A Hero of France: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  He lay back next to her and she rested her head on his chest. “It’s sad, this song,” she said.

  “Lost love, if you know the lyrics.”

  Outside, some vehicle with a siren sped past the hotel. When it was gone, Mathieu said, “Joëlle, do you want to wash up?”

  “I had warm water in my room tonight. A miracle!”

  “Good old Saint-Yves.”

  He kissed her lightly on the forehead, then, with a finger crooked beneath the waistband of her panties, slipped them off.

  “So,” she said, snapping the elastic band of his boxer shorts, “let’s have a look at you.”

  He took his shorts off, she leaned down and gave him a tender kiss. “Now see what you’ve done,” he said. After a moment he said, “With this candle, I worry about the blackout curtain, we don’t want the police blowing their whistles at us.”

  “Why don’t you fix it?”

  “Maybe you should.”

  A sexy walk to the window for Mathieu to watch—Joëlle’s splendidly white bottom shifting with each step. At the window, she said, “I know what you want, you fiend, you just want to look at my ass.” She swung it left, saying, “Is it this side of the curtain?” Then back the other way. “Or this?”

  When she was again lying close to him she said, “I’m glad you sent me the note, I was thinking about you.”

  “Good thoughts?”

  “Oh, you know, reminiscing, one could say…having fantasies.”

  “Ah, those.” He began to stroke her, knee to upper thigh, then back. “Was I doing this, in the fantasy?”

  “Sometimes. I dream up all kinds of naughty things, you would be surprised.”

  “It’s the same with me. With everybody, I suspect.”

  “Yes, sometimes I imagine doing it with someone I’ve seen on the street, sometimes a lover of long ago.” She smiled, amused by what came to mind. “There was a woman who taught at my lycée—lord, what I didn’t do to her. And she loved it, at least in the fantasy she did. What a frisson when she came!”

  “Was she fair? Or dark?”

  “Fair, I would say, pale, and well fed.”

  “Did you undress her?”

  “Oh no, in my fantasy I made her undress for me. She had great hauteur, a severe woman, and a snob, always her nose in the air, so I was very stern with her; made her pose, made her dance, made her crawl on her hands and knees so I could see everything and, when she didn’t want to crawl anymore I encouraged her with a leather belt. Then I lay on my back and raised my knees and she…well, you know what she did, it’s something you like to do. Of course she knew exactly the right place, the right touch…”

  “Well, she should have, after all it was you.” He rested his fingers on her shoulder, slid them down her arm until he held her hand, then put it between her legs. Idly, at first, she moved two fingers back and forth. As her breathing deepened and sped up, she held her breast, then, with two fingertips, her nipple. Down below, he laid his hand atop hers. After a time, she held a final breath, then gasped.

  Eventually, he said, “Did she enjoy it, the teacher?”

  “Yes, Madame X was very hot tonight, more than ever, she must have known I wasn’t by myself and it excited her.” She paused, said, “Bad boy,” pulled him to her, kissed him lavishly, then said, “I love that about you. You’re so…”

  “What?”

  “I guess it’s that you have a wicked mind.”

  “Just me?”

  “No, me too. But most men don’t think women are like that.”

  Mathieu laughed. “Women are just as wicked as men, even worse, once they feel free. What was her name, your teacher?”

  “I’d never tell you that, my God, you might know her.”

  They were silent for a time, content to lie on their backs and gaze up at the ceiling, then, a sudden gust of wind blew under the blackout curtain and the candle flickered and died. Mathieu, half awake, swore, went to the window and yanked the curtain aside. “I hate this thing,” he said. “It keeps the world out.” The warm evening air felt good as it filled the room, and the Rue Dauphine was busy; a dog barked, a couple came by, talking in low voices, their words indistinguishable but their tone intimate, a bicycle with a squeaky wheel passed slowly below the window and a woman called out, “Oh, Yvette, come back, I forgot…”

  “Alive on a spring night, our Paris,” Mathieu said.

  “Funny, it’s just life going on but, when it isn’t there, you miss it.” She turned on her side and began to play with him.

  “I’m still feeling your nice kiss,” he said.

  As her mouth closed around him he remembered a certain gleam in her eyes as she described her fantasy lovemaking with the teacher. She’d had, at that moment, a touch of the dominatrix about her, more than liked being in command, especially over a woman who, during schooltime, had command over her. How had she described her? Fair, she’d said, and pale, with great hauteur. Probably wore a stiff brassiere and girdle, or perhaps a corset, nothing frilly or seductive, armament beneath her teaching dress. A black corset, he imagined, no, a beige corset, which, after it was taken off, revealed a fulsome body of pale flesh, like a nude in a Rubens painting. And then, soon enough, impatient little cries of desire as hauteur gave way to passion…

  Afterward, Joëlle said, “I can guess what went on in your mind just now.”

  “Can you?”

  “A visit with Madame X, perhaps?”

  “Are you psychic?”

  “Oh no, I’m just Joëlle, but she knows how you work.”

  The warm air and the small sounds of the street were hypnotic and soon he put his arm around her and began to doze. For an hour? More? He wasn’t sure but when he came fully awake he heard the airplanes coming from the direction of the Channel. Not over Paris, this time, to the north, but still audible, as were the thuds of the anti-aircraft cannon. Mathieu waited for the flight to vanish into the distance but it didn’t. Not for a long time, it didn’t.

  The gunfire had woken Joëlle. “Did it scare you?” he said.

  “It woke me.” Then, after a pause, “Well, maybe a little. I was dreaming about you, love.”

  “Mmm, tell me, all of it, everything.”

  “No, not that sort of dream. You were kissing me, in a romantic way, and you meant it. From the heart, that kind of kiss.”

  “Maybe, if you go back to sleep, the dream will continue.”

  From Joëlle, a small laugh. “I don’t think it works like that. I was dreaming about us, about what I want for us.”

  He answered by pulling her closer, meaning that he felt the same way. What she’d said was good to hear, better than good, but in his response there was also fear. He didn’t want her to be in love with him because it was possible that some night he wouldn’t come home and she would never see him again and he knew what that would do to a woman who loved you.

  17 May. S. Kolb had given Mathieu a contact address, a Havas travel agency in Neuilly. Mathieu sent a wireless telegram to the address, heard back immediately, and a meeting with Edouard was arranged for five in the afternoon at a hôtel particulier—private mansion: a grand house with a gated entry courtyard in front and a garden in back, built centuries earlier when the nobility ruled the country. This hôtel particulier, known as the Hôtel de Quercy, stood on a narrow street near the Marais. Barely stood—the lovely, ancient building was crumbling away and looked to have been abandoned for years. As Mathieu approached, the late afternoon sun threw long shadows over the cobbled courtyard.

  Following instructions, Mathieu walked to the back of the mansion and entered through a tall gate that squeaked on rusty hinges and led into a garden gone wild long ago: overgrown shrubs that reached out to block the gravel paths; a statue of a nobleman—the statue had lost its head as, perhaps, the original nobleman had; a huge, gnarled, dead oak tree; and a few resident cats. The back doors of the mansion were ajar, Edouard was waiting for him when he arrived.

  He was as Mathieu reme
mbered him—rich English bastard from Mayfair, Mathieu had thought at the time—with a neat blonde mustache and a prim set of the mouth, as though he were offended by the world around him. “I am so glad you have decided to meet with me,” Edouard said, a hint of triumph in his voice. “Let’s go upstairs, shall we?” He gestured toward a staircase and followed as Mathieu, not so comfortable with Edouard behind his back, climbed to the second floor. Where they entered a vast room: floorboards that creaked with every step; tall windows, wood paneling on the walls. An enormous table—large enough for dinner for forty—stood at the center of the room with a few spindly, old chairs pulled up to it. Mathieu chose one, Edouard another.

  “I expect you’ve been a very busy fellow,” Edouard said, in his near-perfect French.

  “That’s true, I have couriers and escaping airmen all over the place.”

  “Yes, big raids now. Big, big raids, new bombers coming off assembly lines day and night.”

  “True of the Luftwaffe as well, I expect.”

  “Indeed, a slogging match. We’re at stalemate today but wait until the Americans get into it. So then, to business. We will provide funds, as I said before, thirty-five thousand dollars for a start. Have a look.” He slid the briefcase across the table and Mathieu opened it, revealing packets of hundred-dollar bills bound with rubber bands. “Do count it, Mathieu, always a good idea, with money changing hands.”

  Mathieu transferred the packets to his briefcase, saying, “I’m sure it’s all here.”

  Next, Edouard took a typewritten page from his briefcase and placed it on the table in front of Mathieu, saying, “And, of course, we must have a little something for the dear people in the London accounts department.” The paper was written in English and Mathieu read it slowly: legal language, a receipt for the money Edouard had given him. “So,” Edouard continued, “sign and date on the bottom of the page, you will find a line there.” He paused, then said, “Your true name, please.”

  Mathieu hesitated, looking up from the document—this receipt was dangerous. If the Germans got hold of it…“How does this paper reach London?”

  “By diplomatic pouch, from a neutral embassy. Safe as can be, old man, the Germans don’t read their mail, though I can’t imagine why not.”

  Mathieu signed, and Edouard, with brisk satisfaction, put the paper in his briefcase and buckled it shut. “Now then, some details,” Edouard said. “We know you’re busy, Mathieu, but we do have a little job for you, date to be determined, but soon. A beach reception, up in Normandy, for two of our agents coming in by submarine. These are people who managed to leave France after the Occupation and make their way to General de Gaulle’s Free French headquarters in London, where we recruited them. De Gaulle would surely, to put it mildly, like to command all French resistance himself but, for the moment, he hasn’t the means, so he cooperates with our special operations people. Your job will be to meet our agents and get them safely to Paris, where they will be on their own and your operatives are not to see them again.”

  “Who are they?”

  “A sabotage instructor and his wireless operator. Their gear—time-pencil detonators, fuse cord, plastic explosive, and all that sort of thing—will be in two duffel bag–sized metal containers. So you’ll want a vehicle to carry it.”

  “Can you tell me where, exactly, your agents will be?”

  “Can’t tell you what I don’t know, but I’ll have the details in a day or two. Do you have a drop-and-receive mailbox in Paris?”

  Mathieu told him about Madame Vigne and the religious articles shop across the street from the Notre-Dame de Lorette church.

  “Then that will be all for today,” Edouard said, and so Mathieu was dismissed from his presence.

  —

  I shouldn’t have done it. The regret was powerful and there was no point in denying it to himself. True, he’d had no alternative and he knew it, but still his mind hunted for some possibility he’d missed. After a few minutes of this, he realized he had no idea where he was going, then saw that he’d entered the Marais, the Jewish quarter, the poor Jewish quarter, and now found himself walking up the Rue Elzévir. The population of the neighborhood had swollen as war drove the refugee Jews west and Mathieu walked past knots of people engaged in animated conversation—arguments in French, Yiddish, and Polish—about what might happen next, and what was the right thing to do, and was there anything they could do.

  The Saint-Yves lay across the river from the Marais and when he reached the Seine he took the Pont Marie, a bridge he especially liked. Pausing to look down at the river, Mathieu saw a man called LeBeq, an acquaintance from his other life who worked for an insurance company. Mathieu tried to turn away but he was too late, LeBeq hailed him then greeted him like a long-lost friend. “Where the devil have you been? Somebody said you’d left the country.”

  “No, here I am, but I’ve been busy, I haven’t seen any of the usual crowd.”

  “Are you managing alright? You didn’t renew your policy…”

  “It escaped me, somehow, too much on my mind.”

  “Anyhow, if you decide to renew, you know where we are. By the way, did you know that Annette and Paul have separated?”

  “Them? That’s a surprise, they were very much the loving couple the last time I saw them.”

  “No more. The pressure of the Occupation, that’s what it is, it makes small things seem very important and people fight over the tiniest details.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear the bad news.”

  “Would you care for something to drink? I know a café near the end of the bridge.”

  “Thanks, but I have to be on my way, I’m meeting…somebody.”

  “Ah, the life of a single man, I envy you,” LeBeq said, with a conspiratorial smile. “Why not telephone sometime? We’ll go out for dinner, my wife’s cousin has a little restaurant in Montmartre, he’ll take care of us, if you understand me.”

  “A good idea,” Mathieu said. He shook hands with LeBeq and crossed the bridge, not far from home now and wanting to sit quietly and think about what he’d done and what it might mean for the people who worked with him.

  —

  19 May. Otto Broehm—formerly senior inspector of the Hamburg police department, now major in the Feldgendarmerie—walked from his apartment in Paris to his office on a cloudy, spring morning. This took only a few minutes as, eager to be at his desk, he’d set off at a brisk pace, and the office was only a few blocks away. He was now installed at the Kommandantur, the headquarters of the German occupation forces based at the Majestic Hotel, on the very fancy Avenue Kléber, a close neighbor to the Arc de Triomphe and the Avenue Champs-Élysées. Broehm, accustomed to the no-nonsense furnishings of Hamburg police stations, was still a little startled when he opened the door to his office—an elegant room that had, a year earlier, been home to guests at one of the grandest grand hotels on the continent.

  Broehm was alone in Paris—his wife had chosen to remain in Hamburg, amid family and friends—but he found this a useful arrangement, for he intended to give all his time and energy to his new job: destruction of the escape lines taking downed RAF airmen out of France—and that meant long hours and no distractions. As he reached his office, his aide, Leutnant Fichter, sprang to his feet and saluted. Fichter, stationed just outside the office door, always made a great show of effort. He had yearned to join the SS but, at five feet five inches, his height fell four inches short of the SS standard. It doesn’t matter, he would tell himself, he would show the world what diligence and zeal meant in an officer of any service.

  Broehm sat at his polished mahogany desk and had a glance at his schedule for the day, his first appointment with one Madame Passot, an employee of the Vichy office that worked with the military police—the Wehrmacht’s Feldgendarmerie. Disruption of the escape lines had been the responsibility of the Vichy office but they hadn’t done very well at it. Now, that would change.

  His telephone rang, it was Leutnant Fichter. “Mad
ame Passot is waiting to see you, sir, the dossiers you’ll need are on your desk.”

  “Please send her in,” Broehm said.

  Madame Passot was a lifelong civil servant: a thin, sour woman who wore eyeglasses attached to a chain around her neck. Broehm greeted her, then said, “It seems you’ve done your job quickly.”

  “I have, Major. I limited my investigation to the Paris area—there are cases of people working for escape lines all over the Occupied Zone—and I have completed five interviews: three wives, one mistress, and a mother, who all lived with men convicted of offenses—for instance use of false papers—committed while helping RAF airmen to avoid capture.”

  “Not aiding the enemy?”

  “France, despite Berlin’s urging, has not declared war on Great Britain, so aiding the enemy doesn’t apply.”

  “And your approach?”

  “I said I was employed by the office that issues ration coupons, and it was my job to make sure the domestic situation was as stated on the registration form.”

  “And were the subjects compliant, when questioned?”

  “Oh, yes—they are all frightened of the government, as well they should be, what with their loved ones serving time as criminals. They are also, because of that confinement, very short of funds, though all of them assured me that their present allotments are quite sufficient to their needs. I asked one of the wives what the family would be having for dinner that night, her answer was ‘Turnips and a potato.’ ”

  Broehm nodded with satisfaction. “Then my research was correct. The censor’s office at the Santé prison reports that the subjects’ letters to the prisoners are filled with complaints—‘life is hard without you’ and so forth—which is no doubt the truth and why these particular women were selected.”