The Spies of Warsaw

“Maybe. One hears things, wisps, straws in the wind, but who knows. What is certain is that the Abwehr loathes the SD: Hitler, the Nazis, the whole nasty business. It’s as much social as it is political, the Abwehr see themselves as gentlemen, while the Nazis are simply gangsters. And the Abwehr, as part of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht, does not want to go to war.”

“Why me, Armand?”

“Why not you? This all came about because your spy lost his nerve on a train. And then word got around that it was a French officer who fought off an SD abduction up on Gesia street. So Dr. Lapp wonders, Who is this Colonel Mercier? Looks up your Abwehr file, sees that you served with de Gaulle, sees that you’re progressive and not part of the old Petain crowd. Then he goes back to his boss and says, ‘Let’s approach Mercier, we think he can be trusted.’ “

“Trusted?”

“His balls are in your hand, Jean-Francois-he has to assume you won’t squeeze.”

“Why would I?”

“Exactly. They have you figured out.”

“I mean, what could I make them tell me? I was up half the night, thinking about what happened, and I finally realized that the information I most want, from the Guderian bureau, the I.N. Six, is the one thing I’ll never get, not from the Bendlerstrasse-they won’t betray their own.”

“Correct.”

“He certainly knew my history, prison camp and so forth. Recited the names of my fellow prisoners.”

“Of course he knew. He spent a lot of time, preparing for his chance meeting, which is plain old good intelligence work. Really, it’s too bad about the Nazis-if Dr. Lapp and his friends ever took power, Germany would be a very useful ally.” Jourdain extended his index finger and pointed east, toward Russia.

“Is there any chance of that?”

“None. Blood will flow, then we’ll see.”

A SHADOW OF WAR

11 March, 1938. In Warsaw, one lately heard the expression przedwiosnie; an ancient term for this time of year, it meant “prior to spring.” The streets were white with snow, but sometimes, early in the morning or toward evening, there was a certain gentle breeze in the air-the season wasn’t turning yet, but it would. The softening of winter was not so different in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, an aristocratic village at the edge of Paris where, in centuries past, the French had stored royal fugitives from across the Channel, in expectation of the ascent of Catholic monarchy to the English throne. They’d given that up, more or less, by March of 1938, and now used one of the former exile mansions to hide the two Russian spies from Warsaw.

Separately and together, the Rozens had been interrogated. First the handwritten autobiography, then the questions, and the answers, and the new questions suggested by the answers. The Rozens told them everything, revealed a treasure trove of secrets going back to 1917, when, young and idealistic, they’d given themselves to the Russian revolution that would change the world. Which it certainly had-producing counterrevolutionary fascist regimes in Hungary, Italy, Roumania, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, and Germany. Fine work, Comrade Lenin!

And so, in cities across the continent, quite a number of individuals sipped their coffee on the morning of the eleventh, blissfully unaware that their names and indiscretions were filling the pages of Deuxieme Bureau files and that this information would presently, in some cases anyhow, be forwarded to the security service of whatever nation they called home. Therefore, again in some cases, tomorrow would not be a better day.

For instance, the emigre Maxim Mostov, a literary journalist in Warsaw. At dawn, as the przedwiosnie breeze brushed tenderly against his bedroom window, he slept peacefully with a proprietary arm thrown over his new mistress, a sexy Polish girl who worked as a clerk at the Warsaw telephone exchange. Sexy and young, this one-the loss of his previous girlfriend had bruised his self-esteem, so here in bed with him was some exceptionally succulent compensation.

The four men from the Dwojka certainly thought so, giving one another a meaningful glance or two as she struggled into a bathrobe. Leaving the bedroom door open-please, no jumping out the window, not this morning-they permitted the couple to get dressed, then escorted Maxim back to the Citadel. And if he’d been frightened by the knock on the door and the appearance of the security service, the march through the chill stone hallways of the Citadel did nothing to soothe his nerves. Nor did the two men across the table, military officers who wore eyeglasses; for Maxim, an intimidating combination.

He had, of course, done nothing wrong.

Malka and Viktor Rozen had been-well, not really friends, more like acquaintances. That was the proper word. And did he know that they were officers of the Soviet spy service? Well, people said they were, and he’d suspected that people might be right-but such rumors often went around, in a city like Warsaw. And what had he told them? No more than gossip, the very things he wrote about, quite publicly, in his feuilletons.

So then, had he accepted money?

Maybe once or twice, small loans when he found himself in difficult circumstances.

And had the loans been paid back?

Some of them, he thought, as best he could remember, possibly not others; his life was chaotic, money came and went, he was always busy, going about, finding stories, writing them, this and that and the other thing.

And did he have family in the USSR?

He did, one surviving parent, two sisters, uncles and aunts.

Perhaps the Rozens mentioned them, now and again.

In fact they had. Asked after their health, in the normal way of people from the same country.

Did they say, for example, that they were worried about them-their health, their jobs?

No, not that he could remember. Maybe once, a long time ago.

At that point, the two officers paused. One of them left the room and returned with a third, this one rather formidable, tall and thinlipped, with pale brush-cut hair, who wore the boots of a cavalry officer and was, from their deference toward him, senior to the interrogators. He stood to one side of Maxim, hands clasped behind his back.

“We will continue,” the lead interrogator said. “We want to ask you about your friends. People you know in the city. Later, we’ll ask you for a list, but for the moment we want to know if they helped you.”

“Helped me?”

“Told you things. Gossip, as you called it, about, for example, diplomats, or anyone serving in the Polish government-the kind of people you met at social events.”

“I suppose so. Of course they did-when you talk to your friends, they always tell you things: where they’ve been, who they’ve seen. It’s common human discourse. You have to talk about something besides the weather.”

“And did you pass any of this information on to the Rozens?”

“I might have. There’s so much…. I can’t think of anything specific, not anything … secret, not that I can recall.”

“Very well. Take, for example, your former friend Pana Szarbek, who I believe you intended to marry. She is employed by the League of Nations, did she tell you things about her work? Things about, say, contacts in foreign governments?”

Here Maxim paused. Evidently, the subject of his former fiancee was a painful one-he’d been hurt, was now likely angry about her leaving him for another. Which was, for Maxim, as for much of the world, quite normal, as it