Free The World at Night by Alan Furst

Meuse. The machine-gun duels across the river, the French soldiers running away, the refugees on the roads. It seemed strange to him now, remote, an experience that happened to somebody else, in some other country.
    He shaved, smelled the lotion he used to wear, then put the cap back on the bottle. Went for a walk. Rue des Vignes. Rue Raffet. Paris as it always was—smelly in the heat, deserted in August. He came to the Seine and rested his elbows on the stone wall and stared down into the river—Parisians cured themselves of all sorts of maladies this way. The water was low, the leaves on the poplars parched and pale. Here came a German officer. A plain, stiff man in his mid-thirties, his Wehrmacht belt buckle said Gott Mit Uns, God is with us. Strange God if he is, Casson thought.
    The Métro. Five sous. Line One. Châtelet stop, Samaritaine department store, closed and dead on a Sunday. He would survive this, he thought. They all would, the country would. “Peace with honor,” Pétain had called the surrender. Peace with peace, at any rate, and not to be despised. Just another débâcle, the lost war. And French life had plenty of those. There goes the electricity, the Christmas dinner, the love of one’s life. Merde.
    In the back streets of a deserted commercial district he found a little café open and ordered an express. The price had doubled, the coffee was thin, and the proprietor raised a cautionary eyebrow as he put the cup down —this is how things are, I don’t want to hear about it. Casson didn’t complain. He was lucky to be alive, paying double for a bad coffee was a privilege.
    On the flight south from Sedan he’d been lucky twice. The first time, he was with a company of French infantry, half of them still armed, when they were overtaken by a German column. An officer stood on a tank turret, announced the Panzerkorps had no time to deal with prisoners, and directed them to lay their weapons down on the road. When that was done a tank ran over them a few times and the column went on its way. Others had not been so fortunate—they’d heard about whole divisions packed into boxcars and shipped off to camps in Germany.
    The second time, Casson was alone. Came around the curve of a road outside Châlons to find three Wehrmacht officers on horseback. They stared at him as he walked past—a lone, unarmed soldier in a shabby uniform. Then he heard a laugh, glanced up to see a young man with the look of a mischievous elf, or perhaps, if some small thing annoyed him, a murderous elf. “You halt,” he said. He let Casson stand there a moment, then leaned over, worked his mouth, and spit in his face. His friends found that hilarious. Casson walked away, head down, and waited until he was out of sight before wiping the saliva off.
    So what? he told himself. It didn’t mean anything.
    A woman came into the café and caught his eye. She was tall, had a big, soft face, net stockings, short skirt. Casson stood and gestured at an empty chair. “A coffee?” he said.
    “Sure, why not.”
    The proprietor brought it over and Casson paid.
    “Been out in the country?” she said.
    “You can tell?”
    She nodded. “You have the look. Too many healthy Frenchmen around, all of a sudden.” She took a sip of coffee and scowled at the proprietor but he was busy not noticing her. She snapped her purse open, took out a small mirror, poked at a beauty mark pasted on her cheek. “Care for a fuck?” she said.
    “No, thanks.”
    She closed the mirror and put it back in her purse. “Something complicated, it’ll cost you.”
    “What if I just buy you a sandwich?”
    She shrugged. “If you like, but I hate to see this louse have the business.”
    Casson nodded agreement.
    “Oh, it’s going to get real shitty here,” she sighed. “Before, I was just about managing. Day to day, you know. But now . . .”
    Casson took out a packet of cigarettes and they both lit up. The woman blew a long plume of smoke at the café