The spies of warsaw (22 page)

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 pineneedle 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

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dered, 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 Tubingen.

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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 Rabenhugel, 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.

Army time.
Nothing much going on. Waiting. Twenty minutes

later, a pair of Mercedes automobiles came up the road from the

direction of Schramberg, a civilian in an overcoat got out, gave a
Heil

salute to what Mercier took to be the senior officer, and received one,

a rather casual version of the raised arm, in return. The officer

pointed, the civilian got back in his car, and it drove away. Perhaps the

engineers, Mercier guessed, there to observe the maneuvers.

At eight o'clock sharp, the rising sun casting shadows on the hills,

the tanks made their first attempt at climbing the Rabenhugel.

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*

Mercier, working quickly, reached into his knapsack and brought out

the camera, made sure that the handle was fully wound, pointed it at

the climbing tanks, and pressed the button. In the wall of engine noise

he could barely hear it. Also, some other sound distracted him; he

puzzled for a moment, and that almost did for him. A drone, only just

audible above the engine thunder, somewhere above him.
Merde,
that

was an airplane! He dove to the earth, slid beneath the branches of the

shrub, and rolled onto his back.

Circling lazily in the morning sky, a Fieseler Storch reconnaissance

plane, small and slow, looking like a fugitive from the 1914 air war, but

lethal. Had they seen him? Was the radio alert to a staff car below

already sent? He covered his face with the gray-green sleeve of his

greatcoat and lay perfectly still. The plane's circuit took it north, then,

coming back toward him, it descended, now less than a hundred feet

above the hilltop. At its slowest speed, it skimmed over his head; then,

thirty seconds later, the drone faded away to the west. But Mercier

stayed beneath his shrub, as the plane returned once more, now gaining altitude. For fifteen minutes it circled the site of the maneuvers,

then disappeared.

By the time Mercier was back to his cover position behind the

shrub, the tanks were spread out across the hill, a few hundred feet

above the road, but the exercise was not going well. He could see at

least six of them, the light model Uhl had been working on. Down by

the road, one of the tanks had failed immediately; the crew had the

rear hatch cover off and were kneeling on the deck in order to work on

the engine. A second had climbed thirty feet, then stopped, blue

exhaust streaming from its vent as the commander crawled between

the treads to check on ground clearance. A third had tried to mow

down a pine, had broken it off, then got hung up on the stump and

thrown a tread. The other three had reached the crest of the hill and

were now out of sight. But Mercier could see that all was not well for

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one tank at least, because, in the distance to the north, a column of

black smoke rose slowly above the forest.

They worked at it all morning, and for most of the afternoon. Now

and again, the Fieseler Storch returned for thirty minutes, and Mercier

had to hide beneath the shrub. Then, late in the afternoon, the weak

December sun low in the sky, they tried something new. From the

north, a blue Opel sedan drove up and parked next to the staff cars.

This was, clearly, somebody's personal car: a few years old, its paint

job faded and dusty, a dent on the door panel. The driver, a young

Wehrmacht
officer--a lieutenant; Mercier could see the insignia with

his field glasses--talked to the senior officers for a time, then took a

length of iron pipe, long enough so that its end stuck out the rolleddown rear window, from the car. While the others watched, hands

clasped behind their backs in a classic officer pose, he knelt by the

front of the Opel and wired the pipe to the bumper. Mercier adjusted

the field glasses and focused on the lieutenant's face as he chatted away

while he worked at twisting the ends of the wire until it was secure.

Oh well, likely it won't work, but you never know. . . .
For a moment,

Mercier wasn't sure what he was looking at, but then, when the lieutenant produced a measuring tape, he understood perfectly: the pipe

was the width of a light tank. The lieutenant slid behind the wheel and

drove cautiously up the hill. More than once he misjudged distance,

one end of the pipe banging into a tree, and had to reverse the Opel

and try a different path. But the idea was simple and effective.

If you contemplated a tank attack through a forest, all you needed

was a car and a length of pipe. If the pipe on the car fit through the

trees, so would a tank.

In the town of Schramberg, the anniversary couple was enjoying the

fourth day of their vacation. On the morning of the fourteenth, after

a copious breakfast, as the lady who'd rented them a room waved

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from the doorway, they set off for their daily walk in the Black Forest.

Such a sweet couple, in their loden-green walking shorts, high stockings, and alpine hats. They headed south out of town, as their kind

hostess had recommended, but then turned north, using a compass to

make sure they weren't going around in circles. After an hour's walk,

they took a radio receiver from a knapsack and ran its aerial up a tree,

fixing it in place with a piece of string. No result, so they kept walking. On the fourth attempt, it worked. Holding a pair of headphones

to his ear, the elderly gentleman smiled with satisfaction: a babble of

voices--commands, curses,
yes, sir
s and
no, sir
s, the radio traffic of a

tank formation moving over difficult terrain. The anniversary couple

were now within range of shortwave tank radios, about five miles.

They connected a wire recorder to the receiver and settled in for the

day. Likely the people they worked with would make sense of it; certainly the couple hoped they would.

Not worked
for,
the way they thought about it, but worked
with
.

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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