The spies of warsaw (17 page)

"Evil bastards, Jean-Francois, they've got their whole country in

prison. I have friends who are Jews, a couple, fled from Frankfurt with

the clothes on their backs. Surely great threats to the government: cellists, both of them. Did you know that, by German law, persons of

more than twenty-five percent non-Aryan blood are forbidden to play

Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, or any other Aryan composer? Can you

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imagine? I know I shouldn't pry, but if you get a chance to put a boot

up their backsides I trust you'll give it an extra shove for me."

"I'll remember that," he said. "You never know what might happen." He poured more wine for both of them. "And you, Albertine?

What goes on with you?"

She shrugged. "I work hard at what I do--charities, boards of

directors, and so forth, wherever they need people they don't have to

pay. Oh, speaking of boards, some awful woman, Madame de

Michaux is her name . . . had dinner with you in Warsaw? She was

eager to tell me about it. Very taken with you, she was."

"Yes, I'd forgotten her name. The dinner was a banquet, at the

Europejski."

"Perhaps, since you're in Paris, you'll go and see her."

"Albertine, don't be wicked."

She smiled.
I can be, as you well know
. "Here's one bit of news.

I'm going to Aleppo, in December."

"Any special reason?"

"I might buy something for the collection, we'll see. I'm going

with a friend of mine, she's a professor of archaeology at the Sorbonne, so that will give me entree to the local collectors--and the

tomb robbers." She paused, then said, "Have you a secret mission for

me, as long as I'm there?"

"I'm not concerned with Syria, dear. And best not to say such

things."

"Oh foo," she said. "I wasn't born yesterday."

He laughed and said, "Albertine, you are incorrigible."

Albertine's eyes wandered, then fixed on a nearby table. Mercier

ate some
frites,
then looked over to see what interested her. A very

handsome man was having dinner with his daughter, maybe twelve,

who was chattering away while she worked at eating a plate of escargots. She was quite adept, using the shell-holding tool with one hand,

probing for the snail morsel with a special fork, yet more than keeping

up her end of the conversation. The father listened earnestly. "Yes? . . .

Really? . . . That must have been interesting."

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Albertine leaned toward Mercier and said, "Are you watching

this?"

"What's going on?"

"Can't you see?"

"No, what is it?"

"He's teaching her how to have dinner with a man."

Mercier took another look. "Yes, I do see, now that you mention it."

Albertine was amused, and pleased with what she'd discovered.

"How I love this
quartier,
" she said. "And, come to think of it, this

country. I mean, where else?"

Back at the apartment, Albertine made sure that Mercier had everything he needed, then went off to her room, down the hall. He tried to

read Guderian, but it had been a long day, they'd finished the SaintEstephe, and German military theory wasn't the best bedside companion. He thought about the following morning: Bruner, the others.

Would he defend himself? Or just sit there and listen? The latter, an

easy decision, the best way to keep his job. His pursuit of the
Wehr-

macht
's intentions--the abandoned tank trap, a careful reading of

Guderian's book--had changed the chemistry of his assignment in

Warsaw. This, along with the abduction of his agent Uhl, had turned

a desk job into something very much like a fight, so to walk away now

would be to walk away from a fight. He had never done that, and he

never would.

It was quiet outside, in the hidden rue Saint-Simon, quiet in the

building, and quiet in the apartment; private, cloistered. Warm

enough, with the radiators going, the room mostly in shadow, with

only a small lamp on the night table lighting his bed. From down the

hall, he heard the faint sound of music--Albertine apparently had a

radio in her room--a swing orchestra playing a dance tune, then a

woman vocalist, singing a song he recognized: "Night and Day." Was

Albertine reading? Or lying in the darkness, listening to her radio?

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Not, he thought, that he would ever find out. Not that he would walk

down the hall and knock at her door. Not that she wanted him to do

that. Nor would she--walk down the hall and open his door. Not that

he wanted her to, not really. Not that much, anyhow.

29 November. In his best uniform, shoes polished to a high gloss,

Mercier walked up the rue de Grenelle, past the walled Soviet embassy,

then along avenue des Invalides to the avenue de Tourville. The chill

gray morning, typical for the city this time of year, did nothing to

soften the official buildings, the heart of military Paris. Saluted by the

sentry, he entered
2, bis
, climbed the stairs to Bruner's office, and at

ten hundred hours sharp, as ordered, he knocked at the door.

Bruner took his time, and after he got around to calling, "Come

in," his greeting was subdued--polite and cold. "How was your flight,

colonel?"

"It was uneventful, sir. On time."

"When I served in Warsaw, I always found LOT to be dependable." Bruner took a sheet of paper from his drawer and placed it

before him, squaring it up with his fingertips. He had, Mercier sensed,

flourished with his promotion to full colonel and his new position.

Short and tubby, with a soft face and a dapper little mustache, he virtually glowed with vanity, and its evil twin, the infinite capacity for

vengeance when insulted. "So then," he said. "Our lost spy in Germany."

"Yes, colonel."

"How did this happen?"

"I don't know."

"You'll have to find out, won't you."

"He thought he was under surveillance on the previous trip. Somehow the Gestapo, or a counterespionage unit of the SD, uncovered

him. I've questioned him at length, and he's been forthcoming, but he

doesn't have the answer."

"And what do you propose to do about it? It's a serious loss, a view

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on German armaments, which imply tactics, and that is information

crucial to our own planning. We're in the midst of a political conflict

these days, the politicians don't want to spend money on tanks and

planes--we still have serious unemployment--but Hitler has no such

problem. He spends what he likes."

"I am aware of this, colonel."

"Perhaps this position, in Warsaw, is not to your taste, Colonel

Mercier. Would you like me to arrange a new assignment?"

"No, colonel. It is my preference to remain in Poland."

Bruner returned to their lost spy, then spent some time on the

shooting incident in Silesia, and around again. He was like a terrier--

once he took hold, he wouldn't let go. But, at last, with a final threat

or two, Mercier was dismissed. "There will be more meetings, Colonel

Mercier, so please be good enough to stay in contact with my adjutant

for the next two days. You are also scheduled to see General de

Beauvilliers. Call his office for the details."

Oh no
. Not de Beauvilliers. Now, Mercier thought, he really

would be sent off to some fever-ridden island.

When he left Bruner's office, he badly wanted coffee. There'd been

no sign of Albertine when he got up, and he hadn't bothered to make

it for himself, so he descended to the officers' mess in the basement

and found an empty table. There were three officers at the next table,

including a major, a fellow military attache he recognized from his

training class the previous spring. They acknowledged each other;

then, as Mercier ordered coffee from a mess steward, the major

resumed telling a story, which the other two were clearly enjoying.

"So they took me to the far end of the palace," the major said, "to

a glorious room: divans, you know, and gauze curtains."

"Perhaps you were in the harem."

"Perhaps. But there were no women about. Just the sultan, the

chief eunuch, the head of the army--the sultan's younger brother--

and me. For a time, we made small talk: the progress of the new

railroad, their war with one of the mountain tribes. Then a servant--

turban, dagger tucked in sash, those slippers with the toes turned

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up--entered with a brass tray. Which held four little pipes, made of

silver, filigreed silver, very old and beautiful, and a silver bowl holding

four brown--well, lumps, the size of small pebbles."

"Ah," said one of the other officers. "Opium."

"No, hashish. As the honored guest, I was served first. Which

meant the servant put a brown lump in the bowl of a pipe and held a

taper over it until I managed to get the damn thing to light."

"You couldn't decline?"

"I could've, but you can't be rude to sultans. That might have been

the end of French concessions in the sultanate."

"How was it?"

"Harsh. Quite harsh--I had to stop myself from coughing. Then

the sultan lit up, followed by the general and the eunuch. The smoke is

very fragrant, sweet; not like anything else. When we were done, the

servant took the pipes away. And
then
we began to negotiate. Imagine!

I'd memorized a list of objectives--what we wanted, what we could

offer in return--"

"And so you offered them Marseille."

"They didn't ask for it, but just as well they didn't."

"And you felt . . . ?"

"Light-headed. And peaceful. With a great desire to smile, an

overwhelming desire."

"And did you? Smile?"

"Not quite. I managed to force the corners of my mouth to

stay where they were. Meanwhile, the eunuch was watching me carefully, and the general began to talk about Schneider-Creusot cannon,

seventy-fives. Then, right in the middle of it, the sultan cut him off

and began to tell a story, the silliest story, really, about his visit to

France before the war, some hotel in Nice, and shoes left outside the

rooms at night to be shined by the porter, and his cousin switching

them around--two right shoes here, two lefts down the hall. Doesn't

sound so funny, now, but if you'd been there. . . ."

*

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Mercier finished his coffee and left the building. The major's story--

an attache
stupifie
with hashish in some desert kingdom--had been,

in its way, instructive. Droll, rather than violent, but nonetheless, like

his own experience, a misadventure of foreign service. Perhaps the

major too had been
recalled for consultations.
Well, Mercier thought,

he'd survived; endured that pompous ass Bruner without losing his

temper, the parting shot no more than an order to replace Uhl, at least

to the extent of having the Schramberg maneuvers observed. But that

was more than reasonable--he would have done that without a trip to

Paris. What lay ahead of him now was a session with the
Service des

Renseignements
--the clandestine service of the
Deuxieme Bureau
--

which would not be a scolding, simply an interview. And a meeting

with General de Beauvilliers, which
was
worth worrying about, but

just then Mercier didn't feel like worrying. On the walk home he took

the rue Saint-Dominique, a commercial street, busy in the late morning, where he saw a bunch of red gladioli in a florist's shop and bought

them for the apartment.

30 November. Sturmbannfuhrer August Voss rode the express back

from Berlin to Glogau. There was only one other passenger in the

first-class compartment and Voss gazed out the window but saw nothing, so much was his mind occupied with anger. He'd gone up to the

central command office on Wilhelmstrasse for the normal monthly

meeting with his superior, but the meeting had not been at all normal.

His superior, Obersturmbannfuhrer Gluck, a bright young lawyer

from Berlin in his previous life, had criticized him for the Edvard

Uhl affair. No compliments for unveiling a spy, only disapproval for

that absurd folly at the hotel in Warsaw. Gluck wasn't sarcastic or

loud, not the type to slam his fist on the desk--he was too high and

mighty for that. No, he
regretted
the incident,
wondered
if it wasn't

just a bit
precipitous
to snatch this man in the middle of a foreign

city, and
unfortunate
that the abduction had failed. This was Gluck's

typical manner: quietly rueful, seemingly not all that perturbed. But

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