Kingdom of Shadows (25 page)

“Betravix—keeps you running.”

“The look on his face.” She snorted at the memory.

The Ides of March. On the fifteenth, German motorized infantry, motorcycles, half-tracks, and armored cars entered Prague in a heavy blizzard. The Czech army did not resist, the air force stayed on the ground. All day long, the Wehrmacht columns wound through the city, headed for the Slovakian border. The following morning, Hitler addressed a crowd of
Volksdeutsch
from the balcony of Hradcany Castle. Over the next few days, there were five thousand arrests in Czechoslovakia and hundreds of suicides.

Two weeks earlier, Hungary had joined the Anti-Comintern Pact—Germany, Italy, and Japan—while simultaneously initiating a severe repression of Fascist elements throughout the country.
We will oppose the Bolsheviks,
the action seemed to say,
and we can sign any paper we like, but we will not be ruled by Nazi surrogates.
In a certain light, a dark, tormented kind of light, it made sense. Even more sense when, on 14 March, the Honved, the Royal Hungarian army, marched across the border and occupied Ruthenia. Slowly, painfully, the old territories were coming back.

In Paris, the driving snow in Prague fell as rain. The news was alive on the streets. Under black, shining umbrellas, crowds gathered at the kiosks where the headlines were posted.
BETRAYAL
. Morath could feel it in the air. As though the beast, safely locked in the basement at the time of Munich, had kicked the door down and started smashing the china.

The receptionist at the agency answered the phone while dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. A subdued Courtmain showed Morath a list of younger men in the office who would likely be mobilized—how to get along without them? In the hallways, conversations in urgent whispers.

But, when Morath left the office at midday, nobody was whispering. In the streets, at the café and the bank and everywhere else, it was
merde
and
merde
again. And
merdeux, un beau merdier, merdique, emmerdé,
and
emmerdeur.
The Parisians had a lot of ways to say it and they used them all. Morath’s newspaper, violently pessimistic about the future, reminded its readers what Churchill had said in response to Chamberlain’s peace-with-honor speeches at the time of Munich: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

On 28 March, Madrid fell to Franco’s armies, and the Spanish republic surrendered. Mary Day sat on the edge of the bed in her flannel nightshirt, listening to the voice on the radio. “You know I once had a friend,” she said, close to tears. “An Englishman. Tall and silly, blind as a bat—Edwin Pennington. Edwin Pennington, who wrote
Annabelle Surprised,
and
Miss Lovett’s School.
And then one day he went off and died in Andalusia.”

For Morath, at work that morning, a
petit bleu,
a telegram delivered via the pneumatic-tube system used by the Parisian post offices. A simple message:
NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE
. 1:30.

The church of Notre Dame de Lorette was out in the scruffy Ninth Arrondissement—the whores in the neighborhood known as
Lorettes.
In the streets around the church, Ilya would not seem especially noticeable. Morath’s best instincts told him not to go. He sat back in his chair, stared at the telegram, smoked a cigarette, and left the office at one.

It was dark and busy in the church, mostly older women, that time of day.
War widows,
he thought, dressed in black, early for the two o’clock Mass. He found the deepest shadow, toward the back, away from the stained-glass windows. Ilya appeared almost immediately. He was tense, the small bravado of the Maubert market was no more. He sat down, then took a deep breath and let it out, as though he’d been running. “Good,” he said, speaking softly. “You are here.

“You see what happens in Prague,” he said, “and next is Poland. You don’t need me to tell you that. But what is not known is that the directive is
written,
the war plan is made. It has a name,
Fall Weiss,
Case White, and it has a date, any time after the first of September.”

Morath repeated the name and the date.

“I can prove,” Ilya said, excited, losing his French. “With papers.” He paused a moment, then said, “This is good Chekist work, but it must go—up high. Otherwise, war. No way to stop it. Can you help?”

“I can try.”

Ilya stared into his eyes to see if he was telling the truth. “That is what I hope.” He had enormous presence, Morath thought. Power. Even battered and hungry and frightened, he had it.

“There’s somebody I can go to,” Morath said.

Ilya’s expression said
If that’s what I can get, I’ll take it.
“The Poles are in the middle of this thing,” he said. “And they are difficult, impossible. In the five-man junta that runs the country, only Beck and Rydz-Smigly matter—Beck for foreign policy, Rydz-Smigly for the army—but they are all Pilsudski’s children. When he died, in 1935, they inherited the country, and they have the same experience. They fought for independence in 1914, and got it. Then they beat the Russians, in 1920, before the gates of Warsaw, and now they want nothing to do with them. Too many wars, the last hundred years. Too much blood spilled. There’s a point where, between nations, it’s too late. That’s Russia and Poland.

“Now, they think they can beat Germany. Jozef Beck’s background is in clandestine service—he was expelled from France in 1923 when he served as Polish military attaché, suspected of spying for Germany. So what he knows of Russia and Germany he knows from the shadows, where the truth is usually to be found.

“What the Poles want is alliance with France and Britain. Logical, on the surface. But how can Britain help them? With ships? Like Gallipoli? It’s a joke. The only nation that can help Poland, today, is Russia—look at a map. And Stalin wants the same thing the Poles want, alliance with Britain, for the same reason, to keep Hitler’s wolves away from the door. But we are despised by the British, feared, hated, Godless communists and murderers. That’s true, but what is also true, even more true, is that we are the only nation that can form, with Poland, an eastern front against the Wehrmacht.

“Chamberlain and Halifax don’t like this idea, and there is more than a little evidence that what they do like is the idea of Hitler fighting Stalin. Do they think Stalin doesn’t know it? Do they? So here is the truth: If Stalin can’t make a pact with the British, he will make one with Germany. He will have no choice.”

Morath didn’t answer, trying to take it all in. The two o’clock Mass had begun, a young priest serving in the afternoon. Morath thought he would hear about bloody crimes: famines, purges. Ilya wasn’t the only defector from the Russian secret service—there was a GRU general, called Krivitsky, who’d written a bestseller in America. Ilya, he assumed, wanted protection, refuge, in return for evidence that Stalin meant to rule the world.

“You believe?” Ilya said.

“Yes.” More or less, from a certain angle.

“Your friend, can approach the British?”

“I would think he could. And the papers?”

“When he agrees, he’ll have them.”

“What are they?”

“From the Kremlin, notes of meetings. NKVD reports, copies of German memoranda.”

“Can I contact you?”

Ilya smiled and, slowly, shook his head. “How much time do you need?”

“A week, perhaps.”

“So be it.” Ilya stood. “I will go first, you can leave in a few minutes. Is safer, that way.”

Ilya headed for the door. Morath stayed where he was. He glanced at his watch, followed along with the priest’s Latin phrases. He’d grown up with it, then, when he came home from the war, stopped going.

Finally, he rose and walked slowly to the back of the church.

Ilya was standing just inside the door, staring out into the rain. Morath stood beside him. “You’re staying here?”

He nodded toward the street. “A car.”

In front of the church, a Renault with a man in the passenger seat.

“For me, maybe,” Ilya said.

“We’ll go together.”

“No.”

“Out the side door, then.”

Ilya looked at him. They’re waiting at only one door? He almost laughed. “Trapped,” he said.

“Go back where we were, I’ll come and get you. Just stay where people are.”

Ilya hesitated, then walked away.

Morath was furious.
To die in the rain on Tuesday afternoon!
Out in the street, he hunted for a taxi. Hurried along the rue Peletier, then rue Drouot. At the corner, an empty taxi pulled up in front of a small hotel. As Morath ran for it, he saw a portly gentleman with a woman on his arm come out of the lobby. Morath and the portly gentleman opened the rear doors at the same moment and stared at each other across the backseat. “Forgive me, my friend,” the man said, “but I telephoned for this taxi.” He offered the woman his hand and she climbed in.

Morath stood there, water running down his face.

“Monsieur!” the woman said, pointing across the street. “What luck!”

An empty taxi had stopped in traffic, Morath thanked the woman and waved at it. He got in and told the driver where to go. “I have a friend waiting,” he said.

At the church, Morath found Ilya and hurried him to the door. The taxi was idling at the foot of the steps, the Renault had disappeared. “Quickly,” Morath said.

Ilya hesitated.

“Let’s go,” Morath said, his voice urgent. Ilya didn’t move, he seemed frozen, hypnotized. “They’re not going to kill you here.”

“Oh yes.”

Morath looked at him. Realized it was something Ilya knew, had seen. Had, perhaps, done. From the taxi, an impatient bleat of the horn.

He took Ilya by the arm and said,
“Now.”
Fought the instinct to stay low and sprint, and they trotted down the steps together.

In the taxi, Ilya gave the driver an address and, as they drove away, turned around and stared out the back window.

“Was it somebody you recognized?” Morath said.

“Not this time. Once before, maybe. And once, certainly.”

For long minutes, the taxi crawled behind a bus, the rear platform crowded with passengers. Suddenly, Ilya called out, “Driver, stop here!” He leapt from the taxi and ran down the entry of a Métro station. Chaussée d’Antin, Morath saw, a busy
correspondence
where riders could transfer from one line to another.

The driver watched him go, then twisted an index finger against his temple, which meant
crazy
in taxi sign language. He turned and gave Morath a sour look. “And now?” he said.

“Avenue Matignon. Just off the boulevard.”

That was a long way from Chaussée d’Antin, especially in the rain. Taking people from one place to another was fundamentally an imposition—clearly that was the driver’s view. He sighed, rammed the gearshift home, and spun his tires as he took off. “What goes on with your friend?” he said.

“His wife is chasing him.”

“Woof!” Better him than me.

A few minutes later he said, “Seen the papers?”

“Not today.”

“Even old
J’aime Berlin
is giving it to Hitler now.” He used the Parisian pun on Chamberlain’s name with great relish.

“What’s happened?”

“A speech. ‘Maybe Adolf wants to rule the world.’ ”

“Maybe he does.”

The driver turned to look at Morath. “Just let him take his army up into
Poland,
and that’ll be the end of that.”

“I forbid you to see him again,” Polanyi said. They were at a café near the legation. “Anyhow, there’s a part of me wants to tell you that.”

Morath was amused. “You sound like a father in a play.”

“Yes, I suppose. Do you buy it, Nicholas?”

“Yes and no.”

“I have to admit that everything he says is true. But what troubles me is the possibility that someone on Dzerzhinsky Street sent him here. After all, anybody can buy an overcoat.”

“Does it matter?”

Polanyi acknowledged that it might not. If diplomats couldn’t persuade the British, maybe
a defector
could. “These games,” he said. “ ‘Hungarian diplomats in contact with a Soviet operative.’ ”

“He said he had papers to prove it.”

“Papers, yes. Like overcoats. Any way to get back in touch with him?”

“No.”

“No, of course not.” He thought for a moment. “All right, I’ll mention it to somebody. But if this blows up, in some way we can’t see from here, don’t blame me.”

“Why would I?”

“Next time he calls, if he calls, I’ll see him. For God’s sake don’t tell
him
that, just accept the meeting and leave the rest to me.”

Polanyi leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You see, whatever else happens now, we must not do anything that will compromise the prime minister. Teleki’s our only way out of this mess—that little man’s a
knight,
Nicholas, a hero. Don’t go telling anyone this, but last week he paid some boys in Budapest to rub garlic on the doors of the foreign office, with a note that said ‘German vampires keep out.’ ”

“Amen,” Morath said. “How could contact with a defector damage Teleki?”

“I won’t know until it’s too late, Nicholas—that’s the way things are done now. Sad, but true.”

Sad, but true
for Morath was, on the last day of March, another letter from the
préfecture.
Once again, Room 24, and six days until the appointment to worry about it. The Roumanians, he guessed, would not go away, but it wasn’t a good guess.

They kept him waiting, outside the inspector’s office, for forty-five minutes.
Calculated,
he thought, but he felt it working on him anyhow. The inspector hadn’t changed: sitting at attention, square-faced and predatory, cold as ice. “You’ll forgive us for troubling you again,” he said. “A few things we’re trying to clarify.”

Morath waited patiently.

The inspector had all the time in the world. Slowly, he read over a page in the dossier. “Monsieur Morath. Have you, by chance, ever heard of a man called Andreas Panea?”

The name on the passport he’d obtained for Pavlo. He took a moment to steady himself. “Panea?”