The Tristan Betrayal, Page 2

  Eigen knew them all. He saw them regularly, at salons such as this, but more to the point, he’d done favors for most of them. The Nazi masters of France didn’t just tolerate the so-called black market; they needed it like everyone else. How else could they get cold cream or face powder for their wives or lovers? Where else could they find a decent bottle of Armagnac? Even the new German rulers of France suffered from the wartime privations.

  So a black-market dealer like Daniel Eigen was always in demand.

  He felt a hand on his sleeve. Right away he recognized the diamond-encrusted fingers of a former lover, Agnès Vieillard. Although he felt a spasm of dread, he turned around, his face lit up in a smile. He had not seen the woman in months.

  Agnès was a petite, attractive woman with blazing red hair whose husband, Didier, was a major businessman, a munitions dealer and racehorse owner. Daniel had met the lovely, if oversexed, Agnès at the races, at Longchamp, where she had a private box. Her husband was in Vichy at the time, advising the puppet government. She’d introduced herself to the handsome, wealthy Argentine as a “war widow.” Their affair, passionate if brief, lasted until her husband returned to Paris.

  “Agnès, ma cherie! Where have you been?”

  “Where have I been? I haven’t seen you since that evening at Maxim’s.” She swayed, ever so slightly, in time to the orchestra’s jazzy rendition of “Imagination.”

  “Ah, I remember it well,” said Daniel, who barely remembered. “I’ve been terribly busy—my apologies.”

  “Busy? You don’t have a job, Daniel,” she scolded.

  “Well, my father always said I should find a useful occupation. Now that the whole of France is occupied, I say that gets me off the hook.”

  She shook her head, scowled in an attempt to conceal her involuntary smile. She leaned close. “Didier’s in Vichy again. And this party is altogether too full of Boches. Why don’t we escape, head over to the Jockey Club? Maxim’s is too full of Fritzes these days.” She whispered: according to posters on the Métro, anyone who called the Germans “Boches” would be shot. The Germans were hypersensitive to French ridicule.

  “Oh, I don’t mind the Germans,” Daniel said in an attempt to change the subject. “They’re excellent customers.”

  “The soldiers—what do you call them, the haricots verts? They’re such brutes! So ill-mannered. They’re always coming up to women on the street and just grabbing them.”

  “You have to pity them a bit,” said Eigen. “The poor German soldier feels he’s conquered the world, but he can’t catch the eye of a French girl. It’s so unfair.”

  “But how to get rid of them—?”

  “Just tell them you’re Jewish, mon chou. That’ll send them away. Or stare at their big feet—that always embarrasses them.”

  Now she couldn’t help smiling. “But the way they goose-step down the Champs-Élysées!”

  “You think goose-stepping is easy?” said Daniel. “Try it yourself someday—you’ll end up on your derriere.” He glanced around the room furtively, looking for an escape.

  “Why, just the other day I saw Göring getting out of his car on the rue de la Paix. Carrying that silly field marshal’s baton—I swear, he must sleep with it! He went into Cartier’s, and the manager told me later he bought an eight-million-franc necklace for his wife.” She poked Daniel’s starched white shirt with her index finger. “Notice he buys French fashion for his wife, not German. The Boches are always railing against our decadence, but they adore it here.”

  “Well, nothing but the best for Herr Meier.”

  “Herr Meier? What do you mean? Göring’s not a Jew.”

  “You know what he said: ‘If ever a bomb falls on Berlin, my name won’t be Hermann Göring; you can call me Meier.’ ”

  Agnès laughed. “Keep your voice down, Daniel,” she stage-whispered.

  Eigen touched her waist. “There’s a gentleman here I have to see, doucette, so if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “You mean there’s another lady who’s caught your eye,” Agnès said reprovingly, smiling in an exaggerated moue.

  “No, no,” chuckled Eigen. “I’m afraid it really is business.”

  “Well, Daniel, my love, the least you can do is get me some real coffee. I can’t stand all that ersatz stuff—chicory, roasted acorns! Would you, sweetheart?”

  “Of course,” he said. “As soon as I possibly can. I’m expecting a shipment in a couple of days.”

  But as soon as he turned away from Agnès, he was accosted by a stern male voice. “Herr Eigen!”

  Right behind him stood a small cluster of German officers, at the center of which was a tall, regal-looking SS Standartenführer, a colonel, his hair brushed back in a pompadour, wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a small mustache in slavish imitation of his Führer. Standartenführer Jürgen Wegman had been most useful in getting Eigen a service public license, allowing him to operate one of the very few private vehicles allowed on the streets of Paris. Transportation was a huge problem these days. Since only doctors, firemen, and for some reason leading actors and actresses were allowed to drive their own cars, the Métro was ridiculously overcrowded, and half the stations were closed anyway. There was no petrol to be had, and no taxicabs.

  “Herr Eigen, those Upmanns—they were stale.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Herr Standartenführer Wegman. Have you been keeping them in a humidor, as I told you?”

  “I have no humidor—”

  “Then I’ll have to get you one,” Eigen said.

  One of his colleagues, a portly, round-faced SS Gruppenführer, a brigadier general named Johannes Koller, sniggered softly. He had been showing his comrades an assortment of sepia-toned French postcards. He quickly put them away in the breast pocket of his tunic, but not before Eigen saw them: they were old-fashioned lewd photographs of a statuesque woman wearing only stockings and garter belt and striking a variety of lascivious poses.

  “Please. They were stale when you gave them to me. I don’t think they were even from Cuba.”

  “They were from Cuba, Herr Kommandant. Rolled on the thigh of a young Cuban virgin. Here, have one of these, with my compliments.” The young man reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a velvet pouch containing several cellophane-wrapped cigars. “Romeo y Julietas. I hear they’re Churchill’s favorites.” He handed one to the German with a wink.

  A waiter approached with a silver tray of canapés. “Pâté de foie gras, gentlemen?”

  Koller snatched two in one swift movement. Daniel took one.

  “Not for me,” Wegman announced sanctimoniously to the waiter and the men around him. “I no longer eat meat.”

  “Not easy to come by these days, eh?” said Eigen.

  “That’s not it at all,” said Wegman. “As a man ages, he must become a grass-eating creature, you know.”

  “Yes, your Führer is a vegetarian, isn’t he?” Eigen said.

  “Quite right,” Wegman said proudly.

  “Though sometimes he swallows up whole countries,” Eigen added in a level tone.

  The SS man glowered. “You seem to be able to turn up everything and anything, Herr Eigen. Perhaps you can do something about the paper shortage here in Paris.”

  “Yes, it must drive you bureaucrats mad. What is there to push anymore?”

  “Everything is of inferior quality these days,” said Gruppenführer Koller. “This afternoon, I had to go through an entire sheet of postage stamps before I found one that would stick to the envelope.”

  “Are you fellows still using the stamp with Hitler’s head on it?”

  “Yes, of course,” Koller said impatiently.

  “Perhaps you’re licking the wrong side, hein?” Eigen said with a wink.

  The SS Gruppenführer flushed with embarrassment and cleared his throat awkwardly, but before he could think of a reply, Eigen went on: “You’re entirely right, of course. The French simply aren’t up to the standards of German production.”
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br />   “Spoken as a true German,” said Wegman approvingly. “Even if your mother was Spanish.”

  “Daniel,” came a contralto voice. He turned, relieved at the chance to break free from the Nazi officers.

  It was a large woman in her fifties wearing a gaudy, flouncy floral dress that made her look a little like a dancing circus elephant. Madame Fontenoy wore her unnaturally black hair, run through with a white skunk stripe, up in a bouffant. She had enormous gold earrings that Daniel recognized as louis d’or, the antique gold coin, twenty-two karats each. They pulled at her earlobes. She was the wife of a Vichy diplomat, herself a prominent hostess. “Pardon me,” she said to the Germans. “I must steal young Daniel away.”

  Madame Fontenoy’s arm was around a slender young girl of around twenty in an off-the-shoulder black evening gown, a raven-haired beauty with luminous gray-green eyes.

  “Daniel,” said Madame Fontenoy, “I want you to meet Geneviève du Châtelet, our hostess’s lovely daughter. I was astonished to hear she hadn’t met you—she must be the only single woman in Paris you don’t know. Geneviève, this is Daniel Eigen.”

  The girl extended her delicate long-fingered hand, a brief warning look flashing in her eyes. It was a look meant only for Daniel.

  Daniel took her hand. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said with a bow of his head. As he clasped the young beauty’s hand, his forefinger gently scratched her palm, tacitly acknowledging her signal.

  “Mr. Eigen is from Buenos Aires,” the dowager explained to the young woman, “but he has a flat on the Left Bank.”

  “Oh, have you been in Paris long?” asked Geneviève du Châtelet without interest, her gaze steady.

  “Long enough,” said Eigen.

  “Long enough to know his way around,” said Madame Fontenoy, her eyebrows arched.

  “I see,” Geneviève du Châtelet said dubiously. Suddenly her eyes seemed to spy someone across the room. “Ah, there’s ma grande-tante, Benoîte. If you’ll excuse me, Madame Fontenoy.”

  As the girl took her leave, her eyes alighted on his, then swept meaningfully in the direction of an adjacent room. He nodded, almost imperceptibly, understanding the semaphore at once.

  After an interminable two minutes of empty chat with the dowager Fontenoy, Daniel excused himself as well. Two minutes: enough time had gone by. He elbowed his way through the thick crowd, smiling and nodding at those who called his name, wordlessly indicating that he couldn’t stop because of pressing personal business.

  A short distance down the grand hallway was the equally grand library. Its walls and inset bookcases were lacquered Chinese red; the rows of volumes leather-bound, ancient, never read. The room was empty, the cacophony from the ballroom a dull, distant murmur. At the far end, sitting on a divan among Aubusson cushions, was Geneviève, ravishing in her black dress, the skin of her naked shoulders pale and magnificent.

  “Oh, thank God,” she whispered urgently. She got to her feet, rushed to Daniel, threw her arms around him. He kissed her long and passionately. After a minute she pulled back. “I was so relieved you came tonight. I was dreadfully afraid you’d have other plans.”

  “How can you say that?” Daniel protested. “Why would I pass up a chance to see you? You’re speaking nonsense.”

  “It’s just that you’re so . . . so discreet, so careful not to let my parents know about us. Anyway, you’re here. Thank God. These people are so boring, I thought I’d die. All they talk about is food, food, food.”

  Eigen was stroking his lover’s creamy shoulders, running his fingertips down to the swell of her breasts. He could smell the aroma of Shalimar, a gift from him. “God, I’ve missed you so much,” he murmured.

  “It’s been almost a week,” said Geneviève. “Have you been a bad little boy? No, wait—don’t answer that. I know your ways, Daniel Eigen.”

  “You can always see through me,” Eigen said softly.

  “I don’t know about that,” Geneviève said archly, her lips pursed. “You’re a man of many layers, I think.”

  “Perhaps you could peel a few of them off of me,” Daniel said.

  Geneviève looked shocked, but it was pure affectation, both of them knew. “Not here, where anyone could walk in on us.”

  “No, you’re right. Let’s go somewhere where we won’t be interrupted.”

  “Yes. The second-floor drawing room. No one ever goes in there.”

  “Except your mother,” Daniel Eigen said, shaking his head. An idea had just occurred to him. “Your father’s study. We can lock the door.”

  “But Father will kill us if he sees us there!”

  Daniel nodded sadly. “Ah, ma cherie, you’re right. We really should rejoin the others, I think.”

  Geneviève looked stricken. “No, no, no!” she said. “I—I know where he keeps the key. Come, let’s hurry!”

  He followed her out of the library, through the doorway that gave onto a narrow servants’ stairway to the second floor, then a long way down a dark hall, until she stopped at a small alcove, at a white marble bust of Marshal Pétain. Daniel’s heart was thudding. He was about to attempt something dangerous, and danger always excited him. He liked living on the edge.

  Geneviève reached behind the statue and nimbly retrieved a skeleton key, then unlocked the double doors of her father’s study.

  The lovely young Geneviève had no idea, of course, that Daniel had been in her father’s study before. Several times, in fact, during their secret rendezvous here at the Hôtel de Châtelet, in the middle of the night when she was asleep, her parents were traveling, the servants excused for the day.

  The Comte Maurice Léon Philippe du Châtelet’s private study was a very masculine chamber that smelled of pipe tobacco and leather. There was a collection of old walking sticks, an array of Louis XV armchairs upholstered in dark brown leather, a massive, ornately carved desk covered with neat piles of documents. On the fireplace mantel was a bronze bust of a family member.

  While Geneviève locked the double doors, Daniel circled the desk, quickly scanning the piles of papers, picking out from among the personal and financial correspondence the most interesting ones. At a glance he could see the dispatches from Vichy concerned top-secret military matters.

  But before he could do any more than identify the piles of interest, Geneviève had finished locking the doors from the inside and rushed up to him.

  “Over there,” she said. “The leather divan.”

  Eigen, however, did not want to move from the desk. He gently pressed her up against the edge of her father’s desk as he ran his hands down her body, along her tiny waist, and around to her small, tight buttocks, where they paused, gently kneading her flesh. Meanwhile he was kissing her throat, her neck, the tops of her breasts.

  “Oh, my God,” she moaned. “Daniel.” Her eyes were closed.

  Then Eigen ran his fingertips along the silk-covered cleft of her buttocks, softly teasing the private regions, which so distracted her she didn’t notice that his right hand had left her posterior and was reaching behind, to one particular stack of documents, nimbly lifting the top layer of papers.

  He hadn’t expected this opportunity. He’d have to improvise.

  Noiselessly he slipped the papers into the vent at the side of his dinner jacket. As the documents disappeared into the silk lining of his tuxedo, he slid his left hand up to the zipper at the back of her neck and tugged at it, pulling the fabric down, freeing her breasts, exposing the brown disks of her nipples to the butterfly-like tremor of his tongue.

  The papers, stiff inside the lining of his dinner jacket, made a slight crinkling sound as he moved.

  Suddenly he froze, cocked his head.

  “What?” whispered Geneviève, her eyes wide.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Footsteps. Near.” Daniel’s ears were unusually sharp, but he was particularly on the alert now that he was in a compromising situation in more ways than one.r />
  “No!” She pulled away, fumbling with her dress, pulling it up to cover her breasts. “Zip me up, Daniel, please! We have to get out of here! If anyone finds out we’re in here—!”

  “Shh,” he said. Two sets of footsteps, he realized, not just one. From the sound of the shoes on the marble-tiled floor of the hallway just outside, he knew it was two males. The sound echoed, growing louder, coming closer.

  As Geneviève crept across the room to the locked door, he could make out their voices now. Two men speaking in French, but one had a German accent. One voice, that of the native French speaker, was low and rumbling; he identified it as belonging to the Comte, Geneviève’s father. The other—was it General von Stülpnagel, the German Military Governor? He wasn’t sure.

  Geneviève stupidly reached for the key—to do what, to unlock the doors, just as her father and his German colleague arrived? Daniel touched her hand, stopped her before she turned the key. Instead, he pulled it from the lock.

  “That way,” he whispered. He pointed toward the door at the far end of the study. The last time he’d entered the room it had been through that door. Perhaps Geneviève would think he’d just noticed it, though in her panic she probably wouldn’t be thinking clearly at all.

  She nodded, ran toward the other door. When she’d reached it, he switched off the lights in the room, plunging them into darkness. But Daniel moved easily in darkness, and he had a mental picture of the layout of the room, the obstacles in his way.

  She gasped when she got to the door, realizing as she turned the knob that it was locked. But Daniel produced the key. Had he not done so, the wasted few seconds would have meant they’d be caught. Swiftly he unlocked the door. It stuck a bit as it came open; the door was seldom used. Shoving her into the narrow, dark corridor, he closed the door behind them, deciding not to lock it. The cylinder was somewhat rusty and noisy, and the sound would be heard by the two men.