The Polish Officer

known as goniometry. They sped through the empty streets to their prearranged positions: one at place de la Concorde, the other in front of the Gare de l’Est railroad station. Almost as soon as they arrived, they were on the radio to Grahnweis’ office:

Place de la Concorde reports a radio beam at 66 degrees.

Gare de l’Est reports a radio beam at 131 degrees.

Grahnweis put down his fork, rubbed his hands on the napkin, took a sip of beer. He placed the celluloid discs on the street map of Paris, one at each of the truck locations. Then he ran the two silk threads along the reported angles. They crossed at Montmartre.

4 September, 6:30 p.m., Calais railroad station.

De Milja and Genya Beilis said good-bye on the platform. She had been drafted as a courier, from the Channel ports to the Hotel Bretagne, because de Milja and Fedin could no longer go back and forth. The full moon in September was too close, the fuel for the van took so many black-market ration coupons it potentially exposed the operation to the French police, and, as the German invasion plan gathered momentum, information began to flow so fast they could barely deal with it.

Genya’s summery print dress stirred as the locomotive chugged into the station; she moved toward de Milja so that her breasts touched him. “Do you know,” she said, her voice just above the noise of the train, “you can ride with me to Amiens, and then come back here.”

“It’s direct,” de Milja said. “Express to Paris.”

“No, no,” Genya said. “This train stops in Amiens. I’m certain of it.”

De Milja smiled ruefully.

Genya studied him. “On second thought,” she said, looking down.

He stared at her, at first took what she said for a lover’s joke. But she wasn’t smiling. Her eyes shone in the dim light of the station platform, and her lips seemed swollen. He took her by the shoulders, gripped her hard for a moment. To tell her, without trying to have a conversation while a train waited to leave a station, that he had to do what he was doing, that he was exhausted and scared, that he loved her.

But she shrugged. “Oh well,” she said. Picked up a string-tied bundle as the loudspeakers announced the departure of the train. The way Parisians survived the rationing system was to get food in the countryside— everybody on the crowded platform had a large suitcase or a package.

“A few days,” de Milja said.

She pushed him away and fled to the step of the coach just before it began to move. When she turned to him, her face had changed to a brainless, bourgeois mask, and she waved at him—the dumb ox, her poor excuse for a husband—and called out, “Au revoir! Au revoir! A bientot, cheri!”

In silence Fedin and de Milja drove out of Calais on a little country road, the E2, headed for the village of Aire, where the Lys River met the Calais canal. They were to meet with a man called Martagne— formerly the director of the port of Calais, now an assistant to a German naval officer—at his grandfather’s house in the village.

A few miles down the E2, a camouflage-painted Wehrmacht armored car blocked the road. A soldier with a machine pistol slung over his shoulder held up a hand. “Out of the car,” he said.

As Fedin moved to open the door he asked quietly, “Who are they?”

“Feldengendarmerie,” de Milja said. “Field police units. It means they’re starting to secure the staging areas for the invasion.” He wondered where Fedin’s Luger was. Normally he hid it in the springs beneath the driver’s seat.

“Papers, please.”

They handed them over.

“Ruzicki,” he said to de Milja. “You’re Polish?”

“French citizen.”

“Your work pass runs only to November, you know.”

“Yes. I know. I’m getting it renewed.”

He glanced at Fedin’s papers, then gestured for them to open the back of the truck. He studied the crates of Vienna sausage and sardines, the name of the distributor stenciled on the rough wood. “Unload it,” he said.

“All of it?”

“You heard me.”

He lit a cigarette as they worked, and another soldier joined him, watching them haul the crates out and stack them on the warm tarred gravel of the road. “Did I see this truck up in Le Touquet last week?” the second soldier asked.

“Might have,” de Milja said. “Sometimes we go up there.”

“Where do you go there?”

“Oh, Sainte Cecile’s—you know, the orphanage.”

“French orphans eat Vienna sausage?”

“For the sisters, I think. The nuns.”

When they were done they stood aside. The first soldier slid a bayonet out of a case on his belt and neatly popped a slat loose from a crate of sardines. He speared one of the tins, held it away from his uniform to avoid the dripping oil, sniffed it, then flung it away, cleaning his bayonet on the weeds beside the road.

“Load it up,” he said.

While they worked, the soldier wandered around the van. Something displeased him, something wasn’t right. He opened the passenger-side door, squatted on the road, stared into the cab. De Milja sensed he was a moment away from putting his hand beneath the front seat and finding Fedin’s pistol.

“Do you know, sir, we took an extra crate of sausage from the storeroom? There’s one more than we’re supposed to have.”

The soldier stood and walked to the back of the truck. His face was dark with anger. “What does that mean? Why do you tell me that?”

De Milja was completely flustered. “Why, ah, I don’t know, I didn’t mean . . .”

His voice hung in the air, the soldier leaned close, saw the fear in his eyes. “You do not offer bribes to German soldiers,” he said very softly. “It is something you do not do.”

“Of course, I know, I didn’t—” de Milja sputtered.

The soldier jerked his head toward the road: it meant get moving. Fedin grabbed the last two crates, carried them into the front seat with him. When he tried to start the car it stalled. The engine caught, Fedin made a grinding shift, the car lurched forward, almost stalled again. The soldier turned away from them, clasped his hands behind his back and stared down the road in the direction they’d come from.

4 September, 9:26 p.m.

In the Funkabwehr bureau on the boulevard Suchet, at the end of the hall where Sturmbannfuhrer Grahnweis’ personal office was located, there was a mood of great anticipation. Grahnweis was cool and businesslike in the summer heat. He could be seen through the open door doing a little late paperwork; studying reports, sometimes writing a comment in the margin. Work went on, he seemed to suggest, the glory and the drudge in turn, such was life.

A few senior officers had found it necessary to be in the Funkabwehr office that night, chatting in low voices with attentive junior staff, who busied themselves with the thousand little jobs that must be done every day in a military office. The devil is in the details, the Germans say.

Klaus was hunting for the carnet file, Helmut needed a look at the July pay vouchers for the Strasbourg station, Walter asked Helmut if the Lyons relay tower plan was still locked up in committee in Berlin. Heinrich, at 9:27, nodded sharply to himself, held the headphones tightly to his ears for a moment to make absolutely sure, then dialed a single digit on his telephone. The crowd in the Funkabwehr office knew immediately that what had been a strong possibility was now confirmed: Grahnweis had caught a spy.

But the Sturmbannfuhrer let the receiver rest on its cradle. He finished the final paragraph of his report, initialed the lower corner, and then answered the phone. The frequency was the same as last night, Heinrich reported. Grahnweis thanked him, turned on his receiver, fiddled with the dial until the transmitted numbers came through crisp and clear. Several of the senior officers and a few people on his own staff drifted into the large office, close enough to Grahnweis’ desk to hear what went on.

The two Loewe-Opta radio trucks had been in position since early evening, strategically placed on either side of the Montmartre hill. Grahnweis gave them a few minutes to get a fix on the transmission, then called Truck