He was astonished to see no signs of the impending Christ mas holiday enlivening the city’s broadest avenues. None of those elegant, swan-necked women in the shopping arcades or haughty restaurants. He had spent Christmas here twice before, once as a London schoolboy with his family and two years ago with the SS, who used trips to Paris as morale-boosting rewards, a tourist attraction for overachievers. The city always wore its brightest colors at Christmas. Now it appeared drab gray and drained of life. Walking through the Place Vendôme, he glanced up at the statue of Napoleon atop its stark central column, fashioned from melted Prussian cannon captured at Austerlitz.
The French beat us that time, Von Leinsdorf remembered grudgingly. Well, that was once.
Turning right onto the Rue de Rivoli, he settled on a bench at the edge of the Tuileries, directly across from the entrance to the Hotel Meurice. A line of Allied flags rippled in formation, a harsh wind stirring up a dark, scudding sky. Dozens of military vehicles for ranking British and American officers were parked out front, flying pennants, jutting into the avenue. When Von Leinsdorf had last been here, the hotel served as the German Army’s headquarters, until the surrender of the city. An artillery shell had since collapsed two of the arches-covered with scaffolding, under repair-that spanned its classical nineteenth-century facade.
He remembered climbing those same steps for the first time, proud and in awe, his father’s sleek leather glove holding his hand. His father was still a high-ranking diplomat and they had been treated like royalty, shown all the sights, squired around the city in a chauffeured car. The happiest days his family had ever known, less than a year before they ended in a single day.
Twelve years later, after the Germans had taken France, he returned as an SS officer on leave, self-made, on his own merits. Everyone in that hotel, in Paris, showed him a respect that not so long before he’d had reason to believe would be denied to him forever. With that visit had come the assurance that his father’s disgrace was at last behind him.
The sound of the chair hitting the floor in the next room.
The old man’s obsequious, servile smile, the fluttering of his hands whenever a superior turned a corner. How pathetic and defeated he had looked when they found him out. The image still sickened Von Leinsdorf. The womanly tears as his father confessed the secret he’d kept from his wife and son all those years; everything they believed about him a lie. Packing his own bags for exile, unshaven, doubled over, sobbing as he folded every collar and crease like a ghetto tailor, the life already kicked out of him. The shameful legacy of the Jew visible in him from a mile away.
Von Leinsdorf had vowed to forget the man. He would cut the scar from his soul.
The creak of the rope when he walked in and found him swinging from that beam. The old man’s pleading eyes meeting his, clawing at his own throat, his life ending with one last misgiving. Von Leinsdorf never moved. He watched him die and then he turned and left the room.
No one had ever worked harder to erase a memory; why would it come back now? Because Paris had fallen? Did that mean all his work had been for nothing? This hotel, the site of the only triumph he’d ever known, was back in the hands of the enemy, Americans and British crawling all over the city, smug and entitled, as if the war were already won.
They would soon be hearing from him about that.
The rattle of a passing bus broke his reverie. He studied the hotel, noting the security outside, the traffic patterns passing through its doors. After twenty minutes he crossed the street and climbed the stairs, leaning on his cane.
Stammering in excited French and broken English, he explained to the guards at the door that an unexploded German shell had been found in his neighborhood. They tried to explain that he needed to report such a matter to his local police or SHAEF’s offices near the Place Vendôme. With the wounded dignity of an outraged Great War veteran, his tirade resulted in a spell of breathlessness. The guards assisted him into the lobby to recover, promising he could speak to the next available officer. After bringing him a glass of water, they promptly forgot about him. Von Leinsdorf settled into a chair that offered him a view of the elevators and the front desk. He watched a steady stream of British officers who had taken up residence in the hotel as they came and went.
He waited for an officer of a specific age and size. Such a man hurried through the door at eleven-thirty-five, carrying two suitcases and an attaché case. Von Leinsdorf rose from his chair and hobbled past the front desk, patting his face with a handkerchief, in time to see this British lieutenant, just arrived from London, identify himself, receive his room key, 417, and carry his bags toward the lift.
Von Leinsdorf waited five minutes, then entered an enclosed lobby phone booth and placed a call through the switchboard to room 417.
“Hallo?”
“Is that Lieutenant Pearson?” asked Von Leinsdorf.
“Yes?”
“I’ve been ringing you for over an hour. This is Major Smyth-Cavender over at SHAEF. Where the blazes are you?”
“I literally just walked through the door, sir.”
“Some problem with the flight, was there?”
“A bit delayed, actually, sir.”
“Yes, well, RAF’s got their own problems. We’ve had a cock-up down the hall here ourselves, pushed the clock right out of round. How are your quarters?”
“Fine, splendid.”
“Beats a damp foxhole by a crushing margin. So listen, Pearson old boy, since there’s no rush, why don’t you pop round and meet me at Maxim’s. Do you know where that is?”
“No, sir.”
“Hard by the hotel there; ask at the desk. It’s our officers’ club for the moment. I’ll stand you to a glass and a spot of lunch, act the welcoming committee. Shall we say quarter past noon then?”
“That’s only ten minutes, sir.”
“Take you five to get there. You can unpack later.”
“Yes, sir, right away, sir.”
Von Leinsdorf hung up the phone and ducked through a nearby door into a service stairwell. He took the stairs to the basement and moved along a low corridor, following the smell of steam until he found the laundry. No one was there. Stepping into a storage area, he removed his overcoat and jacket and replaced it with a valet’s coat, gloves, and hat. He walked into the bustling laundry area and searched through a hanging line of cleaned and pressed military uniforms ready for delivery. After finding what he was looking for, he walked out holding the suit up in front of his face. He waited for the service elevator, followed an Algerian house keeper pushing a linen trolley on board, and rode it up to the fourth floor. The house keeper stepped off first. He started down the hall in a different direction, looking at room numbers, then made a show of patting his pocket, groaned, and turned to the house keeper.
“Merde, j’ai oublié ma clef de passage. Cher, ouvriez-vous une salle pour moi pour satisfaire?”
“Quelle salle?”
Von Leinsdorf pretended to look at the ticket attached to the suit. “Quatre cents dix-sept.”
“Oui, oui,” she said wearily.
She led him around the corridor to the room and knocked twice.
“House keeping,” she said.
When there was no answer, she opened the door with her pass key. Von Leinsdorf slipped her an American five-dollar bill. She pocketed it and turned away, sensing that perhaps this was something she didn’t wish to know any more about.
“Merci beaucoup, chéri.”
He entered, then closed and silently locked the door behind him. He hung the suit on a hook, closed the blinds, and turned on a lamp. He laid Pearson’s two suitcases on the bed, opened and quickly searched through them, taking out the man’s kit bag. He opened the man’s attaché and scanned a cache of letters and documents inside, pleased by what he found.