The Monte Cristo Cover-Up

by Johannes Mario Simmel

  fairly turned him inside out! A pretty thorough job. He was still drunk and weak at the knees when he showed up at the station next morning."

  "Good for her," murmured Chantal, her long red fingernails busy in Thomas Lieven's hair.

  Bastian beheld this scene sadly but appreciatively. "I envy you, boy," he observed, then continued in a brisker tone: "Well, while our pal de Lesseps was busy elsewhere the boys and I started playing trains. It's my hobby, as I've already told you. There are plenty of tenders, you know, in any station. And one looks just like another."

  "But didn't de Lesseps have his tender guarded?"

  "Sure he did. He put two railwaymen on it." Bastian raised his hands and let them fall again. "He gave each of them a gold ingot. But we gave each of them another two we happened to have about us and that was that."

  "The power of gold," said Chantal, biting Thomas in the left ear lobe.

  "Chantal!"

  "Yes, sweetie?"

  "Get up, please," Thomas requested. She rose, looking disconcerted, and went to join Bastian. He laid an arm about her shoulders. The pair stood there motionless, like mischievous children suddenly frightened.

  Beside them the gold bars sparkled, the coins glittered and the chains, rings and jewels glistened.

  Thomas, too, stood up. In a tone of deep depression he informed them: "I'm most sincerely sorry to have to spoil your pleasure and wreck the surprise you arranged for me. But it just can't be helped."

  "What can't be helped?" demanded Bastian, in a dry, level voice.

  "Passing on this stuff to Cousteau and Sim6on. It's impossible for us to keep it."

  "C-c-crazy—-" Bastian's lower jaw dropped. He looked at Chantal in utter bewilderment. "He's gone crazy!"

  [6]

  Chantal stood perfectly still. Only her left nostril quivered. Thomas said quietly: "I've just left Simeon and Cousteau. We came to a clear agreement. They are to have the lists of spies and collaborators, together with all the stuff Bergier and de Lesseps have seized or extorted by blackmail down here. We

  are to retain all the money contained in the three wardrobe trunks we took from Bergier's bedroom. After all, that amounts to pretty nearly sixty-eight millions, you know."

  "Sixty-eight million francs!" exclaimed Bastian, wringing his hands. "Francs! Francs! When their value's falling day after day!"

  "And for that you're going to give up all this?" Chantal spoke in a very low tone, almost a whisper, motioning toward the bed. "There's at least one hundred fifty million's worth of francs there, you fool!"

  Thomas retorted angrily: "It's French property, stolen from France! The money in the trunks is Gestapo money. We can keep it with a clear conscience. But that stuff there, the jewels, the crucifix, the gold from the Bank of France—my God, am I, a German, to remind you of your duty as French patriots?"

  Bastian rejoined hoarsely: "That's our swag. We pinched it The Gestapo's lost it. In my opinion we've done enough for our country."

  Bastian and Thomas argued the point, growing more and more heated over it Chantal, on the other hand, became quieter and quieter, dangerously quiet, in fact.

  With her hands on her hips and her thumbs in her leather belt, she tilted her right shoe backward and forward, her left nostril quivering. At last she interrupted Bastian in a very low tone. "Don't get excited. This is your flat. Before anything happens this little idiot must get out of here and Cousteau and Sim6on must come in."

  Thomas shrugged his shoulders and walked to the door. In a moment Bastian had barred his way, holding a heavy revolver. "Where are you off to?"

  "Chez Papa. I'm going to telephone,"

  "One more step and you've had it." Bastian was breathing noisily. The safety catch of his weapon clicked back.

  Thomas took two more steps forward. The barrel of the revolver touched his chest He took two more steps forward.

  Bastian groaned. He retreated two steps. "Be reasonable, lad ... I—I really mean to do you in ..."

  "Let me go, Bastian." Thomas made another step forward. Bastian now had his back agaiast the door. Thomas reached for the handle.

  Bastian moaned: "Wait, mas! What are the hastards going to do with all that glorious swag? They'll waste it and squander it, sell it on the black market—so-called police—govern-

  ment—secret service—so-called patriots—so what? They're all nothing but a lot of blackguards!"

  Thomas turned the handle. The door opened behind Bas-tian, who had grown very white in the face. He glared at Chantal, moaning: "Chantal, do something—help me, for God's sake—I—I just can't kill him—"

  Thomas heard a peculiar noise and turned round. Chantal had dropped down on the edge of the bed. She was hammering with her little fists at the gold bars, the crucifix and the coins.

  Her voice sounded shrill and broken. "Let him go, let the fool go ..." Tears were raining down the tiger's cheeks. She was sobbing wildly. She looked up at Thomas. "Go on, call Simeon ... he can have everything ... oh, you beast, I wish I had never met you ... and yet I did love it all so ..."

  "Chantal!"

  "... I wanted to go away with you—far away, to Switzerland. I couldn't think of anything but you ... and now ..."

  "Chantal, my dearest—"

  "Don't call me that, you wretched creature!" she screamed, falling forward in a faint. Her forehead struck the heap of coins, making an unpleasant rattle. She lay there weeping incessantly, as though she would never stop.

  [7]

  Just then the handsome young constable Louis Dupont was saying: "Strip, please." He was standing in the reception room of the police prison in the Marseilles Prefecture. Two prisoners had just been brought in to him. One was the rosy-faced, well-groomed and well-scented Jacques Bergier. The other, the younger, was the haggard Paul de Lesseps.

  "What's that you say?" de Lesseps demanded truculently. His cold shark's eyes narrowed to slits, his lips to two bloodless lines.

  "You must undress," said Dupont. "I want to see anything you may have concealed in your clothing or on your persons."

  Bergier giggled. "What on earth do you think we may have on our persons then, my young friend?" He stepped forward and opened his waistcoat. "Come along, search me for weapons." He took off his tie and uadid his shirt buttons. Dupont helped him off with his jacket.

  Bergier shrieked. "Oh, don't, please, dear boy! I'm so frightfully ticklish!"

  "Let's end it now," said Paul de Lesseps.

  "Eh?" Dupont turned around.

  "I've had enough of this. Call up the prison governor and ask him to come here at once. This instant."

  "Don't take that tone to me, you ..."

  The voice of Paul de Lesseps sank to something very like a whisper. "Hold your tongue. Can you read? Look at this." He showed the young constable a pass. It was printed in both German and French and stated that M. Paul de Lesseps was employed on behalf of the German Public Security Head Office.

  "Oh, that reminds me," said Bergier, extracting from his hip pocket, with fastidious gestures, a mauve wallet which smelled of Russian leather. He drew from it a pass like that of his friend. Both documents had been issued by a certain Walter Eicher, Sturmbannfuhrer, Security Service, Paris.

  De Lesseps added disdainfully: "The Sturmbannfuhrer is to be informed of our arrest immediately. If you don't instantly take that step you'll have to put up with the consequences."

  "I—I'll speak to my superior officer," Louis Dupont stammered. After he had seen this couple's credentials he disliked them more than ever. Marseilles was in unoccupied France. But all the same . . . Security Service . . . Gestapo . . . Dupont didn't want any trouble. He picked up the telephone at his elbow.

  [8]

  ... 7 dec 1940—1739 hours—trunks—marseilles prefecture to CID paris—today 1530 hours st. charles station arrested (1) paul de lesseps (2) Jacques bergier— charged gold and currency smuggling—(1) has german sd pass no. 456832 series red (2) german sd pass no. 11165 series blue—both issued by sd
sturmbannfuhrer waiter eicher—request immediate confirmation whether prisoners actually employed by sd—message ends—

  [9]

  "De Lesseps? Bergier?" Sturmbannfuhrer Walter Eicher leaned back in his office chair, going red in the face. He bellowed wrathfully into the mouthpiece of the instrument he was holding to his ear. "Sure, I know them all right. Sure, they're working for us. Tell Marseilles to keep them both in custody. We're coming to fetch them."

  The French official at the other end of the wire thanked his correspondent politely for the information.

  "Don't mention it! Hell Hitler!" Eicher banger the receiver down into its rest and yelled: "Winter!"

  His adjutant dashed in from the next room. The macabre activities of these gentlemen were proceeding on the fourth floor of a sumptuous villa in the Avenue Foch, Paris. The man called Winter rasped: "Sturmbannfiihrer?"

  "De Lesseps and old Aunty Bergier have been picked up in Marseilles," snapped the man called Eicher.

  "Good God! How did that happen?"

  "I don't know yet. It's enough to drive one crazy. Apparently we can only get idiots to work for us. Imagine what Canaris would say if h$ came to hear of it! Just the sort of thing he'd enjoy! Security Service buying up unoccupied France—"

  The Security Service office and Canaris's Intelligence Department hated each other like cat and dog, one as bad-tempered as the other. The fears of Sturmbannfiihrer Eicher were well founded. He growled: "Have the black Mercedes ready, Winter. We're driving down to Marseilles."

  'Today?"

 
  "Very good, Sturmbannfiihrer!" bawled Winter. He slammed the door as he went out. Nothing but trouble. Bloody awful job this was. He'd have to put off dear little Zuzu once again. Twelve hours on the road with that ogre. Not a wink of sleep. For crying out loud!

  Twenty-four hours later Chantal Tessier was presiding at a business meeting of her gang in the back room of the Briileur de Loup cafe in Marseilles. The meeting, to put it mildly, was a bit noisy.

  The French black marketeers, the Spanish passport forgers, the Corsican prostitutes and the killers from Morocco, all busy with their various trades in the front room, often glanced with disapproval at the door at its far end, with the card inscribed club dangling from the handle.

  Pretty riotous sort of club that was! At last the door in question opened and the occupants of the cafe, whose sentences, if the police could ever catch the lot of them, would amount at a modest estimate to about five hundred years' penal servitude,

  saw Bastian Fabre, who was well known to them all, go to a telephone booth near the counter. He looked agitated.

  Bastian dialed the number of Chez Papa. Olive, the owner, answered. Bastian wiped the sweat from his brow, pulled nervously at his black cigar and said hurriedly: ''Bastian here. Is the man who came to see me yesterday afternoon still there?" He had asked Thomas to wait in the restaurant until the result of the meeting was known.

  Olive's voice sounded muffled. "He's here, yes. Playing poker at my regular customers' table and wining all the time."

  "Ask him to speak to me, will you, please?" Bastian took a long pull at his cigar and opened the door of the booth to let out the smoke. That damned Pierre, he was thinking. The man simply didn't deserve to have so much trouble taken over him.

  Twenty-four hours ago the fellow had called up those two secret service characters and they had come and fetched all that splendid swag away. Or rather, not quite all, thank God. While Thomas was on the telephone Bastian and Chantal had quickly hidden a few jewels and quite a tidy sum in gold coins. But that wasn't much compared with the millions they had lost. Didn't bear thinking about . . .

  "Hallo, Bastian! Well, old lad, how's tricks?"

  Bastian noted the carefree accent of that slippery rogue with grim vexation. He said: "Pierre, I am your friend, in spite of everything. So I'm going to give you some good advice, which is: Hop it. This instant. There isn't a minute to lose."

  "Well, well! And why is that?"

  "The meeting's gone all haywire. Chantal's resigned!"

  "Good Lord—"

  "She burst out crying—"

  "Bastian, if you only knewJhow painful all this is for me—"

  "Don't interrupt me, you "bastard. She said that she loves and understands y
  "Ah, Vamour! Vive la France!"

  "... but not all. Lame Francois kid his pals stuck out. You know him. We call him Hoofy—"

  Thomas didn't know him. But he had heard of him. Hoofy was the oldest member of the gang. His nickname was derived in about equal parts from his lameness, his tendency to violence and his methods of amorous conquest.

  "... he's in favor of killing you ..."

  "Charming of him ..."

  "... he's nothing against you personally, he says, but he considers your influence over Chantal disastrous. You're softening her, he says ..."

  "Well, well!"

  "... you're the ruin of the mob, he says, and in order to protect Chantal you'll have to be done in ... Pierre, I'm telling you, shove off, make yourself scarce!"

  "On the contrary."

  "What?"

  "Now listen to me carefully, Bastian," said Thomas Lieven. His friend listened. He began by shaking his head. For some time he remained doubtful. Finally he agreed. He growled: "All right, if you think you can bring it off. In an hour, then. But you take full responsibility, mind."

  He hung up and went back into the smoke-filled back room. The lame Francis, nicknamed Hoofy, was in the middle of a passionate speech advocating the dispatch to a better world of Jean Leblanc, Pierre Hunebelle or whatever he liked to call himself.

  "... in the interests of us all," he was just saying, stabbing the table, as he spoke, with the point of an uncommonly thin and sharp jackknife. Then he let fly at Bastian. "Where have you been?"

  "I've been on the phone to Pierre," retorted Bastian calmly, "He's invited us all to a meal. In two hours' time, at my place. He says we c^n then talk everything over at our leisure."

  Chantal u&ered a faint shriek. Everyone began talking at once. "Shut up!" yelled the lame Francois. Silence fell.

  "Bloke's got .guts, I must say," Frangois commented with a certain respedL^Then he grinned spitefully. "Okay, boys. Let's take him at his word."

  - [10]

  "Welcome, gentlemen," said Thomas Lieven. He kissed the hand of their white-faced boss, whose nerves were strained to breaking point.

  The fifteen ruffians crowded into Bastian's apartment. Some were grinning. Others looked grim and menacing. They stared at the festively appointed board, Bastian's big table for his miniature railway. Thomas had got it ready; with Olive's help. He had removed the mountains, valleys, bridges, rivers and stations. But a single pair of rails ran along the white ta-

  blecloth, from one end to the other, among the glasses, plates and cutlery.

  "Come along then," exclaimed Thomas, rubbing his hands. "May I ask you all to sit down? Chantal at the head of the table. I shall have to be at the other end, for certain reasons. Please, gentlemen, make yourselves at home, and put off your plans for my assassination for the time being."

  The men sat down, whispering and muttering to one another and still very suspicious of their surroundings. In front of Chantal's place stood a bowl of red hothouse roses. Thomas had thought of everything.

  MENU

  Cheese Soup

  (Rabbit Stew with c^Coodles

  Surprise ^Pie with cAfushroom Sauce

  8 DECEMBER 1940

  A strange meal which saved Thomas's life.

  Cheese Soup

  A large quantity of grated Parmesan cheese is soaked in milk and whisked. The mixture is then carefully poured into boiling beef stock. The soup is removed from the flame and yolks of egg are stirred in.

  Rabbit Stew with Noodles />
  A large young skinned rabbit is cut into medium-sized portions. In a casserole three quarters of a cup of diced fat bacon is fried. Portions of rabbit are added and browned on all sides. Last of all add the liver, with a few small shallots, chopped onions and a crushed clove of garlic. When all is brown some flour is sprinkled over the rabbit and two cups of boiling water or stock are added. This is then flavored with salt, pepper, mixed spices and some lemon peel. Also half a bottle of red wine. The stew is then simmered until the rabbit is soft. The other half of the red wine is added and the stew is left to simmer a little longer. It is served with plain boiled

  noodles to which, after draining, a little butter has been added.

  Surprise (Pie with oSdushroom Sauce

  Three fillets of ve'al, pork and beef respectively, their size depending on the number of persons present, and their length , not exceeding that of half the diameter of a large cake tin, are skinned and fried lightly on all sides, then salted and peppered. The bottom and sides of the cake tin are lined with flaky pastry and the cooled fillets are arranged in such a way that the narrow ends point to the center. The fillets should be so distributed that each third of the bottom of the tin is covered by a different fillet. A mark should be made in the top of the pastry where one fillet starts and the other finishes and transferred to the top edges of the tin. A lid of pastry is then placed on the top of the tin and the three marks transferred to the lid. From the marks pastry-leaf decoration is carried to the center, thus trisecting the pastry lid. Pastry models of a pig, an ox and a calf are placed on the relevant sections. The pastry is the then brushed with egg yolk and baked at medium heat until golden.

  A mushroom sauce is served with the pie.

  A few finely chopped shallots are braised lightly in butter and plenty of thinly sliced mushrooms are added. A little flour is sprinkled Over, well stirred in and stock is added. Care has to be taken no to darken the sauce. It is flavored with salt, pepper, lemon juice and an egg yolk. A little white wine may be added if desired.