Classic Spy Novels 3-Book Bundle (36 page)

But then, suddenly, on a day when he’d planned a visit to a museum, on a day when he’d made a telephone call, eaten an omelette, laughed at one of her jokes, he died. She returned from shopping and found him sitting on the couch with an open book in his hand.

The tears came when she finished the story, and she was hunting through her purse when a waiter appeared with a clean white handkerchief, handed to her silently. “My God,” she said, “I will miss this city.”

“I am sorry,” Khristo said, “for Andres. And for you. For what happened. If my English was better …”

“Oh please,” she said, “I understand. And I didn’t mean to cry in front of you. It’s just … When I was sixteen, I used to daydream about a lover dying, to make myself feel sad, I think. But then it happened. It actually happened.” She looked around for the waiter, in order to return the handkerchief, but he was busy at another table.

“I think he wants that you keep it,” Khristo said, searching for a word. “It is his …”

“Gift?”

“Yes, a gift.”

She nodded that she understood and blew her nose. “Tell me about yourself,” she said.

He shrugged. “Some bad things, some good.”

“Andres explained to me about not telling people about yourself, how important that was, so I understand.”

“Yes,” he sighed. He wanted to tell her everything, resisted a desire to go on and on in riddles, telling but not telling, like Sascha. “What for you now?” he asked instead.

“I am going home,” she said. “To America.”

“Ah. For the best, no?”

“I don’t know,” she said, uncertain. “Maybe. But the tickets are all bought and there’s no turning back now. I was in the bookstore looking for something to read on the boat—I really don’t want to listen to a bunch of Americans gossiping about their adventures in wicked old Europe.” She made a face at the thought. “Anyhow, I go up to Le Havre today on the train, I’m there overnight, board the
Normandie
tomorrow, seven days at sea, then it’s New York.”

“What train do you take?”

“Five-twenty from the Gare du Nord.” She was silent for a moment, not happy at the prospect of traveling. For a moment it seemed like she might cry again, a shadow crossed her, then, instead, she managed a gloomy smile. “How like Paris this is—to meet an old friend a few hours before going away forever.”

“Some day you will come back here.”

“Do you think so?” There was a real ache in her voice when she said it.

“I do,” he said.

“Funny, I don’t even know your name. I don’t suppose it’s actually Captain Markov.”

“Khristo is my name. Then Stoianev—like your ‘Stephens.’ ”

“Khristo,” she said.

“Yes. I have not heard it said for a long time. I use another name now.”

Her eyes suddenly lit up and she smiled to herself.

“Is funny?” he asked.

“No. It’s just that my name isn’t Faye Berns, not really.”

“Ah,” he said, “you have a cover.”

“My name is Frances Bernstein,” she said. “But that sounded
too much like just another girl from Brooklyn, so I changed it to Faye Berns.”

He waggled a finger at her in mock reproof. “ Too much like true name,” he said. “Very bad espionage.”

She fell silent in wonder at all that had happened to her, her eyes sought his and he realized suddenly that he was the last link to a life she’d lived in Madrid and Paris, that saying good-bye to him was saying good-bye to that. “I don’t think,” she said sadly, “that I can ever tell anybody what happened to me here. I don’t think they would believe it. And I know they wouldn’t understand it. Most people pretend that exciting things happened to them—I’ll have to pretend they didn’t. That’s what I should do, isn’t it?”

He nodded in sympathy, it was a trap they shared. “Better that way,” he said.

They ate lunch together. And he followed her around Paris for most of the afternoon while she worked her way through an extraordinary list of last-minute errands. He kept an eye out, from time to time, for surveillance, but none appeared, and they were going to places where he’d never been before.

When all the items on her list were crossed off he helped her load a large, battered trunk into a taxi, then into a compartment on the train. He went down to the platform when the conductor blew his whistle, and she leaned out the top of the open window. “Can I write you a letter sometime?” she asked, her voice rising above the echoing noise of the vast, glass-domed station.

He thought for a moment. “I don’t know where you could send it,” he said.

“You may write to me, then. If you like.” She produced a fountain pen, shook it, and scratched a name and address on a scrap of paper.

He took it from her and put it in his pocket. The conductor sounded two short blasts on his whistle and swung himself on board. There was a loud hiss of decompression and a cloud of steam billowed onto the platform. Khristo reached up with both hands
and she took them in her own. They remained like this for a moment, then the train lurched forward and they let go.

The twenty-fourth of June was the first warm summer night of 1937—the sort of night when everything was possible, when any dream could come true. Dusk was hazy and soft, as always, but the usual evening chill never appeared. Everyone in the city came out of their apartments, music spilled from the open doors of cafés, and the strollers, excited by the gentle air, made animated conversation and filled the streets with a music of their own. The clouds were low and dense that night, shutting out the stars, and the city felt like a lovely private room where a party would soon begin.

When Khristo arrived at the brasserie, it was a madhouse. Papa Heininger, glasses askew, was glued to the telephone as reservations poured in. As he spoke, he made soothing gestures with his unoccupied hand, as though to placate the invisible caller. “I am desolated, but I must tell you that His Excellency’s usual table is simply not available at midnight. He may have it at one, or there is table fourteen—a quite estimable location in my opinion.” He nodded and soothed, nodded and soothed, as the caller spoke. “Yes, I agree … Yes,
most
unusual … Just for tonight, of course … Please thank His Excellency for his understanding … Thank you, goodbye.” He hung up and patted his brow with a folded napkin. “Djadja!” he called out to Omaraeff, standing over the reservation book with pencil at the ready, “Count Iava will take number fourteen tonight. Move the Germans!” Omaraeff asked where, for they hadn’t a spare inch of space in the entire establishment. Papa Heininger waved his napkin in the air. “Must I do the thinking for the entire world? I don’t care where you put them. You may seat them in the toilet for all I care. Tell them it is more efficient so.”

So the night progressed.

The florist arrived with sprays of Bourbon roses, fat, decadent-looking things in shades of maroon and lavender. The baker arrived with baskets of loaves. A party of Americans arrived too early, expecting to be fed. They were, despite some shouting in the kitchen, accommodated. The Beale party of six came up the marble staircase
at 10:30—early for them—but the magical night had excited them beyond fashion. Slowly, the sound level grew to a magnificent bedlam—the music of forks and plates, the ring of crystal glasses touched in toast, manic conversation, unbridled laughter, shouted greetings to friends at far tables. The huge mirrors glittered red and gold, the waiters ran to and fro with trays of
langoustines
and bottles of champagne.

And everyone was there.

Kiko Bettendorf, the racing driver. The Duchess of Trent, accompanied by Harry and Hazel, her deerhounds. Dr. Matthew O’Connor and his “niece,” Miss Robin Vote, charming and melancholy as always in her tuxedo and bow tie. The mysterious Mlle. M.—tonight with both her lovers. There was Voyschinkowsky—“The Lion of the Bourse”—with a party of twelve. Fum, the beloved clown of the Circus Dujardin. Ginger Pudakis, Jimmy Grey, Mario Thoeni—the tenor, and Adelstein—the impresario—guests of Winnie and Dicky Beale. The Prince of Bahadur was accompanied by his Austrian nurse, who showed to advantage in a million dollars’ worth of the Bahadur royal emeralds. There was Kreml, the ammunition king, squiring the immense Frau Kreml, her mother, her sister, her cousin, and that nice woman from the hotel who was teaching them bridge. Count Iava. The Baroness de Ropp. Miss Catherine Fetwick-Mill. Mr. Antonio Dzur.

Monsieur Escaldo, of Clichy.

His silent associate, Monsieur Sarda.

And their mentor, the handsomely attired Barbette.

Escaldo and Sarda, in their long gangster coats, fedoras pulled down on their foreheads, Thompson guns held at the hip, caused great stir with their arrival. First of all, they did not have a reservation. Simply swept past Papa Heininger, Mireille the hat-check girl, and Omaraeff the headwaiter without a word. When they entered the dining room, they provoked an instant burst of excitement. Was life not sufficiently
fantastique
on this magical night? No, apparently not. For here were real “American” gangsters, a spicy addition to an evening that had already established itself as thrilling and glamorous.
Vive le grand Capone!
someone shouted, and glasses rang as other voices joined in the toast.

With a cinematic flourish, Escaldo and Sarda raised their weapons and pulled the triggers. Muzzle flashes danced and glittered at the ends of the barrels and the great room dissolved into splinters, a confusion of color and motion, screams and raw panic.

Khristo was on the floor before he knew what was happening. A man in a cape jumped to his feet and sprinted for the exit, knocking him backward, first into a table of four, then onto the carpet. He heard the rounds buzzing over his head and burrowed down as the mirrors lining the walls dissolved in silvery showers of glass. These were
sub
machine guns—in effect, rapid-fire pistols using the same. 45-caliber bullet as the American military sidearm—so, even though they were fired into the ceiling and upper walls, whatever they touched virtually exploded, and diners groveling below the volleys were covered with plaster and mirror shards.

It was a miracle that nobody was actually killed. Count Iava, having secured table fourteen for the evening, found himself pinned to the carpet by its weight, and nearly choked to death on a mouthful of baby lamb. Kiko Bettendorf, survivor of the Death Curve at Frelingheissen Raceway, would require fourteen stitches to repair the gash in his scalp. Frau Kreml, hiding beneath a table cloth and believing herself the object of a robbery, dislocated two fingers in a fruitless attempt to remove her rings. Ginger Pudakis stood up, a foolish thing to do, and had her forehead creased by a spent round that ricocheted from the ceiling. She then fell backward against a chair, blood trickling down her face. From where he lay, Khristo saw what happened next, though he was not able to think about it until later. Of all the people in the room, amid the shrieking and the gunfire, it was Winnie Beale who acted with courage. Seeing her friend hit, she leaped forward, from a position of relative safety on a banquette, and covered her friend’s body with her own.

Barbette had disappeared, having elected to wander in search of Omaraeff, who had vanished from his usual position at the front of the room. Since he was the true object of this operation, Barbette was anxious to find him. He had not left the restaurant—Barbette had made sure of that. Nor was he in the Men’s Room. He was, however, in the Ladies’. In the last stall where he’d gone to hide, his
legs bare, a red waiter’s jacket gathered around his ankles in imitation of a skirt.

Barbette stood at the entry to the stall, the door held open by his left hand, a 9 mm device of no particular distinction held loosely at his side, and contemplated the seated Omaraeff, who was bent well forward, his face hidden in his hands. Barbette’s mouth twisted in sorrowful irony.

“Oh Djadja,” he said, not unkindly, “women do not take their skirts down to use the toilet, they pull them up. Is that possibly something you would not know? Yes? No? Or is it just the strain of the moment that’s confused you? Yes? Tell me, my friend, you must say something.”

Omaraeff just shook his head, refused to uncover his face.

“Poor Djadja,” Barbette said. From where he stood, the top of Omaraeff’s shaven skull offered a particularly tempting aspect and, without further discussion, he raised his hand and completed his mission. Omaraeff rocked back, then collapsed forward, still seated, his upturned hands resting motionless on the tile floor. It was a small facility, the ladies’ W.C. at the Brasserie Heininger, with marble walls and ceiling, and Barbette’s ears rang for hours thereafter.

Roddy Fitzware’s favorite place in Paris was the center window table at the Tour d’ Argent. He loved the view of the Seine, best appreciated from the sixth-floor restaurant, well above the heads of the tourists. He loved the serious atmosphere—one came here to dine beautifully, period—which stimulated a deep, formal serenity in him, made him, he felt, his best self. Here he could do without the absurd eye makeup and stylish effeminacy that cloaked his persona in the café society in which, by direction, he’d taken up residence. He loved the
caneton
, and he loved the
turbot
. When it came time to spend some of His Majesty’s Secret Impres’t Funds, the Tour d’ Argent was where he liked to go. One had to scribble the odd voucher, of course, so he couldn’t just simply dine. He had to do His Majesty’s business.

His Majesty’s business arrived on the stroke of 1:15. Fabien
Théaud, a stiff-necked young Frenchman, surely somebody’s nephew, who moved in the upper circles of the DST—the French equivalent of MI5. In other words, a cop. But, Fitzware thought, a cop in a very good suit. He watched him march resolutely toward the table, chin raised, nostrils pinched, mouth slightly drawn down, as though the world disgusted him.

Fitzware stood, they shook hands formally, in the French manner—a single, firm pump—and Théaud seated himself with ceremony. To the left of the elaborate luncheon setting on Théaud’s side of the table lay a brown paper parcel neatly tied with string. The Frenchman politely ignored the package. He had been treated to these lunches for more than a year and had learned to accept Fitzware’s sense of theater. Revelations were not to be made in the first act.