The Monte Cristo Cover-Up

by Johannes Mario Simmel

  Bastian waited until the page had left the room. Then he fell around his old friend's neck. "Boy, am I glad to see you again!"

  "Same to you, Bastian, and how!" said Thomas Lieven. Extricating himself from Bastian's embrace, he shook the Russian's hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Baron Kutusov. But from now on I propose to stop calling you Baron. I shall call you, instead, Comrade Commissar."

  "But why?" the Russian demanded, blinking nervously.

  "Patience, my dear sir! One thing at a time! I've so much to tell you both, little brothers! I've ordered lunch to be served here. It'll arrive in ten minutes. Borsch among other things, Comrade Commissar. Do please sit down ..."

  Thomas Lieven was behaving with amazing coolness and self-assurance considering that the French military authorities had been looking for him for weeks and that here in Paris he was actually, so to speak, in the lion's mouth. But he consoled

  himself with the reflection that lions seek their prey anywhere but in their own mouths.

  When he left Baden-Baden surreptitiously on December 11, he was carrying an excellently forged French passport in the name of Maurice Hauser, prepared for him by a specialist who had at one time worked for Paris Intelligence. He had also written to Bastian Fabre in Marseilles to inform him that he, Thomas, was absolutely broke.

  Bastian's answer came by return of post.

  "Now you see, Pierre, how right we were in those days not to let you have all the swag you collared from de Lesseps. Now you can have the bit we kept back. I've picked up a pal here, son of a Russian baron. Name's Kutusov. His old man used to be a taxi driver in Paris. Now he's popped off and the boy drives. A Pontiac ..."

  Thomas sent the following telegram to Bastian:

  EXPECTING YOU AND BARON WITH CAR 22 FEBRUARY HOTEL CRELLON.

  As soon as his guests arrived he checked up. "Where's the car?"

  "Outside the hotel."

  "That's good. They'd better see it. But it's you, my dear Bastian, who will have to drive it during the next few days, while Comrade Commissar Kutusov sits at the back. Did you bring the louis d'or?"

  "Yes. In my suitcase."

  Three waiters entered with the luncheon trolley. Then Thomas, Bastian and Kutusov sat down to table and added fresh cream to the appetizing borsch soup. The Russian taxi-nobleman exclaimed in astonishment: "Just like home! Cream on the table!"

  MENU

  (Russian (Borsch

  (Beef Stro&anoff

  Lemon Souffle

  PARIS, 22 FEBRUARY 1946

  Thomas Lieven's first postwar millions were made in the Russian style.

  Russian Borsch

  Boil together one pound each of lean beef and pork. Add half a pound of streaky smoked bacon. Boil to a strong stock, then remove the meat and cut it into small pieces. Cut two pounds of cabbage into thin strips. Pepper and salt. Fry in lard, adding some spice and bay leaf. In another pot braise a chipped beetroot. Add vegetables as used for stock, with pepper, salt, bay leaf and a whole pepper. Add a little vinegar to the beetroot, so that it keeps its color. The lightly boiled vegetables, but not the bay leaf, are placed in the stock. Then the cut meat is added and the whole left to boil together. Before serving, a grated beetroot is added. At table one large tablespoonful of sour cream is poured into each plate of the soup.

  Beef Stroganoff

  Cut a well-hung fillet of beef into thin strips. Fry chopped onions in butter until tender, but do not brown them. Then add the meat and leave the whole to fry for one minute on each side. Add pepper, salt and plenty of thick sour cream. Stir well. Bring to a boil and serve.

  Lemon Souffle

  Cream three egg yolks together with three tablespoonfuls of sugar until foamy. Add all the juice and the grated rind of half a lemon, half a teaspoon of corn flour and the white of an egg beaten stiff. Place this mixture in a buttered souffl6 baking tin and bake in medium heat until risen and golden-brown. Serve immediately in tin, with biscuits.

  "Might I ask you to eat in a rather more mass-produced style, Comrade Commissar? Elbows on the table, for example. And in the future could you be a little less particular about your fingernails?"

  "But why? What are you bothering about all that for?"

  "Gentlemen, I have some big business to propose to you. It's an undertaking in which you, Baron, would pose as a commissar, Bastian as his driver and I as a wholesale dealer in spirituous liquors."

  "Spiri—what?" demanded Bastian in bewilderment.

  "Don't speak with your mouth full. Let's say a wholesale

  dealer in schnapps. I've been most bitterly disappointed by my treatment in the French Army, gentlemen. I intend to take a pretty drastic revenge on it."

  "With schnapps?"

  "Yes, with schnapps."

  "But there isn't any schnapps about now, my dear sir! Everything's rationed!" cried Kutusov.

  "You've no idea how much schnapps there'll be about all of a sudden if you and Bastian play your parts decently as commissar and chauffeur," said Thomas. "Now come on, let's each have another helping. Then after lunch we'll go shopping."

  "What are we going to buy?"

  "Black leather overcoats. Fur caps. Heavy socks." Thomas lowered his voice. "A Soviet delegation has been living in this hotel ever since the end of the war. There are five of them. Their job is to look after all the Soviet citizens in France. Do you know how many there are?"

  "No idea."

  "Over five thousand. And they're all suffering from the same thing . . ." While two guests listened intently over their spoonfuls of borsch, the best soup in the world, Thomas told them what was wrong with all the Soviet citizens in France...

  m

  Two days later a black Pontiac stopped in front of the French Ministry of Food, which controlled, among other things, the distribution of alcohol. A chauffeur in black leather, with a fur cap perched on his spiky red hair, opened the door of the car. A gentleman similarly clothed alighted and entered the great gray building. He took the elevator to the third floor, where he was received with open arms in the office of a certain Hippolyte Lassandre.

  "My dear, my most honored M. Kutusov! It was I with whom you spoke on the telephone yesterday. Let me take your coat. Pray be seated."

  M. Kutusov was wearing under his black leather overcoat a rather crumpled, blue suit of ready-made manufacture. His shoes were big and clumsy. He seemed to be in a great rage. "I consider the attitude of your Ministry a hostile act, which I shall report to Moscow ..."

  "I beg you, I entreat you, my dear M. Kutusov ... I mean dear Commissar Kutusov ... please do nothing of the kind. I

  shall get into the most terrible trouble with the Central Committee if you do!"

  "What Committee are you talking about?"

  "That of the Communist Party of France, Comrade Commissar, of which I am a member. I assure you that it was a pure oversight."

  "A pure oversight to ignore five thousand Soviet citizens for months in the distribution of alcohol?" The bogus commissar laughed scornfully. "Oversight, indeed! I find it very peculiar that while the British and American citizens in your country duly received their alcohol my own brave compatriots who beat the Fascists before any other nation did ..."

  "Say no more, Comrade Commissar, I beg of you! Of course you are right. It was unpardonable. But the error will be made good forthwith."

  The commissar proclaimed: "I demand in the name of the Soviet Union, naturally, deliveries retroactive to cover all the months when none was made."

  "Naturally, Comrade Commissar, naturally."

  The fact that the Soviet citizens living in France did not receive any alcohol rations had been learned by Thomas Lieven from Zizi, a slender young woman with auburn hair, who was employed by a prosperous house of assignation in Paris. Thomas had met her during the war and she was very fond of him. He had saved her lover, at the time, from deportation to Germany. Zizi told Thomas she was now getting on very well, especially since the Russians had come to Paris. Certain Russians were,
so to speak, permanent guests in her establishment.

  "What sort of Russians?" Thomas asked her.

  "Oh, they're members of a delegation living at the Crillon. Five of 'em. Great big hefty chaps, I can tell you. Strong as bears! Talk about the male animal!"

  Zizi went on to say that the five Soviet citizens were positively enraptured by the decadent phenomena of the capitalist West and for that reason were sadly neglecting their duties. They were supposed to be doing their best to encourage their five thousand compatriots living in France to return to Russia. But the delegates hardly ever applied themselves to this task. They preferred Zizi's place, and a few others, too...

  "Just imagine, they don't even bother about the schnapps rationing," Zizi told Thomas.

  "What should they be doing about that?" he asked. He soon found out what the position was.

  The bogus commissar, Kutusov, adequately equipped, with

  forged papers, as a Soviet official, took delivery of the supplementary distribution of alcohol. No less than three hundred thousand quarts were conveyed in trucks to a gloomy, partially demolished brewery near the airport at Orly.

  It had been discovered by Thomas while he was waiting for Bastian. The place had belonged to a collaborator now in exile. In February 1946—the reader should always bear in mind—much confusion still existed in most of the European countries, including France.

  Eight men now resumed work in the abandoned brewery. Production went on day and night. Under M. Hauser's directions the well-known and deservedly popular aniseed brandy known as pastis was distilled according to the following family recipe which was supplied to Thomas by a lady in Zizi's establishment.

  To one quart of chemically pure ninety-per-cent alcohol add:

  8 grams or 1 tablespoon of fennel seed

  12 grams or 4 tablespoons of balm-mint leaves

  5 grams or 2Vi teaspoons of star anise

  2 grams or 1 teaspoon of coriander

  5 grams or 5 teaspoons of sage

  8 grams or 1 tablespoon of green anise seeds

  The mixture is left to draw, in darkness, for eight days. Shortly before filtering ten drops of anise oil are added. Finally the alcohol content is reduced to forty-four per cent by dilution.

  Kutusov paid for the alcohol with the proceeds of the sale of the gold coins which Bastian had brought with him. Labels ordered by Thomas from a small printing shop were attached by Bastian's friends to the filled bottles.

  While wholesale production was still going on Thomas went to see a French military official on the commissariat staff who lived in the Parisian quarter of Latour-Maubourg. This part of the city was entirely occupied by the Army and constituted a small township within the capital.

  "M. Hauser" asked the commissariat officer Villard if he would be interested in a private bargain involving schnapps. "I am in possession of raw-materials which would enable me to produce pastis. I know that your officers' club is short of schnapps. I could sell it to you cheap."

  "What do you call cheap?"

  Thomas's offer was of course cheap at that period of appalling scarcity of alcohol. Today his price would be considered a bit high. He demanded in modern terms something like four dollars for a bottle of pastis.

  The commissariat officer clinched the deal as if it were the bargain of his life. And so it was from his point of view, considering that in those days a bottle of pastis on the black market would cost around about fourteen in currency of the present time.

  Business prospered at lightning speed. The commissariat officer didn't confine himself to supplying his own officers' club with Hauser's Pastis. He ?lso passed on the glad news to his friends. Soon army trucks were transporting Hauser's Pastis to every officers' club in the country.

  In fact, Thomas Lieven could well be said to be supplying the whole French Army. And the French Army paid on the nail. And all went well until May 7, 1946. Then there was a bit of a hitch.

  On that day, just before seven p.m., the permanent head of the Soviet delegation, M. Andreyev S. Shenkov, turned up at the suite of the bogus commissar Kutusov in the Hotel Crillon and demanded, very red in the face, an explanation of his conduct.

  For M. Shenkov, a few days before, had decided to pay a little more attention to his duties. He, too, therefore, proposed to supply his five thousand compatriots with alcohol. But he learned from the Ministry in charge of the rationing system that the alcohol due had long since been delivered to a certain Commissar Kutusov, in residence at the Hotel Crillon.

  "I demand an explanation!" roared Shenkov in French, with a strong Russian accent. "Who are you, monsieur? I don't know you! I never saw you before in my life! I'll have you arrested! I'll..."

  "Shut your trap!" Kutusov yelled back at him, but in the purest Russian. Then for half an hour he addressed Comrade Shenkov in Russian in exactly the fashion and on exactly the subjects imparted to him by Thomas Lieven. For Thomas had naturally allowed, from the start, for some such little hitch in his plans.

  Half an hour later Comrade Andreyev S. Shenkov returned to his room pale and agitated, his forehead damp with sweat His friends Tushin, Bolkonsky, Balashev and Alpalych were waiting for him there.

  "Comrades," groaned Shenkov, dropping into a chair, "we are lost!"

  "Lost?"

  "We're practically already in Siberia. It's ghastly. It's horrible. Do you know who Kutusov is? He is the commissar they've sent to spy on us. He has all the necessary powers and he knows all about us."

  "All?" cried Bolkonsky in horror.

  Shenkov answered in a depressed tone: "Everything. How we've neglected our work here and what we've been doing instead." His four friends looked terror-stricken. "There's only one thing we can do, comrades. We must try to make a friend of him. And we must work like dogs, day and night. No more Zizi! No more nylons and American canned food and cigarettes! Then it's just possible that Kutusov will condescend to be merciful..."

  Such was the way in which, thanks to Lieven's prophetic insight, the little hitch was surmounted and the great pastis undertaking could go on developing without the slightest interruption.

  On May 29 a very happy, because relatively wealthy, ex-comrade, commissar and taxi-nobleman, Kutusov, drove his two friends in his old Pontiac to Strasbourg. In that city Thomas had got to know, during the carefree days of his work for the War Crimes Investigation Service, a few friendly French and a few friendly German frontier guards. With their help it was not too difficult to transport the two trunks of Messrs. Lieven and Fabre, without examination, from the one country to the other. The trunks contained the profits of the pastis enterprise.

  On the back seat of the Pontiac, Thomas was talking excitedly. "Next move England, Bastian! The land of the free! Oh, my club, my lovely flat, my little bank! YouTI love England, old chap ..."

  "But look here, didn't the English chuck you out in 1939?"

  "Yes," said Thomas. "So we shall just have to make a detour first, to Munich. A friend of my youth who lives there will help me to get back into England."

  "Who's this friend of your youth, then?"

  "He's a Berliner. But at present he's an American major, editing a newspaper. Name's Kurt Westenhoff." Thomas smiled blissfully. "Oh, Bastian, I'm so happy. All our troubles are over now. A new life is beginning—a new era."

  Thomas Lieven, together with many other callers, sat in the anteroom of the office of the American major, Kurt Westen-hoff, at Munich, situated in the Schelling Strasse, in the enormous building formerly occupied by the publishing firm of Eher.

  In the days of the Thousand-Year Reich the Nazis had printed the Volkische Beobachter there. Now a different newspaper was being printed on the same premises by the Americans.

  It was very hot in Munich on that May 30, 1946. Many of the lean, pallid men seated in WestenhofFs anteroom had sweat standing on their brows. Thomas Lieven watched then pensively. There you sit, he was thinking, in your old suits, which have grown too big for you, with your shirt collars now too loose, an
d your haggard, undernourished and bloodless features. Beggars and jetsam of this first postwar period, coming here for help, for a job, for Persil tickets ... you don't look to me now as if you could have held your own out at the front or in any genuine resistance movement against the Nazis. You kept pretty quiet during those "Thousand Years." You stopped your ears, covered your eyes and shut your mouths. But now at last you mean to get somewhere. You'll soon be pushing your way to the national manager and extracting your share from the big sausage vat. You'll soon find places upstairs, in the government, in commerce and industry, everywhere. For the Americans will help you ...

  But are you the right people on the right road? Will you use this unique opportunity to shift Germany and the Germans a bit out of the limelight of history, for a time at any rate?

  We have started and lost two world wars in the course of thirty-two years. A tough performance! How would it be if we now withdrew from the arena and cultivated neutrality, gave in a bit both to the Amis and the Russians, traded with both West and East? We've been shooting such a lot! Suppose— now don't start losing your temper right away, it's only a suggestion—suppose we decided never to do any more shooting at all? God in heaven, that would be something to be proud of!

  An extremely pretty girl secretary appeared. "Herr Lieven, Major Westenhoff is waiting for you," said the young lady, who was later to become Mrs. Westenhoff. Thomas walked

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  past her into the editor's office. The latter rose to meet him with outstretched hand,

  "Morning, Thomas," said Kurt Westenhoff, who was short and chubby. He had thin fair hair, a fine forehead and shrewd blue eyes which always expressed both amiability and melancholy. His father, Dr. Hans Westenhoff, had been editor in chief in the Berlin publishing firm of Ullstein and had also been on the staff of BZ am Mittag and Tempo. Then the family had to emigrate. Now the war was over and Kurt Westenhoff had returned to the land which had driven him out

  "Morning, Kurt," said Thomas. He had last seen the man in 1933, in Berlin. Thirteen years had passed. Yet Westenhoff had immediately recognized him.