Free Mission to Paris by Alan Furst

petting the barge cats, now and then each other. The barge’s bedroom, partly obscured by a lank curtain, served those who simply had to shed their black sweaters and make love despite the coming storm, or because of it. Two or three of the guests told Stahl he looked familiar, had they met before? Stahl just smiled and said he didn’t think so. What with the long hours at the baroness’s party, he was tired of being the Fredric Stahl and had packed it in for the night.
    Needing some air, he made his way up to the deck, then noticed a young man who’d apparently done the same thing. He was one of those heading east in the morning and when their eyes met Stahl thought he might be close to tears – perhaps he’d sought privacy for that reason. They stood there in silence, then the man spoke. ‘You know, my life hasn’t been too bad, lately,’ he said, voice unsteady. ‘But now those bastards are going to get me killed.’ He shook his head and said, ‘No luck. No luck at all.’ Stahl didn’t answer, there was no answer. He just stared at the silent lights across the river and felt the heavy current in the deck beneath his feet. He had half turned to rejoin the party when there was a white flash that lit the clouds in the eastern sky, followed by a sharp crack of thunder. Maybe. Stahl and the young man looked at each other. Finally Stahl said, ‘I think that’s thunder.’ The young man nodded, yes, probably thunder . Then they went back to the party.
    Stahl and Kiki left sometime around three in the morning – long after the last Métro at eleven-thirty – and set out to walk back to the Seventh, where Kiki had an apartment. There were no taxis, the streets were deserted. They were not far from the apartment when suddenly, out of nowhere, the city’s air-raid sirens began to wail. They stopped dead, listened for the sound of aeroplane engines, and stared up into the rain. ‘Should we do something?’ Stahl said. ‘Go indoors?’
    ‘Where?’ Kiki said.
    The buildings were dark, the shops had their shutters rolled down. ‘I guess we won’t,’ Stahl said. They trudged on, past piles of sand in the streets. Somebody at the party had told them about the sand, delivered throughout the city by sanitation workers, meant to be taken up to the roof and stored there, in case the Germans dropped incendiary bombs. ‘Then,’ the guest said, ‘when a bomb falls on your roof and starts to burn, you use the sand to put out the fire, and you must remember to bring a shovel. But in Paris nobody has a shovel, so maybe a spoon.’
    At last, exhausted and soaked, they reached Kiki’s door, where she kissed him quickly on the lips and went inside. Then it was a long walk back to the Claridge, and after four when he got there. The desk clerk took one look at him and said, ‘I’ll send someone up to get your suit, sir. We’ll press it, it will be as good as new, sir, you’ll see.’ In the room, Stahl took everything off, put on a bathrobe, and waited for the porter. Standing at the window, he searched the sky, but no bombs fell on Paris that night.
    When the telephone woke him at nine, Stahl struggled to sit up and reached for a cigarette. On the other end of the line, an excited Jules Deschelles. ‘All is not lost!’ Deschelles said. ‘Have you seen the papers? Daladier and Chamberlain are going to Munich to meet with Hitler, a last chance for peace.’ Daladier was the Premier of France, Chamberlain the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
    ‘I thought the war would begin today,’ Stahl said.
    ‘Oh no, not yet, there’s still hope. We’ve lost Emile Simon, our director, he’s been called back to Belgium. However, they might let him go, we’ll see. Then some of the crew, grips and electricians, were sent to their units in Alsace – we’ll see about them as well. So, there will be a delay, but don’t book passage, the movie will somehow get made.’
    ‘What will happen to the Czechs?’
    For a moment,