by Peter May
They moved then into the great hall. An enormous salon on two levels, with an elaborate wooden ceiling. Next to the fireplace hung a vast canvas of a naked reclining woman, a tiny cupid figure with a quiver of arrows about to release one at the recumbent beauty. Hitler waved a proud arm towards the painting. ‘Recognise it?’
‘Of course, sir.’ Lange wondered if this were some kind of test. ‘Venus and Amor by Paris Bordone. A wonderful piece of Venetian Renaissance painting.’
‘Bravo. You know your stuff, then.’
Lange inclined his head modestly, resisting the temptation to point out that the history of art had been his major at Frankfurt.
‘I have a personal preference for classical Greek and Roman art myself, Paul. It’s uncontaminated by the Jews, you see. Unlike the degenerate modern filth they are producing now. I find the impressionists distasteful in the extreme, and the so-called heroes of modern art, like that dreadful Spaniard, Picasso, are simply symbolic of the decline in Western society.’
Lange turned the brim of his hat slowly around in his hands, holding it at his chest, not quite trusting himself to speak. Before the war, like many of his contemporaries, he had traded extensively in modern art. Now the sale of confiscated modern works on the international market was seen as a way of raising funds for the war effort.
‘Come.’ Hitler took his arm and led him out on to a wide stone terrace. From here it felt like you stood at the very top of the world, with extravagant views out across the Bavarian Alps. Only a scrappy handful of clouds gathered around some of the peaks, puffs of white in an otherwise unbroken blue. The further summits were lost in a heat haze that shimmered off into the distance.
Hitler perched on the wall, one leg raised, the other still planted on the terrace, and eyed Lange speculatively, for what felt like an uncomfortably long time. ‘Ever been to Austria?’
‘To Vienna, yes.’
‘I grew up in Linz. A beautiful city.’
Lange nodded, though he had never been.
‘The secret of success in this life, Paul, is to know your limitations, and play to your strengths. It has been a matter of eternal regret to me that I was not blessed with the talent as a painter that I would have wished for.’
Lange smiled in regretful empathy. ‘You and I both, sir.’
Hitler raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘You painted?’
‘Very badly.’
Hitler smiled in return. ‘Then perhaps I was a little better than you. But not good enough. Not for me, anyway. And so I devoted myself to politics and the service of my country.’
Lange nodded. ‘At which you have succeeded rather well.’ He had heard that Hitler enjoyed praise. But there was a fine line between complimentary and patronising. Hitler’s smile suggested that he knew just how successful he had been, and did not need to be told.
‘The love of art is never far from my thoughts. It’s in my soul, you see. The quintessential expression of the finest human qualities, of aesthetics and sensibility, the human experience, the very human condition. Everything that separates us from the animals.’ He turned then to gaze out across the alpine peaks. ‘I have a dream, Paul. A dream of creating the world’s most fabulous museum. An eighth wonder of the world, where people will make pilgrimage to pay homage to the very best art of which Man is capable.’ He dragged his eyes away from his distant dream and fixed them once again on Lange, as if to make the dream concrete. ‘I’m going to build it in Linz. It will be my lasting legacy. The heritage of Nazism in its purest form.’ He paused. ‘Does that excite you?’
‘Very much, sir.’
Hitler beamed. ‘Good.’ He slipped off the wall. ‘But what kind of host am I that hasn’t even offered you a drink? Give me a moment to fetch my hat and stick and we’ll walk down to the Mooslahnerkopf for some tea.’
It took them twenty minutes, following the winding path down through the trees, to reach the tea room. Hitler wore a soft brown hat and walked briskly, swinging his walking stick and speaking of how he had once considered the total destruction of Paris. Lange was appalled, but nodded with raised eyebrow to suggest only surprise. ‘Having seen it for myself, however, I didn’t feel as if I could carry it through,’ he said.
Lange risked a comment. ‘I would have been disappointed if you had.’
Hitler glanced at him sharply. ‘Would you?’
‘I have come to know Paris well over the years, sir. There is much to be admired in its history and its architecture.’
‘Indeed.’ Though the Führer seemed less than convinced.
The Mooslahnerkopf was Hitler’s favourite tea room. It was built into the hillside, nestling among the pines, an unimposing rectangular building attached to a conical tower punctuated by windows all around its circumference. But they didn’t enter immediately to drink tea together in its cool interior. Instead Hitler led them out on to a grassy, horseshoe-shaped promontory where he waved Lange to a seat on a wooden bench that looked out over the view below. Lange laid his hat on the bench beside him and loosened his tie at the collar. The walk down through the heat of the afternoon had brought him out in a sweat. Hitler, by contrast, seemed perfectly cool. He leaned on the wooden rail that delineated the outer curve of the horseshoe and studied Lange thoughtfully. With his eagle’s nest on the hill above, his tea room a few paces away, and a view of breathtaking scope behind him, Hitler seemed like a man entirely in his element. Very nearly godlike. You could almost believe there was nothing he could not achieve.
‘You’re wondering why you’re here, aren’t you?’
Lange’s smile belied the turmoil behind it. ‘It had crossed my mind.’
‘I want the Mona Lisa,’ he said.
Lange felt his skin prickle with shock. He held his breath.
‘Not for myself, you understand. For the museum in Linz. It should be its centrepiece. Its crowning glory. Where else should the greatest painting on earth reside?’
Lange took the question to be rhetorical and did not respond.
‘And I want you to procure it.’
Lange felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of his neck.
‘For the German state.’ Hitler’s gaze swung away again towards the magnificence of the view below. ‘We cannot be seen, of course, to have stolen it. There would be international outrage.’ And he turned cold blue eyes back on Lange. ‘The painting should simply disappear. In the confusion of war, that shouldn’t be too difficult. But it will require stealth, and know-how, and above all, patience. You will have to await your moment, Paul. Choose it carefully. It may take a year, two, who knows? But its disappearance must not be linked in any way to the Reich. Then, at some future date, it will’ – he shrugged – ‘turn up in some sales room somewhere in occupied territory, and we shall confiscate it to put on display at Linz for safekeeping.’
A long silence fell between them. It was clear to Lange that this was not a request, but it was not obvious to him how he should respond. Finally, he nodded his head slowly and said, ‘Of course, sir.’
‘Good.’ Hitler pushed himself away from the fence, his dream banished for the moment to make way for practicalities. ‘You will be drafted into the Wehrmacht on a temporary commission. The rank of Hauptmann should suffice. You will be attached to the Kunstshutz. I take it you know what that is?’
Lange nodded again. ‘That admirable organisation for preserving enemy art in order safely to return it at the end of hostilities,’ he said.
Hitler beamed, apparently impervious to Lange’s straight-faced sarcasm. ‘Very well defined, Paul. You will be a Kunstoffizier, drawing a salary and expenses from that organisation, as well as comfortable lodgings in Paris. And I will see that you are provided with a letter of authorisation from my office, which will procure for you anything you might need.’
The sun was already starting to sink in the sky, and their shadows lengthened acros
s the grass.
‘You have no idea how disappointed I was not to make acquaintance with the Mona Lisa in Paris.’ The merest of pauses. ‘I am trusting that I will not be disappointed a second time.’
The implication of the consequences resulting from a second disappointment hung briefly in the warm air of the alpine early evening, before Hitler broke into a smile, tapped the retaining rail with his stick and said, ‘Let us take some tea.’
Lange stood up to follow his Führer, and knew that his life had just changed irrevocably.
CHAPTER THREE
She sits for a long time staring into space, lost in thoughts and memories that he suspects she will not share with him, before suddenly she turns as if just remembering that he is there. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, monsieur?’ And without waiting for his response, eases herself stiffly out of her chair. ‘You won’t mind if I do?’
Her listener smiles. ‘Not at all.’ He would prefer a coffee, but doesn’t want to put her to any trouble.
She is back in her seat a few minutes later, reaching down to lay her mug on the hearth. ‘Too hot to drink just yet. But it’ll not get cold there.’ Bony hands clutch the ends of the chair arms. ‘Now, where was I? Ah, yes. London. July 1940.’ And she resumes her story.
Georgette was a feisty young thing. Well, not so young, I suppose. Although twenty-eight is a very distant memory to me now. And you, too, I daresay. How can I describe her? Not tall, not short. A skinny girl with not much in the way of hips. A bit of a tomboy, I suppose. She liked to wear her hair cut short, which was not very fashionable for the time. Thick, dark, abundant hair. Knee-length pleated skirts and flat shoes, and a worn old leather satchel that she habitually slung from right shoulder to left hip. Wiry. Strong, of body and spirit. You would think twice about picking a fight with her.
She had been stranded in London for several weeks, frustrated and distracted by the news from France. Defeat at the hands of the Germans, an armistice that tore France in two, handing the lesser part of it over to Pétain’s collaborationist régime to administer under orders from the Third Reich. The Free French Zone, they called it. But there was not much free about it.
It was one of those sticky summer days in the English capital when the humidity hangs thick in the air, the sun almost obscured by haze in a nearly colourless sky. She was sitting at a table in the bay window of her mother’s Kensington home, sunlight slanting through the glass, holding suspended the sparkling motes of dust that hung in the still air. She had tried appealing to the more influential of her mother’s friends to find some kind of work for her in London to help in the war effort. Without success. And she was in the process of writing a letter to a certain General Charles de Gaulle. An old friend of her father from the diplomatic corps had told her at her mother’s funeral that de Gaulle had created a Free French Force based right here in London. He had, apparently, made some sort of appeal via the BBC to his fellow countrymen to resist the Nazi occupation. But she had missed it as, it seems, had most of her compatriots. She was only now writing to him as a last resort.
She had barely made a start on it when she was interrupted by the ringing of the front doorbell. Irritated, she padded barefoot across the parquet in the hall and opened the door to a uniformed telegram boy.
‘Telegram, ma’am,’ he said and thrust an envelope at her. ‘Sign for it here.’ He held out a lined pad for her signature and was gone, leaving Georgette to wonder who on earth might be sending her a telegram.
She carried it back to her seat at the table in the window and tore it open as she sat down. Only to gasp in astonishment.
Please attend meeting with General Charles de Gaulle at 11h tomorrow STOP 4 Carlton Gardens SW1 STOP
What was this? A response to her letter, even before she had written it? Was he a mind-reader? And this didn’t seem so much like an invitation as an instruction. In spite of the fact that she had been in the process of writing to him in search of a job, she felt herself bristle.
She knew nothing at all about this man. And yet he, it seemed, knew all about her – or, at least, exactly where to find her. Dark eyebrows furrowed over warm brown eyes.
The air was clearer the next day. A cooling breeze blew softly along Pall Mall, caressing Georgette’s bare legs. Legs that had seen precious little sun this year and were unusually white. Her face, too, which habitually tanned to a golden brown in summer, was pale and colourless. The spattering of freckles across her nose, a genetic inheritance of her mother, seemed all the more prominent. But she was pretty, and in spite of her pallor drew looks wherever she went.
At Waterloo Place she turned down to the left, her corn-blue skirt billowing in the breeze, and then right on to Carlton House Terrace. This was a leafy street, dappling sunshine on the pavement and the elegant frontage of the classical white-stoned Royal Society.
In Carlton Gardens, two French soldiers stood guard at either side of a wall built in front of the porticoed entrance to number four. She fished her telegram out of her satchel and showed it to one of them. He smiled and waved her inside, calling bonne journée at her back, and it felt good to hear French again.
Inside, everyone spoke French, and Georgette was glad to be speaking it again, too. A middle-aged woman in a dark business suit led her up shiny stairs to the first floor, where a door in the corridor to their right stood open. The chatter of a typewriter came muted from within. The woman knocked twice and ushered Georgette into the room. A younger woman sat behind a Royal typewriter that stood on a desk littered with paperwork. Her scrutiny of Georgette lingered a little longer than perhaps even she had expected, surprised possibly by what she saw – a girlish, short-haired young woman wearing a dark blue summer cardigan over an open-necked white blouse, a brown leather satchel pressing her skirt to her thigh. She waved a hand towards a chair. “He’ll be with you when he’s free.” As if, Georgette thought with a prickle of annoyance, that it was she who had asked for an audience with him.
Still, she found herself fidgeting in nervous anticipation, aware of the secretary’s frequently stolen glances, before finally she met the woman’s eye, silently daring her to keep staring. It was no contest. The secretary’s eyes fluttered back towards her keyboard. On such tiny triumphs was Georgette’s life built these days. Of course, she had no idea what lay ahead.
She was startled as the door suddenly flew open, and an enormous man stood framed in the doorway. He had to stoop to avoid the lintel. He wore a dark uniform, leather-belted at the waist, a grey shirt and darker tie whose colour was impossible to identify. His dark brown hair was slicked back and shining, parted severely on the left. His long face was dominated by an even longer nose above a neatly trimmed moustache. The severity of his expression was mellowed by a peculiar warmth in the orange-flecked brown eyes that he turned on Georgette. She stood hastily.
‘Mademoiselle Pignal?’
She nodded, barely able to take her eyes off the size of his ears. At the Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, she had been taught in portrait class that the top of the ear should be level with the eyebrows, the lobe with the bottom of the nose. De Gaulle’s ears broke all the rules, even for a man with such a long nose.
He jerked his head towards his inner sanctum. ‘Entrez.’
She followed him into a large office with tall windows that overlooked the street below. Sunshine lay in narrow strips across a desk that suggested it had only just survived a hurricane. The place reeked of cigarette smoke, and blue ribbons of it still hung in the sunlight.
He dropped into a captain’s chair that creaked as it swivelled, and a shard of sunshine cast the shadow of his nose across one side of his face. A large map of France hung on the wall behind him. A telephone stood on a small table to one side. He nodded towards the chair opposite and she sat down, perching on the very edge of it.
He gazed at her appraisingly as he prised a cigarette pack from a breast pocket, and tapped out the las
t but one. He lit it with an engraved American brass lighter. ‘Do you have any idea why you’re here?’
‘Should I?’
‘I would hope not. But it’s hard to know these days who you can trust.’ He tipped forward to sift through the chaos in front of him to extract a buff-coloured folder. He flipped it open and lifted the top sheet of several.
She inclined her head towards the folder. ‘Is that my file?’
‘It is.’
‘I’m surprised there’s that much in it.’
He looked at her very steadily. ‘So am I.’ His eyes dropped again to the sheet that he held between fingers that were also occupied by his cigarette. He read, ‘Marie Georgette Pignal. Born August 1912. British mother, French father, Georges Pignal, who served in the diplomatic service. Raised in Bordeaux, but fluent in English as well as French.’
Georgette sighed her exasperation. ‘Did you really ask me here to tell me things about myself that I already know?’
‘No, mademoiselle. I asked you here to gauge what lies unwritten between the lines.’ And he returned, undeterred, to the sheet in his hand. ‘It seems you achieved a remarkable score in your Baccalaureate. Forty-two out of forty-five.’
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘On the evidence of what I have seen so far, yes. But I have learned never to judge a book by its binding.’ He continued reading. ‘You graduated from the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, and’ – he paused to raise a sympathetic eyebrow – ‘your father passed away just weeks before you topped the competitive exam for the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. No doubt he would have been very proud of you.’