Mission to Paris (20 page)

Stahl dressed for the banquet, then transferred the money and ten-reichsmark note to his evening clothes. As Wilkinson had put it, in the still, musty air of the library stacks, ‘If you leave this money in your room, you won’t be coming back to Paris.’ On the day before he boarded the plane, the resident seamstress at the Claridge had sewn a large inner pocket into the lining of his tuxedo jacket, much roomier than the one on the left side. He was now more than glad he’d had this done, for there was only a small back pocket on the trousers. Even so, he had to stash a few thousand Swiss francs in the back of his cummerbund.
So I will not be dancing the polka tonight
. Precisely on time, he made his way down to the Adlon’s grand ballroom.

Splendid it surely was. Vast chandeliers glittered above, the white tablecloths were dazzling, endless ranks of silverware marched away from the side of every golden service plate, the satin draperies were blood-red, and the centrepiece on the elevated centre table held an exceptional display of marzipan tanks and fighter planes.

Very carefully, to avoid a shower of Swiss francs, Stahl withdrew his typewritten speech – written in Paris with Mme Boulanger’s help – from his inner pocket. Herr von Somebody, the official host, spoke first, welcoming the bejewelled ladies and beaming gentlemen to the Reich National Festival of Mountain Cinema, ‘and tonight’s banquet in honour of Herr Fredric Stahl, who is to select the festival’s winners.’ There followed a flowery tribute to the Führer, ‘who has made all this possible.’ Stahl was then introduced, and gave a short speech, thanking everybody in sight, citing the importance of cinema to all the world’s cultures, and looking forward to choosing the best mountain film of 1938, ‘though I expect, given the general level of excellence, that will be an extremely difficult task.’ When he was done, the guests – there must have been at least a hundred – rose to their feet and applauded.

The banquet began with a thin, and absolutely delicious, potato soup. It had been a long time – back in his days in Vienna – since Stahl had tasted good German food, and he made himself hold back on the soup, sensing there were perhaps even better things to come. Wild boar from Karinhall, the Goering estate, said the giant, both-hands-required menu. Leaving the soup, Stahl turned to the lady on his left, Princess von Somebody, with diamonds dripping down towards the cleft of a snowy bosom.

With the arrival of the wild boar, Stahl turned to chat with the director of the festival, who sat across from him, the German film producer Otto Raab. Stahl had never met him, but as Raab talked about himself Stahl realized that he knew this man, knew him from experience. Likely he’d started his artistic career in the provincial theatre, a local genius who had, driven by ambition, gone off to the great city – Berlin in this case – there to discover he was no genius at all, at best a worker bee, so that his passion to succeed soured and turned to bitter resentment. How did it happen that these people, many of them Jews, communists, sexual deviates, were set above him? They were snobs, arrogant and sure of their talent, this so-called elite, but they were no better than he was. They succeeded because they knew the right people, they hobnobbed, they worked their insidious magic and rose to the top, where they looked down their noses at the struggling Otto Raabs of the world.

But with the Nazi ascent to power in 1933, the Otto Raabs of Germany perfectly understood what it meant for them. Now it was
their
turn. They joined the Nazi party, and success inevitably followed. Now look! A respected producer of films, wholesome films,
German
films, a powerful man snubbed no longer. Raab had weak, watery eyes, and in the way they fixed on Stahl as Raab recounted various triumphs, there was the purest hatred. Stahl was careful with him, gently encouraging, keeping condescension at bay. After he’d had all he could stand of Raab, he turned to the woman on his right, the highly acclaimed film actress Olga Orlova.

Stahl knew something of Orlova, who had a complicated history. She was said to be a descendant of the Russian novelist Lermontov, had trained in the great Moscow Art Theatre with Stanislavsky, had fled with the White armies from the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, landed on her feet in Germany, become a film star, and a great favourite of that madly passionate film buff Adolf Hitler. Who made sure that photographs of the two of them together appeared in newspapers and magazines.

Orlova was, like many actresses, not so much beautiful as striking, memorable, with plain, strong features, upswept dark hair parted to one side, and animated eyes. She may have been over forty but looked younger – smooth skin, a well-tended body in a lime-coloured evening gown that revealed the bare shoulders of an athlete. She wore a necklace and earrings of small emeralds and, as she talked, Stahl noticed she had slim, delicate hands. Her voice was low, and sensual in a way that Stahl couldn’t precisely define – she spoke intimately, but she was no coquette.

She admired him, she said, she knew his films. How on earth had they managed to lure him to this incredibly boring event?

‘I’m living in Paris now, making a film for Paramount, and my studio thought it would be a good idea.’

‘Ah yes,’ Orlova said. ‘There’s more to this business than the screen kiss.’

‘That’s true.’

‘It’s certainly true for me. I started out in the theatre, acted my little heart out, Chekhov, Pushkin, Shakespeare in Russian. But the Bolsheviks put an end to that, so now I am in movies.’

‘And a celebrity.’

‘That I am. I work at it, and important people here seem to like what I do.’

‘Surely one
very
important person,’ Stahl said.

Orlova’s smile was ever so slightly grim. ‘One is chosen, sometimes, it’s not up to you. But it’s not bad to be adored, and he is infinitely polite.’

‘To you.’

‘Yes, to me.’ She shrugged. ‘We have no intimate life, though the world is encouraged to think otherwise.’

‘And you don’t mind?’

‘Mind gossip? No, do you?’

‘Now and then, but it comes with the profession.’

‘And makes private life difficult. Still …’ For a moment, her eyes caught his in a certain way. ‘I find
you
, for example, quite interesting.’

‘I’m flattered,’ Stahl said. ‘But for people like us, privacy is almost impossible.’

‘Almost,’ she said. ‘But not quite.’ She paused for a moment, then said, ‘Where are they keeping you?’

‘Here.’ He pointed upwards. ‘In the Bismarck Suite.’

‘Well, well, the Bismarck Suite. Then you’re just down the hall from me.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, I’ve taken the Führer’s suite for tonight. I don’t believe he’s ever been there, but the hotel keeps it exclusively for him.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Just down the hall. The number one hundred is on the door.’

‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘No reason to, but now you know. I’ll leave the door ajar.’

From behind them, a waiter cleared his throat. Startled, Stahl and Orlova turned to face him. He was a wiry little man with oiled, slicked-back hair and a smug, almost triumphant smile on his face. ‘Excuse me, meine Frau, mein Herr, may I take your plates, please?’ The words were commonplace but the tone was just insinuating enough to let them know their conversation had been overheard.

‘By all means,’ Orlova said. Her voice was dismissive, and faintly irritated.

The waiter took their plates, moving from Orlova’s right to Stahl’s. ‘It is a pleasure to serve such glamorous people,’ he said. The insinuation in his voice was now plainly evident. ‘My name is Rudi, by the way.’

‘Thank you, Rudi,’ Stahl said, turning back to face Orlova.

The waiter bowed politely and said, ‘Some people are known to reward good service.’

‘We’ll remember that,’ Stahl said. ‘Now go away.’

After another bow, the waiter, a slight redness to his cheeks, went off towards the kitchen.

‘Rude little bastard, isn’t he. How much of that do you think he overheard?’ Stahl said. He had a bad feeling in his chest.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Orlova said. ‘I do what I want. My private life is my own affair, and certain people know that very well.’

‘Then I’ll see you later.’

‘After I go upstairs, give me a half-hour.’

Stahl looked to his left, meaning to resume conversation with Princess von Somebody, but Orlova put a hand on his arm. ‘By the way, a silly thing but I want to leave a little something for the maid. Do you happen to have a ten-reichsmark note?’

‘I do,’ Stahl said. ‘I’ll bring it with me.’

When Stahl saw the waiters clearing space in the middle of the ballroom, and a small orchestra began to set up, he realized it was time to go. He took Princess von Somebody’s hand, bent towards it, touched her skin with his lips and said good evening. The princess made a disappointed little mouth and said, ‘Will you not stay for the dancing?’

‘Forgive me, your grace, but I’m very tired, and I must rise early and watch the movies.’

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Then good night, Herr Stahl, it was a pleasure to meet you.’

Stahl realized she’d expected to spend the night with him, so wished her the most gracious good-evening he could manage. Next he looked for Orlova, who was nowhere to be seen, and then, needing a breath of fresh air, he walked through the lobby to the door of the hotel, stepped outside, and took a cigarette and a lighter from his side pocket. He was about to light his cigarette when he smelled smoke. Not woodsmoke from a fireplace, the other kind, where something is burning that shouldn’t be burning. He looked over at the doorman, a giant in a coat with epaulettes, who stood nearby, rubbing his hands to keep them warm – it was a chilly night, with a cutting little wind from the north. ‘Is something on fire?’ Stahl said.

‘No, sir,’ the doorman said.

Stahl looked up the front of the hotel but saw nothing. The smell was getting stronger. For a few moments he waited, listening for sirens, but the night was quiet. Curiously quiet, there was no traffic on what was usually, even late at night, a busy street. ‘You’re sure?’ Stahl said to the doorman.

‘Yes, sir. I am quite sure. But when you have finished your cigarette, it would be better to remain in the hotel for the evening.’

Why?
But Stahl said his thank you and lit his cigarette.

12.30 a.m. Stahl walked down the hallway, couldn’t find the Hitler suite, then went back the other way and found a door at the end which faced the corridor, a gold plate inscribed 100 screwed to the polished oak surface. And yes, it was slightly ajar. He knocked lightly, then entered. He was in a foyer, through an open door he could see a bedroom, and a pair of legs with bare feet. Olga Orlova was stretched out on the bed, her gown hiked up above her knees. She rose to a sitting position and smiled at him. ‘My lover at last,’ she said, eyes amused.

‘I’m here, my darling.’

‘Yes, I heard your carriage arrive. Do you have my reichsmark note?’

Stahl handed it to her. She opened a small address book on the night table and spoke the bill’s serial number aloud, consulting her book to make sure the numbers matched. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘I don’t see why we have to do this. I’ve surely seen you enough to know who you are.’ She handed the note back to him and said, ‘For next time.’

Stahl began to fish the Swiss francs out of his tuxedo pockets, then unbuckled his cummerbund, retrieved the rest, and set the stacks on the satin coverlet. ‘A lot of paper,’ he said.

‘How much?’

‘Two hundred thousand francs.’

‘That’s the right number, I’ll count it later. The telephones are turned off by the way, so we don’t have to play the love scene.’

‘They listen to
Hitler’s
phones?’

She shrugged. ‘Who knows what they do. I’m sure they’re watching your room, so you’d better stay for an hour while we make passionate love.’

Stahl found a chair in the corner and sat down.

Orlova gathered up the money and put it in a large handbag with a shoulder strap. ‘My spy bag,’ she said. She poked around inside, then drew out a sheaf of very thin paper with tiny, spidery writing from top to bottom and edge to edge and walked it over to Stahl. ‘Here’s what your friends are expecting. There’s quite a lot of it this time, Orlova has been
terribly
social these last few weeks.’

‘Thank you,’ Stahl said.

‘If I knew how to do it properly, I would spit,’ she said. ‘But they didn’t teach girls to do that, not in Czarist Russia. Maybe they do now, in their USSR.’

‘Why spit?’

‘If you read what I brought you, and I don’t think you’re supposed to, you’d know why. These monsters are bad enough in public, but you ought to get a taste of them in
private
. You’d spit too.’ She lay back down on the bed and put her hands over her eyes. ‘I am tired, Herr Stahl, Fredric. For years.’ She was quiet for a time, Stahl thought she might be going to sleep, but she sat up suddenly and said, ‘Christ! The goddamn hotel’s on fire!’

‘No, I made sure it isn’t, but something is.’

Orlova’s eyes were wide. ‘I know that smell, I know that smell from 1917, that’s a burning
building
.’

‘Yes, I think it is.’

After a moment she lay back on the bed again.

‘I wonder,’ Stahl said, ‘will there be talk, about our being together up here? If they’re watching my room they know I’m not in there.’

Orlova turned on her side to face him. ‘Talk? Not from the hotel people. For one thing, you could be anywhere in the hotel – the staircase in the Adlon is famous for night-time visits, you don’t have to use the elevator. And even if they suspected something, when it comes to Adolf and his circle they keep their traps well shut. As for the morons who are running the festival, all they know is that I arranged to sit next to you. So what? Maybe I want to go to Hollywood.’

‘Do you?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve thought about it.’

‘They like foreign stars out there – you could be the next Marlene Dietrich. Anyhow, in time you may decide to try it.’

Orlova rolled onto her back and rubbed her eyes. ‘Not much time left, Fredric, based on what’s in your pocket.’