by John Pearce
He interrupted Aurélie’s explanation of the wax museum. “This whole thing feels strange. The two men who got out of that Mercedes up ahead were in the restaurant with us, and they left just as Margaux was paying the check — but they were only there a half-hour, not nearly enough time to have even a quick dinner. And now they’re parked where we have to pass them.
“Just ahead of us is one of the old passages, a 19th-century mall where people could shop out of the weather, and halfway down it there is a hotel called the Chopin. My family lived there for a month while our apartment was being renovated. I was about 13 years old then, and bored, so I explored every inch of it. If they’re waiting for us now, we’ll go there.”
As they neared the Mercedes the two passengers walked briskly out of the museum alcove and stopped facing them. The taller one pulled his jacket open just enough to show the leather-wrapped hilt of a large knife protruding above his belt. A prominent scar on his left cheek showed he was no stranger to knives.
He lifted it partway out of the scabbard, just enough for Eddie to identify it as a World War II American Army bayonet — his father had told him it was the sharpest knife he had ever seen.
Mutt spoke roughly in hesitant French, with a strong German accent. “We want the painting, and you are going to tell us where it is. Now. Get in.” He gestured with his head toward the Mercedes.
He reached with his left hand for Aurélie’s shoulder, keeping his right on the hilt of the sheathed knife, but a sharp blast of the Mercedes’s horn distracted him for an instant. Without thinking, Eddie called on the close-combat training he’d received two decades before and grabbed the man’s right wrist with his left hand, preventing him from drawing the knife. With his right, he reached for the man’s other elbow and pulled it sharply to force him off balance. Turning to the left like a dancer leading a clumsy and untrained partner, Eddie pushed him forcefully toward the car. Off balance, he staggered drunkenly across the curb, hit his head on the top of the car, and slumped into the back seat. The bayonet clattered to the pavement.
The smaller man tried to reach for Eddie just as he pushed Mutt away. Aurélie shouted a warning and kicked him hard in the shin. He didn’t appear to have a weapon, but Eddie took no chances. He hit the man hard in the jaw, backhand with his closed fist, then grasped both of his shoulders and spun him around to face the street. Taking him in a bear hug to immobilize his arms, Eddie pushed him toward the Mercedes and watched as he bounced off the rear fender and fell into the street, just missing the bumper of a city bus whose driver tried frantically to go around him, furiously sounding his plangent warning chimes.
Eddie ran back to the two women and whispered, “Hotel Chopin. They’ll be closing the gate any minute.”
They sprinted the remaining few yards to the Passage Jouffroy entrance, arriving just as the night porter prepared to close the ornate iron gate, a 10:30 p.m. tradition. Aurélie told him quickly they were guests of the Chopin, and then they ran for its entrance fifty yards away, at a corner where the passage jogged to the left between two antique-book stores. Halfway there, they heard the night porter argue with the Germans, then give an angry shout as they pushed him roughly out of the way. “That guy’s gonna be pissed. Cops will be here before long,” Eddie said as the three approached the door.
The lobby was empty, as Eddie had hoped. They pushed the door open, then as it closed Eddie said, “Help me put this sofa against it. It’ll give us a little more time.” He piled two large green leather armchairs atop the sofa for good measure, then the three turned and dashed up the half-flight of stairs to the level of the breakfast room. They froze momentarily as the sound of a man’s scream came from the passage. A second scream, then the only sound was the Germans’ footsteps on the marble floor.
“I hope you know where we’re going.” Jen had been surprised at the quick burst of activity because she hadn’t seen the knife.
“This is where my misspent youth will work for us,” Eddie said with a lopsided grin. “I hope the goons will look for us upstairs. But we’re going down below. The back door leads into the service area for all the buildings around here. If we’re lucky, we’ll come out a long way from where they expect to find us. If not, we’ll have to think of something else. This way.”
They ran to the end of the hall and Eddie pulled an ornately painted door, which led to a gloomy utility stair. At the bottom they pushed open a gray metal door to reveal a service alley. Eddie found a wedge the hotel staff used to keep the door open and forced it tightly under the outside of the closed door. The doorstop should give them enough time to escape even if their followers figured out where they had gone.
All three stood with their backs against the old stone wall to catch their breath. “Well,” Aurélie said. “At least we know now what we’re chasing. And we know these salauds will stop at nothing to get it. Let’s go find the young fellow.”
Suddenly they were in the gritty 19th century backstage inhabited by the city’s immigrant service workers. Above them, a pair of dim yellow bulbs struggled in vain to illuminate the hotel’s back door, aided ineffectively by the glow from a few curtained rooms higher on the wall. Down the alley a dozen yards to their right, a single bright window high in the back wall of a Japanese restaurant threw a checkerboard pattern on the cobbled pavement.
It wasn’t really an alley. There are almost no true alleys in Paris because every square inch of space is used for buildings or for the elaborate and parklike courtyards found in the center of almost every block.
To the left was a double steel door — the main exit to the street. Eddie ignored the pungent smell and pushed aside two overflowing garbage cans, dislodging a black cat sleeping behind them, and tried the door. Locked. He turned and signaled in the other direction. The cat let out a single angry hiss and ran ahead of them toward the lighted kitchen window, tail standing straight up.
As they passed under the bright kitchen window an argument broke out, the harsh sound of voices raised in several oriental languages sharpening the hot smell of soy sauce and sizzling meat. The clang of steel against steel faded and after a few steps they reached Eddie’s backup goal, a short, dark passageway that branched left to a fire exit of the Théâtre du Nord-Ouest. A thread of light at the side of the door hinted it was ajar, but he and Jen stood at the corner to watch for pursuers while Aurélie tiptoed ahead to pull carefully on the handle.
“Voilà!” They slipped through to join the departing audience as it flowed through the lobby and deposited them on a busy side street, the Japanese restaurant to their left. A hundred yards to their right the first police car arrived, a single blue light flashing on its rooftop. An ambulance followed.
“Let’s get out of here.” Eddie’s tone did not invite questions.
The crowd thinned as they followed it away from the police lights. Aurélie set a rapid pace down a side street lined with restaurants, while Eddie lagged behind to answer his telephone.
He hurried to keep up, phone to his ear, anxious. “Can you call Philippe? I know it’s late, but I’d rather talk to him than meet the local flics in the basement of the police station. Tell him I need to see him about the Hôtel Chopin, and we think they’re connected. He’ll understand. We’re on the way.”
He put the phone back into his pocket and said, “Not good news. Someone broke into Margaux’s apartment — lots of damage to the door but they were gone when she got back and she’s OK. She doesn’t know yet what was taken but they went through my father’s office. It was probably the guys we just met.”
Aurélie turned and said, “Don’t slow down now. We can catch a cab at a Best Western hotel just two streets ahead. We need to get to her fast.”
The taxi took them across the Seine on the Pont de la Concorde, then a few minutes later stopped under a row of plane trees whose dense leaves blocked the streetlights, making them almost invisible.
They huddled next to the old stone wall of the military academy as Eddie outlined the next ste
p.
“Jen, we’re going to Mother’s through the back way. If the Germans left watchers for us they’ll be on the other side guarding the entrance. Please stay close.”
They would meet inside a parking garage. “Go down the ramp to the left and wait around the corner. Remember, we’re tourists, so let’s try to act relaxed. And no English. It’s too easy to pick out of the background noise.”
He dispatched Aurélie down one side of the street while he and Jen took the other. “A small thing, but it might gain us an extra step if they don’t see a group of three,” he said.
Aurélie waited for a car to pass then crossed to a Moroccan restaurant where a few customers remained on the sidewalk, chatting over their coffee and paying no attention to her. Eddie and Jen crossed at the end of the block then passed a closed newsstand, a grocery, a stationery store and a brasserie where a few tipsy drinkers remained. At the end of the block they turned left to pass a Thai restaurant and a row of large and genteel private townhouses.
“Cross now!” Eddie whispered. “Aurélie is waiting for us to move. She’ll hang back to be sure we’re alone.” She held tight to his arm.
The garage entrance was a gaping black square in the face of the dimly lit office building. They ducked in, feeling their way down the railing of a narrow ramp that led to a landing out of sight of the street. In less than a minute, Aurélie joined them. “No signs of life on the block, so I think we’re in the clear,” she said. A pause as her eyes adjusted. “I bet you did this as a boy,” she said softly to Eddie.
“Almost,” he replied. “I watched it go up during my visits home from college. It’s handy now because it’s a shortcut to mother’s car.”
He told them the pedestrian walkway ended just a few feet further into the garage, and at that point they would cut across the main driveway to reach the rear exit. The automatic lights would come on, but they were so dim they were hardly visible from the street.
They crossed the driveway to a short corridor with machinery-room doors on each side, its smell announcing that it was a frequent rest stop for the city’s homeless, then stepped into a tree-shaded courtyard much like the one Jen had seen from Eddie’s apartment window.
“That’s Margaux’s building across the courtyard.”
He hoped they looked like three friends returning from a neighborhood party as they sauntered under the trees then down a short flight of stairs to a small landing. He tested the door, then keyed in its digicode and pulled it open to reveal a brightly lighted service corridor curving down the full length of the building, whose shape mimicked the half-circle of Place Vauban.
A short walk to the left and they stopped at an elevator. “This is three buildings in one,” he said. “There are three elevators, each opening onto a lobby between two apartments. The exception is my mother’s floor at the top, where there is only one apartment.”
The elevator rose smoothly. They stepped out into a small lobby furnished with a gleaming antique mahogany table. A spray of roses stood wilting in a crystal vase neatly centered on its marble top. The apartment’s main entrance door had been jimmied violently and stood ajar.
“Eddie, look at that,” Aurélie exclaimed when she saw the bent steel of the doorframe. “They just used brute force. These weren’t experienced burglars.”
Eddie called to his mother around the damaged door. They heard her reply from inside, “I’ll let you in the service door.”
The service door was to their left, its face blank so it could be used only for exit. After a brief wait it opened slowly, its seldom-used hinges squealing in complaint. Inside stood Margaux, still dressed for dinner, her shoulders slumped. The sad expression on her face gave Eddie the impression, just for an instant, that she had been crying. A surprise.
Eddie put his arm around her and led her to an upholstered chair facing the living room fireplace. “Aurélie and Jen will stay with you while I find out what happened here,” he told her.
“Thank you, dear. I don’t think they took anything valuable, and they didn’t even do much damage, except for the door. They mainly went through your father’s study.
“Philippe just called me back. He will be here in a half-hour, and we’re not to touch anything in the meantime. He wants to find out more about the Hôtel Chopin on the way.” Eddie nodded and walked down the hall to his father’s study. Initially, Margaux had kept it just as it was when Artie died. After a few years she began to use it herself, giving up the Regency desk in the corner of her bedroom, but to anyone who visited it was still “Artie’s office.” Eddie saw no sign that would ever change. It resembled his own home office, down to the dark wood of the heavy desk.
The room was ransacked in a way that suggested the burglars had been looking for something specific. The desk drawers had been pulled out and turned over, and several books lay on the floor below the library shelves. He remembered his own visits to Iraqi households and thought that he had left much more wreckage than this in his search for weapons or telltale documents. These burglars were obviously looking only for documents that could lead them to a painting, or for the painting itself.
He feared he would find the same thing when he returned to his own study. He kept a small gray document safe in a closet, and when he opened the door to his father’s closet there stood its twin, empty.
Back in the dining room he asked his mother what was in the safe. “Whatever was there is gone now, and I don’t think I ever knew what Father kept there.”
“It was empty. The deed to this apartment and a few other documents used to be there, but a few years ago I wasn’t able to get into it and I had to call a locksmith to open it. He said the safe was so old it was bound to cause more trouble, and that the papers would be much safer in a bank vault. I took them to my box at HSBC and never relocked the safe.”
“Good decision on your part. Tomorrow we’ll go to the bank and see what they were looking for.”
Margaux had regained her composure. “It’s possible they went into your apartment, too, Charles Edward,” she said. “I think all of you should stay here tonight and you can check on that tomorrow.”
Once she saw there was nothing more to be done about the burglary until the police arrived, the hostess in her took over. “There’s a nice bottle of Graves in the refrigerator. Why don’t you bring it out to the end terrace while we wait for Philippe and we’ll show Jennifer what Paris looks like from here.”
Margaux’s building, constructed only five years after the end of the war, was one of the last of the cut-stone luxury residences. At seven stories it was the same height as the older buildings designed in the 1850s, but it was larger than most, curving around half of the semi-circular Place Vauban. Margaux and Artie had bought their grand penthouse shortly after they married in 1952.
She led the way toward the end of the building, where a large open terrace offered views in three directions. As soon as she opened the door, Aurélie exclaimed, “I could never tire of this view.”
To their left stood the Eiffel Tower, majestic in its late-night dress of golden light. “It looks so close I feel like I could reach out and touch it,” Jen said excitedly. Aurélie said, “I felt the same way the first time I saw it from here. It’s actually a mile away, but it’s so large it just seems close.”
Jen turned to take in the views — the new Branly Museum, close by the tower, then the Invalides across the street, with its broad lawn stretching to the Seine a half-mile away, barely visible behind the gilded dome. Further to the right she picked out the Place de la Concorde and beyond it the long Tuileries Gardens, dark at night, leading to the magnificent Louvre stretching a half-mile along the river. By peering around the corner of the dining room she could just make out the grand Cathedral of Notre Dame, far beyond the thousands of buildings that made up the affluent sixth and seventh arrondissements.
“When Artie and I first moved in we loved this view so much we sometimes spent all night on this terrace, frequently with a bottle or
two of wine just like this one,” Margaux told them. “But not tonight. Jennifer, you come with me and I’ll show you your room, then you can come back out here and wait for Philippe and his men. Charles Edward and Aurélie know their way.”
“I believe I’ll go home, Margaux,” Aurélie said. “There’s no reason the burglars should know about me, and Father can deliver me and take a look through my apartment, just in case.”
Jen followed as they retraced their steps down the long corridor they had taken from the living room. “We have a guest bedroom — two of them, actually — at the other end of the apartment. When Artie was in business we had a lot of overnight visitors, so I just always kept them ready. Sometimes people stayed overnight when they didn’t plan for it, so you’ll find everything from a bathrobe to a toothbrush.” She opened the second door on the right.
“Margaux, it’s lovely,” Jen said.
“I hope you will like it. The bedrooms are on the back of the building where it’s quieter, so if you’ll look out the window to the left you’ll see the area around Rue de Sèvres where Aurélie has her apartment, on Rue Oudinot.”
“She’s not married?”
“No. She was married, but it ended badly and Philippe tells me she’s very reluctant to get involved with anyone else right now. Her husband turned out to be a gambler, and dishonest as well. The smallest of her problems was his infidelity.”
6
Paris
“We caught the two men who attacked you at the hotel. They had an accomplice, the driver, who seems to be the boss. Unfortunately he got away, but not before the good citizens of Paris beat him quite thoroughly after he stabbed the hotel clerk. It seems some of the pedestrians were the right age to remember the war.”