Treasure of Saint-Lazare

by John Pearce

  “As you can imagine, the café owner would tell us precisely nothing. He will go to jail for life for the murder but we won’t learn anything more about it. Eddie, maybe you’ve had better luck. Did you learn anything from old Jacques?”

  “Quite a lot,” Eddie said. “We know now that Erich’s father brought the painting and six wooden cases of gold bars from Krakow to Paris on behalf of Hans Frank, and that he delivered five of them plus the painting to a collaborator, an old Count who lived in the seventeenth. Getting that much took quite a long time and quite a lot of persuasion, mainly on Aurélie’s part.

  “But the most significant followup information came just today. Aurélie, why don’t you explain what you found.”

  She detailed her conversation with Jerôme Fontainebleu, including his view that the treasure was probably hidden in the abandoned second basement under the apartment building.

  “I know Jerôme, or at least I did once, and as I recall he was always pretty straight. But some of his co-workers aren’t, so we’d better act quickly just in case they get wind of what might be there,” Philippe said.

  The plan he outlined was elegant in its simplicity. “If I go up the chain of command and tell them we think we’ve found millions of Euros worth of Nazi treasure the bureaucracy will be all over us and there’s a huge chance the delay will let someone get ahead of us. On the other hand, if we go into the building using a slightly misleading but not illegal subterfuge, we can find out if the treasure is there for someone to take. If it is, I’ll have uniformed officers secure the building and let the bureaucracy do its work. If it’s not, we won’t have raised any unreasonable hopes.”

  He proposed to contact his friend the chief fire inspector and ask that an inspector go to the apartment building the next day for a safety inspection. He would have a larger entourage than usual, but it shouldn’t raise suspicions too much.

  “Most people have no idea how much power the fire inspectors have in a city like Paris,” he said. “Basically, they can go anywhere for any reason so long as there’s a reasonable concern about public safety. We have so many people crowded together that, otherwise, we’d have a terrible risk of fire deaths. They are bad enough as it is.

  “Is that OK with everyone?” No one disagreed.

  “Good. Then let’s have our dessert and coffee, and plan to meet at the Rome métro station at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Aurélie, can you make it?”

  “I’ll have to reschedule, but a colleague owes me a class anyway. I’ll be there.”

  Margaux said, “I think I’ll wait for you to tell me the results. I couldn’t add anything and would just get in the way.”

  She had ordered a light and soft chocolate mousse with fruit sauce for everyone but Eddie. “I knew you’d want the café gourmand.”

  “Right as always,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Eddie paid the check — “You got the last one,” he told Margaux sternly when she reached for it — and walked out onto Rue du Bac, the elegant seventh-arrondissement street connecting the Seine to Boulevard Raspail and the grand department store Bon Marché.

  Eddie and Aurélie were the last to leave. On the sidewalk he looked at her and said, “Well?”

  “I thought we settled that today, Édouard. Let’s walk up to my place so I can pick up some things, then we’ll go to the Luxor. You know my concerns, but I’m much more comfortable having seen how you handled Erich. Five years ago you’d either have called the police or killed him yourself and got in trouble. This was much more subtle. It took confidence. I like that. I think Philippe did, too, but he’ll never tell you.”

  18

  Paris

  Aurélie stood impatiently inside the door, bag in hand, dressed in slacks and walking shoes for what she expected to be a dirty visit to the past.

  “Édouard,” she called down the hall toward the bedroom. “We need to go now if you want to look at the tracks first.”

  “Call the elevator. I nearly forgot my camera.” He came through the door, buckling a small leather camera bag on his belt. “I also had to change the flash battery.”

  The half-hour walk took them around the grand and gilded old opera, then down gritty Rue de Rome next to Gare Saint-Lazare.

  The station, the second-busiest in Paris, was alive with activity. As always, the street was clogged with distinctive blue-green and white city buses and pedestrians crisscrossed the plaza in front of the nineteenth-century building, which was in the process of major renovation.

  The entrance to the Rome métro station sits a few blocks behind the railroad station at the center of a small park dividing Boulevard des Batignoles. The Boulevard is one of the spokes radiating from Place de Clichy, where tourists and immigrants pass briefly through each other’s lives on their way to or from the Butte Montmartre, the romantic home of painters and writers and Sacré Coeur Basilica, or the immigrant areas beyond the Montmartre Cemetery.

  Rather than turn right toward the Rome station, Eddie and Aurélie continued along the deep trench. They peered across it, looking for the apartment building constructed on the site of the Count’s grand townhouse, and the parking lot next to it.

  “That must be it,” Eddie said, pointing to a seven-story building perched precisely on the edge of the trench.

  “Deep,” Aurélie said. “I never looked at it from this angle. The whole building would fit in the trench.”

  “The top floor or two might stick up, but that’s about it.”

  Below them a steel catwalk extended across the nine tracks to a narrow fenced ledge that ran down the other side to the next catwalk. The walls had been carefully faced with stone cut and laid like bricks. Below the catwalks the stones were larger, and all bore the faded work of taggers of years past. The graffiti stretched along the length of the tracks as far as they could see and as high as a man — or a teenager — could reach from the ground and from the maintenance walkway above.

  “Do you think they had those catwalks during the war?” she asked as he leaned over the fence to photograph the wall below them.

  “Something like them. The tracks into Paris were partially electrified in the 20s, so they would have needed something to support the catenaries. After the war it was all rebuilt when the power system was upgraded from 1,500 volts DC to 25,000 volts AC. So these were probably added in the fifties but there would have been something there before that.

  Aurélie asked, “Do you think the painting could be behind that stone wall?”

  “Based on what Jerôme told you, it seems possible. My big concern is water. The water table is pretty high on the Right Bank. That’s why the Catacombs and most of the old quarries are on the Left. More water is one of the reasons the Right Bank developed faster. You can’t have a city without water.

  “But if the lower basement is 15 or 20 feet below the surface and there’s drainage to the tracks, the painting might be OK. It’s on a wood panel and wood doesn’t like moisture, so if the drainage is poor it could be damaged or even destroyed.”

  They turned back toward Rome, arriving just seconds before Philippe walked up the stairs accompanied by a short, round-faced man with a salt-and-pepper walrus mustache. Paul leaned against the métro entrance railing reading the International Herald Tribune.

  “This is Jerôme Fontainebleu,” Philippe announced. “Jerôme, you’ve talked on the phone to my daughter Aurélie. You helped her greatly with the plans for the building. And M Grant and M Fitzhugh, his associate.”

  Jerôme was tongue-tied. Aurélie did not fit the mental picture he’d drawn of the Sorbonne professor curious about an abandoned basement.

  “Enchanted,” he said after a pause. “And M Grant. I know your family name well, and once I had the pleasure of meeting your father.”

  Jerôme took charge. “Philippe and I discussed having a fire inspector go with us but we ultimately decided it would not be necessary. I believe I can make this inspection as building inspector, and fewer people will therefore be involv
ed. If we ultimately need a fire inspector I can arrange for one very quickly.

  “In fact, I spoke this morning with the building inspector for the district and he told me the gardien, Mme Tuelle, is very accommodating, at least by the standards of her tribe. I suggest we go see her now.”

  They walked the hundred yards to the front door. Jerôme consulted an orange notebook, then keyed in the digicode another inspector had given him that morning. The door buzzed then slowly pulled itself open, allowing them to step into a small lobby with mailboxes along the right wall. A glass door would normally have blocked their way into the rest of the building, but today it was held open by a bucket of soapy water, with which Mme Tuelle energetically mopped the marble floor and stairs.

  “Excuse me for disturbing you, Madame,” he said politely to get her attention. “I am the building inspector and it is important that we go quickly into your basement.” He held his identity card so she could see it. She touched one corner with her hand and suspiciously compared his face to the picture.

  “I was younger when that was taken, but I assure you I am the same person. And I believe you are Mme Tuelle? My district inspector speaks highly of the care with which you keep your building.”

  All resistance vanished. “And your friends also?”

  “They are all intimately concerned with the matter at hand.”

  “Of course.” She pulled a ring of keys from her apron pocket and led them to a door under the stairway opposite the elevator, unlocked it, then reached through the door to turn on a weak yellow light that barely illuminated the concrete stairs.

  “And, Madame, we will also require the key to the second basement,” Jerôme said.

  “I myself have never been there. But you will find the key in a small recess just above the door, which is next to cave number 6. Beware of spiders.”

  Philippe led the way down the narrow staircase. “You couldn’t store much down here. Stairway is too narrow to get it in and out,” he said.

  The basement was divided into two long bays with a row of storage rooms on each side. Philippe took a small flashlight from his pocket and pointed it at the closest door. “Twelve,” he said. “And its neighbor is eleven, so six must be straight ahead. Watch your heads.”

  Jerôme turned on his large inspector’s lantern, brightening the gloomy space considerably. He walked ahead of Philippe to the end of the corridor and stopped, shining his light to the left.

  “Here is number six, and next to it an unmarked door. This must be the one we require.”

  He pointed the light down toward his feet and looked around until he found a narrow piece of wood a foot long. He picked it up, then looked above the door for the niche Mme Tuelle had mentioned. When he had found it he put the end of the stick in it and, as she had warned, two spiders came scurrying out. He moved the point of the stick around until a key clattered onto the floor.

  “That must be what we’re looking for,” he said jovially as he bent to pick it up. He inserted it carefully in the lock, pausing only long enough to say, “We’re not the first people in here. This lock was changed no more than ten years ago.”

  The door swung open, its hinges complaining. Jerôme looked through and pointed his light to the left and followed it down the stone staircase, which was decades older than the one leading from the lobby.

  The room was as large as the building, interrupted at intervals by stone columns that had been the main support of the old townhouse. Concrete pilings driven into the earth to support the added weight of the apartment building were spaced evenly.

  “I hope they didn’t drive any of those through the painting,” Eddie said quietly to Philippe as he used his flashlight beam to pick out the pilings.

  “I propose that all of us walk together around the walls,” Jerôme said. “There’s no substitute for more than one set of eyes.” They agreed and followed him as he began to move slowly around the wall, shining his light carefully on every square inch.

  “We are looking for any disturbance in the old stone foundation,” he told them. “It’s possible that the treasure was buried below the floor, but that would pose greater risk of water damage because it would be closer to the water table. Therefore I believe it’s likely the treasure chamber will be reached through a wall.”

  The wall looked impossibly ancient. It was built of rough-hewn stones mortared together into a foundation strong enough to support the townhouse. Eddie had seen a similar wall in the basement of his hotel building, and he suspected that behind the stones was a wall made up of even larger stones, which carried most of the weight.

  Two-thirds of the way around they found a closed room built into a corner. A steel door stood slightly ajar in the solid concrete wall.

  “Maybe we have something here,” Aurélie said.

  “Or perhaps not,” Jerôme replied. “We shall see.” The door yielded slowly as he pushed until it was half open. Inside, the room was bare but for a rusted pail standing in the corner, half full of concrete. Jerôme bent to look at it as Eddie held it for his inspection.

  “Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere. This is a Wehrmacht bucket, and was probably used to build these walls.” He turned to Aurélie and Eddie.

  “Your friend the old art dealer was telling you the truth, or at least most of it. This basement was definitely used for some military purpose during the war. We will find something here. I’m certain of it!”

  A half-hour later the group sat in front of the Café Normandie waiting for expressos. As they left the building Philippe introduced himself to Mme Tuelle as a commissaire de Police and complimented her on the condition of her building. Then he asked if there were any other keys to the sub-basement. She produced one from a peg in her apartment and he put both in his pocket.

  “Madame, it is very important that no one go into the second basement until we return. We are not investigating a crime but the history of a crime that long predates your building.” She assured him she knew of no other keys and would guard the door carefully.

  “Jerôme, what do you think that room was used for?” he asked as the waiter brought their coffee.

  “We’ve seen others around the city, but almost all were empty like this one. In one or two we found a little loot, but that was years ago. If you think about it, an honest German wouldn’t have hidden anything in the home of a Frenchman, even one as politically reliable as the Count.

  “If the Count hadn’t been sent to jail right after the Liberation and died soon after he got out of jail, I’d guess that he had moved the treasure somewhere else and we’ll never find it. But he wouldn’t have told his daughter about it. She was a résistante and a patriot and would have turned it over to the government, especially since she had enough money from his estate. So that means either that the Count told Jacques the truth and he did give it to the SS, or it’s still here.”

  Eddie interjected, “I remember my father telling me the Monuments Men found art objects of all types hidden in all sort of places, from cemeteries to barns.”

  “We will know tomorrow,” Jerôme responded. “Or at least we’ll know that we have more to learn.

  “Philippe, can we come back at the same time? I’ll need to organize some technical help.”

  “Sure. But what kind of help? Are we going to tear down the building?”

  “Nothing like that. We’ll use radar just like we do to look under roads and bridges.”

  Eddie and Aurélie looked at each other. “We wouldn’t miss it for anything,” he said. “We’ll be here early.” She nodded in agreement.

  At ten o’clock the next morning Jerôme drove up in a blue city car, followed by a small white van with the name of an engineering firm painted on the side. A burly North African man wearing an incongruously lacy white taguiya stepped out of the driver’s seat at the same time his assistant, thin and nervous, opened the right-hand door.

  Jerôme met them at the rear of the van and watched as they carefully unloaded what looked like a lawn
mower, an aluminum box painted bright yellow fastened to a low four-wheel cart with a push handle. The assistant set it carefully on the sidewalk, first checking carefully for dog droppings, and went back for a long extension cord. The senior technician took out a computer case, carefully closed and locked the door, then walked around to check that both front doors were locked.

  “Are we ready, Monsieur?” Jerôme asked the North African man.

  “We are ready, Monsieur Jerôme. We will need only power, and as you see we have a long cord.”

  Mme Tuelle had come to the sidewalk to determine who had the effrontery to block her door, only to find a smiling Jerôme waiting.

  “Bonjour, Madame,” he said cheerfully. “Please admit us to your basement. And our friends here will need electricity for their machine, and they have a long wire.”

  The gardien thought a minute and said, “There is an outlet in the cave not too far from the stairs. They may use that.”

  The two radar technicians muscled their machine down both sets of stairs to the lower basement. The younger one went back to find the electrical outlet on the floor above and plugged it in, while his older colleague took an HP laptop from its case and locked it into a bracket on the handle. The radar device, which looked much like a metal carry-on suitcase painted bright yellow, hummed as the computer booted.

  As he waited for the machine, he explained that the radar signal it generated would penetrate up to 20 meters into the earth below it. “Sometimes to look behind walls we bring a special frame that holds it up sideways, but this is a small space so we’ll just hold it,” he said. He rolled the transmitter slowly across the floor. They saw a baffling array of squiggles and curves that meant nothing to them.

  “See, this shows a layer of packed stones just a few centimeters below the earthen surface, and then more than a meter of crushed rock. Below that there is undisturbed earth as far as the signal can penetrate.”