When you are in Paris, you have to make love to somebody. (p.76)
This is the twelfth of Alan Furst’s historical espionage novels, all set on continental Europe in the late 1930s or early years of World War Two, in which fairly ordinary European men find themselves caught up in cloak and dagger activities, but are generally consoled by sensuous love affairs with one or more willing young ladies. The very strong love elements in Furst’s novels make them as much romantic novels as historical or spy thrillers.
This one is something of a return to the brooding intensity of his debut, Night Soldiers, with a real sense of growing menace and threat until almost the last pages. The previous two or three books in the series featured interesting hero figures – Carlo Weisz, Jean Mercier, Costa Zannis – who had sporadic undercover adventures, but then tended to return back to the safety of their hotel rooms or apartments for a good kip and some sensual sex with their lady of the moment – before setting out on another adventure, and so on. They felt episodic, only intermittently featuring violence which gave any sense of real danger.
Nazi menace
But in Mission to Paris the hero becomes enmeshed in a web of intrigue that doesn’t let up, but draws him deeper and deeper into peril – in which the Nazis who are tracking him systematically crowd into every part of his life, at first just requesting favours, then threatening vague reprisals, then physical violence and eventually he finds himself running for his life. It is this steadily mounting sense of threat and peril which is reminiscent of the powerful mood of the first books in the series.
The story is set against the looming threat of a European war. Hitler and the Nazis are screaming about the injustices being suffered by ethnic Germans in the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia and in western Poland – all, of course, preparing the way for his invasions of those countries. Many pundits and many ordinary people are concluding that some kind of war with Germany is inevitable. Into the feverish atmosphere of war-worried Paris arrives a Hollywood movie star, Fredric Stahl (in fact born in Austria and who’s made good in the States) who has carved out a niche as an actor of sturdy, reliable male characters. He is coming over to play the lead in a Warner Brothers France production titled Après la Guerre.
As background, the novel gives examples of the incredibly widespread and well-organised propaganda efforts the Nazis are making to promote the parties of the right, to spread disinformation about Hitler’s intentions, to praise Germany, to promote the idea that it is silly to fight the Germans, there will be no war, to blame all warmongering on communists and Jews. In other words, of the Nazis’ extensive use of ‘political warfare’.
As to Stahl, the Ribbentropburo of the German Foreign Ministry knows about his stay in Paris, knows about his Austrian background, and is drawing up plans to exploit him in all sorts of ways: these include setting him up for press interviews with right-wing papers which distort his banal answers into apparent calls for peace, or a more menacing invitation to fly to the Reich to attend a film festival.
German figures from his past suddenly appear out of nowhere, journalists put words into his mouth, Paris salon hostesses introduce him to charming people who run Franco-German Friendship societies, would he like to attend a meeting, give an interview for their magazine, attend a German film festival? As the pressure grows on Stahl from multiple directions, the novel conveys a good sense of claustrophobia and mounting paranoia.
Things take a distinct turn half way through when Stahl reluctantly agrees to attend the wretched film festival in Berlin, and finds his contact at the American Embassy in Paris, J.J. Wilkinson, asking if he would mind taking a large sum of money with him and making a clandestine rendezvous with an American agent working under deep cover in Berlin. At this point Stahl crosses the line from innocent bystander to active agent, and the tension and pressure cranks up from that point onwards right to the end.
Plot summary
As usual with Furst’s novels, the text is divided into four parts or ‘acts’:
1. German money – 14 September to 30 September 1938
September 1938. We are introduced to Hollywood movie star Frederic Stahl, born Franz Stalka in Vienna 40 years previously, ran away to sea from his strict father aged 16, was on board a neutral ship when the Great War broke out. The ship was fired on by Italians and limped to Barcelona where the Austrian Legation gave him a desk job for the remainder of the war. Shipped back to Austria he tried to escape his domineering father and supine family by taking to acting. He played small parts at local theatres, then got a gig in Paris, where he was talent spotted by the Warner Brothers agent and sent to Hollywood. Here he’s created a brand as a clean-cut, reliable good guy. He’s been sent by the studio to star in a movie in Paris, Après la Guerre, alongside a French producer, director, crew etc. He’ll play the hero, leader of three soldiers who find themselves released after the 1918 Armistice and having to make their way home across a war-ravaged Europe.
The text actually opens with a scene depicting a hitman from the Nazi Ribbentropburo, named Herbert. The sinister Baroness Cornelia Maria von Reschke und Altenberg, a German aristocrat who has established one of the top salons in Paris, is a German agent, surreptitiously handing out funds and favours to French VIPs who can influence public opinion and policy in a direction favourable to Germany. As one of her many workstreams she has given a bag of money to one Prideaux, the chef de cabinet of a French senator, to pass onto his boss in return for Germany-friendly speeches. However, handling so much money went to Prideaux’s head and he has absconded to the Black Sea port of Varna, before moving on into Turkey. Unfortunately, Herbert and his henchman Lothar have tracked him down to Varna, with instructions to recover the money and terminate Prideaux. We watch Herbert and Lothar hire a local assassin to murder Prideaux. This opening scene sets the scene and mood, showing the sophistication and extent of their efforts to influence opinion in France, and the ruthlessness if someone crosses them.
The scene then shifts to Stahl on board the transatlantic liner, Ile de France, having a mild flirtation with a star-struck (and married) fan, Iris. He is met at le Havre by Zolly Louis, Warner Brothers man in Paris, and driven to the capital city in a stylish 1938 Panhard Dynamic car, where he’s been booked into a nice room at the Hotel Claridge. Stahl has barely unpacked before the hotel present him with letters and invitations, including one from the Baroness Cornelia Maria von Reschke und Altenberg. No reason not to go, so he dresses smartly and takes a cab to her luxury apartment but, as he takes her wizened claw and observes her tight face with the blue vein in her forehead and her fawning manner, he begins to feel antipathy, confirmed as he is then introduced to a succession of businessmen who gently but consistently ask him his opinion about Germany, about the situation in Europe, wouldn’t peace be better, isn’t war futile, you know it’s all these Jews who want war, they own all the armaments companies – and so on and on.
In the midst of this stifling atmosphere, Stahl is relieved to meet the stylish young Kiki de Saint-Ange, who whisks him away to a much more cool Bohemian party on the Left Bank. Being driven there in the big Panhard they come across men posting up affiches blanches to the walls, indications of the partial mobilisation the French government is beginning as war looms. Stahl’s chauffeur, Jimmy, is on the list and later Stahl learns that the director slated to direct his movie has been called up and sent to Alsace. The threat of a European war is becoming very real.
Next morning Stahl gets a cab out to the Paramount film studios in the Paris suburb of Joinville where, in Building K, he gets measured for his costumes by the costume designer, Renate Steiner, herself an émigré from Germany – her husband is a communist so they had to flee when Hitler came to power. Renate is brisk and professional and half way through her friends Inga and Klaus stop by to excitedly tell her that Daladier and Chamberlain have signed the Munich Agreement, in effect handing over the Sudeten part of north-west Czechoslovakia to Germany in exchange for Hitler’s promise of peace.
Stahl’s taxi back to the hotel gets stuck in a crowd of marchers protesting against the scandalous sellout to Hitler, and Stahl is forced to get out and walk. Suddenly, masked men attack the marchers with iron rods and Stahl finds himself coming to the defence of a woman being hit, next thing he’s struck by a bar himself, several times, falls to the ground, and is in the middle of fighting back when he is arrested and taken to a police station.
After a grim night Stahl is released by Zolly Louis, who has greased a few palms, but ‘Hollywood actor spends night in Paris gaol’ becomes one of the many threats the Germans will hold over him. Although he has a girlfriend / confidente / lover, Betsy Belle, back in Hollywood, he nonetheless accepts an invitation from Kiki to meet for a drink. He and Kiki stroll round lovers’ Paris in the evening, until they come across a nice discreet hotel and slip into it for an evening of slow, sensual sex.
This first ‘act’ ends with the three brief documentary-style examples of the way the Germans are bringing pressure to bear at every level of French society, but especially on the media and opinion formers:
- We find Hervé Charais, news commentator for Radio Paris, relaxed in his bedroom and (naturally) admiring his half-dressed Spanish mistress (p.63) while she taunts and teases him and gently suggests that maybe his commentaries ought to put the German view a bit more, mention the hardships of the poor German minorities trapped in the Sudetenland or Poland and subject to bullying and intimidation. ‘How about it,’ she asks, as she takes his pecker in her hand…
- The Director of the National Press Guild of Germany writes to the chief executive of the Havas Agency, the leading French wire service, confirming an all-expenses paid trip to the Reich where he will have dinner with the German Foreign Secretary, von Ribbentrop, and then a meeting with the Führer himself.
- We hear LaMotte, wine king, in a phone conversation with the publisher of Le Temps, chatting about a weekend away together, the tennis they’ll play, and casually linking the money he’s about to spend on his next advertising campaign in the magazine, with a few comments on recent editorials about Germany: doesn’t he think the magazine is being a bit harsh? After all it was Hitler who invited Chamberlain and Daladier to Berchtesgarten, it was Hitler who defused the crisis; all the Germans want is peace. Honest.
2. Agent of Influence – 12 October to 4 November 1938
Stahl meets the cast of the movie – Pasquin the burly comedian, Brecker the blonde German, Justine Piro his female lead, Jean Avila the boy wonder director.
Mme Boulanger in the Warner Brothers office has fixed up an interview with Loubec, a journalist from Le Matin with his photographer René. Expecting to give an easygoing chat about the new movie and his c-stars, Stahl is amazed when the interview is all about his attitude to war, to the Germans, with insinuating comments about his lack of active service during the Great War. When he sees the headline next morning – Hollywood stars speaks out for rapprochement – he realises how badly he’s been stitched up.
Stahl receives an invitation to visit the US Embassy, where he is seen by Second Secretary J.J. Wilkinson, who formally welcomes him to Paris. Wilkinson points out that he’s already been seen consorting with people known for their Nazi sympathies – the Baroness von Reschke, Philippe LaMotte – as well as managing to be locked up in prison for the night. An impressive start. Wilkinson explains to a puzzled Stahl that he is an ‘agent of influence’; a casual word from him will be widely reported and might help nudge public opinion, towards pacifism, fatalism, the wish for peace at any price: exactly what Hitler wants.
Next day Stahl is appalled when a cast reading of the script is interrupted by Karl ‘Moppi’ Moppel’, Stahl’s boss at the Austro-Hungarian legation in Barcelona where Stahl worked during the Great War. What the hell is he doing here? How did he track him down to the studio? Moppi acts all innocent – he just wants to see his old friend, but has just enough time to make it clear that Stahl is Austrian, something the other cast members didn’t know. It’s a small nudge designed to alienate him from them and push him a little closer to the Nazi camp.
His Hollywood girlfriend Betsy Belle writes a letter dumping him, saying she’s met an older man who’ll ‘look after her’. On the rebound, Stahl phones Kiki and takes her out to a movie theatre where, to his surprise, she manoeuvres his hand between her thighs and makes him masturbate her to a brief gasping climax, all the time watching the silver screen.
Moppi continues to pester Stahl with phone calls and with invitations to lunch at the famous restaurant, Maxim’s. Eventually Stahl gives in, determined to go along and tell him to stop bloody bothering him. He finds a table full of repellent Nazis stuffing themselves with the best French food who invite him to a little film festival they’re having: all-expenses paid, luxury hotel, good food, he just has to watch half a dozen movies and select the best. Stahl stands up and delivers his speech, saying he absolutely will not go and telling them to stop pestering him. But as he walks away, he hears them laughing and drooling over the desserts as they arrive, completely unperturbed.
Next day Stahl goes back out to Building K out at Joinville for further fittings for his costume, where he finds Renate red-eyed and tearful, until he is prompted to give her a big hug. Things are bad at home; her husband is depressed at having gone from big-shot journalist in Berlin to nobody in Paris and gets so low he threatens suicide. Stahl is a friendly shoulder to cry on. ‘Gee, ma’am, wish there was more I could do to help.’
Madame Boulanger, slightly embarrassed at setting him up with the reptile Loubec, now fixes for Stahl to meet André Sokoloff, Russian émigré journalist, senior correspondent for Paris Soir, at the Brasserie Heininger. This is the ‘famous’ restaurant which, rather monotonously, features in every single Furst novel. Sokoloff appals Stahl by giving him an in-depth explanation of how ‘political warfare’ works, a nudge here, a word there, an interview, a commentary piece in a paper, and so on (pp.109-114). What appals him most is the extent of the active treachery of such large parts of French society which would rather have the country ruled by Hitler than by a Jew or a liberal.
When Stahl gets back to his hotel room it’s to find a Nazi bruiser has broken into his room and is calmly lounging on his sofa. It is Herbert who threatens him, warning him that he must come to the Reich for the film festival or he and his colleagues would be upset and you don’t want to upset us do you? You never know what might happen. Before getting up and casually sauntering out the door. It is his arrogance, his assumption that Stahl wouldn’t dare start anything, which Stahl finds so upsetting and demoralising.
Cut to the scene back at the Ribbentropburo in Berlin, where a meeting is convened to go through a long list of eminent French people who are being targeted with invitations, bribes or smears and threats, to toe the Nazi line. It includes discussion of some eye-opening examples, like the Catholic priest who preaches against Nazi ideology and who they’re working on the Vatican to get transferred to Martinique. Towards the bottom of the list is Stahl and, when he hears that the actor is refusing to play ball, the Deputy Director gets into a fury and threatens his underlings that Stahl better go to this bloody festival or else!
Stahl goes for a walk to calm down after the scary encounter with the Nazi in his room, and is sitting in a bar nursing a cognac when Kiki walks in. The conversation morphs from her cheering him up into the seductive role-playing mode of a soft porn movie, and he ends up taking her back to his luxury hotel (the Claridge) where she is soon ‘half-stripped, in high heels and lacy bra and panties’ before Stahl kneels and performs cunnilingus on her (p.125). All frightfully French and sophisticated.
Next day, back at the sound studio out at Joinville, his co-star Brecker arrives at a rehearsal at the studio with his arm in a sling. It was broken in a bar-room brawl. Can it possibly be some kind of threat from the Nazis? Stahl is now so spooked he is seeing their malign influence everywhere.
Stahl seeks another meeting with Wilkinson at the Embassy, tells him about the accumulated incidents and talks through what to do? Well, no laws have been broken – and each one of the incidents by itself is almost trivial. ‘Is he going to go to the film festival?’ Stahl is trying to decide, when Wilkinson points out that, if he does decide to go… well, there’s a little favour he could do for his government…
3. Espionage – 9 November to 10 December 1938
In act three, Stahl crosses a line by agreeing to work undercover for Wilkinson, becoming an agent, a spy. He phones the Nazis and agrees to go to their bloody festival. Has a horrible time on the plane to Berlin, along with repellent Emhof and reading Nazi propaganda rags. Taxi to the Hotel Adlon. The streets are absolutely packed with uniformed men and violence is in the air. He dresses for the evening meal, sucks up to the revolting German hosts – notably Otto Raab, the embittered mediocrity who’s found his niche in the Nazi Party as a hack turning out propaganda movies, and who is organiser of the festival.
Over the festival banquet, Stahl strikes up conversation with the athletic and attractive Russian émigré film star, Olga Orlova, who is one of Hitler’s favourite German actresses, and quite quickly she invites him to pop along to her bedroom after the banquet. Yummy. He waits a decent interval, makes his excuses to his hosts and goes up to her room. The reader expects that this is going to lead to yet another Furstian soft porn interlude. Instead, she calls for his identification, which turns out to be a Reichsmark note whose numbers she has been tipped off to check. They match; his identity is confirmed. Because it turns out, Olga is a spy, too. The mission Wilkinson gave Stahl was to smuggle in $100,000 in cash, which he hands over to Olga in return for the latest top secret documents she has secured. These he will stash in the secret compartment in his bag and take back to Wilkinson. Exchange made, Olga and Stahl agree he must stay in her room till the early hours as if they had had sex, which is their cover story for any snoopers. She goes to sleep in the bed, he on the couch.
Intermittently throughout the evening – when he stepped out for a cigarette, when he was in Olga’s bedroom – he and Olga both smelled burning. The omniscient narrator tells us this is because these events just happen to be taking place on Kristallnacht, the night of 9-10 November 1938, when, in reprisal for the assassination of a German official in the Paris embassy, the Nazi authorities encouraged the destruction of synagogues and Jewish businesses across Germany and the roundup of up to 30,000 Jews to be taken off to camps. Obviously neither Olga nor Stahl understand this is what’s happening, though they realise it’s something bad.
Next day, Stahl has to watch a series of revolting Nazi films and ends up giving the top award to a propaganda farrago titled Hedwig’s Mountain, produced and directed by none other than Otto Raab, amid much backslapping and a graceful speech. Stahl plays his role to perfection without a trace of repulsion, secretly gratified that he is doing these scum some damage.
At the banquet the night before, the waiter serving him and Olga – Rudi – had been unpleasantly intrusive until Stahl bluntly told him to go away. As he’s preparing to leave the hotel, Stahl is horrified when the waiter approaches him and threatens to blackmail him and Olga. Were they really sleeping together – or doing something traitorous, conspiring against the Führer, for example? He wants $5,000 and fast! At first he thinks it’s a ridiculous joke, but then, as the waiter’s bitterness becomes more apparent, and as he thinks of all the stories he’s heard about the Gestapo, Stahl becomes genuinely frightened. He phones Olga on an emergency number, explains the situation, and in 40 minutes she appears with the required money in a bag, and they go up to Rudi’s attic room. Here she mollifies and soothes him, distracting him as she gets out the money, and then shoots him in the head with a silenced gun. She scribbles a suicide note and arranges the body to look like suicide. Stahl, stunned, watches her. Nobody mentioned murder. He’s really in it, now. Up to his neck.
Nonetheless, Stahl takes a taxi to the Berlin Tempelhof airport and flies unhindered back to Paris, job done. Next day he is relieved to see the Warner Brothers press people did a small release about how he’s doing his bit to ‘promote’ his new movie in Germany. Clever way of spinning it.
Out at the Joinville studio, the movie finally starts filming – Furst supplies interesting detail on the script, the opening scenes, technical problems overcome and so on.
In the costume room, Stahl discovers Renate in tears; she has broken up with her depressive husband – more accurately, he’s run off with a younger model. As her hands touch his body as she adjusts shirt and trousers and outfits, as she measures him and as she walks away from him with a sexy sway, Stahl realises he really fancies her or, as Furst puts it, ‘He wanted to fuck her’ (p.165). He makes subtle moves but she doesn’t respond.
Stahl is invited out to a society dinner party where he meets Wilkinson to hand over Olga’s documents. Wilkinson gives Stahl (and the reader) more insight into the complex international situation. Turns out the money he’s given him to give to Olga, is not US government money. Congress, the Senate and most of the population don’t want anything to do with Europe. But Roosevelt knows war is coming and is strongly anti-German. This money comes from private donors and friends of the president’s in order to gather information to help Roosevelt make his case Stateside, to influence important people. Stahl has got himself involved in America’s efforts at ‘political warfare’.
Finishing a day’s filming unexpectedly early, Stahl surprises Renate in her costume room wearing only stockings and suspenders, trying out a blouse. She squeals and runs for the changing room. Stahl is absolutely confirmed in his erotic obsession with her now. He fantasises about her, though she remains cool.
Stahl continues to be pestered by Moppi, this time invited to come meet the famous Wolf Lustig, the most eminent producer in Germany, at a reception being given at the Pré Catelan restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne. It is being hosted by the Roussillon wine people (who we know from early on are pro-German organisation) and the witchy Baroness is presiding – once again Stahl has to shake her claw and stare into her beady eyes – before being introduced to Lustig who he takes an instant dislike to. Lustig, confident and jokey like Emhof, like all these arrogant Krauts, offers Stahl a role in his next production. It will be set in Poland, titled Harvest of Destiny, about a good-hearted German girl who is victimised by cowardly Poles and Jews. ‘Does he want at least to come on the reconnaissance journey round Poland? All expenses paid?’ Stahl feels physically ill and can’t extract himself fast enough.
Stahl goes to meet Wilkinson again. Wilkinson by this time has become a kind of commentator on the action: when something happens to Stahl, Stahl goes to Wilkinson to have it interpreted and explained. Now Wilkinson explains that the ‘recce’ could quite possibly be a spying mission – what better cover than a film producer looking for locations, and quite justifiably taking detailed notes of railway lines, bridges, infrastructure? The more that is revealed to him, the more horrified Stahl becomes at the complexity of the web of deceit which seems to be enmeshing Europe and the lust for violence which underpins it all.
In a new narrative thread, we are introduced to two new characters, Freddi Müller, one of the Führer’s favourites up at his Berchtesgarten retreat, and his wife, Gertrude ‘Trudi’ Müller. Olga is a valued guest of the Führer’s from time to time and the narrator explains how Trudi has developed a lesbian crush on her. A crush Olga the professional spy knows she can exploit. One morning the two women gear up to go for a healthy, vigorous, Aryan walk up a nearby mountain – but snow and bad weather close in and force them back to the hotel they’re staying in. Here, Trudi has a slow luxurious soak, while Olga gets busy riffling through husband Freddi’s briefcase and using a specially adapted Leica camera to snap everything she finds in it, lots of information about Poland.
Through secret channels Olga communicates to Wilkinson that she has new information for sale, but at an even higher price than the previous product. Wilkinson is set to send another courier to Berlin to collect it, but the agent is injured in a car crash, so he’s at a loss. In conversation with Stahl, Wilkinson discovers that the movie he’s working on now moving to do its foreign location shoots – first stop will be Morocco, to a place called Erg Chebbi in the Ziz Valley on the edge of the Sahara Desert (p.192).
So Wilkinson arranges for Olga to send a courier with the photos of the documents all the way to Morocco and gives Stahl a pack of cash to meet him and pay for it. From Stahl’s point of view, we see the flights of him and the film crew in several stops down to Morocco, a bit of atmospheric reconnoitring into the desert, and the set-up for a few days’ filming. In the middle of all this, Stahl takes a break to go to the railway station as planned, and meets almost the only European on the train, a pudgy German. They identify each other and make a discreet swap, Stahl’s money for Olga’s envelope full of photographed documents.
Mission accomplished, Stahl relaxes and invites Renate out for a drink or a meal that night after work, but she is stuck in looking after her room-mate member of the crew, who’s got food poisoning. Stahl is frustrated at his lack of progress with her. He keeps seeing her stockings, her suspenders, her smooth creamy thighs etc.
Early next morning he is woken by the movie’s director, Avila. The police have arrived. As usual nowadays, Stahl’s heart almost stops with fear that he’s somehow been exposed and will spend the next thirty years in a Moroccan gaol. But the police just want them to come to the morgue to identify a body, as almost the only other Europeans in town. It is, inevitably, the corpse of the pudgy German, who had been horribly garroted and thrown off the train. Both Avila and Stahl say they’ve never seen him before.
4. A Good Soldier – 17 December 1938 to early February 1939
The filming is completed without further incident and the crew all fly back to Paris. Stahl makes an appointment to meet Wilkinson at what has become their regular rendezvous, the American Library in Paris. Wilkinson is shocked to hear about the murder, but grateful for the Polish documents – he explains they’ll come in handy influencing senators and congressmen of Polish origin, back in the States.
Stahl chats more to Renate on the plane home, keeping up a slight but relentless pressure for a date. That night she invites him to her small Bohemian flat in rue Varlin for a home-made dinner. They’re drinking wine and relaxing in an intimate candle-lit atmosphere, when Stahl surprises her (and the reader) by asking her to strip. But – thus addressed point blank – she does: she gets up and does a slow strip-tease in front of him, finally unbuttoning his flies, extracting his manhood and kneeling to perform fellatio. Lucky old Stahl.
Meanwhile, in a completely different time zone and mood, Olga is entertaining Trudi to tea in a chintzy tearoom in Berlin. We have, by being party to her thoughts, by this time realised that she mainly works for the Soviets, but sells things onto Wilkinson or the British, if they’ll buy. She’s not fussy. Unexpectedly, there is a phone call for her. At first surprised, Olga is terrified when a voice says simply, ‘Get out now, the Gestapo are in your apartment.’
Flushed and stressed, she takes leave of Trudi who, to her surprise, insists on helping her, so she accepts a lift to the train station. But this is heaving with Gestapo so they drive around before finding a tiny hotel. They take a room then Olga sends Trudi out to buy peroxide and scissors. They cut Olga’s hair short and dye it. Next morning Trudi drives her beloved and now disguised Olga out to the Berlin suburbs, they have a tearful goodbye and then Olga catches a series of local trains to Frankfurt, where she catches a fast one to Prague.
Stahl is at Renate’s when there is a phone call, it is for him, it is long distance from Berlin, one of those arrogantly confident German voices saying they wish to know the whereabouts of a certain Olga Orlova, maybe he can help them. Furious and terrified, Stahl slams the phone down. How did they know he’d be at Renate’s? How did they get her number? It is designed to scare him, and her. As has become usual, Stahl meets Wilkinson to discuss the news and its implications, this time on one of those tourist boats that ply up and down the Seine.
Later Stahl is phoned in his hotel room by another smiling German voice, which asks him to look out the window and there, in the apartment opposite, a hand waves and he hears a voice laughing. Now he is really spooked.
Kiki phones Stahl for a meeting at a cafe in a smart part of town. Instead of her usual seductive self, she is scared. She says she has come from the Baroness and is delivering what she calls ‘a final warning’. They want to know where Olga is. They will brook no refusals.
Meanwhile, back on the film production, as it approaches the end of the year, the entire crew fly to Hungary for the final location shooting at an old Hungarian castle, a key scene in the movie. When I read that the castle belongs to none other than Count Polyani I burst out laughing. Count Janos Polanyi has appeared in numerous previous Furst novels, and is a spymaster at the Hungarian legation in Paris. At a stroke I knew the book would have a happy ending.
Furst litters this series of novels with recurring characters which is entertaining, but the drawback is that their appearance mostly militate against seriousness: they remind me of the gallery of characters you get at the beginning of Tintin books, and the childish pleasure to be had identifying them and trying to remember which one appeared in which story. Same here.
The count is, of course, a noble old host – roast venison is served along with bulls blood wine, and the filming cracks on at a good rate. Except that early on New Year’s Day 1939, the cameraman comes hurtling into the breakfast room to announce that all the cameras have been stolen. A message is left that the crew must bring a ransom to an old inn down the Danube.
The count is amused at this presumption and rustles up to aristocratic friends, Ferenc and Anton to sort out his guests’ little problem. They load a large motorboat and steam down the Danube with Avila and Stahl in attendance but the Hungarians insist that, as their guests, they stay aboard the boat. They anchor it near the old inn and then the count and pals disappear into the woods. After some suspense, our chaps hear a sudden outburst of shooting – single shots then an automatic – and then the roar of a car engine.
The count and pals reappear: three Germans were waiting, but they caught them napping, there was a shootout in which everyone missed, and the Germans ran away. Alas the cameras were nowhere to be seen. Laughing over the incident, the count steers the boat back upstream towards the castle. He secures some more cameras from Budapest and the filming is finally finished. The crew assemble to fly out of Budapest airport, but at passport control there is a problem.
Renate has a German passport, she has never been naturalised in France and she doesn’t have the correct exit visa. The rest of the crew can leave, but she can’t. So they all board the plane out, but Stahl also refuses to go, insisting on staying with his new girlfriend, despite a strong hint from the passport official that it is his last chance.
This ought to be scary but, as with the appearance of Count Polanyi, there is a pantomime feel about the menace. Stahl is not one of the completely powerless Jews I read about in the work of Primo Levi – he is an American film star. Therefore, he is able to get a taxi to a nice hotel, from where he makes an appointment with the American consulate. Here he is shown right in and meets a nice young man named Stanton, who says he’ll be able to expedite getting Renate an American visa which will allow them both to fly right over Hitler’s Germany. Might take a week or more, though. Outside is a long line of people queueing for visas, who are not American film stars.
So they’ve secured one route to freedom, but this is trumped after Stahl makes a person to person call with his agent, Buzzy Mehlman, in California. He explains the situation and Buzzy says he’ll get on it. Result? At 11am next day Jerry Silverberg turns up, Warner Brothers’ man in Eastern Europe, who has fixed everything: train to Arad on the Romanian border; bribe Major Mihaly of the border guard to get into Romania; train to Constanta on the Black sea; steamer to Istanbul; ship to Lisbon; boat to New York; 20th century Limited transcontinental train back to Hollywood. He’s booked all the tickets, first class. Such is the power of Hollywood and American money.
Sure enough, Renate and Stahl get the rather slow train to Arad where there is a civilised exchange of money with Major Mihaly, who waves them across the border.
Stahl and Renate are in a hotel room in Constanta waiting for the ferry, when the narration tells us that… so is Herbert, the Nazi hitman we met in the opening scene of the book, and his sidekick Lothar. On January 13 Herbert packs his Luger and swaggers off to the Princess Maria hotel where Stahl and Renata are staying. He bangs on their bedroom door with increasing impatience, thinking they are unarmed, helpless prey, getting bored and frustrated and hungry for his lunch. However, Stahl still has the pistol Count Polanyi gave him back at the castle, during the trip down the river. As Herbert’s threatening becomes more impatient, angry and Germanic, something in Stahl snaps and he fires through the door. There is the sound of a body falling – then silence.
They smuggle the corpse down onto a nearby bench overlooking the sea then go on to the dock to await their ship. It is a long journey, three weeks at sea, with a few stopovers, before they reach New York. As the Statue of Liberty comes into view Renate is crying and Stahl is choked up. The nightmare is over, and they are both free.
Dramatis personae
As always it’s only when you list them, that you realise what an enormous number of characters a Furst novel contains, and how they add a great sense of depth and complexity and historical verisimilitude to the story.
The characters listed here (and the plot summary above) don’t include the plot and characters of the movie Stahl is making – Après la Guerre – which has a cast of characters and a storyline all its own, which we get to hear quite a lot about as we watch it being rehearsed and filmed. Then there are further ‘stories’ embedded in the text, such as the plot of the film which Stahl and Kiki watch as she masturbates herself on his fingers and which Furst describes in some detail. Or the numerous background stories, such as the slightly complex chain of events which led up to the Kristallnacht and which Furst explains for us.
On multiple levels, then, and in interlocking and overlapping webs, Furst’s books are tremendously dense with story and character, which makes for a rich and rewarding reading experience, like the multiple layers of flavour in an expensive wine.
- Louise Prideaux, chef de cabinet of a French senator, who has absconded with a sizeable bribe given him by the Countess to pass on to the senator, but instead he’s done a bunk and is holed up in a cheap hotel in the Black Sea port of Varna (p.4).
- Herbert, Nazi thug, organises killings for the Ribbentropburo (p.7).
- Lothar, Herbert’s sidekick, fat, fiftyish, jolly (p.8).
- General Aleksey, the Russian émigré they’ve hired to assassinate Prideaux (p.9).
- Deputy Director of the Ribbentropburo, based in the Reich Foreign Ministry at 3 Wilhelmstrasse, young, incisive, angry (p.13).
- Herr Hoff, Ribbentropburo functionary in charge of the French section, so gets handed the Fredric Stahl brief (p.15).
- Fredric Stahl, Hollywood movie star, born Franz Stalka in Vienna, he now makes $100,000 a picture and has been sent by Warner Brothers in a deal to appear in a Paramount France production (p.15).
- Iris, the wife of a drunk mid-Western businessman who Fredric has a kiss and a cuddle with on the transatlantic liner, the Ile de France (p.16).
- Zolly (short for Zoltan, Hungarian) Louis, Warner Brothers man in Paris (p.21).
- Jimmy Louis, Zoltan’s nephew and chauffeur of the huge 1938 Panhard Dynamic automobile in which Fredric is driven round (p.23).
- Jules Deschelles, producer of the movie Fredric’s to appear in, Après la Guerre (p.36).
- Baruch ‘Buzzy’ Mehlman, Stahl’s agent at the William Morris Agency in Hollywood (p.25).
- Walter Perry, right hand man to Jack Warner, boss of Warner Brothers (p.25).
- Mme Boulanger, 50-ish, determined head of publicity at Warner Brothers Paris (p.27).
- Karl ‘Moppi’ Moppel, a threatening presence from the past, Stahl’s boss at the Austro-Hungarian legation in Barcelona where Stahl worked during the Great War (p.32).
- Frau Hilda Bruner, his friend (p.34).
- Jean Casson, a French film producer who was the hero of two Furst novels, The World At Night and Red Gold. We don’t see him; Stahl walks past his door on the way to Deschelles’ office (p.36).
- Baroness Cornelia Maria von Reschke und Altenberg, sinister hostess of a leading Paris salon, German and pretty obviously a German agent.
- Betsy Belle, Stahl’s official Hollywood fiancée / lover, ie they take care to be seen out and about together and photographed by the gossip columns (p.40).
- Philippe LaMotte, managing director of the Roussillon wine company, also director of the Comité Franco-Allemagne, a German propaganda front.
- Kiki de Saint-Ange, stylish young Parisienne who frequents the Baroness’s salon but prefers a racier, more bohemian set on the Left Bank. Quite quickly she and Stahl become lovers and he is excited by her open-minded sexual inventiveness (p.48).
- Renate Steiner, married German émigré costume designer for the movie, fled Germany with her husband because he is a communist (p.53).
- Inga and Klaus, two émigré friends of Renata who cycle by to tell her the Munich Agreement has been signed (30 September 1938) (p.54).
- Justine Piro, female lead in the movie (p.71).
- Pasquin, burly frequently drunk French comedian, co-star in the movie (p.72).
- Gilles Brecker, Germanic looking co-star in the movie (p.82).
- Jean Avila, young Wunderkind director who is now slated to direct Après la Guerre (p.73).
- J.J. Wilkinson, Ivy league Wall Street lawyer, now Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Paris and conduit for money from President Roosevelt’s anti-German friends (p.74).
- Loubec, journalist from Le Matin with his photographer René (p.89)
- André Sokoloff, Russian émigré journalist, now senior correspondent for Paris Soir, a friendly presence who explains in some detail how ‘political warfare’ works, the extent it has penetrated French high society, the sheer number of top French who are, in effect, traitors to their own country (p.109-114).
- Emhof, pop-eyed Nazi in charge of the group at Maxim’s who invite Stahl to the film festival in Berlin (p.99).
- Otto Raab, mediocre German film director who has found is niche in the Nazi party (p.145).
- Olga Orlova, Russian émigré movie star, one of Hitler’s favourites, who turns out to be a spy for hire and who plays a key role in the final sections of the book (p.146).
- Rudi the waiter, who tries to blackmail Stahl and Olga with fatal consequences (p.148).
- Wolf Lustig, Germany’s most successful movie director (p.176).
- Freddi Müller, one of the Führer’s favourites up at the Berchtesgarten.
- Gertrude ‘Trudi’ Müller, Freddi’s wife who has developed a lesbian crush on Olga, a crush Olga ruthlessly takes advantage of (p.184).
- Count Janos Polyani, who has featured in several of the previous novels as a spymaster based in the Hungarian legation in Paris. The film crew use his castle as the final location for the movie (p.233).
- Jerry Silverberg, fairy godmother aka Warner Brothers man in Eastern Europe who fixes the entire escape route for Stahl and Renate out of Hungary and back to the US of A (p.249).
Credit
Mission To Paris by Alan Furst was published in 2012 by Weidenfeld and Nicholson. All quotes and references are to the 2013 Phoenix paperback edition.
Related links
- Mission To Paris on Amazon
- Alan Furst Wikipedia article
- Alan Furst’s website
- Personal Tour: Alan Furst’s Paris
The Night Soldiers novels
1988 Night Soldiers – An epic narrative which starts with a cohort of recruits to the NKVD spy school of 1934 and then follows their fortunes across Europe, to the Spain of the Civil War, to Paris, to Prague and Switzerland, to the gulags of Siberia and the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto, in a Europe beset by espionage, conspiracy, treachery and murder.
1991 Dark Star – The story of Russian Jew André Szara, foreign correspondent for Pravda, who finds himself recruited into the NKVD and entering a maze of conspiracies, based in Paris but taking him to Prague, Berlin and onto Poland – in the early parts of which he struggles to survive in the shark-infested world of espionage, to conduct a love affair with a young German woman, and to help organise a network smuggling German Jews to Palestine; then later, as Poland is invaded by Nazi Germany, finds himself on the run across Europe. (390 pages)
1995 The Polish Officer – A long, exhausting chronicle of the many adventures of Captain Alexander de Milja, Polish intelligence officer who carries out assignments in Nazi-occupied Poland and then Nazi-occupied Paris and then, finally, in freezing wintertime Poland during the German attack on Russia.
1996 The World at Night – A year in the life of French movie producer Jean Casson, commencing on the day the Germans invade in June 1940, following his ineffectual mobilisation into a film unit which almost immediately falls back from the front line, his flight, and return to normality in occupied Paris where he finds himself unwittingly caught between the conflicting claims of the Resistance, British Intelligence and the Gestapo. (304 pages)
1999 Red Gold – Sequel to the World At Night, continuing the adventures of ex-film producer Jean Casson in the underworld of occupied Paris and in various Resistance missions across France. (284 pages)
2000 Kingdom of Shadows – Hungarian exile in Paris, Nicholas Morath, undertakes various undercover missions to Eastern Europe at the bidding of his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi, a kind of freelance espionage controller in the Hungarian Legation. Once more there is championship sex, fine restaurants and dinner parties in the civilised West, set against shootouts in forests, beatings by the Romanian police, and fire-fights with Sudeten Germans, in the murky East.
2003 Blood of Victory – Russian émigré writer, Ilya Serebin, gets recruited into a conspiracy to prevent the Nazis getting their hands on Romania’s oil, though it takes a while to realise who’s running the plot – Count Polanyi – and on whose behalf – Britain’s – and what it will consist of – sinking tugs carrying huge turbines at a shallow stretch of the river Danube, thus blocking it to oil traffic. (298 pages)
2004 Dark Voyage – In fact numerous voyages made by the tramp steamer Noordendam and its captain Eric DeHaan, after it is co-opted to carry out covert missions for the Allied cause, covering a period from 30 April to 23 June 1941. Atmospheric and evocative, the best of the last three or four. (309 pages)
2006 The Foreign Correspondent – The adventures of Carlo Weisz, an Italian exile from Mussolini living in Paris in 1938 and 1939, as Europe heads towards war. He is a journalist working for Reuters and co-editor of an anti-fascist freesheet, Liberazione, and we see him return from Civil War Spain, resume his love affair with a beautiful German countess in Nazi Berlin, and back in Paris juggle conflicting requests from the French Sûreté and British Secret Intelligence Service, while dodging threats from Mussolini’s secret police.
2008 The Spies of Warsaw The adventures of Jean Mercier, French military attaché in Warsaw between autumn 1937 and spring 1938, during which he has an affair with sexy young Anna Szarbek, helps two Russian defectors flee to France, is nearly murdered by German agents and, finally, though daring initiative, secures priceless documents indicating German plans to invade France through the Ardennes – which his criminally obtuse superiors in the French High Command choose to ignore!
2010 Spies of the Balkans The adventures of Costa Zannis, senior detective in the northern Greek port of Salonika, who is instrumental in setting up an escape route for Jews from Berlin through Eastern Europe down into Greece and then on into neutral Turkey. The story is set against the attempted Italian invasion of Greece (28 October 1940) through to the German invasion (23 April 1941).
2012 Mission to Paris The adventures of Hollywood movie star Frerick Stahl, who travels to Paris to make a movie and becomes embroiled in increasingly sinister Nazi attempts to bully, blackmail and intimidate him into making pro-German or at least pacifist statements, and then gets caught up in actual espionage with more and more at stake.
2014 Midnight in Europe
2016 A Hero in France
Books & Boots 