The Spies of Warsaw

at each other, and Malka had taken Viktor’s hands in hers. “Get on the floor,” Mercier said, turned back, drew his own weapon, and opened the door a crack. From the right-hand side of the truck, a path ran up a hillside and disappeared. A dairy farm up there? Maybe. Maybe not.

Gustav came skidding to a stop by the driver’s window of the Buick. He said, his words muffled by the scarf, “Nobody in there. What do you want to do?”

“Wait.” Mercier left the Buick and, keeping his eyes on the hillside, walked backward to Jourdain’s car. “No driver,” he said.

“They’d have been on us by now,” Jourdain said.

“I think so too.”

Mercier walked back past the Buick and, as he did, Marek got out of the car and started to follow him, but Mercier motioned for him to stay with the Rozens. Reaching the truck, he yanked the front door open and looked inside. On the seat, a newspaper and half a sandwich in a piece of brown paper. Planting one foot on the running board, he hauled himself up and slid behind the wheel, searched the dashboard, flipped the starter switch, and gave the engine some gas. When it coughed, Mercier pulled out the choke and it rumbled to life. He shifted into first gear and raised the clutch, driving forward a few yards, then turning the wheel hard. The truck went bumping into a pasture. Mercier looked back, made sure he’d left room for the cars to get by, then turned off the engine.

As Mercier walked back toward the Buick, a man pushing a handcart loaded with milk cans appeared on the crest of the hill, dropped the handles, and came running, shouting and waving a clenched fist.

Mercier was then next to the motorcycle and Gustav waggled his huge pistol and said, “Shall I calm him down?”

“Don’t bother.”

“He is quite upset.”

“So would you be.”

Jourdain was leaning against the hood of the Buick. He raised an eyebrow, his expression ironic and amused. “Vive la France,” he said.

A mile down the dirt road, a hand-painted sign said Konstancin Flying Club. Since the 1918 rebirth of the country, flying had become immensely popular, and private clubs dotted the countryside surrounding the wealthier villages. Not much to look at: a few old planes parked in a field of dead weeds, a limp wind sock on a pole, and a tinroofed shack. Watching the treeline, Mercier and Jourdain hurried the Rozens inside. One of the embassy guards was waiting for them, stoking a potbelly stove with a poker.

“All quiet?” Jourdain said.

“All quiet,” the guard answered. “Too cold to fly.”

“Any idea when they’ll be here?” Mercier said to Jourdain.

“I was at the embassy around midnight, sent the signal, and got a confirmation. So, they’re on the way.”

The Rozens sat on lawn chairs, Malka found a tin ashtray from a Warsaw cafe and lit a cigarette. Viktor sighed and looked mournful. The desperation of flight had given way to the reality of the future, Mercier thought. The Rozens would never again go home. “Tell me, colonel,” Viktor said, “where do you think we might live?”

“I don’t know,” Mercier said. “In a city, somewhere. It will be worked out later.”

“They won’t stop looking for us,” Malka said.

“You’ll have to keep that in mind,” Jourdain said. “Wherever you go.”

“We will,” Viktor said. “Forever.”

“Still, a better fate than what lay in store for you,” Mercier said.

Viktor nodded: yes, but not all that much better.

When Mercier heard a drone in the distance, he checked his watch-just after eleven-went outside, and saw a plane descending on the northern horizon. He watched it for a time, then returned to the shack. Malka Rozen was looking out the window. “Stay inside until we’re sure,” Mercier said. Gustav, dozing in a kitchen chair, awoke and joined Malka at the window. Mercier went back out, Jourdain followed him. A trimotor Breguet circled the field, then landed, bouncing across the uneven ground, coming to rest close to the shack.

Mercier shivered in the cold. The door of the plane opened and a man in a flying overall hopped out, then offered a hand to someone behind him, but the hand was not taken. A moment later, Colonel Bruner appeared in the doorway, dressed in full uniform and standing at attention, as though he expected to be photographed. Mercier swore under his breath.

“Ah, the hero arrives,” Jourdain said. “Well, they belong to him now-he’s bringing the prize home to Paris, to be the envy of all eyes.”

The three men greeted each other, Bruner his most formal self, drawn up to his full height, such as it was, and ruddy-cheeked with excitement. “So,” he said, “where are my spies?”

“They’re inside,” Mercier said.

They went into the shack, and Bruner was introduced to the Rozens; he was silent, his hands clasped behind his back, his greeting a bare nod. “You can put their luggage on the plane,” he said to Mercier.

“We have nothing,” Viktor said.

This, for some reason, Bruner found irritating. “Oh? Well, let’s hurry along, shall we?”

They filed out the door and walked to the airplane. A co-pilot appeared at the entry and helped Viktor climb up, then it was Malka Rozen’s turn. Looking back at Mercier, she said, “Thank you, colonel,” took a deep breath, and wiped her eyes. “It’s the cold air,” she explained, as the co-pilot helped her aboard.

“Very well, then,” Bruner said, triumphant, savoring his success. He entered the plane and was followed by the pilot, who closed the door behind them. The Breguet made a tight turn, taxied down the field, lifted at last, cleared the trees, and headed west, soon a black dot in the sky, its drone fading, then gone.

Back at the embassy, in the midst of writing a dispatch describing the exfiltration of the Rozens, Mercier telephoned Anna Szarbek and invited her for dinner at his apartment. He completed the dispatch, took it down to the code clerk, then went back to Ujazdowska avenue. The coming evening called for planning and logistics: a shopping list for the cook, Wlada to spend the night at her sister’s house.

At 8:20, a proper twenty minutes late, Anna Szarbek arrived in a taxi-she’d declined Mercier’s offer to pick her up-and knocked at the street door. Mercier rushed to let her in, and they embraced-tentatively, a faint apprehension on both sides. But then, following her up the staircase, the sway and shift within her soft skirt so intoxicated him that, by the time he reached the landing, he was more than prepared to skip the preliminaries altogether. Nonetheless, after a tour of the apartment, he started the fire, lit the candles, and poured champagne. On the sofa, she looped her arm through his and rested her head on his shoulder. “I hope you weren’t disturbed,” she said, “that I called so late, last night.”

“Not at all.”

“You sounded-absorbed.”

“Too much excitement. Some of my work showed up here, two people, and had to be dealt with. A-how to say-a fugitive situation.”

“They came to your apartment?”

“They weren’t invited, my love. They needed refuge, and they knew where I lived, so …”

“Did you have the police?”

“No, thank God. I managed without them.”

“You are actually brave, aren’t you?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Oh, I don’t think you can help it, Jean-Francois, I think it’s in your blood, from what you said in Belgrade.”

At the hotel in Belgrade, they had told their growing-up stories and exchanged family histories, Mercier’s reaching back to the Crusades. “All those warrior ancestors,” she said. She took his hand, studied the signet ring, and said, “It’s this.” She slipped it off, put it on her finger, then spread her hand to admire it. “Now you may address me as countess.”

“I’m not anything like a count, countess, just a lowly chevalier, a knight in service