Part Three: The Growing Conflict — Chapter 9 - The Barman of the Ritz

JUNE 23, 1941

Having arrived in the early afternoon, Frank is propped at the bar, thumbing through yesterday’s newspapers while he waits for Georges. They need to come up with a plan to ensure they have an adequate supply of alcohol for the coming weeks. The situation in the hospitality industry has been rapidly deteriorating. Over the past few days, the story has made headlines on the front pages of Le Matin and Paris-soir. There have been urgent calls to regulate the sale of wine, as stocks are running low, and there are hopes that the new ration cards for tobacco will put an end to bootlegging and fraud.

The bar has hardly opened when Charles Bedaux strides in. He sneeringly jabs a finger at the newspapers on the bar.

“You can forget all that bullshit. We’re about to witness the grand finale! Can you believe it? Four million German troops crossing the Russian steppes: the greatest military invasion of all time, a total war that will exterminate the greatest enemy of Europe! Even Churchill ought to help us crush the Soviets and, once we’ve done that, we can find a way to make peace. Give me a whisky sour, Frank. Did you hear Joe Louis KO’d Billy Conn in the thirteenth round at the Polo Grounds in New York? What wouldn’t I have paid to have a ringside seat for that! I know the Nazis hate Joe because he’s a Negro, but I love the way he boxes. You ever see him fight? He’s got the most amazing reach. When he throws a jab, nobody can dodge it. That’s what’s going to happen to the commies, you’ll see. The Nazis will put the Russians on the mat in a matter of weeks.”

He knocks back his drink and gives Frank a conspiratorial look.

“Just between us, Frank, the Wehrmacht is like Joe Louis. It utterly destroys its opponent. You’re skeptical—you don’t have to say anything, I know! But after tonight, nothing will ever be the same again. You just need to be sure that you bet on the right side. You’ve always been partial to a little bet, haven’t you, Frank? This is the biggest bet of them all, one that involves the future of the world. You can take my word for it, I see the phenomenal power of the Nazis every day, and I can tell you nothing is going to stand in their way. You think about that, you old rogue!”

Frank Meier has never been a fan of communism, quite the contrary. As a self-made man, he is deeply suspicious of the idea of the class struggle. He thinks the Bolsheviks are a blight on society. Like Pétain, he despises commies. They are anti-French. Now, with the Germans invading the Soviet Union, he is disconcerted to think that he and the Nazis might have a common enemy.

“I’ll tell you this,” says Bedaux, “Operation Barbarossa is all anyone can talk about, and it has shifted the balance of power. I’m finally going to be appointed as an adviser to the Vichy government, I heard it from the lawyer Fernand de Brinon himself.”

The Nazi invasion of the USSR is confirmed by the small handful of Wehrmacht officers in the bar. There will be no crowds tonight. Georges and Luciano are not pleased: there will not be much in the way of tips.

Bedaux orders a second whisky sour and continues to prattle on to Frank. He rambles about his tiresome wife, the “bloody American passport” that still earns him suspicious looks from members of the Vichy regime, and complains that Coco Chanel has been pestering him again about her lawsuit against her Jewish partners.

Before long the bar is deserted; Frank sends Georges and Luciano home and Bedaux asks for one more drink for the road. Frank goes heavy on the Jack Daniel’s to loosen Bedaux’s tongue. Within a minute of taking his first sip, Bedaux lets slip a vital piece of information:

“With everything that’s been going on, I forgot to tell you about Monsieur Süss! I ran into him in the hotel lobby last night. The poor bastard seems completely overwhelmed. He’s been careering around the city like a madman and, from what I hear, he’s persona non grata among Göring’s entourage. Haberstock tells me that the Gestapo are very interested in what Süss got up to when he lived in Vienna. They’re wondering why he suddenly showed up in Paris three years ago. Was he running away from something? Is he anti-Nazi, a Jew, maybe even a communist? I tell you, that supercilious flunky is on his way out.”

How much truth is there in this rumor?

Frank begins to warm to the idea of accepting Süss’s deal. He is acting purely on instinct: if Bedaux hates Süss, he can’t be all that bad.

In that moment, he decides what he needs to do. He will protect Blanche and put the commission money aside to safeguard his future. Süss is right: you have to have connections. And Frank’s underworld connections are flimsy at best. Speidel is only a low-ranking officer; Georges is walking a tightrope between honesty and temptation; as for Claude Auzello, in his newly appointed role of stocktaker for the Ritz kitchens, when not in the hotel kitchens worrying about orders for jams or eggplants, he spends his time brooding in his apartments.

Better to live with remorse than regrets, Frank thinks. And while the decision affords him neither pride nor consolation, at least he might get a little sleep tonight. If I feel remorse, it will be for something I did. Regret would mean doing nothing.