A Hero of France: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  The butcher wet his thumb and counted the money. “Expensive, this kind of secret merde,” he said, “but that’s how it is. Slow around the corners, heh? This old lady will turn on her side if you go too fast.”

  Mathieu held out another thousand francs and said, “I will want the use of your apron, Monsieur Borbal.”

  “What? Look at it, it’s…” Then he shook his head and said, “Stupid old Borbal! Of course you must have it.” He undid the string tied twice around his middle and handed the apron to Mathieu. Who thanked him and slid into the driver’s seat—caved in by the butcher’s weight—turned on the ignition and shoved the tall gearshift into first gear. “Easy on the clutch!” Borbal shouted as Mathieu drove off.

  —

  When, a half hour later, Mathieu reached the de Boisellier house, he wondered if he should turn around and drive off: a BMW motorcycle was propped on its kickstand by the front entry. But he had a lot to do before nightfall, so parked the van and knocked on the door. Émile answered the knock right away, eyes wide open, face taut with anxiety. “Oh, it’s Monsieur Richard, dear.” He came down hard on the fake name, warning his wife, his voice noticeably higher than usual.

  Claudette, now wearing a white sundress, in a cotton thin enough to more than suggest what was underneath, hurried to the door. “What a nice surprise—another visitor!” Mathieu followed the couple to the parlor where a German officer rose to his feet, ready to be introduced.

  “Allow me to present Monsieur Richard,” Émile said. “This is our friend, Hauptmann Fischer, who has come to pay a visit.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Mathieu said, shaking hands with the officer—a muscular fellow with coal-black hair, very dark, colorless eyes, and a face—heavy bones, thick features—just short of brutal. His hand was bigger than Mathieu’s, his grip powerful.

  “We’re having a whiskey,” Émile said, moving to an array of bottles on a wicker drinks cart, where he poured a generous splash of scotch into a glass, added soda water from a siphon, and handed it to Mathieu. “Klaus is stationed in Le Havre,” Émile said.

  “And do you like the city?” Mathieu said.

  “Not so much. It’s a dump—docks and cranes, sailors’ bars.” His French was slow but precise, language-school French. “Tell me, Monsieur Richard, how do you come to know Émile and Claudette?”

  “Émile and I are in the same business, advertising, though I’m at a smaller agency.”

  “Work friends,” Fischer said. “It’s the same with us, me and Émile. Before the war I was an advertising manager with the Opel company and I would always see Émile and Claudette when I came to Paris.” Something about the way he pronounced her name drew Mathieu’s attention.

  “A satisfying job, I would think—Opel makes excellent cars.”

  “You have a place up here?” Fischer said.

  “Wouldn’t I like that but no, I stay at the Régence.” You must get away from here, Mathieu told himself, before Fischer sees the van. And he wondered where Chantal was hiding.

  “Do you play the tables?” Fischer said.

  Polite conversation, but Mathieu sensed he was probing for information. “Now and then, but mostly I enjoy the ocean bathing.”

  Claudette appeared from the kitchen, carrying little silver bowls of toasted almonds on a tray. When she stood in front of Mathieu to offer the tray he could smell the strong scent she’d used and he thought she had somehow—he had no idea how—changed her makeup. “Will you join us for dinner, Monsieur Richard?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t—I’m down here to see friends and I thought I’d stop by since I was in the neighborhood.”

  Émile, trying for a new topic in the conversation, said, “Klaus works with the Civil Affairs Bureau in Le Havre.”

  “Oh? What’s that like?”

  Fischer shrugged. “Frankly? It’s boring, military life isn’t much my style but when the war started I had to enlist. However, lucky for me, I wound up near the de Boiselliers.”

  The small talk continued, back and forth, this and that, until Mathieu, with his acute sense of social time, felt that the requisite forty-five minutes had passed and then, with regret, stood up to leave.

  “Very nice to meet you, Monsieur Richard,” Fischer said. “Perhaps when I get to Paris I’ll telephone and we can have lunch. What is the name of your agency?”

  Mathieu gave him the name of a Parisian agency that had closed after the Occupation.

  The van didn’t start on the first try. Mathieu closed his eyes, counted to ten, said something close to a prayer, pulled out the choke and, after a few shuddering coughs, the engine came to life. He turned the van around and drove out the country lane until he reached the main road, then, a few miles further on, pulled off the pavement and parked on the weedy shoulder, thanking heaven that he’d decided not to wear the bloodstained apron.

  —

  30 May. After midnight, Mathieu and Chantal were in the kitchen with the de Boiselliers, preparing for that night’s operation. Émile was bright and talkative. As he stood at the kitchen counter, pouring Échezeaux into a thermos, Mathieu saw that he held the lip of the bottle against the rim of the thermos because his hands were shaking. Chantal and Claudette stood at the kitchen table, making sandwiches of ham on thickly buttered baguettes. Chantal, reminiscing about the afternoon, said, “If this happens again, I’ll have to find a better place to hide. Your closet is not the place to spend three hours.”

  “Under the bed?” Claudette said. “When you fix up a house, you don’t think about places to hide.”

  “The cellar is no more than a dirt floor and stone walls,” Émile said. “Maybe the attic…”

  Mathieu was sitting across from the sandwich makers at the kitchen table, loading a spare clip for the Beretta automatic. “I’m sure the closet was bad enough, but I had to pass the time parked by a road and some farmer’s dogs came to the van to see what smelled so good—they barked and barked and scratched at the doors and they wouldn’t go away.”

  “Nothing we could have done,” Émile said. “Fischer telephoned from somewhere outside Deauville and we had to invite him over.”

  “Well, we survived it,” Mathieu said. “But I wouldn’t trust Hauptmann Fischer if I were you.”

  “He’s just lonely,” Claudette said. “In a foreign city, nobody he can talk to…”

  “How sad for him,” Chantal said.

  “The thermos is full,” Émile announced, screwing the metal top on. “We should save some for the agents, Mathieu. ‘Welcome back to France.’ ”

  “Would you like to have some coffee with you?” Claudette said. “We can put it in a wine bottle.”

  Émile laughed. “I don’t think I’ll need coffee to stay awake, not tonight.” He left the kitchen and returned a few minutes later wearing a worn and faded bleu de travail outfit, jacket and trousers. “How do I look?” he said.

  “Where did you find that?” Claudette said.

  “In the garden shed—it’s what Henri wears when he works in the garden. It’s not a proper butcher’s costume but it will have to do.”

  Mathieu looked at his watch and said, “Time to go, Émile.”

  The mood in the kitchen changed. As Émile and Claudette embraced, she whispered something in his ear. For Mathieu and Chantal, a Parisian-style farewell kiss. “You be careful,” Chantal said, her eyes shining. “Did you hear me?”

  He took her hand as he said, “Yes, we will be careful, Chantal, as much as we can.”

  —

  By the time they passed the casino at Ouistreham, the weather had changed: a drizzling rain, an overcast sky, with no sign of the waning moon. The operation’s planners would have been pleased—for them, the darker the better. The sentry hut that Mathieu had seen stood high on a dune, at road level, and the sentry, when he saw approaching lights, walked out onto the road, rifle slung over his shoulder, and held up a hand. Foreseeing this eventuality, Mathieu had consulted a German phrase book and cobbled togeth
er a sentence, which he had memorized: “We are going to Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer”—a fishing village west of Ouistreham—“to pick up a horse that died.” The sentry managed to untangle Mathieu’s version of his language, saw the name on the van and the bloody apron, then gestured to Mathieu to drive on.

  The headlights cut two furrows in the darkness. Mathieu leaned close to the windshield and squinted down the road—the windshield wipers were almost useless, leaving wide streaks as they swept across the glass. And, after the road passed the casino, it narrowed to little more than the width of one car, its surface—ancient, cracked, macadam paving—bearing deep potholes. Every time they hit one, Mathieu feared for the tires. To his right, the sea, he could hear the pounding of the waves, the windows left open to the rain because of the smell in the interior of the van.

  Émile lit a cigarette for himself and one for Mathieu. “I am sorry about Fischer showing up, I hope he doesn’t cause you trouble.”

  “Likely he won’t, but, I should tell you, this is no time to be friends with a Boche.”

  “He’s more Claudette’s friend than mine.” Émile let that hang for a moment, then said, “And nobody tells Claudette what to do. She’s from a wealthy family, her grandfather owns an olive-oil mill down south, at Nyons.”

  “Do they make your life comfortable?”

  “Oh yes. They love their little girl and she must have everything she wants.”

  “And has she other…friends?”

  “Yes, as do I. The first few years we were married, everything was as it should be, then…how to put it, we got bored.”

  Going around a curve, the van slid on the wet surface, the right rear tire spun in the sand by the road and, with power only in the left rear tire, the van was turned sideways by the time Mathieu got it stopped. He swore, then climbed out onto the road. As he knelt by the tires, Émile joined him. “We can back up,” Mathieu said, “but the rear wheels are going to wind up in the sand.”

  “Merde,” Émile said, cupping his hand over his cigarette to keep it dry.

  They got into the van, Mathieu started the engine, then shifted into reverse, backing up until the front tires cleared the sand. Then he turned the steering wheel hard left, found the friction point on the clutch, and gave the engine the barest taste of fuel, but the rear wheels spun, and spun faster as an angry Mathieu stamped on the gas pedal. “Fuck this thing,” he said. “You drive, I’ll push.” He circled the van, pressed his hands on the rear doors and shouted, “Now!” Émile tried the inch-at-a-time technique, Mathieu strained, using all the strength he had until, finally, the tires found traction and the van was again on the road.

  When Mathieu got his breath back he said, “You did that well, you can drive.”

  “I used to like to drive, when I had a car—a little MG, a two-seater convertible.”

  “What became of it?”

  “When the Germans were approaching Paris we ran with everybody else, but we only got as far as Fontainebleau. We gave up and left the car in a garage, then we walked toward Paris, and finally got a lift in the back of a truck.”

  “You think it’s still there?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. We’ll find out when the Germans go home.”

  They passed through the village of Saint-Aubin, not a light on, and the road got worse as they drove west. “Not much up here,” Émile said. “And nobody fixes the roads.”

  “That’s the point,” Mathieu said. “The Normandy coast has some good-sized cities: Dieppe, Le Havre, Caen. The people in London who planned this had to find the most deserted beach they could, so that’s where the reception will take place—just past a cluster of fishermen’s houses outside Arromanches, it doesn’t really have a name.”

  Mathieu looked at his watch and said, “Not long now, another half hour.”

  “We’ll do better on the return trip—this thing is like all the vans, too light in the back. Once we get the duffel bags and the agents, we’ll have some weight.”

  “You’ve driven a van before?”

  “Oh yes, about ten minutes ago.”

  —

  Arromanches was less of a village than Saint-Aubin and just as dark. Mathieu drove another mile, stopped when he saw a few weathered cottages gathered at the foot of a sagging dock, then turned onto a muddy track that led to the cottages. As the van crept slowly through the mud, a dog let the village know that strangers were about and was soon joined by others. Mathieu found a path that crossed in front of the cottages and stopped at the last one. “Would it be better to park on the beach by the reception site?” Émile said.

  “Safer over here,” Mathieu said. “There’s a German patrol boat that cruises up and down the shore, they would see the van and they might radio somebody.”

  From the cottage, an old man wearing a sou’wester raincoat over his nightshirt walked toward them, a shotgun held in one hand, a retriever dog by his side. “What do you want here?” he said.

  “We’re headed for Bayeux,” Mathieu said, naming the small city below Arromanches. “We can’t drive on this damned road anymore and we decided we’d stop for the night and sleep in the van.”

  The old man thought it over. “I guess you’re welcome,” he said.

  “Sorry to disturb you, monsieur, but the road…”

  “Yes, yes, I know, the fat-asses in the province office won’t spend the money to fix it. Well, good night to you.”

  As he turned and walked back to his cottage, Émile had a big grin on his face. “What a mustache! He looked like a walrus.”

  “A lifetime of fishing will do that,” Mathieu said. “Now, let’s go for a walk, Émile, the black rocks should be another mile from here.” He took off his butcher’s apron and left it on the driver’s seat.

  They set out walking west, away from the fishing village. The drizzle had turned to a steady rain and Mathieu in his thin, cotton jacket and Émile in his work clothes were soon soaked. In the darkness, they could see white combers breaking on the sand. They were silent for a time, then Mathieu said, “What did you say Fischer did in Le Havre?”

  “He told us he was with the Civil Affairs Bureau.”

  “And that is…?”

  Émile shrugged. “They deal with the local population, I guess.”

  “Do you think they’re some kind of secret police?”

  “Good God I hope not. But, I agree with you, there’s something about him, he is forever…curious.”

  “What does Claudette say?”

  “She doesn’t talk about him. She doesn’t talk about any of them—it’s her private life.”

  “I understand, but this goes beyond the chic arrangements of the Sixteenth. He could be using her, to work his way into the confidence of people who won’t associate with the occupation forces…people who know things the Germans would like to find out.”

  “You mean a spy, don’t you.”

  “I do. It’s time for you to have a talk with your wife, Émile. I know how it is with Parisian couples who have lovers—bad manners to speak openly, everything must be ‘understood,’ but nonetheless…”

  At the prospect of such a talk, Émile sighed.

  “It won’t be easy, Claudette won’t like it, this is not the mauvais quart d’heure”—a bad fifteen minutes when your mate finds out you’re having an affair—“this is serious. If Fischer is what I think he is, life could go very wrong for both of you—it’s worth a fight with your wife to avoid that.”

  —

  They had to work at it, walking on soft sand, breathing hard, surf pounding forty yards away. Mathieu raised his wrist to his eyes and managed to make out the time—a few minutes until two in the morning, he wanted to be at the reception site well before the two-thirty signal time. Once again, he made sure of the flashlight in the pocket of his trousers. “Are we on time?” Émile said.

  “We are, but we’re moving slower than I thought we would.”

  “Only a mile, you said, but…”

  Suddenly, a bright light app
eared ahead of them, sweeping slowly in their direction. Émile managed to say “What…” before Mathieu grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and they fell full-length together. Mathieu said, “Turn your face away from the light and do not move.”

  Émile did as Mathieu directed, trying to spit sand out of his mouth. As the light crept toward them, Émile said, “What is it?”

  “The patrol boat, on its eastern run.”

  The light came nearer, passed over them as Mathieu held his breath, then returned, lingered for a few seconds, once again headed east, and was turned off. Mathieu could just hear, almost lost in the roar of the surf, the thrumming of a powerful engine some way out to sea. “I think they saw us,” Émile said.

  “They saw something—whatever they thought it was didn’t interest them. Still, don’t move, they play tricks with their searchlight, turn it on and off.” Mathieu gave it another minute, silently counting off the seconds, then slowly turned his head: when the light went back on it was well east of them. Again they walked west, now moving to the hard sand left by the outgoing tide.

  —

  At two-fifteen in the morning, they reached the rock formation. What they had first seen as a ghostly bulk rising in the darkness was, up close, some thirty feet high: smooth, black basalt shining with rain. White foam floated past the base as the tidal ebb ran back to the sea and, in the distance, whitecaps curled over the crests of the heavy swells.

  Seeking a vantage point, Mathieu thought that the beachside wall of the formation could be climbed, got his fingers in a crevice above his head and tried to haul himself up, but the soles of his shoes skidded on the slick surface. Sloshing through the water by the wall that met the tide, he tried again, found a narrow shelf that rose fifteen feet above the sand and slithered up on his belly. A moment later, Émile joined him, finding space to flatten out at Mathieu’s feet. Mathieu retrieved the flashlight—rubber coated as the planners had specified—and aimed it out to sea. Two-thirty passed, then two-forty. And, at three in the morning, only darkness.

  “They’re late,” Mathieu said, his voice rising above the crash of the waves.