He let Versol go on for a time, as he always did, until the lawyer felt honor had been satisfied and he could hang up.
Casson looked at his watch again. Almost five. He lifted the top from a fancy yellow box, unfolded the tissue paper, studied the tie he’d bought on the boulevard earlier that day. Navy blue with a beige stripe, very austere and conservative. Just the thing, he hoped, for the “important people” who had inspired that strange little note in Altmann’s voice. Probably it wouldn’t matter at all, it would simply mean he had done the best he could.
On the way home, between the La Muette Métro and the rue Chardin, he stopped at the busy café where they saw him every morning. He leaned on the copper-covered bar and drank a coffee. “I may get a postcard here,” he confided to the proprietor. “It’s from somebody—you understand. I’d rather my wife didn’t see it.”
The proprietor smiled, rubbing a glass with a bar towel. “I understand, monsieur. You may depend on me.”
8:40 P.M.
The Brasserie Heininger, throbbing with Parisian life on a Friday night. Once past the blackout curtains: polished wood, golden light, waiters in fancy whiskers and green aprons. Very fin-de-siècle, Casson thought. Fin-de-something, anyhow.
Papa Heininger, the fabled proprietor, greeted him at the door, then passed him along to the mâitre d’. The man said good evening with a certain subtle approval, more to do with what he wasn’t than what he was—he wasn’t Romanian, wasn’t wearing a bright-blue suit, wasn’t a coal merchant or a black-market dealer or a pimp.
“Monsieur Altmann’s table, please.”
A polite nod. A German, true, but a German executive. Not so bad, for that spring. Party of four, all men, thus ashes on the tablecloth but at least a vigorous attack on the wine list. “That will be table fourteen, monsieur. This way, please.”
Not the best table but certainly the most requested: a small hole in the mirror where an assassin had fired a submachine gun the night the Bulgarian headwaiter was murdered in the ladies’ WC. The table where an aristocratic Englishwoman had once recruited Russian spies. The table where, only a few nights earlier, the companion of a German naval officer had been shooting peas at other diners, using a rolled-up carte des vins as a blowpipe.
The three men at the table rose, Altmann made the introductions. Clearly they’d been there for a while, most of the way through a bottle of champagne. Herr Schepper—something like that—gestured to the waiter for another to be brought. He had fine white hair and a fine face, a pink shave and shining eyes. One of a class of men, Casson thought, who are given money all their lives because people don’t really know what else to do with them. This one was, if Casson understood Altmann correctly, a very senior something at UFA, the Continental Film parent company in Berlin.
The other man waited his turn, then smiled as he was introduced. They shook hands, shared a brief reniflement—the term came from the world of dogs, where it meant a mutual sniff on first meeting—then settled back down at the table. Herr Franz Millau. Something in the way Altmann articulated the name enabled Casson to hear it perfectly.
He was—nobody exactly said. Perhaps he was “our friend” or “my associate” or one of those. Not a particularly impressive exterior. High domed forehead; sandy hair. An old thirty-five or a young forty-five. Eyeglasses in thin silver frames, lawyer eyeglasses, worn in a way that suggested he only took them off before he went to sleep. And a small, predatory mouth, prominent against a fair complexion that made his lips seem brightly colored. He was not unpleasant in any way Casson could put a name to, so, what was wrong with him? Perhaps, Casson thought, it was a certain gap, between an unremarkable presence, and, just below, a glittering and pungent arrogance that radiated from him like the noonday sun. Herr Millau was powerful, and believed it was in the natural order of things that he should be.
Herr Schepper did not speak French. That kept them busy, with Altmann as translator, discovering that he loved Paris, had attended the opera, was fond of Monet, liked pâté de foie gras. A fresh bottle of Veuve Clicquot arrived, and, a moment later, an astonishing seafood platter. Everyone said ah. A masterpiece on a huge silver tray: every kind of clam and oyster, cockle and mussel, whelk and crayfish—Judgment Day on the ocean floor. “Bon appétit!” the waiter cried out.
One small complication.
Altmann and Schepper had to go on to a certain club in a distant arrondissement, where they were to have a late supper with a banker. Schepper said something in German. “He says,” Altmann translated, “ ‘you must take good care of the people with the money.’ ” Schepper nodded to help make the point.
“That’s certainly true,” Casson said.
“Well then,” Millau said, “you two should be going. Perhaps Monsieur Casson will be kind enough to keep me company while I eat my supper.”
Merde. But everybody else seemed to agree that this was the perfect solution, and Casson was effectively trapped. A glass of champagne, a few creatures from the sea, some additional travelogue from Herr Schepper, then everybody stood up to shake hands and begin the complicated business of departure.
At which moment, from the corner of his eye, Casson spotted Bruno. A party of six or seven swept past like ships in the night, Casson had only a blurred impression. Some German uniforms, a cloud of perfume, a woman laughing at something that wasn’t funny, and, in the middle of it—Bruno in a silk tie and blinding white shirt, a young woman— blonde, green-eyed—on his arm. Their eyes met, Bruno winked. Good to see you getting about with the right people, at last—glad you’ve seen the light. Then they went around the corner of a wall of banquettes and disappeared.
Altmann and Schepper left.
“Friend of yours?” Millau said.
“Acquaintance.”
“Some more champagne?”
“Thank you. How do you come to speak French like that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“No, I don’t mind. As a youngster I lived in Alsace—you know, un, deux, trois, vier, fünf.”
Casson laughed politely.
“That’s the way to learn a language, as a child,” Millau said.
“That’s what they say.”
“What about you, Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
“No, not at all.”
“Maybe some English, then?”
“A little. I can get along in a commercial situation if everybody slows down.”
Millau took a heavy black cigar from his pocket, stripped off the band and the cellophane. “Perhaps you’d care to join me.”
“No, thank you.”
Millau took his time lighting up, made the match flame jump up and down, at last blew out a stream of smoke, strong, but not unpleasant. He shook his head. “I like these things too much.”
Casson lit a Gauloise.
Millau leaned on the table, spoke in a confidential tone. “Let me begin by telling you that I’m an intelligence officer,” he said. “Reasonably senior, here in Paris.”
“I see,” Casson said.
“Yes. I work for the Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, in the counterespionage office up on the avenue Foch. We started out as the SS foreign service, and in a sense we still are that, though success has brought us some broader responsibility.”
Millau paused, Casson indicated he understood what had been said.
“We’ve been getting to know you for a few months, Monsieur Casson, keeping an eye on you, and so forth, to see who we were dealing with.”
Casson laughed nervously.
“Ach, the way people are! I assure you, we can’t be surprised or offended by all these little sins, the same thing, over and over. We’re like priests, or doctors.”