The Foreign Correspondent (23 page)

“True,” the conductor said. “That’s not your job. They can’t expect you to do everything.”

“Bundle of newspapers,” the porter said. “Tied up with a string, you mean. We’d be sure to see something like that.”

“And you never did, right, you’re sure?”

“Seen a lot of things on this train, but never that.”

“What about you?” Gennaro said to the conductor.

“I don’t remember seeing it. A pig in a crate, once. Remember that?”

The waiter laughed, pinched his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and said, “Phew.”

“And we get a body, sometimes, in a coffin,” the conductor said. “Maybe you should look in there.”

“Maybe he’d be reading the paper, Gennaro,” the waiter said. “Then you’d get a medal.”

They all laughed, and went back to playing cards.

On the nineteenth of May, a tipster in Berlin, a telephone operator at the Hotel Kaiserhof, told Eric Wolf of the Reuters bureau that arrangements were under way for Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, to visit Berlin. Rooms had been booked for visiting officials, and feature writers from the Stefani agency, the Italian wire service. A travel agent in Rome, waiting to talk to a reservations clerk, had told the operator what was going on.

At eleven in the morning, Delahanty called Weisz into his office. “What are you working on?” he said.

“Bobo, the talking dog up in Saint-Denis. I just got back.”

“Does it talk?”

“It says”—Weisz deepened his voice to a low growl and barked—“‘
bonjour,
’ and ‘
ça va
.’”

“Really?”

“Sort of, if you listen hard. The owner used to be in the circus. It’s a cute dog, a little mongrel, scruffy, it’ll make a good photo.”

Delahanty shook his head in mock despair. “There may well be more important news. Eric Wolf has cabled London, and they telephoned us—Ciano is going to Berlin, with a grand entourage, and the Stefani agency will be there in force. An official visit, not just consultations, and, according to what we hear, a major event, a treaty, called ‘the Pact of Steel.’”

After a moment, Weisz said, “So that’s that.”

“Yes, it looks like the talking’s done. Mussolini is going to sign up with Hitler.” The war on the horizon, as Weisz sat in the grimy office, had moved a step closer. “You’ll have to go home and pack, then get out to Le Bourget, we’re flying you over. The ticket’s on the way to your hotel, by messenger. A one-thirty flight.”

“Forget Bobo?”

Delahanty looked harassed. “No, leave the bloody dog to Woodley, he can use your notes. What London wants from you is the Italian view, the opposition view. In other words, give ’em hell, if it’s what we think it is, both barrels and the cat’s breakfast. This is
bad
news, for Britain, and for every subscriber we have, and that’s the way you’ll write it.”

On his way to the Métro, Weisz stopped at the American Express office and wired a message to Christa at her office in Berlin.
MUST LEAVE PARIS TODAY FORWARD MAIL AUNT MAGDA EXPECT TO SEE HER TONIGHT HANS
.
Magda was one of the whippets, Christa would know what he meant.

Weisz reached the Dauphine twenty minutes later, and checked at the desk, but his ticket had not yet arrived. He was very excited as he ran up the stairs, and his mind, caught in crosscurrents, sped from one thing to the next. He realized that Kolb had indulged, at the nightclub, in the sin of optimism—the British diplomats had failed, and had lost Mussolini as an ally. This was, to Weisz, pure heartache, his country was in real trouble now and it would suffer, would, if events played out as he believed, be made to fight a war, a war that would end badly. Yet, strange how life went, the coming political explosion meant that
Liberazione, his
war, might possibly be salvaged. A visit to Pompon and the
Sûreté
machine would be put in gear, because an Italian operation, soon an
enemy
operation, would be seen in a very different light, and what happened next would be far beyond the efforts of some yawning detective at the
Préfecture.

But it also meant, to Weisz, a great deal more than that. As he climbed, affairs of state drifted away like smoke, replaced by visions of what would happen when Christa came to his room. His imagination was on fire, first this, then that. No, the other way. It was cruel to be happy that morning, but he had no choice. For if the world insisted on going to hell, no matter what he, what anyone, tried to do, he and Christa would, by evening light, steal a few hours of life in a private world. Last chance, perhaps, because that other world would soon enough come looking for them, and Weisz knew it.

Breathless from the four flights, Weisz paused at the door when he heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Was this the hotel porter, with his airplane ticket? No, the tread was strong and certain. Weisz waited, and saw he’d been right, it wasn’t the porter, it was the new tenant, down the hall and across the corridor.

Weisz had seen him before, two days earlier, and, as it happened, didn’t much care for him, he couldn’t exactly say why. He was a large man, tall and thick, who wore a rubber raincoat and a black felt hat. His face, dark, heavy, closed, reminded Weisz of southern Italy, it was the kind of face you saw down there. Was he, in fact, Italian? Weisz didn’t know. He’d greeted the man, the first time they met in the hall, but received only a curt nod in reply—the man did not speak. And now, curiously, the same thing happened.

Oh well, some people.
In the room, Weisz took his valise from the armoire and, with the ease of the experienced traveler, folded and packed. Underwear and socks, a spare shirt—
two
-day trip? Maybe three, he thought. Sweater? No. Gray flannel trousers, which made his suit jacket into a sport coat—he liked to think it did, anyhow. In a leather case, toothbrush, toothpaste—enough? Yes. Old-fashioned straight razor, the throat-slitter, so-called, his father’s, once upon a time, kept all these years. Shaving soap. The cologne called Chypre, which Christa had said she liked. Put some on for the trip? No, she won’t be at the airport, and why smell good for the border
Kontrolle
?

Ah, the ticket. He went to answer the knock, but it wasn’t the porter. It was the new tenant, still wearing his hat, one hand in the pocket of his raincoat, who stared at Weisz, then looked over his shoulder into the room. Weisz’s heart skipped a beat. He took a half step back, and started to speak. Then, on the stairs, a slow tread accompanied by wheezing. “Excuse me,” Weisz said. He slid past the man and walked toward the staircase, calling out, “Bertrand?”

“Coming, monsieur,” the porter answered. “As fast as I can.” Weisz waited as a panting Bertrand—these errands would kill him yet—struggled up the last few steps, a white envelope in his trembling hand. Down the corridor, a door was slammed shut, hard, and Weisz turned and saw that the new tenant had disappeared. The hell with him, discourteous fellow. Or worse. Weisz told himself to calm down, but something about the man’s eyes had scared him, had made him remember what happened to Bottini.

“This just arrived,” Bertrand said, handing Weisz the envelope.

Weisz reached into his pocket for a franc piece, but his money was on the desk, with his glasses and wallet. “Come in for a moment,” he said.

Bertrand entered the room and sat heavily in the chair, fanning his face with his hand. Weisz thanked him and gave him his tip. “Who’s the new tenant?” he said.

“I couldn’t say, Monsieur Weisz. I believe he is from Italy, a commercial gentleman, perhaps.”

Weisz took a last look around, closed his valise, buckled his briefcase, and put his hat on. Looking at his watch, he said, “I have to get out to Le Bourget.”

The franc piece in Bertrand’s pocket had evidently hastened his recovery. He rose nimbly and, as the two of them chatted about the weather, accompanied Weisz down the stairs.

In the spring twilight, as the Dewoitine airplane began its descent to Berlin, the change of pitch in the engines woke Carlo Weisz, who looked out the window and watched the drifting cloud as it broke over the wing. On his lap, an open copy of Dekobra’s
La Madone des Sleepings—the Madonna of the Sleeping Cars
—a
1920
s French spy thriller, wildly popular in its day, which Weisz had brought along for the trip. The dark adventures of Lady Diana Wynham, siren of the Orient Express, bed-hopping from Vienna to Budapest, with stops at “every European watering-place.”

Weisz dog-eared the page and stowed the book in his briefcase. As the plane lost altitude, it broke through the cloud, revealing the streets, the parks and church steeples, of small towns, then a squared patchwork of farm fields, still faintly green in the gathering dusk. It was very peaceful, and, Weisz thought, very vulnerable, because this was the bomber pilot’s view, just before he set it all on fire. Weisz had been in the Spanish towns, when the German bombers were done with them, but who down there hadn’t seen them, set to heroic music, in the Reich’s newsreels. Did the people at supper, below him, realize it could happen to them?

At Tempelhof airport, the passport
Kontrolle
was all smiles and courtesy—the dignitaries and foreign correspondents, streaming in for the Ciano visit, must see the amiable face of Germany. Weisz took a taxi into the city, and asked for messages at the Adlon desk, but there was nothing for him. By nine-thirty, he had eaten dinner and, up in his room, spent a few minutes standing over the telephone. But it was late, Christa was home. Perhaps she would come tomorrow.

•

By nine the next morning he was at the Reuters office, greeted warmly by Gerda and the other secretaries. Eric Wolf peered out of his office and beckoned Weisz inside. Something about him—perpetual bow tie, puzzled expression, myopic eyes behind round-framed eyeglasses, made him look like a friendly owl. Wolf said hello, then, his demeanor conspiratorial, closed his office door. Anxious to tell a story, he leaned forward, his voice low and private. “I’ve been given a message for you, Weisz.”

Weisz tried to seem unconcerned. “Oh?”

“I don’t know what it means, and you don’t have to tell me, of course. And maybe I don’t want to know.”

Weisz looked mystified.

“Last night, I left the office at seven-thirty, as usual, and I was walking back to my apartment when this very elegant lady, all in black, falls in beside me and says, ‘Herr Wolf, if Carlo Weisz should come to Berlin, would you give him a message for me? A personal message, from Christa.’ I was a bit startled, but I said yes, of course, and she said, ‘Please tell him that Alma Bruck is a trusted friend of mine.’”

Weisz didn’t answer immediately, then shook his head and smiled:
don’t worry, it isn’t what you think.
“I know what this is about, Eric. She’s, like that, sometimes.”

“Oh, well, naturally I wondered. It was, you know, rather sinister. And I hope I got the name right, because I wanted to repeat it, but we’d reached the corner and she took a sharp turn down the street and disappeared. The whole thing took only seconds. It was, how to say, perfect spy technique.”

“The lady is a friend of mine, Eric. A very good friend. But a married friend.”

“Ahh.” Wolf was relieved. “You’re a lucky chap, I’d say, she
is
stunning.”

“I’ll tell her you said so.”

“You can understand how I felt. I mean, I thought, maybe it’s a story he’s working on, and, in this city, you have to be careful. But then, it could have been something else. Lady in black, Mata Hari, that sort of thing.”

“No.” Weisz smiled at Wolf’s suspicions. “Not me, it’s just a love affair, nothing more. And I appreciate your help. And your discretion.”

“Happy to do it!” Wolf relaxed. “Not often one gets to play Cupid.” With an owlish smile, he pulled back a pretend bowstring, then opened his fingers to let the arrow fly.

The invitation arrived while Weisz and Wolf were out for the morning press conference at the Propaganda Ministry. Inside the envelope of a messenger service, an envelope with his name in script, and a folded note: “Dearest Carlo, I’m giving a cocktail party, at my apartment, at six this evening, I’d be so pleased if you could come.” Signed “Alma,” with an address in the Charlottenstrasse, not far from the Adlon. Curious, Weisz went to the clipping file and, German efficiency at work, there she was. Small, slim, and dark, in a fur coat, smiling for the photographer at a benefit given for war widows on
16
March, the German Memorial Day.

On the Charlottenstrasse, a block of elaborate limestone apartment buildings, upper windows with miniature balconies. Time and soot turned the Parisian versions black, but the Prussians of Berlin kept theirs white. The street itself was immaculate, with well-scrubbed paving stones bordered by linden trees behind ornamental iron railings. The buildings, to Weisz’s intuitive geometry, much larger inside than they looked from without. Across a white brick courtyard, and up two floors in a curlicue-caged elevator, Alma Bruck’s apartment.

Had the invitation said six? Weisz swore to himself that it had, but, listening at the door, he heard no evidence of a cocktail party. Tentatively, he knocked. The unlocked door opened an inch. Weisz gave it a gentle push, and it opened further, revealing a dark foyer. “Hello?” Weisz said.

No answer.

Weisz took a cautious step inside and closed the door, but not all the way. What was going on? A dark, empty apartment. A trap. Then, from somewhere down the long hallway, he heard music, a swing band, which meant either a phonograph or a radio tuned to some station outside Germany, where such music was
verboten.
Again, he said, “Hello?” No answer, only the music.
Christa, are you in here?
Was this romantic, playful theatre? Or something very different? For a moment, he froze, the two possibilities at war inside him.

Finally, he took a deep breath. She was in here somewhere, and, if she wasn’t, well, too bad. Slowly, he walked down the hallway, the old parquet flooring creaked with every step. He passed an open door, a parlor, its heavy drapes drawn, then stopped and said, “Christa?” No answer. The music was coming from the room at the end of the hall, its door wide open.