The Paris Architect: A Novel

The Geibers could hear more commotion down the hall and in the attic. After fifteen minutes, a group of soldiers congregated outside the master bedroom. The colonel’s voice pierced the silence. “The back door was open. They must have gone out through the garden to a car at the rear of the property. But they won’t get far. All of you fan out in the garden and sweep the area. Find the cesspool and see if they’re in there. And don’t shoot them, did you hear what I said? I want them alive.”


The soldiers trudged down the main staircase and out the back door. There was complete silence, but the Geibers stayed where they were. The plan was to wait two hours before moving. It was like slowly waking up from a terrible nightmare, but it hadn’t been a surreal dream created by their subconscious minds but a horribly real event. They were emotionally exhausted, completely drained. As their breathing slowly returned to normal, both could feel that their clothes were soaked through with sweat, as if they had jumped into a lake. Even the mattress was drenched. While they waited, their bodies began to ache from being frozen in the same position. Geiber was lying in his own feces, but he wasn’t ashamed; all that mattered was that they had survived. He removed his hand from inside the bag and was relieved they wouldn’t be needing the revolver. In hindsight, he wished he’d accepted the pharmacist’s vials of cyanide.





20





“Your draftsmanship is exceptional. My work was nowhere near as good as this when I got out of school.”

Alain Girardet looked down at the floor and tried to suppress a smile. Lucien smiled at his response because the young man knew his work was good, but it was important to seem humble at this moment. He would’ve done the same thing. Architectural work of any kind was virtually impossible to get in Paris, so he knew Alain was determined to walk out of here with a job. They sat across from each other at a table in the corner of Lucien’s one-room office that Manet had graciously thrown rent-free into the deal. It was more professional for Lucien to be able to meet with Germans at an office than at his own apartment. Plus Celeste would have had a fit if the Germans had set foot in her home.

“Thank you, monsieur. You’re most kind. I worked very hard in school, especially on my drawing. After all, it is the soul of architecture, isn’t it?” answered Alain.

The kid could really kiss some ass, thought Lucien, but it won him over.

“Indeed it is,” replied Lucien, realizing that at last, after interviewing a half-dozen candidates, here was the guy he wanted. He felt energized—and now asked the question all job applicants wanted to hear.

“If you were offered the job, when could you start?”

“Tomorrow,” replied Alain, a little too eagerly. Lucien would’ve said the day after tomorrow to show that he wasn’t so desperate. This kid must be dead broke.

Lucien flipped through the portfolio of drawings again to make sure that he was making the right decision. In the past, he’d hired draftsmen for his firm too impulsively and had regretted it. There was Michel, the middle-aged architect who’d come back after every lunch completely shitfaced. His line work, so beautiful when sober, resembled a four-year-old’s in the afternoon. That’s if he hadn’t fallen asleep on his drafting table. Another memorable hiring choice was Charles, who had turned out to be the laziest bastard in all of France. It had taken him a month to draw a square.