The Black Swan of Paris

by Karen Robards

“Genevieve.” He caught her hands, carried them to his mouth one at a time and kissed them. Then he leaned in to press a warm and possessive kiss to her cheek. “Welcome to Eber Schloss. I am honored to have you here at my poor home.”

  “Your ‘poor home,’ as you call it, is breathtakingly beautiful,” Genevieve said as he continued to hold her hands. “I am surprised you can ever bring yourself to leave.”

  “Sometimes it is a wrench, I will admit, but I must go where duty calls.” He glanced past her, and his smile faltered. A barely perceptible tightening of the skin around his eyes announced his awareness of Max’s presence even before he continued with “Ah, Monsieur Bonet. I am of course honored to have you, too.”

  “It is I who am honored to be here,” Max said. A glance told Genevieve that he was looking doubtfully at the long flight of stairs while leaning heavily on his stick. He was, she reflected, very, very good at what he did. While she hoped, no, prayed, that her performance would be good enough, certainly he was a better actor than she was. Her nerves were already frayed.

  “Max will be playing the piano for me.” Genevieve’s tone was gay as she freed her hands, only to tuck one into Wagner’s arm. She waved a vague hand at the others. “Emmy and I are to duet, Otto is to tune what I am sure is your dreadfully out-of-tune instrument, and Berthe, as always, takes care of me. I have such a show prepared for you! You will be pleased, I promise.”

  “I am looking forward to it more than I can say. Please, come inside where it’s warm.” He was already starting up the steps with her when his attention was caught by—something. Genevieve followed the direction of his gaze to find that he was looking at the admittedly truly impressive amount of luggage Lutz was lifting from the trunk.

  Her heart started thumping so loudly she was afraid he might hear it. If he were to order a search of her bags...

  “You will be thinking that I’ve come to stay a month!” Squeezing his arm, she laughed. “Most everything in there is for the show, of course. I have costumes, and cosmetics and props—just you wait. Because I wanted this performance to be special. Is there someplace where they can be taken? A bedroom, perhaps...somewhere quiet where I can also rest between the rehearsal and the performance?”

  “Of course. I’ve already ordered that overnight rooms be prepared for you and your maid, although of course more can be found to accommodate the rest of your party. Anything else you need, you have only to ask.” He looked at Lutz, raised his voice. “Have Mademoiselle Dumont’s things brought in. Schneider—he is my butler,” he added in an aside to Genevieve before raising his voice to call to Lutz again, “will tell you where to put them. Tell him to find rooms for the other guests, as well.”

  As they continued on up the stairs, Wagner’s entire focus was on her, just as she’d intended for it to be.

  Her luggage did indeed contain costumes, cosmetics and props. They were packed in alongside enough sticks of C-4 explosive to, as Otto put it, bring the whole bloody mountain down.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “Remember, you end ‘Embrasse-moi’ with a glissando—make sure it’s loud so Otto can hear it—then stand up, take a bow and leave the room during the blackout between songs. Do not dawdle. Go into the anteroom, out the side door, down the stairs. The bomb will blow exactly four minutes after the last note of the glissando. By then you want to be well away.” Max’s voice was low. His hands were warm on her bare upper arms. They were in the bedroom that had been allotted to her. He stood behind her, handsome in his tux, looking at her through the dressing table mirror. She was ready for the opening number, wearing her gold-fringed flapper dress that showed a lot of leg. A headband studded with glittering gold butterflies was in her hair. “If anything goes wrong, if for some reason you’re prevented from leaving the room, go right into the next number. Sing those first notes loud, for God’s sake.”

  Genevieve was so nervous she felt cold all over.

  “Understand?” he said.

  “Yes.” Her voice was surprisingly strong given how shaky she felt inside. Their eyes met through the mirror. He smiled at her.

  The concert was scheduled to start precisely at 9:00 p.m. It was almost that now. Wagner and his guests would have finished dinner. She had declined his invitation to join them on the grounds that she needed to rehearse and get ready for her show, and had instead, along with Max and the rest, consumed a light meal as they worked. At that moment the guests should be settling into chairs that had been placed in what Wagner called the Knight’s Hall high up in the east turret.

  Max squeezed her arms, then turned back to the others. For these last few minutes before they went into action, they’d all gathered in her bedroom. Besides the dressing table, it was furnished with a large ornately carved bed, a washstand complete with basin and pitcher (the bathroom was down the hall), a large wardrobe in lieu of a closet, and a fainting couch. The color scheme was deep green and maroon. Her suitcases were neatly arranged beside the wardrobe, which held only a few things. The costumes needed (and not needed) for the various numbers were already hung in the small anteroom adjacent to the Knight’s Hall. The bedrooms were lower down in the schloss and too far from the Knight’s Hall to make any of them practical as changing rooms. They were, however, a good place to shelter from the coming explosion.

  “You all know the plan.” Max looked from one to the other: Otto, Berthe, Emmy. Dressed for their roles, they waited near the door. “Except for Otto, who’ll be in the room beneath the Knight’s Hall waiting to press the detonator, we all stay with Genevieve until our parts in the show are played. Berthe, you go in first and pass out programs.” Forty copies of the list of songs for the night’s entertainment had been prepared, typed by Berthe on a machine in a small office off the schloss’s kitchen; “Embrasse-moi” was the third of a supposed ten numbers. By then, they felt that the program’s staging, which included blackouts between songs, should have become familiar enough to the audience that they would think nothing of one more blackout. With their program in front of them to let them know how much more was to come, there was no reason they all should not remain happily seated in anticipation of the next song. “Then you leave and start making your way down toward the kitchen. If anyone challenges you, tell them that you’re fetching a drink for Mademoiselle Dumont, and no, they can’t fetch it for you because only you can prepare it in the way she likes.” Berthe nodded. They’d been over the plan before. Multiple times. “Emmy, you sing the first number with Genevieve, then you, too, leave and start making your way down to join Berthe. Same excuse if challenged. I’ll accompany you and Genevieve on the piano, then accompany Genevieve alone as she sings the next number. Then I leave and get into position. Genevieve, you accompany yourself to ‘Embrasse-moi,’ end on a loud glissando, take a bow and leave. Otto, you wait four minutes from the time she ends the glissando and hit the detonator. We know the baroness is being held directly below the kitchen, in a cell off the west corridor of the dungeon. We three want to be in place to extract her at the exact moment when the bomb goes off. There should be enough noise and confusion then to allow us to get in, get the baroness and get out with a minimum of trouble. We rendezvous in this room, pick up Genevieve and head for the cable car staging area, where Otto, having by that time gotten the cable cars up and running, will be waiting. Then we get the hell off this mountain.” He looked around. “Any questions?”

  “Just one. Why do I have to wear lederhosen?” Otto asked plaintively. It was, Genevieve knew, his attempt to lighten the atmosphere, which hummed with tension.

  “Because it was the only outfit that could be found to fit you. Because it makes you look dopey.” Berthe’s response was tart. She’d been in charge of scrounging up something for Otto to wear—no one had thought to bring a costume for him. Looking at Otto, Genevieve had to smile. He looked like a wizened German elf.

  “Any other questions?” Max asked. No one had any. “Then let’s go
.”

  As the others headed out, he caught Genevieve by the elbow, waited until they were alone, pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  She kissed him back as if she were afraid she might never again get the chance—which, indeed, she was.

  “You get the hell out of that room right after the glissando,” he said in a low, fierce voice as he let her go. Not the most loverly goodbye, maybe, but the sentiment was there.

  Her heart skipped a beat. If this went wrong, and it could very easily go wrong, he could die, she could die, they all could die.

  “Max—”

  “Tell me later.”

  With a hand in the small of her back, he pushed her out into the hallway in front of him, then stopped to close the door. Farther down the hall, Emmy, in a fringed silver dress that was a close twin to the one she wore, had stopped and was looking back in search of her. Genevieve caught up. Her sister grabbed her hand.

  “You look white as a ghost,” Emmy said. “You always did get nervous when you had something important to do.”

  “I can’t help it. I still do.”

  Emmy squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, bébé. We’ll pull this off.”

  The pounding of her heart and the knot in her stomach might be telling her otherwise, but Genevieve said, “I know we will,” and walked toward the waiting hall full of Nazis, holding her sister’s hand.

  * * *

  The Knight’s Hall was a large, round stone-walled chamber cut straight across at the front like an egg with its top sliced off. The gorgeous Bösendorfer Imperial grand piano was located on a small platform in front of that straight wall. Two doors allowing access to the room were also located on the straight wall, one on either side a few meters behind the piano. Two soldiers each stood formal guard in front of the doors. In the quarter-round lobby area outside the doors, more soldiers provided security for the high-level personnel in the room. Medieval in appearance, the Knight’s Hall had a high vaulted ceiling and six narrow uncurtained windows through which Genevieve, as she awaited her introduction, could see nothing but black, which told her how dark the night outside must be.

  Lutz had been given the honors. He stood now at the front of the stage, his back to her as he looked out at the room that had grown quiet for him. His face was pale under the lights, and she realized that having the attention of so many superior officers and high-level officials on him was causing him stress.

  Still, his voice was loud and commanding as he made the introduction. “As you know, Obergruppenführer Wagner has arranged a very special treat for tonight. Coming to us straight from her smashingly successful show in the most famous city in the world, the city that is renowned for offering the very best in entertainment, please allow me to introduce for your pleasure the incomparable Mademoiselle Genevieve Dumont, the Black Swan of Paris!”

  Gesturing to where she waited in the shadows, Lutz retired from the stage while the audience clapped wildly.

  Taking a deep breath, Genevieve walked out into the light, waving as she crossed to one of the two standing microphones set up in front of the piano.

  The room was cold, but she was sweating bullets. Behind her, Max was already seated at the piano pounding out the intro. Entering from the other side of the room, Emmy arrived at a second microphone at the same time she did.

  They’d rehearsed this. Genevieve knew how it was supposed to go. But she hadn’t counted on how standing in front of this particular audience would make her feel.

  Looking at the rows of very important men in their Nazi uniforms smiling as they applauded, she knew she should have felt strong, determined, justified. But her stomach was a pit, her heart pounded like a drum and her pulse was going haywire.

  The mood in the room was already celebratory. The audience had been jubilant about something—she’d heard several satisfied mentions of Pas-de-Calais and witnessed a number of the guests clapping each other on the back—even before she’d entered, and her appearance had incited them into a roar of appreciation.

  Not important enough to rate a seat, Lutz stood along the wall with a cadre of what she assumed must be other similarly situated aides-de-camp. A few more rank-and-file soldiers than were supposed to be there lurked just inside the doors, sneaking in, she guessed, to watch the show. In front of her, the high-level audience cheering from the seats seemed to stretch out forever. What she and Max and the others were doing was important, necessary, even good: she needed no convincing of that. But the knowledge that in less than an hour nearly all the people in this room would be dead, and she was going to play a part in killing them, chilled her to her soul.

  Max hit her cue.

  “Paris sera toujours Paris...” she sang jauntily, with Emmy chiming in just as they had rehearsed. The two of them shimmied and high-stepped and in general put on quite a show, and when they finished, the loudly appreciative audience was on its feet.

  Then came the blackout. The soldier Otto had put in charge of the light switch timed it perfectly (the Germans were nothing if not punctual). When the lights came back on, Emmy was gone. Genevieve, in a different costume, was seated beside Max at the piano. Together they played and sang.

  Finally, with Max gone, accompanying herself on the piano, she started “Embrasse-moi.” Alone for this final number, she shivered a little as her fingers hit the keys. If her playing was gingerly at first, it quickly grew in confidence. Get through it, she told herself grimly, and that’s what she did. There’d been no outcry, no questions raised, nothing at all said or apparently thought as first Emmy and then Max had left the room and not returned. All was going as planned, and she knew she should have been feeling heartened. Looking out at the audience, she saw Wagner watching proudly from the front row. The high-ranking officers surrounding him, their medals and various insignia glittering in the light of the overhead chandeliers, smiled and drank and in general appeared to be having a marvelous time. She reminded herself once again that what she and Max and the others were doing would strike a terrible blow into the very heart of the Nazi leadership.

  It could shorten the war, and that could save thousands upon thousands of lives.

  Her heart still knocked. Sweat still trickled down her spine. She said a quick prayer for God to have mercy on their souls. Then she hit the glissando. Played the final notes with extra oomph.

  Stood up, took a bow. The audience jumped to its feet. She blew kisses to them.

  On his feet, clapping with loud enthusiasm, Wagner caught her eyes, held them, smiled broadly at her.

  The blackout fell. Quaking, she hurried out, past the sentries that stood guard at the doors, into the anteroom, where she kept on going out the side door and down the narrow, curving stone stairs.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our deaths...

  She was three flights down, rushing along the labyrinth of corridors that led to her bedroom, when the beautiful Bösendorfer piano, which Otto had earlier stuffed full of C-4, blew.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The force of the blast knocked Genevieve to her knees. The schloss shuddered like a dog shaking off water. The sound was apocalyptic. Her ears rang as she staggered to her feet and ran, closing her mind to what the blast meant—all the men in that room instantly dead. Screams, shouts, a terrible rushing roar—fire, that sound was fire—followed her.

  * * *

  The explosion roused Lillian, shook the stone wall from which she hung, filled the cold dank air with grit and smoke and a hideous burning smell that, in the aftermath of what she had endured, terrified her to her bone marrow. Limp, disfigured, despairing in mind and soul, she was in so much pain from what the Nazi torturer had done to her eye—her poor blinded, destroyed eye!—that the other pain, the searing agony of the burns to her face, her swollen, damaged mouth, her bruises and broken bones, was pushed into the background.

  “We’re not f
inished, you and I,” Wagner had said when they’d brought her around from the faint she’d fallen into after he’d pressed that red-hot blade against her closed lid. It had burned through her flesh with the smell of scorching meat, while she screamed and did her best to fight the restraints that held her and then fainted. Restored to consciousness, she was aware enough to know that she was still manacled to the wall, aware enough to feel it when he grabbed her hair and tilted her face up so that he could examine his handiwork, aware enough to hear him. “I am interested to know what else you can tell me. And you still have one good eye.”

  He’d released her hair then; her head had dropped to loll limply forward. Inwardly she’d seethed with hate even as, outwardly, fear wrung a shudder from her.

  “I must go now,” Wagner told her. “But later I’ll return and we’ll continue. Enjoy what’s left of your sight while you can, Baroness.”

  He’d gone. Still manacled to the wall, she’d succumbed to the terror and the pain and shivered and sobbed and sunk into the nightmare-filled semiconsciousness from which the blast roused her.

  Now she lifted her head to the sounds of shouts and pounding feet. The watery, blurred vision in her one remaining eye allowed her glimpses of her captors running past the closed door of the room she was imprisoned in. The door had a glass window in the top, and though the figures beyond it were little more than shapes, she could tell they were gray male shapes—German soldiers.

  At the sound of gunfire, Lillian tensed.

  More shouts, screams, all against the backdrop of a series of muffled booms, a distant roaring. The swirling cloud of gray dust had settled, covering everything. The smell of burning, so terrifying to her now, was strong and growing stronger. The distant roar she could hear—what could that be but a huge and growing fire?

  My God, will they leave me to burn alive?