by Alan Furst
Forty minutes later, the film ended and they had to leave the theatre. The storm had not abated. They walked quickly, her hands in the pockets of her coat; neither one of them wanted to be the first to speak. Then, as the silence grew heavy, Mercier saw a horse cab. He waved and shouted, the driver stopped, and Mercier took Anna’s hand and helped her into the carriage. This might have been an opportunity sent down by the gods of romance, but it wasn’t to be. Anna was quiet, and thoughtful. Mercier tried to start a light conversation, but she, politely enough, made it clear that talking was not what she wanted to do, so he sat in silence as the intrepid horse, its blanket covered with melting hail, clopped along the avenue until Anna directed the coachman to turn into the street that Mercier remembered from the night he’d taken her to the Europejski.
He helped her out of the carriage as he asked the driver to wait—he would take the cab back home—then the two of them stood facing each other. Before he could say anything, she put her hand flat against his chest and held it there—a gesture that silenced him, yet somehow, and he felt it strongly, meant also attraction—desire mixed with regret. He could see in her face that she was troubled: about what had happened in the movie theatre, about what had happened all evening. “Good night,” she said, “Jean-François.”
“May I see you again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe better if we don’t.”
“Then, good night.”
“Yes, good night.”
In Paris, during Mercier’s meeting with the people at the Deuxième Bureau, the Wehrmacht’s planned tank maneuvers at Schramberg had been discussed at length. And so, on the tenth of December, four German agents of the Service des Renseignements had been sent into the town: an elderly gentleman and his wife, who were to celebrate their wedding anniversary by walking the low hills of the Black Forest; a salesman of kitchenwares from Stuttgart, calling on the local shops; and a representative of UFA, the Berlin film production company, in search of locations for a new version of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales.
Not a bad choice for a fairy tale, the older part of Schramberg: winding streets, half-timbered cottages with sloping rooves, shop signs in Gothic lettering. Adorable, really. And the townspeople were eager to talk, to praise their charming Schramberg, understanding perfectly the benefits to be had from film crews, who famously threw money about like straw. The best kind of business: they came, they annoyed everyone, but then they went away and left their money behind.
So the local dignitaries, the mayor, the councilmen, went on and on, describing the gemütlich delights of the town. Though this was, please understand, not the best moment to visit. The Wehrmacht was coming, everybody knew it, one of the roads that wound up into the hills had been closed off, all the rooms at the inn had been reserved, and a few supply trucks were already there, with more to arrive at any moment. Oh well. Still, the good gentleman could see for himself how picturesque the forest was, and, if the area up on the Rabenhügel, Raven Hill, was torn up by the army’s machines, there were plenty of other places just as scenic. More scenic! And would the company be hiring local people to perform in the film? In a crowd, perhaps? Or even, say, as a mayor? Naturally they would, said the UFA man, it was always done that way. What about those two hefty fellows, seated by the window in the Schwarzwald coffeehouse, having their second breakfast? Oh no, they weren’t local! They had just arrived, they were here to make sure that, that—um—that everything went well. Wink.
For the anniversary couple, in loden-green outfits and matching alpine hats—a vigorous yodel could not be far in the future—the same story, as they produced their touring map for the lady who’d rented them a room. No, no, not there, that was forbidden, until after the fourteenth. You cannot go east of the town, to the Rabenhügel, but to the south—ah, there it was even lovelier, the magnificent pines, the tiny red birds that stayed the winter; south, much better, and would they care to have her make a picnic to take along? They would? Ach, wunderbar! She would see to it right away.
And so for the salesman, in his Panhard automobile with sample pots and pans in the backseat, headed over to the town of Waldmossingen. Halted at a sawhorse barrier manned by three soldiers, he was told that this road was closed, he would have to go back to Schramberg, and then down to Hardt and circle around. Of course he knew the way, and only took this road for the scenery. Was this permanent, this road-closing? No, sir, only for a few days. “Heil Hitler!”
“Heil Hitler!”
13 December. Mercier took the early LOT flight to Zurich, then the train to Basel and a taxi to the French consulate. Climbing the stairs to the consul’s office, he was his darkest self, tense and brooding and in no mood for polite conversation, a pre-combat condition he knew all too well. But the consul, a Mediterranean Frenchman with a goatee, was just what the doctor ordered. “So, colonel, a stroll in the German woods?”
Maybe the best approach, Mercier thought, irony in the face of danger. And it would be dangerous. The Wehrmacht wouldn’t care much for a foreign military attaché observing maneuvers—there to discover strengths and weaknesses, what certain tanks could do in the forest and what they couldn’t. Because, if it came to war, such intelligence would lead to casualties, and could be the difference between victory and defeat.
The people at 2, bis, in receipt of reports from their German agents, had acted quickly, sending to Warsaw maps of the Schramberg district: the roads, the walking paths in the forest, the hill known as the Rabenhügel, and two nearby hills with a view of the site to be used for maneuvers. A coded wireless message from the General Staff Meteorological Service predicted a nighttime temperature of 28 degrees Fahrenheit, reaching 35 degrees by noon, and a possible light dusting of snow on the morning of the fourteenth. Mercier had his own field glasses, and the rest of his equipment, as promised in Paris, had been brought down to Basel by courier; a suitcase stood behind the consul’s office door.
The consul hefted it up onto a table, handed Mercier the key, and watched with interest as the contents were brought out: a Swiss army greatcoat—its insignia long ago removed—a peaked wool hat with earflaps, a blanket roll, a knapsack. When Mercier unwrapped a Pathé Baby, the 9.5-millimeter movie camera, the consul said, “Thought of everything, haven’t they.”
With the camera, a typed sheet of instructions. Simple enough: one cranked the handle; the action was operated by a spring. One roll of film was in the camera, ten more could be found in the knapsack; directions for reloading followed, with a diagram.
“What about distance?” the consul said.
“I would assume the lens has been refitted. Otherwise, they’ll have the march of the tiny toys. But even so, it can be enlarged at the laboratory. At least I think it can.”
“So, just aim and press the button?”
Mercier pointed the camera at the consul, who waved and smiled, then went to a closet and produced a six-foot walking staff fashioned from a tree branch. “I won’t tell you what we went through to obtain this, but Paris insisted that you have it.”
“War wound.”
“Then it will help. But please, colonel, try not to lose it,” the consul said. “Now, you’ll be leaving at dusk, your driver will arrive in an hour. If you’d like to rest until then, we’ve set aside a room for you. Care for something to eat?”
“No, thank you.”
The consul nodded. “It was always that way for me, in la dernière.” The phrase was common among people who’d been there, it meant the last one. He opened a drawer in his desk, produced a Swiss passport, and handed it to Mercier. Albert Ducasse, from Lausanne, thus a French-speaking Swiss. The photograph, applied at 2, bis, was a duplicate of the one in his dossier in Paris. The consul cleared his throat and said, “They’ve instructed me to ask you to leave your French passport with this office.”
Whose idea was that, Bruner’s? Out of uniform, on foreign ground, in covert surveillance, he was, by the rules, a spy. But out of uniform, with a false identity—that made him a real sp
y.
“Of course,” the consul said, “if you are caught, in that situation, you could be shot. Technically speaking, that is.”
“Yes, I know,” Mercier said. And gave the consul his passport.
In the early dusk of winter, Mercier climbed into an Opel with German plates. The young driver called himself Stefan and said he was from an émigré family that had settled in Besançon. “In ’thirty-three,” he added. “The minute Hitler took power, my father got the suitcases down. He was a socialist politician, and he knew what was coming. Then, after we settled in France, the people you work for showed up right away, and they’ve kept me busy ever since.”
They crossed into Germany easily enough, Stefan using a German passport, and drove north on the road to Tübingen that passed through Schramberg. “About an hour and half,” Stefan said. “I’ll take you into the town and out on the forest road, where I’ll pick you up tomorrow night, so mark the spot carefully.”
“Before the roadblock.”
“Well before. It’s one-point-six miles from the Schramberg town hall.”
“And then, tomorrow night . . .”
“At nineteen-oh-five hours. Stay in the woods until then, I’ll be there on the minute. Is it only a one-day maneuver?”
“Likely more, but they want me out by tomorrow night.”
“A good idea,” Stefan said. “Don’t be greedy, that’s what I always say. And you’ll want to watch out for the foresters.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep my head down.”
“They’re always in the woods, cutting, pruning.” After a moment he said, “It’s a strange nation, when you think about it. Fussy. Rules for everything—the branches of each tree must only just touch the neighboring branches, and so on.”
“How do you come to know that?”
“Everybody knows that. In Germany.”
They drove on, through pretty Schwabisch villages. Every one of them had its Christbaum, a tall evergreen in the center of town, with candles lit as darkness fell, and a star on top. There were also candles in every window, and red-berried holly wreaths hung on the doors. By the side of the road, at the entry to each village, stood a sign attacking the Jews. This was, Mercier thought, a kind of competition, for none of the signs were the same. Juden dirfen nicht bleiben—“Jews must not stay here”—was followed by Wer die Juden unterstuzt fordert den Kommunissmus, “Who helps the Jews helps communism,” then the dramatic “This flat-footed stranger, with kinky hair and hooked nose, he shall not our land enjoy, he must leave, he must leave.”
“Perhaps an amateur poet, that one,” Stefan said.
“One publishes where one can,” Mercier said.
“Bastards,” Stefan said. “I grew up in the middle of it. Hard to believe, at first. Then it didn’t go away, it grew.” He shifted into second gear, the Opel climbing a grade where forest closed in on the darkening road. He had been rambling along in rough-hewn émigré French, now he switched to native German and said, quietly, “Ihr sollt in der Hölle schmoren!” Burn in hell.
Twenty minutes later, they reached the town of Schramberg. A few Wehrmacht officers wandered along the winding streets, pausing to look in the shop windows, out for a pre-dinner walk to stir the appetite. In honor of the army’s visit, swastika flags lined the square in front of the ancient town hall, their deep red a handsome contrast to the green Christbaum, its candles flickering in the evening breeze. Stefan turned right on the street just past the town hall, took a good look at the odometer, and then, as the street turned into a narrow paved road and the town fell away behind them, switched off the headlights. “They don’t need to know we’re coming,” he said, peering into the gathering darkness, squinting at the odometer. Finally he slowed and let the car roll to a stop. “At the center of this curve,” he said. “See the rock? That’s our mark.”
As Mercier reached into the backseat for his walking staff, Stefan opened the glove compartment and handed him a thick bar of chocolate. “Take this along,” he said. “You might want it.”
Mercier thanked him and, making sure no headlights were visible, stepped out of the car and started to cross the road. Stefan rolled the window down and, his voice close to a whisper, said, “Good hunting. Remember, nineteen-oh-five hours, by the rock.” In two moves he reversed the car and drove back toward Schramberg.
Pure night. Mercier thought of it that way. Faint stars, wisps of cloud, and not a sound to be heard. He reached into his pocket and found his pencil sketch of the Deuxième Bureau’s map. He had to climb the hill above the road, turn east, and walk a distance just short of two miles, descending the first hill, climbing a second, and descending again, to a point just below the crest, where there would be, presumably, a view of the tank maneuvers. For the moment he was warm enough, though he could feel the first bite of the night-borne chill. Wool hat, surplus greatcoat, walking staff, and knapsack—the Swiss hiker, if anyone were to see him, but it was planned that nobody would. And, he thought, with a camera in his knapsack, they’d better not. He entered the forest and started to climb, his footsteps almost silent on the pine-needle litter on the forest floor.
His knee ached soon enough, and he was grateful for the long staff. When he heard the whine of an approaching car, he moved behind a tree, then watched the headlights as they swept along the road, sped around the curve, and disappeared. That would be, he thought, the changing of the guard at the roadblock. Ten minutes later, the car returned, headed back to Schramberg, and Mercier resumed his climb.
The forest never thickened, it was as Stefan had described, a woodland treated as a kind of garden, every tree identified and carefully nurtured. Even fallen tree branches were removed, perhaps taken away by the poor, for use as firewood. Suddenly some animal, sensing his presence, went running off across the hillside. Mercier never saw it; a wild boar, perhaps, or a deer. Too bad he didn’t have his dogs with him, they would have smelled it long before it broke cover, frozen into motionless statues, each with left foreleg raised, tail straight, nose pointed toward the game: that’s dinner, right over there. Then, when the rifle shot didn’t follow, they would look at him, waiting for a release from point.
How he missed them! Well, he’d see them when he went home for Christmas. If he managed to get there. And, even if he did, his daughter Gabrielle probably wouldn’t join him. She’d often meant to, but then her busy life intervened. And Annemarie wouldn’t be there. Not ever again. So it would be just him and the dogs, and Fernand and Lisette, who lived in the house and maintained the property—it belonged more to them now than to him. And they’re getting older, he thought, hired by his grandfather, a long time ago. What, he wondered, would they make of Anna Szarbek? Well, that he’d never know. Stop and rest. He put a hand on a pine tree, forcing himself to stand still until his breathing returned to normal. Whatever drove him, nameless spirit, had been forcing him uphill at full speed.
Did he truly need to be on this hillside? Any trusted agent could have operated the camera, but the people at 2, bis were determined he should himself stand in for his lost spy, and he’d shown them every enthusiasm. Still, it was—oh, not exactly dangerous, France wasn’t at war with Germany, but potentially an embarrassing failure, more a threat to his career than his life.
Again he walked. Confronted by a ravine, with a frozen streamlet at the bottom, he slid down one side and then, a bad moment, had to claw his way up the opposing slope. An hour later he was midway down the second hillside, the trees on the facing hill silver in the light of the rising moon. He had a look with his field glasses, searching for an advance unit, but saw nothing. So he unrolled his blanket and sat on it, back braced against an oak tree, ate some chocolate, and settled in to wait for dawn.
Slow hours. Sometimes he dozed, the cold woke him, then he dozed again, finally waking with a start, face numb, hands so stiff they didn’t quite work. He struggled to his feet, rubbing his hands as he walked back and forth, trying to get warm. His watch said 4:22 but there was, a week before
the winter solstice, no sign of dawn. In the black sky above him, the stars were sharp points of light, the air cold and clean and faintly scented by the forest. Then, in the distance, he heard the faint rumble of engines.
He concentrated on the sound and discovered it was not coming from the direction of Schramberg, west of him, but from the north. Of course! The Wehrmacht hadn’t bothered to set up a tank park on the outskirts of town—a long, complicated business involving commissary, medical units, and fuel tankers—they were coming from an army base, likely somewhere near the city of Tübingen.
He rolled up his blanket and climbed until he found a thick forest shrub, branches bare for the winter but still good cover. The sound rose steadily, reaching finally an enormous crescendo: the roar of huge unmuffled engines and the loud clatter of rolling treads. A tank column, stretched far down the road. How many? Thirty tanks in a formation was common; he had to guess there were at least that many. The earth beneath Mercier trembled as the first lights of the column appeared on the road, and the air filled with the raw smell of gasoline. Two staff cars appeared at the foot of the Rabenhügel, then a tank, and two more, the rest of the column obscured from view by the curve of the hill.
An officer climbed out of the leading staff car, signaled with his hand, and, moments later, Mercier heard the stuttering whine of motorcycles and saw moving lights among the trees. He tracked them with his field glasses, the riders gray forms, working up the shallow grade, skidding on the pine-needle carpet, steadying themselves with a foot on the ground as they wove through the trees. Suddenly, his peripheral vision caught the motion of a silhouette, uphill from his position and moving fast, which he managed to catch a glimpse of just before it vanished: a small bear, whimpering with panic as it ran, low to the ground, in flight from the invasion of its forest. When he again looked at the road, a few officers and tank commanders had gathered by one of the staff cars, smoking and talking, playing a flashlight on a map spread out on the car’s hood.