The Spies of Warsaw

rumor. Wouldn’t work again, I’d say, reprise isn’t the answer. No, this time it would have to be money.”

“Quite a lot of money,” Mercier said.

From de Beauvilliers, a rather gloomy nod of agreement. However, all was not lost. As he leaned toward Mercier, his voice was quiet but firm. “Of course, we do have a lot of money.”

That said, he returned to his lunch. Mercier drank some champagne, then, suddenly, and for no reason he could think of, he was very conscious of the life around him, the Parisian chatter and laughter that filled the smoky air of the restaurant. A strange awareness; not enjoyment, more apprehension. Like the dogs, he thought. Sometimes, at rest, they would raise their heads, alert to something distant, then, after a moment, lie back down again, always with a kind of sigh. What would happen to these people, he wondered, if war came here?

3 December, Warsaw.

Now the winter snow began to fall. At night, it melted into golden droplets on the Ujazdowska gas lamps and, by morning, turned the street white and silent. Out in the countryside, the first paw prints of wolves were seen near the villages.

Mercier’s mail grew fat with Christmas cards; the Vyborgs sent a manger with infant and sheep, similarly the Spanish naval attache. From Prince Kaz and Princess Toni-postmarked Venice-a yule tree dusted with bits of silver, and a Hope to see you in the spring, in girls’ academy handwriting below the printed greeting. From Albertine a warm holiday letter, not so different from the one he’d sent her. By now she would be in Aleppo, he imagined, and found himself remembering the darkened hall that led to her room and the faint music he’d heard.

From the Rozens, a Chanukah card with a menorah, and another from Dr. Goldszteyn, his sometime partner in the foursomes at the Milanowek Tennis Club. Inside the card was a letter, on a sheet of cream-colored stationery.

Dear Colonel Mercier,

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Sadly, I must take this occasion to say goodby. My family and I will soon be in Cincinnahti, joining my brother who emigrated a few years ago. This will be a better situation for us, I believe. For your kindness and thoughtful consideration I thank you, and wish you happiness of the season. Sincerely yours,

Judah Goldszteyn

Mercier read it more than once, thought about answering the letter, then realized, a sadder thing than the letter itself, that there was nothing to be said. He was not able to throw the letter away, so put it in a drawer.

The mail also included invitations, fancy ones-the Warsaw printers thrived this time of year-to more official gatherings than Mercier could ever hope to attend, and a few private parties. RSVP. He declined most, and accepted a few. A handwritten note from Madame Dupin, the deputy director of protocol at the embassy, invited him to a vernissage “for one of Poland’s finest young painters, Marc Shublin.” The vernissage-“varnishing,” it meant, thus the completion of an oil painting- was an old Paris tradition, the first showing of an artist’s new work, typically at his studio.

Mercier had added the note to his no pile, but Madame Dupin, bright and forceful as always, had shown up at his office a day later. “Oh really, you must come,” she’d said. “Congenial people, you’ll have a good time. Marc’s so popular, we’re having it at an abandoned greenhouse on Hortensya street. Please, Jean-Francois, say yes, the young man’s worth your evening, my friend Anna is invited, and everything else this year will be so boring. Please?”

“Of course, Marie, I’ll be there.”

On the afternoon of the eleventh, in suit and tie, Mercier took a trolley to the outskirts of the city to meet a man called Verchak. This was a favor done for him by Colonel Vyborg, thus an offer that could not be turned down, though Mercier doubted it would be productive. Verchak had served with the Dabrowsky battalion in the Spanish civil war and, wounded in the fighting, had been allowed-“because of his family,” Vyborg had said-to return to Poland. Most of the battalion had been made up of Polish miners, from the Lille region of France, almost all of them members of the communist labor union, who’d fought as part of the XIth International Brigade, prominent in the defense of Madrid. Emigre communists knew better than to try to re-enter Poland, so Verchak was a valuable rarity, according to Vyborg.

The two-room apartment in a workers’ district was scrupulously clean-cleanliness being the Polish antidote to poverty-and smelled of medicine. Mercier was taken to the second room, bare of decoration except for a small cedar tree set on a bench and hung with beautiful wooden Christmas ornaments, where he was shown to the good chair, while Verchak sat on a handmade plank chair across from him. Pana Verchak served tea, offered sugar, which Mercier knew not to accept, then left the room.

A broken man, Mercier thought-no wound was physically apparent, but Verchak was old and slumped well beyond his years. His Polish was slow and precise, for which Mercier was grateful, and someone, Vyborg no doubt, had urged him to be forthcoming. Mercier said only that he was Vyborg’s friend and wished to hear of Verchak’s experience of the war in Spain.

Verchak accepted this and began a recitation, clearly having told his story more than once. “In the first week of November, it was cold, and rained every day; we took the village of Boadilla, near the Corunna road, that led from Madrid to Las Rozas. The Nationalists wanted to cut that road and lay siege to the city and, after some hours, while we prepared defensive positions, they attacked us. They surrounded the village.”

“What sort of attack was it?”

Verchak looked out the window for a moment, lost in his memory, then turned back to Mercier. “We couldn’t stop it, sir,” he said. “First the planes bombed us, then came tanks, then two waves of infantry, then more tanks. But we held on for a long time, though half of our men were killed.”

“You fired at the tanks.”

“With machine guns, but it meant little. One of them we set on fire, with a field gun, and we shot the crew as they came out of the hatch. One or two others got stuck in a ravine, and we put hand grenades under the engine in the back. But there were too many of them.”

“How many?”

Verchak slowly shook his head. “Too many to count. We were next to the Thaelmann Battalion, German communists, mostly, and they said it was called ‘Lightning war.’ “

“In Polish, they said that?”

“No, sir. In German.”

“So then, Blitzkrieg?”

“It might’ve been that. I don’t remember.”

“It was their word? The Germans in the Thaelmann Battalion?”

“I think they said they’d heard it from the German advisors who fought with the Nationalists.”

“How did they come to hear it, Pan Verchak? From a prisoner?”

“They might’ve, sir, they didn’t say. Perhaps they listened to the Germans talking on their radios. They were very clever people.”

“Did the planes return?”

“Not that day, but the following morning, as we moved back toward Madrid. We were out of ammunition. They sent us blank cartridges, the officers in Madrid.”

“Why would they do such a thing?”

“For courage, people said, so we wouldn’t retreat.”

“Did the men in the tanks talk to the planes, Pani?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. But I do know it can be done.”

“Really? Why do you say that?”

“I saw it with my own eyes, later, when we fought at the Jarama river. The tanks were on our side there, big Russian tanks, and I saw a tank commander, halfway out of the open hatch, using a radio and watching the Russian war planes in the sky. He shouted at them-I was only a few feet