The Paris Architect: A Novel (17 page)

Patiently, Alain kept working the blade back and forth until he heard a click. The drawer slid open, and he rifled through the papers until he found a folded one. Before he pulled it out, he made sure he remembered exactly where he’d found it. It was pitch black in the office, so Alain took the lamp off the desk, set it on the floor, and turned it on. Under the light, he could see the sketch was the one he’d seen that morning—a metal frame one meter square enclosing some bricks. He turned the paper over and found another view of the bricks with what seemed like a fireplace andiron connected to it. Alain kept staring at the drawing, but it made no sense to him at all. Lucien had never mentioned that he was doing any residential work, and this was just an odd detail of something, not a project.

There were also a few notes in pencil on the sketches, giving some dimensions and sizes of the metal frame. One note called out that the new mortar should match the existing mortar. Alain sat on the bare wood floor and rubbed his eyes. He was getting tired, and not having solved the puzzle, he decided to leave. As he was returning the sketch to its proper place, he heard the lift coming up. He quickly slid the drawer shut and replaced the lamp. He stood by the door to the office and listened. When the lift stopped at the office floor, he immediately knew who it was and retreated to the rear of the office into the storage closet. As he shut the door, he heard the key turn in the lock and the click of a light switch.

Through a crack in the door, he saw Lucien walk briskly to the desk and unlock the drawer. With a solemn expression, he carefully pulled out the sketch and unfolded it. He examined it carefully as if this was the first time he’d ever seen it. Then he stared into space for almost an entire minute before he folded it up and stuck it in his inside jacket pocket. He sat in his chair and dialed the phone.

“I know it’s late, but I needed to speak to you,” said Lucien. “It’s important that we hold off on the fireplace…No, nothing has happened; I just think we should wait…I need a little more time…I know how many people are involved in this…I’m one of those people involved in this…Oh, very well, you can have the drawing tomorrow…No, I promise it will be delivered to the usual place…You have my word, Monsieur Manet…I tell you nothing is wrong…I’m just a bit jumpy…
No
, I don’t know why,” Lucien said and hung up the phone.

Lucien sat down at his desk and began to draw on another sheet of white paper. After twenty minutes, he stood up and lit a match. Holding the first drawing in his right hand, he set it afire and watched it burn into a black crisp, disintegrating into ashes, which floated to the floor. He took the new drawing, folded it, and placed it in his side jacket pocket. After straightening up his desk, he walked to the door and left.

As Alain watched all of this, a great sense of excitement was building up inside of him. He loved reading mysteries and watching them at the cinema. Now here was a real-life mystery to solve. He still couldn’t figure out what the detail meant, but in time he was certain he would. Manet was mixed up in this, and that made the whole mystery even more fascinating. After walking to the door to listen if the lift had made it down to the first floor, Alain sat down for a while to ponder the problem. It had to be something quite dangerous to call for all this intrigue. Why all this fuss about a fireplace?

26

“I’m going to take off the blindfold. Ready?”

Adele loved this game. It was exciting and decidedly erotic. When she and Schlegal had finished their lunch at the little inn in Savran, he’d blindfolded her after they got back into his car and had told her he had a wonderful surprise to show her. The sensation of being blindfolded while riding in the car was wonderful. Her senses of hearing and smell were intensified. Adele could feel every vibration of the road and smell the cut rye in the fields they passed. Soon, the car came to a stop and her Gestapo lover guided her gently out and onto a stone walk.

“I’m going crazy with curiosity, you evil man.”

“Just a few more steps,” Schlegal said before yanking off the white handkerchief.

“My God, this is incredible!” Adele said.

“It’s all yours, my love. All thirty rooms. Until the Reich decides how to dispose of it.”

In front of Adele stood a seventeenth-century hunting lodge with corner towers capped by witch’s-hat roofs. Surrounding the building was a dense forest of huge ancient trees, almost blocking out the sky.

“It’s as wonderful as Château de Chambord. I was there for dinner once, did I ever tell you that?”

“Yes, a few hundred times, my sweet,” said Schlegal. “Now you have your own château to do with whatever you like.”

“I can’t wait to show Bette, she’ll be
so
jealous,” she giggled. Her high heels clattered on the stone path as she ran up to the giant front doors and flung them open. When Schlegal walked in, she was racing uncontrollably from room to room on the first floor.

“It’s completely furnished,” she shouted.

“Down to the last pot in the kitchen, which you’ll see is as big as a ballroom.”

“I’ll be able to entertain two hundred, at least.”

“At least,” said Schlegal.

Adele could see that her lover was quite pleased with himself, knowing this little present would win her heart.

“Where on earth did you get this place?”

“It belonged to a French nobleman. He was hiding Jews here, but they escaped from us.”

“That must have made you quite annoyed, my love,” said Adele tauntingly.

“It most certainly did, so the Reich appropriated his home.”

“And what happened to the nobleman?”

“He’s in Switzerland, so he’ll never set foot in his ancestral home again.”

“What an idiot, to give all this up for a bunch of Jews,” said Adele.

“You’d be surprised, my love, at how many Frenchmen have risked their lives for them. I’m talking about men whose families go back hundreds of years.”

Adele was uninterested in this revelation and turned her attention to the grand staircase.

“Let’s see the rest of the place. I’ll race you upstairs,” said Adele, kicking off her shoes.

Schlegal followed her up the grand carved-wood staircase. She ran ahead, going from room to room, exclaiming with delight at every treasure she found.

Adele reappeared at the end of the corridor, leaning seductively against the jamb of a doorway.

“I believe I’ve discovered the master bedroom, Herr Colonel,” she said, while she slowly unbuttoned her white silk blouse, revealing the black brassiere Schlegal so admired.

“Mm, allow me to verify this discovery,” he replied.

Schlegal rubbed his body against Adele’s as he passed through the doorway. He threw his cap on the bed and took off his black tunic. When he turned around, he was extremely pleased to find Adele completely naked. She was quite proud that he’d once told her that no woman he’d ever known could undress so fast. He took off his uniform and gave her a long, slow kiss. Adele put her arms around Schlegal’s neck, hoisting her legs around his waist. He held her aloft while walking around the bedroom, kissing her passionately.

When he got to a flight of carpeted stairs that led to a small study, Schlegal lowered Adele against them and entered her. She had always enjoyed unusual sites for making love—a tour boat on the Seine, the top of Notre Dame—so she was very aroused at being taken on the stairs. Schlegal was also quite aroused and furiously pounded Adele. His feet were firmly planted on the floor to give him extra leverage. But something was wrong that he couldn’t quite figure out. To Adele’s great disappointment, Schlegal stopped in mid-thrust and looked down at the stairs.

“Did you feel these stairs move beneath us?” he said. “The staircase was moving in unison with us, going up and then down ever so slightly.”

“No, my sweet; my mind was elsewhere. And I wish it were still elsewhere.”

Schlegal gave Adele a powerful thrust. “The stairs
are
moving,” he said. He pulled out of Adele, leaving her sprawled on the stairs.

“So what, for god’s sake; get back in here!” shouted Adele.

“Get off the stairs,” he barked, and Adele raised herself up and stood next to him.

Schlegal reached down, grabbed the edge of the bottom step, and pulled up on it. With great effort, he raised the entire staircase in one piece, revealing a mattress underneath it.

“What the hell is this?” cried Adele. “Why would anyone put a mattress under a stair like this?”

Schlegal moved the heavy staircase up and down.

“It’s hinged at the top, and there’s a bolt on the inside of the bottom step,” he said.

A smile came over Schlegal’s face, and he dropped the stair with a heavy thud. He began to laugh uncontrollably.

“This is most clever,” he said. “It was the hiding place for the Jews we were looking for. No wonder we couldn’t find the bastards. They were here all the time. And we thought they’d escaped out the back!”

“Then why are you so happy about all this?” asked Adele, who was beginning to shiver.

“I admire such ingenuity. I bet my men walked over them two or three times during the search.” Schlegal sat down on the stairs.

“Did the Frenchman think of this?”

“A member of the aristocracy is too stupid to come up with something like this. It had to be someone clever and smart.”

“My friend Lucien, he’s an architect. Maybe he could sniff around. He can make some inquiries. Lucien knows tons of people in the building trades.”

“Your modernist architect lover?”

“Former lover. The one who’s doing many important buildings for the Reich.”

Adele sat beside Schlegal and wrapped her arms around him and began nibbling his ear, but he pushed her away.

“The question is…is this a unique situation…or are there more of these secret hiding places? All those other apartments and buildings I’ve searched—were there Jews hiding right under my nose?”

Adele sighed. She walked over to the bed, pulled off the bedspread, and wrapped it around herself. She reached down, took a cigarette out of his tunic pocket, and lit it.

“Jews have lots of money, and they can bribe anyone. Everyone has their price, even if it means risking death, so there have to be more of these things all over Paris. You’ve made it impossible for the Jews to escape France, so they must be in hiding. I bet you they were right under your nose while you tore those places apart,” Adele said with a laugh.

Adele was now lying on the bed with the bedspread over her. She saw her last comment had hit a nerve. Schlegal was now putting on his shirt, clearly angry and embarrassed, and she watched him with great amusement. He’d been bested by Jews, a subhuman species in his eyes, and his Aryan pride was wounded. At least, they were the only ones who knew of his humiliation. He was about to button his white shirt when she threw off the covers and parted her legs.

“Herr Colonel, I believe the Reich has some unfinished business here,” Adele said in a soft little girl’s voice.

Schlegal turned around to face her and laughed. He pulled off his shirt and dove onto the bed. They made love for hours, but through it all, Adele knew the Gestapo colonel’s mind was somewhere else.

27

Lucien had always hated Lieber for criticizing his work, but now he loathed the drunken German pig as he guided him through the dark empty streets. Drinking nonstop since 9:00 p.m., Lieber was completely plastered. The café had closed before midnight because of the curfew, so now, along with Herzog and Manet, he was trying to find Lieber another place to drink. Not another soul was on the streets. All the French had to be home and German enlisted men in their barracks, so now the streets belonged to German officers, who had no curfew. There was a complete silence in Paris that lasted from midnight to 6:00 a.m., broken only by the sound of the hobnailed boots of the German five-man patrols walking the streets or a single rifle shot or the spray of machine-gun fire in the distance. A car speeding by meant the Gestapo had picked up some unfortunate soul.

Normally, Lucien avoided Lieber at all costs, but tonight he’d been lassoed into a party by Herzog, who wouldn’t take no for an answer because he too had been forced against his will to come. They’d been accompanied by three very drunk young French prostitutes, each carrying a bottle of vintage wine. The girls were from a brothel reserved for German use only, one of seventeen in Paris. The Reich worried obsessively about sex between the French and their soldiers because of VD, so it restricted sex to these whores, who were kept clean as a whistle by constant medical checkups.

Lucien thought the three tarts were part of the wave of girls from the country who came to the city to escape the poverty brought on by the loss of their husbands and lovers. Céline, Jeanne, and Suzy (if those were their real names) all had a wholesome attractiveness quite different from the cheap, painted look of the usual Parisian streetwalker. He was impressed that they had cards that listed their services and prices in both French and German; their business cards were nicer than his. Their cackling and high-pitched laughter caused some residents on the street to switch on their lights and peer out from behind their curtains. Normally, the Germans were highly motorized, but tonight, for some reason, they were without a car, so the whole parade turned down rue de Rivoli. It was an unusually damp and cold night for September, and a light drizzle began.

“Damn it, Bernard, we have to get inside. The girls are freezing their tits off. And we can’t have that. Find me a place, now,” Lieber ordered. The girls shrieked in agreement, and one kissed Lieber’s cheek.

Lucien could see that Herzog, who clearly wanted to be home in bed, was desperate. “What street is this, Lucien?” he asked testily.

“Rue de Rivoli,” snapped Lucien, who, with Manet, was holding up Lieber’s drunken body.

“Manet, don’t you have an apartment on the rue du Renard?” asked Herzog. “That’s the next left, isn’t it?”

Manet suddenly dropped Lieber’s arm, and the German slumped to the pavement, Lucien barely holding him up. Manet looked up and down the street, thunderstruck, as if just realizing where he was. The entire party fell silent, waiting for his response.