tricks of the trade you'll need in Moscow."
Metcalfe nodded. The notion of going to Moscow was enormously exciting, but it was nothing compared to the thought of seeing Svetlana Baranova again and for such an important reason.
Corcoran stood up. "Go, Stephen. We have no time to lose. Every day that goes by, the Nazis gain another victory. Invade another country. Bomb another city. They grow stronger, more rapacious, while we sit on the sidelines and watch. We're short on quite a few things, as you know sugar and shoes, gasoline and rubber, munitions. But the thing we're shortest on is time."
Chapter Four
The violinist was playing his favorite piece, Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, but he was not enjoying himself at all. For one thing, the pianist was terrible. She was the dowdy wife of an SS official, only minimally talented: she played like an adolescent at a school recital. She was no musician. She was hammering the keys with no sense of dynamics at all, completely overpowering him in some of the more urgent, sensitive passages. And she had an annoying habit of breaking her chords by playing the left hand an instant before the right. The first movement, the stormy allegro, had been simply adequate. But the old hag had no feeling for the subtleties of the third movement, the andante cantabile, with its virtuosic rhythmic ornamentations.
Then again, the piece was complex, even for an accomplished musician such as himself. When Beethoven had sent the manuscript to the great Parisian violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, to whom he'd dedicated it, Kreutzer himself proclaimed it impossible to play and never once performed it in public.
Also, the acoustics here were godawful. This was the home of the violinist's immediate boss, Standartenfuhrer H. J. Kieffer, the Paris chief of the counterespionage department of the Sicher-heitsdienst, the Nazi secret service. The room was carpeted, hung with heavy drapes and tapestries, and the sound just died here. The piano was a very good Bechstein, but it was woefully out of tune.
Kleist did not know why he had ever agreed to play this evening.
It was, after all, a very busy time, and the violin was only his avocation.
A smell suddenly assaulted his nostrils. He recognized the bergamot, orange, and rosemary notes on top of a base of neroli and musk and knew it was 4711, the cologne made by the German fragrance firm Muelhens.
Kleist knew without even looking up that Muller had just entered the room. Muller, Jiis local control in the Sicherheitsdienst, was one of the very few men in the SD who wore aftershave. Most of the SD men considered such a thing an unmanly affectation.
Muller had not been at the dinner, nor at the house concert, so he must have had some urgent piece of business on his mind. Kleist decided to skip the repeat and hurry the fourth movement to its conclusion, get the thing over with. There was work to be done.
The applause was enthusiastic, heartfelt, and loud, given that there were no more than twenty-five people in the room, all of them SD men and their wives or consorts. Kleist nodded his appreciation and hurried to the side of the room, where Muller awaited him.
"There's been a break in the case," Muller said quietly.
Kleist, his violin in one hand, his bow in the other, nodded. "The wireless station."
"Correct. There was an R.A.F parachute drop in Touraine in the middle of the night last night. Several containers of communications equipment. Our informant alerted us to the drop." He added smugly, "Our informant has never been wrong. He insists that the drop will lead us to the reseau." That was the term for a nest, a clandestine espionage ring.
"The equipment was delivered to Paris?" Kleist said. Someone was lingering nearby, no doubt to compliment him on his performance. Kleist turned, didn't recognize the woman, nodded brusquely, and turned back to Muller. The woman went away.
"To a flat on the rue Mazagran, near the Porte Saint-Denis."
"That's the location of the wireless station? On the rue Mazagran?"
Muller shook his head. "Just a transfer point. An apartment owned by some old whore."
"Has the equipment been delivered?"
Muller smiled and nodded slowly. "Picked up, actually. By an agent we believe to be a British national living here under cover."
"Well?" Kleist said impatiently.
"Our team lost him."
"What?" Kleist sighed in disgust. There was no end to the incompetence of the SD's field teams. "You want me to talk to this whore," he said.
"I would not delay," said Muller. "Your playing was quite