There was a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne in the icebox. He opened it and poured some into a crystal flute. Then, with a feeling that life was good, he sat down at his desk to read his mail.
There was a letter from his wife, Waltraud.
My beloved Dieter, I am so sorry we will not be together on your fortieth birthday.
Dieter had forgotten his birthday. He looked at the date on his Cartier desk clock. It was June 3. He was forty years old today. He poured another glass of champagne to celebrate.
In the envelope from his wife were two other missives. His seven-year-old daughter, Margarete, known as Mausi, had drawn a picture of him in uniform standing by the Eiffel Tower. In the picture, he was taller than the tower: so children magnified their fathers. His son, Rudi, ten years old, had written a grown-up letter, carefully rounded letters in dark blue ink:
My dear Papa,
I am doing well in school although Dr. Richter’s classroom has been bombed. Fortunately it was nighttime and the school was empty.
Dieter closed his eyes in pain. He could not bear the thought of bombs falling on the city where his children lived. He cursed the murderers of the RAF, even though he knew German bombs had fallen on British schoolchildren.
He looked at the phone on his desk, contemplating trying to call home. It was difficult to get through: the French phone system was overloaded, and military traffic had priority, so you could wait hours for a personal call to be connected. All the same, he decided to try. He felt a sudden longing to hear the voices of his children and reassure himself that they were still alive.
He reached for the phone. It rang before he touched it. He picked it up. “Major Franck here.”
“This is Lieutenant Hesse.”
Dieter’s pulse quickened. “You have found Felicity Clairet?”
“No. But something almost as good.”
CHAPTER 36
FLICK HAD BEEN to the Ritz once, when she was a student in Paris before the war. She and a girlfriend had put on hats and makeup, gloves and stockings, and walked through the door as if they did it every day. They had sauntered along the hotel’s internal arcade of shops, giggling at the absurd prices of scarves and fountain pens and perfume. Then they had sat in the lobby, pretending they were meeting someone who was late, and criticized the outfits of the women who came there to tea. They themselves had not dared to order so much as a glass of water. In those days, Flick had saved every spare penny for cheap seats at the Com‚die Fran‡aise.
Since the occupation began, she had heard that the owners were attempting to run the hotel as normally as possible, even though many of the rooms had been taken over permanently by top Nazis. She had no gloves or stockings today, but she had powdered her face and set her beret at a jaunty angle, and she just had to hope that some of the hotel’s wartime patrons would be forced into similar compromises.
Lines of gray military vehicles and black limousines were lined up outside the hotel in the Place Vend“me. On the facade of the building, six blood red Nazi banners flapped boastfully in the breeze. A commissionaire in top hat and red trousers looked doubtfully at Flick and Ruby. “You can’t come in,” he said.
Flick was in a light blue suit, very creased, and Ruby in a navy frock and a man’s raincoat. They were not dressed to dine at the Ritz. Flick tried to imitate the hauteur of a French woman dealing with an irritating inferior. Putting her nose in the air, she said, “What is the matter?”
“This entrance is reserved for the top brass, Madame. Even German colonels can’t come in this way. You have to go around to the rue Cambon and use the back door.”
“As you wish,” Flick said with an air of weary courtesy, but in truth she was pleased he had not told them they were underdressed. She and Ruby walked quickly around the block and found the rear entrance.