Mission to Paris (26 page)

The trail had a gentle slope as it climbed the face of the mountain, the streets and houses below looked remote and serene, like a village in a painting, and Trudi grew confidential. Did Olga, she wondered, ever feel lonely? In truth, Orlova said, she didn’t – she seemed always to have people around her. Trudi said that even in a crowd she sometimes felt very much alone. For a time, the grade steepened, which made conversation difficult as they worked their way upwards, but then it levelled out and Trudi said that she and Freddi had always wanted children – but did Orlova think every couple
had
to have them? Orlova didn’t think so; people ought to be free to do as they liked. Trudi agreed – wistfully, it seemed to Orlova. Maybe in the future they’d have them, Trudi said, lately Freddi worked so hard, cared so very much about his job, that he was always tired. Every night, he was tired. ‘He falls asleep when his head hits the pillow. It leaves me feeling, oh, “lonely” is the word, I guess.’

Just about here it occurred to Orlova that a comment about Trudi’s sleepwear might be in order, but then she was distracted by the weather. A Muscovite by birth, she knew a thing or two about snow, which had started to come down thick and fast. They really couldn’t see the town any longer and when she turned and looked back down the trail, their footprints had disappeared. In fact, the word ‘blizzard’ wouldn’t have been all that wrong.

‘Trudi, dear,’ she said. ‘I think we shouldn’t go much further.’

‘That’s what I think,’ Trudi said, apparently eager to return to the hotel, and they started back down the mountain, the going sufficiently difficult that now and then Trudi had to hold on to Orlova’s arm. They were never really in trouble, but by the time they reached the hotel they were both red in the face and breathing hard. When Orlova dropped Trudi off at her room and said she was going upstairs to change, Trudi said, ‘You will come back, won’t you? And keep me company?’

‘I’ll see you in a few minutes,’ Orlova said. ‘Why don’t you have them send up a bottle of brandy? It’ll warm us up.’

In her room, Orlova hung up her wet clothes and put on slacks and a sweater, then stood for a time before her open suitcase, contemplating a small Leica camera. It wasn’t a miniature camera, a spy’s camera – discovery of such a thing would have been a catastrophe – but, equipped with a certain lens, it worked almost as well. It had done so in the past. Take it down to Trudi’s room? Where Freddi’s briefcase rested against a chair? How? In a handbag. Would there be an opportunity to use it? Orlova thought this through, and found no suitable strategy, but then, with a nod to the gods of chance, she dropped it in her bag.

Downstairs, Trudi was wearing a quilted pink bathrobe that hung down to her ankles. The bottle of brandy and two glasses had arrived, along with a message from the hotel telephone operator: the roads down the mountain from the Berghof were impassable, Herr Mueller would not be able to return until the morning. Trudi didn’t seem all that disappointed, quite the reverse. ‘So it’s just you and me, tonight,’ she said.

They sat together and talked for a while, then Trudi said, ‘I’ve caught a chill, feel my hands.’

‘Like ice,’ Orlova said, rubbing them for a moment.

‘I think I’d better take a bath,’ Trudi said.

‘You should, it will warm you up.’

Trudi slipped off her robe and walked into the bathroom, leaving the door open behind her. When the water was turned on, Orlova calculated that the sound would cover any noise she might make and headed for the briefcase. She unsnapped the latch and spread the sides open, to be greeted by a bulky sheaf of papers. A memorandum, something about
Plan
ALBRECHT
. Another, this one to do with secretarial holidays. A draft for a report, script written in pen, the sentences hard to read. Then, from the bathroom, ‘Olga, dear?’

‘Yes?’

‘Could you bring me my drink?’

‘Be right there.’

Orlova managed to shuffle through a few more pages, then found Trudi’s glass, poured in some more brandy, and took it into the bathroom. Through the steam, she could see Trudi’s white body in the green water. ‘Here it is.’

‘Thank you. You can sit on the edge of the tub, if you like.’

‘The steam is getting me wet, I’ll wait for you in the room.’ As she turned to go, the significance of one of the papers came to her: a list of names with numbers, reichsmarks, next to them. Which could have been anything, but now Orlova realized that she’d seen a crossed
L
, the
Ł
, which was pronounced
W
.

In Polish.

Orlova snatched the Leica from her purse, found the list, and laid it flat on the desk. She riffled through to the end, some thirty pages. She had only eighteen exposures left on the film in her camera, but she’d get what she could.

Now the splash of water in the bathroom stopped. Orlova glanced at the open door, her heart pounding, but there was only drifting steam. She returned to the document and snapped the first photograph. ‘Olga?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you think Freddi is a good husband?’

Calling out, ‘Of course he is,’ Orlova used the sound of her voice to conceal a turn to the next page.

‘Oh, in a way he is, he’s …’
Click
. Next page. ‘… kind and considerate.’

‘There’s much to be said for kindness.’
Click
. Next page.

‘But shouldn’t there be more?’
Click
. Next page.

‘Do you mean physical things?’
Click
. Next page. ‘Intimate things?’

‘That
is
what …’
Click
. Next page. ‘… I mean, Olga.’

‘It is important in love affairs.’
Click
. ‘But a marriage isn’t …’ Next page.
Click
. ‘… a love affair.’ Next page.

‘Do you think …’
Click
. Next page. ‘… I should have a love affair?’
Click
. Next page.

The dialogue continued, with an occasional slosh from the bathroom as Trudi changed positions. Was there somebody Trudi liked? Well, yes, there was, could Orlova guess who that might be? Orlova said she wouldn’t even try to guess. And what if Freddi found out? What
then
? There was no way he ever would. Orlova doubted that. Trudi persisted – the person she had in mind would
never
tell, of that she was sure. Then, as Orlova rushed to turn a page, it rattled, and Trudi called out, ‘Are you reading the newspaper?’

Desperately, Orlova looked around the room.
Was there a newspaper?
Yes! There it was, on a chair. ‘I’m just thumbing through it,’ she answered. Then, from the bathroom, the sound of Trudi getting out of the tub, and, as she dried herself, Orlova took the final exposure, jammed the document back in the briefcase, closed it, and put the camera in her bag. ‘I don’t think anybody would ever know,’ Trudi said.

Orlova hurried over to the chair, grabbed the newspaper and was standing there holding it when Trudi ran naked from the bathroom, jumped into the bed, pulled the covers up to her chin, and said, ‘That felt so good, my bath.’

‘Well, when you’re chilled …’

‘Olga, dear?’

‘Yes?’

‘Why don’t you get in here with me and keep me warm?’

Orlova laughed and threw the newspaper back on the chair. ‘I’m going to take my brandy upstairs and rest for a while.’

‘Are you sure, Olga?’ Trudi’s voice had lowered,
I’m serious
. The question was overt and direct.

Orlova walked over to the bed and smoothed Trudi’s hair back. ‘Yes, Trudi, I am sure,’ she said, her tone affectionate and understanding. Then she said, ‘I’ll be back later, and we’ll have dinner together,’ and left the room.

Climbing the stairs to the floor above, Orlova hoped that Trudi wouldn’t hate her – she might, that was one possible reaction. But the alternative was too dangerous. In different circumstances, Orlova thought, she might have done it – a dalliance on a snowy afternoon in the mountains, a couple of hours of discovery and excitement, nobody the wiser. With Trudi, however, she feared all that heat stored up inside would explode in real passion, real love, not just a crush on an admired older woman. What then? Longing looks from Trudi Mueller in the midst of the Hitler menagerie? These people were shrewd, they had the sharpened instincts of survivors, and they might very well figure out what was going on.
No, impossible
, Orlova thought as she opened the door to her room. She would be particularly sweet to Trudi at dinner; she loved her like a friend, she loved her like an older sister.

Meanwhile, a roll of film.

3 December. As the first snow of the season whitened the grounds of the Joinville studios, the production of
Après la Guerre
was smoother and faster by the day. The anarchist Jean Avila turned out to be a not entirely benevolent despot and, with cast and crew doing precisely what they were told, the daily minutes of film went from two, to three, to, on some days, five. The romantic scenes between Colonel Vadic and Ilona absolutely
smouldered
, and were more than once applauded on the set. There was, to professionals like Stahl and Justine Piro, no higher praise than that.

Even
the message
– as, after a gun battle in a Balkan village, the dying Gilles Brecker tells Colonel Vadic that an honourable death is the most important part of life – was emotional and moving. This was in no small part Avila’s victory, pressing the screenwriters, as he put it to them in a café, ‘to calm this fucking thing down a little – trust your actors.’ Because the lieutenant has fought bravely, because he’s given his life to save theirs, the colonel pretends to agree with him. But in Stahl’s reading of his lines, in the expression on his face as the camera moves to close-up, it is clear that Colonel Vadic has come to understand that death is death and, honourable though it may be, sorrowful beyond all else. At the end of the second day of shooting, when the sequence was completed, Avila took Stahl aside and said, ‘Thank you, Fredric.’ That wasn’t the last of the filming, not quite, but soon they would be leaving Joinville, to shoot exterior scenes in and around Beirut. Except that Beirut had now become some remote place in Morocco. ‘Where,’ Avila told the cast, repeating what Deschelles had said, ‘they are known to have sand. Plenty of sand. It’s called the Sahara.’ Once that was done, they would return to Paris, then go to the Hungarian castle – Paramount had agreed to pay! – for a few more scenes on location.

By the third of December, Orlova’s letter had reached Paris by courier and Wilkinson knew about the film of the Polish list. And the price of the Polish list, copied out from the eighteen exposures, another two hundred thousand Swiss francs. Roosevelt’s millionaire friends had been generous enough so that Wilkinson could pay, he told Stahl in the billiard room of the American Club, but the exchange was difficult. He had planned on using a ballet troupe based in Boston, headed from Paris to Berlin on a cultural friendship tour, but the willing dancer had been injured in a taxi crash on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

For Fredric Stahl there was no reason, and even less desire, to go to Germany. In fact, he told Wilkinson, he would be going to Morocco, to a place called Erg Chebbi in the Ziz Valley. Wilkinson raised his eyebrows, Stahl said, ‘Dunes.’ The desert scenery was spectacular and had been used by other film companies. But Stahl said he would take on the job if Orlova could arrange for somebody – he doubted she’d be able to come herself – to meet him there. Wilkinson took out his notepad, rested it on the billiard table, and said, ‘Can you spell it?’

Over the next few days, Stahl realized that the prospect of leaving Paris for a time was more than a little welcome. The city of moods had fallen into a kind of trough; Parisians were feeling the pressure and they didn’t like it.
Il faut en finir
, they said, there must be an end to this. They were fed up with alarms – Hitler said this, Roosevelt said that – hopes high one day, dashed the next, optimism followed by gloom. So, enough! After the Munich appeasement, Hitler seemed to think he’d won; France was finished, the war was over. This scared the French, it scared the sophisticated Parisians, and Stahl could feel it.

And, almost despite himself, he became a collector of signs and omens. The Germans had installed a second news agency in Paris, the Prima Presse, that issued a flow of press releases quoted in French newspapers – more tanks, more planes, millions of men marching with guns and giving the Nazi salute. A garment manufacturer in Paris advertised its new
pyjamas d’alerte
, so women would have something attractive to wear in bomb shelters. And America made it clearer every day that help was
not
at hand.
Time
magazine’s newsreel series,
The March of Time
, brought out
Inside Nazi Germany – 1938
, which featured happy, hardworking Germans toiling in field and factory. Stahl watched it with disgust. And read an article by a young woman, a rising intellectual star, in which she described the French political climate as ‘a mixture of braggadocio and cowardice, hopelessness and panic’. A perfect description, Stahl thought. And on 6 December, France and Germany signed a friendship treaty, stating that ‘pacific and neighbourly relations between France and Germany constitute one of the essential elements of the consolidation of the situation in Europe and of the preservation of the general peace.’

8 December. Deschelles had chartered two aeroplanes to fly cast, crew, and equipment to Morocco, with stops for refuelling at Marseille, and then Tangiers – for the three-hundred-mile flight to a military airfield at Er Rashida. From there, cars and trucks would take them to Erg Chebbi, where they would stay at a hotel called the Kasbah Oudami; the producer had secured all thirty rooms for ten days. They left Le Bourget Airport at dawn. More than a few of the cast and crew had never flown in an aeroplane and, when the flight turned bumpy and the plane hit air pockets, had to be calmed by the administration of strong spirits, which were not denied to the other passengers. The well-oiled Pasquin, it turned out, knew a selection of incredibly filthy songs, which most of them had never heard before. But they weren’t hard to learn.