The Spies of Warsaw

years of faith and obedience, nine grams.” The weight of a revolver bullet, Soviet slang for execution.

“We’ll meet again, in four days,” Mercier said. “There’s a talk being given at the Polish Economic Ministry, ‘The Outlook for 1938.’ Surely you won’t want to miss that. But, in an emergency, you can signal us. At the central post office, you’ll find a Warsaw telephone directory in the public booth, the one by the window. On page twenty- seven, underline the first name in the left-hand column. Do this at nine in the morning or three in the afternoon, and we’ll pick you up at the cafe on the other side of Warecki square, thirty minutes later.”

“Page twenty-seven? Left-hand column?”

“That’s correct. But I expect to see you on the eighteenth. And I expect you’ll have something for us by then. At least a beginning.”

She thought a moment, then said, “So, allright, we’ll look through the files.” Her mood had changed: to resignation, and something like disappointment. Yes, she knew all too well what his job entailed, but she’d sensed in him some basic decency she’d hoped might play to their advantage and so had approached him and not the British-the other logical choice. But now, she discovered, he was like all the rest, and would play by the rules. When he didn’t answer immediately, she said, “Maybe there’s something.”

“You’ll do what you have to do, Madame Rozen. You know what’s at stake.”

Viktor returned, having shed the talkative official. “Playing nicely, children?”

Her look, sour and grim, told him what he needed to know.

Mercier nodded a formal goodby, walked away, and out the door.

On the eighteenth, Mercier was among the first to arrive at “The Outlook for 1938,” but the Rozens never appeared. He tried, sitting on a hard wooden chair, to keep his imagination in check, but it didn’t work. As the economic minister droned on-“With the reopening of the Slawska mine, Silesian coal production …”-he could see them, as in a movie, opening the door at midnight, led to a waiting car, driven up to Danzig, then put under guard on a Soviet ship bound for Leningrad. Then the Lubyanka prison, the brutal interrogation, and the nine grams in the back of the neck. Mercier knew also that not all Stalin’s victims got that far; the lucky ones died early, from rough treatment, or purely from fright. He hoped he was wrong-there had been no signal, and there were all sorts of explanations for the Rozens’ absence-but feared he was right.

With Jourdain supervising the watch on the post office, Mercier left the embassy on the afternoon of the nineteenth. At home, he packed carefully, then dressed even more carefully, choosing a shirt on the fourth try-a soft one, thick and gray, with a maroon tie, and a subdued tweed sport jacket. Then he considered the supposedly “woodsy” cologne he’d bought the previous day, but decided against it. He was determined-strange, how desire worked-to be as much his usual self as he could be. And he guessed, given burly Maxim, that Anna Szarbek wasn’t the type who liked men who wore scent. What did she like? What did she like about him?

Such obsession was better than brooding about the Rozens. There had been a flood of cables from Paris: someone in the bureau wanted double agents, the great prize of their profession, who would reveal what the Russians knew, and tell the Russians what the French wanted them to believe. The classic game of spies. But there was no time for that, and Mercier and Jourdain wound up defending them, like lions with a kill. The Rozens would give up their agent networks, Polish and possibly German, when they were interrogated in Paris, and would, before they were taken out of the country, steal from the Soviet embassy whatever they could. That is, Mercier thought, if they were still free. Or if they were still alive. Because there were occasions when these affairs ended very quickly.

Marek drove him to the Warszawa-Wiedenski station at 4:45 P.M., early for the 5:15 departure. His plan was to watch Anna Szarbek arrive-making sure that Maxim had not come to see her off-then “discover” her as they waited to board the train. At first, he was excited. From a vantage point by a luggage cart piled with trunks, he watched the platform; the locomotive, venting white steam with a loud hiss, and the smell of trains, scorched iron and coal smoke, suggesting journey, adventure. But then, as the hands of the platform clock moved to 5:10, excitement was replaced by anxiety. Where was she? When the conductor stationed himself by the steps to the first-class wagon-lit, Mercier realized he had to get on the train. Was he to travel by himself? In white letters on a blue enameled panel by the door, the train’s route was announced: Warszawa — Krakow — Brno

Bratislava — Budapest — Beograd

Beograd-the Serbo-Croatian name for Belgrade-was some seventeen hours away. Hours to be spent alone, apparently, in the splendor of his expensive compartment. Had she somehow managed to board the train without his seeing her? Perhaps she’d never even planned to attend the conference. But there was nothing to be done about it, and on the chance he simply hadn’t noticed her arrival, he climbed the steps and a waiting porter showed him to his compartment. Splendid it certainly was. All dark-green plush and mahogany paneling, the shade of the reading lamp made of green frosted glass in the shape of a tulip, a vase in a copper bracket holding three white lilies. When night fell, the porter would open out the long seat and make the bed.

He raised the window and looked out on the platform, where a few passengers were running for the train as the conductor shooed them along, but not the one he was looking for. Then the whistle sounded, the train jerked forward, and a very chastened Mercier slammed the window shut and fell back on the seat. As the train left the city and gathered speed, the porter appeared, asking if he preferred the first or second seating in the dining car.

“Which seating has Pana Szarbek chosen?”

The porter peered at his list, down, up, and down again. “The lady is not listed, Pan,” he said.

“Then, the second.”

After the porter moved on, Mercier walked along the broad corridor, glancing at the occupants of each compartment, finding an assortment of passengers, reading, talking, already dozing, but not the one he was seeking. He reached the end of the car and entered the next-also a first-class sleeper-but saw only the embassy charge d’affaires, thankfully absorbed in a newspaper as Mercier hurried past.

He returned to his own compartment, soon tired of the January countryside, lowered the tasseled silk shade, and, with a sigh, took a novel out of his valise, The Red and the Black, Stendhal, which he’d found in the library at the apartment, a book he hadn’t read in years. It was, according to one of his instructors at Saint-Cyr, a political novel, very nearly a spy novel, one of the first ever written. But Mercier had not chosen the book for that reason-rather, it was akin to the tweed jacket, an adjunct of his traveling costume, and meant for Anna Szarbek’s eyes. He had always an instinct for something improving, demanding, but by page fourteen he gave up and brought out what he really wanted to read, a Simenon roman policier, The Bar on the Seine, which he’d found in the French section of a Warsaw bookstore.

At eight-thirty, the train making steady progress across the dark fields, the porter rang his triangle, two chimes, signaling that the second seating would now be served. As Mercier followed his fellow travelers to the door at the end of the corridor, the conductor collected his passport-a courtesy to first-class passengers that kept their sleep from being disturbed as they crossed borders through the night and, in addition, a courtesy often exploited by secret agents.

The dining car, each table lit by candles, was even more romantic than his compartment-well-dressed couples and foursomes gathered over white tablecloths, conversation low and intimate, the rhythmic beat of wheels on rails perfecting a luxuriant atmosphere of suspended time. Seated at a table for one, Mercier immediately noticed a handsome woman at the adjacent table, also alone, in black velvet jacket, her face lean and imperious beneath ash-blond hair going gray. The waiter arrived immediately and addressed her as Baronin, the German form of baroness, and, after he’d taken her order, she and Mercier exchanged an appreciative glance of recognition: here we both are, how interesting. When the waiter reappeared, he brought an apple on a plate-nowhere to be found on the menu-which she ate slowly, with knife and fork, her every motion precise and graceful and, somehow, suggestive. Meanwhile, Mercier abjured the cream of asparagus soup and toyed with a trout fillet in wine sauce. Too forlorn to eat, he sent the fish away and ordered a brandy. And so did the baroness.

A few minutes after nine o’clock, Cracow. As the locomotive idled in the station, the baroness finished her