Blood of Victory Page 16

  Serebin shook his head and smiled.

  As the door closed behind them, Valentina turned the corner at the end of the alley. Serebin left the alcove and met her halfway. She was wearing an old fur coat, and a wool muffler as a head scarf.

  “Valentina,” he said.

  She peered at him, then seemed startled when she figured out who he was. “Oh, it’s you.”

  He offered her the bouquet.

  “What’s this?”

  “Can we get out of the snow?”

  The building across the alley from the club had a matching alcove and there was just enough room for them to stand facing each other.

  “I had to have a reason to wait here,” Serebin said.

  Relieved, Valentina said, “Oh,” and took the flowers from him. “You surprised me,” she said. “Anyhow, thank you. They’re beautiful.” Then, “What are you doing here? The hotel operator said you’d left.”

  “We did. But we got your note.”

  “It’s Gulian,” she said. “He wanted to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, to offer his services.”

  “To do what?”

  “Maniu talked to him, before he had to leave. He thinks you’re here to work against the fascists. He’s wrong?”

  “No. Where is he?”

  “Home. He’ll be along later, but you shouldn’t wait.”

  “I can.”

  “No, don’t. Something’s going on. There was a murder, earlier today. A German major was sitting in a café and a man walked up to him and shot him dead. The man was arrested, a former boxing champion, called Axiotti.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “Maybe provocation. It’s the Legion—don’t try to understand, just get off the street.”

  “What about you?”

  “I have to be here.” She looked at him for a moment, then said, “Well, that’s how it is.”

  “Can I contact Gulian?”

  “Do you have something to write with?”

  Serebin found a pencil and gave it to her. She tore a corner off the gold paper on the bouquet and began writing. “I give you his home and his office. But please, be careful.”

  “Why is he doing this?”

  “He hates them. Since ’33, when Hitler took over. Hates what they’ve done to the Jews, what they’ve done to Europe. It’s just the way he is.”

  She handed him the scrap of paper. She’d written two addresses and two telephone numbers. No name.

  “Can you read it?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “All right, good. Go with God.” She kissed him on the cheek and walked quickly across the alley to the door of the nightclub.

  Serebin needed the Number Six tram to reach his apartment. He walked north until he found a boulevard, then east to a tram stop—a bench on an island in the middle of a broad avenue. A small crowd of men waited impatiently, stamping their feet to keep warm, peering down the track into the snow. Serebin stood next to a tall, spindly man with professorial briefcase and umbrella. A narrow face, ascetic and prim. The professor, he thought. A conjecture supported, perhaps, by the fact that the man spoke reasonably good French.

  “Waiting a long time?” Serebin said.

  “Almost an hour,” the man said. “It’s later than usual, tonight.” He took an apple from his briefcase and began to eat it. Somewhere in the distance a bell rang. Once. A church bell, Serebin thought, its voice deep and heavy as the echo faded away.

  “Did you hear that?” Serebin said.

  The professor chewed his apple for a moment, then swallowed. “Excuse me,” he said. “It’s called the Great Black Bell.”

  “A church bell?”

  “Yes. The church is occupied by the Legion, and one ring means that one legionnaire has died in battle.” He ate another bite of his apple. “A huge bell,” he said, “it takes twenty-nine men to make it ring.”

  A man standing nearby said, “They must be fighting.”

  “Somebody said they were. This afternoon, in Vacaresti.”

  “Oh.”

  “Where is that?” Serebin said.

  “The south end of the city,” the professor said.

  Looking down the track, Serebin thought he saw the dim glow of a light. Somebody said, “Here it comes.”

  The light grew brighter, and Serebin could hear the motor.

  “It’s about time.”

  On the other side of the boulevard, a figure appeared from the shadow of the buildings, walking quickly, almost running, toward the tram stop. He paused to let a car go by, its wheels sliding in the snow as it passed, then crossed the street. An older man, with a full beard, and the broad-brimmed hat and tight leggings worn by Orthodox Jews. He was breathing hard, and his face was white. He stood at one end of the island, pressed a hand to his side, then examined it, squinting as though he had lost his glasses.

  The tram approached going full speed, swaying around a curve, its bell ringing wildly. Serebin stepped back from the track as it rushed past, half empty, to angry shouts and curses from the crowd.

  Serebin watched it disappear. “Maybe there’s another one.”

  Some of the men began to leave.

  “Doubtful,” the professor said.

  “Are you far from home?”

  “Far enough.”

  Serebin looked around for the bearded man, but he was gone. “I guess we’ll have to walk,” he said.

  They set out together, following the tram track in the middle of the boulevard. “Where do you live?” the professor said.

  “Out this way. About a mile or so.”

  “My wife will be frantic,” the professor said.

  “Can you telephone? From a café, perhaps.”

  “I tried earlier, but the phones aren’t working.”

  They trudged along in silence. The snow was well over the tops of Serebin’s shoes and his socks were wet and cold against his skin. All along the boulevard, people were walking home—apparently the city’s buses and trams had stopped running. Sometimes a car passed, very slowly, its hood and roof capped with snow. The amber light of a café appeared in the darkness, but the owner was closing up for the night. “Sorry, gentlemen,” he said.

  A block further on, Serebin stopped. “Is that, singing?” They were men’s voices, a lot of them, strong and confident.

  The professor muttered something that Serebin didn’t hear, sped up for a moment, then began to run. Serebin ran after him, saw that he was headed for the cover of the buildings. Christ, he’s fast. The professor ran with stiff back and long strides, snow flying in his wake. He pumped his arms, briefcase in one hand, furled umbrella in the other, his hat bobbing precariously on his head, finally tumbling off. They were both breathing hard when they reached the brick wall of an apartment house.

  “My hat.”

  “Leave it.”

  He was infuriated, could see the hat lying forlorn in the street, was barely able to keep himself from retrieving it.

  Across the boulevard, some fifty or sixty men, marching in formation with rifles held across their bodies. They sang well, Serebin thought, liked doing it and were good at it.

  The song stopped. Replaced by the throb of a heavy engine and clanking treads. The reaction was immediate; frantic, chaotic. And, Serebin thought, comic—the Men’s Chorus of the Iron Guard run for their lives. The riflemen broke ranks and fled into a narrow street off the boulevard. But not quick enough—the tank jolted to a halt and the turret traversed as the cannon tracked the running shadows. The professor said, “My God.” Serebin threw himself on the snow. A long flame lit the street, and the flat crump deepened as it rolled back to them off the sides of the buildings.

  Serebin shouted, “Get down.”

  The professor wasn’t so sure. He wore a good tweed overcoat, there would be hell to pay if he ruined it. Compromise: he dropped to one knee and rested the briefcase by his side.

  In silhouette, the hatch on the top of the turret was flung o
pen and a man with a submachine gun began to work the street, the flare at the barrel flickering on and off with each burst. The cannon shell had meant nothing, zooming away into an unlucky wall, but now the legionnaires were in trouble, and pinpricks of light sparkled from the doorways. Serebin heard it, the air ripped like cloth above his head and he burrowed into the snow as a sliver of brick stung him on the neck and flew away.

  Suddenly, the machine gun went silent. Serebin looked up and saw only darkness above the open hatch. The cannon fired again, and again, right and left, broken glass showered down from the windows and a shop began to glow with orange light.

  The rifle fire from the legionnaires thinned, then stopped. Serebin managed to get himself turned around so that he could see the professor. He lay on his back, one leg folded beneath itself. Serebin slid closer, but there was nothing he could do. The man had a red hole beneath one eye, the other stared up at the falling snow.

  Why wouldn’t you lie down?

  Serebin heard the tank move off down the boulevard and, very slowly, got to his feet. The man’s arm had jerked savagely when he’d been hit and his briefcase had come open and stood on end. Inside, there was only a newspaper.

  All night long the Black Bell rang as Serebin worked his way across the city, the smell of burning stronger and stronger as the hours passed. At one point, the air-raid sirens went off, whining up and down for an hour. He walked, mostly, sometimes ran, and crawled when he had to. Once down a street where the twelve-story telephone exchange faced an eight-story apartment building, the former occupied by the Legion, the latter by the army and police. In between, the bodies of three legionnaires who’d tried to rush the army position. He waited as they fought, exchanging fire window to window, the ricochets singing off into the night, then circled through a park where two soldiers were carrying a third to a taxi with a red cross painted on its side. He was not alone, he saw others, caught out in the storm, bent low, running from cover to cover, trying to go home.

  There was no sunrise. The street simply turned gray, the low sky heavy with winter cloud. He was then at a large square, the piata Obor, and not far from the apartment. He started to cross, then thought better of it and slid beneath a car. The square was held by men wearing the green armbands of the Legion. They had a Model A Ford pickup with a machine gun mounted on a tripod, and had built a barricade of overturned cars and buses, dressers, desks, and beds, across one end of the square. Two of the men sat on a red couch.

  Which way to go? Back out, try another street. He was almost finished, he thought, exhausted and soaked and cold, and he had to wait for a minute and gather his strength.

  Before he could leave, the barricade was smashed open by a huge tank with a swastika on its side. The tank was followed by an armored car, the commander standing behind the driver, a pair of binoculars hanging down the front of his leather coat. He raised his arm and waved it forward, and a motorized Wehrmacht unit advanced into the square and sealed off all but one street.

  The legionnaires thought the Germans had come to help them, and shouted, “Sieg Heil” and “Heil Hitler” and “Duce! Duce!” but the Germans did not respond. When the square was fully controlled, the commander shouted an order and, after a few moments of shocked silence, the Legion began to leave, walking slowly away down the open street.

  When Serebin finally turned his key in the door, the woman who owned the apartment was sitting in her bathrobe, listening to the radio. She leapt up, a hand pressed to her heart, threw her arms around him and wept. When he’d put on dry clothes, she told him the news. The Legion had held the city all night, had murdered hundreds of Jews, at the Straulesti abattoir and in the Jilava forest, and looted and burned the Jewish quarter. Then, at dawn, Antonescu’s forces, supported by German units, had beaten them back; had retaken the radio station, the palace, the railyards—all of Bucharest.

  “It’s over,” she said. “The Legion is finished. I cannot believe my own words, but, for this night at least, thank heaven for Adolf Hitler.”

  At nightfall on 22 January, Serebin took a train to Giurgiu and crossed the river into Bulgaria.

  POLANYI’S ORCHESTRA

  IN BULGARIA, they called Russia Uncle Ivan and he was their favorite uncle, because he’d rescued their Slavic souls from the Ottoman devil in 1878 and they never forgot it. So the French journalist who boarded the Danube ferry in Roumania became, when he reached the Bulgarian port of Ruse, the Russian émigré I. A. Serebin, who, glancing back toward the far shore with evident distaste, earned from the customs officer a fraternal slap on the back.

  They were pleased to see him, at the border post, where they’d had a steady stream of Roumanian refugees all night long and didn’t really know what to do with them. “A writer?” the officer said, looking at his papers. “You ought to go up to Svistov.” Where, it was explained, they had a museum dedicated to the memory of the assassinated poet Konstantinov, his pierced heart exhibited in a glass box. “It will inspire you,” they said.

  There was not a room to be had anywhere in Ruse but, for one of Uncle Ivan’s wandering lads, a nearby hotel had a bowl of soup, an army blanket, and a couch in the lobby where he was guarded the long night through by the hotel dog. In the morning, he wired Helikon Trading and received his answer poste restante by the end of the day. Arriving Central Station Edirne 17:25 on 24 January.

  Serebin spent a long day with the Bulgarian railroad, crossed into Turkey, walked around Edirne for an hour, and entered the railway station waiting room just after five, where Polanyi’s assistant Ibrahim found him and took him off to a caravansary hotel by the Old Mosque.

  Polanyi had taken care to make things nice for his returning warrior. There was a crackling blaze in the fireplace, a plate of things on toasted flatbread, a bottle of Polish vodka. Serebin was surprised at the depth of gratitude he felt. “Welcome home,” Polanyi said. “How bad was it?”

  Bad enough. Serebin described his time in Bucharest, Polanyi listened carefully and, now and then, took notes. “It’s no surprise,” he said, rising to put a fresh log on the fire. “We thought they would support Antonescu. It’s basic German policy, they’ve certainly said it often enough. ‘Peace and quiet in the raw material zone.’ Stability is what they want, and they couldn’t care less about Roumanian politics, to them it’s comedy, farce. They want the oil and the wheat, forget the ideology. And no Balkan adventures.”

  “They are there in force,” Serebin said. “Tanks, armored cars, everything.”

  “And more to come, as they get ready to attack Russia.”

  “Will they?”

  “They will. And soon, likely after the spring floods.”

  The prediction wasn’t new. A drift in war conversation since Poland in ’39, and Serebin saw always, when it came up, the same images. A thousand Ukrainian villages, shtetls, peasants, who had no shoes, who, some days, had nothing to eat, nothing. And then the soldiers came, as had Serebin, then the huts and barns burned and the animals died. To Polanyi he could only say, “Poor Russia.”

  “Yes,” Polanyi said. “I know. But the divisions are moving east, in Poland, and, soon, in Roumania. Bulgaria will sign up with Hitler—Czar Boris will, at any rate—and he already has Hungary, as much as anyone can ever have it, including the Hungarians. Britain has offered to send troops to Greece, but they’ve refused. For the moment. Right now, they think they can chase the Italian army all the way back to Rome, but Hitler won’t allow it. By spring, you’ll see the swastika flying over the Acropolis, and southern Europe will be essentially secured.”

  “Except for Yugoslavia.”

  “A thorn in his side. And the Serbs never go quietly.”

  “Will he invade?”

  “Well, he won’t sneak in. Coup d’état, more likely.”

  Polanyi settled back in his chair and took some time to light a cigar. “So, Ilya,” he said, “tell me how you propose to halt oil shipments to Germany and bring an end to this wretched war.” The edge of amusement in his
voice wasn’t subtle—caught in a hopeless cause that couldn’t be abandoned, one had better be amused.

  “Blow up the river,” Serebin said. “Or block it.”

  “How?”

  “Not like the British in '39.”

  “Meaning?”

  “No commandos.”

  “What then?”

  “Plausible accident.”

  “Ten days. Maybe two weeks.”

  “Then another.”

  Polanyi sighed. “Yes, if you can’t attack the fields, you have only the transport system. We’re all agreed about that.”

  “Marrano?”

  “Everybody. My last two people should be out by the end of the week.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Ilya, please.”

  Serebin laughed. “Sorry.” Then he said, “It doesn’t have to be forever, does it?”

  “No. We don’t have to win, we have to play. Slow him down—an inevitable problem with supply. Make him think about timing, with his Russian invasion, wait for the Americans, or maybe he’ll choke on a cauliflower.”

  For a moment, they watched the fire.

  “Who could ever have imagined,” Polanyi said, “that the man who came to burn down the world would be a vegetarian.”

  “We’ll need people in Roumania,” Serebin said.

  “We have them. Just barely, but we do.”

  Serebin didn’t believe it.

  “We didn’t fail in Bucharest,” Polanyi said. “Not quite.”

  Lunch was ordered in the room. Polanyi and Serebin went round and round, what and how and when and back to what. No final conclusion—the gods on Olympus would have to be consulted—but plenty of false trails pursued to the end. What Can’t Be Done, that dreary epic, written this day in the form of notes by Count Janos Polanyi. Eventually, for Serebin, an assignment in Paris, thank God, and, finally, parting gifts. Balkan Sobranies, sugared plums from Balabukhi—just as he’d given Tamara Petrovna—and, for the long ride west, a copy of Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time.