by Peter May
He steered Georgette, then, towards the door, forcing the Gestapo officer to step aside, and they passed on to the landing and the staircase beyond. Georgette’s legs nearly folded beneath her in relief, and only Lange’s strong arm around her shoulders kept her on her feet.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. And wasn’t sure whether she was thanking the man, or the God who had sent him.
A car with driver stood idling out in the Avenue Foch and took them back to Lange’s apartment in the Rue de Rivoli. Lange sat close to her in the back seat, so that she felt the warmth of his body next to hers. They passed the journey without a word.
By the time he got her up the stairs to his apartment she was almost ready to collapse. She allowed him to lead her into the sitting room where the embers of a coal fire in the hearth still warmed the air. He lowered her into the settee, finally removing his coat from her shoulders and throwing it across an armchair. He sat down beside her, and quite involuntarily she threw her arms around him, burying her face in his chest, tears releasing the toxicity of fear that had built up inside her during the last hours. She felt his arms encircle her, and as she turned her face up to meet his, their lips met for the first time. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world and they each surrendered to it without reserve. With her hand on his face she felt the stubble of a day’s growth, smelled the warm, earthy perfume of his body. And then it was over.
They moved apart, quite suddenly, as if shocked by what had just passed between them, and he seemed flustered, almost embarrassed. He stood up. ‘I’ll get you something to drink.’
He returned with a large Cognac and soda in a glass full of ice cubes. She received it in both hands to sip gratefully, feeling the healing cold of it fresh on her lips, the alcohol warming her inside. He moved his coat and sat on the edge of the chair opposite, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. There was genuine concern in his eyes.
‘Will you be okay?’
She nodded and said, ‘How did you know where I was?’
‘When I called you that first time, I gave you my number. It must still have been by the phone. Mademoiselle Valland called me.’ And Georgette realised then that she probably owed her life to Rose. Lange reached out a hand to place over hers. ‘What did he do to you?’
She shook her head. ‘He didn’t do anything.’
‘Then what did he want?’
‘He wanted to know about my relationship with you.’ She saw his mouth set.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘That we had no relationship. That I came here every Friday evening because you wanted me to, and that I didn’t feel I could refuse.’ Which appeared to unsettle him. He sat back a little.
‘And is that how you feel? Really?’
‘No, of course not.’ She hesitated for a long moment. ‘Wolff said you were married.’ And somehow there was an accusation implicit in it. Lange stood up and turned towards the fireplace.
‘Yes,’ he said, his back to her so that she couldn’t see his face.
‘You never told me.’
He turned. ‘There didn’t seem any point. It’s a marriage in name only. My wife was seeing someone even before the war began. But she’s a Catholic. So divorce isn’t an option.’ Bitterness crept into his voice then. ‘Adultery, it seems, is an acceptable sin. But God forbid you break the rules of the club by asking for a divorce.’
Georgette searched his face and saw only pain there. In her mind she wrestled with mixed emotions. Confusion. Disappointment. Relief. Jealousy. ‘Why do you think Wolff had me arrested?’
Lange sighed. ‘We have a history, Karlheinz and I.’
She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We were students together at university in Frankfurt. Both of us majoring in the history of art.’ He shook his head and chuckled at the irony. ‘We were actually friends then. Part of a group, you know. A bunch of us who socialised, studied together, talked art and philosophy and religion together. And there was this girl . . .’ He laughed, but without humour. ‘Isn’t there always? Hanna. A beautiful young woman. Smart, talented. Classic Aryan looks. Blond-haired, blue-eyed. She and Wolff were a thing, right from first year. By third year they were engaged. He didn’t see any point in hanging around. Was even prepared to drop out of university to marry her.’
He moved away again, towards the fire, and stooped to scoop up a small shovelful of coal to feed the embers. As he stood, he turned again to Georgette.
‘Of course she cheated on him.’
And she guessed what was coming. ‘With you.’
He nodded. ‘I’m not proud of it. At the time it didn’t really mean anything. We were at a Christmas party, and we both had too much to drink. If Karlheinz hadn’t found out, it probably wouldn’t have altered the course of events. But he did. And, boy, did it change things.’
He slumped into his armchair again as she leaned forward on her elbows, sipping at her Cognac and soda, watching him closely while he spoke. He was somewhere far away, in a long-distant youth, reliving mistakes, rekindling regrets.
‘Karlheinz has the most foul temper, and is very much prone to bouts of anger-fuelled violence. In this case, directed at me. He sought me out in the student common room, and simply attacked me. With fists and feet and head. I never saw it coming. Had no reason to expect it. I didn’t even know he’d found out about me and Hanna. I was down on the floor before I knew what was happening.’
She saw the pain of recollection in his eyes.
‘I didn’t have a lot of meat on my bones in those days. Didn’t stand a chance. I actually think he might have killed me if the others hadn’t pulled him off. I had broken ribs, a broken nose and jaw. I missed weeks of lectures.’
‘What happened to Wolff?’
‘Someone reported him to the hierarchy.’ He added quickly, ‘It wasn’t me. He was summoned to a meeting with the head of the university and summarily expelled.’
‘And Hanna?’
‘Oh, she and Wolff were finished. She was appalled by what he had done to me. And he wouldn’t have had her back anyway. He saw it as humiliation. Would never have forgiven her.’ He stretched himself out in the armchair and let his head fall back, eyes closed. ‘And here’s the irony. It was me that ended up marrying her.’ He opened his eyes and pushed himself up again, barely able to meet Georgette’s eyes. ‘Yes.’ He nodded in response to her unspoken question. ‘The same woman who cheated on me seventeen years later. Who gave me two beautiful daughters that she won’t even let me see now.’ The smile that curled his lips was filled with bitterness. ‘You’d have thought that might have been revenge enough for Wolff.’
‘And that’s why he had me arrested by the Gestapo? To get back at you?’
Lange shrugged doubtfully. ‘In part, maybe. But there’s more to it than that.’
Georgette cradled her now empty glass between cupped hands and sat forward. ‘I don’t understand. What?’
Lange looked at her very directly. ‘He knows you were in London. He knows about de Gaulle. We have the same friends in common there. I’m sure he thinks that by getting at you he’s undermining me.’
‘Just because of what happened at university?’
Lange shook his head. ‘Because I know the reason he’s here in Paris.’
‘Which is?’
‘To procure the Mona Lisa for Hermann Göring’s private collection.’
The glass slipped from Georgette’s hand and smashed on the floor.
Lange said, ‘He’s just biding his time.’
The first grey light had appeared in the east. Rose was sitting by the fire in her front room when Georgette took the spare key from beneath the mat and let herself into the apartment. The older woman was on her feet immediately and hurried into the hall. She took one look at her assistant curator and let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Thank God,’ she said
, and took Georgette by the arm to lead her to the fireplace. ‘Come in, child. Warm yourself at the fire.’
‘What time is it?’ Even to herself, Georgette’s voice sounded tiny.
‘It’s almost seven. I couldn’t sleep.’
Georgette turned towards her. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I might be dead by now if you hadn’t called Lange.’
Rose examined her face and Georgette saw trepidation behind the curiosity in her eyes. ‘What happened?’
And she knew that she would have to tell her. Everything.
The rain of the night before had passed, and early morning sunshine glistened on still wet cobbles in the courtyard of the Louvre. Jacques Jaujard was brisk and businesslike. He stood behind his desk in his lounge suit, smoking a cigarette, and did not ask her to sit. Georgette knew that Rose had spoken to him at length in a phone call even before it was fully light. He pushed a leather document wallet across the desk towards her.
‘Your travel documents.’
‘Where am I going?’
‘To the Musée Ingres at Montauban, where the Mona Lisa resides for the moment.’
Georgette felt as if an enormous weight had just lifted from her shoulders. At last. At long last this interminable confinement in Paris was over. But then doubt immediately crept in to cloud her relief. ‘But you told me there was no point, since my cover was blown.’
Jaujard shrugged. ‘After what happened last night there is no way you can stay in Paris. And consider this. While Wolff and Lange know about you, equally you know about them. And of Wolff’s intentions. Who better to watch over La Joconde than someone who knows exactly who it is that wants to steal her?’
He stubbed out his cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling.
‘No one at the Musée Ingres will know the purpose of your presence there. You will just be another assistant curator. But I have told the curator himself that I am sending you to keep a special eye on La Joconde. He doesn’t need to know why. The fewer who do, the better. But I have complete trust in René Huygue. He was curator of the department of painting here in the Louvre for ten years before the war, so if you need someone to turn to, he is your man.’ He tipped his head towards the document folder. ‘Take your papers, go home and pack. You’ll travel to Montauban by rail first thing tomorrow, leaving from the Gare Austerlitz.’ He rounded his desk to take her arm. ‘Now come walk with me.’
The Louvre was deserted. There was some activity in the basement, but the main galleries were empty. Their footsteps echoed back at them from walls once graced by priceless paintings. Sunlight laid itself down in faint yellow slabs where those windows not yet boarded up let the outside in.
Jaujard’s voice was hushed as he said, ‘What I’m about to tell you is known only to a handful of people. I’m trusting you with it because, frankly, there will be no one else better placed to make use of it for the protection of La Joconde.’
He delayed for several more paces before finally, reluctantly, letting go of his long-held secret.
‘Early in 1939, with the prospect of war on the horizon, we not only began to enact the evacuation of the Louvre, we took exceptional steps to secure the Mona Lisa from the possibility of confiscation by the Germans.’ He ran a tongue over dry lips before popping a cigarette between them and lighting it. ‘You’ve heard of André Bernard?’
‘Of course. He’s probably the most notorious forger of the twentieth century.’ Georgette stopped suddenly in her tracks. ‘You didn’t . . . He didn’t . . .’
‘I paid him a very great deal of money to create a reproduction of the Mona Lisa that would fool even the most experienced of art experts. I won’t bore you with the details, but he was virtually incarcerated in a basement room here in the Louvre every night for nearly six months. Most forgers don’t have the luxury of working from the original. Bernard did. We procured a piece of poplar board of the same vintage as da Vinci used to paint La Joconde, and he replicated the Mona Lisa in every possible tiny detail. On both sides of the wood. He aged and dulled the oils and, using heat and varnish, reproduced the Italian craquelure that so characterises her.’ He pulled long and thoughtfully on his cigarette. ‘You know, when he first showed me them side by side, I couldn’t tell the original from the copy. It’s a truly extraordinary piece of work.’
Georgette stared at him with incredulity before growing self-consciously aware that her mouth was gaping. She snapped it shut.
‘I know that you were on the team that crated the original, so you also know that we coded all the crates with a series of one, two or three coloured dots. Yellow for very valuable pieces. Green for major works. And red for world treasures. The Mona Lisa was the only work to have her crate stamped with three red dots. The forgery has been identically crated, but stamped uniquely with three yellow dots. We attached it to the same inventory as the huge canvasses that we had to strip from their frames and roll around long wooden poles for transportation. You know the ones I mean?’
Georgette said, ‘The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Veronese? And presumably David’s Coronation of Napoleon.’
‘Yes, and Napoleon on the Battlefield of Eylau, as well as Napoleon Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa. There are others inventoried in that batch. But the instruction is that under no circumstances are works on the same inventory to be separated.’
‘So wherever The Wedding Feast at Cana is being kept is where the other Mona Lisa can be found.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And where are they?’
‘Everything is at Montauban.’
They were standing now in a shaft of sunlight and Jaujard’s cigarette smoke hung blue in the still air, trapped by the warmth of the light, curling slowly around his head in gauze-like wreaths.
‘Does René Huygue know?’
‘He doesn’t. For all practical purposes, only you and I now know of its existence. The copy is catalogued as Sketch for the Feast.’ He paused. ‘If you believe that La Joconde is in real danger of falling into enemy hands, then I am authorising you to switch the copy for the original.’
They stood in silence for a very long time. The burden that Georgette had earlier felt lifting from her shoulders descended again, weighing even more heavily than before. This was both a momentous and a terrifying responsibility.
‘One more thing,’ Jaujard said, and the light faded in eyes which had so animated his face as he talked about the Mona Lisa and her copy. Even his skin seemed to grey. ‘The intelligence that originally came to us from Berlin, alerting us to Hitler’s designs on La Joconde, has now come up with a name. The person he has delegated to obtain the painting for his collection.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘It is Paul Lange.’
She was waiting for him on the landing outside his apartment when he returned home shortly before eight. All day, it had eaten away at her like a cancer. Her sense of betrayal. The humiliation. The realisation of just what a fool she had been. She felt sick, and exhausted, and was still trembling with anger. And there was no question about it in her mind. She had to confront him.
His face lit up as he reached the landing and saw her there. He stretched out an arm to pull her into his embrace. ‘George!’ There was undoubted pleasure in his surprise. And so he was not expecting the slap that resounded around the fourth-floor landing and stung his face. The strength of it nearly knocked him off balance, but he saw the second one coming and grasped her arm at the wrist to stop it.
‘What the hell . . . ?’
‘You bastard!’ She struggled to free her arm from his grip, but he held on to it.
‘For God’s sake, George!’
‘You lying, cheating, duplicitous bastard!’
He became conscious suddenly that others in the building might hear this. It would be entirely inappropriate for a German officer to be assaulted and verbally abused by a French citizen. He fought to hold her at bay while he fumbled to get
his key in the lock. And then finally they were in the entrance hall and he pushed her forcefully away. He shouted. And his voice seemed excessively loud in the confined space as he slammed the door shut at his heels. ‘Stop! Stop it!’
Each stood breathing hard, and glaring at the other.
‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’
‘So Wolff is acting on instructions from Göring to seize the Mona Lisa. What you conveniently forgot to tell me is that Hitler asked you to do exactly the same thing.’
His eyes opened wide, and she found it hard to read the expression on his face. It might have been anger, or guilt, or both. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ he said, and strode past her into the front room. He shrugged himself free of his coat and threw it over the settee, turning to face her as she entered behind him. ‘After all this time, I might have hoped you would credit me with a little more sophistication than that.’
‘You lied to me.’
‘I did not.’ He strode to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large Scotch. ‘Yes, Hitler asked me to procure the Mona Lisa for him.’ He turned to face her, glass in hand. ‘But I never had the least intention of doing it. For God’s sake, George, art has been my life. An appreciation of the one civilising factor and saving human grace in nearly two thousand relentless years of war and destruction. The Mona Lisa is, perhaps, the most important artwork in the world. The epitome of everything to which Man is capable of aspiring, a quintessential icon of what it is that sets human beings above every other animal on the planet. Art is civilisation, and the Nazis the antithesis of everything that stands for.’ He took a long, breathless draught of his Scotch. ‘Did you really believe I would betray all that for a cretinous little man like Hitler?’
Georgette stared at him, face stinging as if he had slapped her, too. She wanted so much to believe him. ‘And what’s he going to say, or do, if you don’t deliver?’
He threw a dismissive hand towards the ceiling. ‘Jesus, George, do you not think he’s got other things on his mind? The war is not going well on the Eastern Front. Rumours are rife of an imminent Allied invasion of North Africa. There’s the constant threat of an Allied invasion of Europe. I’m quite sure he’s not lying awake at night wondering why I haven’t brought him the Mona Lisa.’