The Forger (25 page)

“Nothing directly.” We were face to face now. Same height. Same color hair. “You are friends with Pankratov,” he said. “Valya told me he worked at the Louvre. He must know where some of those works have been put. All I ask of you is that you”— he paused while he chose the right word—“encourage him to remember. That’s all.” He held out his hand for me to shake.

I didn’t reach out, but he kept his own hand there, the smile plastered lopsidedly against his face. Eventually, I held out my hand.

He shook it. When I tried to let go, he kept his grip on me. “I’ve been given this task,” said Dietrich. “It is mine. Do you see?”

I stopped trying to wrench my hand away. I stood there, trading his stare for my own. I’d been waiting a long time for the war to reach me—not in rumors or things I read about or glimpsed in the distance. I had waited for some evidence that came to me alone, to tell me I was part of it now. And here it was. In this man’s eyes I saw his vision of what the world would become, and all the horror it would take to make the vision real.

Chapter Ten

W
HEN
I
GOT HOME
, I found Fleury sitting outside the door to my apartment. At his feet was a basket of food, some of which he had unpacked and was eating. He gnawed at a piece of sausage and held a bottle of champagne in his other hand. He rolled his head to face me, groggy with pleasure. “Mr. Halifax,” he drawled. “So good of you to come.”

“Explain this,” I said. I was in no mood to trade jokes with him. I was angry at Pankratov for his blindness about Valya, and angry at my own helplessness in front of Dietrich.

“We’re going to a party,” said Fleury, his words sloppy from drink, “and the people who invited us have also sent a gift.” He waved his hand crookedly over the basket, like an arthritic magician performing some kind of trick. “All that you see here.”

I thought he was joking. He must have spent a fortune on some black market deal. One glance at the contents of the basket—chocolate, gourmet cheese, two bottles of good wine, another bottle of champagne—and I knew he had done something illegal to get them. It didn’t surprise me that he’d gotten his hands on the stuff. The opportunity must have presented itself, I thought, and he was unable to resist the temptation. That was just part of Fleury’s character, and there was no point getting angry about it. But I did mind him being drunk and useless just when things were starting to get serious. I jammed the key into the lock and opened my door.

Fleury, who had been leaning against the door, fell with a tweed-muffled thump into my apartment. Champagne ran out of the bottle and over his hands, until he realized what was happening, then yelped and yanked the bottle upright, spilling even more.

I stepped over him and walked into the kitchen. I shucked off my jacket and hung it on the chair in the kitchen, the same as I always did. Then I turned on the tap and washed my face.

Fleury climbed to his feet and brought in the basket of food. He set it on the kitchen table. “You really ought to partake,” he said.

“What did you do?” I asked. I turned off the tap and dried my face with a dish towel. “What kind of deal did you work this time?”

“No deal at all,” he replied, raising his eyebrows. “It was a gift, as I said.”

“All right,” I said, to play along. “Who’s it from?”

He rummaged in the basket and pulled out a card, which he then handed to me.

The card was from Dietrich. On one side was his name and Paris address and phone number, printed in blue ink. The other side had a handwritten note: “6:00
P.M.
German Embassy. Formal. Car will collect you.” I felt myself stop breathing for a moment.

“I don’t even know who he is,” said Fleury.

“I do,” I told him. “Christ, this man moves fast. I only met the guy an hour ago. I don’t think we should be going to any German Embassy party.”

“I thought we were supposed to collaborate,” Fleury said smugly. He handed me the champagne bottle. “Look at this.”

Printed over the Veuve Clicquot label was a stamp in German and French. It read: “Reserved for the German Armed Forces. Purchase or resale forbidden.”

The anger that was dammed inside my chest now flooded through my body. I held the bottle over the sink and flipped it upside down. The champagne poured away, hissing.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” shouted Fleury.

I took the other bottle of champagne and wrenched off the little wire cage over the cork.

“Have you gone completely mad?” Fleury grabbed the bottle out of my hands and held it to his chest. “If you want to prove a point, why don’t you just start singing the
Marseillaise
in the middle of this embassy function tonight? That’ll get their attention. But not this.” He held his hand out at my sink, where the last brassy bubbles of champagne were crackling on the white ceramic. “Oh, why did you have to go and do that?”

I went downstairs and across the road to the pay phone at the Dimitri. Shutting myself in the little box with the folding glass door, I put in a call to Pankratov.

It rang for a long time. Then there was a lot of scraping on the line and distant cursing. “Hello? What? Hello?”

“It’s me,” I said. I explained about the invitation at the embassy and the basket of food.

“Oh, yes,” said Pankratov. “I got one, too, and an invitation to the party.”

“Are you sure that’s the right thing?”

“I called Tombeau as soon as the invitation arrived. I told him about it. Tombeau said he wants me to stay out of the way, but you’re to go see what they want, and then get in touch with Tombeau tomorrow to let him know what you’ve learned.”

I thought about Pankratov’s short fuse, and it seemed to me that keeping him in the background might not be such a bad idea. “Are you going to eat the food they sent?” I asked.

“Look, David,” said Pankratov, finally lowering his voice, “I heard a story once about Alexander the Great. He was traveling through the desert with thousands of his men and they had no water and were dying of thirst. Then one of Alexander’s men found one almost dried-up puddle and scooped out a helmetful of water. He brought it to Alexander. Right there, in front of his troops, Alexander lifted the helmet above his head and poured the water onto the sand. And they all loved him for it, because he wouldn’t drink while his men were thirsty. But do you think he really had no water? Of course he did. He just didn’t drink it in front of his men. So here’s what I think. If we’d been given the food in front of a lot of hungry Parisians, then it would be smart to throw it away and make sure everybody saw us doing so. But if no one’s there to see it, you haven’t got much of a gesture to make, have you?”

After I hung up the phone, I went back up to see Fleury. He was still sitting at my kitchen table. He had the empty champagne bottle laid flat on the bare wood table and was rolling it back and forth under his palm. He stared at the bottle, as if hypnotized by it.

“Pankratov says you should go ahead and stuff your face,” I told him.

Slowly, Fleury raised his head. “Did he really say that?”

I nodded.

“Well, that’s more like it.” Fleury heaved out the other bottle of champagne and quickly had it open.

“Valya’s back,” I said.

He had the bottle to his lips, but now he set it back down on the table, thumb over the mouth to stop it from overflowing. “Is she alone?” he asked.

“No,” I said. I told him about Dietrich.

Fleury looked around the room while I spoke, alternately blinking and squinting, as if he could see my words as they drifted by in the air. He picked Dietrich’s card out of the basket and stared at it. Then he flipped it onto the table. When I had finished, Fleury sat there for a moment in silence. He pushed the champagne away from him, nudging the bottle with the tips of his fingers until it was as far away as he could get it. “I seem to have lost my thirst,” he said. Then he stood up suddenly, the chair scooting back across the floor. “Do you think it matters to her that the man is a
Nazi?
Is it
possible
she doesn’t know?”

“She knows all right,” I said.

*   *   *

T
HE CAR THAT CAME
to meet us was a black Mercedes convertible, with front doors that opened from the left side and swoosh cowlings over the front wheels. It was immaculately polished. The driver wore a black uniform and a black cap. He showed no reaction to my gray flannel trousers and rumpled sports jacket or Fleury’s tired-out tuxedo with its frayed lapel.

The German Embassy was on the Rue de Lille. It was lit with floodlights and long, dark curtains were drawn across the windows. Two huge red banners hung down in front of the building. In the middle of the red was a white circle with a swastika inside. The car pulled up outside the building and the door was opened by an embassy staffer who wore a short blue tunic with brass buttons. People in tuxedos and evening gowns milled around the entrance.

We made jokes to shake off our nervousness.

“I insist that you walk three paces behind me and to the left,” Fleury told me. “I can’t have you spoiling my image.” He raised his eyebrows and peered at me, which made him look like an old barn owl.

“What image is that?” I asked him.

“The dashing image,” he explained. “The raucous, devil-may-care exuberance that surrounds me like a golden halo and ignites the passions of all who cross my path.”

The driver glanced at Fleury in the rearview mirror.

Fleury noticed this. “Oh, yes,” he told the man. “I see you feel it, too.”

The driver’s face remained without expression. He looked back at the road.

When we arrived, I gave our names to a man who stood at the door and showed us in. It was crowded and noisy. I heard laughter and the beehive hum of talk. A band played waltzes in a space between two huge staircases that curved around and joined on the second floor.

We were ushered over to a short, stocky, gray-haired man in his mid-fifties, who wore a tuxedo and a large red sash across his shoulder. He introduced himself as Otto Abetz. “I am the ambassador,” he said, and gave a short bow.

We told him our names.

Abetz immediately turned his attention to Fleury. “I understand you own a gallery. I’ve been looking for someone to serve as an appraiser for my decorations,” he said, lifting his champagne glass to indicate the walls, which were already hung with paintings.

I saw a Rembrandt whose title I knew was
Les Pèlerins d’Emmaus.
There was a self-portrait by Dürer. A portrait of a man in black clothes by Bellini, and a Caravaggio of Christ being whipped at a post. They were all in huge frames, each with elaborate plaster moldings that had been covered in gold leaf.

“Perhaps you can stop by the embassy,” said Abetz.

“I’m sure I can.” Fleury smiled confidently. He was in his element now, and he could not be outtalked or outcharmed or outstared if things got ugly.

There was nothing for me to do but stand back and watch him at work, because this was definitely not what I did best. Already I could feel sweat cooling as the drops inched down my side.

“Tomorrow would not be too soon,” Abetz told Fleury. He excused himself and walked over to another group of people, champagne glass locked in one hand and cigar smoldering in the other.

“That’s what we came to do,” said Fleury. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

“I’m surprised to hear you talking about leaving a party when you’ve only just arrived,” I said.

“In this case,” Fleury told me, “I’ll make an exception.”

On our way out, I heard someone call my name.

It was Dietrich. He was sitting in a small room off to the side of the main door. It appeared to be some kind of library. The walls were made up of bookshelves, each inch of space jammed with volumes. The room was thick with smoke and crowded. Dietrich was lounging in the middle of the room in a large red leather chair, cradling a glass of cognac.

Sitting on the arm of Dietrich’s chair was Valya. She wore a long black gown and a double band of pearls close at her throat. “Ladies and gentlemen—the comedians have arrived!” she announced, when we walked in.

“Did you get that little present I sent over?” asked Dietrich.

“Yes, I did,” I replied.

“Tip of the iceberg!” he shouted. “I can get you anything! We at the ERR—”

“I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “What’s the ERR?”

“Short for the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. If we had to say our full name all the time, we’d be too tired to do anything except introduce ourselves.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarette case. “Smoke?”

“Not for me, thanks,” I said.

“And you, perhaps, Mr. Fleury?” He held the case out to Fleury.

He already knew who Fleury was, even though they had never met before. I wondered how much else Dietrich knew.

“No, thank you,” replied Fleury stiffly. He was studying Dietrich, appraising every facet of the man. Then he turned to Valya. He gave her a small, sad wave, like a tired man polishing a window. “I’ve missed seeing you around,” he said.

Valya smiled at him, but it was a nameless kind of smile with no way to read what lay behind it. She seemed too caught up in being where she was, in the pleasure of it and the distance it put between herself and the shivering, naked woman I had seen when I first arrived in Paris.

Dietrich snapped the case closed and slid it back into his pocket.

Nobody else in the room seemed to notice us. They talked amongst themselves and filled their glasses from bottles ranged along the bookshelves.

“So, Mr. Fleury, what do you think of our ambassador?” asked Dietrich.

“He serves very good champagne,” replied Fleury.

“He wants you to find him some paintings, doesn’t he?”

“He didn’t say that, exactly,” said Fleury.

“Oh, but that’s what he wants. Trust me. If he hasn’t asked you today, he will ask you tomorrow. Am I right? Did he schedule you in for tomorrow?”

“He did,” answered Fleury.

Dietrich stamped one foot and laughed. “I knew it!”

“We ought to be going,” I said.

Dietrich slid his foot forward until the toe of his boot touched my shoe. “Just remember,” he said. “I got to you first.”