Midnight in Europe (19 page)

“Excuse me, sir,” de Lyon said. “Could we perhaps have a look at the freight? If it’s not too much trouble. To make sure the shipment is … as it should be?”

The stationmaster wasn’t pleased. Still, he’d come this far, why not take the next step in the little play? But, when he went to raise the iron bar that locked the door of 605, a surprise. “What’s this?” he said. There was a yellow cardboard ticket, covered with print, wired to the bar. “How on earth …,” he said, theatrically shocked.

“What is it?” de Lyon said.

“My regrets, gentlemen, but your shipment appears to have been impounded.”

“Impounded?”

“I had no idea, but the central freight office has directed that your shipment be held until an administrative procedure determines its disposition.”

“How long will
that
take?” de Lyon said.

“Who can say? A few weeks perhaps, unless there’s some problem.”

De Lyon, tired of the game, took out one of his brown cigarettes and lit it with his steel lighter. When he snapped the lighter closed he said, “Monsieur stationmaster, it’s time we had a real discussion, I think, because this is all horseshit, I think.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me. Now, these boxcars contain armaments, for which we have all the proper documents. So, you will kindly tell me how we are going to move them up to Gdansk. Tonight.”

“It can’t be done. We have our regulations, they must be observed.”

“Not this evening.”

Defiance? The stationmaster would not stand for it. His face knotted with anger, his voice raised, he said, “Don’t you dare contradict me, Monsieur Cohen or Levy or whatever your name is. I say what goes on here, so don’t you try any of your sneaky little tricks on
me
! We’ve had more than enough of your kind in Poland.”

Crack
. The speed of the blow was astonishing. De Lyon’s hand, as though on a coiled spring, swept backhand across the stationmaster’s face. Shocked, his mouth open with surprise, the stationmaster put his hand to his cheek.

“How’s that for a little trick?” de Lyon said.

“You won’t get away with this,” the stationmaster said, rubbing his cheek. “I’ll have you in jail.”

“Maybe. But tonight we’re going to Gdansk.”

Ferrar had been absorbed by the exchange between the stationmaster and de Lyon, now he noticed that Nestor had disappeared.
He’d been there when the ticket of impound was discovered, but had slipped away.

“Here is what we will do,” de Lyon said. “It will be your job to drive this train up to Gdansk.”

The stationmaster wilted; arrogance deserted him, now he was frightened. “No, I can’t,” he said, pleading. “I don’t know how, I worked for years as a conductor, punching tickets.” This was credible—de Lyon believed it and the stationmaster, sensing that he did, pressed his advantage. “The train will
crash
,” he said.

For some seconds they all stood there, de Lyon trying to decide what to do next, but Nestor was ahead of him: he’d foreseen what would happen and had done something about it. They could barely see him as he came along the track, almost hidden by the large man in front of him. What they
could
see of Nestor was his hand which, as he marched the man forward, was pressing the snout of a revolver into the soft flesh beneath the man’s chin.

“I thought we might need him,” Nestor explained. “He was driving the train that just arrived.”

“What about the stoker?” de Lyon said.

“I told him to wait.” After a moment, he added, “Do you want me to tie him up?”

“Yes, Nestor, if he hasn’t already run away, make sure he doesn’t.”

Nestor headed back down the track. The terrified engineer said, “Please don’t kill me, I have a wife and a child.”

“What’s your name?” de Lyon said.

“Kowalski.”

“Tell me, Kowalski, can you drive this train up to Gdansk?”

The engineer nodded.

“Then,” de Lyon said, “that’s what you’ll do.”

It took time, but eventually they got under way. Nestor, having tied up the stoker, was sent back to the car and told to drive it up to
Gdansk—they would meet at the Bernhof Hotel. “We’ll wait for you,” de Lyon said. “It’s dark. Drive slowly, you’re no use to me dead.” After a moment he said, in a different voice, “Thank you, Nestor.”

They had removed the impound tags, opened the boxcars, found crates of anti-tank shells with Skoda identification markings stenciled on the raw wood, and the anti-tank guns themselves, smelling strongly of preservative grease. They put the stationmaster in there as well, telling him he would be released in Gdansk, then barring the door.

“Can we let him go in Gdansk?” Ferrar said. “He’ll run right to the police.”

“Hostages are a real nuisance,” de Lyon said. “We’ll just have to keep him until the last moment.”

After the freight rolled out of the yard, Ferrar and de Lyon took turns shoveling coal into the locomotive’s firebox, and soon enough their hands and faces were powdered with coal dust. When it was de Lyon’s turn, Ferrar stood next to the engineer and stared out over the nighttime countryside. Not much to see, beneath a quarter moon low on the horizon; now and then the distant light of a farmhouse, occasionally a local station, dark and deserted. At Chelmno, there was a crowd of passengers on the platform, waiting for a night train headed north to the Baltic coast, idly watching the freight as it clattered past. A few miles later they slowed for a railroad bridge, where the sound of the train deepened as it crossed the river. “We’re coming up on Terespol station,” the engineer said. “There’s a switch that has to be thrown, so we move to another track.”

As the train stopped, a railwayman with a lantern came out of the station house and approached the locomotive. “What’s this?” he called out to the engineer. “It can’t be the eleven fifty-six.”

“It’s a Special,” the engineer replied. “Freight going to the port.”

The railwayman walked up the track and, using both hands,
moved a lever from one side to the other. Then he raised the lantern twice and the locomotive was shunted onto the track to Gdansk.

11:25, Gdansk. The bar stood at the foot of a wharf in Gdansk port, where the lights of the quayside buildings were reflected in the still, black water. Inside, in clouds of cigarette smoke, off-duty stevedores were drinking vodka or beer or both until it was time to load another freighter. Ferrar and de Lyon—Nestor was still battling the Polish roads—had cleaned up at the Bernhof, then found the bar where they were to meet de Lyon’s friend, called Bolek, who ran the Polish longshore union in the city. They took an empty table, then were joined by two young stevedores, Zigi and Ivo, blond, snub-nosed, and hard to tell apart; both wore brimmed caps down over their eyes and had unlit stubs of cigarettes pasted to their lower lips. “Bolek said to tell you he’s been held up,” Zigi explained. “He’ll be here as soon as he can.” He took a sip of his vodka and said, “You got here right on time, any trouble on the way?”

“Some,” de Lyon said. “Our boxcars are ready to be unloaded, do you know when that will be?”

Zigi shrugged. “What ship?”

“The
Sabina
, out of Valencia.”

“Maybe after midnight … they’ll let us know when they need us.”

Ferrar was drinking beer. He would have preferred a vodka, but in his present state of exhaustion that might have knocked him out cold. He lit a Gitane and offered one to Ivo, sitting next to him. Ivo, who spoke a bit of French, thanked him and said, “So, you’re in Max de Lyon’s gang.”

Ferrar nodded. “I am,” he said.

“You must be busy, with the war going on.”

“We are,” Ferrar said.

“Fucking fascists,” Ivo said. “The union gave a big party last week, proceeds to Aid for Spain. We made plenty, believe me.”
Something across the room caught his attention and he said, “What’s
he
doing here?” Then tapped Zigi on the shoulder and with his eyes pointed out a man having a drink at the bar.

“Somebody you know?” Ferrar said.

“German crane operator. Germans don’t come in here, this is the Polish bar.” Gdansk was a German city, ten percent Polish.

“He’s just having a drink,” Ferrar said.

“For now. You know Bolek?”

“I don’t, he’s Max’s friend.”

“He’s the boss of our union, and he’ll make sure your shipment gets into the hold … the Germans don’t like to load freight that’s going to Spain.”

Zigi said, “Now look at this.” Two men entered the bar and stood next to the crane operator. “What do they think they’re doing?”

Ivo shook his head. “Making trouble, maybe.”

“They better not,” Zigi said.

A minute later, de Lyon went over to the bar and bought a bottle of vodka. As he turned to go back to the table, the crane operator bumped against him. De Lyon stared at the man, who said, “You made me spill my drink,” and poured some beer on the bar. The bartender said, “Hey, take it easy.” The man sneered. De Lyon returned to the table.

“He push you?” Zigi said.

“Forget it,” de Lyon said. “He’s drunk.”

“Looking for a fight,” Ivo said.

“He’ll find it,” Zigi said. “I haven’t hit a German for days.”

“Ignore him,” de Lyon said.

From Zigi, a certain laugh,
as though I could
. Two more men came into the bar, some of the stevedores stopped talking. Outside, a ship’s foghorn cut through the sound of the engines that ran the loading machinery.

De Lyon unscrewed the cap of the vodka bottle and said, “Who’s ready?”

Zigi and Ivo drank off their vodka and de Lyon refilled their glasses. “Cristián?”

“I better stay with beer.”

De Lyon grinned. “It’s been a long day.”

Zigi stood up and walked to another table where a man, a little older than the other stevedores, was talking to his friends. He had a tough face, scars by his eyes, his nose broken, maybe more than once. Zigi stood by his shoulder and said something, the man looked around the room. He didn’t like what he saw.

De Lyon said to Ivo, “Tell Zigi not to start anything. We’re going to need you to load our freight on the ship, we don’t want you locked up.”

Ivo said, “We won’t start it. But, if they do …”

Another man came into the bar. He had a beard that traced his jawline and wore a loden jacket and a green hat. “Hessler,” Ivo said.

“Who is Hessler?” de Lyon said.

“German politician, Nazi party leader.”

Hessler spoke briefly to the man next to the crane operator, then left the bar. “I guess he’s not staying for the fun,” Zigi said.

From the bar: “Hey! What the hell?” The front of the man’s shirt was wet. “Watch what you’re doing.”

“You watch,” the crane operator said.

The man swung and connected, the crane operator hit him back. The bartender vaulted over the bar, the bottom half of a pool cue in his hand. A table went over with a crash of broken glass. Somebody swore, another fight started, this time close to de Lyon and Ferrar. Zigi came on the run and said to Ivo, “Tomasz says to get them out of here.” Then he grabbed Ferrar by the shoulder, hauled him to his feet, and started to shove him toward the door, as Ivo did the same thing with de Lyon. But two big men came running through the door, and a group of stevedores went for them, hitting hard, Ferrar could hear the meaty thuds of body punches amid snarled curses. One of the Germans had blood running from
his nose, another one swung at de Lyon, who blocked his hand with his forearm, then Zigi grabbed him by the head. The two struggled for a few seconds, then another man broke a vodka bottle over the German’s head and he said, “Ach,” and went to one knee. He started to rise and Zigi kicked him in the stomach. He folded in half and something fell from his hand. Ferrar saw that it was a knife and tried to reach for it but there was somebody in his way so he kicked it across the floor.

Then Ferrar and de Lyon were pushed out into the street.

It was after two in the morning when de Lyon and Ferrar stood with Bolek and watched crates of anti-tank shells in cargo nets being lowered into the hold of the
Sabina
. Toward the bow of the ship, the stevedores were using a winch to roll the anti-tank cannon up a gangplank. Ferrar should have felt satisfaction but he was too tired to feel much of anything. The first wisps of a nighttime fog drifted through the glare of the dock’s floodlights.

“What happened in the bar?” Bolek said. He was a balding man with a paunch and an educated voice.

“A fight …,” de Lyon said.

“It was certainly a fight,” Ferrar said. “A fistfight, a bar fight, but one of them had a knife and went after Max. So maybe the whole thing was staged, to get rid of my friend here.”

“In Gdansk? Here it’s usually in the back, down an alley,” Bolek said.

“Your stevedores saved us,” de Lyon said. “Ivo’s at the hospital getting sewed up.”

“They’re tough kids,” Bolek said. “I had a feeling you might be better off with a little protection. You never know, right? And, any day now, this city is going to explode, and we’ll be fighting them with guns. Hitler has started screaming ‘Danzig! Danzig!’ and his propaganda machine has been turned on. You see it in the British press: ‘To die for Danzig?’ As in, who would be so stupid to go to
war over some Polish city nobody ever heard of? And it’s working; the party has technicians who study public opinion and they’re usually right.” For a time they watched the loading, then Bolek said, “By the way, we’ve got the Bydgoszcz stationmaster at the union office, he’ll be on a train in the morning.”

“Did he ask for the police?”

“Not that I know of. He had a bad experience and now he just wants to go home.”

“How long until our shipment is loaded?” de Lyon said.

“Six boxcars? Maybe another half hour.” Bolek looked at his watch. “The
Sabina
sails at five-thirty, are you going to stay here until then?”

“I might,” de Lyon said. “I’d at least like to see the loading done, then we have to go back to the hotel and make sure Nestor got there. He drove up from Bydgoszcz last night.”

“At night?” Bolek laughed. “Good old crazy Nestor.”

“There when you need him,” de Lyon said.