Paris: The Novel (98 page)

If Roland de Cygne was the guardian of a secret that June day, Marc Blanchard was guarding three. Two he had possessed since a week ago. They had caused him great agony of mind. This evening, he was going to talk to his Aunt Éloïse before making the decision about what to do.

The third he had learned that morning.

The meeting was so secret that it had not been held in any government office, but in a private apartment in an undistinguished street north of the boulevard des Batignolles. There were several government men, an important building contractor, an Italian lighting engineer named Jacopozzi, and several others. He wondered why they had invited him. Perhaps because, these days, they thought of him as both a designer and a businessman. Whatever the reason, he was flattered that they trusted him.

They gathered in the dining room of the apartment. It was a representative of the prime minister himself who opened the meeting.

“Messieurs, we are here to consider a most important project, and I must ask you never to divulge what we are going to discuss.

“Today we believe that Paris may face a new and terrible threat. It is a threat that London has already faced, and it is a threat that will only grow with time. I am speaking, naturally, of aerial bombing.” He paused for effect. “In the three years since this war began, many aspects of the military effort have altered; but the transformation of war in the air has been astounding. When we began, there were a few planes, mostly for reconnaissance, and if bombs were used, they were usually grenades or adapted shells dropped by hand by the pilots or copilots of those small open planes.

“Now, however, the German Gotha bombers are large, they carry a payload of over two thousand pounds, and they can fly at over twenty thousand feet where it is hard, if not impossible, for our fighters to attack them.

“I need not tell anyone here the supreme importance of Paris—its history, its art and its culture, for France and for the world. Paris must be protected. But we are not so far from the German lines. Fleets of Gotha bombers, making night raids, night after night, could do appalling damage—for let us remember that we are speaking not only of the explosions, but of the fires that may follow them. We can fire up into the sky. Our gallant fighters can go up to tackle the bombers, but all the evidence so far suggests that large bombing raids would be hard to stop. And so, if we cannot stop them, we must deceive them.”

“Deceive them?” Marc was puzzled. So was everyone else, except the Italian Jacopozzi, who was grinning. And now it was the turn of another of the officials to unroll a large map of Paris on the dining table, and to address them.

“Aviators at night cannot see much on the ground. If there is a little moonlight, however, they can usually catch the glimmer reflected on a river, and they often navigate by this means.” He took a pointer and indicated a point on the map. “Here you can see the River Seine. And I direct your attention to a place about three miles north of the city. As you see, the Seine here displays a series of curves which closely mimic those it makes as it passes through Paris. As you also see, much of the area here is open fields. It would be much better, therefore, if the German bombs fell up here rather than on the city. Our intention is to invite the Germans to do exactly that.”

“Invite them?” Marc was confused.

“Even so, Monsieur Blanchard, and in the simplest way possible. Paris will miraculously move.” He smiled while his audience waited. “Messieurs, we are going to institute a total blackout in Paris itself, and then we are going to build a second Paris, a fake Paris, just to the north.”

“You’re going to build a fake city? The size of Paris?”

“Big enough to be mistaken for Paris at twenty thousand feet, yes.” The man spread his hands. “I am speaking of a stage set, messieurs. A Potemkin village, but a thousand times larger than anything the Russians ever dreamed of.”

“Made of what?”

“Wood and painted canvas, mostly. And lights.” He indicated the Italian. “Thanks to Monsieur Jacopozzi, thousands of lights.”

“You’re going to copy big buildings?”

“Naturally. Buildings that the enemy will be looking for. Buildings that they can see. The Gare du Nord, for instance.”

“And the Eiffel Tower?”

“Yes. That should really fool them.”

“I can precisely copy the lights of the Eiffel Tower,” Jacopozzi said enthusiastically. “You’ll never be able to tell the difference. They will see an illuminated city.”

“You’re insane,” said Marc, shaking his head. “This would be the most daring theatrical deception in the history of war.”

“Thank you,” the prime minister’s man said. “We thought that you might like it.”

Marc laughed.

“It’s daring. It has style,” he agreed. And then, after a little reflection, he paid the project the highest compliment that a Frenchman can pay: “
Ça, c’est vraiment français
: that is truly French.”

A general discussion ensued after that. There were all kinds of practical questions to consider. But it was agreed that he and Jacopozzi would look at the overall design together, and come up with further specific recommendations.

When the meeting ended, he decided to walk the short distance to Place de Clichy, past some of his old haunts, and then down to the office from there. Since he’d become involved in the family business at the start of the war, he hardly ever went up that way.

Passing a bar he used to know, he went in and ordered a coffee. The waiter who brought it to his table was a young man. Marc noticed that he hobbled slightly as he walked. Marc gazed around the bar.

Wartime Paris was a curious place. For the last three months of 1914, when so many people had fled, and the government itself had briefly left for Bordeaux, he had wondered if it would turn into a ghost town. But once the two armies had settled into their trench warfare, the government and most of the people had returned, and Parisian life had resumed, albeit quietly. Food was often short, but Les Halles and the local street markets were still supplied. Bars and restaurants still opened, and nighttime entertainment too.

Paris had three main functions now. From the military headquarters in Les Invalides, it directed the war. It was also the place to which the vast number of casualties were taken. All the great hospitals of the city
were full, aided by the American Hospital out at Neuilly, where American volunteers had taken over the entire local lycée as well, to provide beds for the French wounded.

And of course, it also provided rest and relaxation for the troops on leave from the front.

That meant large numbers of men, not only from every part of France, but from all over her colonies too. There were the colorful Zouave troops from Africa. Tirailleurs from Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, even Indochina. Men of every color, giving Paris a more international look than it usually wore.

In the far corner across from him, Marc watched two Zouaves talking quietly. It was a pity, he thought, that like everyone else, the dashing troops of France’s army of Africa had been obliged to abandon their bright uniforms and baggy trousers for duller khaki, but there was still something romantic about them as they smoked their long pipes.

He’d heard rumors of trouble in the army. The word was that a division or two had even refused to go back to the front line without some changes in their conditions, and that the army might be granting more leave. If so, there would be still more troops visiting Paris. The ladies of the night would have more work to do.

He turned his thoughts back to the fake Paris. Would it really work? Could the secret of it be kept from the Germans? He was just pondering this when the patron came over from the bar, and addressed him.

“Monsieur Blanchard? Do you remember me?”

Marc looked up at his face. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it at once. Then he did remember.

“You were the foreman when we were building the new rooms at Joséphine. You’d worked on the Eiffel Tower.”

“
Oui, monsieur
. I am Thomas Gascon. It’s my brother who owns this bar.”

“Dark-haired. Am I right? I used to come in here. Where is he now?”

“In the army.”

“At the front?”

“Not exactly. He’s in the quartermaster’s department. Supplies. He’s good at that.” Thomas did not add that he and his family had benefited from the army’s food supplies now and then, on Luc’s visits to them.

“You were a good foreman, I remember. Do you ever do any work of that kind now?”

“Not recently, monsieur. Not much on offer.” He grinned. “Unless someone’s wanting to build another Eiffel Tower.”

You have no idea, Marc thought, how close to the truth you are. But when work began, Thomas Gascon might be a good foreman to use. He’d remember him.

“You have a family, I think.”

“My wife and daughter are next door, in the restaurant. My son Robert, with the wooden leg, served you coffee.”

“Any other sons?”

“I had. Pierre was my younger son. We lost him at Verdun.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And your family, monsieur?”

“My parents are down at Fontainebleau, getting old. My sister is well. But my elder brother died three months ago.” He smiled sadly. “That is why I must go to the office now—like you, to keep the family business running.”

Thomas Gascon wouldn’t take any money for the coffee. Marc made a mental note to go to the restaurant sometime, and leave a tip.

Gérard. Dead. Even now he could scarcely believe it. He’d been in the office when it happened. A clerk, ashen-faced, had come into his office and led him down the passage to Gérard’s. His brother had been sitting at his desk—almost as he usually did, except that he was leaning back at a strange angle in his big chair. The stroke had obviously killed him quite suddenly. There had been no warning at all.

And Marc had been obliged to take over in his place.

Looking back, it seemed to him that from the first day Gérard had asked him to join him, his brother had had an inkling of what was coming. He’d taken care that, little as it interested him, Marc obtained a good idea how the wholesale business worked, who the suppliers were, how to treat them and the workings of the distribution process. Though Gérard controlled the finances, including those of the department store, Marc understood how all the accounts were put together and where all the information was kept. He was quite surprised to discover, after the first shock of Gérard’s death, that he knew exactly what to do.

For the last three months, he’d kept everything in good order. Not only that, he’d made his own investigations into every corner of the businesses,
just to make sure that some aspect of them didn’t suddenly take him unawares.

That was how, last week, he had made the two awful discoveries that had been haunting him ever since.

Gérard had known he’d discover those, too. In fact, Marc realized, he’d wanted him to.

He wondered what Aunt Éloïse would say when he told her.

She had changed remarkably little down the years. She used an ebony stick when she walked, but didn’t always bother to do even that. Her face remained smooth. She was as elegant at seventy as she had been at forty.

He’d offered to take her out to dinner, but she preferred to have a delicious little supper served in her own apartment. They dined under a small Manet and a Pissarro. He waited until the dessert before he told her.

“I have two pieces of bad news. The first is that I made a discovery in the accounts. It went back to early 1915, but I happened to find it when I was going through the records of one of our suppliers.”

“We owe money?”

“Not exactly. Worse. Gérard had dealings with a wholesaler up on the north coast. Dunkirk to be exact. They were supplying shipments of food to the French army.”

“What of it?”

“A huge shipment—potatoes, flour, all kinds of essentials—went missing. Apparently the Germans took them. But Gérard was paid all the same.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Except that he sold them to the Germans.”

“Are you sure?”

“There can be no doubt. But the Germans didn’t get them. He told them that the French army had captured the shipment. So the Germans paid him to get some more.”