The Patriarch: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel (24 page)

Ignoring the startled glances around him, he went on, his voice slurring a little, “Women and loot, that’s what wars are all about, at least for the poor bastards who fight them.”

The Russian troops wanted watches and women, he said, chuckling. But the French pilots had learned that the safety-deposit boxes of rural banks in East Prussia, in which the Russians took little interest, provided the richest rewards in jewels, gold coins and paintings. They had learned wealthy Berliners had stored their treasures out in country banks when the Allied bombing campaign made basements and Berlin banks unsafe. And Stalin’s decision at the war’s end to give the new French state forty of the Yak fighters the Normandie-Niemen squadron had been flying gave the Frenchmen a way to bring the loot back home.

“That was how I had the money to buy my Paris apartment,” the Patriarch said. “The Germans had been looting France for the past four years, so I felt it was only fair. They invaded us, now we and our Russian allies were doing the same to them. That’s war
. À la guerre comme à la guerre.
And it’s a terrible shame we didn’t learn the lesson from those years. The Russians are France’s natural allies. The threat of a war on two fronts is the only way we can control the Germans. It was true in 1914, true in 1940, and it’s still true today. Ideologies may come and go, but the geopolitics and facts of geography don’t change. De Gaulle understood that, even if nobody else did.”

He raised his glass, said “Here’s to the Russians!” and drained it.

The table fell silent, the women looking stunned, the men exchanging embarrassed glances. The brigadier looked amused, and Bruno was wondering what he might say to steer his boyhood hero onto more congenial ground, when there came a rustle of silk, a whiff of perfume, and Madeleine swooped down to kiss the Patriarch’s cheeks.

“Darling Papa, are you telling your usual old soldier’s tales about fighting alongside the Russians?” she said in amused tones, taking the old man’s hand as she squeezed herself onto the end of a bench beside Florence.

“I know some of these people haven’t heard your war stories, but think of poor me. I’ve heard them a hundred times, and now I really need a drink. And may I pinch some of that delicious-looking pâté? I’ve just driven all the way from Bordeaux, and I’m starving.”

Bruno swiftly handed her his glass of white wine, so far untouched, toasted her with his water glass and introduced Madeleine to the rest of the table. She threw him a grateful glance, one eyelid fluttering in what might be the merest hint of a wink. It was a signal of intimacy that Bruno cherished, hugging it to himself in private pride. Then she turned back, still chattering gaily to her father-in-law as she discreetly moved the wine bottles out of his reach.

Gilles found a spare plate and cutlery on an adjoining table and served her some pâté, and then a roar of welcome came from the rest of the barn as Stéphane and the baron arrived. They were carrying a door that had been lifted from its hinges and had been loaded with a dozen serving dishes, each one piled high with slices of roast boar. Behind them came Dougal with a wheelbarrow loaded with baked potatoes.

On the early morning drive from St. Denis to Brive to pick up Chantal, Bruno asked the brigadier if he’d heard the Patriarch speak that way before about the Russians. Only when the old man had taken more wine than was good for him, came the reply. But he’d been right about de Gaulle, the brigadier went on. Always suspicious of the Americans and their British allies, de Gaulle had pulled France out of the military wing of NATO and pursued his own policy of détente with the Russians.

“You have to remember that de Gaulle grew up before 1914, when France and Russia were close allies and the Germans were the enemy,” the brigadier said. De Gaulle had come out of St. Cyr as a newly fledged officer and went almost straight to war. He was wounded in the opening battles and returned to be wounded again in the hand in 1915. The following year at Verdun he was bayoneted, lost consciousness from poison gas and was then taken prisoner. He hated being out of the war, tried to escape five times from his prison camp and wrote that being kept from the fighting was like being cuckolded. And then in 1940 the Germans invaded once more, but this time they defeated the French army, occupied Paris and forced France to sue for peace. When France was finally liberated by British and American troops, de Gaulle always remembered that the bulk of the German army had been fighting on the eastern front and that the Russians had borne the brunt of the war effort and most of the casualties.

“De Gaulle didn’t trust the Anglo-Saxons, and he always believed the Russians were France’s best guarantee against another German invasion,” the brigadier concluded. “The Patriarch feels exactly the same way. That’s why he and de Gaulle always got on so well. For de Gaulle, Marco and his Normandie-Niemen squadron embodied the Franco-Russian alliance. De Gaulle never grew out of that 1914 and 1940 mind-set. And Marco never forgot his wartime comrades on the eastern front.”

“What are you trying to say?” Bruno asked, shocked by the implication that his boyhood hero might not have been the devoted French patriot of legend. “Do you think he was too close to the Russians? Was he working for them?”

“No, I don’t think that and there’s no evidence for it, and believe me, people have looked,” the brigadier said as they’d pulled into the parking lot at Brive to wait for Chantal’s train. There had been a full-scale inquiry when the Russians came out with a supersonic airliner that looked uncannily like the Anglo-French Concorde, but Marco had been exonerated. He was always too open and honest about his partiality for the Russians. And Marco had never been in a position to make policy. At the end of the day de Gaulle was a realist, knowing that France was a part of the West. Whatever his sentimental views of the Russians and his suspicions about the Germans, de Gaulle made the alliance treaty with Adenauer and committed France to an ever-closer union with Europe. Logically there was no other choice for France.

Bruno directed the brigadier to take the main road from Brive through Argentat and Aurillac to reach the
notaire
’s office, but even so it took two hours to get there through the hills and valleys. Chantal and her brother were squeezed into the front passenger seat while Bruno stretched out his leg in the rear. When they’d met at Brive station, Bruno hadn’t expected Marc to join them, and Chantal hadn’t expected the brigadier. Bruno introduced him simply as a friend who’d volunteered to drive them after the injury to his leg.

“Marc and I have never had any secrets between us,” Chantal said as her half brother stood protectively at her side. Bruno had shrugged and made some friendly remark about seeing them play excellent tennis together, trying to make conversation, but he got no reaction. Marc glared almost suspiciously around the station until Chantal took him by the hand and led the way into the Land Rover’s cramped front seat.

They drove in near silence, struck by the way the deceptive smoothness of the hills from a distance became a much more gaunt and jagged landscape as they came closer and began to penetrate the
massif
of old volcanoes that became so many ski resorts in winter. Finally, when the peak of Puy Mary came into sight ahead, Chantal seemed to respond to the stern splendor of the views around them, saying she’d never been to this part of France before. Marc said he’d been once, on a school camping trip, and he remembered the Cantal cheese and the imposing viaducts that carried the railway line.

They turned off at Ségur-les-Villas and headed for the small village where the
notaire
was also the mayor, passing farmhouses of gray stone and dark gray slate roofs that seemed to merge into a lowering sky with wisps of cloud swirling around the peaks of the high ridges. The
notaire
’s village was composed of a small, squat church and two buildings on each side of it to form a hollow square. The first building was a private house, separated from the church by a stretch of graveyard. The other had a single entrance, but on one side of the door was a plaque saying
MAIRIE
and on the other the brass plate of the
notaire.
Behind each building were barns, and behind the
mairie
stood an empty milking shed. Some cows were sitting together in the corner of a distant field.

The door of the
mairie
opened, and a tall, thin man appeared. In his sixties with thinning white hair cut very short, he wore a dark suit, white shirt and a very wide tie that might have been fashionable some forty years earlier. He was smoking an old-fashioned pipe with a long, curved stem.

“Welcome,” said the
notaire,
coming from the doorway to greet them, shaking hands with Bruno and asking what had happened to his leg. Bruno explained briefly and introduced his companions. Marc and the brigadier were asked to wait in the
mairie,
a grandiose title for what turned out to be a single room with a desk and two hard-backed chairs. The
notaire
’s office was larger and more comfortable, lined with shelves for books and files of legal documents, a heavy wooden desk for the
notaire
and a matching table with six leather-backed chairs around it. A coffeepot and three cups stood on a small silver tray. The
notaire
took the head of the table, gestured Chantal and Bruno to take a seat and asked Chantal for her identity card. She showed it, the
notaire
sat, asked Bruno to pour coffee for each of them and opened a box of black cardboard labeled
CLAMARTIN, GILBERT
that rested on the table.

“My condolences on the death of your godfather,” the
notaire
said, and began to read the will. Almost everything went to Chantal. The first exception was that a painting, described as a nude portrait of a young woman, went to Yevgeny, the artist who had painted it. Yevgeny had been informed by telephone, and the
notaire
had sent him a formal statement of ownership pending valuation of the painting for tax purposes. The second was an envelope that was to be delivered, unopened, to Nicole Larignac, and the
notaire
was in correspondence with her about how best this was to be done. The third was another sealed envelope, marked “To be handed to a responsible officer of the law in the event of my death.”

“I believe that you would be a qualified person to receive this envelope, Chief of Police Courrèges, if you would sign here for its receipt and to confirm that it came to you unopened.”

As Bruno signed the receipt, the notaire turned to Chantal, informed her that he had asked a local estate agent to value Gilbert’s house and property, and passed over a valuation document that estimated it was worth 180,000 euros in current market conditions. The agent would be happy to put it on sale for her if she so chose. He then turned to Gilbert’s trust fund in Vaduz, which was valued at just over 600,000 euros.

Bruno held his breath as the notaire began to speak, half expecting him to read out some letter to Chantal from Gilbert, revealing that he had been her natural father. But there seemed to be no such personal note, only the dry tones of the
notaire
explaining more financial details.

“In correspondence with the Vaduz bank, I have been made aware of a second trust fund in Gilbert’s name, of which Gilbert made no mention to me when his will was drafted. It is worth nearly three times as much, which also passes to you under the terms of the will. Altogether, mademoiselle, you inherit a little more than two million euros after my estimate of the various fees and taxes that will be due.”

Chantal looked stunned and stared at the
notaire
in disbelief. Bruno poured a second cup of coffee, and she sipped at it gratefully. The
notaire
passed her a large, unsealed envelope and asked her to sign a receipt and to give him a RIB, the details of her bank account into which the final sum could be paid after the fiscal and legal formalities were complete. Chantal took her checkbook from her purse, tore out one of the RIB forms at the back of it and handed it across.

“I should add that your godfather was a friend of mine from boyhood, and I shall miss him greatly. In his memory, my wife and I have prepared a small and very informal lunch in our house across the square. It’s a long way to and from Brive, and we’d be honored if you and your companions would join us and raise a final glass to Gilbert.”

Chantal stammered her thanks, and they rose from the table, collected Marc and the brigadier and strolled across the square to the other house where a thin woman who looked like a female version of the
notaire
opened the door to guide them into a parlor. She was introduced as the
notaire
’s sister. The room was evidently seldom used, featuring old-fashioned furniture with faded upholstery that seemed never to have known the weight of a human body. Bruno tried to recall the name of the small cloths that hung over the back of each chair; he hadn’t seen them for decades.

A trolley with two shelves on castors stood against one wall, cold meats, pâtés, cheese, rolls and a seedcake on the lower shelf, plates and cutlery, glasses and two bottles on the upper. One bottle was wine, of a color between rosé and pale red, and the other was
gentiane,
the yellow apéritif from the
gentiane
root that grew locally.

A short, plump and much-younger woman entered with a coffeepot and some napkins. This was the
notaire
’s wife and she spoke with an Auvergnat accent so strong Bruno had to strain to understand her as she asked if he would like pâté, cold pork or a fish-salad sandwich. The
notaire
remained standing while urging the others to sit and directed his sister to distribute plates and glasses. Beside each seat was a small, low table, each covered with a lace cloth. Bruno and the brigadier each took a glass of
gentiane,
as did the locals. Marc and his sister took a glass of wine, and Marc’s mouth pursed and his eyes widened when he took a sip.

Bruno and Chantal made forced conversation with the
notaire
about his and Gilbert’s boyhood in the area. The room that was now his office used to be the schoolroom, the
notaire
said, and he had walked three kilometers each day to get to school, and the same back. Gilbert had even farther to come from his family’s farm. There were no phones, and the road to the village had been of gravel until the 1960s. The eldest sons stayed to run the farms, some sisters stayed to marry the farmers, and all the other young people left for Paris, where the Auvergnats were famous for running most of the bistros in the city.

“There were so many of us they even had their own newspaper,
L’Auvergnat de Paris,
” said the sister. “We used to get copies down here.”

The visiting party ate, drank a toast to Gilbert’s memory, thanked the
notaire
and his family and left, Bruno edging carefully into the rear seat once more while Marc and Chantal made do in the front. Taking out his map, Bruno directed the brigadier back by a different route, aiming to cross the headwaters of the Dordogne at Bort-les-Orgues and taking country roads through Margerides to rejoin the autoroute at St. Angel. He hoped it would be faster, but it seemed to make little difference. At least this time there was conversation in the car. Marc was eager to hear the details of the will, but Chantal diverted him with good-natured jokes about the old-fashioned parlor they had just visited and the thin, rather-sour local wine they had been served.

“You should have tried drinking the
gentiane
instead,” the brigadier said. “Some call it bitter, but I’d say it’s sweet and sour, very healthy and good for you. There’s quite a cult for it in Paris. Trendy barmen use it in inventive cocktails. It has a beautiful blue flower that covers some of these hills in the spring. My grandmother swore by it as a remedy for indigestion.”

The map spread on his lap, Bruno quietly opened the envelope the
notaire
had given him and found a handwritten letter and another sealed envelope inside. The letter, addressed “To whom it may concern,” said that this was being entrusted to an officer of the law to be passed on “to the appropriate authorities in the event of my death.” It was dated three years earlier and signed by Gilbert Clamartin, with his military rank printed below.

Bruno pondered whether Gilbert had intended him or some other law officer to read it before passing it on. There was no doubt that the brigadier, as a senior official of the interior ministry, qualified as an appropriate authority. But knowing the brigadier, Bruno was far from confident that he’d ever be allowed to see the document again once he handed it over. And he was curious. So he opened the second envelope and began to read.

In June of 1989, serving at the embassy of France in Moscow, I was informed by the doorman that a Russian had appeared and had asked to see the air attaché. I went down to ask his business and found a young man in his twenties, neatly dressed in jacket and tie and speaking an educated Russian with a noticeable Siberian accent. He asked to speak to me privately and we went into one of the small side rooms that we used for interviews. He showed me his identity documents. His name was Dmitri Ivanovitch Gromov, born October 20, 1961, in Novosibirsk, capital of Siberia and Russia’s third-largest city. He said he wanted me and the French authorities to know the truth about the famous French pilot and Hero of the Soviet Union, Marc Desaix. He had learned it from his father who had been an aircraft mechanic attached to the Normandie-Niemen squadron. He handed me a letter, in Russian, which he said explained everything. I asked him to tell me in his own words.

His father, Ivan Tomasovitch Gromov, had been born in Leningrad in 1922, gone to technical school there and when called up for military service was assigned to be an aircraft mechanic. After training, he was posted in late 1942 to join the 18th Guards Air Regiment. In April 1944, he was transferred to join the Normandie-Niemen Escadrille at Borovskoiya, near Smolensk, to service the new Yak-9Ts fighters, equipped with a 37-millimeter “tank-buster” cannon. This was shortly before the big Red Army offensive that was to liberate Belorussia that summer.

Originally one squadron of a dozen pilots, and serviced mainly by French mechanics, the Normandie-Niemen force had now been expanded to four squadrons but depended increasingly on Soviet mechanics, armorers and other staff, many of them female. In the course of that spring Ivan Tomasovitch formed a liaison with a very pretty parachute packer named Oksana, but after the Red Army took Vitebsk and launched an advance that would drive the Germans back 200 kilometers, Ivan was sent to a forward landing strip. Oksana remained at the main base for the Normandie-Niemen, which was in the meantime moved forward to Mikountani, about fifty kilometers from Vilno, in what had been Poland. It was during this period that Lieutenant Desaix began to pay attention to Oksana, who had vowed to remain loyal to her Ivan Tomasovitch.

On his return to the new Mikountani base, Ivan was warned by Lieutenant Desaix to steer clear of Oksana if he knew what was good for him. This warning took place at a popular relaxation spot near the base known as Frenchman’s Hill, since it was the mass grave of nearly two hundred members of Napoléon’s Imperial Guard who had been buried there during the 1812 retreat from Moscow. Ivan told him to get lost and find his own girl. The next day Ivan was arrested by the unit commissar, Major Vdovine, and handed over to the NKVD internal security force, accused of slandering Stalin. He was sentenced to 25 years, and in the course of the brief trial was told that his accuser had been “a loyal ally,” Lieutenant Marco Desaix, who had already been awarded the Order of the Red Banner for downing enemy warplanes.

Ivan was sent to labor camps in Magadan, in the far east of Siberia, assigned to logging duties. He was released in 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev opened the gates of the Gulag, but was refused permission to return home to Leningrad and was restricted to living in Siberia. He found a job in the Novosibirsk aircraft factories, married and had a son, Dmitri. But he was never in good health after his years in the Gulag and Ivan died in 1970. Dmitri said he had taken advantage of the new freedoms to come to Moscow to seek full rehabilitation for his father, to denounce Marco Desaix as a
stukach,
an “informer,” and to ask the French authorities to confront Desaix and make him confess his crime.

I took the young man’s details, told him I would be in touch when I had contacted the proper authorities and showed him out. I then read his written account, which added nothing to what I had heard, and filed it pending preliminary checks of dates and place-names. It was the following week that General Desaix made one of his regular visits to Moscow.

As a close friend of his son, Victor, I knew the general well, and took him into Gorky Park for a stroll where I explained Dmitri’s strange accusation. The general told me that he and most of the other French pilots had enjoyed romantic liaisons with Russian servicewomen at the various bases, and their first NKVD officer, Kapitan Kounine, had turned a blind eye. He did not recall the incident reported by the young Russian mechanic. But there had been a young woman called Oksana, who became pregnant and later gave birth to his Russian son, Yevgeny. He never married her but was able, with the help of Kapitan Kounine, to have her posted back to Moscow to have the child, and supported her and the boy for the rest of Oksana’s life.

The general asked me what I intended to do, and I said I would deliberately misfile Dmitri’s written report and send a cable to Paris saying that it was evidently a crude blackmail attempt and the basic facts did not check out. He thanked me and we never mentioned the incident again. Knowing Yevgeny, the general’s Russian son, I established that he was born on May 2, 1945. He was therefore conceived in late July or early August of the previous year, the period when Ivan Tomasavitch was at the forward landing strip, far from the rest of the unit.

About a month later I received in the post, addressed only to the air-force attaché, an envelope containing a news item clipped from a Novosibirsk paper, which reported the death in a hit-and-run accident by an unknown driver of a young man, Dmitri Gromov. Across it was scrawled in red ink the Russian word
ubiyitsa,
which means “murderer.” This has been on my conscience for many years.

Marco Desaix is a war hero, a great Frenchman and has been a good friend to me. But he is also an old man and I imagine we shall both be dead by the time this is read. I am aware that this report is based on hearsay, and also aware of the routine use of disinformation by Soviet intelligence. This may all be a deliberate KGB concoction to confuse us; if so, we would probably have heard more of the matter. Since we did not, I can only assume the KGB did not want to publicize these allegations. I report all this simply because I believe that we have a duty to history. I misfiled Dmitri’s statement in a batch of minutes of meetings of the Moscow branch of the Franco-Soviet Friendship Association, 1981–88. They were being shipped back to Paris for storage in the archives. The statement is attached to the entry for January 1985, the meeting at which Marco was elected president of the association.