The Spies of Warsaw

them away. Run. “Ach,” he said, to the man behind him in the line, “I have forgotten my valise.”

He left the line and walked back toward the train, his briefcase clamped tightly beneath his arm. At the door to the train, where second-class passengers were gathering, waiting in a crowd to join the line, the conductor was smoking a cigarette. “Excuse me,” Uhl said, “but I have forgotten my suitcase.”

No you haven’t. The conductor’s face showed perfectly what he knew: there was no suitcase. And Uhl saw it. So now my life ends, he thought. Then, quietly, he said, “Please.”

The conductor shifted his eyes, looking over Uhl’s shoulder toward the SS troopers, the civilians, the flag, the dog, the list. His expression changed, and then he stepped aside, just enough to let Uhl pass. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “Ahh, fuck these people.” Uhl took a tentative step toward the iron stair that led up to the carriage. The conductor, still watching the Germans and their table, said, “Not yet.” Uhl felt a drop of sweat break free of his hatband and work its way down his forehead; he wanted to wipe it away but his arm wouldn’t move.

“Now,” the conductor said.

19 October, 3:30 P.M. The weekly intelligence meeting was held in the conference room of the chancery-the political section of the embassy-secured from public areas, away from the seekers of travel documents, replacements for lost passports, commercial licenses, and all other business that brought the civilian world to the building. The code clerks were in the basement-which they didn’t like, claiming the dampness was hard on their equipment-along with the mailroom that handled sealed embassy pouches, while Mercier’s office was on the top floor.

The meeting was chaired by Jourdain, the second secretary and political officer-which meant he too scurried about the city to dark corners for secret contacts-and Mercier’s best friend at the embassy. Sandy-haired and sunny, in his mid-thirties, Jourdain was a third-generation diplomat-his father due to become ambassador to Singapore- with three young children in private academies in Warsaw. Across the table from Mercier was the air attache, at one end the naval attache, at the other, Jourdain’s secretary, who took shorthand notes, which Jourdain would turn into a report for the Quai d’Orsay, the foreign ministry in Paris.

“Not much new,” the air attache said. He was in his fifties, corpulent and sour-faced. “The production of the Pezetelkis is going full steam ahead.” Pezetelki was the nickname, taken from initials, of the PZT-24F, Poland’s best fighter plane, four years earlier the most advanced pursuit monoplane in Europe. “But the air force won’t get near them; that hasn’t changed either. For export only.”

“The same orders?” Jourdain said.

“Yes. Turkey, Greece, and Yugoslavia.”

“They’ll regret that, one of these days,” the naval attache said.

The air attache shrugged. “They’re trying to balance the budget, the country’s damn close to broke. So they sell what people will buy.”

“I guess they know best,” said Jourdain, who clearly didn’t believe that at all.

“Otherwise, very little new.” The air attache studied his notes. “They had an accident, last Wednesday, over Okecie field. One of their P-Sevens clipped the tail of another. Both pilots safe, both planes badly banged up, one a loss-he parachuted-the other landed.” Again he shrugged. “So we can say”-the air attache looked toward the secretary-“that their numbers are reduced by one, anyhow.”

“Just note,” Jourdain said to the secretary, “that we should repeat the fact that the relation of the Polish air force to the Luftwaffe remains twenty-five to one in favor of the Germans.” Then he turned to the naval attache and said, “Jean-Paul?”

As the naval attache lit a cigarette and shuffled through his papers, there were two sharp knocks at the door, which opened to reveal one of the women who worked the embassy switchboard. “Colonel Mercier? May I speak with you for a moment?”

“Excuse me,” Mercier said. He went out into the corridor and closed the door behind him. The operator, a middle-aged French-woman, was, like many who worked at the embassy, the widow of an officer killed in the 1914 war. “A Monsieur Uhl has telephoned your apartment,” she said. “He left a number with your maid. I hope it’s correct, sir, she was very nervous.”

“Poor Wlada,” Mercier said. Now what? The operator handed him a slip of paper, and Mercier went up the stairs to his office. Looking in his drawer, he found a list of German telephone exchanges, dialed the switchboard, and asked for a foreign operator. When she came on the line he gave her the number. “Can you put it through right away?” he said, his Polish slow but correct.

“I can, sir, it’s quiet this afternoon.”

As Mercier waited, he stared out his window onto the square in front of the embassy. Beneath the bare branches of a chestnut tree, a man with a wagon was selling a sausage on a roll to a father with a small child. Far away, a telephone rang once. “Hello? Hello?” Uhl’s voice was tense and high.

“Yes, I’m here. Herr Uhl?”

“Hello? Andre?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

“I’m at the railway station.” Mercier could hear a train. “I had a problem yesterday, on the way back. In Glogau.”

“What problem?”

“I was being watched, on the train.”

“How do you know?”

“I-ah, I sensed it. Two businessmen, and a Gestapo man.”

“Did they question you? Search you?” Mercier had to make himself relax the grip of his hand on the phone.

“Oh no. I eluded them.”

“Really. How did you do that?”

“At the border kontrol, in Glogau station, I left the line and went back into the Warsaw train, climbed down between carriages, and crawled. Along the track. At the end of the train there is Glogau bridge, but I found a stairway that led down to the bank of the river. I walked back toward the city and took a taxi to the next station on the line, where I got on the local train to Breslau.”

“Good work,” Mercier said.

“What?”

“I said, good work.”

“It was very close. They almost had me, in the station.”

“Perhaps they did. Tell me, Herr Uhl, what happened this morning?”

“This morning? I went to the office.”

“Did someone question you? Were you confronted?”

“No. All was normal.”

“Then you’re in the clear. Did the people on the train say anything to you?”

“No. But they looked at me. They behaved, in a furtive manner.”

“I would doubt that German surveillance operatives would be furtive, Herr Uhl. Perhaps your imagination … misled you.”

“Well, maybe. But maybe not. In any event, I think I shouldn’t continue our meetings.”

“Oh, let’s not be scared off so easily. Believe me, if the Gestapo had any reason to suspect you, you wouldn’t be talking to me on the telephone. By the way, you mentioned a Gestapo man. How did you know that? I presume he was in uniform.”

“He wasn’t. He wore a leather coat. It was the way he looked.”

Mercier laughed. “The way he looked?”

“Well …”

“Your work is important, Herr Uhl, and we don’t lose people who help us; we can’t afford that. Would you like me to do some checking? To see if you’re being watched?”

After a silence, Uhl said, “You’re able to do that?”