The Paris Architect: A Novel (36 page)

Alain felt like sprinting down the street, but he fought the urge and walked slowly. He was giddy with joy at the image of the Gestapo beating down Lucien’s door in the middle of the night and arresting him. It was almost eight o’clock and people had cleared off the streets, so the rue du Faubourg was deserted when he got to the telephone booth. Because it was getting late, he knew his uncle was no longer in his office at 11 rue des Saussaies, so Alain would try him at home before he went out for his usual night of socializing. He deposited the coins and was so excited he could barely dial the number. To his great relief, his uncle answered the phone.

“Hello, this is—”

Alain stopped in mid-sentence. Less than a meter away from him stood Pierre. He stared up into Alain’s eyes with such intense hatred that Alain dropped the receiver and stepped back into the box. Pierre then smiled at Alain but said nothing. Alain looked at him in disbelief, as if he was seeing an apparition. Alain regained his composure, and a wave of anger engulfed him.

“What are you doing here, you little shit?” He felt insulted that this useless orphan was interrupting a joyous occasion. The receiver was dangling in air and a voice kept coming from it, asking, “Who is it, who’s there?”

“What the hell do you want? Answer me, asshole,” Alain demanded as he grabbed the receiver and brought it up to his ear.

Still looking straight into Alain’s eyes, Pierre lunged forward. Alain felt a strange burning sensation in his chest. He looked down at his chest and saw a kitchen knife embedded to the hilt. He gasped and dropped the receiver, grabbing onto the call box for support. He tried to call out for help, but the words couldn’t make it out of his mouth. It was as if his throat had seized up. Blood rushed from the wound and soaked the front of his white shirt as he slowly dropped to the ground. Alain’s eyes bulged out in shock; he still couldn’t call out. Pierre watched in silence, not a shred of emotion on his face. Alain crumpled into a ball on the floor of the booth, dead. Pierre kicked the body with his foot to make sure he was gone, then hung up the receiver. He knelt down to pull Alain’s billfold from his jacket and slowly walked away.

As he walked home in the darkness, Pierre knew he had had no choice in the matter. Especially after finding out what Lucien was doing. If Lucien was saving his people, then he had to save Lucien. He was quite proud that he’d protected his protector this time—and he’d done it all on his own like a man should.

60

“Good evening, Monsieur Bernard; so good to see you again.”

From the floorboard in the rear of the moving car, Lucien looked up at his host, whom he recognized as the Resistance leader he’d met weeks ago. A few minutes earlier, while walking down a stretch of alley, Lucien had noticed a dark green sedan pull alongside of him. He knew it wasn’t a Gestapo car and paid it no mind until two men jumped out and dragged him by his arms into the backseat. The move was perfectly choreographed, taking only two seconds to accomplish.

“Please, sit up here with me, so we can talk,” said the old man, patting the seat.

Lucien pulled himself up and onto the seat. He smoothed out his suit and adjusted his tie. He was brimming with indignation but kept his temper in check. It was a bad sign that the Resistance had contacted him again and in so dramatic a fashion.

“Monsieur Bernard, we have a matter that only you can help us with.”

“I’ll help you in any way I can,” muttered Lucien, vividly remembering that the last time they met he’d been accused of being a collaborator.

“We have instructions from London to intensify our efforts in sabotage.”

“That’s great. So go cut some telephone lines. I wish you the best of luck. Now let me out at the next corner if you please.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that. Our instructions direct us to disrupt German war production.”

“So have the workers mess up the manufacturing process. A little distortion in the milling or the cutting of a piece of materiel will do the trick. And the Boche will never know until they actually fire a shell or shoot a pistol. It’s foolproof. That’s the best advice I can give you, so will you let me out?”

“That’s not exactly what we have in mind, Monsieur. We’re planning something a bit more drastic.”

“So what can you do?”

“We’ll blow up a factory. The Allies aren’t in a position to bomb war production in France yet, so we’ll do it.”

Lucien burst out laughing. What a bunch of self-deluded fools. Every action they carried out, no matter how small, meant reprisals by the Germans. A munitions train gets diverted in the wrong direction, causing an hour’s delay, and twenty innocent Frenchmen are shot.

“You’re raving mad. You know how many people will be shot for something like that? At least a thousand,” shouted Lucien.

The old man gazed out the window. “Yes, there’s a price to be paid for every act of resistance, but in the end it will be worth it.”

“For chrissakes, you’re not going to give me that line about living defeated is dying every day.”

“Still, we must obey orders and do everything we can to fight the Germans. Even though the Allies won in North Africa, the Boche can still win this war. It’s far from over. Do you want France to become a province of Germany? Do you always want to be under their thumb?”

“The Americans are in this now. Sooner or later they’ll come marching in and win this thing,” said Lucien. “You’ll see, just like in 1918.”

“You may be right. In fact, I hope you are. But I still have my orders.”

“How the hell will you blow up a factory? They work twenty-four hours a day; you’ll kill all those people. How do you set the explosives with people in there?”

“We plan to blow up the factory in Tremblay that’s under construction.”

A shock jolted through Lucien’s entire body, as though he were being electrocuted. He was completely dazed.

“But that’s my factory,” said Lucien after he calmed down.

The man in the front passenger seat laughed.

“Armand, did you hear this shit? It’s
his
factory.”

“You can’t blow that up.”

“And why is that, monsieur?”

“Because I designed it…that’s why.”

The three men in the car all began laughing and shaking their heads. Lucien felt as if someone was asking him to kill his child. Like that story about God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. But unlike Abraham, he wasn’t about to do it. Abraham, he always thought, was a shit to even consider such a thing.

“You don’t understand how hard I worked on it, detailing every inch, or how many sketches I did. It’s the best design I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Armand, remember you asked me what I wanted for my birthday? Forget about those sausages. As my present, I want you to let me shoot this goddamn traitor,” said the passenger.

“Calm down, Remy. No one is going to kill anyone,” ordered the old man. “Monsieur Bernard, it’s not
your
factory. It’s the
Germans’
factory. A factory that produces objects that kill Frenchmen and our allies.”

Lucien at that moment had a very hard time accepting Armand’s reasoning on the matter. The image of the detailed pencil rendering of the finished building kept running through his mind. In peacetime it would’ve won an award, maybe even have gotten international recognition.

“Did you know that many people have died because of your architectural masterpiece in Chaville, Monsieur Bernard?”

“No…I didn’t,” answered a shaken Lucien.

“I want to show you something you may find interesting.”

The old man handed Lucien a stack of snapshots. He had a hard time making out the images in the darkness of the car.

“Here, let me help you see,” said the old man, flicking on his lighter and shining it above the photos. “Is that better?”

They were photos of dead bodies in what looked like the desert and alongside a road in the countryside.

“Let me explain. These are dead soldiers in North Africa. Notice the uniforms—Free French. They were strafed by fighter planes with Heinkel engines, which just happen to be made in that beautiful factory of yours in Chaville. And this is a picture of some French civilians who were strafed near the Swiss border, trying to get across. Guess where the engines on those planes came from?”

Lucien sat there in silence, looking out the window.

“Let me stop the car, and I’ll kill him,” the passenger said. “I know a great place to dump the body out here.”

“I told you to shut up, Remy.”

The snapshots slipped out of Lucien’s hand and onto the floorboard. He continued to look out the window. They were in the countryside somewhere just outside of Paris. As he watched the dark fields and woods whiz by, he began to think about Celeste’s parting words— an architectural Mephistopheles. Someone who sold his soul to the Germans in order to design. To design things that killed his countrymen. Celeste was right; he had crossed the line over to collaboration for the sake of his art. And he knew the old man was right. His Tremblay design could win a hundred prizes, but in the end it was his enemy’s building, not his.

Lucien rehashed in his mind the same old rationale that he had used after his first meeting with the Resistance. He was so desperate for architectural success, he didn’t care who he designed for. The war had come and his career was put on hold; it seemed he might not ever get another commission. To his bitter disappointment, the 1930s hadn’t brought the recognition he craved. He couldn’t get that breakthrough commission that would set him on the path to professional fame. So when Manet offered him the Chaville job, it was the opportunity of a lifetime he had to take.

The devil to whom he’d sold his soul was Herzog, who wasn’t your conventional Nazi devil with horns, a red suit, and a pointed tail. He was a skilled engineer who loved architecture and honestly wanted Lucien to produce great buildings. He
wasn’t
a barbarian like the rest of them. Herzog had shared his passion for architecture and urged Lucien to design something good because he saw that he had the ability to do it. Designing the two factories proved that he did have talent. But the rationale no longer convinced him as it had before. He realized that he knew what he was doing was wrong.

He wasn’t the least bit scared at this moment—his sense of shame erased all the fear inside him. He reached down and picked up the snapshots and flipped through them again. No soul searching was necessary.

“What do you want me to do?” Lucien asked.

“We have a very limited supply of
plastique
that British Special Operations have given us, so we have to place it where it will do the most damage,” the old man said. “That’s what you will tell us. But first we’ll need a set of blueprints to understand the layout of the place before we go in. We’ll turn back to Paris and go to your office. Remy will escort you upstairs to get them.”

“And if you run, you get one in the back of the head,” said Remy with a big smile.

“And when are you going to do this?”

“Tonight,” said the old man. “For a couple of hours, there’re only two guards on duty watching the whole place. And you’re coming with us to make sure it’s done right. We have only one shot.”

Lucien didn’t have the energy to protest. He was resigned to his fate.

“All right, monsieur, I’m with you.”

“That’s good. Monsieur Devereaux said you were a true patriot.”

“Devereaux, the architect?”

“A mutual friend of ours. He was the one who suggested your building and said you would know the best way to bring it down. ‘Bernard,’ he said, ‘would gladly sacrifice his building for the good of France.’”

“I bet he did,” said Lucien.

61

“Keep your head down, you goddamn idiot.”

“You know he wants to give us away. You know that, don’t you, Remy?”

“I hope he does, Albert. It’ll give me a good excuse to put one in his brain pan,” whispered Remy into Lucien’s ear.

Remy had been peeking over the top of a pallet of bricks when Lucien decided to take a look at the factory for himself. After all, it was his building. But Remy shoved him back down to the muddy ground. Seconds later, Remy crouched down next to him.

“The guard’s just finished his rounds; he won’t be back inside for another half hour,” Remy said to Albert, treating Lucien as if he were invisible, even though he was sitting between them.

“That’s not enough time to set these charges,” said Lucien.

“I told you to shut your mouth, Monsieur Architect. You’re just here to tell us the best place to set the
plastique
inside there,” said Albert.

Lucien was indignant; this was no way to talk to a professional man. These guys were just lower-class slum rats from Paris. No education or breeding, and stinking Communists to boot. That was the problem with the war: it had upset the social order.

“Unroll that drawing and show us those columns again,” commanded Remy, who pulled a lighter out of his jacket pocket.

Lucien had the drawing flat on the ground and pointed to the four columns he’d already indicated with a red pencil.

“Just these four columns will bring the whole structure down.”

“I never could read architectural plans, so you’re coming in,” said Remy.

“But Armand said I could wait outside.”

“Would you listen to this jerk, Albert? What a goddamn coward.”

“Some patriot of France. Let’s kill him after the job. We can say the Boche guard did it,” snarled Albert.

“Listen, asshole,” said Remy, grabbing Lucien by his collar. “Armand isn’t here, so I’m running the show, and you’re going in there.”

“All right, all right. I’ll go.” He wriggled out of Remy’s grasp.

“We’re wasting time; we’ve got to get moving,” urged Albert.

“Where’s the best place to enter?” said Remy.

“We can go to the left around those pallets and get through the door on the south side.”

“Is it locked?”

“None of the doors are in yet.”

“All right, get moving,” said Remy, shoving Lucien forward. The three men crawled on their hands and knees around the pallets, which Lucien thought was overly dramatic. They could have stooped over and still not be seen. Albert carried the canvas bag with the
plastique
, and Remy had the one containing the detonator and the spool of wire. Once inside the plant, Lucien had a hard time getting his bearings; because of the moonless night, it was pitch dark in there. It reminded him of the blackouts in the cinema, where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.