The Monte Cristo Cover-Up

by Johannes Mario Simmel

  As he handed over the bundles of notes to Thomas he smiled seductively at the latter and tried to catch his eye. But Thomas simply went on counting the francs.

  At last Bergier inquired: "When shall we meet again, my dear fellow?"

  Thomas looked astonished. "Why, won't you be returning to Paris, then?"

  "Oh no. Only de Lesseps is going. Hell be passing through here on the Paris express at half-past three tomorrow afternoon."

  "Not stopping?"

  "No, he'll be going straight on from Bandol with the merchandise. I shall be taking your gold to him in his compartment. But after that you and I might have a meal together, don't you think, dear boy?"

  [2]

  "Fifteen-thirty hours at the St. Charles station," said Thomas an hour later in the library of a big old house on the Boulevard de la Corderie. The house belonged to a man named Jacques Cousteau, destined many years afterward to become famous as a deep-sea diver and for his book and film, The Silent World. In the year 1940 this former major of marine artillery was an important figure in the recently reorganized French secret service. Young and full of energy, black-haired and black-eyed, he was trained to a hair and a keen sportsman.

  Cousteau sat in a deep armchair with rows of books bound in glowing colors behind him and smoked an ancient pipe, perforce only half full of tobacco.

  Colonel Simeon sat beside him, the elbows and knees of his black suit pitifully shiny. When he crossed his legs a hole in the sole of his left shoe became visible.

  That absurd, poverty-stricken, pitiful French secret service, thought Thomas. I, a foreigner forced to turn agent, am for the time being richer than the whole Deuxieme Bureau!

  Thomas Lieven, elegant and well groomed, was standing beside the bag in which he had brought the gold ingots to M. Bergier. The bag now contained 2,520,000 francs.

  "You must be very wide-awake," said Thomas Lieven, "when the express comes in. I've found out that it only stops for eight minutes."

  "We'll be awake all right," said Cousteau. "Don't you worry, M. Hunebelle."

  Sim6on twisted his Adolphe Menjou mustache and asked anxiously: "And you think de Lesseps has a lot of the stuff with him?"

  "According to Bergier he has a huge quantity of gold, currency and other valuables. He's been buying up the stuff in the South for days. He's bound to have a lot with him or he wouldn't be going to Paris. Bergier will be handing him my seven ingots. I think the best thing to do would be to arrest the pair of them just at that moment."

  "Everything's fixed," said Cousteau. "We've given our friends in the police the tip."

  Simeon turned to Thomas. "But how are you going to get hold of those lists?"

  Thomas answered with a smile: "You don't have to rack your brains over that, Sim6on. But all the same, if you could supply three lads in Hotel Bristol staff uniforms, Fd be obliged."

  Simeon opened his mouth and eyes wide. It was obvious that he was thinking hard. But before any ideas occurred to him Cousteau said: "We can do that. The Bristol employs the Salomon laundry to wash the staff's uniforms. The deputy manager of the laundry is one of our boys."

  "That's fine," said Thomas.

  He glanced at the haggard Sim6on, with his worn-out shoes and shabby suit. He glanced at Cousteau, drawing economically at the chewed up mouthpiece of his pipe, with so little tobacco left in his pouch. He glanced at the bag of francs. And then our friend performed a touching act. It proved that his heart was in the right place. But it proved also' that he

  had still not learned to live according to the heartless rules of the heartless world into which a cruel fate had thrust him.

  [3]

  When Thomas Lieven left the house on the Boulevard de la Corderie half an hour later he saw a shadow detach itself from a recess in a wall and follow him through the hazy twilight. Thomas turned a street corner and halted abruptly. His pursuer ran straight into him.

  "Oh, pardon," he exclaimed politely, lifting an ancient, dingy hat. Thomas recognized him. He was one of Chantal's mob. The man mumbled something unintelligible and shuffled away.

  Thomas's black-haired, tigerish mistress received him at their apartment in the rue Chevalier Rose with enthusiastic kisses and embraces. She had made herself look particularly attractive for his benefit. Candles were burning. Champagne was on the ice. "At last, darling! I've been so longing for you!"

  "I was .. ."

  "Yes, I know. At your colonel's. Bastian told me."

  "Where is Bastian, by the way?"

  "His mother was suddenly taken ill. He had to go to her. He'll be back tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow," Thomas repeated with a guileless air. "I see." He opened his little bag. It was still quite full but not so full as it had been when Bergier had filled it. Chantal whistled joyfully through her teeth.

  "Don't whistle too soon, my dear," said he. "It's half a million short."

  "What?"

  "Yes, I gave that much away to Cousteau and Sim6on. They're broke, poor devils. I felt quite sorry for them, you know. We can say it's my share of the swag they've got. The rest, quite a decent sum of two million twenty thousand francs, is for you and your colleagues."

  Chantal kissed the tip of his nose. She withstood his attack of kindheartedness with ominous alacrity. "My gentleman! You're so sweet... Now you won't get anything out of it, will you?"

  "I get you," he said affably. But he added without a change of tone: "Chantal, why are you having me followed?"

  "Followed? I? You?" She raised her cat's eyes to the ceiling. "Darling, what do you mean by such nonsense?"

  "One of your mob fell right over me."

  "Oh, that could only have been a coincidence ... oh Lord, why on earth are you so suspicious? Whatever can I do to make you quite sure that I love you?"

  "You could tell the truth for a change, you slut. But I know there's absolutely no sense in making such a request," he retorted.

  As the Paris express, punctually at half-past three on December 7, 1940, came in at platform III of the St. Charles station, a man of about thirty-seven stood at the open window of a first-class compartment. Paul de Lesseps had a lean, sharp-featured countenance, with cold shark's eyes and sparse ash-blond hair.

  His gaze traveled anxiously along the platform. Then he saw the plump, conspicuously dressed lawyer Bergier standing near a small bag.

  Paul de Lesseps lifted a hand.

  Jacques Bergier lifted a hand.

  The train stopped. Bergier hurried to his friend's compartment. After that everything happened very fast. Before a single passenger could alight, thirty plainclothes detectives stepped forward out of the crowds on both sides of the train. The detectives picked up two long ropes which had been lying on the permanent way and formed a cordon to prevent any passenger alighting.

  An inspector spoke to Bergier, who had turned as white as a sheet, and arrested him on strong suspicion of gold and currency smuggling. Bergier still held the bag containing the seven gold ingots.

  Meanwhile two other detectives rushed into the coach, one at each end, and arrested Paul de Lesseps in his compartment.

  At the same time three men in the green uniforms of the Hotel Bristol staff were striding along a corridor on the fourth floor of that establishment. Two of them looked like members of Chantal Tessier's gang. The third looked like Thomas Lieven. None of them looked particularly well in their uniforms.

  The man who looked like Thomas Lieven opened, without difficulty, the door of a certain suite. With an energy seldom to be observed in hotel attendants they dragged three enormous trunks out of the bedroom of the suite to the staff elevator, went down with them to the courtyard, heaved them into

  the back of a delivery van belonging to the Salomon laundry and drove away without interference. But they did not drive to the laundry in question. They drove to a house in the rue Chevalier Rose.

  An hour later a beaming Thomas Lieven, once more normally clothed, returned to the house of Jacques Cousteau on the Boulevard de la Corderie.
Cousteau and Simeon were awaiting him.

  Thomas extracted from the brief case of the charming M. Bergier the lists upon which the precise names and addresses of spies, collaborators and soul-sellers had been noted. He waved the sheets on high, in triumph. Cousteau and Sim6on, to his astonishment, received this manifestation without emotion.

  Thomas demanded, in some anxiety: "What's wrong? Did you get them both?"

  Cousteau nodded. "In the lockup."

  "And those seven ingots?"

  "We've got them too."

  "Well... ?"

  "But that's all we have got, M. Hunebelle," said Cousteau slowly. He was staring very hard at Thomas. Colonel Simeon was also watching Thomas with a very strange expression.

  "What do you mean by that? De Lesseps must have had a fortune on him in gold, currency and other valuables!"

  "Yes, that was what we were led to suppose, wasn't it?" Cousteau was chewing his underlip.

  "Didn't he have anything then?"

  "Not a gram of gold, M. Hunebelle. Not a dollar. Nothing of any value at all. Funny, wasn't it?" ■

  "Well—but—surely he must have hidden the stuff in his compartment or somewhere else aboard the train. He must have been working in with the railway staff. You'd better search the train and all the passengers."

  "We've done that. We've even shoveled all the coal out of the tender. But we've found nothing."

  "Where's the train now?"

  "It's gone on. We couldn't hold it up any longer."

  Simeon and Cousteau noted that Thomas was suddenly beginning to smile grimly, shake his head and move his lips soundlessly. If they had understood lip reading, they would also have understood what Thomas was muttering, viz, "That damned slut!"

  Simeon didn't understand it. He stood up, arched his chest

  and demanded in a sternly ironical and menacing tone: "Well, Lieven, have you by any chance any idea where that gold can be?"

  "Yes," said Thomas Lieven slowly. "I think I have some idea,"

  [4]

  His blood boiling with rage, Thomas Lieven struggled, with clenched teeth and hunched shoulders, against an ice-cold northeasterly gale, as he turned into the rue de Paradis, Marseilles, just as evening was coming on, that December 7, 1940.

  That slut Chantal!

  That ruffian Bastian!

  It blew harder and harder. The wind shrieked and whistled, moaned and roared, through the streets. It was just the right weather for Thomas Lieven's vengeful mood.

  Near the Old Stock Exchange a tall, shabby house stood in the rue de Paradis, with a restaurant known as Chez Papa on the first floor.

  It belonged to a man whose real name no one knew but whom the whole town called "Olive." He was fat and rosy like the pigs he slaughtered for the black market.

  Thick clouds of smoke hung in the rooms of the restaurant, which had fluorescent lighting. At this early evening hour Olive's clients were talking business over aperitifs and getting into the right mood for an evening meal provided by the black market.

  With a cigarette in the corner of his mouth Olive was leaning over the wet counter when Thomas Lieven entered. The man's little eyes twinkled good-humoredly. "Good evening, monsieur. What's it to be? Drop of pastis?"

  Thomas Lieven had heard a rumor that Olive made his own schnapps, starting with a somewhat sinister product, to wit, the alcohol used at the Anatomical Institute. Thomas had nothing against alcohol. But Olive i^as alleged to use spirit which, before being stolen, had already served, at the Anatomical Institute, for the preservation of certain portions of corpses. It was said that some of Olive's clients had been seized by acute attacks of mania after partaking of his pastis.

  Thomas therefore replied: "Give me a double brandy. But the real thing, mind!"

  He got it. „

  "Listen, Olive. I have to see Bastian."

  "Bastian? I don't know him."

  "Of course you know him. He lives just behind your place here. I know that one can only reach his rooms by going through this dive of yours. I also know that you have to announce all his visitors."

  Olive blew out his fat cheeks. His eyes suddenly grew truculent. "You don't fool me, you little runt of a bogie. Buzz off, boy. I've a dozen men here to give you a going-over if I whistle 'em, see?"

  Tm not a bogie," Thomas said. He took a sip of the brandy. Then he drew out his beloved repeater. He had retained it throughout all his dangerous adventures, even saving it from the Costa Rican consul, and brought it with him from Portugal right across Spain to Marseilles. He made it strike the hour.

  The owner of the restaurant looked on in astonishment Then he demanded: "How d'you know he lives here?"

  "He told me himself. You go and tell him that his dear friend Pierre wants to speak to him. And if he doesn't let his dear friend Pierre in on the dot, then something's going to happen here in five minutes by my ticker . . ."

  [5]

  With outstretched arms and a beaming smile Bastian Fabre approached Thomas Lieven. They stood in the narrow passage connecting the kitchen of the restaurant with Bastian's rooms. The latter smote Thomas on the shoulder with his huge palm. "What a pleasure to see you, old lad! I was just going out to look for you!"

  "Take your flippers off me this minute, you swindler," said Thomas fiercely. He pushed Bastian aside and entered the lat-ter's apartment

  The front room looked pretty rough. Tires, petrol cans and cigarette cartons lay all over the place. In the back room there was a big table with a complete model railway on it, run by electricity, with winding tracks, level crossings, mountains, valleys, tunnels and bridges.

  Thomas remarked contemptuously: "Started a kindergarten, have you?"

  "It's my hobby," said Bastian in an offended tone. "Please don't lean on that box or you'll put the transformer out of action . .. and would you mind telling me what on earth you're in such a rage about?"

  "You've got the nerve to ask me that? Yesterday you vanished. Today Chantal vanished. Two hours ago the police arrested those two buyers for the Gestapo, Bergier and de Lesseps. De Lesseps had been in Bandol with gold, jewelry, coin and paper currency. But he arrived in Marseilles with neither paper nor coin currency, with neither jewelry nor gold. The police turned the whole train upside down without rinding anything."

  "You don't say!" Bastian, with a grin, pressed a button of his apparatus. One of the toy trains started running toward a tunnel.

  Thomas snatched a plug out of the wainscot. The train stopped. Two of the coaches had just emerged from the tunnel.

  Bastian rose to his full height, looking like an enraged ape. "You'll get one in the kisser if you're not careful, my lad. What d'you want here anyhow?"

  "I want to know where Chantal is. And I want to know where that gold is."

  "Next door, of course. In my bedroom."

  "What?" Thomas gave a great gasp.

  "You didn't think they'd be anywhere else, did you? Did you suppose she'd run off with the loot? All she wanted was to doll everything up with candles and so on, just to give you a nice surprise." Bastian called out in a louder tone: "Ready, Chantal?"

  A door opened. Chantal Tessier, looking more attractive than ever, stood on the threshold, wearing tight green trousers of undressed leather, a white blouse and a black belt. Her tigerish teeth glittered in a beaming smile.

  "Hallo, sweetie!" she cried, seizing Thomas's hand. "Now baby boy's going to get such a nice present!"

  Thomas followed her, without resistance, into the next room. Five candle ends were burning in five saucers. Their soft light illuminated the old-fashioned bedroom, with its great double bed.

  On a closer view of this place of repose Thomas caught his breath convulsively. For there lay, glistening and sparkling in the candlelight, a good two dozen gold ingots, countless gold coins and rings, together with chains and bracelets, ancient and modern, an antique crucifix encrusted with jewels, a small icon inlaid in gold and bundles of dollar and pound notes.

  Thomas Lieven felt as th
ough his legs had turned into jelly.

  Seized with a sudden fit of faintness he collapsed into an old rocking chair, which at once got into motion at high speed.

  Bastian, standing beside Chantal, was rubbing his hands, elbowing the lady and chuckling with pleasure. "That one caught him all right! Just look at him there! Flat out, that's what he is!"

  "It's certainly a great day for all of us," said Chantal.

  Thomas, in his stupefaction, could only see their faces as white spheres bobbing about in rushing water. They kept jumping up and down. He braced his feet against the floor to stop the chair rocking. Then he could see their two faces clearly. They looked like those of children, perfectly innocent of any dissimulation or deceit.

  He groaned: "So I was right. You two knocked the stuff off."

  Bastian struck himself on the belly with a gross chuckle. "We did it for all three of us!"

  Chantal ran to Thomas and rained kisses on him, brief but ardent. "Oh," she cried, "if you only knew how sweet you're looking now. I could gobble you up! Darling, I'm crazy about you!" She sat on his knee and the chair started rocking again. Once more Thomas began to feel faint

  Chantal's voice reached his ears as through a sea of cotton wool. "So I told the boys, we'll have to go it alone this time, my sweetie's too goodhearted for it, he's got too much of a conscience. We mustn't bother him with it at all. When we flop the boodle down under his nose, he'll be as pleased as any of us!"

  Thomas, shaking his head and still feeling very faint, inquired: "And how did you get at the stuff?"

  Bastian reported. "Well, yesterday, when I went with you to see that queer chap, Bergier, I heard him say his pal de Lesseps was away in Bandol, pretty well loaded up. So what else could I do but take three of the boys with me down to Bandol? I had some of my mates there, you know. I found out that de Lesseps was in with some of the railwaymen. He was scared sick of being caught with the stuff he had. He wanted to stick it under the coal for the engine that would be taking him to Paris, see? In the tender, I mean."

  After mastering, with some difficulty, a hoarse fit of laughter, Bastian continued: "Well, we let him do it, for a start Then we arranged for a smart little bird to keep him busy for the evening. Luckily the randy bastard's easier to provide for than his pal Bergier! So that kid did just what we told her and