Author's Note: I did a little research, and I honestly believe that the character mentioned later in this chapter wouldn't have been charged with much after the war, for the reasons that Hogan later explains.


The rest of the evening passed by with LeBeau tending to his customers while finding whatever opportunities he could to converse with his friends. Carter was taking great enjoyment in feeding the escargots to the Venus flytrap. Newkirk came up with at least two dozen comments he could have made about the plant, only to decide in the end that he may as well keep his mouth shut, even though Carter was taking it with them to the bank as they left after closing time.

They managed to arrive at the bank a few minutes before it was to close.

"Pardon, Mademoiselle," said LeBeau to the teller. "My friends and I wish to see the manager; it is of utmost importance."

The teller took a glance at the unlikely crew, not so sure that they could be trusted.

"It is almost closing time, Monsieur; are you sure it cannot wait?" she asked.

"Sorry, Love," said Newkirk, trying to see if he could charm her into letting them see the bank manager. "We really can't wait." He leaned against the counter of the teller window and smiled. "Surely a girl as lovely as you can pull some strings?"

"Monsieur, I don't think--"

"And maybe afterwards, you can join me for a late dinner on the Seine?" Newkirk added.

The woman's eyes flashed, and she reached her hand out of the teller window and slapped him. "How dare you!? I am a married woman!"

Newkirk winced, retreating, now noticing the ring on her finger. "Maybe we should come back tomorrow…"

"If you'll excuse Mr. Casanova over here," said Hogan. "We're here to help our friend LeBeau claim his inheritance."

"Inheritance?" she replied, glancing at LeBeau. "This isn't a legal firm, Monsieur."

"That well may be, but you have the will," Hogan countered, calmly. "Which is why we'd like to see the manager."

"Ah," the teller said, as though he suddenly understood. "I see." She picked up the telephone. "Monsieur Lefebvre? There are some people here to see you; they say it's an urgent matter." She rolled her eyes. "It's another man claiming to be an heir of the Vicomte de Chagny."

LeBeau's mouth dropped open in affronted shock. "Claiming!?" he repeated.

"Easy, Louis," Kinch said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

But Hogan was stunned for a different reason. If the news of finding the will hadn't been published in any of the French papers, how was it that false heirs were showing up already?

"Well, Monsieur, this one actually is French," the teller said over the phone. "Oui." She hung up the phone and turned back to the Heroes. "You may see him in his office."

LeBeau and Newkirk both glared at the lady (Newkirk still massaging the side of his face) and headed in the direction she pointed out without another word. But Hogan paused for a moment as the others followed the two Europeans.

"What exactly did you mean when you said that LeBeau was 'actually French'?"

"None of the major papers in France have published the finding of the will, at Monsieur Lefebvre's request, but the news has been spread in other nations," she said. "You clearly heard about it in America and came to tell your friend. People have been coming here or calling in for the past two weeks from all over Europe and America, claiming to have enough Chagny blood in them to lay a claim to the fortune. Just yesterday, we had a German man in here—a general in the last war, it seems—claiming that he had rights to the fortune."

"Unbelievable," Hogan mused. But then his brow furrowed. "A German general, you say? Did you happen to get the man's name?"

"No, Monsieur," she replied. "But he was a big, portly man, with a nasal voice."

Hogan's eyes narrowed, half of him surprised, but half of him not surprised at all. "Burkhalter," he muttered to himself. "I should have known."

Meanwhile, with Lefebvre, the other Heroes were explaining the situation to him, with LeBeau making his position on the whole ordeal quite clear.

"Monsieur LeBeau," said the bank manager, after hearing the chef's complaints about not being informed about the will. "Please try to understand my position. It was not my intent to keep the money away from the Vicomte's rightful heirs."

"Then please enlighten me as to why I am standing here without having seen my family receive their inheritance!" LeBeau countered.

"If you want confirmation that he is one of the rightful heirs, we can vouch for him," said Baker.

"And if you need to draw my blood and test it to prove the point, then do so!" LeBeau added. "Just get this over with!"

"I thought you can't stand the sight of blood," Carter said, confused.

"I never said I'd look while they were taking it," LeBeau murmured. He turned back to Lefebvre. "I will follow through with the necessary procedures. But can you just tell me why we have not heard a word about this?"

"It is true that we found the will," said Lefebvre. "But that is all we found. None of the money or items mentioned in the will are here."

"You have found nothing?" LeBeau asked, only vaguely aware of Newkirk placing a hand on his shoulder. No one needed to voice what they were worrying—that the money had been pillaged when Paris had been invaded.

"It's just like what Colonel Hogan said," said Carter, quietly. He blinked as he realized that the Colonel wasn't even present. "Hey, where'd he go?"

"Right here," Hogan replied, joining them. "What's the verdict?"

"They have the will, but none of the assets," Kinch informed him.

"I had a feeling that might've been it," Hogan sighed. But something didn't add up. If the money had vanished during the war, why was Burkhalter here looking for it now?

"Rotten luck, that is," Newkirk muttered. "We're all sorry for you, Louis."

LeBeau tried to put on a brave smile. "C'est le vie. Thank you for trying, mes amis."

Hogan was still pondering over Burkhalter's arrival as they exited.

"If you ask me, they should just put out in the paper that they only 'ave the will," said Newkirk. "That'd stop false 'opes from our side and those greedy treasure seekers."

"But what if the treasure seekers know more than they're letting on?" Hogan said.

"What do you mean, mon Colonel?" asked LeBeau, looking up. "You were the one who told me not to get my hopes up."

"That was before I picked up a little tidbit of information from Newkirk's new lady friend," Hogan said, ignoring the derisive grunt from the Englishman. "Now I'm saying not to throw in the towel just yet."

"Why the sudden change of heart?" asked Baker.

"I found out the identity of one of the treasure hunters," he replied. "And he's no stranger to us. General Burkhalter was here yesterday."

"Burkhalter!?" LeBeau practically yelled. "That fat fool was trying to get my inheritance!?"

"That's right," said Hogan. "But it's actually a good sign."

"You 'ave a weird definition of what's a good sign," Newkirk countered.

"No, think about it," the Colonel said. "Why would Burkhalter be looking around here for the money if it was already taken during the war? LeBeau, you said that the house was turned upside-down. They would have taken everything when they did that, wouldn't they?"

LeBeau blinked, but then nodded.

"And with Burkhalter being a general, he would've heard about exactly what was taken and when," Kinch finished. "I get it."

"Well, that's all well and good," said Carter. "So where's the money?"

"I'm willing to bet that it's still here in Paris somewhere," Hogan said. "This Viscount seems like an intelligent man; I'm sure he had the fortune hidden away the second he got wind of the invasion."

LeBeau pondered over those words. "Then we need to find out where it is before Burkhalter does. But how is Burkhalter here, anyway? Wouldn't he have been arrested after the war?"

"I doubt he would've been charged with much," Hogan said. "Aside from that commanding he did on the Russian Front, he was in charge of the POW camps. I remember that Klink wasn't even charged at all, but there wasn't anything to charge him with. You have to admit that we were treated very well; they can't accuse them of going against the Geneva Accords."

"Treated well?" Carter repeated. "We could've turned Stalag 13 into the next hotel chain!"

"Thank you, Carter," said Hogan, with a roll of his eyes. "But it illustrates my point. Burkhalter probably just got a few slaps on the wrist for the times he tried to line his own pockets, and was sent home."

"And now 'e's running around 'ere, trying to claim what doesn't belong to 'im?" Newkirk asked. "I don't call that reformed behavior."

"Which is why we need to find that fortune before he does, or we never will see it again," Hogan finished. "LeBeau, I think your grandfather's house is a good place to start looking. He may have hidden a clue to point you towards where he hid the money."

"My mother has the key," he replied. He shut his eyes for a moment, biting back a mounting rage. "They tried to force her into giving it to them; she told me in one of her letters." He cursed in his own tongue again. "They threatened her, but in the end decided that she was not worth their time, and they broke the doors in themselves."

"Greed brings out the worst in people," muttered Baker.

"Oui," LeBeau replied, disgusted. "Thank goodness she wasn't hurt. We could go and see her now; she has already met Newkirk, but I am sure that she would love to meet the rest of you."


Giselle LeBeau was a gentle, sentimental woman. The once-golden hair she had inherited from her father was now going gray, and the musical voice that she had inherited from her mother—and subsequently passed on to her son—was now slightly quivery with age. But her sincere eyes had not changed since her childhood, and when her son arrived with his friends in tow, she greeted them all warmly.

"It is always a pleasure to see you again, Pierre," she said to Newkirk. She then looked to the others. "Louis has told me so much about you," she said. "I thank you all for making his time in that prison so bearable." She did not know all of the details of their underground efforts, of course; writing about those exploits in a letter home would have been too risky and was forbidden. But LeBeau had written a lot about the friends he had made. And when the war had ended and he had gone home, he did tell her that he had been helping in the underground, albeit glossing over most of the details (he certainly wasn't willing to confess to her about the times he had been in dire peril, such as when he had nearly suffocated in Klink's safe or when he had been slightly wounded on a mission).

"It was our pleasure," Hogan assured her. "Your son helped us out of a lot of jams during the war. Now we're hoping to help his entire family out."

Giselle looked confused for a moment, and LeBeau quickly explained to her, in French, about the developments in this case.

"I see," she said, her expression betraying her disappointment at the news of the fortune still remaining lost. "I am not sure of hiding places in the house itself that my father would have used; we had a family acquaintance—a friend of my mother's—who knew more about passageways and that sort of thing. But Papa could have easily picked up some tricks from him. I learned this one myself." She crossed to a dresser, opened one of the drawers and removed a false bottom from it, drawing the old key from its hiding place. She handed the key to her son. "I know you wish to recover the lost money, but please do not do anything dangerous."

Newkirk rolled his eyes slightly. If she only knew about some of the things they had done during the war, she would be singing a different tune. But he wasn't one to talk; he hadn't exactly told all to his family, even though his sister Mavis often asked to hear about some tales of intrigue.

LeBeau kissed his mother on the cheek. "We'll be careful, Mère," he promised. "We've handled worse."

"Yeah, that's right," agreed Carter. "There was this one time when we had to get some fake diamonds—ow!" He was cut off as Newkirk gave him a slight kick on the ankle to keep him quiet.

But Giselle smiled slightly. "You must be Monsieur Carter," she said.

"Hey, that's right!" he said, impressed. "How'd you ever guess? Do you really have ESP in your family, after all?"

"No, Carter; you're just the type of person that everyone can recognize," LeBeau said, biting back a smirk.

Carter just shrugged in response.

"Now that we have the key, we may as well head over to the property," said Hogan. "We'd best do this under cover of night; we don't want to attract anyone's attention, but especially not Burkhalter's."

"So we'll grab some extra flashlights and head on over there," said Kinch. "Even if the lights are working, it'd be foolish to use them."

"Exactly," the Colonel agreed.

"I have some extra flashlights at the restaurant for my employees in event of a power failure," said LeBeau. "We can stop off there and head straight for the place; I know a shortcut."

"Good," said Hogan, glancing around at his men. "Let's move out."