Beyond Revanche, page 38
“Why, why would I do that?” It made no sense.
“Because someone might blow it off,” Theo quipped.
They started to laugh, not with me, but at me. They drove to a small auberge on the outskirts of the city. Because they forced me to the floor, I wasn’t certain which district we were in but the word salubrious could not be attached. The building was distinctly third-rate. More of a hostel than a hotel. Paint had not been waved in its direction since the turn of the century and in the growing dusk it looked threadbare from the outside. Theo drew up in a side street and let the engine die. Maurice pulled out a bundle of notes and thrust them into my hand.
“This will cover your costs for a couple of days. We would advise you to leave Paris as soon as you can. Certain parties will be in touch about a bank account which will be opened in your name by a very generous benefactor.” Their attitudes had certainly changed over the five years I was imprisoned. What had I done to offend them?
“How will you find me, if I leave Paris?”
“Don’t worry about that, my friend. We will always know where you are. Always.” There was menace in Conrad’s promise.
Theo grabbed my arm and thrust his face into mine. His smile had morphed into an icy grimace, friendless, threatening violence from eyes that narrowed into contempt.
“You understand the conditions, Villain?”
“Wh...what conditions?” It made no sense.
“Your silence, idiot. One word about us and you will mysteriously disappear. Probably an angry anarchist or socialist who recognized you and took the law into his own hands.”
“What are you talking about?” I simply did not understand.
“This is goodbye, Raoul. You have been spared the guillotine and rescued by your friends. Now you must remake your life elsewhere. We do not expect to see you again. Ever.”
Theo got out of the Renault and from the rear, produced a small suitcase. “This is yours.” It was, though I had not seen it for years.
“Good luck.” Maurice had to push me out. I could not fathom what they meant and stood on the pavement in the darkness, lost like an orphaned refugee. A stranger in a strange land.
Paris looked so bleak when seen close up. Streets which backed away from the main thoroughfare hung jaded, exhausted by war. A cold spirit had descended over the entire arrondissement. Everything I had dreamt of turned to mockery. Inside, the lodging house offered little comfort. A sour-faced war widow glowered from behind the reception desk, her ancient mantilla drawn tight over her head and shoulders. She was thin. Painfully thin, and the black lace over her sparse hair held what was left in place. She looked quizzically as if she was unsure why I was standing there.
“Yes?” she croaked. No introduction. No manners. No interest.
“I need a room for tonight.”
“Name?”
I hesitated. Who was I again?
“Name, Monsieur?
“Raoul…” Nothing followed. I choked on my own surname.
“Well, Monsieur Raoul, pay first and I will show you to your room.”
This was not how it was supposed to be. I had stepped back in time to the squalor of a different age. I wandered around the streets next day, carefully avoiding the eyes of passing workmen. Paris had shrunk; lost its class. I saw the damage inflicted by the Germans. The trouble with modern warfare was that we all had to accept the consequence. It was unfortunate, but there you are.
I treated myself to a three course lunch at La Grand Véfour in the arcade of the Palais Royal. Before the war I had only ever peered through its majestic windows in awe of the ornate neo-classical interior, the chandeliers, and silver-decked, pure white linen-dressed tables, its walled mirrors with gold edging. I never imagined that I could afford to eat there. Maurice had pushed hundreds of francs into my hands. When I counted them at the auberge, there were almost one thousand francs in large denominations. I could afford their outrageous prices. Dressed in the clothes which I wore on that special day in 1914, I entered the restaurant and asked for a seat in the far corner. The doorman, in formal morning suit, permitted me a half bow while in the process assessed the class of my clothes, from toe to head. I sat with my back to the door, fit only for my own company, Duck liver pate was followed by a stunning lamb dish with all the trimmings. The silverware gleamed its reflection in the mirrors. A waiter looked twice in my direction and I bowed my head. Had he recognized me? Christ, he was coming over.
“Is monsieur ready for dessert? I would suggest the crème brûlée. It’s the chef’s specialty.”
“Wonderful.” I tried to sound confident. But suddenly I realized that fear was sitting at my shoulder. Every look in my direction frightened me. “Blow my head off.” That’s what Theo said. And he called me an idiot. Me.
When I recalled that moment, the crème brûlée soured in my mouth. I had more pleasant company in La Santé. No one suggested blowing my head off in prison.
Enough. Time to go. I paid a bill so large that I imagined I had been charged for every customer in the room. Once outside I breathed a purer air. A walk would do me good. A seat in the Luxembourg gardens. I purchased a copy of Figaro and to my surprise my acquittal failed to merit the banner-headline I surely deserved.
And there it was, on the front page, at the bottom of the sixth and last column. But it read like an apology. It was insulting. The nameless journalist wondered if the verdict had been occasioned by the jury’s desire to bring harmony to the nation or perhaps in response to my lamentable background and sad pitiable life? What insolence. These were the very people who urged that Jaurès be silenced in the days before the war. I did it for them. I did it at their behest. I did it with their connivance. And apparently Madame Jaures had been awarded only one franc in damages by the court. One franc! Well. That would make these upstarts think twice about taking on the champions of France.
Then I saw him. Staring at me, shamelessly, across the glistening grass of the manicured formal garden. He stood motionless beside Leduc’s magnificent bronze statue dominated as it is by the proud stag, head raised, ears pricked, his clan gathered for protection against an unseen enemy. But I could see my enemy standing defiantly in contempt. Carbolic.
“What do you want, scumbag?” I yelled. Did he imagine that I would run away? From him? He turned towards the garden exit closest to the metro and disappeared from view. Was this all that was left for me? To be spied upon by the underclass?
In the solitude of a second night in my shabby room, I decided to face my father. I had been informed that the civil administration of the city had been transferred to Auxerre, south of Paris. My father and the entire court had been forcibly evicted to the famous Yonne city for safety. Sadly, five months after the armistice, they, too, were still displaced citizens in their own country.
37
April 1919 – Careers to Protect
Mathieu wanted answers, and he knew a man who could help. He also realized that he would have to face some of his personal nightmares. Mention of Comité des Forges reminded him of Zaharoff and the terror that had introduced Timon to his night-sweats. Mathieu knew that Zaharoff was off limits—officially. But there were serious allegations about the manner in which these steel moguls across Europe and America had manipulated the war to their own advantage. No wonder Villain’s trial had been scheduled to coincide with the formal inquiry into a malpractice which amounted to treason.
It took two phone calls to reconnect Mathieu with his former pilot friend, Pierre Flandin, who, having survived the war in the air, had taken his seat in the National Assembly. They met outside a café in the Rue de Lille close to the Palais Bourbon which housed the French parliament. Pierre looked slimmer and older, hair receding, moustache ample, and eyes burning with determination.
“Mathieu, or should I say Captain Bertrand,” he grinned, gripping his hand firmly, “so good to see you. I assumed that you would be overwhelmed by the Villain affair. Bad business. Bad business, indeed.” Pierre was as serious and straight-backed as Mathieu remembered. “What a tragedy for his family. I keep in touch with Marcel. He and his father are devastated.”
“I’m sure, but so are a great many of us.”
Rude though it might be, Mathieu had no time for small talk. “Pierre, what is happening here? Can you nail those bastards from the Comité des Forges for doing what they did…letting the Germans have control of all the forges, smelters, and mines at Briey?” To Mathieu’s surprise, Pierre Flandin rose from his chair in the café and steered him outside. They crossed the boulevard to the river bank and walked towards the Quai d’Orsay.
“This is still a dirty convoluted business, but allegations of collusion run so far and so deep, that even I have to be careful about what is said and to whom it is whispered.”
“How are they keeping the truth hidden? Why isn’t it plastered across the headlines?”
“Because you are! Not you personally, but Villain and Jaurès and his family. Look, Mathieu, France believes that we won the war. Actually, we didn’t. We managed not to lose it thanks to the Americans, but any politician who says so will be guillotined at the next election. The whole nation is trying to pick up the pieces and voters do not want to hear about military failures and bad news.”
“But we know what was going on.”
“Yes, we do. But are you listening to me? Back there,” he pointed to the Assembly building, “even the socialists and republicans aren’t focused on the facts. They are so insulted by what happened in the Palais de Justice that virtually all their time is spent planning a monumental march for Jaurès.”
“It’s no coincidence then? The parliamentary debate on Briey and Villain’s trial?”
Flandin was hesitant. “We can’t prove it. That’s how clever it is. Oh, we are going through the motions, but the allegations aren’t sticking. The Comité des Forges own more than half the newsprint in France, and they make our accusations sound like a left-wing attack on the government in response to Villain’s acquittal.”
Mathieu had to control his anger. Flandin was a politician. He might make it to the top someday. Surely he could do better than this?
“I remember three years ago a young flyer so fired by the injustice that the Germans had control of the Briey basin that he convinced his senior officer to let him and friends, one of whom still doesn’t know the front-end of an aircraft from its arse, try to blow it apart? Do you remember that young man?”
Flandin sighed deeply. “Of course I do. It was ridiculous to put you in so much danger. I apologize for that. But these were desperate days. And it could have ended the war earlier.”
“So tell them. Tell the Assembly. Bring the Comité des Forges to court.”
“I’ve tried. I have told them about the military failure to take action. I told them that the war could have been brought to an end in 1915. I told them the whole story about the our attempt to bomb the bloody place and how we were crushed by the military high command. They don’t want to know. People don’t care. We won…and that is the only message the government, the prime minister, the president in particular, and the people want to hear. Not the truth.”
He drew in a deep breath of early April air. Spring was threatening to burst through the winter miseries. Paris in spring was always special. With buds on the point of flowering, the boulevards assumed their first covering of leaves, days lengthened, and the city shook off the discontent of winter. People could reclaim the streets and pavements full of coffee drinkers, wine connoisseurs, and matrons, out to be seen in the coming fashions. Well, that’s what it was before the war. But Paris had yet to recover. She, too, had been maimed by the ravages of war. It would take a decade to restore her former glories.
“There is another factor. You probably know this already at the Deuxième Bureau.”
Mathieu’s face darkened. “Another factor?”
“Are you aware that key evidence has been destroyed or removed?”
“I don’t follow? What evidence?”
“Let me give you one example. When the Army High Command, and I mean the most important generals, were questioned by the Commission set up to investigate what happened at Briey, the generals shut down discussion by insisting that politicians knew nothing about the priorities of war and had no right to question the victor. It then emerged that in August 1914, when the decision was taken not to occupy the Briey basin and take or destroy all of the trappings of our industrial power, the orders were destroyed. Joffre issued a command that all documents were to be burned. There is no evidence against either our generals or those who gave them instructions, because these do not exist.”
One thing was certain. Anyone who publicly criticized the army, the self-styled victorious and glorious army and a hero like General Joffre, would be pilloried. Of course Mathieu knew that there were no-go areas of inquiry, even at his level of security. Pierre Flandin was speaking from his heart, a rare thing in politicians.
“Barthe, the socialist leader, accused the iron and steel companies of being in cahoots with the Germans, but he was ripped apart by the right-wing press for peddling Bolshevik lies, and already this false news is being transformed into false history.”
Flandin was close to tears. He grasped for words carefully, holding back emotions and memories which were encased in his soul.
“What truly disturbs me is that people don’t care. They aren’t interested in the facts. They want to pretend and move on. They’re grasping at myths. Yes, Alsace and Lorraine have returned to the folds of our tricolor. But it’s not enough. They want the peace treaty to crush Germany forever. France has moved from a theatre of war to a theatre of lies and half-truths.”
Mathieu realized that his questioning had opened old wounds. Memories of friends less fortunate. Youth destroyed on the battlefield. Hope vanished in the war clouds. This was the reality of post-war survival. A name from the past could trigger yet more unguarded emotions. It wasn’t over. Perhaps it never could be.
“Look, Pierre, I’m not here to question your commitment. I know what you have given for France. I know what you tried to do. I understand that you…no we, all of us, will have to live with the lies. But we can’t give in. We have to find these people and deal with them.”
“If we are allowed to. I mean, look what they have been able to do for Villain. He is free to lead his life while Jaurès is dead, his wife a broken widow, his daughter, traumatized. Do you know that his son Louis–”
“Was killed in June.”
“Yes, Louis Jaurès fought with the tenth battalion in Artois, Verdun, the Marne, the Somme, the Ardennes, and Soissons. That is a list of regimental honor on its own. He gave his life even though his father was murdered in cold blood by an imbecile who stayed safely in jail and claims to have committed the deed for love of France. And there are people who believe that. Millions of them who want to believe that.” Pierre Flandin’s disgust was as deep as his.
“His time will come, believe me. He is no imbecile, remember that…but you mentioned evidence being removed…what else do you know?”
“Government documents, sensitive letters, records, and details of courts-martial have disappeared, and there must be more.”
Years of experience had given Mathieu the ability to change the subject in a way which disarmed and surprised the person he was talking to. As a tactic, it had caught out many criminal liars.
“How honest is the prime minister?”
Pierre looked surprised. “You’re asking me? I thought you worked with him. I’m not nearly as close to him as you are. Are you really asking if Clemenceau is part of a bigger conspiracy?”
“I suppose I am.”
Flandin took a moment before replying. He stopped at the quayside and admitted, “I don’t know. I don’t think he is, but is Wilson or Lloyd George?”
“That’s the problem. Who is? Who isn’t? Who can we trust?”
“No one. But Clemenceau has one saving grace. He will listen to reason.”
Villain might have been freed by a jury of his peers, but hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen were left betrayed. Justice itself had been debased to a point where the law stood unmasked, the scales weighed towards perversion. On Sunday April 6 three hundred thousand protestors crammed the Avenues and Boulevards around Place Victor Hugo, Place du Trocadéro, and Avenue Henri Martin in a triangle of solidarity outraged by the outcome of Villain’s trial. To the relief of everyone at no.36, it was a dignified affair, led by literary and political figures, professors, senators, deputies, union leaders, and international representatives. Vast arrangements of magnificent flowers were delivered to Jaurès’ wife and daughter at their house in the leafy Rue de la Tour but no gesture could bring back Jean Jaurès.
38
Lancing the Boil
Mathieu watched as Georges Clemenceau paced up and down his well-guarded apartment, ill at ease and uncomfortable with the fact that this political crisis had exploded on his watch, yet remained outside his control.
“Why did the stupid bastards at the Ministry of Justice rush Villain through the courts?” Mathieu tried to keep himself out of the firing line but Clemenceau caught sight of him on the lower stairwell.
“Captain Bertrand, a minute of your time, please.” Mathieu skipped up the stairs, a veritable gazelle compared to the elderly statesman.
“What’s happening on the streets? I mean, really happening.”
“So far, so good. A couple of skirmishes on the outer fringes, but no rioting, burning, or looting.”
“So far, you said.” He turned to Mordacq. “Henri, what’s the military view?”
“So far, so—”
“Right. I get it,” he snapped abruptly. He was not a man given to patience. Once was enough. “But what can I do? I understand the public outcry. Not my fault. We’re trying to keep the peace. Fine. But is it going to become a regular event? Will it escalate out of control? Disrupt the Conference? We cannot retry Villain. Where is he, by the way?”
