The spies of warsaw (40 page)

Mercier left the bar, and found a chair in the lobby, a potted palm on

one side, a marble column on the other. Elter came through the door

at 7:28, wearing hat and overcoat and carrying a large briefcase by its

leather handle. He peered about him, found the neon sign above the

door to the bar, and headed across the lobby. Mercier watched the

entry doors--two dowdy women with suitcases, a young couple, a

beefy gent holding a newspaper, who walked toward the elevator.

Mercier stood up and hurried over to the bar. Elter was just inside,

looking around, not sure what to do next--every table was taken.

"Herr Elter," Mercier said, "would you please come with me?"

Mercier led him to the elevator and said, "Eight, please." Above

the door, a steel semicircle, where an arrow moved over the floor numbers as the car rose. Four. Five. . . . Eight. Mercier got out, Elter followed, and they walked together down a long empty hall. It was very

still inside 803, a common hotel room with a print of an old sailing

ship above the bed, and almost dark, but for the ambient light of the

city outside the window. Mercier left it that way, he could see well

enough. "Please put the briefcase on the bed," he said.

Elter stood at the window. Mercier opened the briefcase. Papers,

of various sizes, many of them crumpled and straightened out,

sketches, memoranda, a study of some sort, several pages long. From

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the pocket of his jacket he brought out a manila envelope, its flap

unsealed. "You'd best have a look at this," he said to Elter.

"Very well," Elter said, his voice quiet and firm.

Mercier opened the envelope and handed Elter a Swiss passport.

"There is an address in here, a photography studio in Prague. They

will complete the passport for you. Can you go to Prague?"

"Yes. I don't see why not."

"In this envelope is also an account number and the address of a

bank in Zurich. The account holds five hundred thousand Swiss

francs, you need only submit the number. Is that clear?"

"It is."

"Did you tell anyone about this?"

"I most certainly did not."

"Your wife?"

"No."

"Best keep it that way, until you leave Germany."

"I have no intention of leaving."

"Well, that's up to you." Mercier snapped the briefcase closed and

picked up his valise. "It would be best," Mercier said, "if you remain

in this room for fifteen minutes."

Elter was studying the bank information, hand-printed on a

square of notepaper. "There is one thing I wanted to ask you," he said.

"Yes?" Mercier had taken a step toward the door, now he turned

back.

In the darkened room, the two men in hats and overcoats stood,

for a moment, in silence, then Elter said, "Will you seek further information? About the I.N. Six section?"

Mercier's mind raced. "We might."

"I've thought about this night and day, since Halbach approached

me. And I came to a certain conclusion. Which is, if I can be of service, and you are willing to pay . . ."

It was the last thing Mercier expected to hear, but he recovered

quickly. "We have your address, Herr Elter. And we always pay people

who help us."

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Elter nodded. "Then I'll expect to hear from you."

"Good night, Herr Elter," Mercier said, turning back toward the

door. "And be careful."

"Yes, good night," Elter said.

Mercier left the room and descended to the lobby. He checked out,

retrieved his passport, found a taxi at the entry to the hotel, and

returned to the Adlon.

The briefcase held seventy-three papers, now laid out on the bed in his

hotel room. Some of it useless--
Meet with Klaus, 4:30 Thursday
--

some of it valuable. A draft for a report on the fuel consumption of

Panzer tanks. A hand-drawn sketch of an area within the Ardennes

Forest, with arrows showing potential attack routes. A roneo copy of

a forest survey map, made by French military cartographers in 1932,

according to the legend in the lower corner. This copy bore handwritten symbols and numbers--meaningless to Mercier--which implied

that copies of the map were being used as worksheets. A draft for a

memorandum on the ground clearances of various tank models, some

of the designations unknown to Mercier. Planned? In production? A

significant proportion of the documents had originated with a certain

Hauptmann
--captain--Bauer, including a note from Guderian himself, thanking Bauer for his contribution to a discussion of meteorological patterns on France's northeast frontier.

But what particularly interested Mercier was what
wasn't
there;

nothing on the subject of the Maginot Line, nothing to do with the

defense system built on France's eastern frontier--no forts, no bunkers, no pillboxes. If Germany were to invade France, the attack

would come with tanks, through the Belgian forests. That was the

position of the I.N. 6, that was the position of the German General

Staff, that's what was laid out in seventy-three papers on a bed in the

Hotel Adlon.

Was this enough? For the generals in Paris? Well, there was more

to be had; they could go back to Corporal Elter. Surely they would. A

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gift from the gods--the gods of greed--and entirely unanticipated.

Nonetheless, a victory.

But if this was victory, it had taken him somewhere very close to

exhaustion. Weary beyond strength, Mercier managed to rid himself

of socks, shirt, and trousers, made sure of the lock on the door, turned

off the lamp, and lay down on the other bed. He lit a cigarette and

stared at the papers. In the morning, he would hide them below the

false bottom of his valise, take a taxi to Tempelhof airport, and fly to

Le Bourget. A taxi ride to de Beauvilliers's apartment in the Seventh

Arrondissement, a report to be written, and then back to Warsaw. A

job well done.

Or so he thought. In Warsaw, a hero's welcome on Sienna street--

where Anna went shopping and returned with the best Polish ham, rye

bread from the Jewish bakery on Nalewki street, and a bottle of Roederer champagne. Then, later on, a black negligee, purchased for the

hero's return, which turned her shape into a pale image obscured by

shadow--for as long as it stayed on. At the embassy, the following

morning, again the hero. They didn't know what he'd been doing,

but they knew it was some sort of operation, and they could see he

had returned safe and sound and in a good mood. "It went as you

wished?" Jourdain said. Mercier said that it had, and Jourdain said,

"Good to have you back."

Over the next few days, perfectly content with meetings and paperwork, he waited for word from Paris. It came on a Monday, the eighth

of May, a telephone call from General de Beauvilliers. A series of

oblique pleasantries, "Overall, we are quite impressed here," not

much more than that, one had to be cautious with the telephone. And

then, finally, "I'd very much like to have a talk with you, I wonder if

you could come over here. I believe there's an early flight in the morning." Merely a suggestion, of course.

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Mercier hung up and called Anna at the League office. "I'm flying

to Paris tomorrow."

A sigh. "Well, I hate to give you up. Is it for long?"

"A few days, perhaps."

"But I'll see you tonight."

"You will, but that's not why I called. Would you like to come

along?"

"To Paris?" She said it casually, but there was delight in her voice.

"Maybe I could. I'm supposed to be in Danzig on the tenth, but I can

try to move it back."

"Do what you can, Anna. There's a LOT flight at eight-thirty. We

can stay on the rue Saint-Simon, at the apartment. What do you

think?"

"Paris? In May? I'll just have to make the best of it, won't I?"

9 May. At five-thirty, he met with de Beauvilliers in an office at the

Invalides, in the maze of the General Staff headquarters. Gray and

Napoleonic as it was, the trees were in new leaf and birds sang away

outside the window. "Surely you are the hero of the moment," de

Beauvilliers said. "I have to admit, the day we had lunch at the

Heininger, I didn't really believe it was possible, but you did it, my boy,

you did it to perfection."

"Some luck was involved. And, without Dr. Lapp--"

"Oh yes, I know, I know. Credit goes here and there, but we've broken into the I.N. Six, and we'll go back for more."

"Will you want me to handle the contact with Elter?"

"We'll see. Anyhow I wanted to congratulate you, and I wanted to

talk to you before your meeting with Colonel Bruner; he's waiting for

you in his office. First of all, you're going to be promoted to full

colonel."

"Thank you, general."

"Bruner will tell you again, so you'll have to pretend to be surprised, but I wanted to be the one to give you the good news. And

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that isn't all. You will want to think this over, but I'm requesting, officially, that you come here and work for me. It's a small section, very

quiet, but you'll find people like yourself. And what we do is meaningful, sensitive, far beyond the usual staff drudgery. Does it appeal to

you, colonel, work in the upper atmosphere?"

"It does. Of course it does."

"Good, we'll talk again, maybe tomorrow, but best go see Bruner

and have your meeting."

Mercier walked over to
2, bis,
avenue de Tourville, then waited for fifteen minutes in Bruner's reception before he was admitted to the inner

sanctum. The colonel's freshly shaved face glowed pink, and he sat at

attention, puffed up to his grandest
hauteur
. "Ah, Mercier, here you

are! A great success, our brightest star. Congratulations are certainly

in order--bravo! There will be a promotion in it for you, you can

depend on that,
colonel
."

Mercier was dutifully surprised, and grateful.

"Yes, you've surely given us a view into the I.N. Six," Bruner said.

"We've had meeting after meeting, and we're still working on the documents. This information will, believe me, be taken into account as

we make our own plans."

"That's what I hoped for, colonel."

"And so you should have. Of course, we do have to consider the

possibility that we're being misled."

"Misled?"

"Well, it's almost too good to be true, isn't it. And a recruitment

as well. No doubt the future material will support what we already

have."

"
No
doubt? Why do you say that, colonel?"

"The Germans are clever people, not in any way above misleading

an opponent. It's the oldest game in the world: guide your enemy away

from your true intentions. Are you unable to look at it from that perspective?"

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"I suppose I can, still . . ."

"Now see here, Mercier, nobody's taking anything away from

what you've done. You deserve credit for that, and, as a full colonel,

you'll have it. But you must accept that we have to take other possibilities into consideration, and that includes an
Abwehr
operation using

rogue Nazis, supposedly rogue Nazis, to send us down the wrong

path."

Mercier worked hard to conceal his reaction from Bruner, but he

failed. "Halbach was the real thing, Colonel Bruner."

"Yes, so your report suggested, but how can you be sure? Was

the Halbach you found the real Halbach? Or an
Abwehr
officer

playing the role of Halbach? Well, I can't pretend to know that for a

certainty--can you?"

"Not for a certainty. Nothing is ever certain, particularly in this

work."

"Ah-ha! Now you're on to the game! I'm not saying this is final,

but it's one view, and we would be negligent if we didn't take it seriously. No? Not true?"

"Yes, sir," Mercier said, now eager to be anywhere but Bruner's

office. "I understand."

"I'm glad of that. We know you have ability, colonel, you are an

excellent officer, that's been proven. Surely wasted on an attache

assignment in that Warsaw rats' nest. General de Beauvilliers has

asked for your transfer, and you can pretty much count on our agreement. Does that please you? Colonel?"

Mercier nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"Well then, I won't keep you. I expect you'd like to go out and celebrate."

Mercier walked home through a rich spring afternoon, a Parisian

spring, that mocked him in every way. Amid chestnut blossoms fallen

on the sidewalk, the outdoor tables of a cafe were at full throb with

city life--the lovers, with their hands on each other; conversing busi-Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 264

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