Part Six: Operation Overlord — Chapter 9 - The Barman of the Ritz

JUNE 7, 1944

Rumors of an Allied landing had been circulating for so long that many people in France had begun to lose hope.

But, finally, they arrived.

They landed unexpectedly on a stormy night.

“The Yankees really pulled it off!” Georges says. “They made their landing in a howling gale on the beaches of Normandy where they were like sitting ducks. Who would have thought?”

“We should have taken bets on it,” Frank says, nodding to the empty bar. “We’d have made a lot more money than we did tonight.”

“It’s not going to be easy. They may have taken part of the west coast, but they’ll have to fight to get through the Krauts’ defenses. Ten thousand dead already, according to the papers. I just hope they don’t get pushed back to the ocean… But you’re right, there’s not a soul here tonight. How much have we got in the register?”

“Fifty thousand francs,” says Frank. He does not even need to check.

Georges rolls his eyes.

“What do you say we each take twenty-five thousand, to celebrate the landings?”

“No.”

“Why? You know as well as I do we won’t have customers any time soon. Come on, Frank! Shit—no one’s ever going to know!”

Frank shakes his head, first side to side, then up and down.

“All right then,” he says finally. “Fifty-fifty.”

“All’s fair in love and war!”

Georges is laughing like a little boy at Christmas when suddenly the telephone rings. Frank starts, as though he has been caught red-handed.

“It’s the Widow, she’s been spying on us,” Georges complains.

“Shhh!” Frank hisses irritably before he picks up the phone. “Hello?”

It is Elmiger.

The blood drains from Frank’s face as he listens to the hotel manager tell him that Blanche has been arrested by the Gestapo for the third time. She and Lily Kharmayeff were at the Café de Flore, where their display of outright contempt for the Germans went beyond the pale.

Hopeless, the pair of them.

A third scandal. A third arrest. Likely the last.

I’ll never see her again.

Diary of Frank Meier

You did it on purpose, Blanche. Deep down I know you did this on purpose. You’ve thrown yourself to the wolves again. It’s suicide; you won’t get off this time. In a sense I think that’s what you and Kharmayeff have always wanted.

You would rather be in hell than adapt to what your life, our lives, have become. And you don’t care about the people who love you, the people who suffer in your absence. You don’t care about our pain because you feel nothing but contempt for us. Right now, as I write, Nazis are abusing you, beating you, starving you. As for me, every day I pretend I am alive, I put one foot in front of the other, I talk to customers. Every day I get dressed, I shave, every day I put on an act while you are howling in agony.

I will hide this moleskine notebook under the floorboards. I shall not write in it anymore. Later, as I often do, I’ll think about tossing it into the fire and watching the evidence of my life disappear in the flames. Here I am, fearing for myself when it is your life that is truly at stake.

I can only hope that one day, I may see you again.