The Second Objective (36 page)

“Why?”

“Once you told me about the general? A man like him’s so much more important. I’m nobody. What happens to me doesn’t matter at all.”

Grannit didn’t look at him.

“What did he say to you about Paris?”

“That he’d been here a lot. It’s his favorite city, but he’s not that nuts about the French.”

“Gee, you think? Where’d he learn the language?”

“English boarding school.”

Grannit flicked his cigarette into the river. “That could’ve prepared him for the SS.”

“Got some wiseass in you, too, huh?”

“Must be a neighborhood thing,” said Grannit, with as close as Bernie had seen to a smile.

“You never said. Which side of Park Slope you from?”

“South.”

“Really? What’d your dad do?”

“Let’s stay on Von Leinsdorf.”

Bernie remembered something. “Could you get a question to the MPs, have them ask it at their checkpoints?”

“What question?”

“Who plays center field for the Dodgers.”

“Most guys won’t even know that; it’s like a revolving door out there at Ebbets Field—”

“I know,” said Bernie. “I talked about it with Von Leinsdorf. He thinks it’s Joe DiMaggio.”

Grannit stopped short, looked at him, then took out his notebook and jotted it down. “Not bad, kid. So what about Paris?”

“His style, he’d go for the fanciest joints,” said Bernie. “Art, culture, he was up on all that stuff.”

“I don’t think he’ll be taking in a museum today.”

“Wait a second. He mentioned this hotel he liked once. I got the idea he must’ve stayed there. A good place to take a girl to dinner if you wanted to get laid.”

“What’s the name of it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“There’s a thousand fucking hotels in this city,” said Grannit.

“I know; it was like a guy’s name, I think— Jesus, I’m so tired. Maybe if I saw a list.”

Grannit headed back inside the hotel. The concierge handed them a dog-eared prewar Michelin guide from behind the counter. Bernie paged through it while Grannit placed a call to military police headquarters. He was on his way back when Bernie held up a finger, pointing with his other hand to a page of the book.

“Hotel Meurice.”

When Von Leinsdorf left that morning for the Hotel Meurice, he told Eddie Bennings to stay inside their rented garret until he returned that afternoon. Eddie promised he would, content to start his day with the K rations they’d brought up from the car. Within ten minutes, prompted by an enticing view of Montmartre and the attention span of a hummingbird, Eddie had talked himself into needing a cup of coffee for an eye-opener—what the hell, it was Paris, he’d only go out for a few minutes—and then there was that bakery he remembered around the corner where they sold those buttery brioche. That led him to look for a newsagent, where he picked up
Stars and Stripes
, see if they had the latest college football scores. The
tabac
next door to the newsstand was open for business so he picked up a pack of cigarettes, and when he saw the attached bar, he thought,
What the fuck, after what I’ve been through the last few days, what’s one beer?

Three beers later, after exchanging pleasantries with the barkeep, a comely young woman sat down beside him at the counter and they struck up a lively conversation about her enthusiasm for all things American. Taken in by her adorable broken English, and forgetting that he was supposed to be a Danish businessman trying to secure postwar oil leases, he owned up to being American, and twenty minutes later he was banging the living daylights out of the mademoiselle in her room at a fleabag pension.

The trouble didn’t start for another twenty minutes, after they’d satisfied their physical needs and shared a few minutes of mutual, if not entirely sincere, postcoital appreciation. As Eddie was pulling on his pants, the young lady revealed that the joy they’d just shared was less the spontaneous expression of mutual affection he’d supposed it to be, so much as a routine, age-old business transaction for which she now expected to be paid accordingly. Eddie took exception, arguing, not without reason, that in order for such an arrangement between two parties to be considered binding it first required that he, the buyer, receive from her, the seller, adequate notification—prior to commencement of services and well before their conclusion—and then give answer to said proposal in the affirmative. The girl, who was seventeen, malnourished, and dumb as a ball-peen hammer, countered that as dazzled as she had been by his all-American personality, she had forgotten to mention it, and although she’d be happy to write off their brief encounter as a freebie, her pimp waiting in the
tabac
across the street would take a much dimmer view. Eddie responded that as far as he was concerned this fell under the category of “that’s
your
problem, bitch.” He slapped her around to reinforce his position, put on his overcoat, and left her place of business.

The pimp watched Eddie exit the pension, and waited a few minutes while finishing his first coffee of the day. On the short side, and swarthy, he bore a distinct tattoo of a knife between the thumb and fingers of his right hand. When his girl failed to appear, he sauntered up to her apartment. Appalled less by her physical condition and hysterical emotional state than by her failure to collect any cash, he gave her a more severe beating, emptied her purse, and went back to the street. Outraged that this American prick had flouted the conventions of their industry—the little whore claimed she’d been stiffed—the pimp asked the barkeep if he had seen which way the man went, then hurried off in that direction until he spotted his overcoat on a neighboring street. He followed the man until he entered a transient apartment building a few blocks up the hill. A plan on how to collect his debt took shape immediately.

He walked four blocks south to the local police station, behind a nightclub on the Rue de la Rochefoucauld. The bicycle of a corrupt patrolman he bribed to protect his business sat in its usual parking space under the blue lantern outside. As much as it pained him to enter the station, for fear he might be perceived as a snitch, which in fact he was, the pimp did so just long enough to signal the patrolman that he needed a word. They met around the corner, where the pimp told the corrupt patrolman how his girl had just been taken advantage of by either an American GI or more likely a deserter. His behavior fit the profile of a dabbler in the black market, in which case he was probably sitting on a considerable pile of cash, from which the two of them might, without undue effort or risk, be able to separate the fucker. They agreed to pay the American a visit as soon as the patrolman came off duty later that day and then went their separate ways.

In this unwitting way, for want of a cup of coffee, would Corporal Eduardo DiBiaso, aka Eddie Bennings, make his only significant contribution to the Allied war effort.

The Hotel Meurice, Paris

DECEMBER 21, 2:25
P.M.

At 2:25, just before he left room 417, Von Leinsdorf called an office number at SHAEF headquarters that he found in Lieutenant Alan Pearson’s address book. Speaking as a convincingly under-the-weather Pearson, he reported that he had taken desperately ill at lunch and would need to spend the rest of the day recuperating in bed. Hoping it wouldn’t be too great an inconvenience, he would present himself for duty the following morning. The secretary asked him to hold the line.

“Right, sorry, just checking the schedule, sir,” said the secretary. “The G2 will be out at our offices at Versailles all day tomorrow. I’m afraid you’d have to come out there.”

Von Leinsdorf tried to sound neutral. “whatever the general thinks is best.”

“Will you be needing a driver then?”

“Yes. If you wouldn’t mind sending a car around.”

Before ringing off, she filled him in on how and where to present himself to clear SHAEF security upon arriving at Versailles.

An escort right into Versailles. Von Leinsdorf hung up the phone and laughed so hard he had to cover his mouth.

Earl Grannit and Bernie Oster entered the lobby of the Hotel Meurice at two-thirty
P.M.
After handing flyers with Von Leinsdorf’s likeness to guards at the entrance, they were speaking with the front desk when Von Leinsdorf came off the elevator, carrying a small suitcase and attaché, with a British officer’s greatcoat over his arm, dressed in the uniform of Lieutenant Alan Pearson. He saw Grannit and Bernie across the crowded lobby on his way to the desk. He turned away, patting his pockets as if he’d forgotten something, and headed back up the stairs. Badly shaken by the sight of them, he stopped in the stairwell to collect his thoughts, then ran back up to the fourth floor. He quickly rearranged how he had left things in room 417 in a way that he thought would solve this unwelcome development, then took a rear staircase to the back entrance, sorting through the problem as he walked away.

They had found the apartment and the dead girl in Reims, and Bernie Oster alive in the bargain. That had to be it. Had he convinced Grannit he was an American soldier? Unlikely, but why else would he still be a free man? Grannit and Bernie Oster together.

He walked back toward the Place Vendôme. Had he said anything to Bernie that could have put them on his trail? Why were they at the Meurice? Had he mentioned staying there during his last trip to Paris? Perhaps in passing. A block away he turned to look back at the hotel, saw no other police or military outside. They would have come in force if they were sure he was there, just as they had in Reims.

The two men had come alone then. He walked on, trying to weigh how this affected his plan for the following day. The Lieutenant Pearson scenario had given him a straight-ahead path to the end, but the identity would be compromised by any thorough search of the hotel. He had to assume that would happen, and couldn’t risk using it now.

His mind scrambled after solutions. Pearson had eliminated his need for Eddie Bennings—he’d planned to dispense with him on his return to Montmartre—but now he’d have to keep that scenario in play. And the Corsican, Ververt, as well.

He stepped off a curb without noticing and his foot hit the pavement, jarring him. He felt a violent, visceral shift disrupt his mind from his innermost self, and for a moment all thought of the mission was forgotten. His obsessive focus lifted, he was suddenly, keenly aware of the grid of the Paris streets and how much they reminded him of his own rigid mental discipline; straight lines and angles, geometric precision. He saw perfection and power in their clean, spare rigor. Civilization had reached an apex in this miracle of order, and he wanted nothing more than to inhabit them forever, walking down these broad avenues and regimented streets. He felt that if these buildings, all the people, even the streets themselves faded from view, the deep underlying meaning that their physical reality masked and could only hint at would be revealed. Patterns that unlocked all the uncertainties of existence. It was a moment of grace freed from time and circumstance, transcendent and full, but it was shadowed by a dawning awareness just beyond his comprehension that something dreadful had been done to him. A yawning darkness opened behind him, hideous forms of primal terror lurched at him out of it. He saw himself being held down in a malformed coffin, squirming to escape unseen hands. His head was missing, then it looked up at him from inside his attaché case, and horror like none he’d ever known lit up his mind—

A horn sounded, a screech of brakes. His attaché hit the pavement. He had walked blindly into the middle of a street and nearly been hit by a jeep full of MPs. He waved an apology, picked up his case, and walked on. They watched him go and he felt their eyes on him until they drove away. As quickly as it had come, back in reality, his waking nightmare vanished. He saw the Café de la Paix straight ahead across the street.

The newspaper he’d left on the table was gone. In its place, a pair of gloves and a blue scarf.

The signal. Contact. His mind found navigable points again. Now he could make all the pieces fit together. He crossed the street, and stepped down the stairs to the Madeleine metro station.

Grannit and Bernie spent twenty minutes with the manager at the front desk, who promised them they could question the rest of their staff and the hotel residents. Over two hundred officers billeted at the Meurice, but most were out during the day. Grannit said they were prepared to wait until every last one had been cleared.

Bernie sat near the front desk while Grannit telephoned Inspector Massou. He was out of the office, so Grannit left word to call them at the hotel. He joined Bernie a short time later, waiting for the staff to assemble and keeping an eye on the door in case Von Leinsdorf showed.

As he walked up the stairs at the Abbesses metro station, Von Leinsdorf heard choral music, looked up, and caught sight of a modest Gothic church, St. Pierre de Montmartre, perched on the hill before him just below the Sacre Coeur. The voices drew him forward. He had never had religious feelings—following the Party line, he believed only in the Father, not the Son—but he craved a few minutes in the presence of that music. He slipped inside and stood near the back of the church. A choir stood in a stall below the altar, lit by candlelight, performing a medieval
chanson
. The ancient music fed a hunger in Von Leinsdorf he hadn’t known he possessed. The mysterious feeling of peace that had overwhelmed him as he walked the streets crept back into his mind, shadowed by that same black foreboding. He went weak for a moment, breaking into a sweat, and had to brace himself against a pew.