The Spies of Warsaw

“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….”

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 then, when you left the office, he had your dossier brought out and destroyed you. And what came next was a new assignment-where you’d be tucked away in some cemetery of a bureau where they gathered up failures and kept them busy with meaningless paper.

The deed, for all Voss knew, might already have been done. But, he vowed to himself, the story wouldn’t end there. Zoller, his operative in Leszno who’d followed Uhl up to Warsaw, had been transferred to the Balkans-the Zagreb station, let him deal with the Croats and the Serbs-and Voss had made sure that everyone in his office knew it. But, much more important, the jackass who’d intervened outside the Hotel Orla would be dealt with next.

Voss had worked at that, hard, in the days following the aborted kidnapping. Who was he? The Warsaw operatives knew what he looked like, and Voss had hauled the leader, a Polish fascist, down to Glogau and given him the tongue-lashing of his life. “Find him, or else!” Voss didn’t care how. And the man had done the job in less than a week. His chief thug, once a professional wrestler in Chicago, had kept watch on the main Warsaw hospital and, lo and behold, there he was. Visiting in the morning, leaving an hour later, and followed back to the French embassy. He wore an officer’s uniform, but the operative had gotten a good look at him at the Hotel Orla and thought he was the same man.

In Glogau, Voss had not reported this discovery in a dispatch, sensing he might need it at the meeting in Berlin. And, he thought at first, he’d been right. When Gluck’s criticism finally wound down, he’d said, “Well, at least we’ve identified the man who interfered,” then paused, anticipating words of praise.

They weren’t spoken, only a polite “Yes?”

“A Frenchman, working at the embassy. An army officer.”

“Military attache?”

“Perhaps, we can’t be sure. But we’ll find out, once we’ve got our hands on him.”

“Your hands on him, Sturmbannfuhrer Voss? A military attache? In diplomatic service at an embassy?” Gluck had stared at him, his blue lawyer’s eyes as cold as ice. “You don’t mean that seriously, do you?”

“But …”

“Of course you don’t. You are irritated by failure, naturally, who wouldn’t be, but an attack on a serving military attache?” Gluck closed his eyes and gave his head a delicate shake: this must be a nightmare, where I’m forced to work with fools. “Do we, Sturmbannfuhrer Voss, need to discuss this further?”

“No, sir. Of course not. I perfectly understand.”

In the compartment on the Berlin/Glogau train, Voss’s fury rose as he recollected the conversation-how he’d crawled! The other passenger glanced over at him and rattled his newspaper. Had he spoken aloud? Perhaps he had, but no matter. What mattered was that this Frenchman would pay for sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. The Polish operative had described him as “handsome, aloof, aristocratic.” Yes, exactly, just the sort of Frenchman one could truly loathe. Well, Pierre, you will answer for what you did to me. It couldn’t be done officially, but there were always alternatives; one simply had to take the initiative. In his interior monologue, Voss mocked his superior. That didn’t cure him, nothing would cure him, but he felt better.

“Where?” In the apartment, Albertine turned toward Mercier, the bottle of vermouth suspended over a glass.

“The Brasserie Heininger. For lunch, tomorrow.”

“Down at Bastille? That place? For lunch with a general?”

“Yes.”

“Good heavens,” she said.

1 December.

Papa Heininger, proprietor of the brasserie just off the Place de Bastille, unconsciously straightened his posture when he saw the two officers waiting to be shown to their table. He edged the maitre d’ aside with his hand and said, “Good afternoon, messieurs.”

The older one, at least a general from his uniform and insignia, said, “Yes. The reservation is in the name ‘de Beauvilliers.’ ” He turned to the other officer, who walked with a stick, and said, “We’re upstairs, where it’s quiet.”

Perhaps it would be, Mercier thought, but it wasn’t here. The Heininger was famously excessive: white marble staircase, red plush banquettes, pudgy cupids painted on the walls between the gold-framed mirrors, golden passementeries on the drapery. The waiters, many wearing muttonchop whiskers, ran back and forth, balancing giant silver trays crammed with pink langoustines and knobby black oysters, and the lunchtime crowd was noisy and merry; in clouds of cigarette smoke and perfume they laughed, talked above the din, called out for more champagne.

When they’d climbed the staircase, Papa Heininger showed them to a table in the far corner, only to discover a silver-haired gentleman and a much younger brunette side by side on the banquette, whispering tenderly with their heads together. They were also notably well-dressed-but not for long. Heininger was aghast and started to speak, but the gentleman at the table turned a fierce eye on him and he stopped dead. “There’s been a mistake,” he said, and began an elaborate apology. The general cut him off. “Just anywhere will do,” he said, his voice midway between a sigh and a command.