Chasing Mona Lisa (2 page)

The Berlin Express bore down, but still at lowered speed. The dynamited rail line had to be somewhere—then it hit him. An elevated bridge crossed a small gorge following the yard. If the wooden supports were blown the moment the engine passed, the momentum of the falling locomotive would drag the remaining cars into the gorge, their combined weight crushing one car atop another. The overpass was just ahead.

Rousseau skidded to a stop and slammed his bike to the ground. Time had run out.

Running to the tracks, he reached for a white handkerchief from inside his overalls. Standing between the rails, he waved his arms from side to side. The immediate release of air brakes split the air. A whistle blew three short blasts as train wheels squealed in protest.

The locomotive neared. Shuddering and groaning, the train pushed a wall of sooty air toward him. Old newspapers rose from the ground, levitating, yet he stood, feet planted. A mere ten meters separated him from the massive machine. Just when he was prepared to jump from its path, the steel wheels of the Berlin Express screeched to a stop. Rousseau leaped aside and bolted toward the locomotive engineer, now leaning from the window.

“What are you doing?” the engineer demanded in French.

“You can’t continue on this line. The route is sabotaged.”

German soldiers, rifles ready, poured out of the passenger cars and surrounded Rousseau.

A German officer approached—the same one Rousseau had seen checking off the cargo list.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded in rapid-fire French that carried a hint of German accent.

Rousseau repeated what he had told the engineer.

“Are you with the Resistance?”

Rousseau ignored the question. “The rail line is dynamited ahead. I am gambling with my life, I know, but I was told that you have valuable paintings on this train. I work at the Louvre and cannot allow irreplaceable masterpieces to be destroyed.”

“How do you know about this trap?”

“I overheard a conversation at the museum. People talk.”

The German officer pursed his lips.

From the corner of his eye, Rousseau spotted one of the soldiers raising his rifle.

“Halt!” The shout from the soldier caused the hairs on the back of Rousseau’s neck to stand at attention.

Rousseau turned. A partisan darted from a nearby maintenance shack, fear distorting his features. One shot shattered the air. Then other soldiers joined in. Gunfire pounded Rousseau’s eardrums.

To his horror, the partisan stumbled and then fell into a heap, grabbing the back of his left leg.

Get up!

The man fought to rise and then staggered a few steps, before crumbling again.

“Bring him here!” shouted the officer in charge.

Rousseau’s shoulders slumped. His odds of living beyond the next few minutes had just shrunk dramatically.

Oberst Walter Heller, hands clasped behind his back, placidly surveyed the Frenchman who had boldly stopped the train. While he was sizing him up, another soldier ran toward him, out of breath.

“Colonel, we discovered a dynamite charge about a hundred meters down the track. We found the detonating plunger in the maintenance shed.”

So the Frenchman was telling the truth. But why would he risk his life to stop a German train with this information?

Two soldiers dragged the injured partisan toward Heller. The ashen-faced young man grimaced in pain. His saturated pant leg glistened with blood, leaving an uneven, dark crimson trail behind his limp leg.

“Were you going to blow up the train?” Heller demanded.

The nearly unconscious partisan incoherently mumbled something Heller couldn’t understand, although he heard the word “Göring,” which caught his attention.

The German colonel directed more questions at the prisoner, now pallid and clammy. There was no response.

“Shoot them both,” he ordered in German. He didn’t have time to wait for the Gestapo to arrive. They had a schedule to keep.

The partisan hung limp in the soldiers’ grasp, showing no reaction to the command.

The other Frenchman gasped and stepped backward, and the two soldiers guarding him clasped his arms.

“No!” He kicked and twisted against their iron hold. “Sir, I risked my life to save you, your soldiers, and your paintings, and this is the thanks I get? My friends and colleagues at the Louvre will find out what happened here. My unjust death will only inspire others to take revenge on German lives.”

Heller lifted his chin and approached the Frenchman.

“What’s your name?”

“Rousseau. Bernard Rousseau.”

“Well, Monsieur Rousseau, I don’t think we’ll be meeting again.”

The German colonel unhooked his leather holster and drew his service Luger. With arm extended, he moved two steps to his right and placed the tip of the barrel against the forehead of the injured partisan. Nearly unconscious, the young man hung against the soldiers’ clenched grip.

Heller pulled the trigger, and a plume of red mist exited the base of the freedom fighter’s skull.

Heller turned the gun on Rousseau. The German officer was used to making judgment calls when appraising an artist’s talent as well as the value of a painting or sculpture in Reichsmarschall Göring’s collection. Now a different type of appraisal was set before him, and a man’s life hung in the balance. If what Rousseau had said was true, by all rights he and his fellow soldiers should be dead, lying in a mass of twisted steel.

“Allez,” he said to the Frenchman.
Go.
“Before I change my mind.”

Relief widened the man’s eyes and softened his face. The soldiers released their grasp.

Heller watched for a moment as the man sprinted to his bike. Small clouds of dust and gravel punctuated each stroke as the bicycle tires struggled to find traction.

They were wary adversaries, but he and the Frenchman agreed on one thing: the irreplaceable value of fine art.

For that, he deserved a second chance.

From the back of an empty boxcar on a side track, Antoine Celeste dropped his binoculars to his chest. His lips trembled at the sight, and his breathing became more rapid.

No man should have to witness the execution of his brother, yet he just had. Bile rose in his stomach, and a profound sadness filled his heart. They said that when you joined the Resistance you were signing your own death warrant: sooner, not later, you would join the brotherhood in eternity.

But a fellow Frenchman betraying the cause for liberté in broad daylight—singlehandedly stopping a German train bound for destruction with Göring on board? What explanation could there be?

When he and Philippe had joined the Gaullists’ Free French, he expected a fight against Nazi swine, not treachery at the hands of his own people.

Celeste picked up the binoculars and locked on the solitary figure pedaling his bike pell-mell across the rail yard—memorizing his build, mannerisms, and the face that now filled his binoculars’ view.

Restraining himself not to act immediately, he slumped to the floor of the boxcar after the bicyclist had passed. Tears streamed down his cheeks as emotions took control.

There, sitting alone in the shadows, minutes passed. Celeste steeled himself. Knowing that his vengeance must wait, he vowed that no matter how long it took, this treasonous dog would be found.

Two Years

Later . . .

 
1

Friday, August 25, 1944

Outside of Paris

The purr of the four-cylinder engine softened as the dust-enshrouded ’38 Mercedes slowed, taking the corner cautiously. A paltry breeze drifted through the windows with little effect on this heat-baked morning.

Eric Hofstadler’s eyes swept the serene landscape of the sleepy hamlet of Rozay-en-Brie and then settled on a wooden signpost that bore the words “Nach Paris.” The Antiqua script—“To Paris” it said in German—was a stark reminder that Nazi Germany still occupied much of France with a jackboot to her back.

That signpost will be once again in French before the month is out
, he promised himself.

Another thought stirred, unbidden.
But the cost in lives is sure to be high
.

Turning his attention back to the roadway, he gently steered the dusty four-door sedan past a panorama of sun-baked walls, vermilion geraniums in windowboxes, and gray slate roofs. Few villagers milled about on this muggy morning in late August.

“How much longer?”

Gabi Mueller flattened the map against her light blue, knee-length cotton dress. “Only twenty or thirty kilometers away. Probably a good hour with the time we’re making.”

Eric glanced over at Gabi, smiling softly at the way the breeze whipped strands of blonde hair against her cheeks. His gaze drifted to her lips, remembering the last time he’d kissed her. It felt good to have her by his side, knowing she cared for him as much as he cared for her. It had only been three weeks since their first mission together, but the feelings they shared were unmistakable. In these uncertain times, life was measured by the day or hour, intensifying his emotions. Reluctantly, he refocused on the road.

He set his gaze beyond the belfry of a medieval church, where the flowing green fields of the Île de France beckoned him and Gabi toward one of the world’s leading cultural centers—Paris. They had been told in their pre-trip briefing that they could expect thousands of Parisians rising up against their Nazi occupiers. Chaos, anarchy, and bloodshed were the inevitable result of warfare between the under-equipped citizens and heavily armed German soldiers. Not that anyone could blame the Parisians for mounting an insurrection after four years of simmering frustration and public humiliation that had boiled to a flash point.

Eric slowed the Mercedes—exhibiting a distinctive red cross against a white square on each of the front passenger doors—to a crawl. Outside his dirt-streaked windshield, an older dairy farmer in faded blue overalls rhythmically tapped a tree branch against the red-and-white flanks of a skinny Montbéliarde cow.

“What do you think, Gabi? Looks like neither one are eating very much these days.”

“Even the hands of an experienced dairyman like you wouldn’t get a liter of milk out of her. Poor thing.” Gabi blew on several stray hairs and dabbed the forehead of her flushed face with the back of her hand. “But I sure wouldn’t mind a glass of cold, fresh milk.” She swished the lukewarm water around in the canteen nestled in her lap. They had been sharing sandwiches of
Weissbrot
and jam, apples, and canteens of water since they left Swiss soil fifteen hours ago.

Eric cocked his head slightly to the right and watched Gabi’s eyes follow the path of the lonely farmer and his emaciated cow. A soft smile lifted the corners of his lips.

Gabi set the canteen on the floorboard and unfolded the map supplied last night by Allen Dulles, the station chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) based in Bern, Switzerland. Though she and Eric were both Swiss, they were part of a group of covert agents working for the Americans and the Allied cause.

Eric understood where Gabi’s loyalties lay—her father was an American married to a Swiss. As for him, he was a third-generation Swiss dairyman who joined the OSS when he was recruited by Gabi’s father, Ernst. While Eric felt a keen sense of mission, if truth be told, working with Herr Mueller wasn’t a bad way to spend more time with someone who’d captured his heart.

“And the location?” Eric recalled the memorized address and was ready to repeat it when Gabi looked down at the map and pointed to the Left Bank.

“Right here, just off the Boulevard Saint-Michel. The Resistance controls this neighborhood, so we should be safe.”

“
Should
is a word that means little in wartime.” Eric pursed his lips and considered what lay ahead. Paris—seductive and beautiful—had become an active and highly dangerous battle zone nearly a week ago. According to Herr Dulles, Resistance members aligned with General Charles de Gaulle had seized the Préfecture de Police located in the heart of the city near the Notre Dame Cathedral. The Gaullists, also known as the Free French, were determined to bring the Paris police department under their control before the Allies arrived. It was part of their strategy to control the levers of government once the Germans were driven out of Paris.

The wild card, Dulles had said, was the role the Communists expected to play in postwar France, especially since Communists dominated many of the Resistance groups. With all the rival factions—there were at least sixteen different resistance organizations—vying for power, Paris was a powder keg, ready to explode at any moment.

Eric pressed the accelerator and shifted into third gear as they left the village, passing a Rozay-en-Brie road sign with a red diagonal line across the letters. The pimply faced guard at the last German checkpoint told him there might be one more inspection stop between here and . . .

Eric spotted movement ahead to their right—near a cornfield. A German soldier wearing the distinctive coal-scuttle helmet of the Wehrmacht leaped from a roadside ditch. He jumped in their path, leveling his rifle and locking eyes with Eric.

“Halt!” The husky cry exited cracked lips.

Eric slammed on the brakes. The heavy Mercedes skidded to a stop, raising a cloud of dust that settled over the grimy soldier, who repeated his growling
Halt
!

Gabi stiffened in her seat. “Could be a rogue. I don’t like the looks of this.”

“Me neither.” Eric moved his hand to the gearbox. If this was a rogue soldier, that meant he could be desperate enough to open fire on them.

He quietly shifted into reverse, but the soldier moved his rifle away from Eric and toward Gabi. “Hands up, or I’ll shoot her!”

The way he uttered that simple sentence in less-than-smooth German . . .

“Did you hear his accent?” Gabi asked.

Eric nodded. This soldier wasn’t German. He was part of an Ost battalion—men conscripted into the Wehrmacht from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia. He’d heard about this. Allied troops had been shocked to discover that they were killing Poles, Czechs, and Russians on the beaches of Normandy, as well as Germans.

Gabi pressed her back against the seat. “He’s one of those Ost soldiers. I’m sure of it.”

“Then we have to be ready for anything.”

Herr Dulles had warned them about reports of Ost battalion soldiers either deserting their posts or getting separated from their units. The absence of military discipline created a vacuum, the American director said. They were like caged animals unleashed for murder and mayhem.

Eric sought to defuse the dangerous situation. He leaned out of the open window and adopted a solicitous tone. “Hey, everything’s going to be alright,” he announced in German. “See, we’re Red Cross.”

“Hands up! Out of the car! Both of you!” The Ost soldier advanced within a few meters of the Mercedes.

“We had better do what he says, Gabi.”

She nodded and moved her hand to the door handle. Before she stepped out of the vehicle, Eric noticed her eyes narrowing and a determined look on her face.

He opened the door, careful to keep his hands up where they could be seen. “Listen, we just need to—”

The soldier’s eyes darted to something behind Eric, and his world turned black.

The sound of the rifle butt connecting with Eric’s skull filled the air, and Gabi sucked in a breath as Eric tumbled to the ground. The second soldier then turned the rifle, pointing it at the back of Eric’s head. He had murder in his eyes.

With no chance of reaching Eric’s side before the soldier pulled the trigger, she tried to distract him instead. “No! Stop!”

She darted around the front of the car, toward Eric. Just as she reached his side, the soldier shifted the rifle, lunged, and grabbed her wrist.

“So, you’ve come to see me?” He snarled as he pulled her toward him, burrowing a sandpaper-like cheek in her soft neck. He reeked of pungent body odor and stale beer. Then he pulled back his leathery face and smiled, showing two rows of rotten teeth. “Juri,” he spoke to the other, “this is a pretty one, 
ja
?”

Gabi struggled to slip out of his firm grasp. “Let me go!”

Panic rose in her throat. She pushed against him, but he wrapped his free arm around her body and pressed his dirty tunic, caked with white lines of dried sweat, to her chest. She pushed against him hard, then beat him with her free fist, but he was too strong. His arms tightened, making it hard to move. Her power was no match against his.

“You want me,
Schatzi
. I can feel it.” His hiss inside her ear brought images of a serpent’s tongue.

“Forget it!” Gabi clawed at the hand squeezing her wrist, but his grip felt like iron.

“She’s hot-blooded, Juri. I believe I’ll keep this one for a while.” The swearing soldier yanked on her arm and drew her close again—his mouth nearing hers. His putrid breath caused her to gag.

“Let her go and fetch her purse. This isn’t all play,” said Juri, who shouldered his rifle and extracted a Luger pistol from his waist belt. “I’ll shoot her if she runs.” He raised the Luger, fixing it on Gabi.

Juri seemed to be the one in charge. Gabi’s knees weakened seeing his gun fixed on her.

“Then you can have your way,” Juri added with a snarl.

With a frustrated groan, the other soldier snuggled his bulbous nose one last time in Gabi’s ear and then relaxed his grip. Releasing her, he moved around to the passenger’s side of the car.

At her feet, Eric lay on the ground, facedown, not stirring at all. She crouched down to check on him, but her shoulders tensed as Juri stepped closer.

Gabi defiantly looked up. “You can shoot me if you want, but I have to make sure he’s okay.”

Feeling an overwhelming desire to hold him close, she cradled Eric’s head and inspected his scalp for a bruise. He moved slightly and groaned, and she released the breath she’d been holding. Her tactile touch discovered a bump the size of a two-franc piece on the back of his skull.

She gingerly separated a thatch of red hairs and inspected the injury. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the other soldier discover her purse—hidden under the passenger’s seat. He rifled through its contents.

“What are you doing?” Anger flared in her eyes. She eased Eric back to the ground and jumped to her feet. Gesticulating with both hands, she knew their only chance was to make a scene. “Get your hands out of there! Those are my things!”

The Ost soldier, nonplussed, looked like he was sampling the summer fruits at a Saturday market. “We need money,” he said, unzipping her leather billfold and stuffing all the Swiss and French banknotes into the upper left pocket of his tunic. He dumped the loose change into his pants pocket.

“There has to be more than this.” He strode around the front of the car and then approached Eric, kicking him in the backside.

Gabi gasped. Eric moaned, and she saw his eyes open. Seeing the soldier, Eric attempted to rise but stumbled, falling to his hands and knees.

The soldier pointed his pistol at Eric.

“Wallet.” He fluttered his free hand.

Highway robbery in broad daylight, but Gabi knew their troubles were just beginning once the soldiers had taken all their money. She helped Eric steady himself so he could reach into his rear pocket. With a shaky hand, he tossed the well-worn billfold toward the soldier.

The Wehrmacht soldier caught the wallet in the air and wordlessly extracted a wad of bills. He pocketed them and flung the wallet to the dirt. “What else do you have?”