An Infinity of Mirrors

by Richard Condon

  “About Veelee.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he … better?”

  “He is a hero. He has given almost all he possesses to Germany. That was his duty, but so few of us have done our duty. It takes greatness, you know.”

  “And a sort of madness,” Paule said.

  “That, too. At any rate, for him to continue in his present state of health would be a mistake. To continue effectively, that is. At this time, at this stage, we have him in the wrong work, one might say. The only solution for him is rest, but due to the nature of his zeal, he must not know that he has—ah—been taken out of play. May I?”

  “Of course.”

  The General lifted the wine bottle out of the bucket and filled the two glasses again. “He needs you, Madame, and I need you, because he is my friend and the son of my friend. The only other solution would be a … a hospital. He is fixed on doing his duty. Reality and fantasy are interwoven for him, and only you can tell him whether he has done his duty, because its motivation is the tragedy you share. My God, the sad, German world of duty. We seek it to serve it, but always someone else must tell us where it is and what it is.”

  Tears came to Paule’s eyes. “Thank you, General,” she answered.

  Veelee rang the doorbell at Cours Albert I almost exactly sixteen months after he had left Paule on the summer morning after Paul-Alain’s funeral in 1942. Clotilde took him into the study, where Paule was working on her father’s book. Paule did not appear surprised that he had returned; she stood up, put her arms around his neck and kissed him briefly before staring into his haggard, broken face. “May I stay here, Paule,” he said, “until I can sort everything out?” She nodded, and led him toward the big bedroom.

  Eighteen

  By May, 1944, Veelee’s health was considerably improved. The terrible depressions had left him and he was able to go back to work as Chief of Communications for France.

  In May, 1944, the German Army was nervously confused about the Allied intentions. Eighteen days during that month the weather, tides, and sea had been suitable for landings, but nothing had happened. Putting himself in the place of General Eisenhower, Field Marshal von Rundstedt reported to the Fuehrer that no invasion was “immediately imminent.” On the 4th of June, the Luftwaffe meteorologist advised that the Channel would be shut down for a fortnight by inclement weather. On the strength of this, the Luftwaffe conserved its remaining resources by temporarily abandoning aerial reconnaissance over southern English harbors, where troops were being piled aboard ships. In addition, the German Navy had withdrawn its craft from the Channel because of high-running seas. It seemed so unlikely that any landings would be attempted that on June 5th Field Marshal Rommel set off by car to spend the night with his family in Wuerttemberg, then to proceed to Berchtesgaden the next day for meetings with the Fuehrer.

  Of course, there were the usual reports from agents in England that landings could be expected to be tried between the 6th and the 16th, but there had been hundreds of such warnings since April. On the 6th of June, General Dollmann, commanding the Seventh Army, which guarded all beaches in Normandy, ordered his senior officers to Rennes, one hundred and twenty-five miles to the south, for a map exercise, and relaxed his standing alert over the troops. In the early evening of June 5th, Rundstedt’s headquarters learned that London was sending an extraordinary number of coded messages, and that the German radar stations between Cherbourg and Le Havre were being jammed. However, Rundstedt did not consider the situation alarming enough to pass this information on to the Seventh Army, whose position the Allies were then approaching in a thousand ships.

  One British and two American airborne divisions landed between Caen and Cherbourg just after one A.M. on June 6, 1944. The general alarm was sounded at one-thirty A.M., but at two-forty A.M. the area commander was advised that von Rundstedt did “not consider this to be a major operation”—mainly because Rundstedt and Rommel had convinced themselves that the real landings would be made up the coast at Pas-de-Calais. The Commander in Chief West continued to be deluded until the afternoon of June 6th.

  Professor Morell and the Fuehrer remained calm. The Fuehrer preferred to wait to see what would develop, and went to bed without releasing the tank divisions for which Rundstedt had been pleading. He awoke at three P.M. on June 6th, took his pills, and issued his first order of the invasion at four fifty-five P.M.

  Chief of Staff Western Command emphasizes the desire of the Supreme Command to have the enemy in the bridgehead annihilated by the evening of June 6 since there exists the danger of additional sea- and airborne landings for support … The beachhead must be cleaned up by not later than tonight.

  Charles Piocher’s real work was almost over. The French Resistance, with which he had worked for four years to organize, train, indoctrinate, and arm with the power of England and her Allies, now began its crippling strikes. The Marguerite de Ste. Stephens Group, operating out of Augustus des Pierres, cut all underground telephone and electric-current lines leading to the major garrison and ten-gun battery at Longehommes-Vert, and cut four hundred yards of telegraph wire from the command posts of Pessac-Alouette-Gazinet and Château Laffargue. Nine electrical locomotives were disabled only four hundred yards from the Pessac station, and railway lines were sabotaged between the powder factory and d’Oblinger. The Group Dodo Midi destroyed a motorized convoy of twenty-four trucks, killing one hundred and sixty-two Germans, wounding one hundred and eighty-two, and forcing the convoy to retire to Nonie-Wintour; attacked and seriously damaged the Bordeaux command headquarters; derailed an entire troop train; and destroyed all enemy cables at the Ste. Jeanne d’Ennis center and those between Dax, Pau, and Toulouse. The Group Lefanan cut the main railway line at Château Absinthe; destroyed telephone and telegraph lines, felled forty-six trees across main military highways, and blew up nineteen electric pylons for a total loss of eight hundred and sixty thousand volts. The Rolande-le-Gant Group destroyed two railway bridges; exploded seven pylons, which halted railway traffic for six days; cut seven underground cables at the mouth of the Seine; derailed seven German trains; sabotaged all railway signals in their area; took fifteen hundred gallons of petrol from German stores; put out of commission a thirty-three-ton loading crane and nine steam locomotives; severed all electric cables linking the mines on the right bank of the Seine; and destroyed two V-4 prototypes and sent photographs of them to London via the Spanish route.

  Industrial sabotage reached heights to which not even Piocher could have aspired. Production was so dislocated that scores of factories became utterly useless to the Germans. All previously reconnoitered demolitions were carried out. Roads were blown up, telephone and telegraph communications between enemy headquarters were destroyed, the dispatch riders who were then sent out were killed, and fighting troops desperately needed elsewhere had to be deployed to insure communications safety. Piocher had worked well.

  On May 26, 1944, Charles Piocher pulled himself out of bed, making no effort not to awaken Fräulein Nortnung, an impossible achievement without sunlight and many bells. He shaved carefully, dressed in striped silk underwear with a matching striped silk shirt, a beige linen suit, a floppy brown fedora, and set out in his Dupont for the von Rhode’s apartment at Cours Albert I. It was five-fifty A.M. when Clotilde answered his insistent ring. Piocher pushed past her and shut the door behind him. “Get the General and his wife out here,” he said, “and then bring me some coffee and croissants.”

  Clotilde was shocked. “We don’t get croissants until seven o’clock,” she said.

  “All right. I’ll settle for coffee,” Piocher told her, and sauntered into the small salon. He was studying photographs of Veelee at Wuensdorf when Paule and the General entered the room.

  “What the hell is this?” Veelee said. He had a coldly murderous look and his hand was jammed into his dressing-gown pocket.

  “Why, you’re the black-market man!” Paule said in astonishment.

  “That’s me, love, Cha
rles Piocher. Now sit down. We have a lot to talk about.”

  Veelee was so baffled that he could not maintain his threatening role. “My dear man, it is six o’clock in the morning.” To try to recapture his menacing air, he added, “I have a gun in my pocket.”

  “I should think so,” Piocher answered. “So have I.” He sat down with the briskness of an insurance agent closing a deal.

  Paule and Veelee sat down slowly and warily.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Plenty, Madame. But it will seem like nothing. Coffee is on the way.”

  “Plenty?” Veelee said. “Plenty of what?”

  “Let’s wait for the coffee.”

  “No, no.”

  “Then talk to each other,” Piocher said. “I don’t do any business until I have coffee.” He walked back to the photograph of Veelee at Wuensdorf, then moved crab-fashion to his right to study a picture of Veelee with Keitel at Bruges in 1918.

  “This is insufferable,” Veelee said, walking to the telephone. “You can do your talking to the military police.”

  “Say, is that Keitel?” Piocher asked. Veelee picked up the telephone, but Paule moved to his side and put her hand over his. Gently, together, they replaced the receiver in its cradle. “Keitel certainly was gorgeous,” Piocher said.

  Clotilde came in with a tray and poured coffee for each of them. Piocher sipped his and made a face. “Horrible,” he said. “I must be crazy to have breakfast out. This afternoon I’ll send you some real coffee.” The Rhodes had not picked up their cups.

  “Tell us what is on your mind, Monsieur Piocher,” Paule said.

  “It won’t be easy, you understand,” Piocher told her, “so I’ll be blunt. I want certain military information from the General here—”

  “You what?”

  “I’ll put it this way,” Piocher said. “I’m not exactly what I seem, except that I seem to be becoming what I am—which is the SOE fella for France.”

  “SOE?” Paule asked.

  “Special Operations Executive. British. At least, I think they’re still British—it’s been a long time since I looked, and De Gaulle is in London, too.”

  “Do you mean you are …?” Veelee’s jaw had fallen. Paule’s eyes began to fill with hope. Something within her heard something that had not been said. She sat tensely. “Let us speak in English to be certain,” she said.

  “To be certain?” Veelee said in strangled tones. “To be certain of what?”

  “Yes, you must be certain, Madame,” Piocher answered gravely. “You above all others.”

  “Sure of what? Damn you! Sure of what?”

  “General, sir,” Piocher said in Cockney English, “I want you to give me the plan of all telecommunications between Paris and the Channel, plus the plan for all intercommunications between all posts in that military zone.”

  Veelee took the pistol from his pocket and cocked it, and Paule said hurriedly, “What is it you intend to pay for this, Mr. Piocher?” She pronounced it Pee-o-chur, in the English manner.

  “This will hurt, Madame,” Piocher said. “But I cannot be delicate. I will give you the name of the man who ordered the French police to arrest your son, and the name of the man who persuaded him to issue the order.”

  Veelee returned the gun to his pocket and sat down heavily. He and Paule stared at Piocher, but they could not speak. Piocher could not bear the silence, and he rose and walked to the cut-glass decanters on the sideboard and poured himself a drink. “First morning drink I’ve had since I left the army,” he said, and downed it. Then he poured three more and took them to the Rhodes. “Here we are,” he said, returning to French. “We may not take the same paths, but I suspect we have the same goals—death to them all.” Veelee did not look at his, but merely drank it down and continued to look at Piocher.

  “Who are they?” Veelee asked coldly.

  “Madame?” Piocher said to Paule.

  She leaned forward, her eyes wide and her hands trembling. “If you will give us their names, I will—we will tell you anything.” Veelee looked only at Piocher, his expression slowly changing as he realized what was happening.

  “It is best to be brief,” Piocher said, peering at each of them sympathetically. “I want military information in return for two names.”

  “Will you help us with what we will need?” Paule asked.

  “To the limit of my resources, Madame,” Piocher answered as Veelee looked rapidly from face to face, unsure, confused, desperately seeking his duty.

  When Piocher had gone, Paule called Clotilde. “I love you, Clotilde,” she said. “You are a part of my family as much as—almost as much as Paul-Alain. I want you to go out now and stay away until this evening. When you come back, everything is going to be better again.”

  “I will pray, Madame.”

  “You listened to M’sieu Piocher?”

  “Yes, Madame.” Paule looked squarely at Veelee to be sure that he was listening, and then back to Clotilde.

  “What would you do, Clotilde?”

  “Kill them, Madame.”

  Veelee and Paule sat across the room from each other in silence until they heard Clotilde close the front door decisively.

  “What is honor, Veelee?” Paule said. She crossed the room and sat beside him on the sofa and put her hand over his only hand. “They took your arm, your son, your eye, and a part of your mind, they’ve destroyed the country you love, and now they are going to make you into a traitor to their country. But it is only their country now—it is no longer the one you hold in your heart.”

  Veelee turned his head and looked into her face, but he did not speak.

  “Honor exists outside of us, does it not?” Paule asked. “Especially so, I should think, in the case of a man and a woman whose son has been murdered like an insect, without honor. Think of the years they taught you about soldiers’ honor. Think of the lifetime that I have been taught in various ways about a Jew’s honor. Then tell me whether your soldier’s honor and my ruined honor have any meaning when we think of Paul-Alain dead. There is honor, and there is honor. What happened to us during the four days it took to murder Paul-Alain will live on forever, and now that we are about to learn the names of the two men who killed him I can tell you, at last, what honor is, Veelee. Honor is not being able to live if those men are to live. Honor is not being willing to live unless we kill those men in the most disgusting manner possible. It has come to this, dearest: you must become a traitor and we must become murderers, or else we lose all honor and all peace forever. That is our only duty now.”

  “How is it to be done?” Veelee asked. “We must not wait.”

  She lifted his hand and, her eyes closed, kissed it as though she was swearing upon a sacred sword. “I have thought of the way,” she said.

  Nineteen

  In July, 1944, Paris was the rear area behind the heavy fighting in Normandy and Brittany, and Captain Strasse discovered that this produced a thirty-eight percent increase in the gross volume of his clubs. In a sense, he said to Yoka elatedly; every night was just like New Year’s Eve. “I never thought I would be hoping for the war to last forever,” he said, “but I certainly can’t object to this one any more.”

  “Just so long as it lasts until every dirty, fucking Boche is dead,” Yoka said.

  Strasse touched her cheek and smiled at her lovingly. “Ah, they’re not so bad,” he said expansively.

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I bet if we got to know them we’d find they’re just like everybody else.”

  “Up yours.” Yoka was definite about everything—no halfway stuff with her. It was a good thing she thought he was a Dane and that she couldn’t speak Danish. Thank God. Everything she did excited him, and when he kissed her his ears buzzed. The amazing thing was that no one had ever liked him before, much less loved him. She loved. She was crazy about him. At first, he hadn’t been sure that he wanted anything like that. Who wants to feel owned? He had always r
ealized that he’d had a big edge in life because nobody liked him. No brakes, hit and run. But now that he had a taste of the feeling of being loved—and by the fiercest woman he had ever met—he knew what he had been missing.

  “How come you like me so much, Yoka?” he had asked her once.

  “I like the way you balance a beret, you little shit,” she had said; and she had grabbed him by his buzzing ears and pulled his mouth down to hers and made a meal of it. For her birthday in October—Yoka was a Libra and therefore sensitive to beauty—Strasse had given her a big diamond ring that Fräulein Nortnung had located for him, plus all of her police papers from Amsterdam, her entire record. Yoka had been very big-time; she had even been up for armed robbery. He simply could not imagine it—a beautiful, sweet little doll like this and she had the nerve of thirty Wild-West Indians and a strike on her for armed robbery. That was real aristocracy.

  Yoka had gazed down at the police papers with awe. “Where the hell did you get these?” she gasped.

  He shrugged, so delighted that he wanted to jig. “I gave a man some money and he gave them to me. And they aren’t copies—you burn them and there won’t be any record left.”

  “Burn them? Are you crazy? Honey, they came from you. No man in the whole world but you would think of such a wonderful thing. You want to know why I love you, you sick little bastard? This is why I love you. You are so offbeat, you are so absolutely crazy, that I can’t get it through my head that you belong to me.”

  Well, that was the way it was. He had talked to her about getting married. It wasn’t something he just said; he thought out every word beforehand so she would understand how difficult it was for him to say such a thing. It made her cry, but it was a helpless, grateful, defenseless, total, ecstatic kind of crying, and it made him feel like a giant. He had done more for her than he had ever done for anyone, and all the while this joy pierced his heart he was crying himself and didn’t know it. He cried. He actually cried for the first time in his life that he could remember. Maybe it was the first time in his life he could remember feeling anything, because what he had felt for Yoka was nothing compared to what he felt after she had reacted to his asking her to marry him. He had offered her the only important thing he had to give, and she valued it.