The Spies of Warsaw

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.”

“Gluck?” Willi said.

“Obersturmbannfuhrer, my boss.”

“Oh, that prick,” Willi said, expelling a long plume of cigar smoke.

“Lawyer prick,” Meino said. “No?”

“Yes, before he discovered the party. Opportunist.” Voss spat the word. “I said something about getting even, but that made him even madder.”

“So what? You can’t let it end there,” Willi said.

“Willi’s right,” Meino said. “I hate these French fairies-they think they own the world.”

“This one needs to be taught a lesson,” Voss said.

“That’s right, Augi,” Meino said. “You can’t let him get away with it.”

Voss thought for a moment. “Maybe we ought to pay him a visit, up in Warsaw. The three of us. Bring some friends along.”

“Jah,” Willi said. “Mucki Drimmer.” Then he laughed.

“Where’s old Mucki, these days?” Meino said.

“Dachau,” Willi said. “Just under the commandant. I once saw him tear a telephone book in half.”

“Isn’t that a trick?” Voss said.

“Drimmer does tricks, all right. But not with telephone books. Tricks with a pair of pliers, and handcuffs, that’s Mucki’s style.”

Voss laughed, then looked at his empty glass. “Back to the bar, for me.”

Willi gave Voss an affectionate smack on the shoulder, people nearby turned around at the sound of it. “Cheer up, Augi, we’ll put this right. Too long since I’ve been in Warsaw.”

Then they went off to the bar.

23 December.

Mercier’s flight to Paris on the twenty-second had been delayed, and they’d landed at Le Bourget in darkness. He’d stayed at the apartment, cold and silent with Albertine off in Aleppo, decided he couldn’t face dinner in a restaurant, so went to bed hungry, and feeling very much alone. He was glad to be out of there, at six the following morning, taking the express to Lyon, then changing to the local for the trip down to Montelimar. And there stood Fernand, in his Sunday suit, by the battered old farm truck, smiling as Mercier walked toward him.

The truck, not much bigger than a car, had been a Renault back in the twenties but had become, over time, a collection of replacement parts cannibalized from every sort of machine. A handsome green, long ago, it had faded to the color of a gray cloud, the seat a horse blanket atop crushed springs, the two dials on the dashboard frozen in middle age, the gearshift sounding like a madman with a hammer. The engine managed a steady twenty miles an hour on a flat grade, but hills were an adventure meant only for the brave. It took them over two hours to reach Boutillon and then, twenty minutes later, at the end of a long allee of ancient lime trees, the house.

Still there, his heart rose at the sight of it. Not fallen into ruin, not quite, but surely dilapidated, the shutters askew, the earlier stonework laid bare in patches. Even so, a grand presence-foreign visitors wanted to call it a chateau, but it was just an old stone country house. Nevertheless, home. Home. Lisette stood before the door, alerted by the dogs, who’d heard the truck coming from a great distance down the road, as had most of the neighborhood. The dogs came galloping up the drive, barking like crazy, then ran alongside until the truck rolled to a halt, the ignition was turned off, and, a few beats later, the engine stopped.

They were excited to have him back, Achille and Celeste, a reserved excitement in the manner of the Braque Ariegeois: a muted whine or two, a lick on the cheek as he knelt and tousled their lovely floppy ears. Master greeted, they immediately wanted to go to field, anxious to work for him, their highest form of affection. “Not yet, sweethearts. Later on. Later.” For now, Lisette made him an omelet, which he ate at the zinc-topped table in the kitchen; there was fresh bread from the Boutillon bakery and a glass of wine from a bottle with no label. As Lisette cleared his plate, Fernand brought him a telegram that had arrived that morning: home the 27th. gabrielle. “Madame Gabrielle will arrive on Friday,” he said.

“I will make up her old room,” Lisette said simply. But Mercier could tell that she was very nearly as excited as he was.

It was getting late in the afternoon, so he changed into his country clothes, smelling of months in a damp armoire, and took the dogs for a run. They pointed on birds, were released, then flushed a hare, which zigzagged away and just barely managed to get down a hole. Balked, they stood there, heads canted in puzzlement-why does this happen? — then turned to him, awaiting an answer, but even he, master of all, could do nothing. He stood by them, gazing over the pale winter field toward the mountains in the east. Then he walked for a long time, as dusk came on, at least some of the way across his property, once a run of wheat fields but now, since the 1920s, given over to the commercial growth of lavender.

Lavender had always grown wild in the Drome, but the agronomists had learned how to grow it as a crop, and the perfume companies in Grasse paid well for whatever he could deliver. At harvest time, the air was heavy with the scent, as a few trucks, but mostly horse-drawn carts, piled high with purplish branches, moved slowly along the narrow roads. Enough money to live on, back when, but not now; life as a penurious country gentleman awaited him if he resigned his commission. The property-line lawsuit brought by his eastern neighbor had dragged on for years; bills from a lawyer in Montelimar arrived semiannually. Fernand and Lisette were paid for their service, wood and kerosene had to be bought in winter, straw and hay provided for Ambrose, the plow horse now living alone in a stable with eight stalls-a sad thing for a family with generations of cavalry officers-and Ambrose wasn’t getting any younger. Gasoline for the truck, field help at harvest time, and taxes-oh, the taxes-it all added up.

Full dusk now, in typical winter weather for the south, the chill, moist air sharpened by a steady wind from the east. Foreign visitors called it the mistral, but that was the northwesterly and went on for days, famously making people crazy-an old law excused crimes committed from madness brought on by the incessant moaning of the mistral wind. He didn’t want to go back to the house, not yet, he would turn for home at the end of the field, by a cluster of gnarled olive trees and a few cypress, tall and narrow. This land, like so much of the French countryside, was a painting, but Mercier felt his heart touched with melancholy and realized, not for the first time, that beautiful places were hard on lonely people.

“Achille! Celeste! Let’s go, dogs, time for dinner.”

They came loping across the field, tongues out now because they were tired, and headed for home.

He stayed up late that night, reading in bed, wearing a sweater over his pajama top in order to stay warm. The kerosene heater had been turned on as darkness fell, and, when he went up to his room, found that Lisette had preceded him with a lidded copper pan on a long handle, filled with embers from the fireplace, and warmed the sheets, but the stone house breathed winter into every room, and you had to sleep with your nose beneath the covers.

The journals he’d brought with him from Warsaw should have put him to sleep, but they had the opposite effect. With smoke drifting up from a cigarette in the ashtray on the night table, he worked his way through an article in a journal called Deutsche Wehr-German War-one of several publications issued by the German General Staff. The writer made no secret of what Germany had in mind for the future: an army of three hundred divisions, sufficient fuel for ten thousand tanks and the same number of aircraft, and a prediction that medium and heavy tanks would be built to join the lighter models already in production. If the Deuxieme Bureau had been clever enough or lucky enough to steal such information, it would have caused a riptide of reaction-meetings held and papers written as French military doctrine was re-examined in light of German intentions, yet here it was, for all the world to see. Did they read this journal in Paris? And, if they did, did they believe it? Or did they think that because it wasn’t kept secret, it couldn’t be true? Woe to us if they do, Mercier thought, and took a drag on his cigarette.

Turning to the Militarwissenschaftliche Rundschau, the military science review, he found an article by the chief of staff of the German Armoured Corps that discussed an attack in the north, a massive tank thrust through the Ardennes into Belgium and down into France, the same route they’d followed in the 1914 war and more or less what he’d witnessed at the Schramberg tank maneuvers. He’d sent the film off to Paris, with a detailed report of his observation, including the coordinated operations of air and ground forces. He couldn’t say: this is important; he could only do his best to be descriptive, technical, and precise. What then? A note to General de Beauvilliers? No, not appropriate, simply: listen to me. And, really, why should they?

The German articles had, he thought, a companion piece, which he’d read earlier that year, a book by the French general Chauvineau called L’Invasion estelle encore possible? Is invasion still possible? With a foreword by none other than Marshal Petain. Back in Warsaw, in a file cabinet, was a hand copy of Petain’s words, which Mercier had thought worth saving:

If the entire theatre of operations is obstructed, there is no means on earth that can break the insurmountable barrier formed on the ground by automatic arms associated with barbed-wire entanglements.

And, same drawer, same folder, General Chauvineau himself:

By placing two million men with the proper number of machine guns and pillboxes along the 250-mile stretch through which the German armies must pass to enter France, we shall be able to hold them up for three years.

Thus the answer to the question Invasion, is it still possible? — was No.

Two-ten in the morning: he turned the light out and pulled the covers up to his eyes. Outside, the steady wind rattled his window and sighed at the corner of the house.

Christmas Eve. Fernand and Lisette had gone off to Grignan in the truck to spend Christmas Day with their son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren, so Mercier had the house to himself. Then, at seven in the evening, his Uncle Hercule, who lived on a Mercier property some ten miles south of his own, picked him up in the family Citroen, shiny and new, and took him home for the Christmas celebration. His father’s only surviving brother, and easily his least favorite, Hercule was a thin, fretful man who’d become wealthy by speculating in South American railroad stocks, turned violently political, and now absorbed himself in writing right-wing pamphlets and letters to newspapers, often on the subject of Bolshevik designs to corrupt public waterworks. Still, holidays were holidays, and assorted Merciers must be gathered under one roof, attend midnight mass, then sit down together to reveillon, the traditional Christmas meal of black and white sausages and goose stuffed with chestnuts.

A long, long evening for Mercier. Fourteen people in the parlor, various aunts, cousins, nieces, and nephews, his uncle raving about the government, his widowed aunt, Albertine’s mother, undertaking recollections of Mercier and Annemarie’s years together, with mournful looks in his direction, two nephews in a tense conversation-one couldn’t actually argue on Christmas Eve-about some silly American movie; another aunt had been to Greece and found it “filthy.” Mercier was asked about Warsaw and did the best he could, but it was a relief when they left, in an assortment of automobiles, at eleven-fifteen, headed for the church in the village of Boutillon.

At the door of the church, Mercier knelt and crossed himself, then the family dutifully spent a few minutes in front of the Mercier family crypt, a flat marble slab with an inscription carved in the wall above it.

ICI REPOSENT LES DEPOUILLES MORTELLES

De Messires:

Francois Mercier de Boutillon Decede a Montelimar Le 29 Juin 1847

Made La Chevalier Sa Femme nee de Mauronville Decede a Boutillon le 21 Fevrier 1853

Albert Mercier de Boutillon Decede a Boutillon Le 8 Aout 1868

Seigneurs de Boutillon et Autres Places

Transferees en ce Lieu Le 15 Aout 1868

Sous les Auspices de M^r Combert Maire

et de Mf Grenier Cure de Boutillon

Au frais de General Edouard Mercier de Boutillon

Legion D’Honneur Domicilie a Boutillon

The crypt had been installed by Mercier’s nineteenth-century ancestor Edouard, who’d paid for it-duly noted in stone, along with his decoration and the names of the mayor and the priest-moved a few mortal remains there in 1868, and then himself died in battle at the city of Metz, during the 1870 war with Prussia. And that was, Mercier thought, the problem with a family crypt, his family anyhow-the male ancestors fell in foreign fields and there, in vast cemeteries or graves for the unknown, they remained.

For Mercier, it was the ceremony of the mass that eased his soul: the sweetish smoke trailing from the censer, the ringing of the bell, the Latin incantations of the priest. In Warsaw, he attended early mass, at a small church near the apartment, once or twice a month, confessing to his vocational sins-duplicity, for example-in the oblique forms provided by Catholic protocol. He’d grown up an untroubled believer, but the war had put an end to that. What God could permit such misery and slaughter? But, in time, he had found consolation in a God beyond understanding and prayed for those he’d lost, for those he loved, and for an end to evil in the world.

As the service reached its conclusion, Mercier found himself suddenly aware of the congregation, the crowded rows of men and women, their heads raised toward the priest at the altar. And then, once again, he felt, as he had during his lunch at the Brasserie Heininger with General de Beauvilliers, a certain dark apprehension, a sense of vulnerability. This was midnight mass, not the manic gaiety of a Parisian lunch, but it was the same shadow. Was it, he wondered, brought on by the General Staff journals he’d been reading? If you took them seriously, they doomed these people to another war. But, he thought, he mustn’t let his imagination run away with him. Conflict between nations was eternal, inevitable, and this one, between France and Germany, might burn itself out in the endless warfare of politics: in the struggle between radicals and conservatives, in the brutal economics of armament, in the carnival of treaties and alliances.

Mercier looked at his watch; it was Christmas. Soon enough the new year, 1938, and perhaps, he thought, a better year than this.

27 December.

Mercier arrived early at the Montelimar railway station, anxiously watched the windows as the carriages rolled to a halt, then waved as Gabrielle stepped down onto the platform. How lovely she was, not her mother’s looks, more a touch of his, the determined, pale Mercier forehead, dark hair, gray-green eyes. He was relieved to see that she was alone, not that he didn’t like his son-in-law, a correspondent for the Havas news agency in Denmark, he did-but now he would have her all to himself.

As the truck rumbled toward Boutillon, she told him that she’d stayed overnight at the apartment, having taken the express from Copenhagen, through Germany, to the Gare du Nord. A trip ruined by what she called “that hideous Nazi theatre,” SS men and their dogs, swastikas draped everywhere. “One grows weary of it,” she said. “In the newspapers, on the radio, everywhere.”

“A national illness,” he said. “We’ll have to wait it out.”

“I’m afraid of them, the way they are now.”

“You and half the world, my love.”

“Perhaps we should have done something about it. Paul certainly thinks so.”

They came upon a flock of goats in the road, driven along by a young girl with a switch. Mercier stopped the truck as the girl herded the goats to one side. As he drove slowly past, she held the lead goat by the scruff of the neck. “Looking backward, yes,” he said, as the truck gained speed, “but all we can do now is wait. And prepare for war.”

“And you’re in charge of that,” she said.

Mercier laughed. “I’m in charge of a desk.”

“Still,” she said, “the Germans on the train were pleasant enough.”

“No doubt. That’s the worst part-they pretend not to notice. It’s all that ‘Still, sprach durch die Blume.‘ “

“Which means?”

” ‘Hush, speak through a flower.’ Don’t say anything about the government unless you praise it.”

Gabrielle made a sound of disgust.

Enough of that, Mercier thought. “Can you stay through the new year?”

“Alas, I can’t. I travel the last day of December; I’ll see the new year in at the apartment. But I don’t care, Papa, I wanted to see you, and I have vacation for the holidays.”

Lisette had roasted a capon for dinner and Mercier found a Chateau Latour in the cellar, a 1923, which turned out-one never knew-to be perfect. They took the last of it into the parlor, where Mercier built an oakwood fire, using grapevine prunings for kindling. The dogs sat patiently, watching him as he worked, then lay on their sides in front of the fireplace and went to sleep.

“I’ve been wondering,” Gabrielle said.

“Yes?”

“Are you seeing anyone, in Warsaw?”

“No, dear. Not really.”

“You should, you know. It’s not good for you to be alone.”

“It’s not so easy, Gabrielle, after a certain age.”

“I would imagine, but still … you’ve surely met somebody, that you liked.”

“I have, but she’s taken.”

“Married?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well then, perhaps you should pursue her.”

“Oh, I have, in a way.”

Gabrielle looked dubious. “Really? Because, you know, if you had-well, many women would find you hard to resist.”

“Mmm. I suspect you are biased, Gabrielle, love, but you’re kind to say that.”

“I’m not being kind, Papa. It’s true.”

“So then,” he said. He took a sip of wine, then rose and added a log to the fire. “Any new paintings? At the national museum?” Gabrielle was the curator for western Europe, outside Scandinavia.

She shook her head at the change of subject and made a what a difficult man face. “Oh, all right, I’ll leave you alone,” she said. Then, “As for new paintings, there’s too much to buy, that’s my sad news. We’re approached constantly by dealers who represent Jews. So, it’s a buyer’s market. You wouldn’t believe what’s become available.”

Gabrielle went on. A wealthy Viennese, forced to sell his kitchenware company, had managed to smuggle a wonderful Flemish master, a de Hooch, into Copenhagen, and now …

Mercier was attentive-the time with his daughter was not to be wasted-but, deep within, he was very angry. It doesn’t go away. You twisted and turned, spoke of this or that, but then there it was, waiting for you.

In time, they talked about Beatrice, his older daughter in Cairo. “How she loves it!” Gabrielle said. “You’ll see, I brought along some of her letters. Her students are eager to learn, and Maurice works at the archaeological sites, the tombs, the buried villages. It would be perfect, she says, but she only hopes they can stay there. Because of the political situation, in Egypt….”

Gabrielle left on the thirty-first. Mercier had to spend the New Year celebration chez Uncle Hercule. Keeping to tradition, the collected Mercier de Boutillons went out into the garden at midnight, in drizzling rain, to bang pots and pans in honor of the new year. Then, on the third of January, he took the train back to Paris and returned to Warsaw the following day, to find the city white and frozen.

On the fifth, his first day at the embassy, he found two cables awaiting him. The first, from Colonel Bruner, was very terse, little more than an acknowledgment of his report on the Wehrmacht tank maneuvers at Schramberg, with faint praise to be read between the lines. The second cable, from General de Beauvilliers, was rather more generous, particularly on the subject of two of the bureau’s agents who had recorded radio traffic during the exercise. The general cited, specifically, one instance-“Q-24, a ravine up ahead of you, about six hundred feet”-where the pilot of the Fieseler Storch worked by radio with the tanks below. The French General Staff had little interest in this concept-air-to-ground communication-though de Beauvilliers believed it would be crucial in future warfare. “The marshal”-he meant Petain-“and his clique think only of naval blockade and static defense.”

Mercier was flattered to be so taken into the general’s confidence, but, as he reached the end of the cable, found that such flattery would have its price.

Of course you will recall our interest in the Wehrmacht General Staff, specifically the section I.N. 6, and, shouldan opportunity present itself, we expect you will take fulladvantage of it, by any means necessary, in order to advanceour knowledge of their thinking.

But, what if an opportunity did not present itself? Clearly, the general assumed he would know what to do about that.

At the intelligence meeting on the seventh, Jourdain began with his usual summary of recent political developments. And there was, as usual, no good news. Late in December, King Carol of Roumania had appointed the fascist poet Octavian Goga to head the government as virtual dictator. Anti-Semitic measures began immediately, and the Czechs had reinforced border units at Sighet, where refugees were trying to get out of the country.

In Vienna, the trial of twenty-seven Austrian Nazis, accused of antigovernment activities, was now under way. German diplomats had tried to stop it, which led to a speech by the Austrian chancellor Schuschnigg, saying in effect that Austria wished to retain its independence as a nation. “He is holding firm,” Jourdain said. “But we’ll see how long that lasts.” In Spain, Republican forces had taken the city of Teruel, but fascist forces were expected to counterattack, as soon as frontline units could be resupplied. In the USSR, the purges continued; longtime Bolsheviks arrested, interrogated, and shot. There was to be a new public trial, of Bukharin, Rykov, and Yagoda, the former head of the NKVD. “I expect they’ll admit to their guilt, on the witness stand,” Jourdain said dryly, and added that their own Jean-Paul Sartre had recommended suppression of public statements about the trial, since that might discourage the French proletariat. “Certainly discourages the Russians,” the naval attache said.

“And next, you’ll recall Hitler’s statement in December that Germany would never rejoin the League of Nations. However, Germany and Poland have reaffirmed their commitment to protect the rights of Poles and Germans living in each other’s countries. Meanwhile, the League will be holding a conference in Belgrade, on the twentieth of this month, on the protection of ethnic minority rights in all European states, and on the progress of legal claims. It’s an important conference-no laughing, gentlemen-the ambassador is invited, the charge d’affaires will attend.”

So, Mercier thought, legal claims. That meant the lawyers would be there, and that meant Anna Szarbek would be there.

Did he dare? The memory of Gabrielle, urging him on to pursuit, said he should. When the meeting ended, he had a look at his calendar-the twentieth fell on a Saturday, the League people would have a weekend in Belgrade, then begin talking on Monday. He walked from the chancery over to the public part of the embassy and climbed to the third floor, where the ambassador had installed a water cooler, just outside Madame Dupin’s office. Mercier always took a cup of water when he happened to find himself there, not caring so very much for water, but liking, despite his forty-six years, the bubble that floated to the top and made a noise.

He liked also, that morning, the fact that Madame Dupin never closed her door; her office was open to the world. “Jean-Francois? Come and say hello!”

First, in the gravest and most observed of French traditions: what did you do on the holidays? She’d been to Switzerland, she said, at a ski lodge. Cheese fondue! Villagers in costume! Folk dancing! And, Mercier thought, his attentive smile firmly in place, God knows what else. When his turn came, he dutifully reported on his visit to Boutillon.

And then, attacked.

“I’m told there’s a League of Nations conference in Belgrade, in two weeks.”

Madame Dupin shuffled through some papers, then said, “Yes, there is, a conference on legal rights, and ethnic minorities. Of interest to you?” She seemed skeptical.

“Perhaps. I understand the charge is going.”

This time she rummaged in her out box. Along with her duties as deputy director of protocol, Madame Dupin also managed embassy travel arrangements. “Here he is. Taking the night express on Friday-it only runs twice a week.” She looked up, slightly puzzled at his question, then not. “Oh, of course! Now I see, Jean-Francois! You are, well, more than interested, aren’t you.” Her eyes glittered with conspiracy.

“I’d suppose your friend Anna will be there,” he said, smiling.

“I presume she will be, as a League lawyer. Perhaps I should ask her.”

“No, please don’t. I just thought …”

“Shall I book your ticket?”

“I’ll do it. The embassy shouldn’t pay.”

“Such an honorable fellow, our Jean-Francois.” Her sly grin meant: you devil!

9 January.

Slowly, the social wheels of diplomatic Warsaw began to grind once more. A cocktail party at the Dutch embassy, at six, to meet the new commercial attache, Mynheer de Vries. Mercier pinned on his medals and trudged downstairs, where Marek and the Biook awaited him. They crept along the icy streets, high banks of shoveled snow on either side, a rather dispirited Mercier smoking his Mewa in the backseat. He’d booked a first-class room on the night express to Belgrade, expensive enough, and likely pointless. Anna Szarbek had made a decision that evening in the carriage, and now he was going to make a great fool of himself. Why had he allowed Gabrielle to provoke him into this? There were other women in Warsaw, among the restless wives of the diplomatic community, and the social set that fished in the same waters. Merde, he thought. I’m too old for this.

The cocktail party wasn’t as grim as he’d feared. He avoided the Dutch gin, held a glass of champagne in his hand, and sampled the smoked salmon and pickled herring. Touring the room, he looked for Anna Szarbek, but she wasn’t there, nor was Maxim. He did find Colonel Vyborg, standing alone, and he and the Polish intelligence officer exchanged news of their holidays. When Mercier mentioned his discoveries about German tank formations in the Wehrmacht journals, Vyborg just frowned and shook his head. “A bad dream,” he said. “They write books and articles about what they intend to do, but nobody seems to notice, or care.”

Then Mercier spent a few minutes with Julien Travas, the Pathe News manager, who had a luscious girl by his side. “A full house tonight,” Mercier said. “All the usual characters, including us.”

Travas shrugged. “They seem to ask me, I seem to go, and so they ask me again-they must have bodies to fill the room. And Kamila here has never been to one of these things. Enjoying it, dear?”

“I think it is very interesting,” Kamila said. “Mynheer de Vries has met Greta Garbo.”

“And thinks you look just like her. Am I right?” Travas said.

“Well, yes, he did say that. Exactly that.”

“Colonel Mercier is a war hero,” Travas said.

“Oh yes? You must tell me your story, colonel.”

“Someday,” Mercier said. “At the next party.”

Oh no! Here came the Rozens, everybody’s favorite Russian spies, the sweet old couple bearing down on him like feeding sharks. “I think you’re in demand,” Travas said, steering his prize away. “A bientot,” he said with a grin.

“So here you are!” Malka Rozen said, patting his cheek. “I told Viktor you’d be here, didn’t I, Viktor.”

Viktor Rozen looked up at her from his permanent stoop and said, “You did. It’s true. Here he is.”

“Now see here, my French comrade,” Malka said. “Don’t you like us? The most delicious dinner awaits you at our apartment, and you must eat sooner or later, no? You can’t live on canapes.”

“I’ve been very busy, Madame Rozen. The holidays-”

“Naturally,” Viktor said. “But now it’s January, the long freeze, time to visit friends, have a drink, a nice chicken-is that so bad?”

“Not at all,” Mercier said, charmed in spite of himself. “Tell me,” he said, “how are things back in the motherland?” That ought to do it. A shadow crossed Viktor’s well-lined face. Was he actually, Mercier wondered, going to say something?

“The trials-”

“The trials of winter.” Malka cut him off, and gave him a look.

“That’s it,” Viktor said. “Always difficult, our winter, but we seem to survive.”

“Did you go home for the holidays?” Mercier said.

“No.” Viktor’s voice was excessively sharp. “I mean no, it’s such a long train ride. To Moscow. Maybe in the spring, we’ll go back.”

Malka changed the subject. “You know what I think, Viktor? I think that Colonel Mercier won’t come to dinner unless he gets an invitation. A written invitation.”

“You’re right,” Viktor said. “That’s what we should do. Send him a letter.”

“You needn’t do that,” a puzzled Mercier said. “Of course I am so very busy, this time of year-”

“But it will make a difference,” Malka said. “I’m sure it will.”

Mercier looked around the room. Had Anna Szarbek arrived? No, but Colonel de Vezenyi, the Hungarian military attache, caught his eye and waved him over, so Mercier excused himself. And, oddly, the Rozens seemed happy enough to let him go.

For the next half hour, he circulated, visiting briefly with the usual people, saying nothing important, hearing nothing interesting, then thanked his hosts, told Mynheer de Vries they’d see each other soon, and gratefully headed out the door into a cold, clear evening.

The gleaming diplomatic cars stood in a long line outside the embassy; he found the Buick, and Marek held the door for him. As he slid into the back, he saw an edge of yellow paper on the floor, tucked beneath the driver’s seat. As Marek pulled out of line and drove down the street, Mercier bent over and retrieved the paper-a square envelope. “Marek?” he said.

“Yes, colonel?”

“Did you stay in the car, while I was inside?”

“No, sir. I joined some friends, other drivers, and we sat in one of the cars and had a smoke.”

Mercier turned the envelope over, then back. It was cheaply made, of rough paper, not a kind he remembered seeing. The flap was sealed, and there was no writing to be seen. “Is this yours?” Mercier said.

Marek turned halfway around, glanced at the envelope, and said, “No, colonel.”

“Did you lock the doors, Marek? When you joined your friends?”

“Always, colonel. I don’t fail to do that, not ever.”

Carefully, Mercier inserted an index finger beneath the flap and opened the envelope. The paper inside had been torn from a school-child’s copybook, grayish paper with blue lines. The writing was block-printed, with a pencil, in French. There was no salutation.

We are in great difficulty, recalled home, and we cannot go there, because we will be arrested, and executed. Please help us leave this city and go somewhere safe. If you agree, visit the main post office on Warecki square, at 5:30 tomorrow. You won’t see us, but we will know you agree. Then we will contact you again.

Please help us

Mercier read it once more, then said, “Change of plans, Marek.”

“Not going home?”

“No. To the embassy.”

The ambassador’s residence was in the embassy, and he appeared at the chancery, in velvet smoking jacket over formal shirt and trousers, almost immediately after Mercier telephoned. Jourdain took longer, arriving by taxi a few minutes later. When he entered Mercier’s office, the letter sat alone on a black-topped table. “Have a look,” Mercier said.

Jourdain read the letter and said, “Well, well, a defection. And I thought it was going to be a boring winter. Cleverly managed, isn’t it, not a clue to be found, unless you know which country’s shooting people when they go home. Who wrote it, Jean-Francois, any theories?”

“The Rozens,” Mercier said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. They told me to expect it, at the Dutch cocktail party.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jourdain said. “Stalin’s killing all the Old Bolsheviks now, cleaning house, installing his Georgian pals.”

“How important are they?” the ambassador asked, reading over the letter once again.

“They’re believed to be GRU officers,” Jourdain said. “Soviet military intelligence. We don’t know their ranks, but I’d suspect they’re senior, just below the military attache.”

“Not NKVD?” the ambassador said.

“No, not the real thugs. Of course they could be anything. Viktor Rozen could be a minor official, and Malka simply his wife.”

“I would doubt that,” Mercier said. “They work together-the invitation to dinner turns into a request for information, something very minor, then they’ll try to give you money.”

“Well, now they’ll take the money,” the ambassador said. “Or at least safety, their lives. And the information comes next. Not a provocation, colonel, is it?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Devious people, the Russians,” the ambassador said. “They see life as chess, draw you into some sort of clandestine rat maze, then shut the trap.”

“I believe it’s a legitimate offer to change sides,” Mercier said. “Viktor Rozen seemed, ah, at least worried, maybe desperate. His wife’s the strong one.”

“Maybe she outranks him,” the ambassador said. “That’s not unknown. As for what’s next, we-I mean you, colonel-cable Paris. Tonight. I’ll want to see the text before it goes to the code clerk.”

“Tonight?” Jourdain said. “Couldn’t we … explore the possibilities?”

The ambassador’s smile was all too knowing. “Your instincts are perfect, Jourdain, but if we dawdle, the bureau in Paris will want to know why. Still, colonel, don’t say more than you have to, just follow the form.”

“They’ll be out here, sir,” Jourdain said. “All over us.”

“Maybe. Can’t be helped.”

“So, five-thirty tomorrow,” Mercier said. “A visit to the post office.”

“One can never have enough stamps,” the ambassador said. “As for me, I’m off to the Biddles’ dinner party, you two work out the details.”

Jourdain and Mercier talked for a long time-what did they want, what could they get, what was the price of salvation, this week?

10 January.

In civilian clothing, but well dressed for the occasion, Mercier strolled around Warecki square in a light snow. Then, precisely at five-thirty, he entered the busy post office, stood on line, and bought a sheet of stamps. Very pretty, they were, the two-groszy issue, blue and gold, with a handsomely engraved portrait of Chopin.

14 January.

At the Spanish embassy, an evening of flamenco. The ambassador represented the Republican, the legal, government of Spain, but it was known that there was a Nationalist, a fascist, ambassador in Warsaw, waiting to present his credentials. Franco’s forces had now cut the country in two parts, holding the larger area, so it was, the diplomatic community believed, just a matter of time.

Mercier arrived at the Spanish embassy precisely at nine and found a seat at the end of a row toward the back. Not quite the usual crowd, he saw, the audience determined by political alliance, so neither the German nor the Italian diplomats were to be seen. But no problem filling the room, because half the Soviet embassy was evidently passionate for Spanish dance. Mercier did find Maxim-that was logical, because an evening of flamenco, political flamenco, was just the thing for Maxim’s clever column in the newspaper-who’d saved the seat next to him with his folded overcoat. Then, as the lights dimmed and the Spanish ambassador took the stage, a familiar silhouette hurried down the aisle and took the saved seat. What went on in Mercier surprised him-only a glimpse of her silhouette. But enough. The Spanish ambassador was speaking, though Mercier never heard a word of it, until the end: “… the old and honored heritage of our nation, tonight gravely wounded and in peril, but which, like the passionate art we bring you this evening, will endure.” Thunderous applause.

Mercier liked the flamenco well enough-the fierce guitar, the hammering rhythms of the dance-but his heart was elsewhere. And as the troupe returned for a second encore, he walked quickly up the aisle and out the door into the room where the reception would be held. On a long table covered with a red cloth, bottles of wine and plates of bread and cheese. He stood to one side and waited as the audience filed out.

Maxim was delighted to see him. He strode over, swung his hand back, then forward, grasping Mercier’s extended hand as though he meant to crush it. “Here’s the general! Say, how goes the war?” Standing slightly behind him, Anna raised her eyes, looked at Mercier, then lowered them.

“It’s going well enough,” Mercier said.

“Glad to hear it, glad to hear it, general, keep up the good work.” With a proprietary hand on Anna’s arm, he headed for the wine.

An intense crowd, that night. As Mercier made his way across the room, the conversation was loud, excited, fervent. Opinion on the war in Spain was savagely divided-the battle for an ancient nation had become a battle for the heart of Europe. At last, by the door to the lobby, he spotted the Rozens, being lectured by a comic-opera official, a minister of some state, in tailcoat, pince-nez, and Vandyke beard. As Mercier approached, Viktor said something to the official and began to lead him away, the man making slashing motions with his hand as he talked.

Malka Rozen wasted no time. “It must be soon,” she said, her voice an undertone, her false smile broad and beaming.

“Are you being watched?” Mercier said. “Here? Tonight?”

“I can’t say. They’re very good at it, when they don’t want you to know.”

“Our answer is yes-we’re going to help you get out of Poland.”

“Thank God.”

“But you will have to help us, in return. You will come bearing gifts, as they say.”

“What do you want?” The determination beneath the warm exterior was like steel.

“Photographs, that’s best. Or hand copies. Of documents relating first to France-operations in Poland that involve French interests-and then to Germany.”

“Why do you think we have anything like that? Our work is against Poland, not France, or Germany.”

“Madame Rozen,” Mercier said. He meant: please don’t play games with me.

“And if we can’t get anything you want? Then we die?”

“You work for people, madame, and I work for people. Maybe they’re not so different, the people we work for.”

“I hope they are,” she said.

“Are you saying you won’t try?”

“No, no. No. We’ll try. But we don’t have long. We were directed to return to Moscow last week. We told them we had important meetings in Warsaw, so our return was postponed-two weeks from today. After that, the knock on the door at midnight, and finished. For twenty years of secret work, for twenty 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 brandy, rose from the table, smiled at Mercier, and made for the door to the first-class wagon-lit. Well, he was done with his brandy as well, waited until she’d left the dining car, then headed in the same direction. Walking down the corridor, he saw that she was just entering her compartment, Compartment C, and her door closed gently as he passed.

Back in his own compartment, he found that the bed had been made up, the Polish National Railways blanket turned down at a crisp angle. He stretched out on top of it, raised the shade, and turned off the reading lamp. Outside, southern Poland in moonlight. They were going west now, a few miles above the border, the train rattling along at high speed. The little station at Oswiecim flew past, followed by Strumien, as they neared Karvina, where they would enter Czechoslovakia. Mercier was hard on himself. No more wild fantasies, he thought, that would never see the light of reality. Restless and unhappy, he realized he could not sleep in this condition, and decided to go for as much of a walk as the train would allow. He went out into the corridor, where, to the right, lay only a few compartments, from H to A, including C, and turned left.

Past the other first-class wagons-lits, a succession of second-class carriages, where the passengers sat on faded leather seats. Very smoky here, some travelers already asleep, others, lost in their thoughts, gazing into the darkness beyond the windows. He walked the length of the carriage, and was halfway down the next, when he saw a woman in a long gray coat, severely cut. She wore soft leather boots and a black beret, set slantwise on dark-blond hair pinned up in back. Engaged in conversation with a young woman in the seat by the window, she was facing away from the aisle. As Mercier paused by the seat, the young woman looked up at him. “Hello,” he said. “Anna?”

She turned, startled to see him there, and said, “Oh.” For a moment, she froze, eyes wide with surprise, lips apart. Finally she said, in Polish, “Ursula, this is Colonel Mercier.”

The young woman acknowledged him with a formal nod and said, “Pleased to meet you, colonel.”

“Ursula used to work at our office in Danzig,” Anna said. “We met at the station in Cracow.”

Mercier looked at his watch. “One can have a drink in the dining car now, the second seating has ended. Would you and your friend care to join me?”

“Ursula?” Anna said. “Want to come for a drink?”

Ursula thought it over, but her sense of the situation was sharp enough. “I don’t think so. Why don’t you go?”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh …”

“Don’t be shy, you’ll enjoy it! Ursula?”

“Thank you, but you go ahead, Pana Szarbek. Maybe later, I might join you.”

As they walked toward the forward part of the train, Mercier said, “Do you have a suitcase?”

“I dropped it off-my compartment’s up here somewhere-then I went back to visit with Ursula.”

“Your own compartment?”

“A double. I’ve got the upper berth.”

They reached the dining car and were shown to a table by a window. When they were settled, Anna said, “This is a surprise. Are you going to the conference?”

“Well, I could. The subject is certainly interesting.”

Her eyes searched his, uncertain.

The waiter appeared, and Mercier said, “What would you like? A cocktail?”

“Maybe I would. Yes, why not.”

“It’s a long night ahead, might as well do what you like.”

“Then I’ll have a gin fizz.”

“For me a brandy,” Mercier said to the waiter.

Anna looked around, then said, “Very luxurious. You always seem to be in nice places.”

Mercier nodded. “I’m fortunate, I think. My fellow officers are either in barracks or stuck on an island somewhere, taking malaria pills.”

“You are fortunate.”

“Well, not always, but sometimes. It depends.”

She was again uncertain, hesitated, then said, “What interests you, colonel, about the conference?”

He went on about it for a time-national minorities, political tensions-until their drinks arrived. She took a sip of the gin fizz, then a second. “Good,” she said. “They know how to make these.”

“You can have another, if you like.”

She grinned and said, “Don’t tempt me.”

“No? I shouldn’t?”

“You were saying, about the conference.”

“I really don’t care about the conference, Anna.”

“Perhaps you have-ah, a professional reason, to go there.”

“I don’t.”

“Then …?”

“I’m on this train because I found out about the conference, and guessed, hoped, that you would be on this train.”

She hunted around in her handbag and found her cigarette case-Bacchus and the naked nymphs-put a cigarette between her lips, and leaned forward as he lit it. “So,” she said, “an adventure on a train.”

“No,” he said. “More.”

She looked out the window, then said, voice husky, her faint accent stronger, “There’s no need to say such things, colonel.” When she turned back toward him it was clear that she didn’t at all mind the idea of an adventure.

“But it isn’t just something to say.” He paused, then added, “And, by the way, it’s Jean-Francois. I think we agreed on that.”

Suddenly, she was amused. “If I had a pocket mirror …”

He didn’t understand.

“Well, you look quite a bit like a colonel, at the moment,” she said. “Jean-Francois.”

The tension broke. His face relaxed, and he put his hand on the table, palm up. After a pause, she took it, then inhaled on her cigarette and blew the smoke out like a sigh of resignation. “Oh Lord,” she said. “I’d bid all of this goodby, you know, after the night of the storm.” She waited a little, then said, “I suppose you’ve taken a fancy room, all to yourself.”

“I have.”

“And there we shall go.”

“Yes. Now?”

“I’d like that second gin you suggested, if you don’t mind.”

“Why would I? I’ll have another brandy.”

She squeezed his hand.

He beckoned to the waiter.

They carried their drinks back to his compartment. “My, my,” she said. “Lilies.” He helped her off with her coat, inhaling her perfume, and hung it on a hook as she put her beret on the luggage shelf. The compartment was almost entirely filled by the bed, so she sat across the far end, her back against the panel by the window. She took her boots off, revealing black stockings, wiggled her toes, and sighed with relief.

Unlacing his shoes, Mercier said, “A long day?”

“Dreadful. All sorts of people to see in Cracow.”

The train slowed, then entered a small station and, with a hiss of steam, came to a halt.

“What’s this?” she said. “Not Brno, not yet.”

“Kravina. Border control. Did you give your passport to the conductor?”

“Yes. When I got on.”

Mercier took his jacket off and folded it on the luggage rack above him, put his tie on top of it, and settled at the head of the bed, back against the pillows, legs stretched diagonally down the blanket. A group of Polish and Czech customs officers came walking along the platform, heading for the second-class carriages. One of them glanced in the window.

“Did Marie Dupin tell you about the conference?”

“I heard about it; then I asked her.”

“This was her idea all along, I suspect. Putting us together.”

“She likes to take part in her friends’ lives.”

“True. She does.”

She took the last sip of her drink and put the glass on the shelf below the window. Then she laced her fingers behind her head, closed her eyes, and moved around to get comfortable, sliding forward so that the hem of her skirt slid well above her knees. In the station, someone called out in Czech and a woman laughed.

“A nap?” he said, teasing her.

Very slowly, she shook her head. “Just thinking.”

A porter, pushing a baggage cart that squeaked as it rolled, trudged past the window. Anna opened her eyes, turned to see what was going on, then closed them again. “Ahh, Kravina.”

The locomotive vented steam, a passenger went past in the corridor, a suitcase bumping against the wall, and the train started forward, very slowly, the pillars of the station creeping past the window. Anna extended her leg and put her foot on top of his. Warm and soft, that foot. The train gained a little speed, crossing the town, past snow-covered streets and lamplit squares. A faint smile on her face now, she reached beneath her skirt, left and right, undid her garters, and rolled her stockings down, not far, just enough so that he could see the tops. Mercier turned off the reading lamp, then crawled over to her, and, telling himself not to be awkward, finished the job-his hands sliding over her legs, white and smooth, as the stockings came down. She opened her eyes, met his, and spread her arms. It was very quiet in the compartment, only the beat of the train, but, when he embraced her, she made a certain sound, deep, like ohh, in a way that meant at last. Then they kissed for a while, the tender kind, touch and part-until she raised her arms so he could take her sweater off. Small breasts in a lacy black bra. For a day at the Cracow office?

Madame Dupin, you told.

He kissed her breasts, the lace of the bra against his lips, and they wrestled out of their clothes until she wore only panties-again black and lacy-and he took the waistband in his fingers. They paused, shared a look of exquisite complicity, and she raised her hips.

Somewhere between Kravina and Brno, he woke, cold, the covers down, the speeding train hammering along the track between low hills. She slept on her stomach, curved bottom pale in the light made by the moon shining on snow. As he ran his fingers up and back, he watched her come awake, her mouth opened slightly, then widened as her eyebrows lifted-the delicately wicked face of anticipation.

At Brno station, the sleep of exhaustion.

But after Bratislava, as the train roared through a tunnel, he woke again, to find her making love to him, very excited, her hand between his legs, while her lower part, moist and insistent, straddled his thigh. “Easy … easy,” she whispered.

Coming into Budapest, in the first trace of dawn, only a fond embrace. But very fond.

They went to the dining car for breakfast. The same waiter, discreet as he could be, yet somehow he made them aware that he knew exactly how they’d spent the night, and that he was a man who believed in love. “Do you eat breakfast?” she said.

“No, usually coffee and a cigarette. But I didn’t eat yesterday, so”-he searched the brief menu-“I’ll have the Vienna roll, whatever that might be.”

“A sexual act?”

“Perhaps, we’ll see. Not much privacy in here so it’s probably cake.”

It was, walnuts and apricot filling in butter-laden pastry. “Lord!” he said. “Try a little bite, anyhow.” He fed her.

“What’s next? Belgrade?”

“In two hours. Should we talk about Warsaw?”

“Maybe a few words.”

“I’m in love with you, Anna. I want you with me.”

“I will have to make things final, with Maxim.”

“I know.”

For a moment, she was lost in thought. Then touched his knee, beneath the table. “It’s just the prospect of working it all out, saying things, leaving.”

He nodded that he understood.

“I think I would have left him anyhow. But, are you sure? That you want to do this?”

“Yes. You?”

“Very sure. Since the storm. No, a day or two later. Anyhow, we can talk all this out in Belgrade.”

“Not for long. I have to go back tomorrow: Sunday.”

“What? No rights of national minorities?”

“Which hotel are you staying at?”

A long trip back to Warsaw. After a night together at the Serbski Kralj-King of Serbia-hotel, she’d accompanied him, late Sunday afternoon, to the railway station. In his compartment, he’d lowered the window, and she’d stood on the platform, hands in the pockets of her long coat, and they’d gazed at each other as the train pulled away, until he could see her no longer. Then he’d stared out at the winter dusk for a while, reliving various moments of the time they’d shared. But, finally, it was Simenon-all too soon finished-and, inevitably, Stendhal-far more compelling than he’d remembered-followed by the trout, this time consumed, and, back in his compartment, deep and dreamless sleep.

Paradise, really, compared to what Monday held in store. He’d gone directly to the embassy from the station, and into a meeting with Jourdain and the other military attaches. The usual grim business. He stayed on afterward, to speak privately with Jourdain.

“There’s been no signal from the Rozens,” Jourdain said. “We’ve had our Poles in and out of the post office.”

“They missed the meeting on the eighteenth,” Mercier said.

Jourdain looked up from his papers. “Has something happened?”

“Perhaps. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Jourdain made a small sound of frustration. “We spend our lives waiting,” he said.

“On a different subject, I’ve had a change in my-ah, personal life. Somebody I like. What would happen if she were to join me, in the apartment?”

Jourdain thought for a moment, then said, “I wouldn’t, if it were me. They can’t really tell you what to do, in your private life, but I suspect they think of the apartment as a kind of semi-official residence. Somebody will write a memorandum, you can count on that, and, after everything that’s gone on the last few weeks, I’m afraid there might be a storm. The ambassador likes you, but I wouldn’t want to ask him, if I were you, for protection in this area. Forgive me, Jean-Francois, but it’s better if I tell you what I really think.”

“I knew. More or less. Just thought I’d ask.”

“Anyhow, congratulations. Who is she?”

“Anna Szarbek.”

“The League lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. Lucky man,” Jourdain said.

Back in his office, a clerk delivered mail from the diplomatic pouch. Wading through drivel of every degree-a change in the form for filing certain reports, a new charge d’affaires appointed in Riga-he came upon a yellow manila envelope. Inside-attached to a note from Colonel Bruner-a white envelope addressed to “Andre,” his work name in the Edvard Uhl operation, holding a letter, handwritten, in German: 6 January, 1938

Dear Andre,

I write from Paris, and I am informed that this letter will reach you in Warsaw. I leave soon, for a new life in Canada, a new job, with a small company, and a new place to live, a small town near the city of Quebec. So, I have already started to learn to speak French. Now, I do not regret what I did. As I look toward Germany and see what goes on there, perhaps it was for the best.

I am writing on the subject of the Countess Sczelenska. I know now that she was not a countess, and her name was not Sczelenska. This doesn’t matter to me. I still have dear memories of our love affair. I don’t care how it came to happen-my feelings for her are undiminished. I miss her. I like to think she might have some feeling for me, as well. At least I can hope.

Would you say farewell for me? Tell her of my affection for her? And that, should this unhappy Europe some day find itself in better times, perhaps, on that day, we might meet again. I would be eternally grateful if you would say these things to her on my behalf.

A flowery German closing was followed by Uhl’s signature.

The note from Colonel Bruner stated that the letter was being sent on to him because it was now felt that the bureau might, in certain circumstances, have further use for Uhl, and they wanted to keep him happy. Of course Mercier would not reveal to Hana Musser, who’d played the role of Sczelenska, where Uhl was, or what he was doing, but it might not be the worst thing to let her know of the letter’s existence and Uhl’s sentiments. “Just in case, in future, we need to induce him to undertake new work on our behalf.”

Mercier had maintained Hana Musser’s small stipend; he might require her services, and, also, he liked her-though he would never tell Bruner that. He wrote out a brief dispatch: acknowledged receipt of the letter and agreed to let Hana Musser know of Uhl’s safety, his affectionate farewell, and his hope to, some day, see her again.

25 January. Mercier’s regular meeting with Colonel Vyborg was scheduled for that morning, but there would be no ponczki-or so it seemed-since Vyborg had shifted the meeting from their usual cafe to his office at General Staff headquarters, in the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel: a vast fortress, containing the Savka Barracks, built under the nineteenth-century Russian occupation and located north of the central city, facing the Vistula. Vyborg’s office was down a long hallway from the room where, famously, Marshal Pilsudski had been held prisoner, in 1900, by the Russian secret police.

Mercier arrived promptly at eleven, to discover that Vyborg had ordered the cafe to deliver a dozen ponczkis to his office, where they’d been laid out on a plate from the regimental china service. There was coffee in a silver urn, and the cups and saucers were also from the regimental china. Sugar, cream, linen napkins-what sort of news, Mercier wondered, awaited him? On the wall above Vyborg’s desk, a beautifully drawn map, in colored pencil, of an estate called Perenska, with some of the surrounding countryside included. Mercier walked over to the map to have a better look at it.

“My country home,” Vyborg explained. “The map was drawn by Captain de Milja, in our Geographical Section.”

“It is very handsome,” Mercier said.

“I’m pleased you find it so.”

They settled at a table by the window, looking out at the river. Vyborg poured coffee, Mercier attacked a ponczki, and they chatted for a time, this and that. Mercier knew that Vyborg might soon be made aware of Soviet networks spying on Poland-if the Rozens were still alive-but he could say nothing. This information would go from the Deuxieme Bureau to the head of Oddzial II, Polish military intelligence, the Dwojka-protocol, always protocol. And, since a separate section handled the USSR, the information would not damage Vyborg personally. The discovery of spies was a double-edged sword-congratulations on finding out, why didn’t you know earlier.

When they were done with gossip, Mercier said, “Any special reason to meet in your office?”

“There is, I’m afraid. Something not for a cafe.” In Vyborg’s voice, a slight discomfort.

So then, bad news. Mercier lit a Mewa and waited.

“We have reason to believe,” Vyborg said, “that certain people are interested in you.”

“Which people, Anton?”

“A woman of Ukrainian origin, who works at a travel agency on Marszalkowska, was observed, on three occasions, watching the building where you live. And seen both near your embassy and on your street, a German of Polish nationality, a nasty-looking character called Winckelmann. He was using a fancy Opel, black, the 1937 Admiral model”-Vyborg looked down at an open dossier-“Polish license plate six, nine-four-nine. For what looked a lot like surveillance. This Winckelmann is known to work, from time to time, as a driver for SD officers at the German embassy.”

“A nasty-looking character, you say. A small fellow, with a pinched face? Who might remind one-diminutive but fierce-of a weasel?”

Vyborg was delighted. “A weasel! Yes, exactly. Evidently you’ve seen him.”

“The day of the Uhl abduction. Also, the same car. Did you say you’ve seen him?”

“Not in person.” Vyborg produced, from the dossier, a photograph, which he handed to Mercier.

Taken from a window above Ujazdowska avenue with a long-range lens, the slightly blurred image of a man behind the wheel of a parked automobile, eyes staring up and to the right, apparently watching the street in the rearview mirror.

“The weasel?”

Mercier nodded, then looked up at Vyborg and said, “Your agents were in a building on my street? And near the embassy? You aren’t going to tell me this is a coincidence, are you?”

Vyborg said, “No, I’m not,” quietly, an admission made with only faint reluctance. “You mustn’t be angry, Jean-Francois. The Dwojka cares for its French friends and makes sure, every once in a while, that all goes well with them. It’s done by the counterintelligence people-not my department-and, as you might suppose, the same sort of thing goes on in Paris, with our attaches.”

Vyborg wasn’t wrong, Mercier suspected, but, even so, he didn’t like it. He took a sip of his coffee.

“None of us are saints, my friend; we all watch each other, sooner or later. Have another ponczki.” Vyborg lifted the platter and extended it toward Mercier.

As Mercier chewed, he watched a barge on the river, working upstream.

“And, I would say, in this case the practice works to your benefit. Any idea what’s going on?”

Mercier thought it over. “I don’t know. Perhaps the fact that I spoiled their abduction-”

“Very unlikely. People in this business know that once these little wars begin, it’s very hard to stop them. A silent treaty-we keep our hands off each other. I don’t mean recruitment, that never ends. They might probe to see if you were gambling, or doing whatever it might be that could be used for blackmail, but, as far as I know, you lead a rather respectable life. And if they were recruiting, it wouldn’t look like this.”

Mercier shrugged. “Uhl wasn’t all that important. At least, we never thought he was. A view into German tank production; surely they’re running similar operations in France.”

“Of course they are. Anyhow, as the host country, we have some responsibility for your well-being-I hope you won’t hold it against us.”

“No, Anton, I understand.”

Vyborg made a certain gesture, palms brushing across each other, washing his hands of an unpleasant task. “So now you know,” he said with finality. “May I have my photograph back?”

The following days were not easy. Mercier waited for Anna to call, as they’d agreed in Belgrade, and for the Rozens, who did not signal. They lived in a room near the Soviet embassy, but to go anywhere near there would, he knew, be more than foolish. When he told Jourdain about his meeting with Vyborg, the second secretary wasn’t sure what the surveillance might mean; all Mercier could do was stay alert and report the incident to Paris. Technically, a complaint could be made to the German embassy, through diplomatic channels, but all they would hear back was polite denial, innocent as dew. And, as a potential enemy, Germany had to be treated with restraint-one learned more from smiles than frowns. So Mercier returned to work, now much too aware of people and automobiles, and trusting the telephone even less than usual-a wisp of static on the line implying more than it ever had before. By the twenty-ninth, a cold front froze the city, temperatures below zero, the nights dead still under brilliant stars, and Mercier’s life froze with it.

But, not so bad, that life. The evening of the twenty-ninth found him stretched out on the chaise longue in the study, finishing The Red and the Black, a swing band on the radio, a fire in the fireplace, a brandy at his side. The cook had left earlier. Wlada had finished washing up and gone to her room. Mercier turned a page, and somebody pounded on the street door. He looked up, and heard it again, this time accompanied by a muffled voice. What was this?

He swung his legs off the chaise and put on his slippers. Now the pounding was louder, and so was the voice-distantly, he thought he could make out the sound of his name. He went to the window, cranked it open, the cold air hitting him like a fist, and leaned out. Whoever was hammering on the door was in the alcove and couldn’t be seen, but the voice was clear as a bell. “Mercier! Please! Let me in! Please!” A woman, shouting in German. And he recognized the voice: Malka Rozen.

Mercier ran for the door. Wlada was already there, in her bathrobe, trembling, looking at him desperately. “Calm down, Wlada,” he said, rushing out the door and down the stairs. From above, one of the upstairs tenants was peering anxiously over the banister. “Colonel?” he said. “Is everything …?”

“Sorry,” Mercier shouted back. “I’ll see about it.”

From above, an irritated grunt followed by the slamming of a door.

“Oh God,” Malka Rozen said as he let her in. “He’s hurt.”

“Come upstairs.” As they climbed, Mercier held her elbow, steadying her. She wore an old coat and a shawl over her head.

“You must find Viktor,” she said, her voice edged with panic.

As they reached the apartment, Mercier said, “What happened?”

“It’s them. They know.”

“Merde.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He led her inside, past Wlada, who held her hand over her mouth. Malka turned and grabbed Mercier by the wrists. “He’s in the park, a little park, up at the top of Ujazdowska.”

“Why?”

“He fell, on the ice, and hurt his ankle; he couldn’t walk. So he told me to go on ahead.”

“The park. Three Crosses Square? In front of a church?”

“Yes. A church.”

“Wlada,” as Mercier hurried back toward the study, he lost a slipper, “take Pana Rozen into your room and lock the door.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. Then, to Malka Rozen, “Please, Pana, come with me.” Her voice was shrill with panic.

Mercier kicked off the other slipper, whipped the drawer of his desk open and took out the 9-millimeter Browning, checked to see if it was loaded, and put it in the waistband of his trousers. Then he pulled on his shoes and squirmed into his overcoat. Checking to make sure he had his keys, he called out to Wlada, “Don’t let anybody in here, Wlada. Wait for me to come back.” He had at least one Soviet spy, and he meant to keep her.

The night was brutal. Mercier shivered and tried to run, but his knee didn’t like the weather any better than he did, so he limped along as quickly as he could. She hadn’t meant Lazienka park, had she? That was at the other end of Ujazdowska. No, she’d said church. Saint Alexander’s. Please God, let her be accurate. Mercier took the Browning from his waistband and moved it to the pocket of his overcoat. The first thug I see-that’s it. He gripped the butt tightly and swore as the cold worked through his clothing. Curse the stupid war wound-why couldn’t he go faster? A man attempting to walk a shivering dog took one look at the expression on Mercier’s face and pulled the dog away, back toward his building.

By the time he saw the cross and dome atop Saint Alexander’s, Mercier was out of breath. The tiny park was enclosed by a line of evergreen shrubs and an iron railing. Vault over. He damned the stupidity of his inner voice and hobbled along the fence, looking for the gate. Once past the shrubs, he saw a man seated on a bench, hands in pockets, head almost touching his knees. Gone? It was not unknown. Dawn in Warsaw would sometimes reveal bodies, glazed with ice, dead where they’d sat down to rest, or passed out drunk, on a freezing night.

Mercier found the gate and rushed to the bench. Yes, Viktor Rozen. Eyes closed, mouth open. Mercier said, “Wake up, Viktor, we must get you away from here,” and tugged at Rozen’s shoulder. There was something wrong with him. Mercier said, “Are you ill? Wounded?” Rozen didn’t respond, Mercier gripped him under the arms and raised him to his feet. Rozen revived, swaying as Mercier held him upright, then, with Mercier bearing most of his weight, took a small step, then another.

Out past the shrubs, the engine of a car. A car going very slowly. Mercier hung on to Rozen with one hand, drew the Browning from his pocket with the other, and waited for a Russian to appear. But the car went past.

“Let’s go inside, where it’s warm,” Mercier said, voice gentle.

Rozen took a step, then another, and began walking, with a moan every time his foot hit the ground. Sprained ankle. “Not too far now,” Mercier said. “Keep walking, we’ll be there soon.” Viktor didn’t answer; he seemed distant, vague, not completely conscious of where he was. Had he been drinking? No, something else.

Rozen staggered along. Mercier staggered with him, past the iron palings and elegant buildings of the avenue. Suddenly, Viktor began to sing, under his breath. Mercier swore. This was very bad, he’d seen it on winter battlefields; soldiers who talked nonsense and did odd things-taking their boots off in the snow-and died an hour later. “Viktor?”

Rozen giggled.

Mercier shook him hard.

“Stop! Why do you hurt me?”

“We have to hurry.”

“Oh.”

Rozen actually managed to move faster, supporting his weight on Mercier’s shoulder. Then, as Mercier searched for a house number, to see how close they were, a man emerged from the shadow of a doorway, walked quickly out to the avenue, then stopped dead, a few feet in front of them. Short hair, thick body, a pug face. Mercier moved to put himself between Rozen and the man, took the Browning out of his pocket and held it away from his side. The man stared at him, face without expression, and stayed where he was. When he opened his mouth-to speak? To call out to his fellow agents? — Mercier aimed the gun at his heart, finger tight against the trigger. The man blinked, and his face turned angry, very angry; he wasn’t afraid of guns, he wasn’t afraid of Mercier. But then he turned, slowly, all insolence, and walked across the avenue, his footsteps loud in the night silence.

When they were again under way, Mercier said, “Who was he, Viktor?”

“Some fellow.”

“Someone after you?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Mercier was exhausted by the time he got Rozen up the stairs. He fumbled for his keys, opened the door, shoved Rozen inside, leaned him against the wall, and pulled the door shut behind them. At which moment Malka emerged from Wlada’s room, pushed past him, and cried out, “Viktor!”

“He’s suffering from exposure,” Mercier said. Then he called out to Wlada, who peered, wide-eyed, from the safety of her room. “Go run a bath, Wlada, hot water, as hot as you can get it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wlada ran ahead of them into the bathroom. Malka and Mercier held Viktor up between them. He was singing again, a children’s song. “What’s wrong with him?” Malka said, horrified.

“It’s the cold.”

When they reached the bathroom off Mercier’s bedroom, Wlada was already on her knees, finger under a stream of steaming water. “Get his clothes off,” Mercier said. As Malka began to unknot Viktor’s tie, Wlada fled.

“She is very nervous, your maid.”

“She’ll survive. Tell me what happened.”

“Someone at the embassy, a friend, a friend from the old days, suddenly wouldn’t talk to me. But it was in his eyes-he’d been questioned, I could feel it. So I knew. Then, tonight, we stayed late, but there were people in the file room, security people, and all I could do was look at one of my own operations, where I’m permitted to look, and then I went and got Viktor, and we left. As we walked down the street to our building, we saw one of their cars, so we went into a little grocery store, where we always shop, and left by the back door. Nothing new to us, conspirative work….”

“Were you able to take anything from the embassy? From the files?”

“Yes, it’s hidden in our room. But they’ll find it soon enough.”

“What sort of-” In the study, the whirring ring of the telephone.

“Go ahead, colonel,” Malka said. “I’ll get him into the tub.”

In the study, Mercier stared at the telephone for a moment, looked at his watch, ten-thirty, then picked up the receiver and, voice tentative, said, “Hello?”

“Hello, Jean-Francois, it’s me.” She paused, then said, “Anna.”

“Are you allright?”

“Is it too late to call? You sound … distracted.”

“No, some excitement here, but nothing to worry about.” There’s a naked Russian spy in my bathtub, otherwise …

“Well, it’s done. I came back on Thursday, and I’ve found a place to live. A room and a little kitchen, over on Sienna street. Seventeen Sienna street. Not much, but all I could afford.”

“Don’t worry about money, Anna.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have called, you sound-maybe not a good time to talk?” In her voice, suspicion: who are you with?

“I’ll explain later, it’s only work, but, ah, very unexpected.”

“I see. It wasn’t so good with Maxim. A lot of shouting, but I suppose I knew that would happen.”

“I can’t blame him. He’s losing a lot. A lot.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Can I telephone you at work? Tomorrow morning?”

“You still have the number?”

“Anna!”

“Very well, then. Tomorrow.”

“I can’t come over there right now. I want to, you don’t know how much, but I have to take care of this-situation.”

Her voice softened. “I can imagine.”

He laughed. “When I tell you, you’ll realize there’s no way you could have imagined. Anyhow, you’re my love, and I’ll call you, see you, tomorrow.”

“Good night, Jean-Francois.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Good night.”

Mercier returned to the bathroom. The door was closed. “Do you need anything?” he said, his voice rising above the running water.

“No,” Malka said. “He’s taking a bath.”

Mercier went back to the study, looked in his address book, and dialed Jourdain’s number at home. The phone rang for a long time before it was answered. Finally, Jourdain’s voice. “Yes?”

“Armand, it’s Jean-Francois. Sorry to call you so late.”

“I don’t mind.”

“The meeting with the ambassador-is it still at eight-thirty?”

“It is, in my office.”

“There was some talk of moving it to nine-thirty.”

“No, eight-thirty, bright and early.”

“Very well, I’ll see you then. Sorry if I disturbed you.”

“Don’t be concerned. Good night, Jean-Francois.”

There was no meeting. The telephone call was a signal-operations could now begin to take two Russian spies out of Poland.

1:45 A.M.

Outside, the silence of a winter night, so cold that frost flowers whitened the windows of the study. Viktor Rozen, now apparently recovered, sat near the fire, wearing Mercier’s bathrobe, his heaviest sweater, and two pairs of his socks. He warmed his hands around a glass of hot tea laced with brandy, sipping it Russian-style, through a cube of sugar held between his teeth. Malka sat by his side, smoking one cigarette after another.

“There wasn’t much to do with France,” Viktor said. “Our agents in Polish factories reported on armaments produced under French license, and we tried to reach your diplomats….” Both Rozens gave Mercier a glance. And you see how that turned out.

“Our own operations worked against the Poles,” Malka said. “A major on the General Staff, a director of the telephone company, maids at the hotels, a few factory workers. And significant penetration of the socialist parties-Moscow Center is obsessed with this, so that’s where we spent money.”

“What were the maids doing?” Mercier asked.

“Going through briefcases. Foreign diplomats, businessmen, anyone important. Including the Renault delegation from Paris, back in October. One of them kept a diary, foolish man, a, how shall I say, a very frank diary. His conquests.”

“Did you use it? Against him?”

“Who knows, what Moscow does. We just sent the photographs of the pages.”

“Well, try to remember the name-you’ll go through all that in Paris,” Mercier said.

“When do we leave?” Viktor said.

“Tomorrow,” Mercier said. “That is, today.”

“They’ll be watching everywhere,” Viktor said. “You’d better be armed.”

“Don’t worry, we’re prepared for, eventualities.”

“I hope so,” Malka said.

They sat for a time and watched the fire, logs glowing red, a fire-fall of sparks. Viktor said, “Mostly, we did what everyone does-war plans, arms production, political personalities, border defenses.” He shrugged. “I doubt it’s very much different from what you do, colonel.”

Mercier nodded-that was likely true. “Any German networks?”

“Quite a number of them,” Malka said. “But we didn’t handle them. That was the preserve of the elite.”

“Not you?”

She smiled. “Once upon a time, a few years ago, but the Jews in the service aren’t so favored, these days. They no longer trust us, the Old Bolsheviks-look what they were going to do to Viktor and me. Don’t tell the world, but Stalin’s just as bad as Hitler.”

“Why not tell the world?”

“Because they won’t believe it, dear colonel.” She threw the end of her cigarette into the fire and lit a new one.

“So, no German information.”

“Gossip,” Viktor said. “In an embassy, you hear things.”

“Such as?”

“Surely the Poles already know. Camp Rummelsburg, in Pomerania, where they train spies to work in Poland. It opened in ‘thirty-six, they’re thought to have run about three thousand people through there. And, of course, the Polish branches of I.G. Farben and Siemens-Schuckert are used as espionage centers. But, as for names and dates, this never came our way. Maybe if we’d had some time with the files …”

“Any gossip about the I.N. Six?”

“I.N. Six?” Viktor said.

“Guderian’s office,” Malka said. “In the Bendlerstrasse.” The address of the German General Staff.

“Oh,” Viktor said. He pondered a moment, then shook his head.

“What do I remember about I.N. Six?” Malka said. “Was that CHAIKA? Kovak’s operation?”

“No, no, it wasn’t Kovak, it was Morozov.”

“He’s right,” Malka said. “It was Morozov.”

“What’s CHAIKA?” Mercier said.

“A codename. Means the bird, very common water bird, makes a squawk? In all the harbors, everywhere.”

Mercier came up with seagull, but didn’t know the German. “I’ll look it up,” Mercier said. “What does it have to do with I.N. Six?”

“A GRU officer called Morozov had this operation a few years ago,” Malka said. “Someone who worked in the I.N. Six office, codename CHAIKA, had concealed a political affiliation, from the early thirties. He’d been a member of the Black Front, Adolf Hitler’s opponents in the Nazi party, the left wing. You remember, colonel, the Strasser brothers?”

“I do. Gregor was murdered in ‘thirty-four, the Night of the Long Knives. But his brother Otto survived.”

“He did, went underground, and continued his opposition.”

Mercier knew at least the basic elements of the story. The Nazi party, soon after its birth, had split on ideological lines; some of the original members were committed to the socialist agenda-it was, after all, the National Socialist Party, Nazi the German slang derived from the first word-and proposed sharing German wealth and land with the working class. But the wealthy supporters of the party, Baron Krupp, Fritz von Thyssen, and others, wanted no part of that and Hitler, desperate for money, sided with them, ordered the murders, in 1934, of some of his opponents, and forced the others to pledge support to the right-wing side of the ideology. Otto Strasser, Mercier knew, was still in opposition, operating from Czechoslovakia.

“Anyhow,” Malka continued, “Morozov determined to put pressure on this CHAIKA, to force him to become a Soviet agent.”

“What happened?”

“Morozov was purged. But this operation never really got under way, because …” She stopped, unable to remember the reason.

“Because of the name!” Viktor was delighted with his memory. “Morozov had the name-Kroll? something like that-from a German informant who’d been a member of the Black Front and was now hiding in Poland, but the problem was that the Black Front used false names-after all, they were being hunted by the Gestapo. So the name Kroll, or whatever it was, was meaningless, there was nobody in the I.N. Six with that name.”

“Not Kroll,” Malka said.

“I think it was.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“What then?”

“Kohler, dear. That was it.”

Viktor smiled fondly and said to Mercier, “Isn’t she something?”

30 January, 6:35 A.M. Fully dressed, his Browning automatic on top of his folded overcoat, Mercier telephoned Marek, his wife answered, and the driver was called to the phone. “Good morning,” he said.

“I must go to the embassy, Marek.”

“Yes?” Marek’s voice was cautious, Mercier almost always walked the few blocks to the embassy.

“To prepare for a meeting,” Mercier said.

“When shall I come for you?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Ten minutes,” Marek said, and hung up.

By 6:50, they were under way, the Rozens in the backseat, Mercier sitting beside Marek. Mercier had left the building first, walked up and down the street, then returned for the Rozens. Marek on one side, Mercier on the other, they ran for the idling Buick.

“We’re going to Praga,” Mercier said. “Do you have a weapon?”

Marek patted the side pocket of his bulky coat.

“Don’t hesitate,” Mercier said.

“Who are we expecting?”

“Russians. NKVD Russians.”

“Will be a pleasure.”

They crossed the Vistula, now a sheet of gray ice, wound through the factory district, down a side street, and into the loading yard of a vacant foundry, the smell of scorched brass strong on a windless morning. Jourdain was waiting by his car, slapping his gloved hands against each other to keep the blood moving. “Nice day for a ride in the country,” he said to Mercier, his words accompanied by puffs of white steam. Then, to the Rozens, “Good morning, I’m here to help you.” Formally, they shook hands.

“Where’s Gustav?” Mercier said.

“He should be along in a minute; he’s been trailing your car since you crossed the river.”

A motorcycle pulled into the yard, skidding to a stop on the cinders. The rider’s face was shielded by a wool scarf, worn just below his goggles. He nodded hello and revved his engine by way of greeting.

“No point waiting, Jean-Francois. Gustav leads the way, you follow, I’ll be right behind you.”

As they drove away from the factory, Malka Rozen said, “Where are we going?”

“Konstancin,” Mercier said.

They drove fast through the early morning streets of Praga, past factory smokestacks, the black smoke hanging still in the frozen air, crossed back into Warsaw, turned southeast, and followed the river, the motorcycle slowing, then accelerating, as Gustav watched for idling cars, or trucks moving to block the way. Speed was something of an art, Mercier realized-the traffic policemen gave them a look, but did nothing. Gradually, the city fell away and they moved swiftly along a country road, through the village of Konstancin-elaborate houses and well-groomed gardens-and out the other side.

Mercier saw that Marek was intent on the rearview mirror, shifting his eyes every few seconds. “What’s back there, Marek?”

“A big car; he’s been with us since the outskirts of the city.”

“What kind of car?”

“It has a hood ornament-perhaps the English car, called Bentley?”

Rozen-Russians and Poles understood each other’s languages-said, “Nothing to worry about.”

“You’re sure?”

“Too rich for us.”

Not if it’s been stolen.

But a few minutes later, Marek said, “Now he turns off,” and Mercier relaxed. It was quiet in the car. Up ahead, Gustav leaned over as they sped around the curves, and then he signaled, pointed down a dirt road, and swung into it. They slowed, bouncing over frozen ruts and potholes, turned hard at a sharp corner, and jolted to a stop. Parked in the road: an ancient relic of a truck, its bed holding rows of milk cans. Gustav reached inside his leather coat and produced a cannon of an automatic pistol, a box magazine set forward of the trigger guard. As the motorcycle sped around the truck on the driver’s side, Mercier twisted around to see that the Rozens were staring 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 to the king.”

“Still, a noble.” She put the ring back on his finger. “The only one I’ve ever known.”

“Ever?” This was more than unlikely.

“I mean, as I know you.” She took off her boots, tucked her feet up beneath her, and slid her hand between the buttons of his shirt. “I’m just a Polish girl from Paris.”

“Oh poor you,” he said. “Poor lawyer.”

“Good in school, love. With hardheaded parents-parents with no sons. So, somebody had to do something.” They were silent for a time, and he became aware of her hair, silky against his skin, and her fragrance. “I find it warm in here,” she said, undoing a button on his shirt, then another. “Don’t you?”

The cook, perfectly aware of what was planned for the evening, had done her best-a roasted chicken and boiled carrots left in a warm oven-and later that night, Anna in Mercier’s shirt, he in the bathrobe, they ate-it was a sin to waste food-what they could.

3 February.

All courtesy, the noble Mercier had telephoned Anna and invited her to his next obligation, a dinner party given by the Portuguese consul. “I appreciate your asking me,” she’d said, “but I suspect you are reluctant and, honestly, so am I.” This was, and they both knew it, the social reality of diplomatic Warsaw. Some courageous souls insisted on bringing their “fiancees” to balls and dinner parties, and nobody ever said a word about it, but … Mercier was frankly relieved, and, on the evening of the third, he was accompanied to the consulate by Madame Dupin.

In the library, joining the men for cigars after dinner, Mercier found himself in the company of one Dr. Lapp, believed, by a certain level of local society, to be the senior Abwehr-German military intelligence-man in Warsaw. Officially, he worked as the commercial representative of a Frankfurt pharmaceutical company, but nobody had ever known him to sell a pill. Very much an old-fashioned gentleman, Dr. Lapp-the honorific referred to a university degree; he was not a medical doctor-of slight stature, in middle age, and bearing some resemblance to the sad-faced comedian Buster Keaton. And, like the comedian, he was often to be seen in a natty bow tie, though tonight he wore traditional dinner-party uniform. They had met before, on various occasions, but had never actually spoken at length. “Life going well, for you?” he said to Mercier.

“Not too badly. Yourself?”

“One mustn’t complain. Were you in Paris, for the holidays?”

“I was, then I went down to the south.”

“I envy you that, colonel.”

“The south?”

“Paris. A magnificent city. Would that be your preference, if your career took you there?”

“I like Warsaw well enough, but I wouldn’t mind. And for you, Dr. Lapp, would you prefer Berlin?”

“I only wish I could.”

“Really? Why is that?”

“Frankly, I find the situation in the capital not much to my taste.”

This was flagrant, and Mercier showed the edge of surprise. “You don’t care for the present regime?”

“Mostly I don’t. I am a loyal German, of course, and surely a patriot, but that can mean many things.”

“I suppose it can. You are, perhaps, a traditionalist?”

“And why not? The culture of old Europe, civility, stability, was not such a bad thing for Germany. But it’s all gone now, and the people who are in power these days will presently have us at war, and you know what that meant in 1918.”

“Not so much better for us. We called it victory, and marched through the streets in 1918, but victory is a curious word for what happened in France.”

Dr. Lapp nodded, and said, “Yes, I know. Where were you, on that day?”

“In fact I was a prisoner of war at Ingolstadt, Fort Nine.”

“Our most illustrious prison, at any rate. For our most eminent prisoners-the Russian Colonel Tukhachevsky, now sadly executed by his government; your Captain de Gaulle, lately a colonel; France’s most prominent airman, Roland Garros; and plenty of others. So you were, at least, in good company. How many escape attempts, colonel?”

“Four. All of which failed.”

“Of course I would have done the same thing. Honor demands it.”

“And where were you, on the day of the armistice?”

“At my desk, faithful to the last, at the naval General Staff office in Kiel. My section concerned itself with the submarine service.” Dr. Lapp paused, then said, “Tell me, are you still in touch with Colonel de Gaulle?”

Mercier hesitated, unsure where Dr. Lapp was leading him, but more than conscious of being led. Toward some variety of treason, he sensed. But to France? Or Germany? Finally, he could think of nothing to say but the truth; it would have to do. “From time to time, a letter,” he said. “We are more colleagues than friends.”

“And do you subscribe to his theories of warfare? I’ve read his book.”

“I’ve read it as well, and I believe it should be taken seriously. I suspect, the next time around, it will not be trenches and wire.”

From Dr. Lapp, a gracious smile: success. What success was that? “I agree,” he said. “But better, far better, if there is no next time around. I wonder if, sometime, we could speak in a more private setting?”

To this, Mercier had to say yes.

“Some people I know may not be so much the enemies of France as you would think. Do I need to elaborate?”

“No, Dr. Lapp. I believe I perfectly understand you.”

Without speaking, Dr. Lapp acknowledged this understanding. Did he bow? Did his heels come together? Not overtly, yet something in his demeanor implied such gestures without the actual performance.

Mercier left the library, collected Madame Dupin, and hurried her out to the car. “Did something happen?” she said.

“It did.” Before Marek could pull away from the curb, Mercier took a pad from his pocket and feverishly made notes, trying to reproduce the conversation with Dr. Lapp.

“Something good, I hope.”

“Maybe,” Mercier said. “It won’t be up to me.”

The following morning, he was in Jourdain’s office as the second secretary was hanging up his coat. When they were settled at the table, Mercier read from his notes. “Astonishing,” Jourdain said. “It sounds like he wants to open some sort of secret channel between us and the Abwehr.”

“Shall I report the contact?”

Jourdain drummed his fingers on his desk. “You’re taking a chance either way. If you report immediately, they may say no. But, if you don’t do it now, eventually you will, and then they’ll have a tantrum.”

“Why on earth would they say no?”

“Caution. Fear of provocation, false information, trickery. Or some variety of internal politics.”

“That would be foolish, Armand.”

“Yes, wouldn’t it though. Because I suspect this contact was carefully planned and could lead to important information. First of all, what was Dr. Lapp even doing there? Surely he wasn’t invited as a stray German businessman. No, he was invited as an Abwehr officer. So, he asked the consul-or someone above him asked someone above the consul-to arrange for both of you to attend the dinner. Don’t forget that Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, is an ally of Germany. May I see the notes?” Mercier handed the pad to Jourdain, who turned a page and said, “Yes, here it is. He manages the conversation in such a way that he makes a seemingly spontaneous reference to the submarine service in Kiel. And that means he’s referring to Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr and captain of a submarine in the Great War. Better, if he truly served in Kiel, he is likely a friend of Canaris-a friend for twenty years. So, he is more than reliable.”

“And Canaris is, potentially, disloyal?”

“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.”