Danger in Paris

Chapter 1
This is a story of surprising, unfolding events that amazed the participants when it was concluded. What seemed plausible in retrospect was not so at the time, and even after the fact, there were mysteries. People and events in the nineteen twenties in Paris and Hungary during the second world war, later in Portugal, and then in the nineteen eighties in Spain, Morocco and Algeria, all jangled together in matters of theft, treachery, dishonesty, politics, and murder. It was one surprise after another.
John Page, a historian at Vanderbilt University was invited to St. Antony’s College, of Oxford University, along with his wife Julie, in 1987, for a year to give a few lectures, write a book, and otherwise luxuriate. He was a historian of Islam, particularly in North Africa, especially Algeria. He was in mid career, a young full professor, who had written about the politics of Islamic movements. He had taken his wife Julie to live in Cairo, Algiers, and Paris, which she loved, in comparison to other scholarly destinations. Julie was an anthropologist at Vanderbilt, who had done considerable field work in North Africa, particularly on women in Islam. They were both fluent in Arabic and French.
The Pages flew to London and took a cab from Heathrow airport to Victoria station where they caught the train to Oxford. They had sent their clothes and household goods ahead so that they would be sent to the house they had rented a house from an Oxford professor who was already in the US for a year. It was in a leafy residential area in a cul de sac in North Oxford not too far from the college. There were many English homes just like it. One entered a front hall with two closed doors on the right. The first door was to a sitting room with a front window. The second door was to a dining room that looked into a back garden, as the English would say, or a back yard or lawn, in American terms. The kitchen was off to the side. A staircase in the front hall led to three upstairs bedrooms. The house was furnished comfortably. Clothes, dishes and books arrived the next day. Once settled in the house they went out and bought an English Ford car for the year. The shops were nearby and they could either walk or take the bus to St. Anthony’s but they wanted the car for longer trips. They knew the country pretty well from previous trips but this was their first time living in Britain and they planned to enjoy it.
After a few days Page went to St. Antony’s to get acquainted. He had visited and lectured at the college several times so that he was familiar with it, and had several personal and intellectual friends among the Fellows. They were a distinguished lot. The new Warden, who was in his first year, was a former director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a strong scholar himself. The college was a graduate school, without undergraduates. It had been founded in 1950 from a generous gift of thirty million pounds from Sir Antonin Besse, an English merchant of French descent, and it had filled the place intended for a school of contemporary history and international affairs. Subsequent gifts from the Ford and Volkswagen foundations had permitted growth into a distinguished graduate school with students from all over the world. The faculty had a similar cosmopolitan character.
It had taken the university some time to find a suitable location and buildings and eventually a former convent of the Sisters of Mercy was chosen. The large, stone building had an early Victorian chapel and a library, which in time became distinguished for its holdings. A “New Building” constructed in 1970 included a dining hall and common rooms. There was little housing for students who lived in a few residential halls and surrounding Victorian houses.
College life was very informal. Students and faculty members were not required to wear academic dress, unlike other colleges, except at matriculation and graduation. There was no permanent high table for faculty members but a few dinners each week for visiting public figures and academics, to which students might be invited. Page reported to the Warden’s office and was given a warm greeting by the Warden himself, a German whose English Oxford accent was surely more clear and articulate than some of his English colleagues. He was a scholar of the world who had traveled and lectured widely, including in the United States. Indeed, John had heard him lecture when he was an aspiring, young, unknown academic. The graciousness of his greeting was a boost to Page’s ego, which surely did not need boosting. He showed Page to his “room” which is the term used by the English for one’s academic office. It was large and comfortable with a number of chairs used for student tutorials. He would not teach tutorials but the chairs were available for friends or guests.
They had lunch in the college dining hall at a long table occupied by other faculty members and a few students. After lunch they went to the library where the Warden left him and Page had a long tutorial from a librarian about the collections and how to take out books. He had done a good deal of research on his book in the previous years and had brought notes and copies of the text with him. So he would primarily need secondary books to fill in the pages. He had brought rough drafts of the four lectures that he was to give. They were different interpretations of the politics of Islam, past and present, and his final synthesis. After the library tutorial he paid a few calls on Fellows whom he knew and began the process of settling into routines for the academic year. He would write in the morning, and find friends for lunch, including many new friends. There were plenty of colleagues to talk with about Islam and Middle Eastern and African history. A number of people spoke French easily, something he and Julie both loved to do. One of Page’s colleagues was David Bell, a professor of French politics, a Scot with a wry wit and an ironic view of life. He was continually chasing off to France to follow elections or do interviews. His wife Dem, short for Demeter – her father had been a classics scholar – was delightful, and the two couples became firm friends in no time at all.
In addition to his academic work Page had a mission to perform. He was in search of friends of his mother and her brother who had lived in Paris in the nineteen twenties. Their family had a house in Provence that he hoped to find. His grandmother had placed their letters home in a hall landing of her home in Louisville and never disturbed them. John did not find them until his maiden aunt, Sarah Catherine, had died in 1980. She had never said a word to him about the materials. In addition to the letters there were a number of prints, including an original Hokisai etching of Mount Fugi from the 1840’s. So, since it was late August and term would not begin for a few weeks, they were off to France.