“I sure hope the guys take care of it,” said McPhee, embarrassed. “Maybe I’ll know somebody in the brigade, tell them to look after it.”
“A pity you do not know somebody among the Germans who have been occupying my house since 1940,” said Francois.
In the silence that followed, as Francois smoked and McPhee stared out of the train window, Jack realized that a pattern had been established. The Frenchman needled the American, even when he did not mean to. There was a constant irony in everything that Francois said, and a bitterness that he did not bother to conceal. Jack took it equably. He had come across far odder types in the desert, and had learned to tolerate eccentricities in the regiment.
They were comrades in arms, bound together by duty and by a common mission, and he admired the Frenchman’s brains and grit even if he didn’t follow the chap’s obsession with politics. But the American seemed in his own way as clever and as well read as Francois, just as attuned to the political minefield they were heading into, but somehow less nimble than Francois in discussing it.
“I never asked you, Jack,” Francois broke in. “How do you speak French so well?”
“A governess I had before I went away to school. She was French. And then skiing at Chamonix in the winter, Cap d’Antibes in the summer, I kept in practice. Just seemed to have an ear for it. And never much liked lying on the beach, so I’d go and talk to the fishermen and the waiters,” Jack replied. “Then, the interpreter’s course was something to do while I was in Quetta. Couldn’t play polo all the time. So I was assigned to liaison duties during the phony war, based in a corps HQ at Longwy on your Maginot line. I suppose that’s how we first met, when they were looking through the files in Cairo for any odd bod whose docket said he spoke French when you came back with General Koenig’s boys, after Bir Hakeim.”
Francois nodded. “And you, McPhee. Your French is good, too.”
“Usual way, Francois. A sleeping dictionary, a petite amie. I was in France in 1939, best year of my life. Springtime in Paris, a girl, a crazy idea that maybe I could be a writer. Can’t figure whether I fell in love with her or with France, and while I was working it out, I ended up speaking a language I never could handle at school, although they tried hard enough. Hell, you learn a lot in bed.”
“Perhaps we should try to find you a pretty teacher of demolitions,” laughed Jack. “Then you’d sort out your fuses and your ammonal fast enough.”
“Explosions in bed,” grinned Francois. “There’s an idea.”
“Don’t worry about me, you guys. We have the best part of another year of training before we get sent in. Figure it out. We in the Jedburgh teams are meant to drop into France just before the invasion to help coordinate the Resistance. There’ll be no invasion this year, not with the American troops still coming in, and the new front in Italy. Besides, the summer’s just about over and we can’t cross the Channel with the storms coming on. We’d never be able to ensure supplies to the beachhead. So the invasion will be next year, May or June, ’44. So we’ll drop into France in May. That gives us nine, maybe ten more months. More training. Winter in Scotland, underwater demolitions training in those freezing lochs. I have all the time in the world.”
“You are right, of course,” Francois said. “Except for one thing.”
“What’s that”?
“The Germans. More precisely, the Abwehr and the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, and the Gestapo. They are not idle. They roll up the Resistance cells with a dismaying regularity. If the clever chaps in Baker Street who devised this whole operation think that there are too few networks on the ground for us to work with when we drop in, they may send some of us in early, to have the time to build up our own teams. At least, that is what my Free French masters think in Duke Street. And since Jean Moulin managed to forge the various Resistance factions into a single structure, the Gaullists probably know the situation better than the Englishmen in SOE.”
“But Jean Moulin has gone, disappeared, arrested,” said McPhee. “Night and fog, that good old German way.”
“It is a dangerous game, Resistance, and a lot of people disappear. It will be dangerous in Europe for a long time I think. After the Germans, we might be playing it against the Russians,” said Francois. “And I think we three will be playing it long before next May, McPhee.”
CHAPTER 4
Time: The Present
Lydia had expected to find Clothilde difficult. She would have been entitled to be furious at a wasted trip. Instead, she found the Frenchwoman a comfort, as she helped satisfy the demands of the police for an authoritative opinion on what the stolen rock was and what it might be worth. She was quite splendid with the man who came from the insurance company, informing him that he might count himself fortunate that Lydia had listed the value at a mere ten thousand pounds.
“For once, we can use the word priceless and mean it,” she had snapped, eyes ablaze with professional righteousness. Lydia found her admirable. And Clothilde was even useful with the hapless Justin, who was obviously terrified of her. And she bullied the directors into matching the ten thousand pounds she decided her museum could offer as a reward. So after the paperwork and the meetings with directors and the police and insurance affairs had all been dealt with, it was evening, and when Clothilde asked Lydia if she could recommend a quiet hotel, she insisted that the Frenchwoman come and stay with her. It was, she felt, the least she could do. Clothilde wanted to go to Chinatown for dinner, saying it was the one food she missed in Perigord. She devoured most of the Peking duck she insisted they eat, attacked a vast plate of Szechuan beef, chattered amusingly about a holiday she had taken in China, drank three beers, and tried to pay the bill. Lydia, who had seldom enjoyed an evening more, firmly refused.
“I accept only if your auction house is paying,” said Clothilde. “And if they are not trying to blame you for all this mess.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they will want to blame somebody, and you are a woman. That is how male-dominated organizations tend to work. And that was the impression I had at your office.”
“I’m afraid you might be right. They were dropping some pretty strong hints about my desk failing to bring in enough money even before this happened.”
“Not enough product, or not enough rich clients?” Clothilde grinned. “I know something about your auction houses.”
“Not enough of either, not for my preclassical area. I don’t seem to be very good at rounding up rich collectors.”
“A friend of mine in one of the Paris auction houses, an Egyptologist, had a similar problem,” said Clothilde. “So she got the list of all the people who had come to the last few sales of Napoleon’s materials-and that is a very big thing in France-made a deal with a travel agency, and offered to guide historical tours of Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition. She took them to the site of the battle of the Pyramids, told them about the Rosetta Stone, and then took them down the Nile in a luxurious boat. By the end of the trip, she had a whole new list of clients and made a lot of money. You could do the same.”
“That’s a splendid idea,” said Lydia, trying not to think about the lack of Napoleonic enthusiasts in Britain, or the reluctance of wealthy collectors to visit those remoter parts of Iraq and Central Asia that produced the bulk of her treasures. Quickly, she signed the bill she had charged to her credit card. “That advice is certainly worth a good dinner, even if my company were not paying. Which they are,” she lied. But she let Clothilde pay for the taxi.
“You are being very reasonable about this theft,” Lydia said when they were back at her apartment, sipping the malt scotch that had sat untouched in the cupboard since the end of the affair with David. “In your place, I would have been outraged.”
“Oh, I can be outraged if there is a point to it. But there isn’t,” said Clothilde. “I am fatalist about thefts, ever since I was burgled as a student. They are a fact of life. And if the police find the rock, then all will be well. But I doubt tha
t they will, so we are left with an even deeper mystery. But then we had a mystery to begin with. Where did it come from, where is the cave of its origin, and why this bull, which is almost certainly by the hands of Lascaux, should be the only miniature we know of? That is three big mysteries that already confront us, and now we have a fourth. Who took it and why?”
“That makes five. Add a sixth-where is it now?”
“I assume an art thief who knew what he was doing somehow heard about the find and broke in. If so, he will try to sell it, and we may hear of it that way. Or when he realizes there is no market for these things, he will find a way to accept the reward we have offered. And then we are back where we started, examining the rock for any clues to its provenance. But I shall start on that next week. We have a national laboratory that does computer enhancement, and I already sent them your digital photos. I am almost certain already that this is no modern copy, but that should make sure. And since you photographed the backs and the sides of the rock, we have a chance to narrow down the geology.”
“I wish I shared your confidence. I keep thinking the thief could simply destroy it. Or we might never hear of it again. Remember that this rock has sat in an Englishman’s home for fifty years, and nobody had the slightest idea that it existed. So presuming it does come from an unknown cave, its secret has been well kept.”
“That is the part of the mystery that intrigues me. It even excites me,” said Clothilde. “This Englishman worked with the Resistance in Perigord. So there are records. We can track down the people he worked with, ask the old men who still survive from those days. There are some friends of my father where I can make a start.”
“Was your father in the Resistance there?”
“Yes. He was shot by the Germans, but some of his old comrades are still alive.”
“I’m sorry, I had no idea.”
Clothilde shrugged and reached into her bag for another cigarette. “I never knew him. He was shot during the Liberation, a few months before I was born. And then my mother married again, after the war, so I had another father, a good man. A teacher, still alive. He and my mother still live in the district, and he writes about local history. He wrote a book that was quite controversial, about the Resistance. These things still matter, in France, to the old men and some of the politicians.”
“It must have made things complicated, when you and Horst were together. His being a German.”
“Not for me. I was born after the Liberation. So was he. These were things other people had done, not us. My adoptive father felt the same way. He liked Horst. But for my mother, it was difficult. And Horst is not very German, if you understand me. He is more like an American, in some ways. He studied in America, you know. He drove a French car, spoke French well-almost as well as he speaks English.”
“I rang him today with the bad news, told him not to bother to come to London because there was nothing to see. He was much more furious than you,” Lydia said. “He said he’d probably come over anyway, to talk to the owner, see if he could find out any more about where the rock came from.”
“That’s Horst,” Clothilde smiled, rather fondly. “Once he gets his teeth into something, he doesn’t give up easily. Maybe that’s the German in him. Or the scholar. And he’s right, what’s more. The Englishman who first had the rock is the key to this. We assume that he brought it back from the war as a trophy, from the Perigord. So either he found it, or somebody gave it or sold it to him. Your Englishman was no scholar, and his son thinks he was no expert on the caves and the paintings and never showed any more interest in the matter. So it seems logical that he did not find it himself. Somebody local must have helped him or shown him, and then had some very strong reason to keep quiet. And who did he know locally?”
“The Resistance,” said Lydia.
“Exactly. So that is where I shall start. But perhaps you could help, Lydia. There must be records here about his military career, where he served, where he was. Could you find that for me, and the names of any networks that he worked with, any reports that he wrote?”
“Yes, I’d like to do that. There must be records in France, too.”
“There are the Compagnons de la Resistance. They are like a club of the old comrades, and they must have archives and memoirs. I can ask them, as the daughter of a Resistance man. Maybe the Communists will have something. My father was with them from before the war. I think he might even have been a party member. A lot of them were, in the Resistance. I will ask my mother, although my stepfather might know more. He will certainly know all about the local records and archives. Then there is a place in Bordeaux, the Centre Jean Moulin, which is named after one of the Resistance heroes, the one who was caught and tortured by Klaus Barbie of the Gestapo. You remember the Barbie trial?”
“Vaguely,” said Lydia. “I never had much reason to be interested before. But I think I might be seeing the son again. He asked me to lunch, and I owe him an explanation about the theft. I can ask him what he knows about his father in the war.” Lydia refilled their glasses, and grinned at Clothilde. “He’s not bad-looking, if you like the military type. Officer and gentleman. No longer young.”
“The military does that to them, after a certain rank. They age years with each promotion. Catch them young, and they can be very exciting. But then they get accustomed to commanding things and become tiresome, unless you want to make the effort. And having taken one look at military wives, I never wanted to join them. Garrison towns and being polite to the general’s wife. Not for me,” she grimaced. “Do you like soldiers?”
“I never came across one before.”
“There is no sign of a man in your apartment,” Clothilde said directly.
“No razors in the bathroom, you mean?” Lydia laughed as she felt herself blushing. “The last time there was a man in my life, he was far too discreet to leave anything like that. He always carried a portable electric razor and a clean shirt.”
“I would not trust that type,” Clothilde sniffed. “Always ready for adventure. And that, in my view, is a woman’s prerogative.”
At the Savoy Grill, which Major Manners said was the only place he really knew for lunch in London apart from his club, Lydia solemnly handed him a company check for ten thousand pounds with her apologies for the loss of his possession.
“That is the value I placed on it. That is what our insurance therefore pays out, or will if they know what’s good for them, even though the rock was not placed in our storeroom,” she said, and sipped her champagne.
“I therefore owe you two thousand pounds,” he said, smiling. “Under the terms of our agreement.” He was wearing a town suit today, a good one in dark blue, a striped shirt, a tie that looked regimental. His handkerchief was still in his cuff. She could detect no aftershave, which pleased her. There was an awful lot of male cologne in the art world, and she did not care for it.
“No,” she said firmly. “That was contingent on my doing some work that resulted in the sale of your rock, or at least its amicable disposal in a way that left you with no further obligations to France or anyone else. That is hardly the case now,” she said, thinking of the band of journalists and TV cameras thronging the street outside the salesrooms. “But there is one thing that troubles me. You barely mentioned your father’s service in wartime France when we spoke. Now I find that the President of France makes a private visit to his funeral. You must have known France was very important to him.”
“Naturally I did, but not from my father,” Manners said easily. The question did not seem to embarrass him in the least. “His reminiscences were all about the Middle East and North Africa, a bit of India. He hardly spoke of France at all. Nor did we visit it much when I was growing up. It was always Austria or Switzerland for the skiing, and summers in Scotland. He took me fishing, taught me to shoot. That kind of thing. Never much of a one for beaches or casinos. The south of France was never his style.”
“Did he never go back to Perigord?”
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p; “Not that I know. But I can’t say I followed his movements closely,” he said. She did not know him well enough even to guess whether this straightforward, rather bluff manner of the plain-speaking officer and gentleman was real, or just a surface skin he wore, like a uniform. She had never known any soldiers. Perhaps they were all this way; what you saw was what you got. But Manners had a quick mind, possibly even a subtle one. She suspected there was more to him than he wanted to display-at least, she cautioned herself, display to her.
“What about Paris?” she asked him. “Catching up with his friend Francois Malrand, the rising political star. Did he keep up with his old comrade-in-arms, de Gaulle’s protege?”
“Maybe he went when I was at school or when he was serving in NATO. I think he was stationed there in some staff job when the HQ was still at Fontainebleau. before de Gaulle kicked them out to Brussels in the 1960s.” He shrugged and fell silent as the waiter came with their smoked salmon. “He went off to the races at Longchamps from time to time, I seem to recall. He won a lot of money once.”
Remember his father, she told herself. There was obviously a lot more to old Colonel Manners than he had ever allowed to meet the eye. Working underground with the French Resistance, staying on the run from the Germans. That must have meant something to do with Intelligence, a skill at keeping secrets. Perhaps his son was the same way, hidden depths.
“Fathers can have a lot of privacy in our kind of family,” he went on. “I was away at school, and he’d retired before I went to Sandhurst. Maybe they sometimes met in London. I wouldn’t know. But that friendship didn’t seem to play a big part in his life. He said nothing when Malrand won the election. I found no letters among his things, and I was as surprised as anyone else when the French ambassador rang to say that the President planned to come to the funeral. I’m slightly surprised you knew. It was kept very quiet.”
The Caves of Perigord Page 7