by Richard Wake
"The mademoiselles, they like -- what can I say?"
"And glasses? Since when?"
"They're plain glass."
"The mademoiselles?"
"Oui, oui," he said. "Now come here and give me a proper hug, you fucking asshole."
Leon, Henry and I met during the war, fighting for the honor of the archduke, or something. We were just kids then, but came back to Vienna and remained the closest of friends. For years and decades, I could never manage to get serious with a woman, and I hated my father and brother back in Brno, so that left Leon, Henry and Uncle Otto as my only family.
Between female conquests, of which there were hundreds in the quarter-century I had known him, Leon had managed to carve out a nice career in journalism. He started covering cops and then society bullshit at one of the Vienna tabloids, Der Abend, the society bullshit consisting mostly of drinking free champagne at museum openings and spelling the rich people's names correctly. He managed to turn that into a job at one of the serious newspapers in Vienna, Die Neue Freie Presse, where his society connections morphed into political connections. The highlight of his career was the break he got on the story of the timing of the German invasion of Austria -- I was the source. Of course, within hours of its publication, he was slouched down in the front seat of a car, driven by Henry, that was speeding through a border checkpoint into Czechoslovakia as Nazi bullets registered their disapproval. In the car, he had a copy of the newspaper with his big scoop bannered across the top, but he had no career anymore -- and no passport besides.
The Czechs then agreed to give Leon a passport and ship him to Paris as part of the deal I made with my former/current employers. His French was better than average -- the frauleins liked it as much as the mademoiselles, it seemed -- and he had a contact at a Paris newspaper, one of the correspondents who used to populate his favorite Vienna hangout, Cafe Louvre.
"What's the paper like?" I said.
"Better than Der Abend, not as good as Die Neue Freie Presse. But they let me have my head. They're even calling it a column now -- or a regular feature, with my name on it. It's called 'Fresh Eyes,' and it's supposed to be a foreigner's take on different aspects of French life and culture. Twice a week, no heavy lifting."
"What was the last one about?"
"Well, a lot of them are serious. I did one where a bunch of deputies tried to explain to me how having a government that falls every 10 seconds isn't such a bad thing -- that got a lot of attention. But the last one was about the history of the culture of perfume."
"I bet you did a lot of fucking sniffing around for that one," I said.
"My specialty," Leon said.
We drank the bottle and caught up. I told him about Henry and Liesl's baby, and about Manon. He told me about his latest, whom he claimed "can get both ankles behind her head without so much as a strain." Every few minutes, the reason for my trip popped into my head, but I kept forcing it out. We were in Paris in 1940, but we could have been in Vienna in 1930, and I didn't want to let that go.
"Come on," Leon said, after paying the bill.
"Where to?"
"The Paris version of Cafe Louvre."
We grabbed a taxi and, in a few minutes, were dumped out at a place called La Pluie, on Saint-Germain. The architecture was all different, as was the menu -- there was no schnitzel for two marks, for instance -- but you could just tell it was a newspaper bar. The foreign correspondents were all different but the vibe was the same -- lots of drinking, lots of half-formed opinions about the events of the day being tried out on each other, a wariness among competitors but also a collegiality.
"Does it work the same as Vienna?" I said.
"Pretty much. They're all scared of getting beaten on a big story so they tend to stick together and write the same shit. That protects them all. But the problem for them is, lots of newspaper executives show up in Paris. It was a haul to get to Vienna, and it was cold, so their wives didn't really want to go, which left the correspondents on their own a lot more. Here, they occasionally have to actually produce something enterprising for the boss. They can't just sit in here all day and rewrite the local papers. Although there's still plenty of that."
"So what do they think about the war?"
"That it's coming. Just look at them, all sticking together. You can tell they're getting worried about getting scooped."
It was time to tell Leon what I knew. We got drinks and took a table as far away from the correspondents as we could, and I began talking. I might have spoken for an hour straight, with barely an interruption from Leon. I laid it all out -- my increased role with Czech intelligence, my frustration with how they seemed incapable of acting on the information that we brought them, and the key points: that the invasion would come through the Ardennes, and that it would come on May 10th, this Friday, three days away.
In the midst of all of that, I also told him about the Nazi gold and the implications for the war. Leon seemed much more interested in that. He stopped me several times and went into reporter mode, asking me for clarifications and specific details, and to separate my theories from demonstrated facts.
"That would be a big fucking story," he said.
"But what about the invasion? Hitler's attempt to dominate the entire continent of Europe? Not big enough for you?"
"I could never write that one. First, they would never believe I had the proper sourcing for it. But even then, I don't know about you, but I'm not going to be the person responsible for panicking an entire nation. I mean, what if it's wrong? I believe what you're telling me, but Hitler is crazy. He could change his mind tomorrow. I can't touch that one -- but I know a military guy you can talk to about it."
It is what I hoped for all along, just an audience with someone who might listen and who maybe could make a difference. There was still time -- not much time, but still some. I don't know how long it took to move an army, but even a couple of days' head start toward the Ardennes had to help. I don't know -- it could be the difference between success and failure.
"But the gold story, that's dynamite," Leon said. "There isn't enough to publish yet, but I can start asking questions about it tomorrow. I know a guy who works at a bank. I helped him out of a jam, and he owes me a favor."
"What kind of a jam? A female jam?"
"Not important," Leon said. And then he smiled that fabulously wicked smile of his. It really did feel like 1930 again, for maybe a second.
46
The next afternoon, because this was Paris and mornings were for chumps, apparently, I met Leon outside the Saint Paul station. It was an easy walk for me from Le Meurice, on the Rue de Rivoli, across from the Jardin de Tuileries, because the bank was paying for this trip whether they knew it or not. And Saint Paul was a Metro station that was right in the Marais, where Leon lived. He was the least Jewish Jew that I knew, but the Marais was Paris' traditional Jewish neighborhood and, as he said, "Fuck it, I figure if I live there, I don't have to go to temple."
He had a friend he wanted me to meet. Over my late, ridiculously expensive breakfast, I fought my way through two Paris newspapers. My French was actually decent, with practice -- back-when in Brno, before I escaped as a teenager to live with Uncle Otto in Vienna, we had a French cook who taught me and left me with what one woman in Strasbourg once told me was "a charming Alsatian accent," which was good enough for a few kisses but also a very curt karate chop to my wandering right hand. So exactly how charming was it, after all?
Anyway, the papers were full of political intrigue. Most of it was about 200 former Communist mayors and deputies who had been exiled to internment camps on islands in the Atlantic after the party was outlawed. Military tribunals pronounced their sentences and put them on the boats, operating under the theory that you need to cut off the head of the snake first. But the papers were full of stories that quoted unnamed party members who said their members were never more motivated than they were when the boats pushed off from Fromentine with their former leaders on boar
d.
France was crazily, and maybe fatally, unstable. The Communists hated the rightists and pretty openly smooched photographs of Stalin -- well, at least before they were outlawed. The rightists, whom the Communists called Fascists, didn't hate the Commies -- they feared them. Fear is a much stronger emotion than hate. And while the rightists couldn't smooch Hitler photographs in return -- some things just weren't done -- it was fair to say that said portraits gave them stirrings in places unseen behind their desks at the banks, and beneath the white linen tablecloths at their current favorite restaurant.
That left the people in the middle trying to govern, a group whose number seemed to shrink by the hour. They were like the people who ran for club president in every little club that you ever belonged to, the people who tended to win because nobody else wanted the job, or wanted to deal with the shit, and who spent their entire existence getting yelled at from a minimum of two directions. All of which meant that if a French government lasted as long as six months, they should have had a parade to celebrate. I'll never forget that they had no government when Hitler marched into Austria in 1938. Even if there had been some inclination to offer help -- and I'm not sure the phrase "offer help" has ever been in the French dictionary -- who was going to arrange it? The bell captain at the Ritz?
One thing there wasn't a lot of in the newspapers was war news, as in, none at all. Leon had warned me.
"They set up this Ministry of Information about six weeks ago," he said. "It's turning out to be the ministry of no information. Nothing in the papers, nothing on the radio -- you need to get a London paper to find out anything about Norway."
"How is Norway going, by the way?"
"Shitty," Leon said. "But like I said, you can't read about it here."
He was right. There wasn't anything. Thus fortified after breakfast, and assured that this place was as fucked up as ever, I met Leon. We were on the Metro's Line 1, the oldest line, and it soon became apparent that the friend we were meeting was going to be at the end of the line, the Chateau de Vincennes.
"All the way the hell out here? Why?" I said as we got off the train.
"Because this is where he works," Leon said.
"But what's out here? We're, like, how many miles--"
"About five or six from your hotel, probably."
"But what's out here?"
"Just that." Leon pointed as we took the last few steps up to the street. Just the chateau, perhaps the most fabulous combination of size and ugliness ever conceived by an architect.
"He works in there?" I said.
"They all do."
"Who's they?"
"The French high command," Leon said. He looked at his wristwatch. "We're a bit early. Let's take a lap."
As we walked, Leon played the tour guide. He said he knew all of the history because it was the subject of one of his newspaper columns. The headline was, "A Submarine without a Periscope."
"The press guy from the army was furious," Leon said. "I told him that the writers don't write the headlines. Of course, I didn't tell him that I suggested it to my editor. It came from an anonymous quote in the story from one of the junior officers on the staff who resented having to come all the way out here every day, to the ass-end of the Metro line."
"That junior officer wouldn't be the friend we're going to meet later, would it?"
"I'll never tell," Leon said. His smile, of course, gave it away.
The chateau was just odd looking, both wide and tall, with these massive battlements in the middle. It was the home of kings, going back centuries, obviously built more for defense than looks. There was even a moat to keep out the barbarians, only it was now dried out and beginning to sprout spring grasses.
"Based on what my friend tells me, he believes Gamelin would actually fill it with water again -- just one more barrier to keep the politicians outside," Leon said.
As we circumnavigated, we came upon a statue on one corner of the property of Louis IX, known to you and me as St Louis. But this also was a place known for death: Henry V of England died there, and the spy Mata Hari and many others had been executed there. As we turned a corner, we came upon a gaggle of school children, maybe 10 years old, about 30 of them being shepherded by two very outnumbered teachers. If they managed to get back to school on the Metro without losing at least one of those kids, they deserved the Croix de Guerre.
"You can go on a tour of the place if you are so inclined," Leon said. "Lots of big, dark, cold, damp rooms. A bunch of furniture from the 16th century that appears as if it couldn't survive a healthy fart at this point. A few suits of armor, if that's your thing. And they'll show you the courtyard, part of the barracks where they shot Mata Hari."
"I'll pass," I said.
"The truth is, it's nicer inside. These big walls -- it was built as a fortress, after all. They were trying to keep people out."
"And still are, it sounds like."
"Ask my friend," Leon said.
47
We waited at a cafe across the street from the chateau. If it had a name, it wasn't obvious. There was nothing written on the glass door, and nothing on the green-and-white awning, either. The menu was chalked on a small slate that the waiter dropped on the table with a mini-thud.
After a few minutes, Leon and I watched as an officer in uniform crossed the street and walked in our direction. He looked about our age, maybe a little younger. Leon introduced him as "the Captain."
"No names?" I said.
"Not for now," Leon said.
"Hell, I don't care," the Captain said, sticking out his hand. "Georges."
He ordered coffee, and I made conversation. I looked at Georges and said, "Well, how did you two meet?"
"Well, that's a story," Leon said. I loved it when Leon said, "Well, that's a story." I think the first time I heard him say it, our unit was a few miles outside of Caporetto, after the battle. I don't remember all of the details, but the tale that day involved a redhead and a scarf that doubled as a restraint. Whenever he pre-announced, "Well, that's a story," it was.
"So," I said.
"Well--" Georges said.
"We met because we were fucking two sisters," Leon said.
"And then we had a contest," Georges said.
"Let me guess," I said.
"Shut up, it's our story," Leon said.
"The contest was simple," Georges said. "Who would be the first one to fuck the other sister. Loser buys the winner drinks for a night."
"Ah, so it was true love," I said.
"I thought he told you to shut up," Georges said. I liked him immediately. He described the two sisters for me, just to round out the picture. His (original) sister was, as he said, "the more voluptuous of the two." When I arched an eyebrow, he said, "Not fat, voluptuous. Am I right?" Leon nodded.
"So how would the winner prove to the loser--"
"What do you think we are?" Georges said. "Our word is our bond. We're gentlemen, for fuck's sake."
His faux outrage was pitch perfect.
"So don't keep me in suspense. Who won?"
At this point, Georges actually stood up and raised his arms above his head, hands balled into fists. He looked like a boxer standing over a fallen opponent, splayed out on the canvas. It would have made for quite the scene, had there been anybody else sitting at one of the sidewalk tables.
"Leon, you're losing your touch," I said.
"What my worthy opponent failed to mention was that I lost by three fucking hours. I lost because I bought mine dinner and he only bought his a drink. Shows you where being a gentleman gets you."
"All's fair in love and war," Georges said. "That fits perfectly, doesn't it? Although, whoever said that, I kind of doubt he had our contest in mind."
The preliminaries aside, we began to talk about why I had traveled to Paris. Georges just let me speak, never interjecting, just nodding occasionally. I probably went on for a half-hour, my frustration with the leadership at every level of officialdom spilling out.
Finally, I was done. Georges shook his head. Then he cleared his throat, turned and spit on the sidewalk.
"Gamelin knows this -- or, should I say, most of it," he said. "I'm not sure he knows the Ardennes information is coming from three sources. I don't know if he knows the May 10th date comes from two sources. But he knows. Trust me, he knows."
"And what does he say?"
"We're, and I quote, 'awaiting events.'"
Georges sipped his coffee. It was cold. He raised his hand to get the waiter's attention. Waiters hated that, but he was wearing a military uniform, so screw the waiter. He pointed down at the table and drew a circle with his finger, for another round of coffee.
"Awaiting fucking events," he said. "I've personally heard him say that a half-dozen times, and I don't get into half of the big meetings. He must say it on the hour. Such a goddamned fossil. We are so doomed."
Fossil. I thought about the old men in Cafe Fessler, arguing about the positioning of FC Zurich's midfielders. They were as old as Gamelin. Hell, Gamelin was probably older.
"Why doesn't Gamelin believe it? Why don't his people believe it?" I said.
"Because of the plane crash." Georges began to tell the story, about the crash into Belgium and the original invasion plans falling into Belgian hands, a little scorched but readable. I stopped him midway.
"I know, I know. But that was months ago."
"But don't you get it -- it fits with what Gamelin knows, and what he knows is the last war."
"But--"
"There's no but," Georges said. "They have about two staff dinners a week. I get invited to about two a month. I've been at this post for seven months, so 14 dinners, give or take. And at every one of them -- every fucking one -- the conversation has turned at one point or another to the Marne. And Gamelin is always the one who turns it there."