The Pursuit of Pearls (20 page)

“You were saying…what you're really doing in Paris?”

“I'm advising on a collection.”

That was no surprise. All Germans were collectors now. From Himmler's grisly skulls to the cigarette cards passionately collected by the children and the jars of coffee hoarded by the housewives. Their collections were like flimsy bulwarks, shored up against the fear of what was to come.

“Paintings?”

“Various things.”

His eyes flickered with amusement at the cautious tango of their conversation. The wine was dancing in her veins, and it occurred to Clara that perhaps she had misjudged Conrad Adler. Perhaps he was nothing more than he said—an art lover who found himself co-opted into the Foreign Ministry, a man bored with the daily detail of politics.

He called for the bill and stood while the waiter helped her on with her coat.

But as they walked outside, he gripped her arm. “Walk with me awhile. It's a full moon, and they say that's how Paris is meant to be seen.”

He slung his coat over his shoulder, and she felt the warmth of his arm through his jacket. Moonlight slid over the cobblestones and turned the Seine beside them into a flat metallic gleam.

“If war comes, that river will be a guide for bombers,” she commented.

“I wouldn't worry. Hitler will never bomb Paris.”

“You sound very sure.”

“The Führer says that Paris is his favorite city in the world, despite the fact that he's never even seen it.”

“How can he know?”

“Because he has studied every architectural monument, every building, every map and street. He spends his evenings poring over pictures and street plans. You have no idea of Hitler's attention to detail.”

Clara did. And she was beginning to understand it enough to know that when Hitler paid attention, others should watch out.

“How do you know all this?” she asked.

“I was present once when he wanted advice on a matter of architectural history.”

They walked on for a while in silence. Clara found herself relaxing, even enjoying their meandering path, and she had to force herself to return to Major Grand's request.

“Do you miss the Foreign Ministry? It must be annoying to leave at such a busy time.”

“Busy?”

“I mean with the diplomatic moves being made. Danzig and everything.” She hesitated, then added, “I've heard talk that von Ribbentrop is making moves towards Russia.”

He looked at her sharply. “And where would you hear talk like that, I wonder.”

“People at the studios were discussing it.”

“And there I was thinking that actresses spent their time talking about makeup and partying. But now I see that between scenes in
Love Strictly Forbidden
the cast is fiercely debating the intricacies of foreign diplomacy.”

Clara could not help the flush rising to her face. Without thinking, she said, “Your prejudices about people you have never met astonish me.”

He stopped and looked down at her, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I'm glad I astonish you. It wouldn't do to be dull.”

His gaze was unflinching, and she was certain she had never been so closely scrutinized by anyone. For a second, she experienced a sharp, reciprocal tug of attraction. The closeness of Adler, the clean, fresh smell of him, undercut with hot, masculine musk, and that smile, as though the two of them shared some private knowledge…He was attractive, there was no denying it, and she averted her eyes so that he would not divine it.

He leaned even closer, cupping her head as if to kiss her, but instead he bent and whispered in her ear. “There's something wild about you, Clara Vine. Something secret. Which I intend to uncover.”

She jerked away. The arrogance, the sheer presumption of that remark! Evidently Adler thought all his flaws, his vanity and sense of superiority, were in fact strengths.

“I doubt you'll get the chance.”

He laughed. “Let's wait and see.”

“You'll be waiting a long time.”

“I'm a patient man.”

They walked for a little longer, until Clara forced herself to return to the matter at hand.

“So we're wrong, are we? About Russia?”

A weariness entered his tone. “As I said, I haven't been into the Foreign Office recently. As a matter of fact, I'm glad to be out of it.”

“What did you actually do for von Ribbentrop in London?”

He shrugged. “The usual diplomatic rounds. I met people. Eased the diplomatic channels.”

“Did you like Britain?”

“Immensely. I enjoyed London society, but I admired British culture even more. The museums, the concerts, the theater. The National Gallery was two minutes from my office at Carlton House Terrace, and I used to go in my lunch hour and spend an hour looking at the paintings. It was such a pleasure. Unfortunately, art doesn't seem enough for most people. They seem to need drums, flag-waving parades. Films. Cheap sentimentality.”

She decided to ignore the slight. “And did you enjoy the work?”

He grunted. “Unfortunately, working closely with our foreign minister was not so civilized. Von Ribbentrop sees conspiracies everywhere. He's convinced Goering and Goebbels are plotting to have him assassinated, or that they're hand in glove with British intelligence. The embassy was bristling with concealed listening devices. We used to amuse ourselves by holding conversations for his benefit.
Do you think von Ribbentrop is as great as Bismarck? No, I think he's greater
. Schoolboy stuff, but a sense of humor was essential in that place.”

Clara steeled herself not to look around, to check who might be listening. She was astonished at the freedom with which he was speaking his mind in the open, yet the last thing she wanted was for Adler to stop talking.

“Von Ribbentrop has a lot to answer for,” he continued. “The man's a buffoon. He has convinced the Führer that the British are ruled by a decayed and privileged clique who will never allow their country to go to war. His wife's even worse. She may be a stickler for correct behavior, but she hated curtsying to royalty. Her influence on Hitler is strong, and believe me”—he glanced at her thoughtfully—“she utterly detests the British.”

“I heard.”

“It was being in London that did it. When the Führer came to power, he favored a partnership with the British—he saw the British empire as a template for his own plans for expansion. But they laughed at Frau von Ribbentrop, and now she has a very different agenda. In fact, if she has her way…”

He stopped to guide Clara across the road to the ancient white Pont Neuf, arching over the Seine to the Île de la Cité, with the looming medieval bulk of Notre Dame beyond. The pale stone was punctuated by iron lamps that cast pools of soft light in the darkness, and Adler paused in one of the alcoves, leaning on the balustrade, gazing into the ink-black water below.

Clara asked, “How is it you're so familiar with Frau von Ribbentrop's thoughts?”

“She took rather a shine to me.”

“Can't think why.”

Adler acknowledged her implication with a dip of his head. “True. I was a single man, away from home, with no ties. Extremely rich and of more than adequate social rank. Annelies is infinitely more intelligent than that husband of hers, and besides, she was bitterly jealous that he was sending carnations to Wallis Simpson at the time. And, of course, we shared a passion.”

He laughed at Clara's puzzlement. “Nothing as exciting as you imagine. Annelies studied art history in Munich. She liked to swap professional expertise with me. I think she felt it might lead to something more, but I preferred to keep to the subject of painting. She owns several important pieces herself—Courbet and Manet and even a Madonna by Fra Angelico. She brought it to London with her and rigged it up to a burglar alarm. Unfortunately, the alarm kept going off, causing a complete evacuation of the embassy every time.”

Clara laughed. The earlier tensions of her chase through the streets had dissipated. There were far worse situations than to be here in Paris, enclosed in an ivory circle of lamplight, with only the comforting rumble of the city around them, the occasional hoot of traffic, and the laughing murmur of a cluster of men walking beneath them on the banks of the Seine.

“Did you work in the art world professionally? Before going into politics?”

“For years. I lectured first, then did a little dealing, and advised on authenticity. Funnily enough, Art was not my first love. Philosophy was. When I was a student, I thought I might make a future in that, but eventually I chose Art. Philosophy is a stricter mistress. It requires a mind that is as hard as diamond. That's what I admire the Jews for. They cherish the intellect. You should appreciate that, Clara,” he added casually, “being Jewish yourself.”

His words went through her like a knife. The relaxation she had felt until that moment, the pleasure in his company, evaporated instantly. The warmth of his manner, the conversation about Art, had encouraged her foolishly to relax and recklessly to let down her guard, yet here was a senior Nazi officer casually dismissing her carefully constructed persona. At once the sounds of the city, the murmur of traffic, fell away, and it was just herself and Adler, looking at each other eye to eye.

“That's not true,” she protested, quietly.

“Isn't it? Let's see your documents then.”

Everyone in Germany was used to showing their ID. In Berlin it happened all the time, and both of Clara's documents had always passed scrutiny. She kept them together, in a small calfskin wallet in her bag. The Deutsches Reich Kennkarte, the compulsory gray identity card complete with photograph and fingerprints, and the red cardboard document with an eagle on the cover containing an Aryan certificate, the
Ariernachweis,
confirming that Fräulein Clara Vine was a member of the German race, possessing birth and baptismal records of her parents and grandparents and a genealogy table going back to 1850. It was the document required for all members of the Reich Chamber of Culture, and it had been procured for her by Leo Quinn, the Jewish ancestry of her mother and grandmother expertly replaced with Christian blood. For a second she contemplated telling Adler that she had come out without her papers, but no German would risk being without them, even in a foreign country. Even here in Paris.

She handed them to him.

Adler took a brief look. “Impressive.”

“What do you mean?” Another chill went through her.

“Obvious forgeries.”

“Don't joke.”

“You forget, my dear, in my business I have plenty of experience in spotting fakes. And these are fakes. They're quite good ones, I admit, but they have certain elements that betray them instantly to the trained eye. The color of the eagle—that imperial purple—is not quite precise, for example.”

Clara was rooted to the spot, despite her urge to flee. What was she to make of his nonchalant dismissal of the documents that had served her so well for the past six years?

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Don't you?” he asked, sounding bored and lighting a cigarette, her papers in one hand. “I'm surprised. You seem such an intelligent woman.”

Clara repressed a shudder. What else did Adler know about her, that she so confidently believed was concealed?

He scrutinized the cards more closely, squinting in the lamplight. “A specialist, you see, is trained to tell the genuine article through the minutest scrape in the paint or the pattern of brushstrokes. I can see a forgery in a patch the size of a thumbnail. My eye is honed to authenticity in the same way a piano tuner's ear can tell if an instrument is tuned. I know all about provenance. So I know yours.”

Clara did not trust herself to speak. This man held her entire future, her work as a member of the Reich Chamber of Culture, her credibility with the senior Nazis, her freedom itself, in the palm of his hand.

“You should get a new one made. Tell your man to pay more attention to color. And the bleeding of the ink at the edge of the stamp. Just there. That kind of definition can be hard to replicate with cork stamps.”

“Please give them back to me.”

He was enjoying himself.

“In a minute. You see, it's interesting to mark how they've made the forgery. This stamp here…”

“Give them to me. Now!”

Clara reached to snatch the documents from his hand, but as she did, he lifted them out of her reach and she stumbled and collided with his chest. He put out an arm instinctively to steady her, clasping her to him, and in the process lost hold of the cards. They spiraled into the air, then pirouetted lazily down behind them into the river twenty meters below. Instantly, they both reached over the balustrade and stared as Clara's pale cards flashed a second on the surface before being engulfed in the vast, swirling water of the Seine.

“Forgive me…”

At that moment the rumble of a well-tuned engine caused them to turn. A black Mercedes, shiny as a jackboot, pulled up on the bridge alongside them. The man who climbed out of the back was in his forties, balding and thuggish, dressed in a clearly expensive evening suit, and he leaned against the car regarding them, lazily snapping a pair of calfskin gloves. In an instant Adler's deportment changed.

“Herr Adler. I've been looking for you. But as so often, you've found yourself a more appealing diversion.”

Adler stiffened. His eyes became flinty and unreadable. His face was formal again, sculpted into official disinterest. He was transformed into the sober Obersturmbannführer. “I'm afraid I must leave you, Fraülein Vine.”

Clara was still too dumbstruck by the loss of her precious documents to make a proper reply. She gazed at him in desperation.

“Please don't let me hurry you, Herr Adler.” The man had a lascivious gleam in his eye. “I wouldn't want to interfere with private…
affairs
. But if you have finished with this young lady, I would remind you that we do have some pressing matters.”