Kingdom of Shadows (32 page)

“Not like that,” Morath said. “Come with me.”

Kolovitzky turned toward him. He wasn’t the same man who’d played the violin at the baroness’s party, this man was old and tired and frightened, wearing suspenders and a soiled shirt. He studied Morath’s face—was this some new trick, one they hadn’t tried on him yet?

“I came here for you,” Morath said. “I burned down this hotel for you.”

Kolovitzky understood. “Blanche,” he said.

“Are they holding anyone else up here?”

“There were two others, but they left yesterday.”

Now they heard sirens and they ran, coughing, hands over mouths, down the stairs through the rising smoke.

The street in front of the Schoenhof was utter confusion. Fire engines, firemen hauling hoses into the hotel, policemen, crowds of onlookers, a man wearing only a blanket, two women in bathrobes. Morath guided Kolovitzky across the Mauerplatz, then a little way down a side street. As they approached, the driver of a battered Opel started his car. Kolovitzky got in the backseat, Morath in front.

“Hello, Rashkow,” Morath said.

“Who is he?” Kolovitzky asked, later that morning, while Rashkow watered a tree by the roadside.

“He’s from Odessa,” Morath said.
Poor little Rashkow,
Balki had called him, who’d sold Russian railroad bonds and Tolstoy’s unfinished novel and wound up in a Hungarian prison. Morath had gone to Sombor to get him out of jail. “He used to sell Russian bonds.”

“The way he looks,” Kolovitzky said. “He should come to Hollywood.”

Rashkow drove on farm roads through the Austrian countryside. A day in July, the beets and potatoes sprouting bright green in the rolling fields. It was only forty miles to the Hungarian border at Bratislava. Or Pressburg, if you liked, or Pozsony. In the backseat, Kolovitzky stared at the Austrian passport with his photo in it. “Do you think they’re looking for me?”

“Of course they are.”

They stopped well short of the Danube bridge, in Petrzalka, once a Czech border point, now in the Slovakian Protectorate. Abandoned the car. Went to a rented room above a café, where all three changed into dark suits. When they came downstairs, a Grosser Mercedes with Hungarian diplomatic registration was waiting for them, driven by the chauffeur of one of Bolthos’s diplomatic colleagues in Budapest.

There was a swarm of Austrian SS gathered at the border crossing, smoking, laughing, strutting about in their high, polished boots. But the chauffeur ignored them. Rolled to a smooth stop at the customs building, handed four passports out the window. The border guard put a finger to the visor of his cap, glanced briefly into the car, then handed them back.

“Welcome home,” the chauffeur said to Kolovitzky, as they crossed to the Hungarian side of the river.

Kolovitzky wept.

A midnight supper on the rue Guisarde.

Mary Day knew the trains were late, crossing Germany, so she’d planned for it. She set out a plate of sliced ham, a vegetable salad, and a baguette. “And this was delivered yesterday,” she said, taking a bottle of wine from the cupboard and a corkscrew from the kitchen drawer. “You must have ordered it by telephone,” she said. “Very thoughtful of you, in the middle of—whatever it was, to think of us.”

A 1922 Echézeaux.

“It’s what you wanted?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling.

“You are really very good, Nicholas,” she said. “Really, you are.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Furst, who has often been compared to Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, is widely recognized as a master of the atmospheric spy thriller. A journalistic assignment for
Esquire
inspired him to write
Night Soldiers,
the first of his highly original novels about espionage in eastern Europe before and during World War II. Born in New York, he has lived for long periods in France, especially Paris. He now lives on Long Island.

ALSO BY ALAN FURST

Night Soldiers

Dark Star

The Polish Officer

The World at Night

Red Gold

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This work was originally published by Victor Gollancz, a member of the Orion Publishing Group, London, in 2000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Furst, Alan.

Kingdom of shadows: a novel / Alan Furst.

p. cm.

1. World War, 1939–1945—France—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Hungary—Fiction.3. France—Fiction. 4. Hungary—Fiction. I. Title.ps3556.u76 k56 2001

813’.54—dc21 00-032344

Random House website address:
www.atrandom.com

e
ISBN:
978-0-375-50680-2

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