Gracianna by Amador Trini

Author:Amador, Trini [Amador, Trini]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608325719
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Published: 2013-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

THE FIRST INVESTIGATION

She was right on time and, within minutes, they came looking. It was as if on cue and it was overwhelming, like the blackness of a locust swarm, except these men were in perfectly creased gray uniforms as they thundered in—at least 20 soldiers in the café searching. They took everyone into separate corners and outside to interrogate them.

Marceau came back from his “interview” badly bruised, but the swarm found that nobody seemed to know anything except some people close to the station neighborhood. Word had spread up and down the street that the German officer was seen last night with a prostitute walking away from Le Meurice, where he was headquartered, toward Les Halles, the large central wholesale marketplace, and toward the train station. “Let’s see, I think, no, I am sure, it was 1:30 a.m.,” was repeated twice. One yarn spun by a taxi driver and then another by a bartender getting off work from Le Meurice.

Just as M. Fontaine had promised, miraculously, the heat of intense interrogations and discussions and notes taken by Germans looking for their man lasted for only two days.

“Er war ein huren liebhaber [He was a whore lover],” one of the interrogating officers was overheard to say to the other investigator. Gracianna noticed that the officers, the young ones with few stripes, seemed to just be going through the motions. Just like that, the investigation ended.

The cover story had worked.

In the days after, Dom’ hosted Fontaine and Company for more afternoon meetings, right under the Nazis’ noses.

The meeting men were back, more frequently. Every few days, at different times, Gracianna watched as M. Dom’ was quietly accommodating men, some of whom she did not recognize. Some had been there on the night of the shooting. They were reticent, some Basque beret-wearing men, all sitting far from the window in the darkest corner of Maison. There was no shout of “Vive la France” coming from the corner, no smiles, no laughter or typical diminutive arguments or banter about de Gaulle versus Vichy (de Gaulle was proclaiming himself to have more right to power than the current mantle owner, Pétain).

Gracianna crossed herself to think that this was all happening right in the shadow of Le Meurice’s provisional headquarters, where staff cars dripped with pressed men and pressed flags and pressed gas pedals that whisked passed the café at all hours. Officers continued coming to the café at all hours but especially at night to drink and eat. They were none the wiser.

The only thing Gracianna could catch in one of these meetings was how unhappy these men were about Prime Minister Paul Reynaud’s decision to surrender to the Nazis. Especially M. Dom’. De Gaulle had unsuccessfully opposed surrender, advocating instead that the government remove itself to North Africa and carry on the war as best it could from France’s African colonies. He had “skin in the game,” Dom’ liked to say of de Gaulle, “because you know he was wounded twice in the First World War.

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