Time: The Present
The temple to the Resistance known as the Centre Jean Moulin inhabits a classically French urban palace of four stories, two wings, and three grand windows on each side of the entrance, and dominates the Place Jean Moulin in the old center of Bordeaux. It stands opposite the Cathedral of St-Andre, where Eleanor of Aquitaine married the King of France in the twelfth century, before proceeding to remarry herself and her lands to King Henry of England and perpetuate for three centuries the English occupation of the city and its region. Lydia had learned all this, strolled around the cathedral and reread the entries about Jean Moulin in Foot’s official history, The SOE in France, before she heard a merry toot on a horn. She turned to see Major Manners grinning at her from the seat of an open-topped elderly Jaguar, his hair in disarray and looking boyish.
“Am I late, Lydia?” he called.
“No. I was early,” she said, stuffing Foot’s fat tome into her usefully large bag, a lesson she had learned from Clothilde, and walking briskly to the car. It looked red and mean and luxurious and she savored it, as Manners clambered out and walked around the beast to open the passenger door and escort her in. She felt relieved that she had chosen to wear slacks, and had a silk scarf in her bag. Convertibles were hell on hair.
“Lunch,” he said, and drove off with a luscious mechanical growl. They went around the cathedral square, down two streets, and reversed into an embarrassingly narrow alley. He led her into a small but decently furnished restaurant called the Wolf-something, which had an impressive number of points in the extract from the Gault Millaud guide pasted proudly beside the door. A young woman with dark bags under her eyes greeted him effusively, stared coldly at Lydia, and showed them to a table by the window.
“They say we should eat the seafood ravioli and the fish in beurre blanc,” he began. “You are looking breathtakingly lovely. Milan must suit you. Or perhaps it is Bordeaux.”
“Or perhaps the educational value of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s cathedral balanced by Jean Moulin’s memorial,” she said coolly. “Two great French people who each in their way chose the English. A happy augury for our task, I trust. And thank you for the compliment.” She looked at his tousled hair, the odd smut from the road on his reddened face, and surveyed the denim shirt and antiquated tweed jacket. They suited him. And for the first time since she had met him, he looked younger than his age, which she had ascertained from a quick check of Debrett’s to be thirty-eight. And he was indeed divorced. “Your choice of food sounds excellent. Might I begin with a Campari and soda, please?”
“No. When I booked the table, I asked them to prepare some champagne. I want to celebrate your arrival, and drink to the success of our venture. And thank you for coming, Lydia.”
“Thank you for meeting me. Now, where are we? Do you have your father’s war records?”
“Yes. And better still, I have a reply from Malrand, from the …lysee Palace itself, on the thickest notepaper you ever saw. And an invitation to have lunch with him later this week at the family place near Le Buisson. An invitation to us both.”
“I haven’t got a thing to wear that is suitable for lunch with a head of state, let alone the President of France,” she said, as a flute of champagne was placed before her. “In fact, I’m not sure I even own anything suitable.”
“I don’t think the ancestral jewels are called for. He called it a very informal family lunch, and suggested that I not bother to wear a tie.”
“Worse still, Manners. Any girl can dress decently for a formal lunch. Informal ones are the very devil.”
“The last time I was called Manners was at school. Please go on using it,” he grinned. He was looking more boyish by the minute. Boyish and merry. And still dashing. She grinned back, liking this version of him on holiday, and getting a sketchy sense of how he must have looked as a schoolboy. Emboldened, he went on. “Manners sounds much better than mister or major, and I was never all that fond of Philip.”
Two plates of giant ravioli arrived. There were three on Lydia’s plate, two white and one black, with some overflow calimari nestling against some shredded tomatoes with white slivers of garlic peeking above, like snowfields on summer mountains. It smelled divine.
“Bon appetit,” she said, and took a bite. Delicious. “The war records?”
“Thin. He was in a Jedburgh team, one of three. Most of the Jedburgh teams were set up in the same way. One Brit, one Yank, and one Free Frenchman, who in my father’s case appears to have been Malrand,” he said, and took a forkful of his food. Silence. Evident appreciation. He had not been this attentive to his food at the Savoy Grill.
“Jolly good grub,” he said, as Lydia continued to eat. He put down his fork and carried on talking.
“They trained together in 1943, and dropped into France together early in 1944. The record is unclear about the date, but in French accounts Malrand is given credit for some sabotage operation against a propeller factory in February. Most of the Jedburgh teams arrived much later, with the invasion in June. But one or two of the earliest trainees were reassigned to SOE and were sent in early, where there was a particular problem of local organization. My father’s team was the earliest of them all. They were assigned to a network called Digger, and did a lot of demolition work before the invasion. My father got a DSO and a Croix de Guerre for operations against an SS panzer division. He then got his Legion d’Honneur for helping to liberate Toulouse in July, which is a long way south of Perigord. By October 1944, he was back in England and assigned to the team setting up the military government in Germany. That was the end of his French adventure. So whatever he did here took place between January and October of 1944. Nine months. People can have a baby in that time.”
“Well, that all fits with what I found out,” said Lydia, who had eaten as much as she dared, with a fish in beurre blanc to follow, no fitness center in sight, and a presidential informal lunch looming menacingly on the horizon. “Your ravioli are getting cold. You eat, my turn to talk.”
“The Digger network was run by Malrand’s brother, Christophe,” she said, “as a kind of subsidiary of a much bigger network called Wheelwright that was one of the great triumphs of SOE, the British effort to help the Resistance. Wheelwright was run by a man called Starr, one of the top agents of the war. He used the cover of a Belgian mining engineer who retired with his loot from the Belgian Congo. He settled into France so well that he was elected deputy mayor of a tiny place called Castelnau-sous-l’Auvignon, which gave him the right to issue all sorts of genuine identity papers and ration cards and petrol coupons. For the Resistance, this was like a bank robber having the keys to the Bank of England. Starr was, in fact, a star. He held the highest rank of any SOE man in France, and was one of the very few who was able to combine Communists and Gaullists into a single network without friction. At least until de Gaulle showed up, well after the liberation, and had a huge row with Starr. De Gaulle insisted that he be evicted from French soil within twenty-four hours. But of course by then, the French civil war with the Communists was well under way.
“Starr was the uncrowned king of southwestern France,” she went on. “He got more arms and supply drops than anyone else, over two thousand of them, and lost hardly a one. He built a private army of nearly ten thousand Maquis guerrillas, which your father helped train, and together they liberated the city of Toulouse. You’ll see why that’s important in a moment. But what I hadn’t realized was what an extraordinary job they did. I made a note of one German report I came across. It was from Field Marshal Von Runstedt, the German Supreme Commander in the West.” She pulled out a notebook and began to read aloud, “‘The HQ of Army Group G near Toulouse was at times cut off-he’s talking about late 1943 and early 1944, six months and more before D-Day,” she interjected. “‘It was only with a strong armed escort or by aircraft that they could get their orders through to the various armies under their command. The main telephone lines and power stations were frequently out of order for many days.’ How about that?”
“Very impressive indeed-I had no idea the Resistance was that effective before the invasion.”
“Anyway, back to the smaller Digger network. It was based around the city of Bergerac and the Perigord, and operated all the way to the remote uplands of the Massif Central. Malrand himself was part of it, until he was wounded and captured in a German ambush not long after the invasion. Led by your father, Resistance fighters from brother Christophe’s network rescued Malrand from the prison in Toulouse, as the Germans were pulling out to the north. Your father saved the life of the current President of France, which is presumably why he came to the funeral.”
“That’s amazing, Lydia. You have done well.”
“No. It’s all in the published record, in the official history and Malrand’s irritatingly oblique memoirs. And the bad news is that it is only context, more than the kind of detail we need. Apart from the names of Starr, Malrand, and his brother Christophe, and a few radio operators who are all dead, I have found absolutely nothing that will tell us more about your father’s time in Perigord. The American member of their Jedburgh team is a dead end. His name was McPhee, but he didn’t survive the war.”
The fish in beurre blanc arrived and with it a bottle of Chateau de la Jaubertie, of which Lydia had never heard, but which was so glorious that she asked Manners how he had known to order it.
“I didn’t,” he confessed. “I just asked the people here to serve what they thought best. They said it was a dry Bergerac, where they come from, which also happens to be the area we are heading toward, so it seemed the right thing. Seems to go with the fish all right.”
Lydia cocked a skeptical eye at him. She was learning that Manners was seldom so deviously formidable as when he pretended to be just a bluff English simpleton. This was Bordeaux, heart of the proudest wine region of France. A decent restaurant in this city would no more offer a wine from a little-known appellation like Bergerac than they would recommend Coca-Cola.
She opened her mouth to say: “Bullshit, Manners-you ordered this and you knew what you were doing.” But she paused and wondered what Clothilde might have done in such a situation. She would have accepted what he said and stored up the useful knowledge for the future, and appreciated a man who had obviously taken some care to provide her with a memorable lunch. Thank you, Clothilde. Now all I have to do is ask you what on earth I wear to lunch with your President.
“You did choose well, Manners, coming to this restaurant,” she said, calculating that he must have reconnoitered the place, and the street, and discussed the meal and planned his parking in advance. Very flattering that he was going to such pains.
“Picked it out of the guidebook,” he mumbled. “Lucky, really.”
Manners gasped with pleasure as they climbed the steps into the Jean Moulin building, and found a small exhibition spread before them. He pounced at once upon a tiny motorcycle that looked like a child’s toy. The label said that it was a type developed to be dropped by parachute to help the Resistance leaders get around.
“I learned to drive on one of those,” he said fondly. “My father brought one back from the war. It’s still in one of the outbuildings somewhere. Made a fearful racket, and pumped out tons of gray smoke.” He squatted down to peer more closely, occasionally glancing up at her with enthusiastic delight. Lydia found herself smiling back in what felt like genuine affection. Friendliness, perhaps, she told herself. He was very appealing in this boyish mood.
“The old man never said it was a Resistance bike,” he said, rising. “I remember when the tires rotted, and I tried to fit an old set of scooter tires. No good-too fat.”
Lydia steered him toward the reception desk before some other military antique drew his attention. She had made an appointment with the curator of the museum library, an elderly man with a small red ribbon in his lapel. He came down to greet them, casting an appreciative glance at her before clasping Manners’s hand in both of his. Once in his small office upstairs he poured three small glasses of a golden wine, insisting that they drink to the honor of the late capitaine.
“He was always the capitaine to us,” said the old Frenchman, speaking serviceable English. “Whatever rank he reached later. We all liked him, because he was always cheerful, and could make us laugh. He was a very good leader, the kind who led without your noticing that he was in charge. He taught me how to strip a Sten gun. That was in Toulouse, when we liberated the city.”
“I had no idea you knew my father,” said Manners. “That makes our job a lot easier. He never spoke much about the war, so I’m really trying to find out more about what he did, the people he knew, and whether any of them could still be found. I’m very pleased indeed to meet an old comrade-in-arms-and hope to meet some more.”
“We are very few, those who remain,” said the old man. He looked at Manners neutrally, then at Lydia-the look of someone who had learned caution in a hard school. “Not everyone wants to remember. The war was a long time ago. So long, we even get Germans coming here now. There was a time we would have kicked them out, but you cannot blame the young ones. And half of the people in Wehrmacht uniform weren’t Germans at all. There were Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Poles-all hauled into the German Army. Some of them even joined us. And some of our worst enemies were other Frenchmen.”
“You mean the Milice?” asked Lydia, thinking he might need some gentle prodding. She had read about the pro-Nazi militia who supported the Vichy regime.
“Not just them. But they were bad. They and the Gestapo were the worst. We had political problems too, in those weeks around the Liberation. The Communists, mainly, and some black market people. A long time ago.” He shrugged and pushed across the desk toward them a small pile of books in French, and a folder containing some microfiche.
“I prepared this for you, after Mademoiselle telephoned me,” he went on. “I knew your father from late June of 1944, when he came south to help train us in the Maquis and take us into Toulouse. But he was in Perigord and the Massif for months before that, so I have put some books and memoirs together about the Perigord networks, not just the Berger network that he worked with, but le Reseau Soleil as well, a separate network. And then in the microfiche, there are transcripts. We did a lot of oral interviews with old Resistance members, making sure we have their memories before they died. We have them on cassette, and these are the transcripts. There are three who knew your father, including Berger himself, God rest his soul. I still don’t have on tape the one I want most, but it takes a lot of time, being President of France.” He grinned. “Malrand has promised to do an oral interview once he retires after the next election. But you’ll find a copy of Malrand’s final report to the FFI in the folder.”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Lydia. “You mentioned le Reseau Soleil-were they attached to the Berger group? I thought Soleil was more of an independent.”
“Some might call him a gangster, or a black Marketeer, mademoiselle,” shrugged the old man. “I think of Soleil as a good resistant because he killed Germans, and he fought for France. You are right to call him independent. He didn’t take many orders, neither from us in the FFI nor from the Reds in FTP, nor from London. But gangster-not really, except that we were all gangsters part of the time. I did a few armed robberies, but only of the bureaux de tabac. You can imagine how desperate we were for tobacco and cigarettes in the Maquis. It was always tightly rationed, and London never sent us enough, so we used to raid the shops. Except that time when Malrand and your father stole the German cigarette ration from the stores at Brive. We had a lot of smokes then.”
He poured another glass for each of them, took out one of the old-fashioned Gauloises packs, a flash of bright blue, lit it, coughed, and sat down. “At my age, you need a little vice,” he wheezed. “Those books-I kept them for you, although there are people here who want them. You’ll find one of them in the library. An American, I think, but speaks good French. He’s looking at Perigord, as well, at what we have on the Jedburgh teams. I told him the material was reserved for a special project, and he’d have to wait. You’ll find the microfiche reader in the library-I presume you know how to work it, mademoiselle? I know your French is more than good enough to read the instructions.”
“Lydia,” said Manners. “I wonder if we could do two things at once. If you tackle the microfiche in the library, I can carry on talking to our friend here about his memories of my father and pick his brains about other old comrades. We’d get on twice as fast.” His tone was as friendly as ever, but there was just a touch of briskness about it, of someone accustomed to delegating matters, that Lydia realized she had not heard before. But the suggestion made sense. She nodded coolly.
“At what time does the library close, monsieur?” she asked.
“Officially, at five P.M. In fact, as long as I’m here, you may stay. But not the other members of the public, of course. But then, we keep special hours for old comrades, and the son of Capitaine Manners …” He gestured grandly.
As Lydia left with her pile of books and files, she noticed that Manners had taken one of the old Frenchman’s cigarettes, and they were pouring yet another glass of the sweet golden wine. Officer’s privileges, she grinned to herself. If they drank the afternoon away, then Manners would have to let her drive the Jaguar on to Les Eyzies. She was still smiling when she entered the library to find Horst perched on a desk and glowering at her.
“So you are the special project for whom the Perigord materials are reserved,” he said coldly. “There must be more money at stake than I thought in this cave painting if an auction house is investing its time like this.”
“I’m on vacation,” she began, then brought herself up short. She owed him no explanations. “And you must be convinced that this rock of mine comes from Lascaux, or you wouldn’t be here, pretending to be an American.”
“Not your rock, Miss Dean. The Manners rock, or, should I say, France’s rock? But yes, I think it’s real. I told you that. And the only place we are likely to find out where it comes from is to look into the wartime exploits of Mr. Manners. It was not difficult to find that he was in the Jedburgh teams in Perigord, and this is probably the best library on the Resistance in Perigord, so this is the place to start.” He pushed himself off the desk, a lithe movement, and gave a friendly smile that reminded Lydia that this man had been Clothilde’s lover for some time, and she was not a woman to waste her time on uninteresting men.
“May I look at the books that you aren’t using?” he asked, courteously enough. “I quite understand that a beautiful young woman will always take precedence in France, even leaving aside the fact that this is a Resistance shrine and I am a German.”
“Don’t be silly, Professor,” Lydia said. “Of course you can look at the books while I’m using the microfiche. And the librarian thinks you’re an American. I won’t give away the little secret of your nationality-if you think it still matters.”
“Among these old Resistance types, it certainly matters. And so it should. My countrymen behaved monstrously around here. I understand their attitude, and have to live with it. But let’s be practical. Have you heard anything more from the London police about the theft?” he asked. “It seems very suspicious, the rock disappearing almost on the very night that it is brought in.”
“It is suspicious, even though it was the next night. And all the police have told us so far was to give us the authorization to make the insurance claim. The whole art world and auction community know about the theft, so I doubt that it will surface in the salesrooms. We hope that the reward offer will persuade the thief to make a discreet approach in the usual way.”
“But you have heard nothing as yet?” he asked, leaning forward to leaf through the books she had brought.
“Not when I left London. I have been in Italy, but if there had been an approach, I would have known. I’m surprised-I’d have thought a thief would have worked out by now that twenty thousand pounds is about the best he’s going to get.”
“Perhaps the French will offer more.” He was riffling through the index of a book about Soleil, put it down and picked up Malrand’s memoirs.
“I doubt it-half of the reward money comes from the museum at Les Eyzies. The French won’t bid against themselves.”
“If the President of the Republic takes a personal interest, you might be surprised at what the French can do, Miss Dean. The Perigord is Malrand’s home region. This was his war. Manners was his comrade, and now it looks as if Manners was looting France’s heritage when he was meant to be fighting Germans. Did Malrand not know what his British friend was doing? Did he not care? Malrand’s war record as a Resistance hero was the key to his political career, and now this comes along to cast a shadow over the presidential past.”
“That seems a bit fanciful, Professor. You may be convinced that this rock is Lascaux work, but I’m not half so certain, and I have seen it. You have only seen the photos.”
“So why, my dear Miss Dean, are you wasting your holiday in the Resistance library?”
“Because I feel responsible,” she burst out. Calm, Lydia, calm. The man was only scoring points, infuriating and perceptive points. And surely that was a mocking smile on his face, the self-satisfied beast! Whatever had Clothilde seen in this fellow? She went on evenly. “What may have been an extraordinary piece of cave art was entrusted to us, and we lost it, and we have a duty to try and put that right. At least, I think we do. But I don’t see that presidential politics comes into it. And I came here because this was where my plane landed. I’m off to the Perigord region to look at lots of caves because I now think I don’t know nearly as much about them as I should.”
He looked at her quizzically and smiled easily, the practiced grin of someone who had often been told that his smile was charming. “Perhaps you are right, Miss Dean. Your motives do you credit. My motives are scholarly, but I’m sure we can agree that were we to find where this rock of yours came from, it would enhance both our reputations. I think we have much in common. Perhaps we can work together, share the burden. Who knows-perhaps even share the glory, if we are lucky?”
He slid into the chair at the desk before her, opening a laptop computer and pushing the button that whirred the thing into life. “Let me tell you my thoughts,” he went on distractedly, as he waited for the screen to settle. “I thought I would make a timeline of the locations we know that Manners visited, plot them against known sites, interview any former Resistance people he worked with, and see if that leads anywhere. What about you?”
“Nothing so organized, I’m afraid. I imagine he was all over the Vezere and Dordogne valleys, where most of the known caves are to be found. But I had thought of asking his old comrades, although if they knew anything definite about undiscovered caves, I presume they would have been discovered by now.”
She found herself looking at the books by Horst’s elbow. There was one she recognized, Das Reich, the account of the Resistance battle to slow down the march of the German SS panzer division from Toulouse north to Normandy. Some photocopies of a dense German text peeped from beneath the book. She made out the initial Kr and the letters B-U-C-H. Kriegesbuch-the war diary of a German unit. He had been busy.
“Can I buy you dinner this evening, Miss Dean?” He casually scooped his books and papers into a neat pile.
“I’m sorry, Professor, but no. I have an engagement.” Obviously Horst didn’t know Manners was in the next room. No reason why he should, but equally, no reason to let him know that Lydia’s quest was serious enough to be accompanied by the rock’s current owner.
“Well, perhaps another time. And you must call me Horst,” he smiled. “I’m sure we will meet again on our treasure hunt. You said you were off to Perigord soon-doubtless we’ll run into each other in Les Eyzies. I’m staying at the Cro-Magnon Hotel. How about you?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said lamely. “Excuse me, Professor, but I really ought to start looking through this stuff-the sooner I’m done, the sooner you can have it.”
“Horst, please. Not Professor,” he said, turning back to his laptop. “But good hunting. To both of us.”
As she sat at the microfiche and inserted the first of the miniaturized films into the reader, Lydia began thinking about how soon she could pretend to go to the ladies’ room, and warn Manners not to come into the library. Secrets and intrigue already, Lydia. How silly, as if the Germans were the enemy again. She turned to the spare prose of Malrand’s military report, so different from the florid style of his memoirs.
“My theory is that we save money on hotels and spend it on food and drink. I never saw the point in paying for an expensive hotel room when all you do is sleep in it,” said Manners. Which is just the sort of thing a chap would say to lull a girl’s suspicions, thought Lydia, as he led her into the dining room of the Centenaire. Two Michelin rosettes; she was looking forward to this.
They had left Bordeaux and the kindly old curator at six-thirty, Horst having long before been shown to the door as just another member of the public to whom closing hours applied. Claiming to have drunk no more wine, Manners had taken the wheel and the Jaguar had raced past mile after mile of vines: Lydia had seen the signs for St-Emilion and Lalinde de Pomerol and her mouth was watering already. At one crossroads, delving into the glove compartment to find a map, she found a small leather pouch, which she recognized as a traveling chess set. Well, well, she thought to herself, he does have hidden depths. After consulting the map, they had driven to a tiny hamlet, not much more than a bend in the road, a small river, and a pretty miniature chateau. Their Hotel du Chateau was just across the park, and she had a view of the turrets from her room. It might not be expensive, but it was well chosen. Manners allowed her precisely ten minutes to wash and change and they raced the three miles into Les Eyzies, parked, and walked into the restaurant with a few minutes to spare before 9 P.M. He was wearing a rather jolly pink tie with his blue suit. Given no time to iron her clothes, Lydia was playing safe in black cashmere and her expensive gray flannels. The restaurant was full, and moderately noisy, the clientele too discreet or self-absorbed to break off their conversation to study the latest arrivals. Shown to a large table by the wall, they ordered two glasses of Kir Royale and began to study their menus in silence.
“The menu for me. The foie gras, the sandre, and the duck,” he said as the somber gentleman approached with the wine list under his arm and his badge of office, the small silver tastevin, gleaming on his chest. Lydia ordered the foie gras and the fish, chose lamb instead of duck, and in serviceable French Manners asked the sommelier which wine he would recommend. Did Monsieur know the wines of the region, unpretentious but charming? Only the Jaubertie and Pecharmant, said Manners. A thoughtful nod, a courteous inquiry whether Monsieur had considered a Pomerol, and business was concluded with a glass of Monbazillac for the foie gras, some Badoit water with the fish, and a Chateau Nenin. It had been competently done, thought Lydia, looking appraisingly at her companion. An extremely grand restaurant, and he had surmounted the hurdle of ordering the wine without showing off, and with a courteous consideration for the sommelier’s expertise. She approved.
“Well, our adventure is shaping up according to all the proper conventions,” said Manners, as the two glasses of champagne arrived, touched with rose by the cassis. Another waiter brought some amuse gueuls, a morsel of salmon, some black pudding, and a small sphere of foie gras topped with a black flake of truffle. “We have a Holy Grail to look for, a chateau to stay in, an extremely fair maiden, and an enemy.”
“I think the most you can say of Horst is that he is a possible rival.” She smiled at him, enjoying the thought of herself as a fair maiden. She had related the encounter with Horst as they raced through the flat-lands of Gascony.
“Point taken. No dragon. Still, he’s German, which is the next best thing.” He grinned. Lydia had a feeling that nobody had ever told Manners he had a good smile, or if they had, he hadn’t paid attention. Looking at the healthy way he was polishing off the tiny snacks, he’d probably been too busy eating.
“Old Morillon, the chap in the library, has given me three leads,” he went on, after a swig of his Kir. “Three old men. One is from the Berger network who lives near a tiny village called Audrix. There’s an old railway man from the Communist FTP in le Buisson who worked with them. I have their addresses. And then there’s Soleil himself, still alive, but his memory is not what it was. But at least we have his memoirs, which do not mention my father. Apparently he used to be some kind of Communist, but broke with the party after the war. I have his phone number, but he was always very cautious about who he sees, so Morillon is going to call him on our behalf, and see if the old chap still has enough of his marbles to be worth seeing. That’s about it. Morillon himself was never north of Cahors, and only knew my father during the Toulouse operation. But he did say one thing about the Berger network that I found interesting. They sometimes hid the guns and ammo from the parachute drops in the remote caves along the Vezere valley. Caves were good because they protected the stuff from the damp, and he said my father was always on the lookout for a good cave.”
“That seems obvious, but it’s a useful connection,” she mused, tearing her attention away from the elusive taste of the truffle. “He could well have found a cave with paintings-except how has the cave remained unknown ever since? There must have been some local Resistance people in on the secret, if only to carry the weapons.”
“I asked Morillon if the caves weren’t too dangerous. They make terrible traps if the Germans were on their heels. And then probably some of the German troops would have been stomping around the better-known caves for their own interest. A lot of them apparently went to look at Lascaux itself, which was only discovered in 1940.”
“That reminds me. Among the microfiche I went through was something called the order of battle for Army Group G, under General Von Blaskowitz, in charge of defending southern France. It assigned him three armored divisions, one motorized and thirteen infantry divisions. How many troops would that be, Manners.”
“We normally reckon about ten thousand to a division, but armored divisions tend be larger and an SS panzer division would have twice that number. Then there are the troops attached to corps and army HQ. At least two hundred fifty thousand troops, but that was to hold down the whole of southern France, which contained something close to twenty million people. Not all of the troops were Germans, as Morillon said this afternoon. And a lot of the German infantry units were composed of old men or convalescents from the military hospitals. They had entire battalions of ulcer sufferers-it made it easier to organize their diet. Even the SS panzer division was being filled up with Volksdeutsch, the ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Alsace-Lorraine. Some of them didn’t even speak much German. And the troops were spread out, guarding the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, controlling the big cities like Lyon and Marseilles, the industrial centers like Clermont-Ferrand, patrolling the railways. Bear in mind that Perigord was not terribly important to the Germans, except for the rail and transport links. Not much industry, no great population centers, just a handful of important factories. They had the Vichy police and paramilitaries to do most of the patrols-and the dirty work.”
Their foie gras arrived, just long enough in the pan to toast the outside and warm the flesh within, with a steaming portion of onion confiture on one side of the plate, and a tender bed of baby leeks on the other. She took some liver. It had the taste of luxury. She sipped her Monbazillac. Sweet gold.
“I think just one restaurant meal a day from now on, Manners,” Lydia said. “I don’t mind putting on weight in a good cause, but this is too princely.”
“Grand, I call it. What’s the point of coming to the home of the best food in France if we don’t enjoy it?”
They finished their liver, sat back and cleansed their palates with the mineral water, and then leaned forward to address themselves to the lightly grilled fish. Hearing a burst of laughter, Lydia looked casually around the room. There was a loud and jolly English family talking of plonk and fizz, some serious French tables concentrating on their food, a table of three businessmen talking in low voices, and a rather fetching pair of young lovers, their heads close together and eyes sharing secrets. The laughter had come from the English family. From behind her came a murmur of what might have been German, except for the constant sound of throat clearing. Must be Dutch. I wonder what they all make of me and Manners, she mused. Not lovers, certainly, but not married either. Friends, then, which is what she supposed they were becoming. Or allies, which is what they were. Or possibly, she smiled to herself, adventurers. What kind of adventure would be up to her.
And that, she told herself with a thoughtful glance at the rather appealing and likeable Manners as he tasted the Pomerol and pronounced it sound, was how it should be!