by Peter May
Bruno’s secretary is a pretty young thing. Lovely dark hair and the most startling blue eyes. In other circumstances, I might have been tempted to linger and chat, but although I suspected Lohse would be gone for a while, I didn’t want to tempt fate. I leaned into the office, and as she looked up, I said casually, ‘Bruno there?’
‘He’s out at a meeting.’
‘Ah.’ I feigned annoyance. ‘I’ll catch him later then.’ I made to leave, but stopped suddenly and turned back as if just remembering something. ‘By the way, I need the address of a French art critic here in Paris. Georges Picard. Bruno said to ask you for it.’
It is amazing the influence that the name Hermann Göring brings to bear so far from home. It opens doors and cuts through red tape. German efficiency is always to be admired, but the bureaucracy can be tiresome. To be on official business on behalf of the Reichsmarschall short-circuits all of that. As the government minister who oversaw the creation of the Gestapo, Göring is a name that evokes awe, and sometimes fear. For me it achieved almost instant results when I visited the offices of la Carlingue, in the Rue Lauriston.
Which is how I came to be standing on the first-floor landing of a very upmarket apartment building in the sixteenth arrondissement at two o’clock the following morning. Cream-painted walls, wrought-iron banisters on a marble staircase, mosaic flooring. Wealthy people lived here.
I was accompanied by two armed, uniformed officers of the occupying authority, one of whom rapped the iron knocker on the door of apartment 1B. The sound of it reverberated around the landing, up and down the stairs. Yellow lamplight threw our shadows long across the tiles as he knocked again. Louder and longer.
A door across the landing opened, and an angry young man in a nightshirt blinked in the light, demanding to know what the hell was going on. It took only a few more blinks for our little group across the hall to become apparent to him, cutting off his query mid-sentence. He hurriedly closed the door again, and we resumed our hammering on the one opposite.
Finally, an elderly man opened up, pulling on a dressing gown over patterned pyjamas. Thinning grey hair was plastered against one side of his head, and stood up on the other. Milky pale skin like parchment creased around eyes darkened by confusion. He took in the three uniformed figures on his doorstep, and confusion gave way to fear, banishing sleep.
‘What do you want?’
His voice seemed very tiny in this large, echoing hallway. If I am being honest, I will confess to being surprised, and almost disappointed. It was more than twenty years since I had bloodied my knuckles on this man’s face. He had been then, perhaps, the age I am now. The years, however, had reduced him to a rather frail and elderly man. But I could still conjure in my mind’s eye the image of my sister as the beautiful young woman she had been, and would be forever. And my appetite for avenging her death had not diminished.
A woman wrapped in a silk dressing gown appeared in the hall behind him. ‘Who is it, Georges?’
‘Just an old friend,’ I assured her. ‘These gentlemen have come to take him to the Rue Lauriston to establish whether or not the claims against him are true. But don’t worry, I will be there to ensure that justice is done.’
‘What claims?’ Picard was shaking his head in consternation.
‘That you have been hiding your Jewish ancestry.’
‘Well, that’s ridiculous! I’m not Jewish.’
I smiled reassuringly. ‘Of course you’re not.’ I paused, then. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
He looked at me with no hint of recognition in his eyes. ‘Should I?’
I removed my cap and smiled again. ‘We met once. Very briefly. Though I thought I might have made more of an impression on you. Perhaps the light in the bar was not so good, and I suppose it must be difficult to see with blood in your eyes. But I’m sure you’ll recall my sister with much greater clarity, since you succeeded in making her pregnant.’
A flood of sudden recognition reflected itself in the fear that gripped him now. His eyes were almost black, and he knew that he was finished. No way out.
I nodded to the uniforms and they stepped forward to seize him, one on each side. They dragged him struggling and screaming across the landing to the top of the stairs in his bare feet. I remained for a moment on the doorstep and nodded to the woman who was now a shrinking shadow in the dark of her apartment and wondered if she had ever known about Erika. ‘Good evening,’ I said, and leaned in to pull the door shut.
I have learned a great deal in just a few days. For example, la Carlingue is what we call the French Gestapo. I had no idea that such a thing existed. It is run by French collaborators and is located in an undistinguished building at number ninety-four Rue Lauriston in the sixteenth arrondissement, not that far, in fact, from Picard’s apartment. So it didn’t take us long to get him there.
The torture rooms are on the top floor. When I visited yesterday they told me that they call them kitchens. I have no idea why. It seems an odd euphemism.
Picard was taken straight to the top floor and I left him to sweat there for a good couple of hours. Although sweat is perhaps the wrong word. Shiver, I should say. For he was stripped of his clothes, and there is no heating in the kitchens. It must have been four or five in the morning when I finally went up. Of course, I hadn’t slept, but I wasn’t tired. I had rarely felt so wide awake in my entire life. I don’t imagine that Picard had slept either.
He was huddled on a chair when I went in. The room was otherwise empty. There was a single, naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. On an impulse I reached up and pushed it with my gloves and it swung back and forth, throwing our shadows around the room. There was an odd whimpering sound issuing from Picard’s lips. Lips I had split and bloodied all those years before. Lips that had once kissed my sister, sucked on her nipples. I felt rage rise in me again like bubbles in a champagne glass, but I was determined not to lose control. Not this time. Revenge is a dish best served cold. I repeated the refrain to myself several times.
He hardly dared look at me. His fear was palpable. And I found so much pleasure in it that I am almost afraid now to confess it.
‘I’m not Jewish,’ he whispered.
‘Good God, man, I know you’re not. I just needed a pretext to get you here. To finish the job I began all those years ago.’
‘Please. Please don’t. I’ll do anything.’
‘Stand up.’
Picard did not move from his chair. Just stared back at me, huddled in terror.
‘Stand up!’ I shouted this time, and he scrambled hurriedly to his feet, embarrassed by his nakedness and doubtless feeling horribly exposed. As I reached for his chair he winced and shrunk away, anticipating the first blow. But I wasn’t ready for that yet.
I turned the chair around, lay my gloves on the seat, and removed my jacket to hang on the back of it. Very slowly, very carefully, I rolled up the sleeves of my shirt. I wanted to avoid getting blood on it if at all possible.
‘Did you enjoy my sister?’ I asked him. ‘Was she good in bed?’
‘Please . . .’ He backed away towards the wall. ‘I loved her.’
Anger spiked through me like the blade of a bayonet, and it took every little piece of self-restraint I possessed not to grab him there and then and smash his head against the wall. ‘A man does not abandon the pregnant woman he loves.’ I was surprised at how calm and reasonable I sounded. ‘When you have lost every one of your teeth, Georges, and I have broken every other bone in your body, I have a special treat for you. She may not be as beautiful as Erika, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy her. She is so looking forward to meeting you.’
I could see confusion ripple the black surface of his fear. I stooped to pick up my gloves and pulled them on, flexing my hands to stretch the leather. This was so much more satisfying than losing control. There would be time to savour each blow and contemplate the next
.
I took a single stride towards him, and I don’t believe he even saw my gloved fist coming. I could feel bone break beneath my knuckles, and his head snapped to one side, throwing droplets of blood across the room. His legs folded beneath him and he dropped to the floor like a fallen sparrow, a feeble heap of bones. He started to weep, and for the first time I began to doubt my ability to see this through. In the heat of anger there is no room for empathy.
‘Get up!’
He didn’t move. I reached down and grabbed a scrawny arm to pull him to his feet. I wanted to tell him to take it like a man, but he was only just a shadow of the one I had almost killed twenty years earlier. He stared at me with dark, desperate eyes.
Through the blood bubbling about his lips he said, ‘I know something, Monsieur Wolff. Something . . .’ He appeared to be searching for a word to describe what it was he knew, but failed to find it. ‘Something no one else knows.’ Which even he seemed to think inadequate. ‘I can share it with you if you’ll let me go.’
I almost laughed. He was only succeeding in rekindling my anger.
‘Information,’ he said. ‘In the right hands – in your hands – invaluable.’
I felt the first stirrings of interest. ‘Tell me.’
‘Only if you agree to let me go.’
‘How can I make that judgement until you’ve told me.’
I could see him making the desperate calculation. Would this information he possessed be enough to persuade me to set him free? And even if it was, could I be trusted to do it? Then he whispered three words that rooted me to the spot.
‘The Mona Lisa.’
I felt the skin on my face prickling. Myriad droplets of cold sweat. ‘What about it?’
‘You know who Jacques Jaujard is?’
‘Of course I know who Jaujard is. He’s the director of the Louvre.’
‘I’ve known him for years. Mentored him.’
‘So?’
‘Jacques always knew that if France fell, the Mona Lisa would be the prize that the Nazis would want.’
I was aware for the first time of holding my breath.
‘Evacuating her from Paris with all the other pieces from the museum was never going to be enough. We knew that the Germans couldn’t just take her without arousing international fury. But we knew, too, that there would come a time when you would lose patience. And one way or another she would be gone. No doubt to hang in Hitler’s super museum in Linz.’
‘And?’ My patience was stretching thin.
‘He had a copy made.’
I frowned. Disappointed now. ‘A copy?’
He sensed that he was losing me. ‘Not just any old copy, Monsieur Wolff. They employed André Bernard.’
Naturally, I knew who Bernard was. He had been fooling art experts around the world for the best part of two decades. His technique and eye for detail in the forgeries he produced had convinced dealers and buyers alike to part with millions in auction houses on both sides of the Atlantic. He was wanted by almost every police force in Europe and the Americas. It was not his real name, of course. ‘You know who Bernard is? Who he really is?’
Picard shook his head. ‘But Jaujard does. He persuaded him out of retirement with the offer of a huge sum of money, monsieur. After all, what price could anyone place on the safety of La Joconde.’
I shook my head. ‘A Mona Lisa forgery? No one would be fooled by it for one moment.’
Picard nodded vigorously. ‘They would.’ He paused. ‘I was.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
‘Jacques showed it to me. I didn’t know, you see. I didn’t realise it was a forgery. And I have seen her so many times. The original, I mean. I knew her intimately. I . . . I couldn’t believe it when he told me. It simply didn’t seem possible. But I was holding her in my hands, and I swear to God I couldn’t have told the difference.’
I lifted my jacket and turned the chair around. ‘Sit down.’
He did as he was told and wiped the blood from his face with the back of his arm. I could see a little of his tension dissipate. He knew he had me now. ‘Jacques was clever, you see. They sacrificed another work. A piece from the same era. The same workshop. Painted by a student of da Vinci on poplar, not canvas. It might even have been the same batch of wood on which da Vinci painted La Joconde. They stripped away the oils from the wood and Bernard used it for his forgery. Every scratch and dent and annotation on both sides of that piece of wood was replicated from the original. Of course the paint was too fresh, the colours too lurid. But they have very sophisticated means of ageing a painting these days. Even reproducing the typically Italian craquelure that so mars the surface of the Mona Lisa. Some treatment in an oven, I believe. I don’t know what exactly. But I swear to God, monsieur, if I could not tell the difference, then I would defy anyone else to.’
‘Where is this forgery now?’
‘It was packed, identifiable only to those in the know, by a specific code on the crate. It was then inventoried with a particular batch of artworks that curators were under strict instructions not to separate. But if ever it seemed like the original was under threat, it was to be swapped for the forgery.’
I left the room then, to return a few minutes later with a glass of water and another chair. I handed him the glass, and as he drank from a trembling hand, I rolled down my sleeves and pulled on my jacket before sitting opposite him.
‘Tell me about the coding on the crate. And the other works with which it has been inventoried.’
I made him go over it again, and again. And again. Paying attention to any discrepancy of detail that might lead me to disbelieve his story. But he never wavered from it. And in the end I was convinced. Against all my better judgement. For in the face of death a man does not lie. And how could Picard have had the presence of mind to invent such a tale, in such detail, in such circumstances. It was impossible not to believe him.
At length I got to my feet. ‘I’ll not kill you,’ I told him, and saw relief surge through his body. ‘But I would hate to deny you the pleasure I guaranteed you earlier.’ And now his fear flooded back. ‘You’ll like Violette. She’s quite a woman.’
‘You promised!’
‘I promised you nothing. But as a man of honour I will personally do you no further harm.’ I crossed the room and opened the door. ‘Violette!’ After a moment I heard a door opening along the hall, and Violette stepped out with the light that fell from the room. I turned back towards Picard and saw the sense of betrayal in his eyes. ‘I suspect,’ I said, ‘that she’ll not be as compliant as Erika.’
His eyes then flickered away from me towards the figure which had appeared in the doorway.
Violette is a large woman. I would say that she is probably fifty, or thereabouts. She wore a white singlet stretched tightly over extravagantly large breasts, a pair of black shorts, and well-worn brown sports shoes. Flesh once toned and muscular is now white and flabby and dimpled. She wears her hair dragged back and tied in a tight knot behind her head. And as she stood in the doorway, she wore the simple smile of someone who takes great pleasure in work that has nothing to do with sex, but everything to do with pain.
I saw a judder of fearful anticipation wrack Picard’s fragile frame. ‘Meet Violette,’ I said. ‘You might know her as Violette Morris, the medal-winning athlete. Competed for France at the Women’s World Games a couple of decades ago, and at the Women’s Olympiad, too, I believe. Won gold medals for the discus and shot-put, isn’t that right, Violette?’
She nodded.
‘Her motto has always been Ce qu’un homme fait, Violette peut le faire.’ Anything a man can do, Violette can do. ‘Used to knock them down in the boxing ring, too.’
I moved aside to let Violette step into the room. She clasped her hands together in front of her and smiled at Picard. I could see that he was choking on his own fear, and
not a word came to his lips.
‘Good night, Monsieur Picard,’ I said. ‘Rest assured that as a good Catholic, Erika sends her regards from hell.’
I had reached the next landing before I heard his first scream. It actually chilled me. But not enough to distract from the extraordinary piece of good fortune I had stumbled upon by sheer chance in this early morning. Revenge and profit all in one night.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He returns to the house in the early afternoon following a solitary lunch.
There were guests at two other tables in the dining room of the hotel. A travelling salesman, and an elderly couple on an out-of-season tour. But he paid them very little attention as he replayed the old lady’s tale.
When he knocks and comes through from the kitchen, she is sitting exactly where he left her. The fire has been stoked. Fresh logs placed upon the embers crackle and send flames dancing against the tarry residue of the wall behind.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asks.
She shakes her head. ‘I am not hungry, monsieur.’
‘Can I get you anything? A cup of tea? A coffee?’
Again she shakes her head. ‘That’s kind. But no thank you.’
He is pleased not to delay the resumption of her story, for he has been absorbed by it. He settles himself comfortably in his seat. ‘I’m ready when you are.’
She inclines her head a little to give him the palest of smiles and draws a long breath . . .
Only a handful of days had passed since the incident at the Jeu de Paume, but the frustration of her predicament was making Georgette restless to the point of distraction.
She lay propped up in her bed, pillows against the headboard, trying to concentrate on a book she had started the night before. But the words would not form images, and she found it hard to empathise with the characters.
What point had there been in returning to France only to see the war play out from the comparative safety of the hallowed halls of the Jeu de Paume? Would she ever even set eyes on the Mona Lisa? She had consulted a map of France to identify the exact whereabouts of the town of Montauban. It was a long way from Paris. Just north of Toulouse, which was deep in the south-west, not far from the Pyrenees and the Spanish border. It would be nearly a full day’s journey by train, assuming she was ever granted permission to cross into the Free French Zone.