by Alan Furst
“French battle plan?” Mercier said. “Did we see that?”
“I don’t know; that was in 1934, before I was posted here, but we might have. Still, three years old. General Staff plans change all the time. It wouldn’t be worth much now, certainly not worth annoying the Poles.”
They rode in silence for a time, then Mercier said, “Is anything wrong, Armand?”
Jourdain looked at Mercier, not pleased that whatever it was showed. “I’ve lost one of my people,” he said.
“Bad luck,” Mercier said.
“Can’t be helped, it does happen, but it’s always a shock. He went to work one morning, then, pfft, gone.”
“In Germany?”
“Here.” Jourdain flicked his eyes toward Marek’s back—he was trusted, but not that trusted.
“Anything I can do, you’ll let me know.”
“I’ll have to write a dispatch. Paris will be irritated—how much I’m not sure, but they won’t like it.”
“Well, that makes two of us.”
“Your little foray in the west? Shooting at German border guards?”
“Bruner was incensed.”
Jourdain laughed. “Nothing quite so safe and warm as an office in Paris.”
“Yes, a lovely fall afternoon, a window looking out on the Champ-de-Mars. ‘Merde, look what Mercier’s done!’ ” He smiled and spread his hands; life was hopeless. “To hell with them, Armand.”
Jourdain’s face showed agreement. “I just feel bad about it. He was a decent fellow, the real reptiles always seem to survive.”
14 November, 8:22 A.M. In Glogau, in the SD office above the toy shop on Heimerstrasse, one of the secretaries in Major Voss’s office answered the telephone, then passed the call immediately to Voss.
“Yes?”
The voice identified itself as an SS sergeant stationed at the passport kontrol at the Glogau railway station. “We have made a possible identification, sir, of your person of interest.”
“Better than the one last week? This is turning into a comedy.”
“We hope so, Herr Sturmbannführer. The subject’s passport is issued to one Edvard Uhl, U—H—L. He left on the eight-fourteen express to Warsaw, and he fits the description provided by your office.”
“So did the last three, sergeant.”
“We regret the errors, Herr Sturmbannführer.”
“Very well, let’s hope you’re right, this time.”
Voss hung up. He shouted to one of his lieutenants; the man came running into his office. “We have another one—half the men in Germany have bulbous noses. The name this time is Edvard Uhl, find out immediately who he is, but first get somebody on the eight-fourteen express to Warsaw.”
The lieutenant looked at his watch, panic in his eyes.
Idiot. In the mock-gentle voice a frustrated parent might use on a stupid child, Voss said, “Send a wireless telegraph message to Zoller, in Leszno, and tell him to get on the train. The Poles take their time checking passports; they won’t be leaving Leszno for thirty minutes. And make very sure, lieutenant, that genius Zoller takes with him the description we’ve issued. Would you do that for me, lieutenant? I would so, appreciate, it, if, you . . . would!” Voss resumed his normal growl. “And as for information on this man”—Voss looked at his watch—“you have twenty minutes.”
The lieutenant, palms sweating, ran out of the office. “Bar-gumf,” he said, under his breath, the German version of a frog’s croak.
He was back in eighteen minutes, having bullied clerks—Voss could hear him shouting on the phone—in government bureaux from Glogau to Berlin. The major looked up from a railway timetable spread across his desk.
“Herr Edvard Uhl is a resident of Breslau,” the lieutenant said. “I have the address. He is employed by Adler Ironworks in the same city, where he is the senior engineer on a tank design project for the Krupp company. According to his employer, he is this morning at the office of a subcontractor in Gleiwitz.”
“And the photograph?”
“On the way, Herr Sturmbannführer, by motorcycle courier from Breslau.”
“Get that woman in here, immediately. Anything else?”
“Herr Uhl has received an exit visa, to visit South Africa. For himself only, not his family.”
Voss nodded, and rubbed his hands. “A scenic country, lieutenant. But he’ll never see it.”
15 November, 5:45 A.M. Standing amid a silent crowd of factory workers, Mercier rode the trolley to Praga for his meeting with the engineer Uhl. It was snowing, not the massive snowfall of the Polish winter, but a taste of the future—big, lazy flakes drifting through the gray light, the street white in some places, wet and shiny in others. Would Uhl show up for the meeting? Maybe not. He’d wobbled badly, the last time out. So, probably not. Mercier put it to himself as a bet and decided he’d bet no. And then? Then nothing. Uhl would never be betrayed to the Germans, not by him, not by anyone. Because if Uhl was compromised, all he’d given them would be compromised as well, not that the Germans could do much about it. Change the tank design? The other possibility, that Uhl might have been arrested, was, to Mercier’s thinking, unlikely. He’d sent the promised postal card—Hans was enjoying his visit to Warsaw, which meant all was well in Germany.
Mercier stepped off the trolley car at the third stop in Praga, walked past the burnt-sugar smell of the candy factory, and down the narrow alley to the nameless bar. Particularly nameless that morning; the lone drinkers lost in their shot glasses, the bartender bored with the morning paper, one office worker in a shabby suit, untasted coffee going cold in his cup. And, bet lost, Edvard Uhl, sitting at a table in the far corner.
After they’d greeted one another, Mercier said, “And the train ride yesterday, Herr Uhl, how was it? Packed with Gestapo men?”
“All was normal,” Uhl said. “From Gleiwitz to Glogau, only a few passengers. Then, on the express to Warsaw, a crowd, but nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual people looking into the compartment to see if there were any seats.”
Mercier nodded: there, that’s better. “So now, to work, Herr Uhl.”
Uhl had brought the formula for the case-hardened steel to be used for the new tank bodies, as Mercier had requested. “It’s in here,” Uhl said, gesturing toward his newspaper. “I had to copy it by hand, the roneo machine was in use all morning.” Otherwise, not much new in Breslau: design work on the Ausf B version of the Panzerkampfwagen 1 continued, none of the specifications had changed, the final engineering blueprints would soon be completed.
“Our next meeting will be the fourteenth of December,” Mercier said, feeling for the envelope of zloty in the pocket of his battered overcoat. “I will look forward to copies of the blueprints.”
“The fourteenth?” Uhl said.
Here we go again.
“Not the fourteenth, I’m afraid,” Uhl said. “I cannot come to Warsaw until the night of the seventeenth.”
“Why not the fourteenth?”
“I must go to Schramberg, on business.”
“Schramberg?”
“In the Black Forest. There are three of us going, from the ironworks, all engineers. We are to observe tank exercises; then we will be asked for opinions and recommendations. There will be a dinner that night, at the inn in Schramberg, with Wehrmacht officials, technical people, and we leave the following morning, the fifteenth. So, you see I cannot come to Warsaw until the night of the seventeenth, and we can meet the following morning.”
“Where is there terrain for tanks, Herr Uhl, in the Black Forest?” To Mercier, it sounded like a story—this little sneak of a man was up to something. What?
“I don’t know where, exactly, but I was told the maneuvers will take place in the forest.”
“Tanks don’t go in forests, Herr Uhl. There are trees in the forest, tanks can’t get through.”
“Yes, so I thought. Perhaps they wish to have us suggest modifications that might make it possible. The fact is, I don’t know what they’
re doing, but, in any case, I’ve been ordered to attend, so I must.”
Surely you must. “You’ll write us a report, Herr Uhl, about the exercises. Be thorough, please: formations, speeds, angles of ascent and descent, how long it takes to go a certain distance. And, also, the names of the Wehrmacht officials. Do you need to make a note to yourself?”
Uhl shook his head. “I know what you want.”
“Then we’ll meet again on the morning of the eighteenth.”
Uhl agreed, though Mercier sensed a growing reluctance, as though the day would come, soon enough, when these meetings would end. He slid the envelope into his newspaper and received the steel formula in return. Uhl signed the receipt, then left the bar.
Mercier lit a Mewa, his mind working on what Uhl had told him. Just precisely what forest were the Germans thinking about? The mountains on the border with Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland region? There was no forest on the frontier between Germany and Denmark, as far as he knew. And the Polish steppe had virtually been made for tank formations. Where else? The forests between Germany and France? Under the artillery of the Maginot Line forts? Suicide. Austria? Hitler might attack Austria, but it would be a political, not a military, invasion.
That left what? That left the Ardennes, in Belgium, north of the Maginot Line. No. For a thousand reasons, a very remote possibility. But, he thought, somewhere.
Mercier finished his coffee, bad as it was. The bar felt oppressive; he disliked waiting for Uhl to leave the area and kept glancing at his watch. Finally, twenty minutes—well, almost. The doctrine on agent meetings said last to arrive, first to leave, but Mercier did it his own way, and, to date, nothing had gone wrong.
Out in the street, he hurried through the floating snowflakes, heading toward the tram stop. He was anxious to return to the apartment, to change out of his disguise, this old coat and hat, and be off to the embassy, where he could look at his maps. He peered ahead, to make sure he didn’t catch up to Uhl, though anyone dawdling in this weather seemed unlikely, and Uhl had to get his train back to Breslau. Did he use the same tram stop? Mercier couldn’t decide; the alley lay almost midway between two stops. As he neared the corner where he took the trolley, he heard its bell ringing behind him and broke into as much of a run as he could manage. In the event, the motorman saw him loping along and waited, and Mercier thanked him as he climbed aboard.
He started to move through the standing crowd toward the rear platform, then stopped dead. Uhl! At the center of the car. Well, they would just have to ignore each other. Evidently, Uhl had gone to the other stop, and the trolley was running late. Mercier found room on the opposite side of the aisle and stared out the grimy window, then chanced one fast look at Uhl. What was this? He wasn’t alone. Holding the back of a wicker seat with one hand, briefcase under his arm, he was engaged in animated conversation with—who? An angel. That was the word that sprang into his head. Because she stood on Uhl’s left and was turned toward him, Mercier could see her face, could see that she was very young, barely twenty, and, even in a city of striking blond women, extraordinary—innocent as a child, the rabbit-fur collar of her coat turned up, her long flaxen hair set off by a knit cap, sky blue, with a tassel. Standing close to Uhl, face upturned, she was rapt, transfixed by what he was saying, laughing, gloved hand over her mouth, then giving her hair a seductive shake. Had this just begun? On the trolley? Mercier guessed not—it had started at the tram stop. Again she laughed, leaning toward Uhl, almost, but not quite, touching him. Was she a prostitute? No sign of that, to Mercier’s eyes. Or, if she was, an extremely rare version of the breed, not the sort who would pick up a man at a tram stop at six-thirty on a snowy morning.
Immediately, Mercier sensed that something was wrong. He forced himself to look away, at a row of brick factories sliding past the window, until the trolley slowed for the next stop. Then he stole another glance. If they got off together, what would he do?
But they stayed on the tram. Which rolled over the bridge that crossed the Vistula, the snow swirling in the wind above the dark river. Now it was her turn to talk, her face concentrated, wanting the man she’d met, older, experienced, to take her seriously. Was she speaking Polish? Did Uhl speak the language? Breslau had forever been a disputed city—Wroclaw, as far as the Poles were concerned—and it was possible that Uhl spoke some Polish. A woman standing next to Mercier—he could smell the damp wool of her coat—caught him staring and gave him a look: mind your own business. He turned back to the window. The trolley was now approaching his stop, in central Warsaw, and, as the motorman pulled on the cord that rang the bell, Mercier glanced up the aisle and saw that Uhl and the blond girl were moving toward the rear platform.
Mercier left by the front door, circled the tram—thus shielded from Uhl and the girl—headed quickly for the shops across the street, and chose one with a set-back entry. Like some sly private detective, he thought, lurking in a doorway. A fancy perfume shop, as it happened, great clouds of scent rolling out each time the door opened. When the trolley pulled away, he spotted the blue cap in the crowd waiting to transfer to another line. Where the hell were they going? Not to the Europejski. A taxi drove up to the front of the shop, a pair of women in the back, and Mercier arrived in time to hold the door as they emerged. “Oh, why thank you,” the first one said. Mercier mumbled “You’re welcome” and slid into the seat.
“Sir?” the driver said. He was in his twenties, with a well-oiled pompadour.
“Don’t go anywhere, not just yet,” Mercier said. “Some friends of mine are waiting for a trolley; we’ll just follow along behind.”
“Friends?” A wise-guy grin, who are you kidding?
“Yes, it’s a surprise.”
The driver snickered. Mercier peeled twenty zloty off the wad in his pocket—for agent meetings, one carried plenty of money. The driver thanked him, and they waited together, the ill-tuned engine coughing away in neutral.
Waited for ten very long minutes. At last, a trolley arrived and the blue cap climbed aboard, followed by Uhl. “That’s the one we want,” Mercier said.
As the driver put the taxi in gear and fell in behind the tram, he said, “It’s the number four line. Up to Muranow.”
Not bad at this, the driver, he’d evidently done it before, pulling over well to the rear of the trolley each time it stopped. The tram tracks curved into Nalewki, the main street of the Jewish quarter: kosher butchers, pushcarts piled with old clothes or pots and pans, men in caftans and fur hats, hurrying along through the snow. Mercier could see that the crowd of passengers inside the trolley had thinned out—had Uhl and the girl somehow gotten away? No, the next stop was Gesia, Goose street, and they appeared on the rear platform as the trolley slowed. Mercier put his head down.
“That them?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus, look at her.”
Mercier handed over more zloty and climbed out. He found himself in front of an open stall on the cobblestones, a chicken-seller, scrawny birds hung by their heads from hooks, and a smell that almost made his eyes tear. To Mercier, it now seemed that the girl was leading the way, her arm looped in Uhl’s, walking quickly. Mercier hung back, close to the buildings, ready to step into a doorway if one of them turned around. Gesia was an old street—three-story buildings, some wood, others gray stone darkened by time and coal smoke—where every shop called out to potential customers: a clock hung out over the sidewalk advertised a watchmaker; a painted sign showed a pair of eyes wearing spectacles; M. PERLMUTTER—FINE GLOVES.
HOTEL ORLA.
Now Mercier knew where they were going. He dropped back well behind them as they crossed the street, past a crowd of schoolboys with curly sideburns and yarmulkes, past a horse-drawn coal wagon, the driver, wearing a long leather apron, shoveling coal down a chute that led into the hotel’s cellar. The Orla—eagle—had the look of hourly rates and no questions asked; as Warsaw slang put it, a Paris hotel. Mercier stationed himself where he could see the entry, using the do
orway of a shop with stacks of old books piled high in the window, some with Hebrew writing on their spines. After a time, the proprietor of the shop came to his door and had a look at Mercier, then nodded to himself, a faint look of disgust on his face—so here’s another one, the watchers of the Hotel Orla.
•
It was now after nine in the morning, and Uhl, having to return to the Europejski for his valise, would miss the express to Breslau. Well, there was always another train, and Uhl, who had fallen to the charms of the Countess Sczelenska, now took advantage of a new opportunity, but that was the way of the world—Uhl’s world, at any rate. An opportunity much too good to be true, Mercier thought, but maybe he was seeing the same phantoms that had spooked the engineer on his last trip to Warsaw.
The Orla was busy—a couple hurried out of the hotel, and, a minute later, another. An officious little fellow, all business, came striding down Gesia, looked left and right—feeling guilty, monsieur?—then went inside. A luxurious black Opel, a German car with Polish license plates, drew up in front of the hotel and waited there, engine idling. Mercier shifted his stance, stared at the books in the window, watched the morning shoppers go by, the women’s heads covered with shawls, string bags in hand.