by Alan Furst
They had refused payment, their spying was an act of conscience. Sincere Christians, German Lutherans, they had watched with horror as
the Nazis violated every precept sacred to them. But then, what to do
about it? They could not leave Germany, for a list of commonplace
domestic reasons, so they had traveled up to Paris, a year earlier, taken
a room at an inexpensive hotel, written a note to the General Staff
headquarters, and settled in to wait. It took a week, then two men
appeared at the hotel, and the couple offered their services. No, they
didn't care to be paid. They had prayed together for hours, they
explained, down on their knees, trying to make this decision, but now
it was made. The people who led Germany were evil, and they were
obliged, by their faith, to act against them. "Very well," said one of
the men. "Give us your address in Germany. We'll see about who you
are and then, in time, someone will get in touch with you."
Three months later, someone did.
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THE
BLACK
FRONT
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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,
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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.
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"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
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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 hou
se.
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.
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"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 horsedrawn 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
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days, famously making people crazy--an old law excused crimes committed from madness brought on by the incessant moaning of the mis-
tral 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
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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 est-elle 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 pill
boxes 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
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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 elevenfifteen, 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.