The Pursuit of Pearls (19 page)

Suddenly Clara felt dizzy with the music, the colors, and the press of people. Speaking English, not to mention speaking her mind, had been intoxicating. But ditching her normally cautious persona, even for a few minutes, had left her feeling exposed and disoriented. Bidding good night to Epstein, she made her way up the narrow stairs and went to collect her coat.

The coat-check girl had a sharp face, with kohl-lined eyes and heavily lacquered lips. She was wearing a modest little outfit with white collar and cuffs, but the modesty extended only as far as the briefest of skirts and a pair of fishnet stockings. As she handed over the coat, she gave Clara a conspiratorial wink. “You have an admirer, mademoiselle.”

“I shouldn't think so.”

After the talk of Joe Kennedy, Clara was in no mood for admirers.

“He was certainly very interested in you.”

“Who was?”

The girl gave a slow, crimson smile.

“A gentleman. He left just now. You'll catch him if you hurry. If you want to catch him, that is.”

“I'm pretty sure I don't.”

“Shame. He looked nice.”

Was this how all Parisiennes behaved? thought Clara. As though they were duty bound to establish an assignation? Sex, and the possibility of it, was never far from their thoughts. Perhaps that was the unspoken code of Paris.

The girl leaned over the counter with a surge of sweat and perfume. Her breath smelled of French tobacco and garlic. “I didn't hear him speak, but he was foreign, I think.”

A sudden spark of excitement leapt in Clara. A foreign man had been looking at her. Could it possibly be Leo? Was that sense of him in the hotel a premonition? Some kind of subliminal awareness that he was near?

“If he didn't speak, how could you tell he was foreign?”

The girl pursed her lips into a magnificent pout at her expertise being called into question and gave a shrug that expressed her absolute conviction. “I know a Frenchman when I see one, and this man was certainly not French.”

It had to be him! Surely this was why Major Grand had set up a meeting in Paris. He wanted to direct her to the place where Leo could be found.

“What did he look like?” Clara's heart was racing

“He was wearing a loden coat. No Frenchman wears a coat like that.”

But Leo did.

“There was a look about him,” the girl added. “He was interested in you. A woman can tell.”

Trembling with excitement, Clara bundled on her jacket and dropped a
pourboire
into the saucer. “Which way did he go?”

“He turned left at the top of the stairs. Heading towards the Boulevard du Montparnasse. It was a few minutes ago. You'll have to hurry if you want to catch him.”

As Clara emerged from the narrow stairway, the raw night air hit her face. She looked the length of the street, but there was no familiar figure of Leo waiting on the corner. Even from a distance, she felt sure she would recognize that brush of red-gold hair, that lean, sinewy frame, the hands, as always, plunged deep in his pockets. Decisively, she turned towards the Boulevard du Montparnasse and onto the Boulevard Raspail.

Paris at night, without a map to guide her and only the memory of a single previous visit to orient herself, was a chiaroscuro world. The City of Light was unrecognizable in darkness. Restaurants were beginning to close, and shadows piled on shadows, deepening like layers of indigo gauze. Lamps cast pools of light on the pavements, but between the high-sided buildings, narrow alleyways receded into blackness. Clara had memorized the route back to the Rue Jacob, but how, in this darkened city, amid unfamiliar streets, could she even begin to look for a single man in a loden coat? Should she turn left, or right? Her only thought was to head in the direction of her hotel. If Leo had found her at the bar, perhaps he also knew where she was staying.

In the Latin Quarter, faint traces of jazz leaked out of the basement bars and the bright neon of La Coupole hung in the still night air. She passed the vast shadows of the Luxembourg Gardens, scanning the streets constantly. The ghost of Leo was around every corner. Memory played tricks, so that several times she thought she saw a familiar building only to discover, when she came closer, that she had taken an entirely wrong turn.

At last she saw him. A figure in a loden coat and hat, striding swiftly, a hundred meters away. Too far to hear her if she called. But almost as soon as she had glimpsed him, he was swallowed behind a passing van. She hurried on, her heart bursting with excitement. It was odd to be the pursuer rather than the pursued. She was so accustomed to the idea of surveillance that she had thought herself often into the shadow's mind. How to hang back when approaching the quarry. Never get too close, yet never lose sight of the target. But this chase was different. The figure ahead of her seemed determined to evade her pursuit.

Towards St.-Germain, as the severe geometry of the mellow stone buildings gave way to a labyrinth of cobbled streets, following became trickier. Clara had lied when she told Goebbels that she didn't need spectacles. In truth, it was getting harder to see distant objects at night. In the darkness the faces of passersby loomed dim and indistinct, like figures in a painting by Edvard Munch. A drunk stumbled into a doorway. She turned her ankle on the cobbles—her heels were too high—and wished passionately that she had not chosen to wear the silk dress, now damp and flecked with dirt. Still she plowed on, turning back once or twice to reorient herself until, eventually, she drew to a halt beside the shuttered grille of a shop. It was plain that the man she was following was lost from sight, and what was more, she had no idea where she was. Despondently, she decided to retrace her steps to the nightclub. At the very least there she could find a taxi and return to the hotel in the Rue Jacob.

Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught it. The whisk of a coat around a corner. She glanced down a narrow alleyway, no wider than an arm's span, and saw him again, slipping like a blade of shadow until, at the end, the view opened up to the broad span of the Seine and the man before her had vanished.

He must have crossed the river. Clara walked swiftly across the Pont des Arts towards the classical façade of the Louvre and into the Cour Carrée, the magnificent cobbled courtyard in the western wing. Then, at last, she saw him. Leaning against the pillar, his exaggerated shadow lying diagonal along the ground, his coat now slung elegantly like a cloak over his shoulders. As he cupped his hand to light a cigarette, the flame leapt up to his face and she realized that it wasn't Leo at all.

“Fräulein Vine. What a surprise to see you here.”

It was the handsome, sardonic face of Conrad Adler.

T
he surprise was enough to stun her for a moment. The breath tore at her lungs from the speed of her long pursuit, and the blood was still pounding in her ears. Shock and disappointment that the man she had pursued was so different from the one she longed to see robbed her of speech. For a second the image of Leo still imprinted itself on her vision, so that she had to shake her head to dismiss it before focusing on the man who genuinely stood in front of her.

Obersturmbannführer Conrad Adler. He was wearing a smart navy suit rather than his uniform, and the rigid perfection she had observed in him before seemed exaggerated in the lamplight, making the curve of his jaw and the ruthlessly carved planes of his face stand out in sharp relief. She slowed as she approached him. “What are you doing here?”

Even to her own ears it sounded curt. Although the urbane smile remained in place, she sensed that she had caught him unawares. Both of them were dissembling.

“I might ask the same of you. When we met you didn't mention that you were going to be in Paris. We could have shared the journey.”

She ignored the invitation to explain herself.

“So why are you here?”

“I'm visiting the Louvre.”

“It's closed at night.”

He took a draw of his cigarette and exhaled a slow jet of smoke into the shadows.

“As a matter of fact, you're wrong. It appears to be open for business.”

He pointed to a truck, its back doors open and a ramp leading up. An arc light illuminated a path where large wooden boxes were being wheeled. A team of workmen moved swiftly, silently, stacking a succession of crates. It was not hard to guess their contents. Under cover of darkness, the Louvre was removing its treasured paintings, steadily and methodically.

“Anyway, it's fortuitous that I should run into you just now.” Adler's tone was conversational, as though they had bumped into each other on the Ku'damm rather than engaged in a close pursuit through a maze of Paris streets. “Because I've been finding out all about you. Researching you.”

“Researching?” she repeated mildly, attempting to suppress her alarm. “I can't imagine why.”

“But it was your idea. I was following your advice. You suggested I might be out of touch with popular culture, so I decided to watch all of your films.
Black Roses, The Pilot's Wife, Es leuchten die Sterne
. Now that I've seen everything you've appeared in, I feel I know you so much better.”

“You actually watched my films?”

“Every one. Ask me anything. In fact”—he drew closer—“why don't we talk about it over dinner? You're certainly dressed for it.” His eyes trawled the length of her blue silk gown. “I know a place that I think you might like.”

In one way, there was nothing Clara wanted less than dinner with this Nazi official and his harsh, derisive sense of humor. Yet she hadn't eaten since the café that afternoon, and her senses sharpened treacherously at the thought of what would no doubt be a fine French restaurant. The words of Major Grand rang again in her ears.
Any way we have into the Foreign Office. It's urgent, I don't need to remind you.

Conversation with a Foreign Office official, a man close to von Ribbentrop, who might be expected to know his mind and the chances of Nazi-Soviet negotiations, could be the opportunity she so desperately needed.

And yet…what did Adler want? Was it her company or something more? And if he had been watching her in Dingo Bar, had he overheard her incautious comments to Jack Kennedy?

She summoned a cheerful smile. “Well, I
am
awfully hungry. And it's not too late. Where's this place you know?”

“It's called Lapérouse. It's just across the river. Along the Quai des Grands-Augustins.”

SHE HAD FULLY EXPECTED
Adler to frequent the Ritz, Maxim's, or Fouquet's, one of the big-statement venues that Nazi officers favored, the kind of place that spelled out
Paris
in neon letters to the wide-eyed foreigner, with a trip afterwards to the Folies-Bergères. Yet Lapérouse was clearly a place for connoisseurs. The walls and ceiling were painted with eighteenth-century pastorals of gods and shepherds. Through a swing door Clara glimpsed a floor-to-ceiling rack of bottles, their dusty bottoms gleaming like blackberries. Ancient gas lamps hung over tables laid with starched napkins and packed with diners.

As if reading her thoughts, Adler leaned closer. “Most Germans who come to Paris make for the obvious destinations, but I like this place. It was created by a man named Lefèvre, who kept wines for Louis the Fourteenth. Flaubert, Zola, Victor Hugo, and George Sand all came here. Escoffier used to run the kitchen. In the back there are private rooms with couches where French aristocrats take their mistresses. A charming idea, don't you think?”

He helped her with her coat, lingering a fraction too long as he let his hand slip down the silk of her dress. When the waiter showed them to a table in a small alcove, she glanced at her reflection in an ancient, mottled mirror and adjusted the clip in her hair, then chided herself for her vanity. Why on earth was she bothering to look her best?

Although Adler spoke flawless French, he inspired the same chilly deference in restaurant staff that was directed at Germans throughout the city. Beneath a surface of unctuous servility, the familiar French superiority remained. The manager brought a bottle with a sepia label, and Adler gestured for him to pour it for Clara. She took a sip, astonished at the mellow warmth that slipped down her throat, redolent of chocolate and spice.

He smiled at her reaction.

“It's a good burgundy. See the way it has legs?” He pointed to the drip of wine, slowly funneling its way down the glass. “A single drop is probably worth more than a month of most people's salaries.”

“Please don't spend money on my account.”

“Why not? If it gives me pleasure.”

She wondered how old Adler was. Mid-forties, she guessed. The steeliness of his Aryan looks and silvered hair marked him out from the more sallow French around him. His gray, metallic eyes reminded her of the surface of a lake, sometimes flat and impersonal, occasionally bottomless. He looked so different from the other Nazis she knew. Unlike Goebbels, with his endless sessions beneath the sunlamp, or Goering, whose efforts on an exercise machine were hopelessly futile, Adler glowed with health and self-assurance.

“That's a beautiful dress you're wearing. I hope the occasion was worth it.”

“It was, thank you.”

“It's my favorite color. Prussian blue.”

“I didn't realize you were an expert on haute couture.”

“I'm not. Prussian blue is famous. It was created by a Berlin chemist in 1706, and because we know the date, we can use it to authenticate paintings. There are numerous apparently genuine old masters that have been betrayed by the presence of Prussian blue on the canvas. Painters love it. Picasso could not have managed his Blue Period without it. You can see it in Van Gogh's
Starry Night
. As it happens, I can also see it in your eyes.”

She couldn't help a wry smile at such obvious flirtation. Perhaps it was the fact that they were not in Germany, or the delicious aromas of the cooking rising around them, but she found herself relaxing.

“That's a first. No one has ever described my eyes as Prussian blue before.”

“With a few flaws.”

“You spoiled it.”

“Not at all. Everything's more beautiful for having flaws.”

The waiter appeared and Adler gestured towards Clara. “Duck with olives. Or would you like lobster? I haven't had lobster for such a long time. The Führer hates to think of them suffering.”

She shook her head. The scale of this hypocrisy seemed too great, just then, to merit comment.

Once he had ordered, he leaned back in his seat and surveyed her, deadpan. “I've been longing to know. What news of
Love Strictly Forbidden
?”

There was a curl of soft sarcasm in his voice. Despite herself, Clara was nettled. “Actually, I'm starting work on a new film with Leni Riefenstahl.”

“Now that lady even I have heard of.”

“It's about the Ahnenerbe.”

His eyes widened at this information. “Himmler's organization?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn't have thought that was a fit subject for entertainment.”

“Fräulein Riefenstahl thinks otherwise.”

“And what do you think?”

Privately, Clara agreed with Adler. Memories of the rows of skulls and the fusty old books in the Ahnenerbe library came back to her. The preoccupations of the Ahnenerbe didn't seem at all the right subject to ignite the enthusiasm of a nation, let alone to showcase the dubious glories of Nazi Germany. But if anyone could make an epic out of them, it was Leni Riefenstahl. She had, after all, managed to transform the Nuremberg Party rally into two hours of compulsive viewing.

“I'm sure Fräulein Riefenstahl knows what she's doing.”

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing further.

The food was astounding. It had been ages since Clara had tasted rich, creamy dishes that didn't have the telltale tang of gasoline about them. Between courses a sorbet was brought to cleanse the palate. She had to remind herself to stick to her task.

“You didn't explain. I mean really explain, what you're doing here,” she said.

“Nor did you.”

“That's easy. I was being photographed for
Vogue
.”

Adler cupped his face in one hand, a cigarette poised between his fingers, and scrutinized her.

“Were you? I hope they've done you justice. It would be hard to capture a face like yours.”

She laughed. “Actually, this photographer didn't want to photograph my face at all.”

“Shame. Now I've watched your films I see how it responds to light. It changes entirely. I'm almost sorry they invented talking pictures. Your face would have done so well in silent films.”

“Are you saying, Herr Adler, that I'd look better if I kept quiet?”

Now he laughed. “That applies to most women, but perhaps not you.” He stroked a pensive finger down his wineglass. “I'd like to feel your face beneath my fingers. I would start there and proceed downwards.”

The urbanity of his manner was entirely at odds with the audacity of the remark. Despite herself, her pulse quickened.

“Don't mistake me. All I mean is that beauty can't be fully appreciated through the eyes. It takes the other senses too—the sense of touch, taste, smell, to experience another person. And you have a particular glamour about you. A dangerous glamour.”

“I don't see why glamour has to be dangerous.”

He leaned forward. “Glamour is dangerous because it distracts the eye. It's like a jewel. It sparkles and dazzles and prevents us from seeing what is really there. Even the word itself has associations of enchantment and magic.
Glanz
. It means illusion. It implies radiance or luster, flashiness designed to distract. Ask Doktor Goebbels. He knows all about it. It's not by chance that his newspapers leaven every line of soldiers with pictures of actresses.”

“If I did have any glamour, which I dispute, I'm sure you'd see through it.”

“I would certainly hope so. I pride myself on seeing through things.”

He reached over and touched the pearls at her throat with a fingertip. “These are good quality. I like women wearing pearls.”

The unexpected contact caused Clara to flinch.

“A pearl has a character. It starts with a tiny piece of grit, deep in the heart of the oyster. The oyster is troubled by this, yet gradually it learns how to resist. It builds up its armor, layer upon layer, until at last, in the secret darkness, a pearl is produced. An object of total beauty, with a piece of grit at its heart. Perhaps that's what I like, the thought that beneath all that beauty lies a tough, unglamorous little piece of grit.”

What was he saying? Clara ducked her head to avoid his eyes and watched the candlelight flickering in the bowl of her wineglass.

He asked, “Do you collect jewelry?”

She laughed. “Hardly.”

“I'm surprised. Most women I know are dripping in jewels and furs.”

“Then I'm obviously not like most women you know.”

“That much is plain.” His eyes swept over her with forensic precision, as though monitoring her for any further deviations from the norm.

“I think, perhaps, you remind me of a Vermeer painting. Vermeer loved women in pearls, though of course the pearls he painted weren't real at all. They were made of glass, because the price of pearls was too high.”

“They look so convincing.”

“That's because Vermeer understood light. As well as any Ufa cameraman. Better, no doubt. He saw how light falls on a face and the fold of a gown. How it sometimes sparkles, and sometimes glimmers or gleams. He was skilled at perspective, too. Some Vermeer canvases have tiny holes in them where he has stuck a pin so that he could attach strings to help the line of perspective.”

“You seem to know a lot about him.”

He refilled her glass and handed it to her, his fingertips skimming hers deliberately.

“He was my specialty. The subject of my doctorate. He left us only thirty-five paintings, yet such a great legacy. The Führer loves him too, above all others. He believes the tradition of Northern Renaissance realism will be the building block of our new Germanic empire. He has already bought Vermeer's
The
Art of Painting
for his museum in Linz, and he paid more for it than he has paid for any painting ever.”

Adler paused as the waiter brought a dish of desserts, and he pushed them towards her. It was an
assiette
—a miniature version of every dessert on the menu—wild strawberries sprinkled with white wine, tiny diamonds of marzipan shaped into jewellike petit fours, and fruit tarts with scalloped edges. Clara picked a truffle and felt her head swim as the unaccustomed rich chocolate swirled in her mouth.