mediterranean?”