Free Blood of Victory by Alan Furst Page A

name. “We will help you,” Polanyi said, “when we think you need it. But Serebin you have always been, and Serebin you must remain.”
    On 5 December, 1940, the Istanbul–Paris train pulled into the Gare de Lyon a little after four in the afternoon. There had been the customary delays—venal border guards at the Yugoslav frontier, a Croatian blizzard, a Bulgarian cow, but the engineer made up time on Mussolini’s well-maintained track between Trieste and the Simplon tunnel and so, in the end, the train was only a few hours late getting into Paris.
    I. A. Serebin, traveling on the French passport issued to the
étranger résident,
paused for a time outside the station. There was snow falling in Paris, not sticking to the street, just blowing around in the gray air, and Serebin spent a moment staring at the sky. The first driver in the line of waiting taxis was watching him.
“Régardez,
Marcel,” he said. “This one’s happy to be home.” Marcel, a lean Alsatian shepherd, made a brief sound in his throat, not quite a bark.
    They were right. Serebin tossed his valise in the back of the cab and climbed in after it. “In the rue Dragon,” he said. “Number twenty-two.” As the driver started the engine, a woman came to the passenger side window. A Parisian housewife, she wore a wool scarf tied over her head and the ubiquitous black coat, and carried a string bag of battered pears and a
baguette
. She broke an end off the bread and offered it to the dog, who took it gently in his mouth, dropped it between his paws, and looked up at the driver before licking the crust. “You are very kind, madame,” the driver said gravely, putting the car in gear.
    He drove off slowly, down a street with a few people on bicycles but no other cars at all. The taxi was a
gazogène,
a tank of natural gas mounted upright in the lidless trunk, its top rising well above the roof. Gasoline was precious to the Germans, and the allocation for occupied countries was only two percent of their use before the war.
    Across the Pont d’Austerlitz, then along the
quai
by the river, low in its walls in winter, the water dark and opaque on a sunless afternoon. For Serebin, every breath was gold.
This city.
The driver took the Boulevard St.-Germain at the Pont Sully. “Come a long way?”
    “From Istanbul.”
    “Bon Dieu.”
    “Yes, three days and nights.”
    “Must have been a pleasure, before the war.”
    “It was. All red plush and crystal.”
    “The Orient Express.”
    “Yes.”
    The driver laughed. “And beautiful Russian spies, like the movies.”
    They drove very slowly along the boulevard, through the 5th Arrondissement and into the 6th. Serebin watched the side streets going by; rue Grégoire de Tours, rue de Buci—a shopping street, rue de l’Echaudé. Then the Place St.-Germain-des-Prés, with a Métro station and the smart cafés—the Flore and the Deux Magots. Then, his very own rue du Dragon. Cheap restaurant with neon signs, a club called Le Pony—it was clearly a nighttime street, with the usual Parisian tenements crowded together above the sidewalk.
    “Here we are,” the driver said.
    The Hotel Winchester.
Le Vanshestaire,
a hopeful grasp at English gentility by the owners of 1900, now run-down and drifting just below
quaint
. Serebin paid the driver and added a generous tip, took his valise and briefcase, and entered the musty old lobby. He greeted the
propriétaire
behind the desk and climbed five flights to his “suite”—two rooms instead of one and a tiny bathroom.
    In the bedroom, he went directly to the French doors that served as windows, opened them, and looked out into the street. His red geraniums, the famous
Roi du Balcon,
king of the balcony, had been dutifully watered during his absence but they were fast approaching the end of their days. In the room, a narrow, creaky bed with a maroon coverlet, an armoire, things he liked tacked to the wall—a Fantin-Latour postcard, an ink drawing of a nude