Classic Spy Novels 3-Book Bundle (126 page)

The woman looked over her shoulder and laughed.

In the ballroom, the eminent cellist Bela Kolovitzky stood on the raised platform and grinned at the gathering crowd. His colleagues, the remainder of the string quartet, joined them. Kolovitzky tucked a handkerchief between his neck and shoulder and settled himself around a violin. He’d been famous and successful in Budapest, then, in 1933, had gone to Hollywood.

“ ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’!” somebody called out, clearly joking.

Kolovitzky played a discordant bleat, then looked between his feet. “Something else?”

Then he began to play, a slow, deep, romantic melody, vaguely familiar. “This is from
Enchanted Holiday,
” he said.

The music grew sadder. “Now Hedy Lamarr looks up at the steamship.”

And now, wistful. “She sees Charles Boyer at the railing. . . . He is searching for her . . . among the crowd. . . . She starts to raise her hand . . . halfway up . . . now back down . . . no, they can never be together . . . now the steamship blows its horn”—he made the sound on the violin—“Charles Boyer is frantic . . . where is she?”

“What
is
that?” a woman asked. “I almost know it.”

Kolovitzky shrugged. “Something midway between Tchaikovsky and Brahms.
Brahmsky,
we call him.” He began to speak English, in a comic Hungarian accent. “It muzt be zo tender, ro-
man-
tic, zenti-
ment
al. Zo lovely it makes . . . Sam Goldwyn cry . . . and makes . . . Kolovitzky . . . rich.”

Morath wandered through the party, looking for Mary Day. He found her in the library, sitting by a blazing fire. She was leaning forward on a settee, a thumb keeping her place in a book, as she listened earnestly to a tiny white-haired gentleman in a leather chair, his hand resting on a stick topped with a silver ram’s head. At Mary Day’s feet lay one of the vizslas, supine with bliss, as Mary Day’s ceaseless stroking of its velvety skin had reduced it to a state of semiconsciousness. “Then, from that hill,” said the white-haired gentleman, “you can see the temple of Pallas Athena.”

Morath sat on a spindly chair by a French door, eating cake from a plate balanced on his knee. The baroness Frei sat close to him, back curved in a silk evening gown, face, as always, luminous.
One could say,
Morath thought,
that she is the most beautiful woman in Europe.

“And your mother, Nicholas, what did she say?”

“She will not leave.”

“I will write to her,” the baroness said firmly.

“Please,” he said. “But I doubt she’ll change her mind.”

“Stubborn! Always her way.”

“She did say, just before I left, that she could live with the Germans, if she had to, but if the country was to be occupied by the Russians, I must find a way to get her out. ‘Then,’ she told me, ‘I will come to Paris.’ ”

He found Mary Day and took her out into the winter garden; dead leaves plastered to the iron chairs and table, bare rose canes climbing up through the trellis. The frozen air made the sky black and the stars white and sharp. When she started to tremble, Morath stood behind her and wrapped her in his arms. “I love you, Nicholas,” she said.

INTERMARIUM

10 M
ARCH 1939.

Amen.
The world in chaos, half the armies in Europe mobilized, diplomats in constant motion, popping up here and there like tin monkeys in shooting galleries. Very much, Morath thought, like tin monkeys in shooting galleries.

Crossing the Pont Royal on his way to lunch, late, unhurried, he stopped and leaned on the stone parapet. The river ran full and heavy, its color like shining slate, its surface roughed up by the March wind and the spring currents. In the western sky, white scud blew in from the channel ports.
The last days of Pisces,
he thought, dreams and mysteries. When it rained in the middle of the night they woke up and made love.

He looked at his watch—Polanyi would be waiting for him—was there any way to avoid this? From here the Seine flowed north, to Rouen, to Normandy, to the sea.
Escape.

No, lunch.

Thirty minutes later, the Brasserie Heininger. A white marble staircase climbed to a room of red plush banquettes, painted cupids, gold cords on the draperies. Waiters in muttonchop whiskers ran back and forth, carrying silver trays of pink langoustes. Morath was relieved. No more Prévert, “the beauty of sinister things,” the Count von Polanyi de Nemeszvar had apparently risen from the lower depths, tempted by sumptuous food and a wine list bound in leather.

Polanyi greeted him formally in Hungarian and stood to shake hands.

“I’m sorry to be late.”

A bottle of Echézeaux was open on the table, a waiter scurried over and poured Morath a glass. He took a sip and stared at the mirrored panel above the banquette. Polanyi followed his eyes.

“Don’t look now, but there’s a bullet hole in the mirror behind you,” Morath said.

“Yes. The infamous Table Fourteen, this place has a history.”

“Really?”

“Two years ago, I think. The headwaiter was assassinated while sitting on the toilet in the ladies’ bathroom.”

“Well he won’t do
that
again.”

“With a machine gun, it’s said. Something to do with Bulgarian politics.”

“Oh. And in his memory . . .”

“Yes. Also, the story goes, some kind of British spymistress used to hold court here.”

“At this very table.”

The waiter returned, Polanyi ordered mussels and a
choucroute royale.

“What’s ‘
royale
’?” Morath asked.

“They cook the sauerkraut in champagne instead of beer.”

“You can taste the champagne? In sauerkraut?”

“An illusion. But one likes the idea of it.”

Morath ordered
suprêmes de volaille,
chicken breast in cream, the simplest dish he could find.

“Have you heard what’s happened at the French air ministry?” Polanyi said.

“Now what.”

“Well first of all, they let a contract for building fighter planes to a furniture manufacturer.”

“Somebody’s brother-in-law.”

“Probably. And then, they decided to store their secret papers at a testing facility just outside Paris. Stored them in a disused wind tunnel. Only they forgot to tell the technicians, who turned the thing on and blew the papers all over the neighborhood.”

Morath shook his head; there was a time when it would have been funny. “They’ll have Adolf in the Elysée Palace, if they don’t watch out.”

“Not in our lifetime,” Polanyi said, finishing off his wine and refilling the glass. “We think Adolf is about to make a mistake.”

“Which is?”

“Poland. Lately he’s been screaming about Danzig—‘is German, has always been German, will always be German.’ His radio station tells Germans in the city to ‘keep a list of your enemies, soon the German army will help you to punish them.’ So what must happen now is a pact, between the Poles, the Roumanians, and us—the Yugoslavs can join if they like. The Intermarium, so-called, the lands between the seas, the Baltic and the Adriatic. Together, we’re strong. Poland has the largest land army in Europe, and we can deny Hitler Roumanian wheat and oil. If we can make him back down, call his bluff, that will be the end of him.”

Polanyi saw that Morath was skeptical. “I know, I know,” he said. “Ancient hatreds and territorial disputes and all the rest of it. But, if we don’t do something, we’ll all go the way of the Czechs.”

The lunch arrived, the waiter announcing each dish as he set it down.

“And what does Horthy think about all this?”

“Supports it. Perhaps you know the background of political events in February, perhaps you don’t. Officially, Imredy resigned and Count Teleki became the prime minister. In fact, Horthy was told that a Budapest newspaper was about to publish proof, obtained in Czechoslovakia, that Dr. Bela Imredy, the rabid anti-Semite, was Jewish. Had, at least, a Jewish great-grandfather. So Imredy didn’t jump, he was pushed. And, when he resigned, Horthy chose to replace him with Teleki, an internationally prominent geographer and a liberal. Which means Horthy supports at least some resistance to German objectives as the best means of keeping Hungary out of another war.”

“With Great Britain and France. And, sooner or later, America. We’ll surely win that one.”

“You forgot Russia,” Polanyi said. “How’s your chicken?”

“Very good.”

Polanyi took a moment, using a knife to pile a small mound of sauerkraut atop a bite of frankfurter on his fork, then added a dab of mustard. “You don’t mind the Poles, do you, Nicholas?”

“Not at all.”

“Lovely countryside. And the mountains, the Tatra, sublime. Especially this time of year.”

“So it’s said.”

“Nicholas!”

“Yes?”

“Can it be possible that you’ve never been there? To the majestic Tatra?”

A memorandum on his desk at the Agence Courtmain requested that he have a look at the file on Betravix, a nerve tonic made of beets. And there he found a postcard of a wild-eyed Zeus, beard blown sideways by a thundercloud above his head, about to ravish an extraordinarily pink and naked Hera he’d got hold of by the foot. On the back of the card, a drawing, in red crayon, of a heart pierced by an exclamation point.

He sat through a meeting with Courtmain, then, back in his office, found a second message, this one scrawled on a slip of paper:
Your friend Ilya called. M.

He walked down the hall to her office, a glassed-in cubicle by a window. “I liked your card,” he said. “Is this the sort of thing that goes on when you take Betravix?”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.” The late afternoon sun slanted in on her hair. “Did you get your telephone message?”

“I did. Who’s Ilya?”

“A friend, he said. He wants you to meet him.” She thumbed through a stack of notes on her desk. “For a drink. At the café on rue Maubeuge, across from the Gare du Nord. At six-fifteen.”

Ilya?
“You’re sure it was for me?”

She nodded. “He said, ‘Can you tell Nicholas.’ ”

“Is there another Nicholas?”

She thought about it. “Not in this office. He sounded nice enough, very calm. With a Russian accent.”

“Well, who knows.”

“You’ll go?”

He hesitated. Unknown Russians, meetings at station cafés. “Why did he call
you?
”

“I don’t know, my love.” She looked past him, to her doorway. “Is that it?”

He turned to see Léon with a sketch of a woman in a fur stole. “I can come back later, if you’re busy,” Léon said.

“No, we’re done,” Morath said.

For the rest of the day he thought about it. Couldn’t stop. Almost called Polanyi, then didn’t. Decided, finally, to stay away. He left the office at five-thirty, stood for a moment on the avenue Matignon, then waved at a taxi, intending to go back to his apartment.

“Monsieur?” the driver said.

“The Gare du Nord.”
Je m’en fous,
the hell with it.

He sat in the café, an unread newspaper beside his coffee, staring at people as they came through the door. Was it something to do with the diamond dealer in Antwerp? Somebody Balki knew? Or a friend of a friend—
Call Morath when you get to Paris.
Somebody who wanted to sell him insurance, maybe, or a stockbroker, or an émigré who needed a job. A Russian client? Who wanted to advertise his . . . shoe store?

Anything, really, but what he knew it was.

Morath waited until seven, then took a taxi to Mary Day’s apartment. They drank a glass of wine, made love, went out for
steak-frites,
walked home, curled up together under the blankets. But he woke up at three-thirty, and again at five.

And, when the phone rang in his office on Monday morning, waited three rings before he picked it up.

“My apology, Monsieur Morath. I hope you will forgive.” A soft voice, heavily accented.

“Who are you?”

“Just Ilya. I’ll be, tomorrow morning, at the open market at Maubert.”

“And this concerns—?”

“Thank you,” he said. In the background, somebody called out
“Un café allongé.”
There was a radio playing, a chair scraped a tile floor, then the phone was hung up.

A big market, at the place Maubert, on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Cod and red snapper on chipped ice. Cabbages, potatoes, turnips, leeks, onions. Dried rosemary and lavender. Walnuts and hazelnuts. A pair of bloody pork kidneys wrapped in a sheet of newspaper.

Morath saw him, waiting in a doorway.
A spectre.
Stared for a moment, got a nod in return.

They walked among the stalls, breaths steaming in the cold air.

“Do I know you?” Morath asked.

“No,” Ilya said. “But I know you.”

There was something subtly mismade about him, Morath thought, perhaps a trunk too long for the legs, or arms too short. A receding hairline, with hair sheared so close he seemed at first to have a high forehead. A placid face, waxy and pale, which made a thick black mustache even blacker. And in his bearing there was a hint of the doctor or the lawyer, the man who trained himself, for professional reasons, not to show emotion. He wore a sad old overcoat, olive green, perhaps a remnant of somebody’s army, somewhere, so soiled and frayed that its identity had long ago faded away.

“Did we meet, somewhere?” Morath asked him.

“Not quite. I know you from your dossier, in Moscow. The sort of record kept by the special services. It is, perhaps, more complete than you would expect. Who you know, what you earn. Political views, family—just the usual things. I had a choice of hundreds of people, in Paris. Various nationalities, circumstances. Eventually, I chose you.”

They walked in silence, for a time. “I am in flight, of course. I was due to be shot, in the purge of the Foreign Directorate. My friends had been arrested, had vanished, as is the normal course of things there. At the time, I was in—I can say, Europe. And when I was recalled to Moscow—to receive a medal, they said—I knew precisely what medal that was, nine grams, and I knew precisely what was in store for me before they got around to using the bullet. So, I ran away, and came to Paris to hide. For seven months I lived in a room. I believe I left the room three times in that period.”