The spies of warsaw (5 page)

with a statue. In his office, he typed out a brief report of his contact

with Uhl. Very terse: the date and time and location, the delivery of

diagrams for the production of the new--1B--version of the Panzer

tank, the payment made, establishment of the next meeting.

Should he include the fact that Uhl was wriggling? No, nothing

had really happened; surely they didn't care, in Paris, to be bothered

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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 2 5

with such trivia. He had a long, careful look at the diagrams to make

sure they were as described--there was potential here for real disaster;

it had happened more than once, they'd told him; plans for a public

lavatory or a design for a mechanical can opener--then gave the

report, the diagrams, and the signed receipt to one of the embassy

clerks for transmission back to the General Staff in Paris, with a copy

of the report to the ambassador's office and another for the safe that

held his office files.

Next he took a taxi--he had an embassy car and driver available

to him, but he didn't want to bother--out to the neighborhood of the

Citadel, where the Polish General Staff had its offices, to a small cafe

where he was to meet with his Polish counterpart, Colonel Anton

Vyborg. He was first to arrive. They came to this cafe not precisely for

secrecy, rather for privacy--it was more comfortable to speak openly

away from their respective offices. That was one reason, there was

another.

As soon as Mercier was seated at their usual table, the proprietor

produced a large platter of
ponczkis,
a kind of small jelly doughnut, dusted with granulated sugar, light and fluffy, to which Mercier

was gravely addicted. The proprietor, chubby and smiling, in a wellspattered apron, produced also a silver carafe of coffee. It required all

of Mercier's aristocratic courtesy and diplomatic reserve to leave the

warm, damnably fragrant
ponczkis
on the platter.

Vyborg, thank heaven, was precisely on time, and together they

set upon the pastries. There was something of the Baltic knight in

Colonel Vyborg. In his forties, he was tall and well-built and thinlipped, with webbed lines at the corners of eyes made to squint into

blizzards, and stiff, colorless hair cut short in the cavalry officer fashion. He wore high leather boots, supple and dark, well rubbed with

saddle soap--Mercier always caught a whiff of it in Vyborg's presence, mixed with the smell of the little cigars he smoked.

Vyborg was a senior officer in the intelligence service, the Oddzial

II--the
Deuxieme Bureau,
named in the French tradition--of the Polish Army General Staff, known as the
Dwojka,
which meant "the

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2 6 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

two." Vyborg worked in Section IIb, where they dealt with Austria,

Germany, and France; Section IIa occupied itself with the country's

primary enemies--thus the
a
--Russia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, and

the Ukraine. Did Vyborg's section run agents on French territory?

Likely they did. Did France do the same thing? Mercier thought so,

but was kept ignorant of such operations, at any rate officially ignorant, but it was more than probable that the French SR, the
Service des

Renseignements
, the clandestine service of the
Deuxieme Bureau,
did

precisely that. Know your enemies, know your friends, avoid surprise

at all costs. But the discovery of such operations, when they came to

light, was always an unhappy moment. Allies were, for reasons of the

heart more than the brain, supposed to trust each other. And when

they demonstrably didn't, it was as though the state of the human

condition had slipped a notch.

"Have the last one," Vyborg said, refilling Mercier's coffee cup.

"For you, Anton."

"No, I must insist."

Gracefully, Mercier acceded to diplomacy.

Breakfast over, Vyborg lit one of his miniature cigars, and Mercier

a Mewa--a Seagull--one of the better Polish cigarettes.

"So," Vyborg said, "the Renault people will be here the day after

tomorrow." A delegation of executives and engineers was scheduled to

visit Warsaw, a step in the process of selling Renault tanks to the Polish army.

"Yes," Mercier said, "we are ready for them. They're bringing a

senator."

"You'll be at the dinner?"

From Mercier, a rather grim smile:
no escape
.

Their eyes met, they had in common a distaste for the obligatory

social engagements required for their work. "It will be very boring,"

Vyborg said. "In case you were concerned."

"I was counting on it."

"You'll be accompanied?"

Mercier nodded. With no wife or fiancee, he would be with the

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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 2 7

deputy director of protocol at the embassy, who served as table partner to Mercier, and one other bachelor diplomat, when the need arose.

"You've met Madame Dupin?"

"I've had the pleasure," Vyborg said.

"Where is it?"

"We sent a note to your office," Vyborg said, one eyebrow arched.

Don't you read your mail?
"A private dining room at the Europejski,"

Vyborg said. "They're going to watch a field maneuver earlier in the

day, so they're sure to be exhausted, which will make the evening even

more amusing. Then we're going on to a nightclub--the Adria, of

course--for dancing until dawn."

"I can't wait," Mercier said.

"It's obligatory. When the purchasing delegation went to Renault

in Paris, they were taken to some naughty cancan place--they're still

talking about it--so . . ."

"Will you buy anything?"

"We shouldn't, but there's always a possibility. They want to sell

us the R Thirty-five, which was demonstrated when the delegation visited the factory. This visit is supposed to close the deal."

"The R Thirty-five isn't so bad." Mercier, officially loyal to the

national industries, had to say that and Vyborg knew it. "For infantry

support."

Vyborg shrugged. "A thirty-seven-millimeter cannon, one machine

gun. And they only go twelve miles an hour, with a range of eighty

miles. The armour's thick enough, but you don't get much machine

for the money. Truthfully, if it wasn't French, we wouldn't bother, but

this is up to Smigly-Rydz's office." He meant the inspector general of

the Polish army. "And they may have to bow to political pressure, so,

potentially, our tank crews will die for the cancan."

"What do you have now? The last figure I heard was two hundred."

"That's about right, unfortunately. The Russians have two thousand, best we know, and the same for the Germans. The Ursus factory

is working on the Seven TP, our own model, under license from Vick-Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 28

2 8 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

ers, but Ursus has to make farm tractors as well, and we need those. In

the end, it's always the same problem: money. You've been out to the

Ursus factory?"

"I was. At the end of the summer."

"Maybe that's the answer, maybe not. It really depends on how

much time we have until the next war starts."

Mercier finished his coffee, then refilled both their cups. "Hitler

loves his tanks," he said.

"Yes, we heard that story. 'These are wonderful! Make more of

them!' An infantry soldier in the war, he knows what the British did at

Cambrai, a hundred tanks, all at once. The Germans broke and ran."

"Not like them."

"No, but they did that day."

For a moment, they were both in the past.

"Who else is coming to the dinner?" Mercier said.

"Well, they have a senator, so we'll have somebody from the Sejm.

Then a few people from the French community: the ubiquitous Monsieur Travas, the Pathe agency manager, is coming, with some gorgeous girlfriend, no doubt, and we've asked your ambassador, of

course, but he's declined. We may get the charge d'affaires."

"Who's the senator?"

"Bernand? Bertrand? Something like that. I have it back at the

office. One of the Popular Front politicians. Somebody from Beck's

office will talk with him, though we doubt he'll have anything new to

say."

Josef Beck was the Polish foreign minister, and Vyborg now

referred to the issue that stood between him and Mercier, between

France and Poland. Treaties aside, would France come to Poland's aid

if Poland were attacked?

"Likely he won't," Mercier said.

"We think not," Vyborg agreed. "But we must try."

France's political condition--strikes, communist pressure, a right

wing divided into fascists and conservatives, failure to aid the Spanish

Republic--continued to deteriorate. The most absurd views were held

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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 2 9

sacred, and there was too much deal-making, though all of this was

seen by a tolerant world as a kind of amiable chaos--a British politician had said that a map of French political opinion would look like

Einstein's hair. But, to Mercier, it wasn't so amusing. "You know what

I think, Anton. If the worst happens, and it starts again, you must be

prepared to stand alone. A map of Europe tells the story. It's that, or

alliance with Russia--which we favor but Poland will never do--or

alliance with Germany, which we certainly don't favor, and you won't

do that either."

"I know," Vyborg said. "We all know." He paused, then brightened. "But, nevertheless, we'll see you at the Renault dinner."

"And then at the Adria."

"You will ask my wife to dance?"

"I shall. And you, Madame Dupin."

"Naturally," Vyborg said. "More coffee?"

At eleven, Mercier was back at the embassy for the daily political

meeting. The ambassador presided, touched on political events of the

last twenty-four hours, and looked ahead to the Renault visit--special

care here, don't bother there. Then LeBeau, the charge d'affaires and

first officer, reported on unrest, potential anti-Jewish demonstrations

in Danzig, and a border incident in Silesia. Then the ambassador

moved on to the topic of electricity consumption at the embassy. How

difficult was it, really, to turn off the lights when not in use?

Mercier had a bowl of soup for lunch at a nearby restaurant; half a

bowl--Polish chicken soup was rich and powerful, laden with heavy,

twisted noodles--because the
ponczkis
had finished his appetite for

the day. He did paperwork in his office until two-thirty, then returned

to his apartment, changed from uniform back into civilian clothes--

gray flannel trousers, dark wool jacket, subdued striped tie--and set

out for his third cafe of the day. This time on Marszalkowska avenue,

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3 0 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

a lively and elegant street with trees, awnings, nightclubs, and smart

shops.

At midafternoon, the Cafe Cleo was a perfect sanctuary: marble

tables, black-and-white tiled floor, a bow window looking out on the

avenue, where a less-favored world hurried by. The small room was

almost full; the customers chattered away, read the papers, played

chess, drank foamy cups of hot chocolate with whipped cream; their

dogs, mostly beagles, lay attentive under the tables, waiting for cake

crumbs. In a corner at the back, Hana Musser, spectacles pushed

down on her pert nose, worked at a crossword puzzle, lost in concentration, tapping her teeth with a pencil.

Mercier liked Hana Musser, a half-Czech, half-German woman of

uncertain age, who, two years earlier, had fled the fulminous Nazi politics of the Sudetenland and settled in Warsaw, where she worked at

whatever she could but found the economic life of the city more than

difficult. She had fine skin and fine features, a mass of brass-colored

hair drawn back in a clip, and wore a bulky, home-knit cardigan

sweater of a dreadful pea-green shade. How Colonel Bruner had discovered her--to play the part of Countess Sczelenska--Mercier did

not know, but he had his suspicions. Was she a prostitute? Never a true

professional, he guessed, but perhaps a woman who, from time to

time, might meet a man at a cafe, with some kind of gift to follow an

afternoon spent in a hotel room. And, if the man had money, the affair

might continue.

As Mercier seated himself, she looked up, took her spectacles off,

smiled at him, and said, "Good afternoon," in German.

"And to you," Mercier said. "All goes well?"

"Quite well, thank you. And yourself?"

"Not so bad," Mercier said. A waiter appeared, Mercier ordered

coffee. "May I get you something?"

"Another chocolate, please."

When the waiter left, Mercier said, "We've made our usual

deposit."

"Yes, I know, thank you, as always."

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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 3 1

"How do you find your friend, these days?"

"Much as usual. Herr Uhl is a very straightforward fellow. His