The spies of warsaw (2 page)

wasn't it.

After a few minutes, Uhl moved to her table. Well, that was life for

Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 7

H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 7

you, he'd said. Fate turned evil, often for those who least deserved it.

But, don't feel so bad, luck had gone wrong, but it could go right, it

always did, given time. Ah but he was
sympathique,
she'd said, an aristocratic reflex to use the French word in the midst of her fluent German. They went on for a while, back and forth. Perhaps some day,

she'd said, if he should find himself in Warsaw, he might telephone;

there was the loveliest cafe near her apartment. Perhaps he would, yes,

business took him to Warsaw now and again; he guessed he might be

there soon. Now, would she permit him to order another glass of

wine? Later, she took his hand beneath the table and he was, by the

time they parted, on fire.

Ten days later, from a public telephone at the Breslau railway station, he'd called her. He planned to be in Warsaw next week, at the

Europejski, would she care to join him for dinner? Why yes, yes she

would. Her tone of voice, on the other end of the line, told him all he

needed to know, and by the following Wednesday--those idiots in

Gleiwitz had done it again!--he was on his way to Warsaw. At dinner,

champagne and langoustines, he suggested that they go on to a nightclub after dessert, but first he wanted to visit the room, to change

his tie.

And so, after the cream cake, up they went.

For two subsequent, monthly, visits, all was paradise, but, it

turned out, she was the unluckiest of countesses. In his room at the

hotel, brassy hair tumbled on the pillow, she told him of her latest

misfortune. Now it was her landlord, a hulking beast who leered at

her, made
chk-chk
noises with his mouth when she climbed the stairs,

who'd told her that she had to leave, his latest girlfriend to be installed

in her place. Unless . . . Her misty eyes told him the rest.

Never!
Where Uhl had just been, this swine would not go! He

stroked her shoulder, damp from recent exertions, and said, "Now,

now, my dearest, calm yourself." She would just have to find another

apartment. Well, in fact she'd already done that, found one even nicer

than the one she had now, and very private, owned by a man in Cra-Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 8

8 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

cow, so nobody would be watching her if, for example, her sweet

Edvard wanted to come for a visit. But the rent was two hundred zloty

more than she paid now. And she didn't have it.

A hundred reichsmark,
he thought. "Perhaps I can help," he said.

And he could, but not for long. Two months, maybe three--beyond

that, there really weren't any corners he could cut. He tried to save a

little, but almost all of his salary went to support his family. Still, he

couldn't get the "hulking beast" out of his mind.
Chk-chk.

The blow fell a month later, the man in Cracow had to raise the

rent. What would she do? What was she to do? She would have to stay

with relatives or be out in the street. Now Uhl had no answers. But the

countess did. She had a cousin who was seeing a Frenchman, an army

officer who worked at the French embassy, a cheerful, generous fellow

who, she said, sometimes hired "industrial experts." Was her sweet

Edvard not an engineer? Perhaps he ought to meet this man and see

what he had to offer. Otherwise, the only hope for the poor countess

was to go and stay with her aunt.

And where was the aunt?

Chicago.

Now Uhl wasn't stupid. Or, as he put it to himself, not
that
stupid. He

had a strong suspicion about what was going on. But--and here he

surprised himself--he didn't care. The fish saw the worm and wondered if maybe there might just be a hook in there, but, what a delicious worm! Look at it, the most succulent and tasty worm he'd ever

seen; never would there be such a worm again, not in this ocean.

So . . .

He first telephoned--to, apparently, a private apartment, because

a maid answered in Polish, then switched to German. And, twenty

minutes later, Uhl called again and a meeting was arranged. In an

hour. At a bar in the Praga district, the workers' quarter across the

Vistula from the elegant part of Warsaw. And the Frenchman was, as

promised, as cheerful as could be. Likely Alsatian, from the way he

Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 9

H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 9

spoke German, he was short and tubby, with a soft face that glowed

with self-esteem and a certain tilt to the chin and tension in the upper

lip that suggested an imminent sneer, while a dapper little mustache

did nothing to soften the effect. He was, of course, not in uniform, but

wore an expensive sweater and a blue blazer with brass buttons down

the front.

"Henri," he called himself and, yes, he did sometimes employ

"industrial experts." His job called for him to stay abreast of developments in particular areas of German industry, and he would pay well

for drawings or schematics, any specifications relating to, say, armament or armour. How well? Oh, perhaps five hundred reichsmark a

month, for the right papers. Or, if Uhl preferred, a thousand zloty, or

two hundred American dollars--some of his experts liked having dollars. The money to be paid in cash or deposited in any bank account,

in any name, that Uhl might suggest.

The word
spy
was never used, and Henri was very casual about

the whole business. Very common, such transactions, his German

counterparts did the same thing; everybody wanted to know what was

what, on the other side of the border. And, he should add, nobody got

caught, as long as they were discreet. What was done privately stayed

private. These days, he said, in such chaotic times, smart people

understood that their first loyalty was to themselves and their families.

The world of governments and shifty diplomats could go to hell, if it

wished, but Uhl was obviously a man who was shrewd enough to take

care of his own future. And, if he ever found the arrangement uncomfortable, well, that was that. So, think it over, there's no hurry, get back

in touch, or just forget you ever met me.

And the countess? Was she, perhaps, also an, umm, "expert"?

From Henri, a sophisticated laugh. "My dear fellow! Please! That

sort of thing, well, maybe in the movies."

So, at least the worm wasn't in on it.

Back at the Europejski--a visit to the new apartment lay still in

the future--the countess exceeded herself. Led him to a delight or two

that Uhl knew about but had never experienced; her turn to kneel on

Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 10

1 0 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

the carpet. Rapture. Another glass of champagne and further novelty.

In time he fell back on the pillow and gazed up at the ceiling, elated

and sore. And brave as a lion. He
was
a shrewd fellow--a single

exchange with Henri, and that thousand zloty would see the countess

through her difficulties for the next few months. But life never went

quite as planned, did it, because Henri, not nearly so cheerful as the

first time they'd met, insisted, really did insist, that the arrangement

continue.

And then, in August, instead of Henri, a tall Frenchman called

Andre, quiet and reserved, and much less pleased with himself, and

the work he did, than Henri. Wounded, Uhl guessed, in the Great War,

he leaned on a fine ebony stick, with a silver wolf's head for a grip.

At the Hotel Europejski, in the early evening of an autumn day, Herr

Edvard Uhl finished with his bath and dressed, in order to undress, in

what he hoped would be a little while. The room-service waiter had

delivered a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket, one small lamp was

lit, the drapes were drawn. Uhl moved one of them aside, enough to

see out the window, down to the entry of the hotel, where taxis pulled

up to the curb and the giant doorman swept the doors open with a

genteel bow as the passengers emerged. Fine folks indeed, an army

officer and his lavish girlfriend, a gentleman in top hat and tails, a

merry fellow with a beard and a monocle. Uhl liked this life very well,

this Warsaw life, his dream world away from the brown soot and

lumpy potatoes of Breslau. He would pay for that with a meeting in

the morning; then, home again.

Ah, here she was.

The Milanowek Tennis Club had been founded late one June night in

1937. Something of a lark, at that moment. "Let's have a tennis club!

Why not? The
Milanowek
Tennis Club--isn't it fabulous?" The village of Milanowek was a garden in a pine forest, twenty miles from

Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 11

H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 1 1

Warsaw, famous for its resin-scented air--"mahogany air," the joke

went, because it was expensive to live there and breathe it--famous for

its glorious manor houses surrounded by English lawns, Greek statues, pools, and tennis courts. Famous as well for its residents, the

so-called "heart of the Polish nation," every sort of nobility in the

Alamanach de Gotha,
every sort of wealthy Jewish merchant. If one's

driver happened to be unavailable, a narrow-gauge railway ran out

from the city, stopping first at the village of Podkowa. Podkowa was

the Polish word for horseshoe, which led the unknowing to visions of

a tiny ancient village, where a peasant blacksmith labored at his forge,

but they would soon enough learn that Podkowa had been designed, at

the turn of the century, by the English architect Arthur Howard, with

houses situated in the pattern of a horseshoe and a common garden at

the center.

The manor house--owned by Prince Kaz, formally Kazimierz,

and Princess Toni, Antowina--had three tennis courts, for the noble

Brosowicz couple, with family connections to various branches of the

Radziwills and Poniatowskis, didn't have
one
of anything. This taste

for variety, long a tradition on both sides of the family, included

manor houses--their other country estate had six miles of property

but lay far from Warsaw--as well as apartments in Paris and London

and vacation homes--the chalet in Saint Moritz, the palazzo in

Venice--and extended to servants, secretaries, horses, dogs, and lovers.

But for Prince Kaz and Princess Toni, the best thing in the world was

to have, wherever they happened to be at the moment, lots of friends.

The annual production of Christmas cards went on for days.

At the Milanowek house, their friends came to play tennis. The

entire nation was passionate for the game; in Poland, only a single golf

course was to be found but, following the re-emergence of the country,

there were tennis courts everywhere. And so they decided, late that

June night, to make it official. "It's the Milanowek Tennis Club now,"

they would tell their friends, who were honored to be included.

"Come and play whenever you like; if we're not here, Janusz will let

you in."
What a good idea,
the friends thought. They scheduled their

Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 12

1 2 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

matches by telephone and stopped by at all hours of the day and early

evening: the baron of this and the marchioness of that, the nice Jewish dentist and his clever wife, a general of the army and a captain of

industry, a socialist member of the Sejm, the Polish parliament, the

royalist Minister of Posts and Telegraph, various elegant young people who didn't do much of anything, and the newly arrived French

military attache, the dashing Colonel Mercier.

In fact a lieutenant colonel, and wounded in two wars, he didn't

dash very well. He did the best he could, usually playing doubles, but

still, a passing shot down the line would often elude him--if it didn't

go out, the tennis gods punishing his opponent for taking advantage

of the colonel's limping stride.

That Thursday afternoon in October, the vast sky above the

steppe dark and threatening, Colonel Mercier was partnered by

Princess Toni herself, in her late thirties as perfect and pretty as a doll,

an effect heightened by rouged cheeks and the same straw-colored hair

as Prince Kaz. They did look, people said, like brother and sister. And,

you know, sometimes in these noble families . . . No, it wasn't true,

but the similarity was striking.

"Good try, Jean-Francois," she called out, as the ball bounced

away, brushing her hair off her forehead and turning her racquet over

a few times as she awaited service.

Across the net, a woman called Claudine, the wife of a Belgian

diplomat, prepared to serve. Here one could see that the doubles

teams were fairly constituted, for Claudine had only her right arm; the

other--her tennis shirt sleeve pinned up below her shoulder--had

been lost to a German shell in the Great War, when she'd served as a

nurse. Standing at the back line, she held ball and racquet in one hand,