Free Red Gold by Alan Furst Page B

makeup. “But then she takes her clothes off,” he’d once told Leon, “and you faint.”
    “You fainted?”
    “I should’ve.”
    “What did she look like?”
    “Hey, don’t pry.”
    He finished the sandwich, it was too late now for her to make it back home before curfew. They talked a little, but they couldn’t wait. She blew out the candle, stood, and undressed. A goddess, he thought. Hips swelling from a narrow waist, full breasts, long sweeps of sallow skin. She was careful with her clothing, folded everything into a neat pile, then lay down beside him. They kissed for a while, then he rolled on top of her.
    He shuddered to feel her skin next to his. “Hold me,” she said. “We don’t have to hurry.”
    “No, we don’t.” She excited him too much, he thought. She would encourage him to slow down and enjoy it, rest her warm hands below his shoulder blades, a gentling touch that made it happen even faster.
    “Oh, my glasses,” she said. She took them off, squinted up at him through the darkness. “Put them where they won’t get broken.”
    He reached out, set the glasses down by the wall, just off the edge of the blanket.
    “Mm,” she said.
    “I love you, Eva,” he said.
    “Don’t move,” she whispered. “Just stay in me.”
    SAINT-DENIS. 4 NOVEMBER.
    A cold morning, the sky at dawn blue and black, trails of fiery cloud on the east horizon. The garage in Saint-Denis smelled like hay. After several tries, the engine turned over and Eva started to maneuver out of the narrow entry. Backing up was not something she did well—in fact, she’d only done it once before. Szapera’s cousin Leon stood to one side of the car, waving his arms. Szapera, turned halfway around in the passenger seat, called out directions. “Now to the left. More, he says. No, stop. Stop! ”
    They had less time than they’d thought. Kohn had been late. “A problem at home,” he said sheepishly. Szapera wondered what that meant.
    “Everybody be quiet,” Eva said. “Let me do this by myself.” The car crawled backward. Szapera looked out the rear window. She was off to one side, but made it with inches to spare.
    The courier from Weiss had shown up the night before, a young man in a seaman’s jacket. He’d handed over a fourth weapon, an automatic pistol manufactured in Spain. “Good luck, comrade,” he’d said to Szapera. “Here is something extra from Weiss. Remember, no closer than thirty feet.”
    A hand grenade. Szapera held it tight in his left hand. In his belt was the revolver. He’d given Leon the automatic—none of them was exactly sure how it worked, and Leon, just turned sixteen, with glasses much thicker than Eva’s, probably couldn’t hit anything anyhow.
    Eva had negotiated the garage by backing straight out, blocking traffic in both lanes. Ignoring the furious honking, she made several moves until at last she got the car headed north. She should probably drive with a cushion, Szapera thought, she could barely see over the steering wheel.
    “Can you manage?” he said.
    “Don’t make me nervous.” She shifted from first to third. The car rattled and jerked, then ran smoothly.
    Just outside the town of Aubervilliers, Eva pulled off the road and waited. Kohn was holding a pocket watch. “7:22,” he said. Szapera had a school friend—a redhead who looked more Irish than Jewish—who worked as a clerk at one of the offices of the Banque de France in Paris. Twice a week, an armored car left the bank with bundles of occupation money, which it took to a Wehrmacht office at an army barracks near Aubervilliers. Szapera had ridden his bicycle out there, observed the armored car going through the gates, and established the time of delivery. He went out again a week later to make sure he had it right. Stalin had robbed banks in Baku to finance underground work, Szapera meant to follow his example. He had proposed the idea to Weiss, who resisted at first, then, in early October, changed his