The World at Night (27 page)

Langlade made a sympathetic face; yes, he knew how it was. “She’s certainly beautiful, Jean-Claude. For myself, I couldn’t stop looking at her long enough to go to bed.”

Casson smiled. “We just spent a week together, in Lyons—that’s between you and me by the way. Now, I’ve had some kind of problem in the Gestapo office on the rue des Saussaies. Bernard, it’s so stupid— I went up there to get an
Ausweis
to go to Spain, and they asked me about military service and something told me not to mention that I’d been reactivated in May and gone up to the Meuse. You know, there are thousands of French soldiers still in Germany, in prison camps. I decided it would be safer not to admit anything. So, I didn’t. Well, time went by, somebody sent a paper to somebody else, and they caught me in a lie.”

Langlade shook his head and made a sour face. The Germans were finicky about paper in a way the Latin French found amusing—until the problem settled on their own doorstep.

“The next thing was, they started reading my mail and listening to my phone. So, when I was with Citrine down in Lyons, I told her that if she wanted to get in touch with me she could send a postcard to your office, your law office in the 8th is the address I gave her.”

He waited for Langlade to smile and say it was all right, but he didn’t. Instead, his expression darkened into a certain kind of discomfort.

“Look, Jean-Claude,” he said. “We’ve known each other for twenty years, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. If Citrine sends me a postcard, well, I’ll see that you get it. On the other hand, next time you have a chance to talk to her, would it be too much to ask for you to find some other way of doing this?”

Casson wasn’t going to show what he felt. “No problem at all, Bernard. In fact, I can take care of it right away.”

“You can understand, can’t you? This work I’m doing matters to them, Jean-Claude. It isn’t like they’re actually watching me, but, you know, I see these military people all the time, from the procurement offices, and all it would take would be for my secretary over in the other office to decide she wasn’t getting enough money, or, or whatever it might be. Look, I have an idea, what about Arnaud? You know, he’s always doing this and that and the other, and it’s just the sort of thing that would appeal to him.”

“You’re right,” Casson said. “A much better idea.”

“So now, here’s what we’ll do. Let’s go back to Paris—I can call a driver and car—and treat ourselves to a hell of a lunch, hey? Jean-Claude, how about it?”

Friday, 4 May. 4:20 P.M.

End of the week, a slow day in the office, Casson kept looking at his watch. Seven hours—and the dinner at Brasserie Heininger would be over. Of course, he lied to himself, he didn’t have to go, the world wouldn’t come to an end. No, he thought, don’t do that. “Mireille?” he called out. “Could you come in for a minute?”

“Monsieur?”

“Why don’t you go home early, Mireille—it won’t be so crowded on the train.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Casson.”

“Could you mail this for me, on the way?”

Of course.

A postcard—the people who watched the mail supposedly didn’t bother with postcards—telling Citrine to write him care of a café where they knew him. He had to assume Mireille wasn’t followed, that she could mail a postcard without somebody retrieving it. It meant he could save an anonymous telephone he’d discovered, in an office at one of the soundstages out at Billancourt, for a call he might want to make later on.

Mireille called out good night and left, Casson returned to the folder on his desk. Best to prepare for an important meeting. The folder held various pencil budgets for
Hotel Dorado,
a list of possible changes to the story line, names of actors and actresses and scenic designers—they were just now reaching the stage where certain individuals were, almost mystically,
exactly right
for the film. Also in the folder, a list of new projects Altmann had mentioned over the last few months; you never knew when one of these “ideas” was going to leap out of its coffin and start dancing around the crypt.

Casson read down the page and sighed out loud. Ah yes, the Boer War. The whole industry was planning movies about the noble Boers that spring, somebody in Berlin—Goebbels?—had decided to make them fashionable. A group of farmers, not exactly German but at least Dutch, thus Nordic and sincere, had carried out guerrilla actions and given the British army fits in South Africa. A war, according to German thinking, that made England look bad: imperialist, power-hungry, and cruel. One German company, Casson had heard, was about to go into production on something called
President Kruger,
a Boer War spectacle employing 40,000 extras.

The phone.

Now what?

Maybe he shouldn’t answer. No, it might be Altmann, some change of plans, or even, gift from heaven, dinner canceled. “Hello?”

“Monsieur Casson?”

“Yes?”

“Maître Versol here.”

What? Who? Oh Jesus! The lawyer for the LeBeau company!

Versol cleared his throat, then continued. “I thought I would telephone to see if any progress has been made on locating our missing inventory. You will recall, monsieur, some four hundred beards, fashioned from human hair and of a superior quality, provided for your use in the film
Samson and Delilah.”

“Yes, Maître Versol, I do remember.”

“We feel we have been very patient, monsieur.”

“Yes,” Casson said. “That is true.”

He let Versol go on for a time, as he always did, until the lawyer felt honor had been satisfied and he could hang up.

Casson looked at his watch again. Almost five. He lifted the top from a fancy yellow box, unfolded the tissue paper, studied the tie he’d bought on the boulevard earlier that day. Navy blue with a beige stripe, very austere and conservative. Just the thing, he hoped, for the “important people” who had inspired that strange little note in Altmann’s voice. Probably it wouldn’t matter at all, it would simply mean he had done the best he could.

On the way home, between the La Muette Métro and the rue Chardin, he stopped at the busy café where they saw him every morning. He leaned on the copper-covered bar and drank a coffee. “I may get a postcard here,” he confided to the proprietor. “It’s from
somebody—
you understand. I’d rather my wife didn’t see it.”

The proprietor smiled, rubbing a glass with a bar towel. “I understand, monsieur. You may depend on me.”

8:40 P.M.

The Brasserie Heininger, throbbing with Parisian life on a Friday night. Once past the blackout curtains: polished wood, golden light, waiters in fancy whiskers and green aprons. Very fin-de-siècle, Casson thought. Fin-de-something, anyhow.

Papa Heininger, the fabled proprietor, greeted him at the door, then passed him along to the mâitre d’. The man said good evening with a certain subtle approval, more to do with what he wasn’t than what he was—he wasn’t Romanian, wasn’t wearing a bright-blue suit, wasn’t a coal merchant or a black-market dealer or a pimp.

“Monsieur Altmann’s table, please.”

A polite nod.
A German, true, but a German executive.
Not so bad, for that spring. Party of four, all men, thus ashes on the tablecloth but at least a vigorous attack on the wine list. “That will be table fourteen, monsieur. This way, please.”

Not the best table but certainly the most requested: a small hole in the mirror where an assassin had fired a submachine gun the night the Bulgarian headwaiter was murdered in the ladies’ WC. The table where an aristocratic Englishwoman had once recruited Russian spies. The table where, only a few nights earlier, the companion of a German naval officer had been shooting peas at other diners, using a rolled-up
carte des vins
as a blowpipe.

The three men at the table rose, Altmann made the introductions. Clearly they’d been there for a while, most of the way through a bottle of champagne. Herr Schepper—something like that—gestured to the waiter for another to be brought. He had fine white hair and a fine face, a pink shave and shining eyes. One of a class of men, Casson thought, who are given money all their lives because people don’t really know what else to do with them. This one was, if Casson understood Altmann correctly, a very senior something at UFA, the Continental Film parent company in Berlin.

The other man waited his turn, then smiled as he was introduced. They shook hands, shared a brief
reniflement—
the term came from the world of dogs, where it meant a mutual sniff on first meeting—then settled back down at the table.
Herr Franz Millau.
Something in the way Altmann articulated the name enabled Casson to hear it perfectly.

He was—nobody exactly said. Perhaps he was “our friend” or “my associate” or one of those. Not a particularly impressive exterior. High domed forehead; sandy hair. An old thirty-five or a young forty-five. Eyeglasses in thin silver frames, lawyer eyeglasses, worn in a way that suggested he only took them off before he went to sleep. And a small, predatory mouth, prominent against a fair complexion that made his lips seem brightly colored. He was not unpleasant in any way Casson could put a name to, so, what was wrong with him? Perhaps, Casson thought, it was a certain gap, between an unremarkable presence, and, just below, a glittering and pungent arrogance that radiated from him like the noonday sun. Herr Millau was powerful, and believed it was in the natural order of things that he should be.

Herr Schepper did not speak French. That kept them busy, with Altmann as translator, discovering that he loved Paris, had attended the opera, was fond of Monet, liked pâté de foie gras. A fresh bottle of Veuve Clicquot arrived, and, a moment later, an astonishing seafood platter. Everyone said ah. A masterpiece on a huge silver tray: every kind of clam and oyster, cockle and mussel, whelk and crayfish—Judgment Day on the ocean floor.
“Bon appétit!”
the waiter cried out.

One small complication.

Altmann and Schepper had to go on to a certain club in a distant arrondissement, where they were to have a late supper with a banker. Schepper said something in German. “He says,” Altmann translated, “ ‘you must take good care of the people with the money.’ ” Schepper nodded to help make the point.

“That’s certainly true,” Casson said.

“Well then,” Millau said, “you two should be going. Perhaps Monsieur Casson will be kind enough to keep me company while I eat my supper.”

Merde.
But everybody else seemed to agree that this was the perfect solution, and Casson was effectively trapped. A glass of champagne, a few creatures from the sea, some additional travelogue from Herr Schepper, then everybody stood up to shake hands and begin the complicated business of departure.

At which moment, from the corner of his eye, Casson spotted Bruno. A party of six or seven swept past like ships in the night, Casson had only a blurred impression. Some German uniforms, a cloud of perfume, a woman laughing at something that wasn’t funny, and, in the middle of it—Bruno in a silk tie and blinding white shirt, a young woman— blonde, green-eyed—on his arm. Their eyes met, Bruno winked.
Good
to see you getting about with the right people, at last—glad you’ve seen
the light.
Then they went around the corner of a wall of banquettes and disappeared.

Altmann and Schepper left.

“Friend of yours?” Millau said.

“Acquaintance.”

“Some more champagne?”

“Thank you. How do you come to speak French like that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“No, I don’t mind. As a youngster I lived in Alsace—you know,
un,
deux, trois, vier, fünf.”

Casson laughed politely.

“That’s the way to learn a language, as a child,” Millau said.

“That’s what they say.”

“What about you,
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

“No, not at all.”

“Maybe some English, then?”

“A little. I can get along in a commercial situation if everybody slows down.”

Millau took a heavy black cigar from his pocket, stripped off the band and the cellophane. “Perhaps you’d care to join me.”

“No, thank you.”

Millau took his time lighting up, made the match flame jump up and down, at last blew out a stream of smoke, strong, but not unpleasant. He shook his head. “I like these things too much.”

Casson lit a Gauloise.

Millau leaned on the table, spoke in a confidential tone. “Let me begin by telling you that I’m an intelligence officer,” he said. “Reasonably senior, here in Paris.”

“I see,” Casson said.

“Yes. I work for the
Sicherheitsdienst,
the SD, in the counterespionage office up on the avenue Foch. We started out as the SS foreign service, and in a sense we still are that, though success has brought us some broader responsibility.”

Millau paused, Casson indicated he understood what had been said.

“We’ve been getting to know you for a few months, Monsieur Casson, keeping an eye on you, and so forth, to see who we were dealing with.”

Casson laughed nervously.

“Ach, the way people are! I assure you, we can’t be surprised or offended by all these little sins, the same thing, over and over. We’re like priests, or doctors.”

He stopped for a moment to inhale on the cigar, making the tip glow red, to see if it was still lit. “We got on to you down in Spain—the British were interested in you, and that was of interest to us. We were . . . nearby, when you met with a woman who calls herself Marie-Noëlle, Lady Marensohn, a representative of the British Secret Intelligence Service who we believe attempted to recruit you for clandestine operations. She is, by the way, residing with us at the moment.”

Casson felt the blood leave his face. Millau waited to see if he might want to comment, but he said nothing.

“Our view, Monsieur Casson, is that you did not accept recruitment.”

Casson waited a beat but there was nowhere he could hide. “No,” he said, “I didn’t.”

Millau nodded, confirming a position held in some earlier discussion. “And why not?”