Chief Administrator again, accepting the file from his lieutenant and putting it on his desk. “But tell me, how did we make the connection between Rostov and the Finnish passport in the first place?”
“Comrade Leplevsky, sir.”
“How so?”
“When comrade Leplevsky was led to the basement, he witnessed Rostov taking the Finnish guide from a collection of abandoned books. With that piece of information in hand, the connection was quickly made to the theft of the passport, and officers were dispatched to the station.”
“Excellent work all around,” said the Chief Administrator.
“Yes, sir. Though it does make one wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Why Rostov didn’t shoot Leplevsky when he had the chance.”
“Obviously,” said the Chief Administrator, “he didn’t shoot Leplevsky, because Leplevsky isn’t an aristocrat.”
“Sir?”
“Oh, never mind.”
As the Chief Administrator tapped the new folder with his fingers, the lieutenant lingered in the doorway.
“Yes? Is there something else?”
“No, sir. There is nothing else. But how shall we proceed?”
The Chief Administrator considered this question for a moment and then, leaning back in his chair with the barest hint of a smile, replied:
“Round up the usual suspects.”
It was Viktor Stepanovich, of course, who left the damning evidence in the Vyborg terminal washroom.
An hour after bidding the Count good-bye, he boarded the Helsinki-bound train wearing the journalist’s hat and coat with the Baedeker in his pocket. When he disembarked in Vyborg, he tore out the maps and left the guide with the other items on a counter in the station’s washroom. Then he traveled back on the next train bound for Moscow empty-handed.
It was almost a year later when Viktor finally had the opportunity to watch Casablanca. Naturally, when the scene shifted to Rick’s Café and the police began closing in on Ugarte, his interest was piqued, because he remembered his conversation with the Count in the railway station café. So with utmost attention, he watched as Rick disregarded Ugarte’s pleas for help; he saw the saloonkeeper’s expression remain cool and aloof when the police dragged Ugarte from his lapels; but then, as Rick began making his way through the disconcerted crowd toward the piano player, something caught Viktor’s eye. Just the slightest detail, not more than a few frames of film: In the midst of this short journey, as Rick passes a customer’s table, without breaking stride or interrupting his assurances to the crowd, he sets upright a cocktail glass that had been knocked over during the skirmish.
Yes, thought Viktor, that’s it, exactly.
For here was Casablanca, a far-flung outpost in a time of war. And here at the heart of the city, right under the sweep of the searchlights, was Rick’s Café Américain, where the beleaguered could assemble for the moment to gamble and drink and listen to music; to conspire, console, and most importantly, hope. And at the center of this oasis was Rick. As the Count’s friend had observed, the saloonkeeper’s cool response to Ugarte’s arrest and his instruction for the band to play on could suggest a certain indifference to the fates of men. But in setting upright the cocktail glass in the aftermath of the commotion, didn’t he also exhibit an essential faith that by the smallest of one’s actions one can restore some sense of order to the world?
And Anon
On one of the first afternoons of summer in 1954, a tall man in his sixties stood in the high grass among some ragged apple trees somewhere in the Nizhny Novgorod Province. The beginnings of a beard on his chin, the dirt on his boots, and the rucksack on his back all contributed to the impression that the man had been hiking for several days, though he didn’t look weary from the effort.
Pausing among the trees, the traveler looked a few paces ahead to where he could just make out the suggestion of a road that had become overgrown long ago. As the man turned onto this old road with a smile at once wistful and serene, a voice came down from the heavens to ask: Where are you going?
Stopping in his tracks, the man looked up as—with a rustle of branches—a boy of ten dropped to the ground from an apple tree.
The eyes of the old man widened.
“You’re as silent as a mouse, young man.”
With a look of self-assurance, the boy took the man’s remark very much as a compliment.
“I am too,” said a timid voice from among the leaves.
The traveler looked up to discover a girl of seven or eight perched on a branch.
“Indeed, you are! Would you like a hand coming down?”