The wall was covered with it. Phrases in cyrillic Russian, in Polish, what might have been Armenian. There was Annamese, and Arabic. Faces front and profile. Crosses. Hearts—with initials and arrows. Cocks and cunts, with curly hairs. Somebody loved Marguerite—in 1921, somebody else Martine. This one wrote Au revoir, Maman. And that one—a tall one, Casson had to stand on his toes—was going to die in the morning for freedom.
When he heard a deep rumbling sound, he thought for a moment that the RAF was attacking the factory districts at the edge of the city. And under cover of the bombing, said Wing Commander Smith-Wilson, our commando team will attack the Gestapo office on the rue des Saussaies and rescue our valiant agent from his basement prison. But it wasn’t bombing, it was thunder. Rain pattering down in a courtyard above him somewhere. A spring rainstorm, nothing more.
“One thing I will tell you.” A deep voice, from a cell some way up the corridor. Good, educated French, the melancholy tone of the intellectual. Not exactly a whisper, but the voice low and private, confidential. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you injured?”
“No.”
“Then I will tell you one thing: sooner or later, everyone talks. And it’s easier on you if it’s sooner.”
He waited, heart pounding, but that was all.
There was no bed, he sat on the stone floor, back against the damp wall. The last Métro train faded away, the hours passed. Perhaps he could have hidden with the baroness, but then, not finding him, they would have searched the building. They had, no doubt, searched his apartment, but there was nothing for them to find there. Now, what remained was a final scene, he’d manage it as well as he could. The post in the courtyard, the blindfold. Farewell, my love.
What worried him came before that—“sooner or later everyone talks.” I don’t want to tell them, he thought. But he had no choice, and he knew it.
They came for him an hour later.
A functionary, and his helper, an SS corporal in a black uniform. The functionary was a small man in his twenties, wearing a mole-colored suit with broad lapels. Hair parted in the middle; weak, sulky mouth. He said to the corporal, “Unlock this door.” Disdainful, chin in the air—you see, I run things around here. Casson stood, they walked on either side of him, down the corridor, then up long flights of stairs.
Somebody’s son, Casson thought. A high official in the Nazi party— what shall we do with poor X? Well, this is what they’d done with him. They reached the top floor, Casson had been here before, for his meetings with Guske. All around him, office life: people talking and laughing and rushing about with papers in their hands. Typewriters racketing, telephones ringing. Of course, he thought, the Gestapo worked a night shift just like the police. A clock on the wall said 3:20. They took him to Guske’s office, made him stand against a wall at attention. “Could I have some water?” he said. He had a terrible, burning thirst—was that something they were doing to him on purpose?
“Nothing for you,” said the functionary. He picked up the phone, dialed two digits. A moment later: “We have him ready for you now, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”
Guske arrived a few minutes later, all business and very angry. He gave Casson a savage glare—very much the honest fellow betrayed by his own good nature. Well, they’d see about that. He was dressed for an important evening; dark suit and tie, cologne, sparse hair carefully arranged for maximum effect. On his pocket, a decoration—swastika and ribbon. To Casson’s guards he said “Get out,” in a voice only just under control. Then paced the office until a heavy woman in SS uniform rushed in with a file. Guske took it from her and slammed it on his desk, and she ran out of the office.
Guske walked slowly over to him and stood there. Casson looked away. Guske drew his hand back and slapped him in the face as hard as he could, the sound was a crack like a pistol shot. Casson’s face was hot, and tears stood in the corners of his eyes.
“It’s nothing,” Guske said. “Just so we understand each other.” He went back to his desk and settled in, still breathing hard. He thumbed through the file for a moment but he really didn’t have his concentration back. He looked up at Casson. “I’m the stupid one. I gave you my hand in friendship, and you turned around and gave me the Dolchstoss—the stab in the back. So, good, now it’s clear between us and we’ll go on from there. And, when I’m finished with you, Millau gets what’s left.” He sniffed, turned one page, then another. “The trouble is, we have not come to a true understanding of this country. The Mediterranean type is unfamiliar to us—it does not hesitate to lie, because, the way it sees the world, honor means nothing. But then, when it thinks nobody is looking, it runs out of its burrow, where it hides, and gives somebody a vicious little bite.”
Guske read a note pinned to the inside cover of the dossier. “What is HERON? Code for what?”
“I don’t know.”
Guske’s face was mottled with anger. “And who is Laurent?”
Casson shook his head.
Guske stared at him. Casson heard the typewriters and the telephones, voices and footsteps. The rain outside the window. It seemed very normal. “I need,” Casson said, “to use the bathroom.”
Guske thought about it for a moment, then opened the door and called out, “Werner, come and take him down the hall.”
The functionary came on the run. Took him past offices, a long way it seemed. Around a corner. Then to an unmarked door, which he opened, saying “Be quick about it.” He closed the door. Casson stood in front of a urinal.
On the wall above the sink, a window. Gray, frosted glass. Probably barred, but not so Casson could see. But then, he thought, why would they have bars? This is the Interior Ministry. The top floor. For the French, the most important people would be housed on the second floor. In former times, the top floor would have served the Ministry’s minor bureaucrats—what would they want with bars in a bathroom? Casson walked to the sink and turned it on, drank some water, put his hand on the glass of the window. Top floor, he thought, six stories down to a courtyard.
You’ll die.
But then, what did that matter? Better now, he thought, before they go to work on me.
“Just a minute.”
He put his index fingers under the two handles and very gently pushed up. Nothing. Locked. He could back up to the door, take a run, and jump through it, smashing the glass, tumbling six stories to the courtyard below. He pushed harder, the window moved. Opened an inch. The night air rushed in, it was black outside, and pouring rain.
Lower the window. Go back to Guske’s office. Explain everything to him. Try to talk your way out of it—crawl, do whatever you have to do.
He listened, held his breath. Against the background hum of office business he could just make out Werner’s voice. It spoke German, but Casson could easily understand the tone of it. He was explaining something—he was being important. Casson raised the window, perhaps a foot. A damp, sweet wind blew in on him and he could hear distant thunder, a storm up the Seine somewhere, the sound rolling down across the wheatfields into Paris.
He put one knee on the edge of the sink, pulled himself through the window, then froze, terrified, unable to move. The night swirled around him, the courtyard a thousand feet below, the wet cobblestone gleaming in the faint spill of light from blacked-out windows. He forced himself to look around: the window was set out a little from the slanted plane of the roof, slate tile angled sharply up to the peak— copper sheathing turned green with age. To the left: a cascade of white, foamy water. He followed it, found an ancient lead gutter, eaten through by time and corrosion, water pouring through the hole, spilling off the edge of the roof and splashing into the courtyard below.