Midnight in Europe (20 page)

Bolek looked at his watch again and said, “I have to be somewhere, so …” He shook hands with Ferrar, then with de Lyon. “Coming back any time soon, Max?”

“Maybe not for a while.”

“Then I’ll say goodby, because if this war starts you won’t see me again, likely never again.” He shrugged and said, “But we did some good work together, and that’s what matters.” They shook hands once more, then Bolek turned and walked away down the dock.

The
Sabina
left the dock at six-thirty, working through a heavy sea in light fog. Her original destination was the port of Valencia, which meant sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean. And that would have been the end of her—an Italian submarine was waiting at the Nationalist port of Palma de Majorca, with orders to torpedo the
Sabina
as she approached the
Spanish coast. But now, because the French had opened the border, she would make for the port of Bordeaux, 938 nautical miles from Gdansk, where the shipment would come under the control of the Army of the Republic, then be sent south by rail. The
Sabina
was an old ship, for years a tramp steamer, and nine knots per hour was the best she could do. So, five days to Bordeaux, then on to Salou, the base of the Republic’s Fifth Army Corps, now rearming for a stand at the river Ebro.

If it failed, the war was lost.

A
PLEASANT DAY IN
P
ARIS, THE NINTH OF
A
PRIL, THE SUN IN AND OUT
of the billowy white clouds that blew across the city from the North Sea. Cristián Ferrar was in the walled garden of the Hungarian legation: gravel paths, well-barbered shrubs, and a fountain where a green-stained face of Pan produced a trickle of water that formed a puddle in the marble basin. He had come to the legation to work with the Count Polanyi on a nefarious love letter to the nephew in Budapest, which they started to write in Polanyi’s office—portraits of fierce Magyar kings staring down at them from the walls—but Polanyi said, “It’s been too long of a winter, I can’t stay indoors anymore, I’m tired of it,” so they moved to the garden.

Ferrar liked Polanyi, a diplomat/spy now in his sixties, and a gentleman from another time. He was a large, heavy man with
thick, white hair, who wore suits cut by London tailors and smelled like bay rum, cigar smoke, and the excellent Burgundy he drank with lunch. Once they were settled in garden chairs, Polanyi said, “So, are we really going to do this?”

“It’s a long shot, Count Polanyi, but unless we can get the Belesz nephew into court, the future of your bank is … questionable. He intends, I think, to destroy it.”

“Tell me
why
, for heaven’s sake! It does him no good that I can see.”

Ferrar agreed. “All I could sense in Belesz was malice, a kind of pure hatred with God knows what cause. But then, when I was trying to reason with him on the telephone, he said that he belonged to the Arrow Cross.”

“Yes, you told me. We too, in Hungary, have our Nazi party. In fact, last week, my steward only just got away from them.”

“There is a good possibility that his malice is political. Fascism is a revolutionary force, it wants to destroy the established order and take its place—take its money, its businesses, everything it has because, to these people, the governing class in Europe is hesitant, ineffective, effete. So, destroy it. That’s what they’ve done in Germany and Italy and what they will do in Spain, with the excuse that they’re fighting Bolshevism.”

The count looked grim, with the insights of a diplomat and a spy, he believed Ferrar was right. “Very well then,” he said. “Let’s write the damn letter.”

Ferrar stared at the pad of lined paper on his lap, tapped it speculatively with the eraser of his pencil, and said, “We’ll need an address, so that he can write back to her. Should we use
poste restante
?” It meant general delivery.

“Like a spy novel from the twenties?” Polanyi was amused. “No, he’ll surely smell a rat.”

“Well, not American Express.”

“Hardly—she’s no tourist. Actually, this comes up in my work from time to time, and I use a little hotel on the rue Chemin Vert,
not far from Place Bastille. Hotel Victoria, it’s called, we give the manager the names we’re looking for and he brings the letters over here.”

“Then it should be on hotel stationery.”

“I wonder if they have such a thing? But, a nice touch. I’ll have some made up.”

“Cheap paper, poorly printed.”

“I know, Monsieur Ferrar,” Polanyi said gently.

“So, from Celestine, umm … her married name? Perhaps Duval, something common, not foreign. Then, to start out, ‘My dear Fabi’?”

“ ‘Dearest.’ ”

Ferrar nodded and made the change. “I wonder if she had a pet name for him?”

“Maybe, you never know, with love affairs. Shall we say, ‘I hope you will remember me, and the times we had together’? No,
‘Perhaps
you will remember me, I hope you do.’ And ‘sweet times’—meaning times in bed.”

“ ‘Intimate times’?”

“Rather elevated, for her.”

“I have it! We say ‘our nights together.’ ”

“Ahh.”

“ ‘Our nights together’ and she often thinks of him now and wishes, no,
dreams
, that they could once again have such pleasure.” Ferrar wrote that down, then inspiration struck and he looked up from the paper and said, “Perfume!”

“Yes, of course, good idea. A perfumed letter. Nice perfume, not cheap, and plenty of it.”

“Cheap perfume can be seductive.”

The count laughed; a deep, bass rumble. “What a pair of scoundrels we are. You’re right, she hasn’t any money, so it’s what she uses now. Cheap perfume, filthy nights of lovemaking, all modesty abandoned. White Ginger, something like that. He’ll like it, my nephew will, a poor girl at his mercy.”

Ferrar was impressed, the count remembered the name of a perfume. He smiled and said, “I suspect you’ve been down this road before.”

Polanyi nodded. “Haven’t we all?”

“Those of us who love women, and how they go about things, yes.”

“White Ginger,” the count mused. “I wish she’d write to
me
.” Then he sighed and looked at his watch. “There is something I must do, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Ferrar was content to wait in the garden.
For the marquesa, what perfume?
He tried to recall if she’d worn scent, and rather doubted she had. He’d been close to her, kissed her hand as they parted—wouldn’t she have worn it on her wrist? On her pulse? Of course, in the excitement of the moment …

This wistful thought was suddenly interrupted by three vizsla dogs, who came bounding through the French doors into the garden, quivering with outdoor freedom, the two males seeking the right shrub to water while the bitch squatted on the gravel. “Yes, here they are, the dogs my nephew meant to sell,” Polanyi said.

“How did they get
here
?”

“Nephew Fabi organized a kind of raid on my castle in Hungary. The steward grabbed the dogs and escaped through an old tunnel, eventually he got them to Paris, where they’ll be safe.” Polanyi watched as the males marked the shrubs and said, “The legation gardener is not happy about this but I’ll be damned if I’ll take them out to the street and stand there while they do their business.”

One of the males, done with business, galloped up to Ferrar and, wanting to play, smacked his forepaws on the ground. The vizsla was a hairless breed, all muscle and sinew in visible motion beneath a reddish-brown coat, but the irresistible features of the vizsla were its soft, floppy ears, velvet to the touch. Ferrar couldn’t resist, playing with the dog’s ears, rumpling them gently, and saying, “What a handsome fellow you are, yes you are,” in a talking-to-a-dog voice. The dog sprinted away, leapt easily into the fountain,
and began to lap up the puddled water. The other two followed. The bitch, who was quicker than her brothers, stood on her hind legs and licked at the water coming from Pan’s mouth.

Polanyi took a gray tennis ball from his pocket and tossed it to one side of the fountain. The vizslas were immediately in hot pursuit, one of the males skidded on the gravel but snatched up the ball in his mouth, then brought it back to Polanyi and waited for the next throw.

“Did you see, Ferrar? The finest breed there is, a pointer/retriever, finds the game, waits for you to shoot it, then brings it to you with a soft mouth. A great hunter’s dog.” He flipped the ball to Ferrar, who threw it high in the air. All three jumped, ears flying.

“Now I’ll have to find an excuse to hold talks with you here,” Ferrar said as the bitch dropped the ball at his feet.

“You are welcome, any time. They love to play,” Polanyi said. Then, “Now, where were we?”

“We have most of it, she has to explain that her marriage wasn’t so good, implying that her husband was never the lover that Fabi was and now he has died, leaving her in a cheap hotel and dreaming of lost love.”

“How do we close?”

“ ‘Please write to me, dearest, at least I will know I am not forgotten.’ This will take an exchange of letters, and
he
has to be the one who writes, ‘Guess what, I’m coming to Paris on business, would you care to have a cocktail?’ ”

“True. And she signs …?”

“ ‘Your Celestine,’ best to keep it simple.”

“Then let’s do that,” Polanyi said.

The vizsla got Ferrar’s attention with a little whine and he reached for the tennis ball.

The following day found Ferrar working on a letter of his own, a letter to the marquesa. He wasn’t really supposed to do such a
thing, court one of the firm’s clients, but Coudert left such matters to its attorneys’ discretion. The general rule, not said aloud, was that serious affection, so long as it was kept separate from legal business, might be pursued, but making passes at female clients was frowned on. Ferrar would use his personal stationery, with the Place Saint-Sulpice address, and write briefly. “Dear Marquesa Maria Cristina …” He hoped she was well, and likely looking forward to the spring season. Would she care to join him, next Wednesday at five o’clock, for hot chocolate at Angelina’s? He looked forward to hearing from her, then closed respectfully with one of the French formulas. He licked the envelope and sealed it, then went off to the Bureau de Poste.

Angelina’s, beneath the arcades on the rue de Rivoli, was a Paris institution, in business as an elegant tearoom since the turn of the century, and famous for its Mont Blanc pastry and hot chocolate. Here Ferrar preferred the French version, the warm, soothing sounds of
chocolat chaud:
“showco-la-show.” As for the Mont Blanc—noodle-shaped strands of cream of chestnut over whipped cream—watching the marquesa go to work on it was, for Ferrar, beyond appetizing. She scooped up a tiny spoonful and closed her lips on the spoon, resulting in the daintiest smear of
crème de marrons
on her upper lip, a sight which she allowed him to enjoy for an instant before raising her napkin.

“And do you travel for your work, Monsieur Ferrar?”

“At times I do, to meet with clients.”

“And have you traveled lately?”

“Last week I was in Poland, in Warsaw and Danzig, or Gdansk if you prefer the Polish version.”

“A troubled place, one reads in the newspapers.” With delicate fingers, she raised her cup of chocolate and took a sip. She was dressed for afternoon tea in a pale lilac blouse, with a strand of pearls at her throat, and a suit colored dove gray which, he suspected, came from one of the better fashion houses. She wore her
hair back, twisted into a chignon, and in the low light of Angelina’s it glowed like metal. She had been wearing fitted suede gloves when she entered the tearoom, these now rested in her lap.

“Have you been in Poland, Marquesa?”

“I was there years ago, at the Krynica spa in the Tatra mountains, where the marques went for treatment.”

“They are uneasy now, the Poles, they fear the ambitions of their neighbors.”

“And so they should. Do you not agree, Monsieur Ferrar?”

“I’m afraid so, Marquesa.”

“I do try to keep up with European matters,” she said. “I was raised in France, at an old house on the edge of Angers. But then, at the age of fourteen I was sent to a Swiss boarding school for young women. There were girls from England, and Italy, and Spain, and I came to realize that the world was a much bigger and more varied place than I had imagined.”

“And did you learn to like it there?”

She smiled and said, “I do not believe one was supposed to
like
it, but I don’t recall being miserable; oh perhaps now and again, in the way of young girls. The school was run by a religious order and the sisters could be severe.” She paused, remembering, and said, “We had to work very hard, and write with perfect penmanship. If not, we could expect … punishment. I mean of the physical sort.” Again she smiled.

A smile, just shy of naughty, which implied she had a good idea of what his imagination might make of that.
Would you care to describe it?
Ferrar thought.
Oh if only I were so daring
. He settled, instead, on “Still, a good education is crucial these days, do you agree?”