by James Lepore
Leaving Julian where he was, Fleming stepped from behind the lorry and headed across the sun-splashed street toward the church of St-Germaine l’Auxerrois, where refugees, probably the ones chased from the Louvre, were beginning to gather on the church’s wide front esplanade. Off to the right, separated from the crowd, he noticed a woman with long brown hair in a light blue dress reading from a guide book and looking up at the thirteen-hundred-year-old church. When she saw him, she waved and started walking his way. He did the same.
“Mr. Harrington,” she said when they met.
Fleming recognized her but did not answer.
“Marlene Weil,” she said. “We met at Maxim’s.”
“Of course,” he replied. “You are much too beautiful for any man to forget.”
“How nice to see you again.”
“Such August company you were in, fraulien.”
“Yes, my father does a great deal of business with Miss Chanel.”
“Mustn’t let the war stop all that.”
“No. Your cufflinks were quite the thing.”
“Yes, I had to show the duke. They were a gift from his father to mine.”
Marlene did not answer, but only smiled, the same smile that was on her face when he took her picture with his left cufflink two nights ago.
“It’s sad,” Fleming said, “isn’t it?”
“Sad?”
“To be a tourist in a city that is about to be placed in shackles.”
“It is my only chance.”
“And your father? Is he sightseeing as well?”
“No, he is working in his room.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Ritz.”
“How long are you stopping?”
Now came an awkward silence as Fleming thought his thoughts and watched Marlene Weil—identified the day before by MI-6 as Marlene Jaeger, a Berlin clerical worker thought most definitely to be an Abwehr agent—thought hers.
“We are Jewish,” Marlene said finally. “We are not waiting with baited breath for the Werhmacht to take Paris.”
“And you don’t want to go back to Berlin.”
“Would you?”
Fleming did not answer, just shook his head in what he hoped looked like a gesture of sincere empathy. Obviously not, he thought, if I were a Jew. And if you were really a Jew and not a spy, I might take more pleasure in our supposed chance second meeting and the unfolding of our love affair.
“What will you do?” he said finally.
“I don’t know. Miss Chanel has offered to help us. Perhaps go south, perhaps a flight to Lisbon.”
Ah yes, Fleming thought. The horizontal collaborator. Seen last at Maxim’s with a man MI-6 tentatively identified as the Italian aristocrat Count Vittorio di Leo, an alleged diplomat and friend of il Duce. Thank God for those cufflinks, a gift, not from King George V to Valentine Fleming, but from Eddie Jones, an East End fence, to Valentine’s son, Ian, on his assignment to watch George’s son and his wife as they flitted about Europe looking for sycophants.
“A Jewish family owns a majority of Les Parfums Chanel,” Marlene said, when she saw that Fleming was not answering. She smiled innocently as she tried to casually confirm that of course Coco would therefore want to help us. “My father is one of their business agents.”
“The Wertheimers,” said Fleming.
“Yes.”
“How fortunate for you, then.”
“Yes, we are grateful.”
“Shall I see you again? You and your father, of course.”
“I love my father, Mr. Harrington,” Marlene replied, “but he does not care for drink or nightlife of any kind. Except perhaps going to bed early.”
“He seemed to be enjoying himself at Maxim’s.”
“He was working.”
“I see. Well, just us then, if you can bear it. Shall we meet in the Ritz lobby at eight?”
“Mais oui. I look forward to it. A bientot, Mr. Harrington.”
“My friends call me Ian.”
“I thought it was Tony.”
“Ian’s my middle name. I much prefer it.”
“Ian. A bientot, Ian.”
Chapter 11
Montparnasse, May 29, 1940, 6:00 p.m.
“Introibo ad altare Dei.”
John Ronald Tolkien knew what these words meant—I will go unto the altar of God—but had trained himself to experience the Roman Mass rather than be instructed by it, to, as much as was humanly possible, simply exist in the midst of the ancient rite rather than think about it. He hoped the priest saying the mass was Father Alain LaToure, but, as the man in the green chasuble, whoever he was, began to recite the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar—as the great mystery that was the life, passion and death of Jesus Christ, began to unfold—Tolkien let go of this thought. He was no longer an Oxford professor, a husband, a father or an amateur spy, but simply a soul joined with the universe. How he entered this state he did not know and did not care to know. He did know that this mindless and exhilarating experience of God is what had turned an obedient and lonely Catholic boy, an orphan, into a devout Catholic man, one of the faithful.
“Father, may I speak to you?”
“Who are you?”
“I have been to see Father Jacques.”
“I ask again, who are you?”
Tolkien had exited the small church on the grounds of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion convent and waited on the lawn between it and the rectory, approaching Father Alain when he appeared, now in the simple bottomless soutane that the Jesuits had worn for centuries, his white clerical collar encircling his neck. The priest—a dark-haired, handsome man in his mid-forties—had stopped abruptly on hearing Tolkien’s voice, and just as abruptly squared off to face the Englishman full on. He had barked out his first question, and the second, though in a quieter tone, was no less confrontational.
“My name is John Tolkien. I am a professor of English literature at Oxford. I am here on a mission for my government.”
“What kind of mission?”
“I am looking for a boy, two boys—two German boys.”
“Tolkien is a German name.”
“It is, but I am English, I assure you.”
“What did Father Jacques say?”
“He said you took the boys, Conrad Friedeman and Karl Brauer.”
“He is a naïve man, Father Jacques, too trusting.”
Tolkien’s expectations regarding Father Alain had been informed by the humble demeanor of Father Jacques, the only other Jesuit he had ever met. LaToure’s anger was a surprise, not only in contrast to Father Jacques, but as opposed to the dull sort of hopelessness he had seen on the faces of the Parisians he had met thus far. Though his black eyes still burned, the priest now seemed to relax a bit. His tone of voice when speaking of Father Jacques was more respectful than angry. His right hand, which had been oddly resting on his right hip, he now extended downward.
“How can I convince you to trust me?” Tolkien said.
“Are you really who you say you are, a professor of English literature?”
“Yes, I am.”
“A Catholic professor of English Literature?”
“You saw me?”
“You did not take communion.”
“Does that mean I’m not Catholic?” Now it was Professor Tolkien’s turn to be angry. Normally, he would have been embarrassed to be marked as a sinner, but for a priest, who forgives sin not in his own name but in the name of Christ, to do it…that itself seemed sinful.
Tolkien watched as Father LaToure parted his lips to speak and then closed them abruptly.
“‘He that hears you hears me, and he that despises you despises me.’” These words, learned as a boy over thirty years ago and never repeated, nor thought of, since, leapt unbidden from the Englishman’s heart.
“You know the Book of John?” the priest asked.
“My guardian was a priest. He bade me memorize it.”
Tolkien and LaToure,
both trying to survive in a war zone, looked hard at each other for a brief moment, silently acknowledging as they did their shared Catholic heritage and its core tenet: that all humans—including them, indeed, especially them—are sinners in need of redemption.
“These two boys,” said LaToure finally, his body language slightly less defensive, “are they innocent?”
“Yes, completely,” Tolkien replied, “and I must bring them back to England.”
“Why?”
“Does it matter why? They will not be harmed. On the contrary.”
“I must know.”
“If I tell you, I will only be exposing you to danger, great danger.”
“It is not myself I am concerned for, it is the people who have taken custody of the two boys.”
“Ah, so you…”
“Do you think we are all cowards in France, Professor Tolkien?” Father Alain returned to barking, his face flushed. He spit on the ground.
“Of course not.”
“The rich are leaving Paris like rats.”
Tolkien did not answer. He looked down at the brown stain on the lawn where the priest’s saliva had landed. Had he been reaching for his chewing tobacco? Or was it a weapon?
“Do you know why communism is so popular here, professor?”
“Father, I—”
“I will tell you. The rich are pigs.”
Silence. How to reply to this?
“Who are these boys?” Father Alain asked.
“Conrad is carrying the formula for a new kind of weapon,” Tolkien replied. “An unimaginably destructive weapon. If the Germans capture him first, they will win the war in a matter of months.”
“Nothing of importance was found on the boys.”
“You searched them?”
“The people who have them did.”
“Nevertheless.”
Both men looked up when they heard popping noises, to see the white puffs of antiaircraft shells as they exploded in the northern sky, a sky that was cloudless and achingly blue, a sky that did not know that Paris was about to be invaded. The day before, a squadron of German bombers had flown over but not dropped any bombs. On the metro heading to Montparnasse, Tolkien had seen preparations underway to convert several large stations to bomb shelters, cots and blankets piled against tiled walls, crates of canned food, candles, and bandages being opened and unloaded.
“It will not be long now,” the priest said. “A matter of days.”
“The code name for my mission is Shiva,” said Tolkien.
“The Hindu god of destruction.”
“Yes.”
“I will try to confirm that you are who you say you are.”
“We have no time for that.”
“There are people here who have put their lives at risk for these boys. I must receive confirmation.”
Images of Paris in the throes of preinvasion schizophrenia passed through Tolkien’s mind. Steel girders across the Champs d’Elysées, well dressed people smoking and drinking and smiling under bright sunshine at sidewalk cafes, caravans of trucks and cars and bicycles and horse-drawn carts loaded with furniture, pets and children heading south on the Boulevard St. Michel, lines of chatting and laughing people at movie theaters, Prime Minister Reynaud on the radio announcing the treason of the Belgian king. How would this convent priest get through to MI-6 in all this chaos?
“I will want something in return,” Father Alain said, breaking into the newsreel in Tolkien’s mind.
“What?” he replied.
“Thompson submachine guns. Two hundred, with ammunition times ten.”
“Father…”
“I am staying to fight, professor. Those are my terms.”
Tolkien smiled as something tight in his heart let loose. He had met two resistance fighters in the short time he had been in Paris, both Catholic priests. There was hope.
“How shall I contact you?” he asked.
“I will contact you. Where are staying?”
“The Meurice.”
“There is a café two blocks south, Le Café de le Petit Flore. Go there every morning at ten. If a boy approaches and asks for money for bread, give him a one sou piece and follow him. A ten year old boy, wearing a blue shirt.”
Chapter 12
Paris, May 30, 1940, 10:00 p.m.
“They say that Cole Porter wrote this song here,” said the darkly handsome man leading Marlene Jaeger gently but firmly as they danced to “Begin The Beguine.” “At that very piano.”
“Which is what we’re doing, isn’t it?” Marlene murmured, her cheek very close to her partner’s.
“What is a beguine, exactly? Do you know?”
“A long, slow dance. The dance of life, some say, when you find your soul mate.”
“French?”
“Creole.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.” Jaeger smiled, letting her mind drift. Her first real lover—if you could call him a lover—when she was seventeen, had been a Haitian general in exile in Switzerland. He had taught her the most God-awful French and the most delightful uses of the human body. She had been frightened then, at least at first, and then never again. She murmured again as she pressed her body closer to the would-be wine connoisseur who, classically upright, was waltzing her with ease and finesse around the parqueted floor of the Ritz’ Bar Vendome. She felt the tips of her breasts tingling as they brushed against his chest.
“Have I told you how stunning you look?” her dance partner asked, bringing her back to the present.
“Yes, but you can again.”
“Gorgeous.”
“Danke, Herr Harrington.”
Marlene Jaeger wore a black, sleeveless dress cut to below the knee with a tucked waist, ebony buttons down one side, and a slit on the other that revealed a great deal of creamy thigh. The pearls on her neck and ears matched the color and luster of her skin. Her almond-shaped hazel eyes looked more Slavic than German, more oriental than western. Her full lips, painted a lovely red, and her long brown tresses, completed a picture that she knew was indeed stunning.
“Till you whisper to me once more, darling I love you…” Mr. a/k/a, as Marlene was beginning to refer to him in her mind, sang softly, his lips close to her ear, close enough, she hoped, to smell the single drop of No. 5 she had dabbed there after getting dressed and made up earlier.
“Can I ask you, Herr Harrington,” Jaeger said, pulling away and looking up at him, “are you married by chance?”
“I’m not,” he replied. “Does it matter?”
“It adds depth, I always find.”
“You mean all that pain and suffering?”
“That, yes, or pent up emotion.”
“I’m single, but still very complicated.” a/k/a Harrington smiled as he took her around the waist and bent her slightly backward to punctuate the end of the song. They stood for a moment and applauded the mulatto chanteuse standing in front of the piano, and then clapped again when the black piano player in evening dress looked up and nodded to the crowd on the dance floor, his teeth as white as his beautifully starched shirt.
“Can we go someplace else for a nightcap?” Marlene asked. “There is so much of Paris to see before I must flee.”
“Of course. When do you leave?”
“We’re not sure. We hope by the weekend.”
“You’ll be cutting it close.”
“What about you? I haven’t asked you…”
“I am in an allied country. My papers are stamped for a departure before June 30.”
“Why are you staying?”
The chanteuse had stepped away, but the piano player was starting in to another Cole Porter song, Paris Loves Lovers.
“He’s looking at us,” said Marlene. “Do you know him?”
“He’s a business associate.”
“American, I presume.”
“Jamaican.”
“Your wine business?”
“Yes, I give him a fee for finding me cac
hes of great wines.”
“What are the great wines? I’m afraid I haven’t a clue.” Please, Monsieur a/k/a, teach me about wine.
“I am currently looking for a 1922 vintage Le Romanee Conti.”
“Very special?”
“It’s from a five acre vineyard in Burgundy, where grapes have been grown and wine made for two thousand years. But that’s not it really. The 1922 vintage produced only two cases. I have been tracking down the last two bottles.”
“Expensive, I presume.”
“Very.”
“Shall we dance?”
“Mais oui.” They had moved to the edge of the floor and now stepped onto its darkly gleaming surface and began dancing again.
“Charles sometimes let’s me use his apartment,” Monsieur a/k/a said, “on Rue Bonaparte, overlooking the Seine.”
“Charles?”
“The piano player. Shall we have our nightcap there? There’s a balcony covered with jasmine.”
Marlene Jaeger lay naked on her back on the red and white striped chaise lounge on the balcony chez Charles-the-piano-player, dreamily looking up at the night sky through the branches of the Spanish jasmine that surrounded her on its trellis on three sides. At first she thought she was looking at dozens of stars so close that she might touch one if she reached up. Then she realized, smiling languidly as their heady aroma reached her nostrils, that it was the jasmine’s tiny white flowers arrayed overhead, not stars. Better than stars, she thought. Her dress, which had been slit up the back from hem to neckline, lay crumpled on the stone floor nearby; her stockings, garter belt, underwear, and silk slip were scattered on the floor as well.