Paris: The Novel (138 page)

Not only that, his office was spectacular. Not his own, personal office exactly, since that was quite a small room. But the building was spacious and situated on one of the noblest avenues in the world.

After the Great War, the wide, stately avenue that ran down from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne had been renamed after one of the war’s great French generals: avenue Foch. And the Gestapo had chosen well when they took over three houses at the avenue’s lower end. “My office,” he had written to his parents with satisfaction, “is on the Avenue Foch, which is a very good address.”

He was not entirely surprised when Luc appeared to see him. When he had first encountered him, it had seemed to Schmid that, by his demeanor, the fellow might be a potential informer, and he had been thinking of going by the bar again someday.

He was pleased that Luc didn’t waste any time.

“I could not speak in public, Lieutenant Schmid,” Luc said politely, “but I know many corners of Paris. If I can ever be of service to you …”

“Do you expect to be paid?” Schmid asked.

“If my services are useful. One has to live.”

Schmid had no intention of paying without results. It was a good sign that the man wasn’t asking for that.

“I can pay a little.” Schmid looked at Luc thoughtfully. “If you hear of any illegal activity, any terrorist plans …”

“I avoid that world myself,” Luc said carefully. “But I sometimes hear things.” He paused. “Is there anything else you need?”

“The Wehrmacht has already confiscated some art, as you will be aware, I am sure. But there is so much art in Paris, often in criminal hands. Paintings especially. I take a personal interest in such matters.”

“I understand. The owners have to be arrested. But then the work may be confiscated.” Luc nodded. “A valuable business.”

“I have said you will be paid.”

Luc inclined his head politely.

“I shall make inquiries,” he said. “They may take time.”

“Come to see me at the start of every month,” Schmid ordered. “Meanwhile, I know where to find you.”

Time would tell whether this smooth Frenchman of the streets would produce anything of value.

As Luc went about his business in the months that followed, one thing seemed very clear: his self-interest lay with the Germans.

True, only days after he had first met Schmid, news came that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and America had entered the conflict. People were saying that the tide of war would change. It might be so. It might not. But any such change was far over the horizon.

By June 1942, the British were starting to bomb German cities. But that wasn’t stopping the Germans from launching a new offensive in Russia that was sweeping toward the mighty River Volga.

And in France, in Paris especially, the German grip was total.

All the same, Luc didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the Resistance. Successful or not, the Dalou boys and their friends could be dangerous. He’d be better keeping in with them. Besides, the more he knew about their activities, the more opportunities there might be, if he was careful, to sell information to Schmid.

More than once he’d said to Thomas, “I was wrong not to have come out with you when you did the job on the Eiffel Tower. Tell the Dalou boys I’d be glad to come another time.”

It was a dangerous line to walk. But he thought he could manage it.

He hadn’t yet been able to find an art collector for the German. He’d thought of Marc, naturally. But in the first place, Marc was a longtime customer—and Luc always looked after his customers. Besides, Marc was
in high favor with the Germans, and he doubted very much that Marc was involved in any way with any Resistance groups.

But he’d been able to make himself useful to the Gestapo nonetheless. When Schmid had asked him to watch a French engineer who he thought might be running several wireless operators, he had done so, and the engineer had been arrested. Luc had been paid something after that. Once, when he overheard the Dalou boys planning a raid to steal explosives from a store down in Boulogne-Billancourt, he’d waited to make sure that Thomas was not involved, and then gave Schmid the tip-off. The next time he saw Schmid, the Gestapo man remarked: “We ignored that tip you gave us about the explosives.”

“And?”

“They stole them. Can you tell me who they were?”

Luc threw up his hands.

“Unfortunately no,” he lied. “It was two men I overheard, but I’d never seen them before. If I see them again, I’ll tell you.”

“Well,” Schmid said, “I shall listen to you next time. By the way,” he added, “there is something else I want. If you can find me some.”

“What is that?”

“Jews. But not just any Jews. I want French Jews. Find me a French Jew whom I can arrest, my friend, and I will pay you well.”

It was a hot day that July when Luc Gascon walked along the bank of the Seine past the Eiffel Tower.

He was going there because he made a point of seeing everything that was going on in the city. And this was certainly an unusual occurrence. He was going to take a look at what was going on at the large building that lay just a short distance downstream from the Eiffel Tower.

The old indoor bicycle stadium which had proved such a useful venue for the boxing matches during the ’24 Olympics was still in use. The Vélodrome d’hiver, the winter bicycle track, remained its official name. But everyone called it the Vel d’hiv. And for the last few days, the French police had found another use for the old place. It was a holding station for a large number of undesirables they had just rounded up. Several thousand of them. Jews: foreign Jews, mostly.

When Luc got there, he could see a number of police vans outside the stadium, but there didn’t seem to be any people going in or out. All the
doors of the stadium were closed. In the strange silence, under the harsh sun, the scene reminded him of one of those surrealist paintings he had seen, as though he had walked in upon a dream. But as he got closer, something else struck him that wasn’t like a dream at all. It was the smell. Not just a smell, a stink, a terrible, sickening stench of latrines overflowing, of excrement warmed and putrefied. He pulled out a handkerchief and held it over his nose.

Luc didn’t especially like or dislike Jews. People who had strong beliefs said they were capitalist bloodsuckers, or Marxist revolutionaries. And they’d crucified Christ, of course. Personally, Luc never went to church and didn’t care whether they’d crucified Christ or not.

Most of the Jews he’d met weren’t so bad. He supposed they were mainly French Jews, and they might be rather different from all the foreign Jews who’d been flooding into Paris in the last few years.

And it was the foreign Jews that the police had been rounding up.

He stared at the building with its terrible stench. Whoever those poor devils were inside, he considered, this was a terrible way to treat them.

He’d been standing there for a little while when he noticed another figure, a small, neatly dressed man, also watching the Vel d’hiv from a street corner. The fellow looked vaguely familiar, and he searched his mind, trying to remember where he’d seen him. He saw the man turn and look at him, then walk toward him.

When Jacob had told his wife he was going to see what was going on at the Vel d’hiv, he had felt a secret sense of dread, but he had not told her that. Now, as the art dealer gazed at the big building, he understood exactly what he saw.

The logic was simple: If they would pen all these people up in conditions like this—if they would treat them worse than animals being prepared for slaughter—then there was nothing they would not do.

Perhaps, if he had not known the long history of his people, he might have remained like so many in the Jewish community who refused to believe that a French government could be so evil. Perhaps, if he had not spent all his life in the company of works of art, and known their stories and the characters, sometimes, of the very men who commissioned such beauty, he might have been less keenly aware of the terrible possibilities that lie within the human spirit.

But Jacob knew these things, and foresaw what was to come, and knew he must get out, if he could.

Ever since he had given some of his paintings to Louise, Jacob had been preparing for the worst. If he could have, he’d have gone to England. But escape across the Channel was almost impossible. A few months ago, however, a friend named Abraham had told him of a new opening.

“We’re going to organize a route across the Pyrenees into Spain,” Abraham had told him. “It’s not in place yet, and it’ll be risky, of course; but we’re getting our people together.” He’d promised to keep Jacob informed. Jacob had told his wife about the conversation, and between themselves they referred to this option as “visiting Cousin Hélène.”

Abraham lived in Montparnasse. If Abraham could just get them to a safe house of some kind out of Paris, Jacob thought, that at least would be a start. He still had money to invest in the enterprise.

And he was so shaken by what he had just seen at the Vel d’hiv, so afraid that any delay might put his little family in danger, that he resolved to go straight to Abraham and, if possible, to flee at once.

He just needed to get a message to his wife. A couple of hundred yards away he could see a telephone kiosk. He glanced toward the police vans. A couple of policemen were standing beside one of them, watching him idly. That was a nuisance. As a Jew, he wasn’t allowed to use the public telephones. It would be ridiculous to get arrested for some tiny infraction like that.

But there was another fellow standing not far from the telephone. Perhaps he could be of help. It was worth a try.

Luc gazed down at Jacob. He remembered him now. Their meeting had been very brief. He’d called to see Marc Blanchard at his apartment, a few years ago, just as Jacob was leaving. Marc had introduced him as his dealer. They’d spoken for only a few moments before Jacob had to go.

Evidently Jacob didn’t remember him, and he was just debating whether to introduce himself, or whether it might be a bore, when the dealer started speaking.