Mission to Paris (17 page)

‘The Vatican doesn’t exactly disagree,’ said the man who saw to operations in the Rhône Valley, ‘but the administration is slow as a snail, very tentative, and very cautious.’

‘Are our Italian friends willing to help?’ said the Deputy Director.

‘To date they are useless. They say they will intervene, but then they do nothing.’

‘Can we prod him?’

‘No, no, let’s not. He has a true sense of mission, that will only inspire him.’

The Deputy Director thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. Priests!’

Here and there at the table, an appreciative laugh.

‘Perhaps I can do something,’ said the Deputy Director. ‘I will have a word with our Vatican diplomats, they might just have to
insist
– it’s the lepers on Martinique who require such a passionate fellow.’

The man in charge of Lyons made a note – though a secretary seated on one of the chairs kept a record of the meeting in shorthand – and work on the list continued. The journalist Sablier had died in a motoring accident – ‘Ours?’ ‘No, the hand of fate, a mountain road’ – and the owner of a small chain of radio stations, Schimmel, a Jew, had put his business up for sale and was going to emigrate to Canada.

‘The emigration papers are truly filed?’

‘Yes, we checked.’

‘That brings us to’ – he ran his finger down the list – ‘Monsieur Sicot.’ Sicot was the publisher and editor of a small socialist newspaper in the city of Bordeaux.

‘He rants and raves,’ said the man in charge of Sicot. ‘“The Maginot Line will not save us!” On and on he goes, calls for fleets of fighter planes. He was highly decorated in the Great War and is a fanatic patriot.’

‘Who won’t listen to reason.’

‘Not Sicot. Not ever.’

‘Then he’ll have to have business problems. Perhaps the advertisers, perhaps the unions, perhaps the bank that holds his notes. Can this be done?’

‘I’ll go to work immediately, it will take some research.’

‘Use the SD’ – the intelligence service of the SS – ‘and see what you can do. I’ll expect a report at our meeting the first week of December. Now then’ – he paused, again consulted the list – ‘to Fredric Stahl, the movie actor.’

‘No good news, I’m afraid,’ said the man in charge of Stahl. Called Hoff, he was a plain, middle-aged man who’d served twenty years in the Foreign Ministry with very little distinction – but no serious missteps – then made his way to a position in the bureau through seniority, longtime alliances, and a rather late but practical membership in the Nazi party. ‘He moved a little,’ Hoff said, ‘attended a luncheon, but there he stopped.’

‘He’s an
actor
, no? What’s the problem? Nervous about his career? Studio control?’

‘Some of that, but we suspect he’s concerned about his, um, we can call it integrity – being faithful to his political beliefs.’

‘His what?’

‘Integrity.’

The Deputy Director was a very smooth man, but he had a temper, and it was getting towards the time when he wanted a drink and dinner. ‘And so?’ he said, voice rising. ‘And so we kiss him goodbye?’

‘We may have to.’

‘Somebody give me the goddamn file.’

Hoff shuffled through the dossiers in front of him, where was it? Not this, not this …

‘
Now
, Hoff.
Now!
’

‘Yes, sir. Here it is.’

The Deputy Director opened the dossier by slamming the cover against the table, then, using his index finger, searched through the typed reports of contacts and surveillance. ‘We want him to visit the Reich, for a
day
, for a single
day
, to judge some little movie festival, is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Herr Hoff.’ By now the Deputy Director was almost shouting. ‘He
will
visit the Reich. And we
will
take his photograph for the newspapers, with fucking
Goebbels
we’ll take his photograph, and he will pick some idiot as a winner and we will take another photograph as they both hold a fucking
bouquet
! Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, sir. Very clear.’

The Deputy Director read further, slapping each page down as he turned it over. ‘So, he was visited in his hotel room. What a blow! Is anything else planned?’

‘Not for the moment. I thought it best to seek your counsel.’ Hoff had moved his hands off the table and hidden them in his lap because they were shaking.

‘Seek my counsel? Oh, very flattering, Hoff, you’re seeking my counsel. Well, here’s my
counsel:
you think up something to make this man behave, and you send me a memorandum before you do it. Is that understood, Herr
Hoff
?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And, if you cannot persuade him to put aside this saintly
integrity
– Christ! What a word! – and do what we want, you can have somebody get in touch with, ah, Heinrich, and instead of visiting the Reich he can visit the devil. Oh, excuse me, I forgot he’s a saint, so he can visit the angels.’

From down the table, a small, hesitant voice: ‘It’s not Heinrich, sir, the man who does these things for us is called Herbert.’

3 November. At 7.15, Stahl decided to stop worrying and go out for dinner. Too often that day he’d caught himself brooding about the man who’d entered his room, and all the rest of it, which he suspected was exactly what they wanted him to do. Therefore, he wouldn’t. He could have gone down to the hotel restaurant, but the food there was rich and elaborate, living up to its price, and really much fancier than he liked. So he put on a pair of corduroys and a comfortable jacket, with a wool scarf and a pair of leather gloves to keep him warm, walked over to the Champs-Elysées, then down to a big Alsatian brasserie that served the commercial residents of the quarter – butchers from the wholesale meat markets on the rue Marbeuf, office workers, and shop clerks. It was a big, rough, loud sort of place, where you could eat cheaply by ordering the plat du jour, or in grander fashion, oysters, lobster, champagne, if you were in the mood and had the money. For Stahl, always steak au poivre, a tough, delicious steak, barely cooked, and more frites – crisp, golden, and brown at the edges – than you thought you could eat, though you were usually wrong about that.

He was just seated at a table when Kiki de Saint-Ange walked through the door, peered about, discovered Stahl, and came hurrying towards him. She was very good to look at that evening, a black afternoon dress beneath her raincoat – a vivid memory from their night at the movies – and a violet and grey scarf arranged in the complicated style Parisian women were taught at birth, arty gold earrings, and her little knitted cap. Stahl was delighted to see her, a friend welcome when one thinks one will be dining alone, but for the question
what’s she doing here?
The more contact he had with his German enemies, the more sensitive he became to coincidence.

‘I
hoped
it was you,’ she said, slightly breathless. ‘I saw you on the boulevard, from a distance, and I thought, ‘Is that Fredric?’ My eyesight is terrible – it wouldn’t have been the first time I chased down a stranger. May I join you? Maybe you’re expecting somebody.’

‘Please,’ said Stahl, standing up and waiting until she was seated. ‘I’m not expecting anybody. What brings you to the neighbourhood?’

‘Ai!
Horreur!
I had to see my attorney, he has his office up the Champs-Elysées, and I’d finally got done with him and was walking down the hill, upset, close to tears, and hello, there you were! At least I suspected it was you and, honestly, I really hoped it was.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Darling, may I have a cognac? A double?’

‘Ah, Fredric,
manners
! Yes, of course, forgive me.’ Stahl signalled to the waiter, who made eye contact, meaning
yes, I see you, be patient
.

‘What’s going on,’ said Kiki, ‘is that a year ago, my lovely old aunt, whom I adored, got sick and died. I used to go and stay with her when things were too awful at home, she had the sweetest little house, down in the Sologne, do you know it? It’s where the Parisian aristocrats hunt wild boar, and anything else they can shoot at. There are hunting lodges down there but she just had a country cottage, in a kind of hidden valley, looking out at the river Sauldre. In her will, she left the house for my sister and me to share, which was not a problem at all, but then there was every sort of legal complication that comes with inheritance. Fredric, if you hate somebody and want to ruin their life, die and leave them a house in France. Anyhow, I just spent two hours with the lawyer and, when I said close to tears, I meant tears of frustration. I got so angry I finally said, “Let’s give the damn thing to a charity,” to which the lawyer replied, “Impossible, mademoiselle, it cannot be done until you have taken legal possession of the property.”’

The waiter rushed over, Stahl ordered two double cognacs while in his mind a cartoon version of a steak au poivre grew wings and flew away. He sensed the evening would end with the two of them in bed together, and disliked making love on a full stomach –
the stag grows thin during the rutting season
and all that. And he’d always preferred sex to food. ‘You have my sympathy,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent hours in lawyers’ offices, my nose shoved in the worst side of humanity.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘Still, I expect it will all work itself out, in time.’

From Kiki, a glum smile. ‘You really are an American, my dear. Hopeful, optimistic. Some things here, believe me,
never
work out – lawsuits, property disputes, absurd legal entanglements – these things can go on for
generations
. I just want it over with.’ She looked rueful for a moment, then said, ‘You would have liked that house, we could have had a very nice weekend there.’

‘I’m sure I would have, though I’d likely leave the boars alone.’ A moment of silence, the waiter appeared with the cognacs, a napkin riding atop each glass. Stahl took a sip, pure fire all the way down, and said, ‘So what have you been doing?’ And then – strange what the mind did when you weren’t watching it – ‘Have you seen the baroness lately?’

Kiki seemed surprised. ‘You know, I actually have seen her, that German witch, I was at her house for an afternoon card party.’

‘You were?’

‘Yes, trapped, you might say. She’d invited my crowd, girls who grew up together in the Seventh Arrondissement, went to the same school, la-la-la. I couldn’t say no.’ Stahl took out his Gauloises, offered one to Kiki, and lit both. ‘That’s just the way it is here. So we gossiped and laughed and tried to play bridge; I’m not very good at it, dreadful really. Anyhow, tell me about yourself.’

What about himself could he tell her? Surely not the truth, for, Gallic to the core, she had no desire to hear about personal problems and, beyond that, in the fogbound land of intrigue, he thought he’d rather not test her loyalties. ‘Oh, life goes on,’ he said, not without charm. ‘I’m spending time out in Joinville, rehearsing. It’s work, but it’s the work I do and I like doing it. Most days.’

Kiki nodded. ‘I hope I didn’t interrupt your dinner, you
were
planning to eat, weren’t you?’

‘Actually I wasn’t. I got tired of being in my room, thought I’d come down here and have a drink. Hotels are a kind of curse of the movie business, even very nice hotels.’

‘It is a very nice hotel, isn’t it, the Claridge. Or so people say.’

‘You’ve never been there?’

‘No, my dear, I haven’t.’ As she said this, her eyes met his.

‘It’s very, oh,
luxurious
would be one way to describe it. And quiet, when the traffic dies down at night.’

‘And discreet, I’d imagine. Perfect discretion for all that money, which I imagine appeals to the guests.’

‘Yes, one feels one can do … almost anything, really.’

‘Anything at all, unknown to the prying eyes of the city,’ she said, as though quoting from a certain kind of novel. She picked a shred of tobacco off her tongue with her red fingernails, then said, ‘And do you find that – stimulating?’

‘You know I
do
, Kiki,’ he said, playing at sincerity, ‘now that you mention it. Once the door closes …’

‘One can only
imagine
,’ she said. ‘Like the little hotel we found, the night we had a drink at the Ritz.’

He smiled, acknowledging that he’d enjoyed it in the same way she had. ‘Yes, lovers on the run, fleeing to an anonymous room.’

‘But that’s not the Claridge.’

‘No, the fantasy there is quite different,’ he said.

She’d slipped her shoe off, and a soft foot now rested on top of his. ‘Oh yes? Well, I wouldn’t know,’ she said.

‘Because you haven’t been there.’

‘No, I haven’t.’ The foot made its way up his leg, then returned.

The waiter appeared at the table, two menus in hand.

‘We’re just having drinks,’ Stahl said. ‘
L’addition, s’il vous plaît
.’

At the Claridge, she would, to her ‘surprise’, be seduced; a proper, a time-honoured, hotel fantasy.
In all innocence, she accompanied him to his room, but, once there
… And she did, somehow, contrive to suggest the demure maiden. ‘It’s so terribly
warm
in here,’ she said.

‘It’s the warm dress you have on,’ he said. ‘That’s why.’

‘But if I were to take it off …’ Quite worried, Kiki.

‘Oh you needn’t be concerned,’ he said. ‘Not with
me
.’

‘Well …,’ she said, uncertain, then took her dress off and draped it neatly over the back of a chair. ‘There. That’s better.’

And then, even half-stripped, in high heels and lacy bra and panties, she played the ingenue – explored the suite, room to room, discovering the flowers in a crystal vase, stroking the sleek wood of the escritoire, thrilled to be among such elegant things. Stahl followed her eagerly – she was a pretty woman, prettily made, champagne-cup breasts, derriere the classic inverted ace of hearts, swaying as she roamed about.

Eventually she wandered back to the bedroom, took off her shoes, and stood with feet together, head bowed, arms by her sides, at his mercy. Cautiously, he embraced her, but she was rigid, anxious, moved not an inch. By happenstance the mirror on the bedroom door was directly behind her, so he took the waistband of her panties between delicate fingers and turned down the back, the result especially provocative in the mirror. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘what are you doing to me?’ He knelt before his victim and lowered her panties to her ankles, took them off, moved her legs apart, then, with his thumbs, more parting, and he touched her with his tongue. ‘Oh no,’ she said,
not that
. She kept her role in play, though it grew difficult, and in time he took her hand and led her to the bed
and there ravished her
. They both, Kiki and the virgin Kiki, did very much like being ravished,
her girlish passion at last released
. But by then she acted no longer, and let the guests in the rooms on either side of the suite know about it.