The Forger

by Paul Watkins

  “Well,” said Fleury, his voice drifting with uncertainty, “I saw an early eighteenth-century Italian statue go at Christie’s the other year for what would be about four hundred thousand francs.”

  Touchard pursed his lips and nodded. “Close,” he said. “Very close.”

  Dietrich, too, was nodding. “Fair,” he said. “And under normal circumstances, I’d say this might be worth about half as much again.”

  “Normal circumstances,” repeated Touchard.

  “But these are not normal circumstances, are they, Monsieur Touchard?”

  “No, Herr Dietrich,” came the reply.

  “So, Monsieur Touchard, what would be your best price on the Rusioni sculpture?”

  Touchard walked up to it. He reached one finger out and touched it against the statue’s upper lip, as if the man had been about to break from his dusty red shell and speak and declare his own worth, and Touchard committed him again to silence. “Perhaps a hundred thousand?” He asked it. He did not say it.

  Even I who had no idea what this statue was worth knew that Dietrich would not pay this price if the man deciding it had spoken so hesitantly.

  “It’s worth more than a hundred thousand!” said Fleury. His protest vanished into the huge space of the warehouse.

  “I might pay fifty thousand,” said Dietrich casually.

  “Done,” barked Touchard.

  Fleury turned on him. “What do you mean, ‘done’? You know damn well it’s worth ten times that!”

  Touchard shrugged. “I am the government,” he said.

  “Who else can make offers on all this?” demanded Fleury. “Is it open to the public?”

  “No,” said Touchard. “Only Mr. Dietrich.”

  “But look here!” Dietrich called out. “The sculpture is damaged.”

  The three of us stepped forward to see where this damage might be.

  “Where?” asked Fleury. “I can’t see any damage.”

  Then we all watched as Dietrich raised the candlestick over his shoulder and brought it down hard across one of the statue’s delicate hands. He smashed off the fingers. Fragments cartwheeled through the air and rattled to the floor, breaking into even more pieces. “There,” said Dietrich. The candlestick hung heavy in his grip.

  Even Touchard looked shocked at this.

  “You’re insane,” said Fleury.

  Dietrich chose to ignore this. “It’s not worth much of anything now,” he said with mock sadness.

  “No, sir.” Touchard’s voice was choked.

  “I couldn’t pay more than five thousand francs now.”

  “Done,” said Touchard.

  “There might even be more damage.” Dietrich’s knuckles grew white as he clenched his fist around the candlestick.

  “No!” Touchard called out, raising his hands out to the statue.

  Dietrich lowered the candlestick, grinning.

  “I’ll draw up the paperwork now.” Touchard set off toward the office.

  Dietrich bent down and picked up the fragments of the fingers. Then he put them in the pocket of his coat and stood to face us. “I’ll have this repaired. You’d never know the difference. I brought you here,” he said, “because I have a particular interest in you. You’re both young, capable. That’s what I need. New faces for a new marketplace.”

  We walked back out into the rain, heading for the office, where Touchard would be typing up the documents of sale.

  Over and over in my mind, I saw the statue’s delicate fingers shattering on the concrete floor of the warehouse.

  “What I would like,” said Dietrich, “is for you both to work exclusively for me from now on. I saw that Cranach you found for Abetz. He gloated about it for an entire week. Cranach happens to be a particular favorite of the Reichsmarschall. You obviously have the means to satisfy a discerning palate.” He set his hand on Fleury’s shoulder and squeezed. “This is your great opportunity. You should take it. Besides, considering what Abetz tried to do with you, and considering that I am the only reason you’re still here, I’d have thought you might show me a little consideration for my trouble.”

  “And what would you have us do about Abetz?” asked Fleury.

  “I’m glad you asked about Abetz. He can be very persuasive in a bullying sort of way. He’s an ambitious man. This is the greatest moment of his diplomatic career and he’s chosen to add to his laurels a collection of the finest art in France. But it’s really just a hobby for him. He’s got too much else on his plate. He has to run the embassy, after all. And what with Hitler’s visit to Paris in June and other dignitaries flooding in, it’s all he can do to get any sleep at night. That’s why he’s palmed you off with that man Behr, who shouldn’t even be on the embassy staff.”

  “Well, why is he there?” I asked.

  “His mother had an affair with a man who is now one of the regional governors of Austria. A Gauleiter. I expect she reminded him of their past, and probably offered to remind everyone else as well, unless her son found himself out of harm’s way. Of course, Behr has no idea about this. He just thinks it’s all some bureaucratic foul-up.”

  We had reached the office. Dietrich opened the door for us and we filed in.

  Inside, Touchard was typing out the documents. His glasses were balanced on the tip of his hooked, Roman nose and his lips moved as he spelled out the words.

  “Aren’t you ready yet?” Dietrich asked.

  “Almost.” Touchard did not look up from his typing.

  In the room adjacent to Touchard’s office was a man with short dark hair combed straight back on his head. He had his back to us and was brandishing an antique sword around a coat stand, on which hung a gabardine raincoat and a soft hat. The man was pretending to sword-fight with the coat, flicking up the arms with the end of the sword. He shuffled around on his feet as if the empty coat were fighting back and he were dodging sword thrusts.

  “Hey!” Touchard called out. “Be careful with my coat!”

  The young man turned and grinned.

  My eyes widened with surprise. It was Tombeau. “Oh,” I said.

  He caught my eye, warning me. Then he looked away.

  “What is it?” asked Dietrich.

  I choked a little before I came up with a reply. “That sword he’s playing with. It’s an antique, isn’t it?”

  “Christ almighty! So it is. You!” bellowed Dietrich, his shout boxing our ears in the cramped space of the office.

  Tombeau stopped dueling with the coat. “It’s just a blade,” he said.

  Dietrich strode across the space between them. He snatched the sword out of Tombeau’s hand and turned to us, smiling. “This is one of my associates. From the firm of Fabry et Georges.”

  Tombeau made a short, sarcastic bow.

  I remembered what Pankratov had said about the Fabry-Georges hiring themselves out for any dirty jobs that paid good money. It made perfect sense to me that Dietrich and the Fabry-Georges would find themselves working together.

  Dietrich turned back to Tombeau. “Do you know what this is?” He held the sword blade up between them and glared past the damascus-patterned iron at Tombeau’s insolent smile.

  “Of course I know,” replied Tombeau.

  “No, you don’t,” Dietrich snapped. “This is a seventeenth-century French saber, made by Ferdinand de Thézy for the comte de Barzilay. It’s worth a lot of money, and I don’t want you chipping the blade.”

  “Sorry,” said Tombeau, without sincerity.

  “Besides,” said Dietrich, “if you’re going to use the thing, use it properly.” Dietrich balanced himself in a swordsman’s pose. Then with a movement so fast and precise that I barely saw it, he sliced off one of the sleeves of Touchard’s coat. The sleeve fell to the floor and lay there in a heap.

  “My coat!” shouted Touchard.

  Dietrich handed the sword back to Tombeau, who peered at the blade with new respect.

  “What about my coat?” asked Touchard, his voice high-pitc
hed with frustration.

  “Get a new one,” said Dietrich. “Or lose an arm. Or something.”

  Touchard shook his head slowly and went back to his typing. He jabbed at the keys with his bony fingers, muttering to himself.

  “I want that sculpture on the train to Germany tonight,” said Dietrich.

  Touchard stopped typing. His face twitched. “Tonight? There’s no one here but me. How am I supposed to crate it up and get it to the station?”

  “Make some calls. Get some Fabry-Georges people to do it. They don’t mind hard work.”

  “You’d trust one of those thugs with that statue?” asked Touchard.

  “It’s already broken,” said Dietrich. Then he turned to me and Fleury. “The car will take you home.”

  The car was out there in the rain, Grimm at the wheel, engine running, exhaust leaking silver from its tailpipe.

  “What are we supposed to do when Abetz calls?” I asked. “Because he is going to call, sooner or later.”

  “If he gives you any trouble,” said Dietrich, “just let me know. You’ll only have to do it once, I guarantee.”

  On the ride back, I was afraid to say anything to Fleury because I worried that Grimm would eavesdrop. I asked Grimm to drop us off a block away from the apartment, so that no one would see the car pull up in front of our place. Grimm nodded at my request, no expression on his face, the way a person does who has made a life’s work out of following orders.

  * * *

  WHEN I REACHED MY apartment, I found Pankratov sitting at my kitchen table. He was hunched like an old circus bear over a loaf of bread, a slab of white-flecked salami and the remains of a bottle of red wine.

  “How did you get in here,” I asked, “and where did you get all that stuff to eat?”

  Pankratov’s mouth was too full to talk. He held something up between his thumb and first two fingers. It was a straightened-out paper clip. Then he dropped the clip, picked up the bottle, the muscles in his neck straining as he forced a mouthful down his throat. He shook his head and finally spoke. “Valya. Came to see me. Brought food.”

  I walked to the window and looked at the windows of the Postillon. These days, I always had the feeling I was being watched.

  “There’s no one out there,” said Pankratov, forcing down a mouthful of sausage, bread and cheese which he had stacked one on top of the other and then compressed with the flat of his hand before packing it into his mouth.

  “I don’t understand why they don’t follow us everywhere we go,” I said.

  “So they could find out our sources and grab them for themselves?” he asked.

  “Exactly.” I leaned forward and breathed on the glass, fogging it with condensation.

  Pankratov knocked back some wine, swished it through his teeth, then swallowed. “Because there is no single source. At least not as far as they know. Half of the great paintings in France are tucked away in root cellars, chicken coops, and behind walls three feet thick. The Germans know perfectly well that they’d have no hope of tracking them down. Sure, they could grab us and dig out whatever little treasure trove we happened to be raiding, but what about the thousand other hiding places? They know that the best thing for them is to leave us be. As long as we keep handing them paintings, and since they’re trading what they don’t want for what they do, how can they lose?”

  “They can lose because what we’re giving them is a lie.”

  Pankratov held up one finger, commanding me to silence. “It’s not a lie if they don’t think it’s a lie. Besides, I’ve persuaded Madame Pontier to part with some originals to make us more credible,” he said. “I told her she owed us that much.”

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK, MADAME Pontier delivered to us an original drawing of a kneeling angel by Gianfrancesco Penni.

  “Take it,” she said, her teeth gritted, “and don’t expect me do to this very often.”

  Each time I met her, I became more convinced that she wouldn’t lift a finger to help us if we were caught. In everything she did, the way she looked and spoke and in the doll’s-eye flatness of her gaze, she was the coldest person I had ever met.

  That same day, we brought the drawing to Dietrich.

  Dietrich was no great lover of art. He had been chosen for this job because he was a businessman. He was not particularly pleased with the drawing. The irony of this did not escape me, seeing as it was original. Penni, who worked in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, was not high on Dietrich’s procurement list. Dietrich knew as well as we did that if the artist was not a huge name, the subject matter needed, at least, to be appealing. An angel was not as choice as a picture of a young woman, or a cat or a dog, or a classical Greek or Roman location, all of which moved very quickly through Dietrich’s warehouse on the outskirts of Paris. The main problem with this angel was that the drawing had been perforated, or “pounced,” along most of the lines. This was so that the drawing could be laid out over a blank piece of paper and, if sprinkled with charcoal dust, would provide the layout of an identical drawing underneath. After several uses, the original drawing would start to get a little dirty. The one we gave Dietrich had been used several times.

  The next day, a call came through to the atelier, where Pankratov and I were mixing paints. Fleury was there, too. He lay flat on his back on the stage, silently puffing a corn-silk cigarette. He let the smoke leak from his mouth. It wound in gray ribbons up toward the rafters.

  Pankratov picked up the receiver.

  I could hear someone shouting over the phone.

  Pankratov’s eyes were wide with surprise. He held the receiver away from his ear.

  When the person on the other end paused for breath, Pankratov tried to speak. “But,” he said, “how were we to know?”

  The shouting started up again, this time even louder.

  Pankratov looked at Fleury and me. He shook his head wearily. “Yes,” he said to the receiver. “Yes, I understand.” Then he hung up. He stood there in silence, still dazed from the barrage of insults. “That was Abetz. He’s furious that we let Dietrich have the Penni drawing. He says we promised him all Italian drawings.”

  “No, we didn’t,” said Fleury. These were the first words he had spoken in almost an hour.

  Pankratov and I looked at each other and shrugged. Neither of us had made that promise, either.

  “He just wants an excuse to get mad at us,” I said.

  “He had demanded that one of you meet him at a restaurant in Montmartre tonight,” said Pankratov. “It’s a place called La Mère Cathérine. It’s up on the Place du Tertre in the old part of town.”

  I walked over to the phone. “I’m calling Dietrich,” I said.

  “Why?” asked Fleury, still staring at the ceiling.

  “He told us to ring him if Abetz ever gave us any trouble. Personally, I don’t feel like going up against Abetz, when the man’s worked himself into a frenzy.” There was no protest from Fleury or Pankratov, so I dialed Dietrich’s number.

  “Moment.” It was Grimm’s voice.

  Then I heard Dietrich’s brassy voice. I explained about Abetz. When I gave the name of the restaurant, I heard Dietrich snap his fingers at someone in the room and then I heard the scrabble of him writing down the information. “We never did agree to give him old Italian drawings,” I told him.

  “Of course not.” Dietrich’s voice was soothing and comradely. “The man’s out of his mind. Listen, I want you to go to the meeting. Be as friendly as you can. Tell him what he wants to hear. If he wants you to promise him Italian drawings, then make the promise. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes,” I said uncertainly.

  “No harm will come to you,” said Dietrich. “You’re going to have to trust me. David, I will not let you down.” This was the first time he called me by my Christian name. I didn’t know what to make of it.

  Afterwards, I explained to the others what Dietrich had said.

  By now, Fleury had lit himself
another cigarette. He remained on his back, staring at the ceiling as if in a trance. The only movement was the regular sweep of his hand to his mouth and then down to his side. Lately, he was often like this.

  I thought it would probably have been a better idea if Fleury went to the meeting. He would do a better job of sweet-talking Abetz than I ever could, and sending Pankratov to make small talk was out of the question. But Fleury didn’t offer to go, and in the shape he was in just then, I didn’t want to ask.

  La Mère Cathérine was in a small park, at the top of Rue Norvin. The park lay in the shadow of the church of Sacré-Cœur and little tables were set out amongst the trees. Each tree was girdled by tall metal railings. The tables were busy, and tended by waiters from a café called Au Cadet de Gascogne, which had musicians playing inside. La Mère Cathérine was a few buildings down the cobbled street, with a few of its own tables set out on the sidewalk. The front of the building was glossy black and lace curtains hung in the lower half of the two front windows. The ceiling inside was hammered tin, painted white, and the walls were painted red. It was a lively place, and I wished I’d known about it before the price of a good meal had gone through the roof.

  I looked through the window for Abetz, but couldn’t see him. Then I felt a hand against my arm.

  It was Lieutenant Behr. He was sitting at one of the outside tables, wearing civilian clothes. “I saved us a place,” he said.

  There were two more chairs at the small table, and three places set for dinner.

  I told him about Fleury not being able to make it. Behr shrugged to show it didn’t matter. “Where’s Abetz?” I asked.

  “He’ll come for a drink in an hour or so. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.” He seemed genuinely apologetic about this.

  “I guess you’re stuck with me, too,” I said.

  “Not for long.” He grinned and looked like a kid. “I got a transfer. I’ve been putting in for one practically every month. I think I must have worn them down. Or maybe they felt bad for me that my mother died a few weeks ago.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said. But then I knew why he had got his transfer, and I was happy and sad for him at the same time.

  “I’m going to be part of the Sixth Army,” he said.