2

Colette Perriard studied the faces of her fellow travelers on the Métro like one would study a great work of art.

Normally, Parisians were content to stare straight ahead or bury their faces in one of the collaborationist newspapers like Paris-Soir or Le Petit Parisien. On this Friday morning commute, however, perfect strangers eagerly shared morsels of gossip they’d heard on the street. Hope lighted thin and pale faces. Chins were held higher, like in the H. de la Charlerie engraving, The Women March on Versailles.

Bus service had been canceled because of the Paris insurrection that started almost a week ago, but below ground on the Métro, rumors buzzed like a swarm of locusts . . .

French tanks were seen passing through May-en-Multien during the night.

The Americans want to free Paris, but Montgomery doesn’t want to put British troops into harm’s way.

They’re waiting for de Gaulle to arrive from London.

Colette listened impassively, not sure what to believe. Someone even claimed that the Germans had decided to begin mass executions, starting at dusk.

She let out a slow breath. For her, the meaning of life was tied to the art she worked hard to protect and preserve. The liberation of Paris and the ultimate defeat of the Nazis would mean the recovery of priceless treasures and the restoration of sanity in the world of fine art.

She alighted at the Palais Royal stop and hurried from the tomblike oven. She climbed the last of the stairs and stepped onto a broad sidewalk shaded by pavilions and baroque buildings with colonnades. Here on the Right Bank was the center of contemporary Paris, home to palaces, government buildings, and museums, including the Louvre, where she worked as a curator.

Most pedestrians avoided eye contact as she walked a brisk half block to the Rue de Rivoli, one of Paris’s grand boulevards. The optimism of the underground Métro had given way to the reality of the streets: Paris would soon be under siege. Gazing toward the western horizon, she viewed pillars of brown and white smoke curling to the heavens, signs of skirmishes and pitched battles in the distance. Her stomach clenched, and she quickened her pace.

She reached the corner, preparing to cross, when a convoy of German troop trucks rumbled her direction. She stiffened, pausing her steps. Truck after truck thundered past—more than a dozen vehicles in each of three columns. The air thickened with plumes of sooty exhaust. As each truck passed, rows of seated German soldiers cast cold stares at the knot of Parisians waiting to cross the boulevard. Colette’s eyes met one soldier’s narrowed gaze, and a shiver traveled up her spine. Death was landscaped in the soldier’s look.

Perhaps the rumor about summary executions was right.

“I haven’t seen this many boches in one place since June 1940.” The observation came from someone she recognized from the Louvre’s Antiquities area. Several Louvre employees had gathered at the corner, patiently waiting to cross.

“Where do you think they’re going?” asked another.

“Probably the Hôtel Meurice.” The man from Antiquities rubbed his hands. “That can only mean one thing—the German High Command knows the Allies are coming to liberate us.”

The Hôtel Meurice, located half a kilometer west of the Louvre, housed the top German military brass as well as the commanding governor, General Dietrich von Choltitz.

As Colette crossed the boulevard, she looked toward her office on the third floor of the Richelieu Wing. Working at the Louvre had been a wartime balm and had given her an opportunity to live adequately amidst the food and fuel shortages the last four years, comfortable by comparison to most Parisians.

With Paris on the cusp of liberation—or unruly revolution—every able-bodied employee had been called in to the Musée du Louvre. It was all hands on deck after Gaullist forces stormed the Préfecture de Police nearly a week ago and set Paris down a path of no return. No one knew what the next day or even the next hour would bring.

Colette drew in a heavy breath. She had a feeling that history would be made very soon—and she had a front row seat.

“Bonjour, Anne.”

Colette set her purse on the file cabinet and approached Anne Chavanette, who, like Colette, was twenty-seven years old and a Louvre curator. Anne stood up from her desk, and the pair leaned forward and lightly touched cheek with cheek—once for each side.

“Hear anything on the Métro?” Anne asked.

“The rumors get wilder each day. At least no one spoke of the Louvre getting blown up this morning.”

“You’d think the Allies would be here by now. I heard that Patton’s tanks turned in our—”

Colette held up a hand. “Right. And General de Gaulle will be parachuting into Paris to storm the Hôtel Meurice single-handedly and drive out the Nazis with a cowboy six-shooter.”

Anne waved her off. “You and your imagination. Can I pour you some tea? It’s a bit weak.”

“Sure.” Colette held out a chipped china cup for Anne to fill, then sat down at her desk and opened the top right-hand drawer. A small glass jar half filled with honey was still there. Colette picked it up to appraise how much was left. “I see you’re being a good girl.”

“I wouldn’t imagine using any of your honey. But since you’re here—” Anne walked over, and Colette handed her the small jar with a smile.

Time to get to work. She retrieved a set of keys from her purse, one of which she used to open the top drawer of the wooden file cabinet. The worn folder of Paul Cézanne, the Post-Impressionist painter, was the closest—right where she had left it yesterday. Inside the file were pages of information about his paintings and where they were located.

Cézanne apparently fancied himself as a philosopher as well. Several pages of his writings were included in the files, including this quote that leaped from the smudged pages: “Right now a moment of time is passing by. We must become that moment.”

Colette sat down and took her first sip of sweetened tea. She was certainly in the moment now. A liberated Paris and no longer working for the Germans were tantalizing prospects. She’d been hired in the summer of 1940 after her predecessor had fled for Vichy France because of Jewish ancestry. Since then, Colette had faced all sorts of pressures from the occupying victors. The Germans had been distressed to learn that Cézanne’s works as well as the Louvre’s priceless “show pieces”—led by Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Venus de Milo, and the Mona Lisa—had been evacuated the moment Hitler unleashed the Nazi blitzkrieg on Poland. What remained in the Louvre’s depleted basements were minor collections and lesser-known odds and ends—but all were valuable.

If only she’d had a chance to see the Mona Lisa in her position as curator, but the painting had already been safely hidden away for six months by the time she’d arrived. Of course now . . . if stories of liberation were true, she might soon get her chance. The prospect of planning the return of the Mona Lisa to her rightful place in the Salle des États thrilled her.

Colette sighed. She couldn’t think of that yet. Her work wasn’t done. The victory was not yet theirs.

She looked up from the file, turning to Anne. “Do you remember when someone from Reichsmarschall Göring’s office came here? I saw a soldier on a transport that reminded me of him today. Maybe it was the hard look in his eyes.”

“Colonel Heller?” Anne refilled her cup with weak tea. “He’s the one snatching up art pieces for Göring—that fat hunk of sausage. Come to think of it, we haven’t seen the colonel in a while.”

“Good riddance.” Colette looked down at her file. She hadn’t forgotten the time when Heller asked her to go to the storage basement to identify a half-dozen paintings confiscated from Jewish families. He wanted an expert opinion about their worth. When she confirmed their authenticity and incredible value, Heller replied that the paintings and sculptures were destined for the Führermuseum in Adolf Hitler’s hometown of Linz, Austria. The conceit of those Nazis! Soon France would be rid of them. She wished for nothing more.

Until then, she had to appease types like Heller. Government-run museums like the Louvre fell under the control of the German Ministry of Culture and were subject to their whims and desires. Seeing German soldiers load their loot into trucks caused her heart to break.

“Liberation can’t be much longer.” Anne set down her cup of tea and inserted a piece of paper into her typewriter. “Is anything happening out there?”

“I’ll take a look.” Colette stepped over to their third-story vantage point overlooking the busy thoroughfare and pushed open the window to gain a better view.

“German tanks are coming this way, two or three blocks to the east.” A trio of Panzers ate up pavement in single-file fashion and would soon pass on the street below.

Her colleague stopped typing and rose from her desk to join Colette at the window. “Where do you think they’re going?”

Colette’s ears tingled from the exhaust notes of the powerful diesel engines. “When I got off the Métro, we saw a huge convoy of troop trucks. They had to be heading to the Hôtel Meurice.”

“Yes, I heard them pass too.”

“And now these tanks are moving in the same direction. Maybe an Allied attack is imminent.”

As a rule, Colette kept her distance from where the German High Command was posted. Most Parisians did the same, although some parents still visited the lovely sculptured Tuileries Garden opposite the hotel, where their children played by the pond with wooden sailboats. She leaned out the windowsill and regarded how the tanks purposefully maintained a straight line down the middle of the boulevard, which had emptied in the last twenty minutes. The few Parisians out and about skirted underneath the alcoves or slipped into the background.

Easy now, she thought. All it took was a Resistance member to fling a Molotov cocktail at one of those tanks, and a trigger-happy tank gunner could punch a grotesque hole in the nearest building—or her office.

Anne stood on her tiptoes and leaned out the window. “I’m looking for Allied tanks, but I’m not seeing anything.”

Colette mirrored her movement. “Me neither. I’m sure we’ll hear shooting once the Allies are in Paris. This certainly is nerve-racking, waiting for something to happen.”

“What are you going to do when the shooting starts?”

“Stay here as long as I can. I would imagine that the Louvre would be one of the first places the Allies want to secure.”

Colette closed the window, which cut down the cacophony of sound considerably. Anne returned to her desk, while Colette turned to the wooden file cabinet and unlocked the second drawer. The file she sought was one she could find blindfolded. She bent over, let her fingers count off six files, and pulled out a binder marked La Joconde.

She carried the thick file back to her desk and untied the string holding its contents. Henri Rambouillet, her department head and senior curator, had given her a promotion that carried responsibility for the Mona Lisa back in 1942, one which raised eyebrows among other Louvre curators since she only had two years of experience. The hallway gossip was horrible. Some said the German cultural minister pressured Rambouillet because she had slept with him, but that was a filthy lie. It was her mother-tongue fluency in German that leapfrogged Colette over other applicants.

Colette skimmed the first few pages, which she could practically recite by heart. When Hitler was rattling sabers in the summer of 1939, at least one segment of the French elites believed him—the arts community. August vacations were canceled at the Louvre, and packing and crating started in earnest. A plan was formulated to safeguard priceless works of art like the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo by removing them from the Louvre and hiding them outside of Paris for safekeeping.

Over the next four years, the famous painting moved more often than a green pea in a shell game. Currently, she was resting in a chateau outside the medieval town of Annecy, not far from Geneva.

Colette smiled and gathered the papers in the file and straightened the bottom edges. Keeping up with the wry smile of a Florentine merchant’s wife and her constant moves caused Colette to rub her temples. But based on the events of the last few days, soon she—and all of France—could breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Colette looked up from her file. “It will be nice to get La Joconde home where she belongs,” she said to Anne.

The phone jangled, which Colette picked up.

“We have a problem,” a voice announced.

She immediately recognized the voice of Monsieur Rambouillet, her superior, a few offices away.

Rambouillet cleared his throat. “There’s a German major in my—”

The phone line went dead. Seconds later a commotion of guttural German shouts and heavy boots filled the hallway.

“What’s happening?” Anne asked, the color draining from her face.

“I’m not sure.” Colette set the black handset back in its cradle and stepped out into the hallway. Monsieur Rambouillet scrambled her way. A German officer and a soldier holding a bayoneted rifle followed with heavy steps.

Rambouillet, pale and clammy, mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “I can’t understand a word this crazy German is saying!” he cried. “You have to help me.”

Colette stepped in front of her superior. She squared her shoulders and gathered her courage. “There seems to be a misunderstanding, Herr Oberst. How can I help?” she asked in crisp German that bespoke authority.

“I’m here to move a few paintings.”

Colette regarded the intruder. His uniform was all starch and shiny brass. Slight of build with a face pockmarked from scarred acne, the Prussian exuded arrogance. His pinpoint eyes made her skin crawl.

“Sir, this is the Louvre, and we work under the German Ministry of Culture. May I see your requisition documents, please?”

“Will this suffice?” The major unbuttoned his leather holster and pointed a pistol at Colette and then Rambouillet, who instinctively held up his hands at chest height.

Colette’s heart skipped a beat, then she steadied her nerves and took a long moment to study the German major, whose exertion had prompted two lines of perspiration to roll down his craggy face. To Colette, he reeked of desperation, which was the picture of a proud and boastful enemy teetering on defeat.

“But Herr Oberst, how will I explain this to the Cultural Minister?”

Without moving his gaze from Colette, the major aimed his Luger in Rambouillet’s direction and fired a single round. Rambouillet winced as powder stung his bald head. Behind him, wood splintered and scattered to the floor. Shock hung in the air with the acrid aroma of spent gunpowder filling the hallway.

Colette maintained her composure. “Herr Major, surely you’re aware that I’ll need to answer to the Ministry for any pieces of art released without the proper paperwork.”

This time the major slowly lowered his outstretched arm and pointed the pistol directly between Rambouillet’s eyes. “I’m sure the Ministry has more pressing matters to tend to at the moment . . .”

Colette stiffened. “Very well,” she said in a steady voice that surprised even her. “What do you have in mind?”

“A few souvenirs of my time in Paris. I’d like to see what you have in the Sully Wing,” he replied, while returning the sidearm to his holster.

Colette’s gaze narrowed. “Yes, let me see what I can arrange. You can follow me.” She turned to Rambouillet and switched back to French. “You may go back to your office. I’ll handle this.”

She had never seen a more grateful look in her life. Anne, who’d watched the encounter from the doorway, slipped away and joined Rambouillet down the hall.

Colette had trained for moments like this and knew exactly what to do. She stepped back into her office, and with a demure smile to the major, she lifted the phone. “I’ll just call the custodian and ask him to meet us at the storage area.”

The connection was made after two short rings. “Je cherche Monsieur Monet. J’ai besoin de le recontrer dans l’aile Sully,” she said. I’m looking for Mr. Monet. I need to meet him in the Sully Wing.

A brusque, deep voice replied that Monsieur Monet wasn’t available. She hung up the handset. “He wasn’t there,” she said in German to the two men occupying her office. “I can try someone else—”

The German officer placed his left hand over hers before she could lift the phone to place another call. Her body shivered in response to his cold touch.

“That won’t be necessary. I’m sure you know the way.”

The major had good information, Colette thought. The Sully Wing was the easternmost annex of the Louvre, ringed by a thirteenth-century moat, and showcased invaluable eighteenth-century paintings from French artists like Fragonard and Watteau. Many had been wrapped, boxed, and shipped out in the fall of 1939, but with 15,000 works of art in the Louvre’s possession at the start of the war, thousands of paintings had to be left behind in the Louvre’s basements.

And now some rogue Nazi was treating the most famous museum in the world like a shopping gallery. She wished her boyfriend, Bernard Rousseau, had picked up the phone when she dialed Maintenance.

She led the Germans from the Richelieu Wing into the main palace courtyard, which was empty except for a pair of gardeners clipping potted hedges to the left of the Sully Wing entrance. The German major was a step behind her, followed by the soldier who had shouldered his carbine.

As they approached the ornate double doors, the German major called to her, “Fräulein, one moment.”

Colette came to a stop in the magnificent courtyard and turned to face him. The major paused his steps and leaned in slightly.

“We will keep this our little secret, ja? If not—” The officer tapped his black leather holster, a visual reminder to Colette that he was prepared to use his Luger.

Colette did not respond. Her attention was directed elsewhere—to movement behind the Wehrmacht soldier. In one fluid motion, one of the gardeners swung a short-handled tool into the back of the unsuspecting infantryman.

With a muffled grunt, the soldier fell face-first to the cobblestone square, the blunt end of a pickaxe extruding from his back.

The German major swiveled and fumbled for his Luger as a shadow of a shovel darted across the walkway ahead. The broad blade of the tool struck him square in the face. The sharp crackling of bone and cartilage was muffled by splitting skin. The dazed officer covered his face and doubled over in agony, blood dripping between his fingers. Colette placed her hands over her mouth and stepped back.

Windmilling the shovel, the gardener brought the blade down hard against the back of the major’s head, flattening the base of his skull. The German crumpled to the ground. Colette stared in horror as the gardener delivered the coup de grâce—a pair of hedge shears ferociously driven between the officer’s shoulder blades.

A grotesque sucking sound caused her stomach to lurch as the long-handled shears were pulled from the dead officer. The gardener quickly removed the Luger from its holster and tucked it under his belt.

“Et voilà,” he said, breaking the silence with his gruff voice. There you have it.

Colette felt her world spinning. She knew that her code phrase—“Je cherche Monsieur Monet”—would alert the maintenance crew that she was in danger, but up until today, she had never needed to make that call. She moved to a nearby bench and sat down, taking several deep breaths to steady herself.

“Quick—help me load this pig.” The gardener beckoned his partner to give him a hand.

Within seconds, the second gardener wheeled a wooden handcart out from behind the potted hedges. Together, they heaped two bodies onto the cart and covered them with a green canvas tarp.

“Go back to your office,” the gardener said to Colette. “We’ll tell Bernard you’re okay.”

“Where is he?”

He adjusted his brimless beret. “I’m sorry, Mademoiselle, I don’t know where he is, but he is fighting for our liberation. Vive la France!”

“Oui, vive la France.”

Colette looked up at the summer sky, tarnished with smoke and haze in the distance. She could only wonder what Bernard was doing at that moment.