The Night Gate - Enzo MacLeod Investigation Series 07 (2021)

by Peter May

  The Reichsmarschall smiled at my naivety. ‘Because, Karlheinz, there would be the most almighty international uproar. We would leave ourselves open to accusations of the looting of national treasures.’ He chuckled. ‘We must be careful. Either we will go down in history as the world’s greatest statesmen, or its worst villains. So the acquisition of this work has to be achieved with subtlety, diplomacy, and preferably in the shadows.’

  He fell silent for a long time, gazing at me, or rather through me. At least, that’s how it felt. And I found it hard to believe that I was sitting here, in the lion’s den so to speak, being taken into the confidence of the lion himself. Me, a Mischling. A lover of modern art. Everything that was anathema to the Nazis. And I very much feared for where this all was going.

  ‘I want it,’ he said simply.

  I frowned. ‘Want what, sir?’

  ‘The Mona Lisa. I want it for my collection. Even if no one ever knows it. Even if no one ever sees it. It will be mine, to gaze upon whenever I choose. And I will know, when no one else does, where the missing Mona Lisa resides.’ Another pause before the coup de grâce. ‘I want you to get it for me before Lange acquires it for Hitler.’ His smile was filled with warmth, but his words chilled me to the bone. ‘It’ll be our secret, Karlheinz. Just you and me.’ And I understood in that moment just how fatally dangerous it could be to share such a secret with such a man.

  But now that he had taken me into his confidence, there was no way out. He had committed me, whether I wanted it or not. There was no possibility to refuse.

  He said, ‘You will, of course, accept my invitation to become an officer in the Luftwaffe. It will pay your wages, and open whatever doors you need. You will be attached to the ERR in Paris. You are familiar with this organisation?’

  I was well aware that the raison d’être of the ERR was to confiscate art and artefacts, manuscripts and books in occupied territories. Procurement under cover of protection. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Ultimately, they are answerable to me. So you will carry that authority. You know Paris, I believe.’

  ‘I do. It is the world capital of art.’

  ‘Good. ERR will arrange office and living accommodation for you there.’ He shifted himself to the edge of the settee and leaned towards me. ‘I’m putting a great deal of trust in you, Karlheinz. Guido speaks most highly of your discretion, and I’m going to have to ask you to exercise that in relation to Guido himself. No one, and I mean no one must know about this.’ He reached for a small bell that sat on the table and rang it vigorously.

  Almost immediately Daniel appeared from a door in the fireplace wall carrying a brown paper parcel. He laid the neatly folded package on the coffee table and retreated. Göring pushed it towards me.

  ‘A gift,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Go on, open it.’

  It was with great trepidation that I unpacked the parcel to reveal a black leather flying jacket with a short, elasticated waist, large lapels and a collar that could be turned up for warmth. I gazed on it with astonishment, to Göring’s apparent amusement.

  ‘Usually it is only pilots who get to wear these,’ he said. ‘But since it is my gift to you, you can wear it with pride. I understand that you were awarded the Iron Cross for bravery during the last war.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Then you can pin it with honour to the left breast of this jacket, and let no man doubt your courage.’ As he spoke he absently fingered the elaborate gold and blue of the Pour le Mérite, best known as the Blue Max, that dangled from his collar. And, in spite of myself, I felt a frisson of excitement. I was no longer to be a bystander in this war of wars. I had a reason to be a part of it, and a precious function to fulfil.

  Bauer shares his grandfather’s excitement, and with shaking fingers flicks through the pages of the diary to the night before Wolff’s departure for Paris.

  Monday, September 16, 1940

  I lay tonight with Lisbeth, in her apartment that overlooks the river. We left the drapes undrawn, and the same moonlight that reflected on the dark surface of the River Main also flooded her bedroom. I said my farewells to my wife and children this morning, and they believe me to be on my way to Paris already.

  I am sitting at Lisbeth’s desk in the window that looks out on the river as I write this, and she lies sleeping among the warm folds of the sheets that wrapped themselves around us in the frenzy of our lovemaking. I love her with a great intensity, and never once have I felt those same base urges that have caused me to raise my hands to Kersten. They say that your partner can bring out the best in you. But they can also bring out the worst. I am happy to escape the worst that Kersten brings out in me, but sad to be leaving my Lisbeth. I feel that I owe her my honesty. The truth. But I simply cannot break the bond of silence that has been forced upon me by Herr Göring.

  On the drive back from Carinhall to Berlin last month, it was all I could do to fend off Guido’s questions. He knew perfectly well there was more to Göring’s request that I trade confiscated modern art in the international marketplace on behalf of the Reich. And when it became clear to him that I was not going to share it with him, he fell silent and has been cool with me ever since.

  However, I am consumed by excitement now. For tomorrow I will fly to Paris. I have been there many times since they had to drag me off that vile piece of excrement who made Erika pregnant. But always incognito. And never have I dared go near him again. Now it is different. Now it is I, and not the French authorities, who hold sway. I have often heard the aphorism that revenge is a dish best served cold, but never understood it. Until now.

  The very next entry is made at the end of Wolff’s first day in the French capital. Bauer has long since forgotten the pain and humiliation of his beating, devouring with his eyes now the pages of his grandfather’s journal.

  Tuesday, September 17, 1940

  What I found most extraordinary upon my arrival in Paris this morning was the sense of normalcy. If one can say that German soldiers standing on street corners in the French capital, and swastikas hanging from every other building, is normal. I think what I sensed was a lack of the tension I had most certainly expected. The streets were full of traffic, and pedestrians, all going about their daily lives as usual. Or so it seemed.

  What I did perceive, perhaps, was a nervous excitement simmering just below the surface. A certain febrile quality to the atmosphere in this City of Light. But superficially at least, you would never have guessed we were at war, and that Paris was a city under occupation.

  I strode along the crowded pavement of the Boulevard Haussmann, aware of drawing eyes that were reluctant to show too much interest. I cut, I think, a more dashing and exotic figure than those bored-looking soldiers in their field-grey uniforms and utilitarian helmets. As Göring had foreseen, I wore my Iron Cross pinned to the left breast of my leather flying jacket with the fiercest of pride. An embroidered Luftwaffe eagle was pinned to my right, the pips on my epaulettes denoting the rank of Hauptmann. I had not yet become accustomed to the baggy thigh britches tucked into my black leather boots, but I walked, I suppose, with a confidence verging on arrogance. France had fallen with barely a fight, and we were in the ascendancy. I was returning to Paris with a certain sense of entitlement.

  I caught a glimpse of myself in the window of the Hôtel Commodore as I approached its entrance at the junction with the Rue Laffitte. With the peak of my Luftwaffe cap pulled down over my forehead, and my pistol in its leather holster, I thought I looked quite formidable. Not someone to pick a fight with lightly.

  I very nearly walked smack into Bruno Lohse as I turned under the canopy at the entrance to the hotel. The Commodore had been commandeered by the ERR as its Paris headquarters. I imagined that as well as office accommodation, the hotel would also provide living quarters for many of the staff, and I wondered if I would be one of them.

  I knew Lohse of old. Before the war he ha
d traded art in many of the same markets as I, and although he was only number two to Baron Kurt von Behr here at the ERR in Paris, with the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer and the blessing of Göring himself, he was effectively the Reich’s art looter in the French capital.

  But he was not in uniform today. He wore a light grey double-

  breasted suit, the collar of his white shirt turned up above a dark blue cravat. A matching fedora sat at a jaunty angle on neatly cut dark hair. He is a good thirteen years my junior, but comports himself like a man who considers his superiority to be apparent.

  He recognised me immediately, of course. And would have known that I was here on Göring’s business. Though not being privy to exactly what that business was must have put his nose considerably out of joint. We blocked the doorway for a moment as he ran his eyes from my head to my feet and back again. ‘Didn’t know you’d got your wings, Wolff. I suppose you’re here to take up your sinecure?’ He pushed open the door and I followed him in, across the lobby and into a circular lounge beneath a stunning stained-glass cupola that shed wonderful filaments of light across a scattering of tables and chairs where officers sat in groups of two and three drinking coffee.

  I hurried to keep up. ‘I’m assuming I’ll be allocated office space, Bruno.’

  He stopped suddenly, turning abruptly, and I almost bumped into him. He lowered his voice. ‘You will be a part of this organisation in name only, Wolff. And don’t expect any favours from me. I have enough on my plate without having to pander to some freeloader.’

  ‘I’ll pass on your sentiments to the Reichsmarschall, shall I?’

  He glared at me, and I could see latent fury bubbling up behind his black eyes. But he had no opportunity to vent it, for we were interrupted then by a laconic voice that I knew only too well.

  ‘Well, well, I’ve clearly stumbled upon the place to be in high Paris society, these days. All the top people are here.’

  Lohse and I turned to see Paul Lange smiling sarcastically. I was surprised to see him in army uniform. He carried his cap in his hands and looked tanned and well, and his smile suggested the confidence of a man who operated with the explicit blessing of the Führer. The very sight of him made me want to lash out. But I forced myself to return his smile. ‘Hello, Paul,’ I said. ‘Here on holiday, are you?’

  ‘Yes, what are you doing here?’ Lohse growled.

  Lange turned a withering look on him. ‘I had a meeting with your boss, Hauptsturmführer.’ And then his smile turned patronising. ‘I suppose the number two doesn’t always know what’s going on at the top.’

  I had to restrain the urge to laugh out loud. Whatever I felt personally about Lange, I knew him to be a man of far superior intellect to Lohse, and I enjoyed the latter’s humiliation. Then he turned his sarcasm on me.

  ‘Come to join up with the looters, have you, Karlheinz? The den of thieves here at the Commodore?’

  ‘A marriage of convenience,’ I told him, aware of how infuriating this conversation must be to Lohse.

  ‘Yes, I’d heard you were into extramarital arrangements these days,’ Lange said, and I felt my face colour. ‘I’m with the good guys, the Kunstschutz, over at the Majestic across town. Perhaps it’s just as well we’re not going to be working out of the same building.’

  Lohse glanced between us. ‘I didn’t realise you two knew each other.’

  I said, ‘We were at university together at Frankfurt.’ And found it hard to keep the animosity out of my voice. Lohse did not miss it.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have better things to do with my time than spar with two alumni from a second-rate university.’ He turned to me. ‘Report to personnel for office and living accommodation.’ He nodded curtly, and with a click of his heels, strode away across the lounge.

  Which left Lange and I on our own beneath the splendour of the Commodore’s cupola. He pulled on his cap and said, ‘I’m surprised that a Mischling like you should find himself working for the Party.’

  In spite of myself, I glanced around in case anyone had heard him. I lowered my voice. ‘I’m not a Party member.’

  ‘I’d have been surprised if you were.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Of course. One does what one has to in order to survive, these days.’ He hesitated only briefly, and the strangest smile flickered across his face. ‘I heard a rumour that Herr Göring is very anxious to get his hands on what the French call La Joconde.’

  ‘Did you?’ I was shocked, but determined to give nothing away.

  ‘I did. And I imagine that Herr Hitler would be less than pleased if somehow it went missing. It’s no secret that he would like to see it hanging at Linz.’

  I was unblinking in meeting his gaze. ‘Unless, of course, it happened to go missing into the hands of someone in his employ.’

  And there it was. All set out. Our shared objective for different ends, and different masters. And Göring’s assertion that the quest to acquire the Mona Lisa would be a secret only between him and me seemed like a distant and very hollow echo.

  Lange just smiled. ‘Well, since the Louvre keep moving her around the Free French Zone, I imagine it could be some time before she might turn her smile upon a new master.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bauer sat back in his chair, removing his eyes from the painful concentration of light that his desk lamp threw upon the diaries. All the various pains he felt seemed fused into one general ache. Bruised and battered, and enormously fatigued, the escape offered by sleep was seductive. But, still, his excitement at what he had just read banished any thoughts of calling it a night.

  He leaned forward again, and selected the final diary, effectively fast-forwarding through four years of war. The entries now were much briefer, and felt hurried. Wolff’s careful, considered handwriting had become slapdash and erratic. There was the sense of uncertainty, of a turn in the tide of events. The final entry pre-dated the D-Day invasion in June, and was an abrupt end to his journal. Bauer imagined that this was when he had returned to Germany on leave and left the diaries in the safekeeping of his lover, Bauer’s grandmother, Lisbeth.

  But before then, by the spring of 1944, it seemed he had tracked down the Mona Lisa to a château in south-west France, where it appeared to be in the safekeeping of a young woman called Georgette Pignal. In an increasingly irregular hand, Wolff wrote that he had heard that this woman had been specifically tasked by de Gaulle with keeping the painting safe, and out of the hands of the Nazis. He also suspected that she was somehow in league with his nemesis, Lange. Why he believed this was not clear, but Bauer imagined that the answer must lie in earlier entries.

  Although it seemed that she was living a short distance from the château itself, in a village called Carennac, Wolff reported that she was spending her nights at the château.

  That his grandfather’s journal ended here, so abruptly and without conclusion, was infuriating. Bauer felt frustration welling up from deep inside him. But there was nothing, and no one, for him to lash out at, no focus for the venting of his vexation. He dropped the diary on to the desktop and wakened his laptop with a sweep of his fingers on the trackpad. He opened his browser and brought up a Google search page. His bruised fingers had stiffened up, and it was only with difficulty that he typed Carennac into the search window.

  His screen immediately filled with links to tourist sites describing the village as the epitome of provincial France in the Dordogne valley, with its medieval stone houses and Romanesque church. Several sites referred to it as one of the most beautiful villages in France. Images revealed steeply pitched red-tiled roofs with towers and turrets rising over honeyed stone. The Wikipedia entry listed its permanent population as 408.

  Bauer sighed. This seemed like a waste of time. He was about to give up when a link to an article in a local newspaper well down the page caught his eye. The newspaper was La Dépêche du Midi, an
d the article which had appeared on an inside page just three days earlier, was headlined ‘MACABRE DÉCOUVERTE SOUS UN ARBRE MORT: UN CADAVRE DATANT DE LA DERNIÈRE GUERRE’. Bauer selected and copied it, and entered it into Google Translate. MACABRE DISCOVERY UNDER A DEAD TREE: A CORPSE FROM THE LAST WAR, appeared in the translation window. Which excited his interest sufficiently for him to have the entire article translated.

  A dead tree, brought down during a storm in the village of Carennac, has revealed the remains of a body buried in a park sometime during the last war.

  Metal and leather artefacts recovered with the bones have led experts to believe that this was the corpse of a German air force officer. A bullet hole in the cranium appears to have been the cause of death.

  All the remains, from what seems to have been a hastily dug and shallow grave, have been collected and sent to Paris for analysis by a forensic archaeologist.

  Three brief paragraphs that sent all the hairs rising on the back of Bauer’s neck, and his mind doing circuits around the room. The pounding of his heart actually felt painful. Was it possible that these were the remains of Karlheinz Wolff? A German air force officer, they thought. Missing in action, was how Lisbeth had reported the last words she’d had of her lover in France. Bauer knew from his diaries that he had been there. Had someone shot him in the head and then buried him in haste? Just a stone’s throw away from the château where the Mona Lisa was being kept. But who, and why?

  Bauer held his face in his hands and breathed deeply for several long minutes. But it was what he read next, about the occupant of the house adjoining the park, that had him reaching for the first of the diaries. His fatigue banished. Pain retreating to the very edge of consciousness. He would refill his glass. Again. And again. However many times it took to see him through the reading of his grandfather’s diaries from first page to last.