Chasing Mona Lisa (13 page)

For two years he’d kept his eyes open and his ears to the ground. There were rumors about who’d stopped the train, but every lead had come up empty. Now the pieces were fitting together at the Brasserie Lipp, known as the unofficial headquarters of the Communist factions of the Resistance.

Had this young man risen in the ranks since the tragedy at the Pantin rail yard? Why else would Colonel Rol be whispering something to him, taking him in confidence? The famous freedom fighter was undoubtedly issuing instructions on what to do with the three sluts he and several men had picked up loitering near a bar.

It made no sense to stop him and his Gaullist friends from making an example of the traitors who bedded down with the Nazis, just as it made no sense to stop an attack on a train bearing such a rich target—Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. The course of the war could have changed.

Now he knew where to find the fifth columnist, who, like the whores, had sold out his allegiance to France.

There was a score to settle.

 
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Moonlight drifted through the bedroom window, carrying the music and laughter of a free people. Gabi moved around the twin-sized mattress, attempting to fit the bottom sheet around the second corner. The sheet smelled of soap and sunshine. Madame Beaumont insisted on helping.

“Please, Madame Beaumont. I can make my own bed.”

“I will hear nothing of the sort,” the matronly woman said. “You are our guest, as is Colette.”

Colette made eye contact with Gabi. “You better listen to her. She gets her way around here.”

“Not tonight,” Gabi said lightly as she quickly finished tucking in the last corner. She lay the duvet on the bed and smoothed the covering.

With a soft giggle, Colette leaned over to level her duvet. As she did, the locket slipped from beneath her blouse, catching Madame Beaumont’s eye. “My, what a beautiful locket. Is that new?”

“Yes, Bernard gave it to me this evening. Do you recognize it?”

Madame Beaumont straightened, stepping closer. “Let me have a look, dear.”

“Bernard said it belonged to your mom.”

“Really?” She took a closer look. “I don’t recognize it, or at least, I never saw Mother wear it. But it’s beautiful all the same.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Maybe I misunderstood,” Colette said.

“Perhaps so.” Madame Beaumont fluffed Colette’s pillow and set it on the bed. “I hope you can sleep with all the noise. I don’t think the celebration will be ending soon.”

Gabi noticed Colette’s perplexed expression as she tucked the locket beneath her blouse. Then she looked toward the hoopla lifting up from the Beaumont courtyard. “I think you’re right. I hope they’re not expecting you to serve breakfast.”

Madame Beaumont smiled. “Well, if they are, they’re going to be disappointed. Sleep well, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

As soon as the bedroom door closed, Gabi traipsed into the bathroom for a long overdue bath. A half hour later, she emerged and placed her clothes on the back of a chair. There was a soft thud as the skirt she’d been wearing earlier that day bounced against the wooden base. Reaching down to investigate, Gabi felt the firm rectangular shape and then remembered the small black book in the pocket. It seemed like days had passed since she had opened the hidden compartment in the base of the small safe.

With the slim black leather book in hand, she slipped under the sheets, grateful for the bed and the bath. “That was awfully nice of Bernard’s aunt to offer Eric and me a place to stay. I can’t remember when a hot bath felt better. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to another night in the car, but after such a long day, I could sleep standing up.”

“We’ll all sleep well tonight. That’s for sure,” Colette said.

Gabi peeled open the soft leather cover and found three columns of neatly printed accounting. A line item followed by two large numbers. Quickly paging through, she found about twenty-five pages of detailed entries. The German script seemed to be titles and artist’s names . . .
Still Life with Sleeping Woman
by Matisse and
Reclining Nude with Cupid
by Jan Van Neck . . . followed by several columns of numbers, with the first always lower than the second. She did some quick mental calculations and noted they were all about 30 to 40 percent higher.

“So, you work for the Red Cross?” Colette broke in.

Gabi hesitated. “Uh, yes, I enjoy helping others.” She propped herself up on a pillow, hoping she sounded convincing enough to avoid more questions.

“What do you have there?” Colette inquired. “Do you keep a journal?”

Gabi looked up with a blank expression. She realized that Colette was now staring at her.

“Oh, this?” Gabi raised the small book. “Actually, I forgot I’d put it in my pocket this morning.”

“So what’s in it?”

“I’m not sure. Seems like a listing of paintings.”

Colette crossed the room and sat on the side of Gabi’s bed. She looked over her shoulder, skimming the German text. After a few seconds, she caught her breath in surprise. “Where did you find this?”

Gabi paused. “It’s a long story, but basically, it was in the bottom of a safe . . . there was a hidden compartment.”

“The one downstairs in the corner of the dining room?”

“Yes, the one Bernard said he found at a German stronghold.” Gabi studied the woman’s face. “You seem to recognize these titles. What are they?”

“I should know. They are the names of paintings, many of which I appraised prior to their sale.”

“Their sale? To whom?” Gabi pressed.

Colette looked up and shook her head. “A despicable German colonel. He worked for Reichsmarschall Göring, and his job was to purchase art for his collections.”

“So this booklet contains a list of all the paintings, along with sale prices?”

Colette scanned a page again. “Looks like there are two columns here . . . one for the sale’s price and the other for the invoice. The last column shows the difference.”

“Which means . . .”

“Someone was padding the price, making a handsome profit . . . at Göring’s expense.”

“Interesting.”

They paged through the hundreds of cataloged entries. At the bottom of each page, total amounts for each column were added up.

“If my suspicions are correct,” Colette surmised, “I’ll bet Colonel Heller has been defrauding Göring for years and has amassed a small fortune.”

“Appears that way. So you know this colonel?”

Colette sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. He has made my life very difficult . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Gabi sensed by Colette’s tone that she had struck a nerve. The woman was troubled by something deeper. Gabi didn’t know her well enough to prod for more information, so she let it go, knowing full well that Colette wasn’t telling her everything.

There was also that embarrassing moment with the gold locket. Why would Bernard tell her it was a family heirloom when the pendant clearly wasn’t?

Gabi yawned but was still wide awake. There was more to Colette—and to Bernard—than what she saw at face value.

Her mind was racing. Had she made a mistake . . . sharing the information in this book with a woman she barely knew?

 
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Saturday, August 26, 1944

Bern, Switzerland

The door swung open before Ernst Mueller had set foot onto the landing. Allen Dulles stood in the doorway, holding his pipe as smoke curled to the high ornate ceiling.

“You made great time.” Dulles extended his hand and beckoned Ernst across the threshold.

Ernst studied the OSS director and noticed the furrowed eyebrows behind rimless glasses. As much as anyone, Ernst knew that Paris’s liberation did not mean safety for his daughter, Gabi.

The chief directed him to the formal living room, where he took a seat.

“Can I pour you a cup of tea?”

Ernst leaned back in the nineteenth-century Charles II settee. “Certainly, Allen. And if you have any sugar, a teaspoon would be great.”

“Tea, I have, but it seems sugar is worth its weight in gold these days.” Dulles reached for a bone china tea service resting on a low French antique table. “I hope a dollop of Swiss honey will satisfy that sweet tooth of yours.”

Ernst smiled. As an American married to a Swiss, he had worked as an undercover agent with Dulles’s network for the last year and a half and had come to admire the unwavering civility of the “gentleman spy.” The formal persona of this Ivy League patrician came together nicely inside his cut-stone apartment situated in the heart of Bern’s medieval Altstadt. He watched the well-connected Dulles pour steaming tea through a fine-mesh stainless steel strainer and fill the Clarabelle-patterned cup.

The last forty-eight hours had been anxious ones for Ernst with the stunning news of Paris’s liberation. When Dulles had rung him earlier this morning, Ernst hoped all was well. The director reassured him that Gabi was not in any immediate danger, and then he asked if they could meet in Bern. Dulles’s guarded tone, as well as his unusual Saturday request to drive the ninety minutes from his home near Basel to Bern, alerted him that something important had come up.

Dulles poured a cup for himself and got right down to business. “The boys from Bletchley Park intercepted a message last night that you might find interesting.”

Ernst, who had been glancing at the headlines of several Swiss newspapers strewn across a coffee table, perked up. It was uncanny how often the code breakers at the British Secret Service cracked the Nazi ciphers.

“What did they find?”

Dulles settled into his customary wingback chair covered in burgundy leather. “We believe the message came from a Colonel Heller, speaking on behalf of his commanding officer.”

“And who would that be?”

Dulles adjusted his glasses. “A Reichsmarschall Göring.”

Ernst inched farther forward. “To whom was this Colonel Heller sending the message?”

“Our friends Schaffner and Kaufman.”

Ernst’s mind was now on full alert. He had contacts within the Swiss counterintelligence community, and Hans Schaffner and Rolf Kaufman were German agents living in Switzerland since the fall of France. The scuttlebutt was that this pair would disappear for a while and then resurface—usually in a rowdy bar nestled inside Zurich’s seedy Niederdorf, flush with cash.

Contacts believed Schaffner and Kaufman’s main task was to launder money for the Nazis’ ultra elite. The German operatives were also spotted entering and leaving numerous Swiss banks lining the Bahnhofstrasse.

Ernst took another sip of tea. “I’m not surprised. This further establishes the fact that Göring has people in Switzerland doing his bidding.”

“Here’s where it gets interesting.” Dulles’s eyebrows peaked as he explained that the German operatives were directed to drive to a chateau outside Annecy, where they were to take possession of the
Mona Lisa
and bring it back to Switzerland. The Dolder Bank would hold it for “safekeeping.”

Throughout the telling, Ernst sat motionless, but anger pumped through his veins. The arrogance of Göring and the sheer audacity. He slowly shook his head. “Nothing should surprise us anymore.”

“I’ve been thinking how to best approach this.” Dulles took a draw from his pipe. “First, we have to get a message to your daughter and Eric and brief them. They need to get to the
Mona Lisa
before Schaffner and Kaufman, but that will take some time and planning. The painting is supposed to be in a chateau outside Annecy, but the exact location has not been confirmed, at least according to the intercept. Regarding Schaffner and Kaufman, you could loosen a few tongues in the Niederdorf. Talk to the streetwalkers and barkeeps, that sort of thing. From what I hear, these two Germans aren’t the most discreet agents to walk the earth.” Dulles produced a legal-sized envelope bulging with Swiss francs. “This should help you unearth some clues.”

Ernst rifled through his memory of contacts in Zurich’s red-light district. He smiled slightly, considering what the people in his congregation would think of the friendships he valued in such places.

“There was another message.”

“Oh?”

“Anton Wessner was told by Colonel Heller to expect to hear from Schaffner and Kaufman and to give them his full cooperation. Carte blanche, the message said.”

“Anton Wessner—the president of Dolder Bank?”

“One and the same. Are you surprised that a Swiss banker is in bed with the Nazis?”

Ernst paused. “No, not that a banker is collaborating, but Wessner is well-respected in Zurich.”

Dulles reached for his cup of tea, but before he took a sip, his eyes bore into the agent. “It’s up to us to stop them. The
Mona Lisa
cannot fall into Göring’s hands. I don’t know what our adversary is up to, but whatever his scheme, the fragile French psyche can’t afford to lose their national treasure, not after Libération.”

“Agreed. If I can borrow your transmitter, I’ll contact Eric right away.”

“You’ll find it in the back bedroom. Interesting, though, how history repeats itself.”

“How’s that, Allen?”

This time, Dulles allowed himself a long drink of tea before answering. “The
Mona Lisa
was stolen right under French noses before the last war—1911, if memory serves me correctly. It was two years before they found the painting. Terribly traumatic for the French back then. I’m sure this distraction would be the last thing de Gaulle needs right now.”

Gabi raised the window shade and looked into the empty Beaumont courtyard. Paper trash littered the ground, and broken glass created a mosaic on pockets of cobblestones. The boisterous revelers were undoubtedly sleeping off their celebration, leaving behind an eerie calm for the late morning hour.

A form stirred in one of the twin beds. “What’s it like out there?” a voice moaned as she pulled the duvet back over her head.

“A bright sunshiny day,” Gabi replied to her new acquaintance. Her voice sounded cheerier than she felt. The Ost soldiers had haunted her dreams, and a heavy presence weighed on her shoulders.

Colette turned over in the bed. “What time is it?”

Gabi found her watch on her nightstand. “Later than I thought. Just about 10:30.”

Colette came out of hibernation and stretched her arms. She covered her mouth, stifling a large yawn. “When did the party stop?”

Gabi, who had been gathering her clothes to get dressed in the bathroom, stopped in her tracks. “I think the accordion player collapsed shortly after 4 a.m. At least, that’s when I last looked at my watch.”

A knock on the door caused both young women to look up.

Colette spoke in a whisper. “Probably Bernard’s aunt, wondering when we’re coming down for breakfast.” She raised her voice. “Who is it?”

“Eric. Is Gabi there?”

“I’m here. Be there in a moment,” Gabi said.

There was a pause. “A message from the Red Cross came over the transmitter,” Eric’s voice was urgent.

“Okay.”

Gabi stepped into the bathroom and set her clothes on the edge of a rattan hamper.
Another message from Mr. Dulles?
She wondered why the OSS chief was contacting them again, especially after they just spoke last night. It didn’t sound good.

If the events of the last twenty-four hours were any indication, today would be another day of surprises.

Eric had copied the letters of Morse code streaming through his headset onto a yellow pad. Then he used a codebook to decipher the message. He committed the contents to memory before burning the piece of paper in the bedroom fireplace:

Information from London indicates that the Mona Lisa painting is in harm’s way in southern France. The painting is thought to be near Annecy, but waiting to confirm exact location. Begin planning departure for Annecy. The Mona Lisa must be protected at all costs.

—E

The
Mona Lisa
? Eric had many important missions before, but this . . . he couldn’t put it into words. The
Mona Lisa
was the world’s most well-known painting, France’s greatest treasure. He did not wonder why the Nazis wanted it . . . but how could he and Gabi stop them?

When she arrived in the dining room, Eric whispered the explosive contents to Gabi. Her eyes widened slightly as her mind took in his words. She nodded and smiled, and Eric let out a slow breath. He admired how she maintained her calm.

“We must find petrol, which will not be an easy task—”

The sound of footsteps bounding down the wooden staircase caused him to pause. He glanced up to see Colette and then turned back to Gabi.

Gabi gave Eric a knowing look. They’d resume the conversation later.

As Colette entered the dining area, Madame Beaumont stepped out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a faded red apron. She shooed Eric, Gabi, and Colette toward the dinner table.

“Our hens must have known that Paris was liberated yesterday,” she said gaily. “There were plenty of eggs this morning. I even have a little Comté that I can mix in some scrambled eggs,” she said and then stepped back into the kitchen.

Eric missed his daily fix of animal protein. “That would be very kind of you, Madame Beaumont, especially at this late hour,” he called to her.

He looked through the open kitchen door and saw Madame Beaumont crack a half-dozen eggs into a small bowl and then beat them with a silver fork before pouring them into the saucepan. She sprinkled dabs of creamy yellow cheese onto the foamy mixture.

The smell of cooking eggs
avec fromage
filled the living quarters, and Eric’s stomach rumbled.

Five minutes later, Madame Beaumont walked out with scrambled eggs heaped upon a china platter. Steam rose into the air, spreading a delightful scent through the room.

“Did you rob a farm?” Colette asked.

“No, just happy chickens. Please, eat up.”

“You’re sitting down with us,” Colette insisted.

Madame Beaumont declined. “I had something earlier—”

Colette turned to Gabi and Eric. “Madame Beaumont is as good at stretching a meal as she is at stretching the truth.” With laughter in her voice, she turned back to Madame Beaumont. “You’ve eaten nothing but rutabaga and turnips all summer. We’re certainly not going to enjoy these delicious eggs without you.”