Part Six: Operation Overlord — Chapter 5 - The Barman of the Ritz

MARCH 26, 1944

Was there ever a plan to try to assassinate Hitler?

Frank Meier no longer thinks so. If there was a plan, it has obviously failed, since the Führer is still very much alive. The war rumbles on, and every day it gets uglier. Ordinary life has become impossible. Four or five air raids a day. There is increasingly strict rationing of gas and electricity. The food supply, once carefully regulated, has devolved into anarchy—everyone is out for themselves.

The people of Paris are panicked, occupiers and occupied alike. The Nazis are terrified that an ambush lurks around every street corner—soldiers are no longer allowed to wander about the city and the officers are all on edge.

The only distraction now is the news. Every day, newspapers provide new details of what they have dubbed “the Petiot affair.” Frank pretends to be uninterested, but, deep down, he is just as fascinated by the macabre story as everyone else.

On March 11, on the Rue Le Sueur, the neighbors of Dr. Marcel Petiot, alarmed by the foul stench in the neighborhood and a thick pall of gray smoke, called the police and the fire brigade. When the emergency services arrived and entered the palatial mansion they discovered the remains of twenty-seven dismembered human bodies in the basement. It seems that the doctor would invite people being hunted by the Gestapo to his home, promising them safe passage to Argentina. It was a trap. When these desperate men and women arrived at his house, they were slaughtered and their bodies burned. The newspapers say that the alleged murderer was a war veteran who was wounded by a grenade in 1917 and was later confined in Fleury-les-Aubrais hospital for psychiatric problems. From the descriptions of the bodies in the press, Frank has no doubt that the man is psychotic. To make things worse, someone at the bar told Frank that Petiot had a peephole fitted into the steel door of the cellar so that he could watch the death throes of his victims. How do we possibly come back from something like this? Frank is anxious. Especially since Petiot seems to have vanished into thin air and is still at large. Some people are saying that he has contacts in the police. Frank does not know what to think.

There are even some who claim that Henri Lafont personally discovered the mass grave and blackmailed Petiot before helping him escape. The only thing that’s certain is that the victims include a number of Jews who sought papers from the murderous doctor to cross the Spanish border. The very thought makes Frank shudder. Who knows, but for his scheme with Süss, the families they saved might have ended up in the doctor’s cellar. Only yesterday, Frank was thinking of relaunching the venture, but Fersen dissuaded him. The Swedish diplomat agreed to provide one last forged passport for Blanche, but said that, going forward, they had to be very cautious. All that remains is to find Blanche a Scandinavian name.

We’re on the edge of a precipice.