The Spies of Warsaw

climbing the Rabenhugel.

Mercier, working quickly, reached into his knapsack and brought out the camera, made sure that the handle was fully wound, pointed it at the climbing tanks, and pressed the button. In the wall of engine noise he could barely hear it. Also, some other sound distracted him; he puzzled for a moment, and that almost did for him. A drone, only just audible above the engine thunder, somewhere above him. Merde, that was an airplane! He dove to the earth, slid beneath the branches of the shrub, and rolled onto his back.

Circling lazily in the morning sky, a Fieseler Storch reconnaissance plane, small and slow, looking like a fugitive from the 1914 air war, but lethal. Had they seen him? Was the radio alert to a staff car below already sent? He covered his face with the gray-green sleeve of his greatcoat and lay perfectly still. The plane’s circuit took it north, then, coming back toward him, it descended, now less than a hundred feet above the hilltop. At its slowest speed, it skimmed over his head; then, thirty seconds later, the drone faded away to the west. But Mercier stayed beneath his shrub, as the plane returned once more, now gaining altitude. For fifteen minutes it circled the site of the maneuvers, then disappeared.

By the time Mercier was back to his cover position behind the shrub, the tanks were spread out across the hill, a few hundred feet above the road, but the exercise was not going well. He could see at least six of them, the light model Uhl had been working on. Down by the road, one of the tanks had failed immediately; the crew had the rear hatch cover off and were kneeling on the deck in order to work on the engine. A second had climbed thirty feet, then stopped, blue exhaust streaming from its vent as the commander crawled between the treads to check on ground clearance. A third had tried to mow down a pine, had broken it off, then got hung up on the stump and thrown a tread. The other three had reached the crest of the hill and were now out of sight. But Mercier could see that all was not well for one tank at least, because, in the distance to the north, a column of black smoke rose slowly above the forest.

They worked at it all morning, and for most of the afternoon. Now and again, the Fieseler Storch returned for thirty minutes, and Mercier had to hide beneath the shrub. Then, late in the afternoon, the weak December sun low in the sky, they tried something new. From the north, a blue Opel sedan drove up and parked next to the staff cars. This was, clearly, somebody’s personal car: a few years old, its paint job faded and dusty, a dent on the door panel. The driver, a young Wehrmacht officer-a lieutenant; Mercier could see the insignia with his field glasses-talked to the senior officers for a time, then took a length of iron pipe, long enough so that its end stuck out the rolleddown rear window, from the car. While the others watched, hands clasped behind their backs in a classic officer pose, he knelt by the front of the Opel and wired the pipe to the bumper. Mercier adjusted the field glasses and focused on the lieutenant’s face as he chatted away while he worked at twisting the ends of the wire until it was secure. Oh well, likely it won’t work, but you never know…. For a moment, Mercier wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but then, when the lieutenant produced a measuring tape, he understood perfectly: the pipe was the width of a light tank. The lieutenant slid behind the wheel and drove cautiously up the hill. More than once he misjudged distance, one end of the pipe banging into a tree, and had to reverse the Opel and try a different path. But the idea was simple and effective.

If you contemplated a tank attack through a forest, all you needed was a car and a length of pipe. If the pipe on the car fit through the trees, so would a tank.

In the town of Schramberg, the anniversary couple was enjoying the fourth day of their vacation. On the morning of the fourteenth, after a copious breakfast, as the lady who’d rented them a room waved from the doorway, they set off for their daily walk in the Black Forest. Such a sweet couple, in their loden-green walking shorts, high stockings, and alpine hats. They headed south out of town, as their kind hostess had recommended, but then turned north, using a compass to make sure they weren’t going around in circles. After an hour’s walk, they took a radio receiver from a knapsack and ran its aerial up a tree, fixing it in place with a piece of string. No result, so they kept walking. On the fourth attempt, it worked. Holding a pair of headphones to his ear, the elderly gentleman smiled with satisfaction: a babble of voices-commands, curses, yes, sirs and no, sirs, the radio traffic of a tank formation moving over difficult terrain. The anniversary couple were now within range of shortwave tank radios, about five miles. They connected a wire recorder to the receiver and settled in for the day. Likely the people they worked with would make sense of it; certainly the couple hoped they would.

Not worked for, the way they thought about it, but worked with. They had refused payment, their spying was an act of conscience. Sincere Christians, German Lutherans, they had watched with horror as the Nazis violated every precept sacred to them. But then, what to do about it? They could not leave Germany, for a list of commonplace domestic reasons, so they had traveled up to Paris, a year earlier, taken a room at an inexpensive hotel, written a note to the General Staff headquarters, and settled in to wait. It took a week, then two men appeared at the hotel, and the couple offered their services. No, they didn’t care to be paid. They had prayed together for hours, they explained, down on their knees, trying to make this decision, but now it was made. The people who led Germany were evil, and they were obliged, by their faith, to act against them. “Very well,” said one of the men. “Give us your address in Germany. We’ll see about who you are and then, in time, someone will get in touch with you.”

Three months later, someone did.

THE BLACK FRONT

22 December, 1937. The Schorfheide. Fifty miles northeast of Berlin, a region known for its deserted countryside, its marshland and forest, deep lakes, bountiful game, and splendid hunting lodges. Notably Hermann Goring’s Karinhall, where, some months earlier, at one of the field marshal’s infamous parties, he had appeared wearing a leather jerkin, grasping a spear, and leading a pair of bison on a chain. The bison had been induced to mate, while the guests fell to awed whispers, and the story was told everywhere.

For Sturmbannfuhrer August Voss, that evening, a party not to be missed, held at a Berlin banker’s hunting lodge not far from Karinhall. “I think he bought them,” said Voss’s friend Meino, referring to the wolf pelts, bearskins, and stag antlers that decorated the pine walls. The two men stood before a crackling fire in a fieldstone fireplace, drinking champagne, following a dinner of wild boar and potatoes in cream.

“Look at him,” Voss said. “I doubt he hunts anything.”

The banker, in eager conversation with an SS colonel, was a fat little elf who rubbed his hands and laughed no matter what anybody said. He looked like a man who’d never been outdoors, much less hunting.

“Maybe he hunts women,” said Willi, third in the trio of SS pals.

“Or boys, more likely,” Meino said.

Voss reached inside his black tunic, brought out a cigar, and lit it. “Care for one?” he said to his friends.

Meino declined. Willi produced one of his own and said, “I’ll have this.”

They’d met years earlier: Meino built like a gross cherub, with big belly and behind, and balding Willi, with a fake dueling scar, made by a kitchen knife, on his cheek, and a newly installed von in front of his name. He now worked in the administration office of the SD in Berlin, while Meino was second-in-command of the Regensburg headquarters. They’d joined the SS in the late twenties, together fought communist dockworkers in Hamburg, together beaten up their share of Jews, got drunk together, threw up together, were staunch friends and brothers-in-arms-that would never change.

“Where are the wives?” Willi said.

“In the parlor, gossiping,” Voss said.

Willi frowned. “No good will come of that,” he said.

“What about this Frenchman?” Meino said, returning to an earlier part of the conversation.

“He’s the military attache in Warsaw,” Voss said. “Made me look like a fool. Then Gluck hauled me up to Berlin and roasted my ass.”