Trophies of War Read online

  “Yes,” Valland replied. “Everything. I kept secret lists and made copies of shipping manifests. Every night I took home negatives of the archival photographs they took. I sent much of it to Jacques and the Resistance. They were able to save some of the objects before they left the country, or at least slow down the process.”

  “Wonderful!” Clark exclaimed. “Does that mean you know where most of these objects are?”

  “Most, yes,” Valland replied. “But not all. Most of them have been shipped off to Germany. Some may still be in Paris. The ERR maintained several other repositories around the city.”

  “Can I see what you have—your documents?” Clark asked.

  Valland didn’t answer. She studied Clark a moment.

  “And what would you do with them?” she asked.

  Clark was starting to feel giddy.

  “Ha! What would I do with them?” he replied. “I’d send them to everybody! I’d make it part of my reports back to Supreme Allied Headquarters. I’d send it to the Office of Strategic Services for this new investigative unit. The Army can use it as a guide when they get to Germany. They’d be able to find all of it!”

  Valland was unmoved. “Yes, but you are not in Germany yet, are you?”

  “What?” Clark asked, puzzled. “Not yet, no, but everyone is saying that the war will be over before Christmas, so it won’t be long now.”

  “Perhaps,” Valland replied. “Perhaps not.”

  “Are you saying that you won’t give me your records? I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you?” Clark asked. He looked to Jaujard who was standing with a bemused look. The Frenchman shrugged as if to signal that Clark was on his own with Valland.

  “When I give my documents to someone, French or American or whomever,” she replied, displaying a real passion for the first time. “I want to know that they will do something with it. I don’t want them part of some report that gets lost on its way to General Eisenhower, or stacked in a gigantic pile of paper somewhere. I want to know that whoever I give them to will go find these objects and bring them home. Until then, I will keep this information safe.”

  Clark opened his mouth to argue, but the stern look on Valland’s face convinced him it was pointless. She would share her secret documents on her own terms or not at all.

  The next few months were busy ones for Clark. In addition to all the museums in Paris, it seemed like every Army unit in France was coming across artwork, archives or rare books. With only a handful of Monuments Men in the entire country, Clark was fielding requests from all over. Working during every waking hour, he was exhausted but gained great satisfaction from knowing that the field commanders were taking protecting cultural property seriously.

  One cold December morning, Clark tended to what he considered his second job: winning Rose Valland’s trust. He had received two prints that had been part of the Jeu de Paume’s collection and now he was walking them over to surprise her. He hadn’t quite gotten to the point of bringing her flowers every day, but the idea had occurred to him.

  If I could just get those documents, he thought. I could send them to forward units for when we cross into Germany. Thousands of objects could be protected from the fighting and we could collect them all and bring them back to France.

  Clark had to admit to himself that the prospect of ending the war by Christmas was looking remote. Allied forces were fighting the Germans after a surprise attack in the Ardennes forest of Belgium. From what Clark was hearing, it was turning into a long, frozen slog. While it may be a little longer until Allied forces crossed the German border, he wanted to be ready when it happened. A list of looted objects and their locations would be like a treasure map for him to protect and help with the restitution efforts that would start as soon as the fighting stopped.

  The OSS had indeed formed their Art Looting Investigative Unit and Clark had been in touch with them since they entered France. He was afraid that if he told the ALIU about Valland’s secret records, they would swoop in and put pressure on her to give them up, ruining Clark’s careful work cultivating a relationship with her. It was clear that no one, not even Jaujard, was going to force her to give up her information. She had risked her life for those documents and wasn’t going to give them up until she was ready. Clark hoped that today might be a step closer.

  He squinted at the low sun, pulled the collar of his overcoat tighter against the cold and quickened his pace.

  “These are both by Méyron, do you know him?” Valland asked as she looked at the prints.

  “No, I don’t think I do,” Clark replied.

  Valland held the portfolio open for Clark to see. “Wonderful etchings of Paris. Great appreciation for architecture as you can see in this one of Notre Dame.”

  “I do enjoy the architecture of France, and my work in Normandy gave me an up-close appreciation for it,” Clark said, sensing an opening. “But I must confess that it’s the depictions of the French people that I’ve always loved the most.”

  Valland closed the portfolio and wound the string around the button.

  “Yes, I believe you, James,” she replied, looking up at him.

  Clark felt like she wasn’t responding to what he had said, but was pronouncing judgement on him.

  “That’s why Manet is my favorite painter,” he continued. “His stylistic innovation, elimination of half-tones and all the rest are admirable enough, but for me it was his depiction of ordinary French people that make him special. No more paintings of Judith slaying Holofernes or heroic battles. He painted people waiting for a train or tending bar. Ordinary French people.”

  Valland smiled.

  “Manet is your favorite? I thought all Americans were partial to the great Impressionists, but Manet was before them. Some call him the Father of Impressionism, some call him the last Realist.”

  Clark shrugged. “What can I say? I like what I like.”

  Valland nodded.

  “I believe you, James,” she repeated. “I do believe that you care about France and about our art. You are not just another soldier acting like this entire country is a battlefield, with no people inhabiting it, no culture. I believe that you won’t just take what we have done here and pass it up your chain of command, with no thought as to whether anything comes of it.”

  “Thank you,” Clark replied. He felt like a vault was about to open before him.

  “There are former ERR repositories in Paris. I will give you the addresses, but there is no art there, nothing there except some records, perhaps. Whatever you might find there is nothing compared to what I have compiled here.”

  Valland turned and left Clark standing in the gallery, looking at the dust motes floating in the sunbeams that streamed through the high windows. He wasn’t feeling excited or vindicated, just relieved. The most important pieces of the puzzle would finally be within his grasp. Identifying the rightful owners of these objects and preventing the Nazis from using them as a source of financing were important enough, but the most pressing question with battles raging and bombs falling was: where is it all?

  Valland returned with a sheaf of papers, many with photographs attached. She held them out for Clark, but quickly pulled them back before he could take them.

  Clark felt momentary panic that she was changing her mind.

  “Before I give these to you, you must realize that they will do you no good.”

  Clark was puzzled. “Why not?”

  “They will do you no good, because until you can get your hands on these objects, you can do nothing for them. And you cannot get your hands on them because they are all in Germany.”

  “God willing, we soon will be,” Clark replied.

  “Yes … God willing,” Valland said in a quiet voice, handing over the stack of papers.

  They spent several hours reviewing Valland’s detailed records—every object was listed with its name, artist, year, date that it arrived at the Jeu de Paume, and final disposition. Works that were sold had the date, price and b
uyer noted. Objects that were taken by Nazis were carefully organized by their packing crate numbers. Clark scanned the pages and pages of crates. It was a horrifying mix of precise accounting and an orgy of looting. Every Dürer, every Vermeer and Cranach was carefully noted as if it were simply a lot in an auction, rather than stolen property from some dispossessed French Jew being greedily pilfered by shameless men.

  Valland was right in saying that the works listed were outside the reach of the Monuments Men. All the shipping manifests and bills of lading had various cities in the German Reich as their final destination. Most were places Clark had never heard of: Buxheim, Heilbronn, Neuschwanstein.

  Where the majority of the crates were simply numbered, the last few pages had special alphanumeric IDs for the crates: H1 through H35 and G1 through G46.

  “What are these?” Clark asked, pointing to the codes.

  “Those were the crates for Hitler and Goering,” she replied. She pursed her lips when she said the names. Clark remembered that she had likely interacted with Goering many times on his trips to the Jeu de Paume. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to watch that glutton casually walk around her museum, stealing art like it was his right.

  “Here. This one,” Valland said, pointing on the page to the crate numbered G46. It said ‘red’ in parenthesis next to the number. “This one was the last one sent out for Goering, just after the Allied landings in Normandy. It wasn’t meant for Goering’s private collection—it was all art marked ‘degenerate’ for Goering’s agent to sell on the open market. The crate code G46 was stamped in red to make note of that fact, lest anyone think that Goering would approve of anything inside.”

  Clark shook his head. ‘Degenerate’ art. What barbarians.

  “They would carefully evaluate each work and classify it according to their Nazi ideology as if they were great experts,” Valland contined. “But the fools were constantly being duped by fakes and misattributions. They strutted around here as if they were the masters of the art world, but half the time they didn’t know what they were talking about.”

  She stopped for a moment, looking at the page.

  “That reminds me,” she said. “You’ll like this. See the last line here under crate G46? Zitrone und Orchideen? They were convinced that, in their genius, they had discovered an unknown work: a painting of a lemon and orchids by none other than your favorite ‘degenerate’ painter—Édouard Manet.”

  7

  US National Archives

  College Park, Maryland

  David Lyon stared at the microfilm reader and turned the knob, watching the pages slide by. He had taken Beth Krasner’s advice and headed down to the National Archives, just outside Washington D.C. The records of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of the Allied military government were all there—boxes of paper and books, roll after roll of microfilm. Lyon couldn’t guess at the number of pages of reports, photographs, maps, letters—every piece of printed material related to the Monuments Men and their efforts to save the culture of Europe during the Second World War.

  And now he was three days into looking at all of it, or trying to. The archivists had done a great job of indexing what they could, but when Lyon was already looking for a needle in a haystack, the best he could hope for was help finding the right haystack.

  Much of the records related to individual looted artworks was in French or German. With help from his childhood French and a semester of college German—along with an Internet translation utility—he was able to make sense of some of the lists, albeit slowly. From his online research and a couple of books he had picked up, he knew the scale of Nazi looting was immense, but seeing it all laid out in lists on microfilm was overwhelming. Millions of objects were there: books, archives, drawings, sculptures, paintings, tapestries, furniture, armor, porcelain. And each one with a story.

  Lyon was focused on the lists of paintings, but even with narrowing it down the numbers were staggering. It was like reading a catalog of the contents of every European museum: Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Italian paintings in Modern, Renaissance, Gothic, Impressionist, Romantic, Rococo and every other style and period. He gave up trying to read anything and was now just scanning the pages, looking for the name Manet. So far he had found well over a hundred of his works, but nothing about flowers and a lemon.

  Lyon’s phone vibrated in the back pocket of his jeans and he took it out to look at the screen. It was a Boston area code. He got up from the microfilm carrell and walked out to the lobby to take the call.

  After seeing his mother settled in at the Résidence Mont Royal, he had returned to Connecticut, stopping by the house when he knew Sarah would be at work. Searching the attic, he had found the bankers box he was looking for: one marked ‘David College Stuff.’ In the box, among the old BU hockey programs and photographs, he had found his transcript with the names of instructors for each class. A quick search through the online BU faculty directory had showed that his Art History 101 professor, Peter Wills, was still at the university. Lyon had sent him an email asking about his mother’s story and how likely it was that she did have a real Manet.

  The call was from Wills.

  “Your email was quite intriguing,” Wills said. “But I’m afraid the news is probably not good.”

  “Yeah,” Lyon sighed. “You’re not the first to tell me that.”

  “Manet wasn’t the stereotypical starving artist, only gaining fame after death,” Wills continued. “In fact, he was wealthy and quite famous in his time. Despite his rocky relationship with the critics and the Paris Salon, his works were well known when he was alive. So, the odds of there being an unknown Manet out there are pretty slim, I should think.”

  “Yeah,” Lyon sighed again. “I get it. I …”

  “But!” Wills cut him off. “But! It is entirely plausible that if your mother’s … grandfather, was it? … if he did know Manet personally, it is possible that this painting was indeed a gift and was never exhibited or sold, and is therefore unknown to the art world. And I don’t have to tell you that such a painting would be extremely valuable! It’s not unheard of for this to happen, thought it's usually lesser figures whose unknown works suddenly appear. Still, it would be very exciting if true. An unknown Manet, lost to the world since the war and found by an intrepid son … it would be a wonderful story.”

  “Well, I don’t know about ‘intrepid,’ ” Lyon replied. “But I’m leaving no microfilm unturned.”

  “I can only imagine. Good luck!”

  The hotel bar was starting to fill up with a business crowd shuffling in from their sales meetings and conferences. Some stood around talking shop while others sat at the bar to watch the Nationals take on the Red Sox. Lyon hated interleague play, but was happy to watch the Sox while on the road. It was still early in the game, but it looked like the Boston lineup was going to have a long night against the Nationals’ young ace.

  Lyon pushed his empty glass away and waved to the cute redhead tending bar. She refilled his bourbon and Coke without making eye contact, much less cracking a smile.

  Oh, well, he thought. Anyway, I’m a married man … aren’t I?

  When stopping by the house to get Professor Wills’ name, Lyon had noticed some subtle changes. Sarah had moved the furniture around in the family room, pushing his leather club chair into the corner. That frou-frou porcelain clock with pink flowers around the face was back on the mantlepiece. Megan’s old schoolwork, left for so long with the magnets barely hanging on to the refrigerator, was gone.

  But … she didn’t touch my office, Lyon reminded himself. The papers were still piled up on the desk and his pile of to-be-read books was still stacked on the floor in the corner.

  Before he could spend time thinking about what that all meant, he stopped himself and re-focused on his amateur investigation. Three solid days of flipping through boxes of paper and scanning microfilm. Was he any closer to finding his mother’s painting? Was he even close to an answer on whet
her the damn thing existed in the first place? He guessed that he was maybe twenty percent through the entire record group. Lyon did some quick math in his head.

  So … twelve more days of this? he wondered. I’ve probably already scanned past thousands of words, with millions more to go, just trying to find ‘Manet’ and something about lemons or flowers. And what if I don’t find it? Is it over then? There has to be somewhere else to look.

  Lyon guessed that if the Monuments Men had so many records, surely the French government had more? Did that mean that his next stop should be Paris?

  Getting on a plane to sift through French archives is crossing over into crazy territory, Lyon thought. What if they have ten times the stuff we have here? Am I going to spend months looking through it all when this painting may not even exist?

  Still, if it was real and he found it … ten or twenty million dollars was a lot of reasons to keep up with the search. Of course, finding it may just be the start of his problems. He had done enough reading to know that restitution of Holocaust-era assets could be a long and difficult process. What record did his mother have of this painting that would stand up in court? He would need documents, a bill of sale or insurance records. He had nothing. Less than nothing—just a story from his mother, who was one of millions who had lost property to the Nazis.

  To compound his problems, his mother didn’t want him looking for her Manet in the first place. She would have to change her mind if he found it, wouldn’t she? Would she help Lyon in going to court to get it back from whoever might have it?

  I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it, Lyon thought with a smile, remembering his favorite joke about doing long-range planning at DataVision. Right now, I need to get through this research, or figure out some shortcut.

  He thought about Beth Krasner. He had read several of her newspaper and magazine articles on art restitution. Some of them read like detective stories and obviously had required a great deal of research. She had to have better ideas about looking through archives than just starting at the top and working your way down. Lyon turned his phone over on the bar and pulled up the email app, searching for the last message she had sent.