by Cara Black
“Herr Leduc, you say he has a reservation?”
“Hasn’t he checked in?”
“I don’t see his name.”
“Please, can you check?”
In the pause, she heard the rustling of pages.
“Our register shows a reservation for Herr Leduc. But no check-in.”
A frisson skittered across her shoulders. There could be a lot of explanations; her Papa had changed his mind, the train got held up. Or worse.
She called Gerhard’s number. No answer, no machine. Great.
She suppressed her worry, finished her report.
Fortified by more coffee, she called the Peltiers’ number, the one that Denise the housekeeper had finally coughed up last night.
A woman answered. “Oui?”
“Madame Peltier? It’s Aimée Leduc.”
“Who?” the voice quavered.
“My father, Jean-Claude, is Elise’s cousin.”
“So you say.” Not only old but suspicious.
“It’s true, madame. My father is her second cousin,” she said. “Elise knew me when I was little. I expect you did, too.”
“I’d have to think about that.”
Now was her chance, an opening. “But you’d remember my . . .” She hesitated—this word she’d used so rarely. “My mother, Sidonie. An American.”
“L’Américaine? That’s so long ago. Pah, you’re not bringing all that up again?”
Aimée’s heart tightened. What did this woman know?
“Bringing up what, madame?”
“Alors, I’m busy.”
Friendly, too. All the things one expected from family.
“Elise asked me to call.” A small lie—a variation on the truth. “May I speak with her?”
“Why?”
Pause. “I missed you last night. You’d already left when I dropped by. But Elise left me a message that worried me. She sounded upset after the police got in touch with her.”
“I can’t talk now.”
A rooster crowed in the background.
“Please take my number down. I must speak with Elise.”
“I don’t know if I should.”
“Just write my number down. Tell her I found Suzy, she’ll understand. Then it’s up to Elise, okay?”
The woman listened. Aimée heard the scratching of a pencil as she gave her number.
“Are you all right, Madame Peltier?”
“It’s the barn owl.”
Aimée tried to make sense of this woman—a woman who, according to Elise, had shut down after her husband’s murder.
“Has something happened, Madame Peltier?”
A sigh. “Hooting just like the night the Boches came.”
The phone clicked off.
Chambly-sur-Cher · December 1942
They took advantage of the last moonless December night to camouflage the blacksmith forge’s smoke. Philbert stood watch outside the forge at the windswept crossroads; the hot shoeing of Gaubert’s horse would serve as a cover if the Germans came to enforce curfew. Gaubert’s nerves were frayed; the Germans controlled all of France now—even if eighty-six-year-old Maréchal Pétain, hero of WWI, remained a figurehead leader of the puppet Vichy government—and he ached for his Fanny and little Gaby.
Perspiration dripped down Gaubert’s neck as he stood in the smoke-filled forge. Transfixed, he watched the Nazi gold brick glow and soften inside the conical melting crucible. Alain and Bruno shoveled coke into the blazing brick furnace. Shadows snaked up the forge’s arched brick walls. The anvil bore a worn engraved date of 1781, the year Minou’s ancestors went into business. Nothing had changed since Gaubert’s childhood, when he’d brought his mother’s soup pot to mend; the rods, bellows, piled charcoal, and tongs had hung in the same places decades earlier.
“‘A watched pot never boils,’ you know the saying.” Baret, the jeweler, shook his head of thick, prematurely white hair. Older-looking than his forty plus years, he’d been Gaubert’s captain in the last war. He unbuckled a leather valise with his working hand. His other arm was wood attached to a hook claw, courtesy of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Gaubert’s throat burned from the smoke; he couldn’t shake the nagging cough from that freezing rainy night on the river. In the trenches men didn’t last long when their lungs sounded hollow—hollow as two bells. They called this the clang of death.
A flurry of sparks burst from the embers, bringing a wall of heat.
Alain jumped back. “We could have baked bread in less time.”
“Don’t compare baking bread to melting a dense five-kilogram bar of precious metal,” said Baret. “If everything goes well, this will take another few hours.”
“We should just file the serial numbers and stamp off,” said Alain. “That would be quicker.”
Baret shot a look at Gaubert. Children.
“Filing that deep to remove the Reichsbank stamp? Twelve hours at least.” Baret shook his head. “Use your impatience to work the bellows.”
“And get caught red-handed by the Boches patrols?”
“Didn’t you listen when I explained yesterday?” Baret’s face was flushed in the heat. “Gold melts at a thousand degrees centigrade. We must maintain this temperature for hours in order to liquify such a solid mass. So either pipe down or help work the bellows. Unless you think you’d be better off with the Reichsbank stamp.”
Alain wiped his forehead. “I’m not an idiot.”
“He knows what he’s doing, Alain, he’s a jeweler,” said Gaubert.
“Was,” Baret said. “Now I’ve taken over my father’s farm. Good thing I kept my tools.” With the hook on the end of his artificial arm, he lifted a wine bottle from his valise, placed it between his knees, and twisted off the cork with practiced expertise.
Gaubert wiped his own forehead, sweating in anxiety as much as in the heat of the bellows. He had so much to worry about. If it wasn’t these three young idiots—grasping and impatient—then it was the German military demanding that Mayor Gaubert enforce the curfew, scale back farm rations, requisition farm animals. God knew how long this would last—or could last.
Meanwhile, Rouxel’s mother bombarded him every other day, wanting to know where her son was. Alain had taken him from the shallow grave on the river and reburied him. Gaubert never asked where. Fanny’s ardent letters begged him to leave the village and let someone else deal with the Germans—Gaby had tonsillitis after his broken nose. Gaubert couldn’t stop thinking about them; they’d never spent Christmas apart. But it wasn’t safe for him to go to them yet.
The worst was the guilt—every night hearing that baby cry across the river in that village of orphans and widows. It was all their fault.
The Germans hadn’t forgotten. Right now their energies were occupied on the Eastern Front. But they would be back, Gaubert had no doubt. What then?
Baret gestured to Bruno. “Open my suitcase, take out the long-handled tongs, my carbon rod, the ingot molds—you want to arrange them on the bench. Then we’ll need the fluxing agent and the charcoal mixture.”
“What’s charcoal for?” asked Bruno, lifting out Baret’s tools.
“That’s the next step, after the bar melts. Before we pour we need a lift-off agent so the gold releases from the ingot mold,” said Baret.
Gaubert’s draft horse munched hay at the trough. Shirts off, their backs glistening, he and Bruno shoveled in the coke and Alain pumped the bellows. Minou, at Baret’s instructions, used the long tongs to shift the crucible and add the fluxing agent. They dripped with sweat and Alain hadn’t stopped complaining the whole time. It had been his damn idea in the first place.
After half an hour, the brick still maintained its shape, but a shiny gold puddle was spreading.
“We need to raise the temperature or this won’t me
lt by dawn,” said Baret.
Seized by a fit of coughing, Gaubert grabbed his handkerchief in time to catch his phlegm. Bright red blood. His hand shook. He balled it up, stuffed it in his pocket.
“Enough,” he said. “We’re dead men.” Gaubert caught the wall for support and turned to Alain and Bruno. “This gold’s a curse. Innocent people have been murdered. The Boches are hunting us down. Time we dump it in the river where it belongs.”
Alain glared. Threw down the bellows and strode over to him.
“Or do you want to die for it, Alain?”
“Non, I want to live on it, you fool,” said Alain. He swung back his fist and punched Gaubert in the gut. “I won’t throw it away.”
Gaubert felt the air get knocked out of him, wrenching pain. His lungs fought to breathe. Coughing and sputtering, he grabbed the metal tongs. “Greedy bastard, you’ll get us all shot.”
Bruno grabbed at Alain, knocking Baret to the dirt floor. A free-for-all in the dense heat.
Philbert burst into the forge, breathing hard. “What in the . . . Stop! Didn’t you hear my warning? There’s a Boches patrol coming.”
They’d been tracked down. One of the idiots must have blabbed. Gaubert and Baret locked glances. Right then he knew they would die. They’d escaped it in the trenches, but here and now the reckoning arrived.
An owl hooted in the neighboring barn. Then Gaubert heard thrumming engines, the gunning of motorcycles and German voices coming in through the open wooden door.
Place de la Madeleine, Paris · Saturday, 1 p.m.
Their old meeting place had changed, like so much else. Heinz Felsen took a deep breath as he entered le Foyer in the vaulted basement of the Madeleine Church. Well-dressed volunteers staffed the restaurant, a glorified cafeteria that reminded him of the Dresden University student canteen.
The Foyer’s proceeds funded homeless programs, according to the sign on the wall. Give that to them, Heinz thought, but the clientele was a far cry from the population he remembered the Foyer serving during the war. Then, it had been a soup kitchen; today, the homeless ate in their own reserved section, while at communal tables sat office workers, locals, aristocrats, some elderly on a budget. Quite a three-course bargain in this chic quartier. Aah, the French.
Armed with his newly purchased membership card and meal ticket, he walked to a table he remembered. His brown suit and serviceable East German shoes looked shabby even among the working-class types here. Self-conscious and uneasy, he realized anyone who looked twice would notice—it would be glaringly obvious to these sophisticated Parisians. The culture shock of being in the West for the first time in forty years hit him.
“Bonjour, c’est libre?” he asked the woman at the table, for formality’s sake. She was seventy if she was a day.
“Asseyez-vous,” she said. Her white hair was back in a tight chignon; she wore a slash of coral lipstick and turquoise earrings—a style from the fifties that looked à la mode today. Still a stunning woman.
“Bien sûr, I’d suggest you pass on the rubber poulet and order the fish, Heinz.”
He’d recognize her voice anywhere: gravelly and low.
He nodded. “Merci, Madame . . . ah . . . ?”
“It’s Comtesse de Ribes de la Besson,” she said, flashing a megawatt smile.
Perfect white teeth, not her own. Taut alabaster skin with a hint of makeup and faint expression lines around her mouth. His informer, whom he’d known as Marie Buvet in the bordello, had done well for herself.
“But you can call me Comtesse. As I imagine you know, it’s important in life to reinvent oneself, n’est-ce pas?”
Message received, loud and clear. Heinz, no stranger to reinvention, nodded. “Understood. What do you have to tell me, Comtesse?”
“Important things come after dessert. Much better for the digestion, don’t you think?”
An all-night train ride to watch the old hooker play grande dame? Yet he was hungry. It was always better to eat and then talk.
She’d gambled that he was still alive, would get her message and show up now that the Wall was coming down. She’d lured him here, hedging her bets he’d come. Now she reverted to their former protocol. More than forty years ago, he’d sat here, his black boots shined, his insignia glistening.
“You remember the last time, non? I see it in your eyes,” she said. “We say Paris hides many sins. The past melts away.”
“It’s done wonders for you.”
Her tone became matter-of-fact. “The sole meunière’s passable.”
It was ambrosia to him. Then the salad and a dessert, fromage blanc with a swirl of raspberries. The small strong coffee accompanied by that tiny chocolate square. He remembered now the French attention to detail and taste.
The lunch rush ebbed; only two other tables were still occupied. “We were so young—the parties, the champagne . . .” She looked around to see if anyone was listening. “All you bad boys.” She pulled out her lipstick. “Our deal’s still good, Heinz?”
Heinz nodded. “The world’s changed, but my word stands.”
“How’s your French holding up?”
“My Russian’s better.”
She slipped an envelope over the tablecloth. Inside it was a newspaper clipping, words underlined. He nodded. How he’d taught her. Then another article clipped from Le Parisien with lurid headlines of a murder.
“That’s background,” she said. “Read it later. But notice this?” She pointed.
His hands went cold as he scanned the photos. “Give me the gist of what’s not here.”
She applied coral lipstick, blotted her lips with her napkin. Looked around again. “Monsieur Peltier is . . . I mean, was . . . from my quartier, a neighbor down the street. Wealthy, but who isn’t around there? My niece saw this article about his murder and, my God, she’s upset because she made her First Communion with the daughter, knows the family.”
Heinz had forgotten how the woman gossiped. But then that’s what he’d paid her for in the past. The Marie he knew had resurfaced.
She noticed his look. “Alors, Heinz, I’ll tell it my way. Long story short, at Peltier’s funeral, my niece hears he came from a village next to Givaray, where your brother was lost. See, I never forgot.”
Heinz folded his napkin. Put it on the table. Irritated, he wished he’d thought this through before jumping on a train a day after the Wall fell.
“Sounds like a coincidence,” he said. “It’s not even the same village.”
He’d seen the death notifications of his brother’s unit—his brother was listed as missing in action, whereabouts unknown.
“I left the business, Heinz, but I didn’t abandon my contacts.” She tugged her diamond tennis bracelet, checked the clasp. “Recently, a German troop truck was found sunken in the river by Givaray. I know an old commissaire who told me that in Givaray sixty villagers were executed in reprisals by your lot. Even the priest’s parents. No one in Givaray has forgotten or forgiven.”
The reprisals for four soldiers murdered on the night Heinz’s brother had disappeared. He nodded. He’d developed a theory, after years of researching in the military archives, that his brother’s unit had been guarding a gold train en route to Portugal.
“Go on,” he said. He almost snapped his fingers for coffee and service, almost barked orders at the waiter, when he caught himself. Not even here two hours and he could slide back into those old habits. He might have just walked away from a Gestapo interrogation in rue des Saussaies . . .
“Rumor is the mayor of that Vichy village was responsible for the reprisals,” Marie was saying. “The village over the river where the Peltiers come from, Chambly-sur-Cher. Only a kilometer away. It even made the Paris papers.” She indicated the article he was holding. “That’s why I got interested. Remember, Heinz? I promised I would follow up on anything I heard.”
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br /> She sat silently while he read the whole of the newspaper article.
While engineers surveyed the Cher riverbed to reinforce dikes by the old Roman bridge, they discovered more recent history—a sunken German WWII convoy truck on the river floor by the mill. A far more intriguing war-era discovery than the usual shells and Nazi helmets. Old-time villagers of nearby Givaray insist the German truck links to the murders of sixty villagers who were shot after four German soldiers’ bodies washed up on their bank in 1942. “They blamed us, but we’d never seen them before,” said a sixty-year-old woman, Pascale Alfort, a teenager at the time. “Who’d be such an idiot? Whoever killed them never came forward.” Another old villager who spoke anonymously said Alphonse Gaubert, then mayor of Chambly-sur-Cher across the Cher, had been rumored to be responsible for killing the German soldiers. Rumors continue to this day, according to the anonymous villager, that a fifth German soldier escaped.
Escaped. Heinz’s brother’s body had never been found. But after all this time . . . “You’re saying the mayor, this Gaubert, murdered my brother and the others?”
She shrugged.
“Where is Gaubert?”
“Dead for all I know. In the South of France?” Marie paused. “Is it possible your brother is still alive? In Argentina?”
Even with the Wall, Gottfried would have gotten in touch. Wouldn’t he?
Or had he gone AWOL, been afraid to surface? Had he made off with that gold? Maybe over the years he’d bought a new identity and burrowed into another life. That’s what Heinz would have done.
After all these years, he wanted closure. Could that be all there was to it—a dead end and a hollow feeling inside?
He couldn’t accept that. Not yet. He’d follow this to the end or he’d never have peace.
“Don’t you have something for me, Heinz?”
“Have I ever come empty-handed?”
He pulled out the missing persons reports dated 1954 and 1961. The copy of the POW and Red Cross list, the displaced persons camp in Poland, all with whereabouts unknown stamped in red. He’d kept them for years, wondering if this day might come.