A Hero of France: A Novel Read online

  Mathieu whispered, “Keep going, Arthur.”

  From down below. “We’re railway police, I’m going to shoot you if you don’t stop.”

  They kept going.

  “Look, be sensible, we just want to question you.”

  A few more rungs, Mathieu could see the curved handles at the top.

  “Do it, Corporal.”

  The corporal tried shooting from below but the bullet pinged off a steel rung and whined away into the darkness. Mathieu felt the impact where his hand gripped a rung, instinctively pulled it off, fought for balance, then started to climb again. A second shot passed behind him.

  “The angle’s no good,” the policeman said. “We have to back up a few feet.”

  His breathing hoarse with effort, Mathieu reached the curved handles atop the ladder and, with Gillen still hanging on, dropped flat at the edge of the street. “One more, Arthur, I’ll pull from here.” For a moment Mathieu felt that his shoulder joint was going to give out, then Gillen struggled over the last rung and fell next to him.

  Down below, more shouting, more threats, as the two moved off down the street.

  —

  14 March. Taking the Métro, then walking through the darkness, Mathieu made for the neighborhood of crumbling tenements by the Les Halles market. On the Rue du Cygne, a giant doorman with gold epaulets on his uniform stood beside a discreet sign that said LE CYGNE, the swan, a nightclub named for its address. As Mathieu turned toward the entry, the doorman said, “You are early, monsieur, we don’t open until ten-thirty.”

  “I’m here to see Monsieur de Lyon.” The name was pronounced like the animal, not the city.

  The doorman put two fingers to the visor of his cap and said, “Ah then, welcome to Le Cygne.”

  Descending the stairway to the cellar, Mathieu could hear a piano—a slow version of the cancan—and a woman’s voice, rising over the music, that called out, “And one, kick…and two, kick…and three, kick…and four, oomph!”

  The piano player, a cigarette held between his lips, said, “Again, madame?”

  The woman calling out the numbers, apparently the dance director, clapped her hands twice and said, “Once more, ladies.” She had a pale, refined face, the body of a ballet mistress, and wore a kerchief over her hair. Four young women, or maybe not so young, wearing only bra and panties, kicked in time to the music, then stuck their bottoms out on the “oomph!”

  At a table on the far wall was, Mathieu supposed, the man he’d come to see, the owner of the nightclub. De Lyon stood as Mathieu reached the table and extended his hand. “I’m Max de Lyon, you must be Mathieu. Red wine? Champagne? A cognac for a cold night?”

  “A cognac, please.”

  De Lyon, perhaps fifty, had a still face and hooded eyes—narrow and low-lidded with a faint downward slant—that were at once amused and threatening. The gaze in those eyes was conventionally known as penetrating; they read deep and they knew who you were. For the rest: a receding hairline, a compact build, and a double-breasted suit over a black shirt and a pearl-gray tie. He looked like a gangster, but Mathieu knew this was a costume. A gangster de Lyon might be, but not the sort who wore such clothes. He looked the way a German officer might expect him to look: the owner of a nightclub on the dark side of Paris. The effect was completed when he spoke: low, determined tones with just a hint of a Slavic accent.

  De Lyon produced a packet of long cigarettes in brown wrapper leaf, offered one to Mathieu, then lit both with a brass lighter designed to work in the wind. “They’re made in Turkey,” he said. “And what I have to pay now, since the Occupation…” He shook his head. “It’s everything. You can’t imagine what it costs to buy an ostrich plume these days, but we must have them, for the dancing girls, just like the Folies Bergère.”

  “To please your new clientele?”

  “Yes, German officers. At first, they came here to watch the typical nightclub crowd, you know, thugs of the better class, swindlers, Parisians getting rich off the black market, their fancy girlfriends, a spy or two, some local courtesans. But now we need dancing girls who look good with their clothes off—they used to wear G-strings, but not lately. So, as you see, we’re having an audition tonight, which one do you like?”

  “They all follow the routine,” Mathieu said diplomatically. “Is one better than the others?”

  “Oh yes. It will be the one on the far left with the big behind—Germans are partial to big behinds.”

  Standing by the piano, the director said, “Alright, ladies, turn your backs to me and jump, up in the air, as high as you can. Now, one at a time, starting from the left, and…jump!” The dancers did as they were told. When de Lyon’s candidate jumped, her behind jumped with her, then bounced as it landed. The director walked over, placed a firm hand across the dancer’s lower derriere, let it rest there, then said, “Very nice. What is your name, dear?”

  “My name is Lulu, madame.”

  “A stage name?”

  “Yes, madame, my real name is Marie.”

  “Very well, Marie, let’s you and I visit the ladies’ WC and take your pants down.”

  “My, my,” de Lyon said, raising his eyebrows.

  The three remaining dancers stood together and talked, while the man at the piano began to play something classical, which Mathieu recognized, after a few bars, as Chopin.

  A waiter arrived with Mathieu’s cognac and a red wine for de Lyon, who said, “So Mathieu, my lawyer tells me you’re a man doing good work, I know you can’t say too much, but…”

  “My friends and I take downed RAF pilots out of France.”

  “That kind of thing costs a lot of money.”

  “It does. Before the war I had a job and an everyday life, but I ran out of savings long ago. Now, people like your lawyer and a few others help out, otherwise…I don’t know.”

  “Don’t go robbing banks, Mathieu, that’s the old Bolshevik style, very unhealthy.”

  “No, no, that takes professionals.” He paused, then said, “But we must do something.”

  “I agree,” de Lyon said. “But what is it that makes you say ‘must’?”

  Mathieu hesitated, then said, “When we lost the war, the heart went out of the people here. It was as though the city had died. This reached me, and soon enough I began to do things, small things, but they made me feel better. And the more I watched these arrogant bastards strutting around the city, my city, the more I did.”

  From de Lyon, a sympathetic nod. “I understand, believe me I understand. This was my refuge, this Paris. I was born in a shtetl in the Ukraine, then, when my mother died, I was sent to live on my father’s estate in Poland, among Polish nobility, the result of my father’s youthful folly with a Jew. But these people didn’t want me there so, at the age of fourteen, I ran away and came here, where I’d never been before, but I knew I was home. Now they’ve taken my refuge, so, yes, I will give you money.” He drank some of his wine, then a little more. “Call it my way of fighting back. I hate them, of course, but I must have customers or I close, and the customers these days are German officers.” He shrugged. “Everyone in this city will tell you the same story, though there are those who go much further, who collaborate. Which, someday, God willing, they will regret.”

  When Mathieu answered, he spoke slowly. “You are no collaborator, monsieur, I’m sure of that.”

  “No, I am not, but how can you be sure?”

  “It’s one of the things I do—make decisions about people, can they be trusted. I am good at it. And I’d better be, because I can be wrong only once.” He had a sip of his cognac. “Very good cognac,” he said. “I wonder if, someday, I could call on you for a favor?”

  “More than money, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  De Lyon smiled and said, “Are you recruiting me, sir?”

  “I am.”

  De Lyon thought it over, then said, “My answer is ‘maybe,’ we’ll see when the time comes. But, for now, the money. When they fin
ish up here we’ll go to my office, and I can let you have five thousand dollars.”

  “A generous gift, monsieur, American dollars get an extraordinary rate on the black market, because people in flight desperately need them. Also, at a certain level, they are the currency of choice for bribery.”

  De Lyon laughed. “How well I know,” he said. “There was a time when I was an arms dealer, on a small scale, and I bribed everything that moved.”

  The director and the dancer came out of the ladies’ WC; the dancer’s face was flushed pink. The director signaled to de Lyon, who said to Mathieu, “You see? I was right, she’ll have the job. Now we’ll go up to my office and visit the safe. I wasn’t planning to give you that much, but, once I met you…Anyhow, in the future, please call me Max.”

  —

  Back in the night, Mathieu made for the Châtelet–Les Halles station, where he would take one of the last trains—the Métro shut down at eleven as the curfew began. Eyes searching the darkness, he had to move slowly, pausing at doorways where he could hide if necessary, hurrying to cross a narrow street, and listening intently for the telltale sounds of police patrols. The Parisian police often talked to each other as they rode their bicycles, their voices loud in the strange silence of the city. This was intentional, the theory went, the flics making sure you knew they were around so they didn’t have to arrest you. As for the German patrols, the ring of their hobnailed boots on cobblestones carried a long way: useful for people like Mathieu, hated by the Parisians, captive in their blacked-out apartments.

  —

  The Parisian male of a certain class was finely made, slim and elegant, insoucient, and faintly amused. This was not Mathieu. To some, at first glance, he looked like an American. Perhaps he did, a former athlete with thick shoulders and big hands and, from an amateur boxing match when he was twenty and a student at the Sorbonne, a small, curved scar by his right eye. He leaned forward when he walked, as though in a hurry, and watched the world around him with a particular intensity. His eyes were a rich brown, his hair, always a little too long, a shade darker, his voice both strong and low pitched, and he laughed easily. He had always been strong; a leader, a protector. From the age of twelve, he was the one who had confronted the school-yard bullies when they pushed some kid too hard.

  At the end of winter, he wore what he’d worn before the war: jacket, muffler and gloves. An old jacket but expensive, in a brown-and-gray Harris Tweed, collar up, over a heavy woolen muffler looped at the throat, then a charcoal-black, home-knit sweater. This had started out to be a turtleneck but here his aunt had tired of the project and left the neck low, a soft roll that didn’t quite fold over. Which was fine with Mathieu, who didn’t like turtleneck sweaters. Or hats. Against the cold, he wore black leather gloves lined with rabbit fur.

  Mathieu had never married, he’d had some long and serious love affairs but the wedded life—shared home, children, in-laws—had never appealed to him. Still, it was always there if he changed his mind: women found him attractive, rough around the edges but with two notable qualities that won hearts; he was funny and he was kind. Mathieu would turn forty in the summer of 1941—he had always looked younger than his years but, after he’d begun to work in the Resistance, a patch of gray had appeared above his ear. The pressure of clandestine work had aged him and there, in the mirror, was the result.

  When Mathieu left the nightclub, headed for the Métro, he passed beneath a propaganda poster: a portrait of Marshal Pétain, the leader of the Vichy government, with the printed legend RÉVOLUTION NATIONALE. In June of 1940, the Germans held the upper third of France and, when Pétain signed the surrender, this area became the Occupied Zone, ruled by the Germans, while the remainder of France was governed by Vichy and led by Pétain.

  Traitor, Mathieu thought, anger rising within him. A traitor with a snow-white mustache that some took as a symbol of his moral purity. Pétain was the one who, in the 1930s, claimed that France had been weakened by decadence—too many love affairs, too much wine, rich food, and liberal politics. And then, in June of 1940, when the French lost the war, well there you had the reason. Thus the phrase National Revolution; no more soft, corrupt people, no more indulgence, now France, and the French, would have to change.

  Instinctively, Mathieu reached in his pocket for a pen, meaning to draw a Cross of Lorraine with two bars, the Gaullist symbol, and write VIVE DE GAULLE beneath it. He had begun his resistance in just this way, a “small thing” to be sure, still, it had helped him feel better in the summer of 1940 that followed the Occupation. But the pen stayed where it was. In the summer of 1940 he hadn’t cared about being arrested but not now, not on a night when he was carrying a lot of money.

  And that wasn’t all he was carrying.

  He turned into the Rue Pierre Lescot, not far from the Métro, but his luck didn’t hold. Up ahead of him he heard the sound of shattering glass, followed by a gleeful, triumphant snicker, and out of the gloom came three teenaged boys in uniform. Uniforms of a sort, cheaply made jackets, trousers, and ties, which meant membership in one of the youth organizations created by Vichy operatives. Called the Garde Française or the Jeune Front—Young Guard, French versions of the Hitler Youth, they were packs of teenaged thugs who roamed the streets and set upon those they took to be enemies of the Vichy regime.

  For Mathieu, it was too late to slip away. Inspired by the bully’s edge—three against one—they decided they didn’t like him and that they would do something about it. One of them, the smallest of the three—scrawny, hair shorn above the ears, and, from the set of his face, mean as a snake—showed Mathieu a tire iron, likely used to break the shop window. “See this?” he said. Mathieu stood where he was, stared, and was silent—if they thought he was going to grovel, they were wrong. When the Young Guard took a step toward him, Mathieu reached under the back of his jacket and drew, from his belt, an Italian automatic pistol, a Beretta, then held it loosely by the side of his leg.

  For the Young Guard with the tire iron, a moment of reflection. There were those who gestured with a weapon, most would never use it. Was showing the gun an act of bravado?

  Mathieu read his mind, and smiled. A tolerant smile—he understood them, could only hope they understood him.

  The Young Guard glanced at his friends, would they think he was a coward? But then he came to a conclusion and stepped aside. If this went any further Mathieu would kill him and he knew it.

  —

  It was frigid inside the Métro car, and there wasn’t much electricity, so the lights were dim. In the semi-darkness, the crowd was silent, a sea of white faces. The train stopped at Vaneau, then Sèvres-Babylone. Next came Mathieu’s station, Mabillon, where he left the train and hurried along the platform as he looked at his watch. He might just make it indoors before the curfew began.

  Leaving the entry, he took the Rue de Buci, a market street where produce was set out on stalls in front of the stores, a street that smelled like rotting vegetables. Just after eleven, he turned onto the Rue Dauphine—a few shadows, walking fast, late like Mathieu, headed the other way up the street. The Rue Dauphine was home to small shops—umbrellas, lamps, cookware—and battered old hotels with sensible room rates. He passed the Louisiane, the Tarane, the Hôtel du Petit Mouton—the little lamb, essentially a brothel, followed by his hotel, the Saint-Yves.

  As Mathieu opened the door, there was an eager whine from the vestibule and Mariana, the hotel dog, her tail wagging at full speed, ran up to him and gave him a fast lick on the hand. Where have you been? Why do you make me worry like this? Mariana was a Belgian shepherd bitch of the Tervuren variety, with a thick brown and white ruff at her neck. Yes, it was there to keep wolves from biting her throat but it also felt good to touch, and Mathieu combed his fingers through the fine hair and said, “Bonsoir, bonne Mariana.” He was her most favored tenant and she had adopted him as her owner, sleeping across the threshold of his bedroom at night, and lord help anybody who tried to get past her; fear had been
bred out of the Tervuren a long time ago. Mariana led him up five flights of stairs, occasionally looking back to make sure nothing had happened to him. When he opened the door to his rooms, she charged in and leapt onto the sofa, mouth open, tongue out, panting with pleasure. Once again, life was as it should be.

  Mathieu had discovered the Hôtel Saint-Yves six months earlier. On the top floor, the previous tenant had turned three adjacent rooms into an apartment: a bedroom with a desk and sofa, a bathroom with a porcelain claw-foot tub, and a kitchen with stove, refrigerator, and a sturdy walnut table that looked like it had made more than one trip to the flea markets. Under false name and identity papers, Mathieu rented the apartment by the month and used it as a base of operations.

  It was a familiar place, the rooms like those to be found in cheap but decent hotels anywhere in France: wallpaper with pink roses and green leaves on a tan background, thin brown carpet, a narrow bed with iron bars at head and foot, a green chenille bedspread, and a sagging mattress.

  As Mariana watched, Mathieu used the claw of a hammer to prise up a floorboard and there he deposited de Lyon’s five thousand dollars. It had company: Swiss francs, Spanish pesetas, occupation francs, and French francs minted before the Occupation. These had the former national motto, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, while the occupation francs had the new, Vichy motto, Travail, Famille, Patrie, thus liberty, equality, and brotherhood had become work, family, and fatherland. From the Vichy point of view, healthier ideals for the new France. Before he put the board back in place, Mathieu laid the Beretta on top of the money.

  —

  He would need some of the money later in the week when he saw Ghislain, his second-in-command, to be used for repayment of railway fares, various bribes, and payments to passeurs, who escorted fugitives into the Unoccupied Zone south of the Loire. Business done for the night, Mathieu went over to his bedroom window and looked out into the darkness. The Rue Dauphine led directly to the Pont Neuf, and from his vantage point he could see the river. There was a three-quarter moon that evening and its light made the Seine visible, a ghostly gray, its surface showing the swell of the current that ran with the spring tide.