With a camera slung around his neck, dark glasses on his nose, and a preposterous hat shielding his head from the Mediterranean sun, Goldfarb hoped he looked like a man on holiday. He walked along the hilly streets of Marseille, peering down at a city map to make sure he didn’t get lost.
When he found the synagogue on Rue Breteuil, he grimaced. Rank weeds grew in front of the building. The boards nailed across the door had been in place long enough to grow grainy and pale, except for the streaks of rust trailing down from the nailheads. More boards kept men without better homes from climbing through the windows. Vandals-or, for all David knew, Nazi officials- had painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on the bricks of the front wall.
Passersby gave Goldfarb curious looks as he kicked his way through the weeds toward the back of the synagogue. He ignored them. Not least because he proceeded as if he had every right to be doing as he did, the passersby stopped paying attention to him almost at once. In the Greater German Reich, no one questioned a man who acted as if he had the right to do what he was doing. Basil Roundbush had told him it would be so, and it was.
Other buildings huddled close on either side of the synagogue. In their shadows, the weeds did not flourish quite so much. Behind the closed and desecrated shrine, though, they grew even more vigorously than in front, growing almost as tall as a man. Anything or anyone might be lurking there. Goldfarb wished for a pistol. Softly, he called, “Dutourd?” For good measure, he tacked on an interrogative cough.
The weeds stirred. “I am here,” a man answered in the language of the Race. He did have a pistol, and pointed it at Goldfarb. Under his beret, his sad-eyed face was nervous. “Did anyone follow you here? Anyone at all? Germans? Males of the Race? Were you careful?”
“I think so,” Goldfarb answered. “I am not a spy. I am a soldier, and not so used to sneaking here and there.”
“Then you may well die before your time,” Pierre Dutourd remarked. He took from his belt a gadget probably of Lizard manufacture. After glancing at it, he relaxed a little. “I do not detect any electronics planted in or aimed at this place. That means-I hope that means-no one is listening to us. Very well, then-say your say.” Even speaking the Lizards’ language, Dutourd sounded like a Frenchman.
“Good,” Goldfarb said, though he wasn’t sure how good it was. “My friends back in Britain want to see if they can return you to doing business for yourself. They do not think you should have to subordinate yourself to the Reich.” The Race’s language was made for distinguishing subtle gradations of status. The relationship Goldfarb described was one of menial to master.
Dutourd caught the shade of meaning and grimaced at it. “They do not treat me quite so badly as that,” he said, then paused and shook his head. “They say they will not treat me so badly as that. Whether it proves true remains to be seen.”
“Anyone who trusts the Germans-” Goldfarb began.
“Trust them? Do I look like such a fool as that?” Pierre Dutourd sounded offended. “But I did and do trust the Race to kill me if I did not have the Reich protecting me. And so…” He shrugged. Still aiming the pistol in David’s general direction, he pointed with his free hand. “What can your English friends do to keep me going without the Germans and without getting myself killed?”
Goldfarb would have asked exactly that question had he worn Dutourd’s shoes. It was a question for which he had no good answer. He did his best to disguise that, saying, “They will do whatever proves necessary to keep you afloat.”
Dutourd’s lip curled. “As the Royal Navy did at Oran, when your ships opened fire on and sank so many of the ships of France? Why should I trust Englishmen? With the Germans and with the Race, one is always sure of what one gets. With the English, who can say? I sometimes think you do not know that yourselves.”
“We can give you money,” Goldfarb said. “We also have good connections with the Lizards. They can help take the pressure off you.”
“A likely story,” Dutourd said, unconvinced. “Next you will tell me of a tunnel from London to Marseille, so the Germans will not be able to tell what ginger you bring me. If these are the best stories you can tell, better you should go back to England.”
“These are not just stories,” Goldfarb said. Miserable frog, he thought. He’s lived under the Nazis so long, he’s used to it. Aloud, he went on, “My cousin in Jerusalem is Moishe Russie, of whom you may have heard. Did Monique tell you that?”
“Yes, she told me. And my cousin is Marie Antoinette, of whom you may have heard,” Dutourd answered. “More lies. Nothing else.”
Goldfarb pulled out his wallet and displayed a picture he carried in it. “Here is a photograph of Cousin Moishe and me. I should very much like to see a photograph of you and Cousin Marie.”
Pierre Dutourd bared his teeth in something close to a smile. “I must say that I have not got one with me. If you are a liar, you are a thoroughgoing liar. I know of this Moishe Russie, as who with a hearing diaphragm”-using the Lizards’ language could produce some odd images-“does not? I am surprised to find his cousin, if you are his cousin, working with the ginger smugglers, I must also say.”
“Why?” Goldfarb asked. “If you think I love the Race, you are mistaken. My empire might have beaten Hitler. Thanks to the Race, that did not happen. And Britain is not a friendly home for Jews any more.”
“It could be,” Dutourd said, “that you are telling the truth after all. Whether this matters in the slightest, however, remains to be seen.”
“How can I do more to convince you?” Goldfarb asked, though he had already come closer to convincing the Frenchman than he’d thought he would.
“By showing me that-” The ginger smuggler abruptly broke off, for the device on his belt let out a warning hiss. With surprising speed and silence, he disappeared back into the weeds.
That left David Goldfarb out in the open by himself as he listened to someone crunching through the plants by the side of the synagogue as he had done. He wished for a pistol more than ever. His hand darted into his pocket. It closed on the best single protection he did have: his British passport. Against certain kinds of danger, it was sovereign. Against others, though…
“Jesus!” a woman said in American English, “why in hell would anybody want to set up a meeting in this goddamn place?”
A man laughed hoarsely. “You just covered the waterfront there, Penny,” he said, pausing for breath every few words. “But I don’t reckon the Jews’d reckon you got ’em wet once.”
“Am I supposed to care?” the woman-Penny-asked. “The tracer gadget says that Frenchman’s in there, so we’ve got to keep going.”
“You’ll get yourself killed if you charge ahead like that,” the man remarked. His accent, while still from the other side of the Atlantic, was different from Penny’s. “Let me get out in front of you.”
He came out from around the corner with a soldier’s caution-and with a pistol in his hand. None of that would have kept Dutourd from spotting him, as David Goldfarb knew very well. Before any fireworks started, Goldfarb said, “Good day, there. Lovely weather we’re having, eh?”
“You must be the limey. We’ve heard something about you.” The man leaned on a stick, but the gun in his other hand remained very steady. “Don’t tell me you don’t have that Frenchman around here somewhere.”
The woman, a brassy blond, came into sight behind him. She also carried a pistol. Goldfarb didn’t think either of their weapons would do them much good if Pierre Dutourd opened up: he’d be able to get off at least a couple of shots before they realized just where he was.