The Foreign Correspondent Read online

“It was very bad,” Weisz said.

  “Well, it’s not much better back home. And I have to tell you that we’ve lost two runners.”

  He meant distributors—bus drivers, barmen, storekeepers, janitors, anybody who had contact with the public. Thus it was said that if you wanted to know what was really going on in the world, best to visit the second-floor lavatory at the National Gallery of Antique Art, in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. Always something to read, there.

  But distribution was mostly managed by teenaged girls from the fascist student organizations. They had to join, just as their fathers joined the Partito Nazionale Fascista, the PNF. Per Necessità Familiare, the joke went, for family necessity. But a lot of the girls hated what they had to do—march, sing, collect money—and signed up to distribute newspapers, getting away with it because people thought that girls would never do such a thing, would never dare. The fascisti had it a little wrong there, but still, now and again most often by betrayal, the police caught them.

  “Two of them,” Weisz said. “Arrested?”

  “Yes, in Bologna. Fifteen-year-old girls, cousins.”

  “Do we know what happened?”

  “We don’t. They went out with papers, in their school satchels, to leave them at the railroad station, but they never came back. Then, the following day, the police notified the parents.”

  “And now they’ll go before the Special Tribunals.”

  “Yes, as always. They’ll get two or three years.”

  Weisz wondered, for a moment, whether the whole thing was worth it; girls in jail while the giellisti conspired in Paris, but he knew it for a question that couldn’t be answered. “Perhaps,” he said, “they can be pried loose.”

  “Not in this case,” Salamone said. “The families are poor.”

  They were silent for a time, the bar was quiet, only the sound of the rain in the street. Weisz unbuckled his briefcase and put the lists of German agents on the table. “I’ve brought you a present,” he said. “From Berlin.”

  Salamone worked away at it; leaned on his elbows, soon enough pressed his fingers against his temples, then moved his head slowly from side to side. When he looked up, he said, “What is it with you? First that fucking torpedo, now this. Are you, some kind of, magnet?”

  “It would seem so,” Weisz said.

  “How’d you get it?”

  “From a man in a park. It comes from the Foreign Ministry.”

  “A man in a park.”

  “Leave it at that, Arturo.”

  “Fine, but at least tell me what it means.”

  Weisz explained—German penetration throughout the Italian security system.

  “Mannaggia,” Salamone said quietly, still reading through the list. “What a gift, it’s a death sentence. Next time, maybe a little stuffed bear, eh?”

  “What do we do?”

  Weisz watched Salamone as he tried to work it out. Yes, he was called a giellisti, but so what. The man on the other side of the table was in late middle age, a former shipping broker, his career destroyed by the government, and now a clerk. Nothing in life had prepared him for conspiracy, he had to figure it out as he went along.

  “I’m not sure,” Salamone said. “We can’t just print it, that I do know, it would bring them down on us like—I don’t know, like hellfire, or think up something worse. And we’d have the Germans as well, the local Gestapo, with their pals in Berlin tearing the Foreign Ministry apart until they find out who went to the park.”

  “But we can’t burn it, not this time.”

  “No, Carlo, this hurts them. Remember the rule, anything that forces Germany and Italy apart, we want. And this does, this will make some of the fascisti mad—our people are mad already, which doesn’t mean shit to a snail, but, get them, the fearful them, mad, and we’ve done something worthwhile.”

  “It’s how we do it.”

  “Yes, I think so. We can’t be cowards and slip this to the Communists, though I admit it crossed my mind.”

  “That’s where it comes from, I suspect. I was told as much.”

  Salamone shrugged. “I’m not surprised. To do such a thing as this, in Germany, under the Nazi regime, would take somebody very strong, very committed, somebody with real ideology.”

  “Maybe,” Weisz said, “maybe we can just say we know, that we’ve heard this is going on. The fascists will know how to find out the rest, since it’s in the heart of their machine. It’s disloyalty, to Italy, to allow another country to prepare for an occupation. Thus, even if you don’t like us, when we print this, we’re patriots.”

  “How would you put it?”

  “Just as I’ve said. A concerned official in an Italian bureau has informed Liberazione…Or an anonymous letter, which we believe.”

  “Not bad,” Salamone said.

  “But then, we have the real thing to deal with.”

  “Give it to somebody who can use it.”

  “The French? The British? Both? Hand it to a diplomat?”

  “Don’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’ll be back in a week, wanting more. And they won’t say please.”

  “In the mail, then. Mail it to the Foreign Ministry and the British embassy. Let them deal with the OVRA.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Salamone said, sliding the list toward his side of the table.

  Weisz took it back. “No, I’m responsible for it, I’ll do it. Should I, maybe, retype it?”

  “Then it’s from your typewriter,” Salamone said. “They can figure these things out. In the crime novels, they can, and I think that’s true.”

  “But it would be on the man in the park’s typewriter. What if somebody figured that out?”

  “So, find another typewriter.”

  Weisz grinned. “I think this game is called hot potato. Where in hell will I find another typewriter?”

  “Buy it, my friend. Out at Clignancourt, in the flea market. Then get rid of it. Pawn it, throw it out, or leave it in the street somewhere. And do it before the mail is delivered.”

  Weisz refolded the list and put it back in its envelope.

  At eight that evening, Weisz went looking for dinner. Mère this? Chez that? He’d read that day’s Le Journal, so he stopped at a newsstand and bought a Petit Parisien as a dinner companion. It was a terrible rag, but he secretly enjoyed it, all that lust and greed in high places somehow went well with dinner, especially dinner alone.

  Walking through the rain, he took a side street, and came upon a little place called Henri. The window was well steamed, but he could see a black-and-white tile floor, diners at most of the tables, and a blackboard with that night’s menu. When he entered, the proprietor, properly heavy and red-faced, came to greet him, wiping his hands on his apron. A couvert for one, monsieur? Yes, please. Weisz hung his raincoat and hat on the clothes tree by the door. In very crowded restaurants, in bad weather, the thing would in time become overladen, and could be depended on to tip over at least once during the evening, which always made Weisz laugh.

  What Henri offered that night was a large plate of steamed leeks, followed by rognons de veau, morsels of veal kidney, sautéed with mushrooms in a brown sauce, and a mound of crisp pommes frites. Reading the paper, following the prodigious love affairs of a nightclub singer, Weisz finished most of his carafe of red wine, mopping up the veal sauce with a piece of bread, then decided to have the cheese, a vacherin.

  Weisz was seated at a corner table, and, when the door opened, he glanced sideways to see who might be coming in for dinner. The man who entered took off his hat and coat and found an unused peg on the clothes tree. He was a fattish, benign sort of fellow, a pipe clenched in his teeth, a slipover sweater worn beneath his jacket. The man looked around, searching for somebody, and, as Henri approached, eventually spotted Weisz. “Well, hello,” he said. “Mr. Carlo Weisz, what luck.”

  “Mr. Brown. Good evening.”

  “Don’t suppose I might join you. Are you wa
iting for somebody?”

  “No, I’m just finishing up.”

  “Hate to eat alone.”

  Henri, wiping his hands on his apron, was not quite following this, but when Mr. Brown took a step toward Weisz’s table, he smiled and pulled out a chair. “Much appreciated,” Brown said, settling himself at the table and putting on his glasses to peer at the blackboard. “How’s the food?”

  “Very good.”

  “Kidneys,” he said. “That will do nicely.” He ordered, then said, “I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you, actually.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “A small project, something that might interest you.”

  “Really? Reuters pretty much takes up all my time.”

  “Yes, I imagine they would. Still, this is quite out of the ordinary, and it’s a chance to, well, to make a difference.”

  “A difference?”

  “That’s it. In Europe these days, the way things are going, what with Hitler and Mussolini…I think you know what I mean. Anyhow, the world is too much with me, getting and spending, as the man said, but one does want to do something more, and I’m associated with a few like-minded fellows, and, every now and again, we try to do a little something worthwhile. Very informal, you understand, this group, but we pitch in a few pounds, and use our business connections, and, you never know, it might just, as I said, make a difference.”

  A waiter brought a carafe of wine and a basket of bread. Mr. Brown said, “Mmm,” by way of thanks, poured himself a glass of wine, took a sip, and said, “Good. Very good, whatever it is. They never tell you, do they.” He had another sip, tore a piece of bread in half, and ate it. “Now,” he said, “where was I? Oh yes, our small project. Actually, it began the night we had drinks at the Ritz bar, with Geoffrey Sparrow and his girl, you recall?”

  “I do, of course,” Weisz said cautiously, apprehensive about what might be coming next.

  “Well, you know, it got me thinking. Here was an opportunity to do a little something for the sorry world out there. So I had a friend make inquiries, and, by a lucky chance, we actually found this Colonel Ferrara you wrote about. Poor bastard, his unit retreated to Barcelona, where they had to get rid of their uniforms and make a run for it, across the Pyrenees at night, which is very damn dangerous, I don’t have to tell you. Once in France, he was arrested, naturally, and interned at one of those wretched camps down in Gascony. Where we actually found him, through a friend in one of the French ministries.”

  Worse and worse. “Not easy to do, something like that.”

  “No, not easy. But, damn it all, worth it, don’t you think? I mean, you’re the one who told his story, so you know who he is—what he is, I should say. He’s a hero. Don’t see that word too much these days, it ain’t fashionable, but that’s the truth of it. In the midst of all this whining and hand-wringing, here’s a man who stands up for what he believes in, and—”

  The waiter arrived with a generous wedge of vacherin, soft and smelly. Not that Weisz particularly wanted it, not anymore. Brown and his like-minded fellows had, with whatever else they were about, whipped his appetite away and replaced it with a cold knot in the stomach.

  “Ah, the cheese. Nice and ripe, I’d say.”

  “It is,” Weisz said, testing it lightly with his thumb. He cut a piece—a proper diagonal, not the nose—and stuck his fork in it, but that was as far as he got. “You were saying?”

  “Uh, oh yes, Colonel Ferrara. A hero, Mr. Weisz, and one the world ought to know about. You certainly thought so, and, evidently, so did Reuters. Really, can you name another? Plenty of victims, out there, and plenty of nasty villains, but then, where are the heroes, tonight?”

  Weisz wasn’t meant to answer this, and he didn’t. “And so?”

  “So this, Mr. Weisz: we think that Colonel Ferrara should make his story known. In detail, in public.”

  “And how would he do that?”

  “The usual way. Always the best way, the usual way, and in this case that would mean, a book. His book. Soldier of Freedom, something like that. To Fight for Freedom? Is that better?”

  Weisz wouldn’t bite. His expression said, who knows?

  “But, whatever the title, it’s a good story. We start in the camp—will he ever get out? Then we find out how he got there. He grows up in a poor family, he joins the army, becomes an officer, fights with an elite force at the Piave River, in the Great War, is ordered to Ethiopia, Mussolini’s quest for empire, then resigns his commission, in protest, after Italian planes spray the tribal villages with poison gas, goes to Spain, and fights the fascists, Spanish and Italian. Now, here he is, at the end, preparing to fight fascism again. That’s a book I’d read, wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess I would.”

  “Of course you would!” Brown made a bracket of his thumb and index finger, then moved it across the title as he said, “My Fight for Freedom, by ‘Colonel Ferrara.’ In quotation marks, of course, and no first name, because it’s a nom de guerre, which makes for a rather tasty dust jacket, don’t you think? You get to buy a book by a fellow who must keep his real identity a secret, has to use an alias. Why? Because tomorrow, when he finishes writing, he goes back to war, against Mussolini, or Hitler, in Roumania, or Portugal, or little Estonia—who knows where it might break out next. So we feel, my friends and I, that here is a book which should see the light of day. Now, how does this sound to you. Can it be done?”

  “I would think so,” Weisz said, his voice as neutral as he could possibly make it.

  “Only one problem, as far as we can see. This Colonel Ferrara, a gifted army officer, can do many things, but one thing he can’t do is write books.”

  “Les poireaux,” the waiter said, sliding a plate of leeks onto the table. It was no more than a momentary flicker of the eyes, as Mr. Brown regarded the plate, but it revealed to Weisz that Mr. Brown didn’t actually like steamed leeks, probably didn’t like veal kidneys, maybe didn’t like French food, or the French, or France.

  “So then,” Brown said, “what we thought is that maybe the journalist Carlo Weisz could help us out in this area.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “Oh yes it is.”

  “I have too much work, Mr. Brown. Really, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.”

  “I’d wager you can. A thousand pounds, I’d wager.”

  That was a great deal of money, but the cost of it! “Sorry,” Weisz said.

  “Are you sure? Because I can see that you haven’t thought this over, you haven’t seen all the possibilities, all the benefits. It would be a chance, certainly, to enhance your repuation. Your name won’t be on the book, but your bureau chief, what’s-his-name, Delahanty, would know about it. Likely he’d see it as patriotism, on your part, to take a hand in the fight against Britain’s enemies. Wouldn’t he? I know Sir Roderick would.”

  This thrust went home. We’ll tell your boss, if you don’t do what we want. Sir Roderick Jones was the managing director of the Reuters bureau—a famous tyrant, a holy terror. Wore the school ties of schools he’d never attended, implied service in regiments he was too short to have joined. At night, when his chauffeured Rolls-Royce took him home from the office, an employee was sent out to jump on a rubber pad in the street, which, as the car approached, turned the traffic light to green. And he was said to have berated a servant for not ironing his shoelaces.

  “How do you know he would?” Weisz said.

  “Oh, he’s a friend of a friend,” Brown said. “Eccentric, sometimes, but his heart’s in the right place. Especially when it’s a matter of patriotism.”

  “I don’t know,” Weisz said, searching for some way out. “If Colonel Ferrara is all the way down in Gascony…”

  “Good heavens no! He’s not in Gascony, he’s right here, in Paris, up on the rue de Tournon. So, now that that’s out of our way, will you, at least, think it over?”

  Weisz nodded.

  “Good,” Brown said. “Better
to consider these sorts of things, take some time, see how the wind blows.”

  “I’ll think it over,” Weisz said.

  “You do that, Mr. Weisz. Take your time. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  By nine-thirty, Carlo Weisz wasn’t ready to jump into the Seine, but he did want to look at it. Brown had made a fast exit from the restaurant, tossing franc notes on the table, more than enough to pay for both dinners, sparing himself the veal kidney, and leaving Henri to gaze anxiously out the door as he went down the street. Weisz didn’t dawdle, paid for his own dinner, and left a few minutes later. So, for the waiter, a gratuity to be remembered.

  There was no going back to the Dauphine, not just then. Weisz walked and walked, down to the river and onto the Pont d’Arcole, the Notre Dame cathedral looming up behind him, a vast shadow in the rain. All his life he’d gazed at rivers, from London’s Thames to Budapest’s Danube, with the Arno, the Tiber, and the Grand Canal of Venice in between, but the Seine was queen of the poetic rivers, to Weisz it was. Restless and melancholy, or soft and slow, depending on the mood of the river, or his. That night it was black, dappled with rain, and running high in its banks, just beneath the lower quay. What shall I do? he wondered, leaning on a parapet made for leaning, staring at the river as though it would answer. Why not try running down to the sea? Suits me.

  But that he couldn’t do. He didn’t like being trapped, but he was. Trapped in Paris, trapped in a good job—all the world should be so trapped! But add Mr. Brown’s trap and the equation changed. What would he do if they booted him out of Reuters? He would not soon find another Delahanty, who liked him, who protected him, who had fashioned a job particularly for his abilities. In his mind, he went down the list of little jobs the giellisti had managed to acquire. Not a good list—a place to go in the morning, a little money, not much more. And, he feared, a life sentence. Hitler wasn’t going to fall anytime soon, history was ripe with forty-year dictatorships, and that made him a free man at last, at the age of eighty-one. Time to begin anew!

  Perhaps he could delay the project, he thought, say yes but mean no, then disentangle himself in some clever way. But if Brown had the power to get him fired, he might also have the power to have him expelled. Weisz had to face that possibility. In the morning light, Zanzibar was not so grim as he’d feared. Or worse, the letter to Christa—a change of plans, my love. No, no, impossible, he had to survive, to stay where he was. And then, despite the cold ironic twist in Brown’s soul, such a project might in truth be good for the sorry world out there, might inspire other Colonel Ferraras to take arms against the devil. Was it, really, so different from the work he did with Liberazione?