A Hero of France: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  “I need your help, Sonya, to rescue Chantal.”

  “Anything. Just name it.”

  Mathieu told her what he wanted to do and she said yes, it was possible.

  “Tonight, Sonya. I will telephone you here, can I do that?”

  “Yes, there’s a telephone at the nursing station, it goes through the switchboard and everyone uses it. You need only call the hospital number and ask to be connected to Ward Five-B, and they’ll come and get me.”

  “I won’t say much, just a few words.”

  Sonya’s smile was momentary and grim. “I know how these things work, Mathieu.”

  He leaned toward her for a Parisian kiss goodby, then left the hospital.

  —

  Taking the Pont au Change across the Seine, Mathieu was in a crowd of bicyclists but nobody gave him a second look. The night was warm and sticky and the sweat ran down his sides—only in athletic competition had he ever sweated like this, but he’d had a shock and he was scared. Also he was angry, in the way of what was called a sore loser—in his heart he had believed he could never be caught because he was somehow better than his enemies. So now you see, he mocked himself, what nonsense that was. But he recovered quickly, working his way through what had to be done. Again and again, trying to make sure he hadn’t made some fatal error. Such concentration caused him to speed up and, as he turned off the bridge, he swept past a woman cyclist, missing her by a hair. She called him a name, he shouted an apology.

  —

  16 July. Sometime after midnight, in the Rue d’Assas, a small street that bordered the Jardin du Luxembourg, the sound of an approaching ambulance, its high-low siren hoarse from overuse. When the ambulance stopped at the third apartment house on the block, some of the tenants came to their windows to see what was going on, and two men in suits stepped out of darkened doorways. The ambulance driver and his assistant moved quickly, taking a stretcher from the back and running into the building. A few people went outside, reaching the sidewalk in pajamas and bathrobes, and spoke in hushed tones. Who is it? What has happened?

  A few minutes later, the driver and his assistant reappeared, carrying a woman, wearing only a nightgown, on the stretcher. The two detectives came running and, as the ambulance crew carried the stretcher to the back doors, one of the detectives showed his badge and held up a hand. “Stop,” he said. “Who is that on the stretcher?”

  “This woman has had a heart attack,” the driver said. “She’s dying, monsieur, if we get to the hospital in time she may live.”

  The detective, now joined by the other, pointed the beam of his flashlight directly onto Chantal’s face, which was waxy and dead white. She raised a hand to keep the light from her eyes, coughed, and put her head over the side of the stretcher as if to be sick. The detective, fearing for his shoes, stepped back. Chantal waited for a few seconds, but she did not get sick, lay back on the stretcher, held her hand over her heart and said, in a whisper, “It hurts, please…” One of the tenants, a pompous, pigeon-chested little gentleman wearing a maroon bathrobe with satin lapels, stepped forward from the crowd and said to the detective, “What is the matter with you? Have you no heart?” The detective gave him a dark look but the little man was fearless and said, “Let her go, you mean sonofabitch.”

  The detective asked the driver what hospital they were going to. “The Hôtel-Dieu, Officer, but if we wait much longer, the morgue.” The detective turned to face up the street, took a police whistle from his pocket and blew two shrill notes. In response, a car engine came to life, accompanied by the dim glow of blue-painted headlights.

  —

  At the Hôtel-Dieu, the two detectives accompanied the ambulance crew in the elevator and followed the stretcher into Ward 5B. Sonya hurried over and said, “You can’t stay in here, Officers.”

  “This woman is wanted for serious crimes, nurse. Our job is to watch her.”

  “It is against the rules at every hospital in Paris, messieurs, because of contagion. And we’ve had the police here before, they have always stationed themselves just outside the entry to the ward.”

  The two detectives held a whispered conversation, then left the ward and stood at either side of the ward’s entry, facing the elevator. In the ward, Annemarie wasted no time. She said to Chantal, “How are you feeling?”

  “Not so good,” Chantal said, her voice barely audible.

  Sonya smoothed Chantal’s hair back from her forehead, knelt by the side of the bed and tied a thin rope around her waist. “Too tight?” she said.

  Chantal nodded that it was.

  “Not for long, dear. When the ambulance driver handed you the powder, did he explain what was going to happen?”

  “Yes, I had no idea the police…”

  “Well, now you are going to go for a little ride, and then you’ll be hidden. The powder is effective for a few hours—you’ll be fine in the morning.”

  When the elevator door opened, a crowd of people, nurses, doctors, patients, flowed out into the hall and this flurry drew the attention of the detectives. A woman in the bed next to Chantal’s, watching the activity outside the ward, said, “Now.” Sonya helped Chantal to stand up, then half carried her to a laundry chute set in the wall a few feet from her bed. Chantal crawled into the chute and, with Sonya hanging on to the rope for dear life, slid three stories to the basement laundry room where, amid huge steel machines that rumbled and steamed, she landed in a canvas rolling bin filled with sheets.

  The driver and his assistant were waiting for her, put her back on the stretcher and carried her out the hospital service entry to the ambulance. With siren bleating as loud as it could, they took the Pont au Change across the river and then drove north on the Boulevard Sébastopol, turned left on the Rue du Cygne, and parked in the alley by the back door of the Le Cygne nightclub. Mathieu and Max de Lyon helped Chantal onto the landing of the stairway that led to the nightclub’s spare room and, with Mathieu’s arm around her waist and de Lyon’s across her shoulders, walked her slowly up the stairs. “How are you doing?” Mathieu said.

  “I’ll be better in the morning, the nurse said. Do you have anything I can cover myself with? I’m practically naked.”

  “The bed’s already made up for you,” Mathieu said. “Clothes in the morning.”

  —

  Poor Oberst Pfeffer.

  A good boy, once upon a time, from a good family in Stuttgart, where he’d been first a leader in the Boy Scouts, then a captain in the Hitler Youth. He had been a diligent student and earned high grades, attended university in Munich, and, after graduation, had met his devoted wife at a tea dance, then fathered two adorable girls. After working for his father-in-law as an accountant, Pfeffer joined the Wehrmacht and rose in rank and position until he was a colonel, a respected staff officer. Now he served on the general staff of the occupation forces, headquartered in Paris.

  For Oberst Pfeffer, the City of Light was exceptionally illuminating. Soon after his arrival in Paris he joined fellow officers at a brothel, his first experience of such a place where, for the first time in his life, a woman took him in her mouth, a curvaceous woman wearing a harem costume. Never had he had such pleasure and he would have it again. And again. Thus the newly enlightened Pfeffer, who gambled up in Deauville and watched sexual exhibitions in Pigalle. Most evenings he wrote his wife: “Dearest, so much do I miss you, and sweet Gretel and Liesl…” then went off to the Le Cygne nightclub to drink champagne and dance in the conga line. The club’s owner, Max de Lyon, was like nobody he’d ever known and Pfeffer admired him as only a naughty boy can admire a naughty man. Pfeffer believed that Max de Lyon was his friend—after all, in private they called each other Max and Willy.

  In private, because he had to visit the office from time to time when he needed a loan. The sinful life had turned out to be sinfully expensive. Oh what a licking he’d taken at the casino in Deauville! And, yes, when he tipped the already high-priced harem girls in their gauzy costumes, they would make him
so happy that he tipped them again. In fact he now had a favorite, the luscious Mimi, sorely missed when he was with his wife on leave in Stuttgart. So he had to visit the office with some frequency, to see his generous pal, Max. But then, on the seventeenth of July, disaster.

  De Lyon had come down to the nightclub and asked Pfeffer to stop by his office when he had a moment. This had never happened before and it made Pfeffer faintly uncomfortable.

  “Willy!” de Lyon said as he let Pfeffer into the office and slapped him on the shoulder. “Come in, come in, I have a brandy waiting for you.” When Pfeffer sat across the desk from de Lyon, they toasted Paris. “No place like it,” de Lyon said. “Whatever pleasure you desire, it’s right here…”

  Pfeffer clearly liked that idea.

  “…but it has to be paid for.”

  For a moment, de Lyon looked a little glum, then he explained. Such nonsense, really, but the nightclub owners of the city had received a formal written order from the commanding general of the occupation forces: under no circumstances were they allowed to loan money to military personnel and, if there had been such loans, they must be repaid immediately. “You and I may think this is ridiculous but, as you know, Willy, an order is an order and must be obeyed. So, we’d best put things right between us.”

  De Lyon opened his desk drawer and brought out a piece of paper that Pfeffer recognized immediately; a ledger sheet. When de Lyon handed it to him, Pfeffer’s eyes went to the number at the bottom of the column—a great deal of money. “So much…,” he said.

  “Well, over time…”

  “I always meant to repay the loans, Max.”

  “Of course you did! Now, let’s put this behind us—how long will it take you to gather your funds?”

  Pfeffer swallowed hard and said, “I don’t have any funds, Max.”

  De Lyon was surprised. “You don’t? I always thought that, back in Stuttgart, you had, umm, private means.”

  Clearly miserable, Pfeffer shook his head.

  “Could you borrow the money from your family? From your wife’s family?”

  “That is impossible…how would I explain?”

  “But then, what shall I tell the general’s office when they inquire?”

  From Pfeffer, silence. At last he said, “Do you…do you have to tell them?”

  “No, maybe I don’t, but what if they find out? I will be in real trouble, Willy, they will close the nightclub.”

  Pfeffer said, “Please, my friend, think of some way out of this.”

  De Lyon tried, drummed his fingers on the desk, working on the problem. But then, suddenly, he brightened. “There is one possibility…”

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “I do need a favor, Willy. In return, I’ll keep quiet about the loans.”

  “Of course, I will do anything.”

  “An officer of your rank usually has a car and driver.”

  “I do. A grand Mercedes-Benz.”

  “I have a friend, you know, a petite amie, a girlfriend, and my life goes much better when she’s happy. At the moment, she is very worried—her grandfather in Geneva is ill and she must go to see him, before it is too late. Unfortunately, there is no train to Geneva until next week, but what if your driver were to take her there? It’s about five hours, faster with a Mercedes-Benz. If you can do me that favor I will cancel your debt, what do you say?”

  Pfeffer thought it over. “I don’t see why not. It is irregular, of course, so we will have to be quiet about it.”

  De Lyon agreed, then stood and offered Pfeffer his hand. “Let’s shake on it, an agreement between gentlemen.”

  The following morning, de Lyon visited his friend at the Swiss embassy and a three-month visa was arranged.

  —

  Two of the dancers from Le Cygne had shopped for hours and spent lavishly to produce a new version of Chantal who, sitting in the back of the Mercedes, looked just as the doxy of a nightclub owner should: clothing a little too tight and sexy. One of the dancers, Lulu, whose audition Mathieu had observed, had contributed an oversized pair of glittering, fake-diamond earrings, the perfect finishing touch. At the French border, the German guards saluted and waved them through and they paused only briefly at the Swiss control. Then the driver took Chantal to the hotel she’d named and, when the doorman let her out of the car, headed back to France.

  Chantal would be staying elsewhere, at a pension Mathieu had found for her, so, valise in hand, she crossed the street to a small park at the edge of Lake Geneva and sat on a bench facing the water. She would have to, sooner or later, find someplace to change her clothes before going to the pension but, for the present, she wanted to do nothing—a luxury not available to her for the past months. At this distance, she understood too well what had become of her city under Occupation—its spirit had been damaged but would, she thought, heal itself with time. The Germans would go away and then, whenever that might happen, she would see it once more.

  —

  Chantal’s escape raised all sorts of hell.

  The detectives who’d lost her were furious. First they drove around the neighborhood, probing alleys and doorways with their searchlight, then returned and questioned anyone who’d been in the vicinity of Ward 5B: doctors, nurses, and patients, but getting nothing for their trouble. Their style—You better tell me what you know, or else—did not work well with sick people who wanted to get well and go home and had no interest in becoming witnesses to—anything, much less a woman in a nightgown sliding down a laundry chute. In fact, they’d had a bellyful of being policed—permits, controls, curfews. Enough. The doctors had actually not seen the escape—that left Sonya and one other nurse, who was her friend. The detectives might have arrested Sonya, who they suspected of aiding the escape, but she claimed that Chantal had discovered the laundry chute and used it.

  “With a heart attack?”

  “Some people, when they are afraid, have great strength of will.”

  In the end, they let her go, aware that she was the sort of individual who could not be bullied into a confession. So, in the morning, one of them telephoned Madame Passot who, voice icy and rigid, told him that he and his partner would be transferred back to their old jobs. Now that the bird had flown, all the border controls were given Chantal’s picture and they arrested two or three women who bore some slight resemblance to her. Wasted time and effort, and one of them wrote a letter.

  Then, Broehm. Madame Passot tried to be apologetic, but was so utterly unused to apologizing that she made Broehm even madder and, if possible, even more silent. Finally, he said, “They knew.”

  “I would say they did, though how they found out is beyond me.”

  Broehm did not want to have the wound-licking conversation and, polite as always, told Madame Passot she could go back to work. When her hand was on the doorknob, an afterthought. “One more thing,” Broehm said. “Have the café owner arrested and brought here. Now.”

  Jules had been warned. Early in the morning, from a telephone in an unused office at a department store, de Lyon had called Jules, Annemarie, Ghislain, Daniel, Madame Vigne, and several others who worked in the escape line and told them it was time to be elsewhere, saying that the business was bankrupt and had to be shut down, then wished them well on their upcoming vacation. Contact with Kusar had been limited to Chantal and Mathieu, as for the rest, they were likely safe but getting out of town for a while was probably a good idea.

  After de Lyon’s call, Jules didn’t know what to do. He had never been outside of France, and finally decided to go to some other city for a time. His best waiter would run the café but he started his shift at noon, so Jules waited for him. Then, an hour later, the detectives showed up and, in front of a silent crowd of midmorning patrons, manacled Jules and led him away. This saved his life.

  In his office at the Kommandantur, Broehm interrogated as was his custom; the removal of the manacles, the coffee, the pipe, the mild tone of voice, but Jules wasn’t impressed.

&nb
sp; “Your café was used by the Resistance, monsieur, and you had to know about it. So, unless you wish to be forthcoming with me, I can promise you some time in prison.”

  “Forthcoming?”

  “Give me some names, the names of people who associated with Chantal.”

  “Who’s Chantal?”

  “Do you know Mathieu?”

  “I know a dozen Mathieus. More. This is a common name in France, where we name for saints.”

  “This Mathieu,” Broehm said, showing Jules the drawing.

  Jules squinted at the drawing, then took his spectacles from his apron pocket and tried again. “No, monsieur, you have found a Mathieu I’ve never seen. I used to have a patron who resembled the fellow in your drawing but I haven’t seen him for years. Somebody said he’d moved to Lyons, maybe you should look for him there. Or was it Bordeaux?”

  I hate these people. “How can something like this resistance contact go on in your café without your knowing about it?”

  “Monsieur, do you know what goes on in the cafés of Paris? Everything. Of course, one may have a glass of wine, a coffee, and something to eat, but there is more. Love affairs begin, love affairs end, swindlers meet their victims, victims meet their lawyers. But, mostly, the café is a place for people to go. To keep warm in winter, to write a letter, to read a newspaper, to stare out the window at the people in the street, while in summer they do their staring from tables on the terrasse. In the midst of all that, how do I know if someone is making contact with the Resistance?”

  Thus was Jules sent from the Kommandantur to Fresnes prison. He was to make the café speech again, in a longer form, in court, where he was defended by the cell’s excellent lawyer, who had gone to the Sorbonne with the prosecutor. As for Jules, the judge quite liked him and, in the end, he did a year.

  —

  An hour after Jules had left his office, Broehm telephoned the vice-minister from the Foreign Ministry in Berlin who had recruited him to run the operation against the Resistance. The vice-minister, when his secretary told him who was on the line, picked up the phone with a hearty greeting. Then Broehm delivered the bad news: his first agent penetration had gone wrong—they had discovered the identity of one of the escape-line operators and put her under surveillance but she had vanished. They had, however, learned much from this failure and would do better in the future.