As Time Goes By (20 page)

At that instant, Rick saw Meredith kiss Lois, a quick
peck on the cheek. Her eyes were shining like the dia
monds he would never be able to give her. And here he
was going to propose to her this very night. He felt like
a fool.

"Ain't love grand!" said Mae West, who ought to
know.

"I'll see she gets home safely," Dion O'Hanlon said.
"You can count on me."

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Don't you see, Ricky?" Renault was saying, "it's crazy
.
Even if the bomb goes off, even if it actually
kills Heydrich—and I have my doubts on that score—
the consequences will be dire for everybody left stand
ing. And I most certainly include myself in that
number."

Renault was pacing around Rick's rooms at
Brown's. Sam was playing at Morton's. Rick was sit
ting in a wing chair.

"A bomb thrown into his car as he comes over the Charles Bridge from the Star
é
M
ě
sto! It's preposterous! The chances of its actually working are one in a
hundred, maybe one in a thousand. How is the assassin
supposed to get away? How is he even going to get
close to him? What if the device malfunctions?"

"That's what the rest of the team is for," Rick re
minded him. "That's why they're carrying guns." He laughed. "That's why they may even get a chance to
use them."

Renault was unconvinced. "As if they would have a
chance against Heydrich's security men."

Rick blew a smoke ring into the air. "I really don't
think Victor Laszlo cares much whether he gets out of
Prague alive, as long as Heydrich doesn't."

"Why are you going, then?"

"Because it amuses me. Because I like lost causes. Because I have nowhere else to go and nothing else to
do. Because it's time to stand and fight instead of sit-
ting this one out on the sidelines."

"Fight for her, you mean," said Renault. "For Ilsa
Lund. Or is it more than that?"

"It's a lot of things."

Renault looked at his friend. "Ricky, back in Casa
blanca I asked you why you couldn't return to
America. You gave me a very evasive answer."

"It was the truth, Louie."

"If you don't want to tell me—"

"I can't."

"—or if you can't tell me, very well. But let me ask
you this: After you left New York, why did you spend
all those years in Ethiopia and Spain, fighting for the
losing side? Surely a man of your sophistication would
have known that neither the overwhelmed Ethiopians
nor the outgunned Republicans had a Chinaman's
chance."

"Maybe I liked the odds."
    

"Why?"

"Do I have to draw you a picture?" Rick fought the
impulse to get angry; it wasn't Renault's fault he was
curious. Hell, he'd be curious himself if he didn't al
ready know the answer. "I was trying to get myself
killed." He shrugged. "I failed."

"That really doesn't explain anything," said Re
nault.

"Okay," said Rick. "Let's just say that a long time
ago I did something I wasn't proud of. I made a mis
take—hell, I made a whole series of mistakes—and be
fore I knew what hit me, a lot of people I loved were! dead and it was my fault. It cost me everything I had.
I'm still paying for it."

Rick and Renault both fell silent for a time. Neither
was very comfortable exchanging confidences.

"What else is bothering you?" Rick said suddenly.
"
You're
acting
like a cat on a hot stove. Don't tell me you're losing your nerve."

Renault sat down in the chair across from Rick's.
"I'm not quite sure how to say this," he began.

Rick looked up. It was not like Renault to speak with
anything but derision. "Try English. You
know how
bad my French is."

"I'm serious, Ricky," replied Renault. "We have a
saying in France,
'Albion perfide.'
Perfidious Albion.
Treacherous England."

"Maybe you should have stayed in Casablanca,"
Rick suggested.

Renault rose, drawing himself up to his full height.
It wasn't much, but it would have to do. "What I
mean," he said angrily, "is that something about this
whole operation stinks to high heaven. I know some
thing about fixes—"

"So do I," Rick reminded him.

"—and I smell one now. Why should the British
care about Reinhard Heydrich? Why should they exert
all this effort to kill one obscure Nazi, when there are
far more important, others whose deaths might
bring an end to this war much faster? Why are they
financing Victor Laszlo and his crew? Why don't they
want their fingerprints on the knife?"

"I give up," said Rick.

"Because there's something in it for them, something very important." Renault lit a cigarette. "When
we first met Major Miles, I raised the issues of repri
sals. He brushed my concerns aside. Consider this,
though: What if that's what they're really after? The
British don't give a damn about Reinhard Heydrich. Yo
u heard Lumley complaining about the lack of
Czech backbone, didn't you?" Renault's voice fell
very low. "Well, what if this whole thing is simply a
way to provoke an atrocity and get the Czechs fighting
again? It wouldn't be the first time the English have
done something like this. Remember Norway."

"What about Norway?" asked Rick, bis curiosity
rising.

Louis was happy to explain. "When the English
mined the harbors at Narvik in April of 1940, they were
not trying to
prevent a
German invasion of Norway. They were trying to
incite
one, because they wanted to
occupy Norway themselves and cut the German iron ore supply coming along the Kiruna-Narvik rail line.
The problem was, the Germans outsmarted them and
landed while the British ships were sailing home,
awaiting the German response. The English got caught
with their pants down once; they won't want it to happen again."

"That's hard to believe," muttered Rick.

"Hard to believe because that's the way they want it.
Propaganda, dear boy—it's the name of the game. The
English are as crooked as your roulette table."

"
You
never complained about my roulette table be
fore. So why are
you
going, then?"

"To retrieve the honor I thought I had lost forever," Renault said glumly, sitting down.

"Honor?" said Rick, surprised. "Why, Louie, I don't
think I've ever heard you use that word."

"I did once," replied Renault.

"I guess there's a second time for everything, then,"
said Rick, lighting another cigarette. Blindly his left
hand sought the drink that was habitually at his side,
until he recalled why it wasn't there anymore. Because
of her. "You want to tell me about it?"

"No more than you wanted to tell me," said Renault.
"Still, they say confession is good for the soul."

"I wouldn't know about that," said Rick. "Don't let
me stop you, though."

"Very well, then," replied Renault, and told his
story.

In 1926 Louis Renault had left his home in Lille to
come to Paris and seek his fortune. He was twenty-
six years old, witty, educated, articulate, and far more
elegant than his drab, grimy, industrial hometown. Re
nault rightly considered Lille too small for the proper exercise and display of his talents. He had no interest
in following his father into the lace-manufacturing
business but was only too pleased to accept his father's
money to assist him on the short journey to Paris and
the foundation of a small establishment there.

Renault had envisioned a life as the darling of cafe
society and the sensation of the salons. He had foreseen
evenings at the Opera and nights in the company of
breathtaking women. As she had for so many other
young rou
é
s, though, Paris proved herself an inhospita
ble mistress. Much to his surprise and chagrin, Louis found himself living not in an elegant suite of rooms
in the rue Scribe, but in an unaesthetic flat on the fourth
floor of a grimy building across from the Cimeti
è
re
Montmartre in the rue Joseph le M
å
itre and spending
his dwindling funds in the dubious company of the la
dies of Pigalle.
   

One early evening in May he trudged back up the
hill from the Abbesses stop on the Metro, discouraged. The money from his father was running out, he had no particular prospects for employment (not that he really desired any), his attempts to penetrate the salons of the
Eighth Arondissement had so far failed, and his wits, which had always served him so well back in school, were being put to the test as never before.

To his surprise, he found a young woman sitting dis
consolately by the curb in front of his house. His con
cierge, a formidable brute of a woman named Madame de Montpellier, whose suspicion of outsiders and inter
lopers still extended to him, although he had rented
his room for more than four months, was screaming
imprecations at her; but the girl took no notice. The
rain had not yet washed away the smell of cigarette
smoke from her clothes, and her hair was uncombed.
Renault tapped her on the shoulder, to ask if he could
be of assistance, but she ignored him and stared
straight ahead.

He lit a cigarette, breathing in the tobacco smoke
deeply. Madame de Montpellier (privately he doubted the validity of the nobiliary particle) finished her tirade
with some choice words of invective and slammed
down the window. Louis knew she was still there,
watching, so he continued to smoke and gaze out over
Paris—the view was spectacular, even if the accommo
dations were not—until a decent interval had elapsed. Once again he addressed the waif.

"Louis Renault, at your service, mademoiselle," he said with what he hoped was an aristocratic flourish.

Finally she deigned to look at him. In the twilight he
could not tell the color of her eyes, but they were big and round, and he knew they must be blue. Her light
blonde hair fell unarranged to her shoulders. It had not
been washed in several days, but—
tant pis!
"Renaud,"
she said. "That's a funny name. Are you running from the hounds, like me?" She giggled, and for a moment
he wondered if she was a bit mad.

It was not the first time someone had made a pun on
his name, but he acted as if it were and let out a
chuckle. "Indeed, mademoiselle," he said, "the
hounds are baying at my heels at this very moment."
Which was something very near the truth.

"Then perhaps we should go inside, where we will be safe," she suggested, and stood up.

She took his breath away. Not that every woman
didn't take his breath away, but as he was growing
older he was also growing more sophisticated in his
appraisal of the female sex. Dirty and unkempt as she was, she was also special. That he could tell, even in
the Parisian dusk, which after all was so much more romantic than the dusk in every other city.

"What is your name, child?" he asked her as they
mounted the steps to his room.
Madame la Concierge
had retreated to her matins and her meal; even so, they
tread lightly upon the stair.