CHAPTER NINE

47 Rue d’Assas, Fauborg Saint Germain-des-Prés, 6^th arrondissement [6ème], Paris, Assumption Day, late morning

“Oui?” came the raspy voice of an elderly woman from inside the apartment. Just finishing her petit déjeuner, she did not care to be disturbed.

“C’est le gendamerie, Madame,” Inspector de Vincent responded.

Three locks were deactivated, and the heavy metal door opened.

“How can I be of service to the police?” Madam Malboeuf asked with a measure of apprehension without inviting the two policemen inside.

“May I step inside, Madame?” de Vincent requested. “I have important questions we need to put to you.”

She looked doubtful, but, after a pause, opened the door and showed the police officer into her parlor.

“Yes?”

“I am sorry to disturb you, Madame, but are you the wife of General Malboeuf?”

A dark shadow of fear momentarily crossed her sallow and wrinkled face. She tugged at the front of her worn and none-too-clean dressing robe.

“I am indeed Monica Roussin-Malboeuf. How may I be of service, gentlemen?”

She presumed now that they were from the de Gaulle government, and she had dreaded this day for years.

“I am afraid I have some unfortunate news for you, Madame Malboeuf.”

“Please tell me,” she said, her voice now barely a whisper.

“It is my sad duty to inform you that your husband, General Malboeuf, has passed on.”

“How is it that he died?”

She said it with resignation and a sigh.

Inspector de Vincent shook his head sadly, “I am afraid that he was murdered—shot.”

She reflexively crossed herself and fought to restrain insistent tears.

“May I be excused to make myself more presentable, gentlemen?” she asked.

It was obvious that she needed a moment. She was gone fifteen minutes and reappeared in a highly presentable ensemble and with fresh facial makeup.

Inspector de Vincent resumed his questions, “As difficult as this time is, Madame, I am obliged to ask you some questions to aid our investigation.”

“But of course. Please feel free. Anything I can do to help I will do.”

“Did the general have enemies?” de Vincent asked, knowing that becoming a general in anyone’s army produced many enemies.

“He did. There were people from the war … wars, of course. He was active in the postwar efforts to track down Nazis and Nazi sympathizers; so, the ODESSA probably harbors keen resentment against my husband. Then there was the unfortunate Algerian war … perhaps you are familiar.”

De Vincent was indeed thoroughly familiar and was glad that Madame Malboeuf brought up the subject first. Général de division Étienne Malboeuf was stationed in Algeria in the mid-1950s and early 1960s when forces for independence from France—largely the FLN [National Liberation Front]—launched the Algerian War of Independence which pitted the nation of France against the fighters associated with the several independence movements. The vicious struggle lasted from 1954 to 1962 and finally resulted in Algeria gaining its independence. Gen. Malboeuf and his fellow senior officers pledged themselves to defending the honor of France—as they perceived it—to the bitter end. The war—like many civil and revolutionary conflicts—descended into barbarity consisting of a complex conflict involved in guerrilla warfare, maquis [guerrilla resistance fighters] fighting, terrorism and counter-terrorism operations characterized by inhuman measures including the use of torture by all sides. Gen. Malboeuf and many of his colonial compatriots entered into the civil war between loyalist Algerians supporting a French Colonial Algeria and insurrectionist Algerian Muslim fighters. The conflict shook the foundations of the French Fourth Republic (1946–58) and led to its eventual collapse and a legacy of enmity.

President De Gaulle told the people of France and the French army in Algeria that he believed the war in Algeria was militarily winnable, but it could not be defended politically on the international stage. Finally, he announced that France would no longer contest the colony’s eventual independence. Gen. Malboeuf very publically voiced his anger and his sense that Frenchmen and the army were deeply offended. The French settlers and the French city-dwellers—joined by the dissident members of the army—were so enraged that they staged two armed uprisings. Reluctantly de Gaulle sent regular army units and fanatical foreign Legionnaires to the colony to suppress the settlers and troops. During the second uprising, in April 1961—with Gen. Malboeuf as one of the principal leaders—a threat of invasion of France itself was raised in what came to be known as the Generals’ Putsch. Rebel paratroops landed on French soil. Retaliation was swift, excessively brutal, and decisive. A noisy and chaotic demonstration in Paris—which came to be known as the Paris massacre of 1961—led De Gaulle’s government and police to machine-gun dissidents and herd them into the River Seine to drown. The Algerian rebels and angry colonial soldiers made several attempts on de Gaulle’s life.

The massacre and the assassination attempts were kept secret for decades. De Gaulle won decisively and was then faced with the thorny issue of what to do with the French generals in Algeria who had defied him in armed conflict. De Gaulle was a thoroughly unforgiving man, but also a pragmatist. His overwhelming victory could easily have been capped by executions or other draconian punishments visited upon his officers. He knew, however, that reprisals would expose to the world and to his own people the fragmentation of the French armed forces and would explode the myth of French honor and cohesiveness. Against the advice of many of his senior officers who had remained loyal, President de Gaulle decided to show leniency … with a price. Every Algerian officer of the rebellion who preferred life over execution had to choose to resign his commission, to retire into silent obscurity, to foreswear any political activities for the rest of his life, and to accept a subsistence-level pension.

De Vincent nodded his understanding to Madame Roussin-Malboeuf.

She continued, “My husband—the proud Étienne Malboeuf—had to eat humble pie and to live like one of the racaille [riff-raff] in a city apartment. He had to gnash his teeth whenever that pompous ass, de Gaulle, made some new gaffe in his public pronouncements. It ate away at his innards; but his life depended on his silence; and so he kept quiet—even with me.”

“I understand that Gaullists retaliated against some of the old-guard army men and searched them out. Many were taken away and disappeared over the next few years; a few had unfortunate and unexplained accidents; and a few were frankly murdered with the murders never solved,” de Vincent added in his slow soft voice.

As Madame Roussin-Malboeuf had been talking, he had been unobtrusively reading his extensive file on her husband provided by Lieutenant Piétri.

Madame Roussin-Malboeuf nodded her agreement, and added, “And their estates were confiscated. My Etienne and his fellow officers lived in terror. We moved many times, changed our names, and tried to become invisible. We were visited at random times by big men from the Deuxième Bureau. Did you know that they have a whole section devoted just to the ‘appenings in the colonial wars, especially Algeria? Until today, I thought that de Gaulle might have forgotten or forgiven my Étienne, and life had returned to some semblance of normal.”

At the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Deuxième Bureau became the modern French counterespionage service—the SDECE [Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage: English—Foreign Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service]; but for the Algerians and old French cops it would always be the Deuxième, and would always be regarded with suspicion and distaste seasoned with a generous dollop of fear.

“Any names come to mind?” asked de Vincent.

“I will compose a list,” Madame Roussin-Malboeuf said with a hard set to her features.

The general’s wife was bent from arthritis and spinal osteoporosis, and her face showed every insult and deprivation to which she had been subjected. But in her gray-blue eyes was still the fire of determination and the need for revenge. She was wrinkled, and her skin was sallow. Surprisingly to the detectives, as a result of her fifteen minutes of regaining her composure, Madame Roussin-Malboeuf was well-dressed, at least by the strict rules of the 1950s French style when Paris burgers ruled the fashion world. Her archaic ensemble included a mink coat with hairless patches and considerable jewelry. Had he bothered to ask, the detective would have received the answer, “Because it is the style, Monsieur.” True enough, but off by more than a decade.

Enquêteur De Vincent was sure the elderly woman locked in her time warp would produce a list that would include serious de Gaulle officials, and its release to the public would create an international sensation that could topple the de Gaulle presidency and might well result in his and Lieutenant Sylvain Piétri’s deaths.

He simply nodded noncommittally to the widow and took a new tack in his questioning.

“You have children, I understand,” he said, recalling Piétri’s hasty research back at Paris Police Headquarters at Place Louis Lépine, 1 rue de Lutèce, before he drove his pathetic automobile to the Jardin du Luxembourg Park and his quick study of the file he carried.

“Yes, Monsieur, my husband and I were blessed by the Virgin to have two sons, René and Damien.”

“What is their relationship with you and their father, Madame?”

She paused before answering.

“Somewhat strained I’m sorry to say, Monsieur Enquêteur.”

“And their relationship to you?”

“Better. Much better, I am pleased to say.”

“What was the problem between your sons and their father?”

“I am not entirely sure, but it had to do with money and business, a subject that none of the men in the family share with their women. Relations with the Roussin side of the family have not been good these past six or seven years. I think that was part of the money and business problem. You will have to take that up with René and Damien.”

“Would you please write down their addresses and telephone numbers, Madame Roussin-Malboeuf?”

She nodded and began to write.

“I am sorry to have to bring this up, Madame, but I am afraid that it may have something to do with the tragic events of today,” de Vincent said in his slow and deliberate way.

She gave him a quizzical look.

“My associates and I searched the general’s belongings and found a photograph, a name, and address of a young woman. It was prominently displayed. Can you shed light on that finding? A daughter, perhaps?”

She snorted.

“You mean his putain [whore]—the catin [strumpet] Antoinette de Baudry—the famous model!”

She spat out the words with acidic venom.

“What can you tell me about her, other than the obvious, Madame?”

“She was passed from rich man to rich man. First, an Italian count—maybe a Mafioso—then the son of some wealthy de Gaulle appointee, then just before my husband, she did the dirtiness with a chief criminal of the Unione Corse [Corsican crime syndicate].”

“Do you have a name for any of those men?”

“Only the last one. He was called Benedettu Paganucci. But, knowing that lot, it could be a fake name. For that matter, I can’t be the least bit sure that the catin’s name is what she says it is.”

“It gives us a start,” de Vincent said and paused a moment to take notes.

“Anything else?” he asked, then flipped a few pages in his notes. “Ah, yes, the will—it slipped my mind.

“Madame Roussin-Malboeuf, the gendamerie are familiar somewhat with the general’s career and that he came from a well-to-do family. Can you tell me about the extent of his estate?”

“First of all, the general did not share with me his business dealings, including the value of his estate. I do know two things: first, he took from me my inheritance from my Roussin relatives, which was valued in the millions of francs; second, de Gaulle allowed him to keep his money and property in recognition of his long service to France and as a way of demonstrating that he forgave him. So, I am certain that he died a very wealthy man.

“I know he had a will, revised only recently when he set up the catin in her own pied-à-terre not far from here. I cannot tell you what evil she seduced him to commit against his wife and his children, but I would not be surprised at anything.”

De Vincent glanced away from the newly created widow and shrugged.

“I will leave you to mourn now, Madame. It is possible that I or others from the police may return with more questions. Please do not leave the area.”

“Of course. I have no means to leave at the moment.”