The Spies of Warsaw

and so on.”

“How do you come to know that?”

“Everybody knows that. In Germany.”

They drove on, through pretty Schwabisch villages. Every one of them had its Christbaum, a tall evergreen in the center of town, with candles lit as darkness fell, and a star on top. There were also candles in every window, and red-berried holly wreaths hung on the doors. By the side of the road, at the entry to each village, stood a sign attacking the Jews. This was, Mercier thought, a kind of competition, for none of the signs were the same. Juden dirfen nicht bleiben-“Jews must not stay here”-was followed by Wer die Juden unterstuzt fordert den Kommunissmus, “Who helps the Jews helps communism,” then the dramatic “This flat-footed stranger, with kinky hair and hooked nose, he shall not our land enjoy, he must leave, he must leave.”

“Perhaps an amateur poet, that one,” Stefan said.

“One publishes where one can,” Mercier said.

“Bastards,” Stefan said. “I grew up in the middle of it. Hard to believe, at first. Then it didn’t go away, it grew.” He shifted into second gear, the Opel climbing a grade where forest closed in on the darkening road. He had been rambling along in rough-hewn emigre French, now he switched to native German and said, quietly, “Ihr sollt in der Holle schmoren!” Burn in hell.

Twenty minutes later, they reached the town of Schramberg. A few Wehrmacht officers wandered along the winding streets, pausing to look in the shop windows, out for a pre-dinner walk to stir the appetite. In honor of the army’s visit, swastika flags lined the square in front of the ancient town hall, their deep red a handsome contrast to the green Christbaum, its candles flickering in the evening breeze. Stefan turned right on the street just past the town hall, took a good look at the odometer, and then, as the street turned into a narrow paved road and the town fell away behind them, switched off the headlights. “They don’t need to know we’re coming,” he said, peering into the gathering darkness, squinting at the odometer. Finally he slowed and let the car roll to a stop. “At the center of this curve,” he said. “See the rock? That’s our mark.”

As Mercier reached into the backseat for his walking staff, Stefan opened the glove compartment and handed him a thick bar of chocolate. “Take this along,” he said. “You might want it.”

Mercier thanked him and, making sure no headlights were visible, stepped out of the car and started to cross the road. Stefan rolled the window down and, his voice close to a whisper, said, “Good hunting. Remember, nineteen-oh-five hours, by the rock.” In two moves he reversed the car and drove back toward Schramberg.

Pure night. Mercier thought of it that way. Faint stars, wisps of cloud, and not a sound to be heard. He reached into his pocket and found his pencil sketch of the Deuxieme Bureau‘s map. He had to climb the hill above the road, turn east, and walk a distance just short of two miles, descending the first hill, climbing a second, and descending again, to a point just below the crest, where there would be, presumably, a view of the tank maneuvers. For the moment he was warm enough, though he could feel the first bite of the night-borne chill. Wool hat, surplus greatcoat, walking staff, and knapsack-the Swiss hiker, if anyone were to see him, but it was planned that nobody would. And, he thought, with a camera in his knapsack, they’d better not. He entered the forest and started to climb, his footsteps almost silent on the pine-needle litter on the forest floor.

His knee ached soon enough, and he was grateful for the long staff. When he heard the whine of an approaching car, he moved behind a tree, then watched the headlights as they swept along the road, sped around the curve, and disappeared. That would be, he thought, the changing of the guard at the roadblock. Ten minutes later, the car returned, headed back to Schramberg, and Mercier resumed his climb.

The forest never thickened, it was as Stefan had described, a woodland treated as a kind of garden, every tree identified and carefully nurtured. Even fallen tree branches were removed, perhaps taken away by the poor, for use as firewood. Suddenly some animal, sensing his presence, went running off across the hillside. Mercier never saw it; a wild boar, perhaps, or a deer. Too bad he didn’t have his dogs with him, they would have smelled it long before it broke cover, frozen into motionless statues, each with left foreleg raised, tail straight, nose pointed toward the game: that’s dinner, right over there. Then, when the rifle shot didn’t follow, they would look at him, waiting for a release from point.

How he missed them! Well, he’d see them when he went home for Christmas. If he managed to get there. And, even if he did, his daughter Gabrielle probably wouldn’t join him. She’d often meant to, but then her busy life intervened. And Annemarie wouldn’t be there. Not ever again. So it would be just him and the dogs, and Fernand and Lisette, who lived in the house and maintained the property-it belonged more to them now than to him. And they’re getting older, he thought, hired by his grandfather, a long time ago. What, he wondered, would they make of Anna Szarbek? Well, that he’d never know. Stop and rest. He put a hand on a pine tree, forcing himself to stand still until his breathing returned to normal. Whatever drove him, nameless spirit, had been forcing him uphill at full speed.

Did he truly need to be on this hillside? Any trusted agent could have operated the camera, but the people at 2, bis were determined he should himself stand in for his lost spy, and he’d shown them every enthusiasm. Still, it was-oh, not exactly dangerous, France wasn’t at war with Germany, but potentially an embarrassing failure, more a threat to his career than his life.

Again he walked. Confronted by a ravine, with a frozen streamlet at the bottom, he slid down one side and then, a bad moment, had to claw his way up the opposing slope. An hour later he was midway down the second hillside, the trees on the facing hill silver in the light of the rising moon. He had a look with his field glasses, searching for an advance unit, but saw nothing. So he unrolled his blanket and sat on it, back braced against an oak tree, ate some chocolate, and settled in to wait for dawn.

Slow hours. Sometimes he dozed, the cold woke him, then he dozed again, finally waking with a start, face numb, hands so stiff they didn’t quite work. He struggled to his feet, rubbing his hands as he walked back and forth, trying to get warm. His watch said 4:22 but there was, a week before the winter solstice, no sign of dawn. In the black sky above him, the stars were sharp points of light, the air cold and clean and faintly scented by the forest. Then, in the distance, he heard the faint rumble of engines.

He concentrated on the sound and discovered it was not coming from the direction of Schramberg, west of him, but from the north. Of course! The Wehrmacht hadn’t bothered to set up a tank park on the outskirts of town-a long, complicated business involving commissary, medical units, and fuel tankers-they were coming from an army base, likely somewhere near the city of Tubingen.

He rolled up his blanket and climbed until he found a thick forest shrub, branches bare for the winter but still good cover. The sound rose steadily, reaching finally an enormous crescendo: the roar of huge unmuffled engines and the loud clatter of rolling treads. A tank column, stretched far down the road. How many? Thirty tanks in a formation was common; he had to guess there were at least that many. The earth beneath Mercier trembled as the first lights of the column appeared on the road, and the air filled with the raw smell of gasoline. Two staff cars appeared at the foot of the Rabenhugel, then a tank, and two more, the rest of the column obscured from view by the curve of the hill.

An officer climbed out of the leading staff car, signaled with his hand, and, moments later, Mercier heard the stuttering whine of motorcycles and saw moving lights among the trees. He tracked them with his field glasses, the riders gray forms, working up the shallow grade, skidding on the pine-needle carpet, steadying themselves with a foot on the ground as they wove through the trees. Suddenly, his peripheral vision caught the motion of a silhouette, uphill from his position and moving fast, which he managed to catch a glimpse of just before it vanished: a small bear, whimpering with panic as it ran, low to the ground, in flight from the invasion of its forest. When he again looked at the road, a few officers and tank commanders had gathered by one of the staff cars, smoking and talking, playing a flashlight on a map spread out on the car’s hood.

Army time. Nothing much going on. Waiting. Twenty minutes later, a pair of Mercedes automobiles came up the road from the direction of Schramberg, a civilian in an overcoat got out, gave a Heil salute to what Mercier took to be the senior officer, and received one, a rather casual version of the raised arm, in return. The officer pointed, the civilian got back in his car, and it drove away. Perhaps the engineers, Mercier guessed, there to observe the maneuvers.

At eight o’clock sharp, the rising sun casting shadows on the hills, the tanks made their first attempt at