Alan Furst: The Spies of Warsaw

“Not much new,” the air attache said. He was in his fifties, corpulent and sour-faced. “The production of the Pezetelkis is going full steam ahead.” Pezetelki was the nickname, taken from initials, of the PZT-24F, Poland’s best fighter plane, four years earlier the most advanced pursuit monoplane in Europe. “But the air force won’t get near them; that hasn’t changed either. For export only.”

“The same orders?” Jourdain said.

“Yes. Turkey, Greece, and Yugoslavia.”

“They’ll regret that, one of these days,” the naval attache said.

The air attache shrugged. “They’re trying to balance the budget, the country’s damn close to broke. So they sell what people will buy.”

“I guess they know best,” said Jourdain, who clearly didn’t believe that at all.

“Otherwise, very little new.” The air attache studied his notes. “They had an accident, last Wednesday, over Okecie field. One of their P-Sevens clipped the tail of another. Both pilots safe, both planes badly banged up, one a loss-he parachuted-the other landed.” Again he shrugged. “So we can say”-the air attache looked toward the secretary-“that their numbers are reduced by one, anyhow.”

“Just note,” Jourdain said to the secretary, “that we should repeat the fact that the relation of the Polish air force to the Luftwaffe remains twenty-five to one in favor of the Germans.” Then he turned to the naval attache and said, “Jean-Paul?”

As the naval attache lit a cigarette and shuffled through his papers, there were two sharp knocks at the door, which opened to reveal one of the women who worked the embassy switchboard. “Colonel Mercier? May I speak with you for a moment?”

“Excuse me,” Mercier said. He went out into the corridor and closed the door behind him. The operator, a middle-aged French-woman, was, like many who worked at the embassy, the widow of an officer killed in the 1914 war. “A Monsieur Uhl has telephoned your apartment,” she said. “He left a number with your maid. I hope it’s correct, sir, she was very nervous.”

“Poor Wlada,” Mercier said. Now what? The operator handed him a slip of paper, and Mercier went up the stairs to his office. Looking in his drawer, he found a list of German telephone exchanges, dialed the switchboard, and asked for a foreign operator. When she came on the line he gave her the number. “Can you put it through right away?” he said, his Polish slow but correct.

“I can, sir, it’s quiet this afternoon.”

As Mercier waited, he stared out his window onto the square in front of the embassy. Beneath the bare branches of a chestnut tree, a man with a wagon was selling a sausage on a roll to a father with a small child. Far away, a telephone rang once. “Hello? Hello?” Uhl’s voice was tense and high.

“Yes, I’m here. Herr Uhl?”

“Hello? Andre?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

“I’m at the railway station.” Mercier could hear a train. “I had a problem yesterday, on the way back. In Glogau.”

“What problem?”

“I was being watched, on the train.”

“How do you know?”

“I-ah, I sensed it. Two businessmen, and a Gestapo man.”

“Did they question you? Search you?” Mercier had to make himself relax the grip of his hand on the phone.

“Oh no. I eluded them.”

“Really. How did you do that?”

“At the border kontrol, in Glogau station, I left the line and went back into the Warsaw train, climbed down between carriages, and crawled . Along the track. At the end of the train there is Glogau bridge, but I found a stairway that led down to the bank of the river. I walked back toward the city and took a taxi to the next station on the line, where I got on the local train to Breslau.”

“Good work,” Mercier said.

“What?”

“I said, good work .”

“It was very close. They almost had me, in the station.”

“Perhaps they did. Tell me, Herr Uhl, what happened this morning?”

“This morning? I went to the office.”

“Did someone question you? Were you confronted?”

“No. All was normal.”

“Then you’re in the clear. Did the people on the train say anything to you?”

“No. But they looked at me. They behaved, in a furtive manner.”

“I would doubt that German surveillance operatives would be furtive, Herr Uhl. Perhaps your imagination … misled you.”

“Well, maybe. But maybe not. In any event, I think I shouldn’t continue our meetings.”

“Oh, let’s not be scared off so easily. Believe me, if the Gestapo had any reason to suspect you, you wouldn’t be talking to me on the telephone. By the way, you mentioned a Gestapo man. How did you know that? I presume he was in uniform.”

“He wasn’t. He wore a leather coat. It was the way he looked.”

Mercier laughed. “The way he looked?”

“Well …”

“Your work is important, Herr Uhl, and we don’t lose people who help us; we can’t afford that. Would you like me to do some checking? To see if you’re being watched?”

After a silence, Uhl said, “You’re able to do that?”

“We are a resourceful service,” Mercier said. “We’re able to do all sorts of things. Why don’t I ask some people to see what’s going on; then I’ll send you a postal card, if everything is normal.”

“And what if it isn’t?”

“I’ll find a way to let you know. What time do you leave your office?”

“At six, generally.”

“Every night?”

“Yes, almost every night.”

“Then we’ll know how to find you. For the moment, I expect to see you in November. You recall the information I requested.”

“Yes.”

“Just remember, it’s in our interest to keep you safe, and it’s in your interest to continue your work.”

After a time, Uhl said, “Very well, we’ll see. If everything is-as it was….”

“You did very well, Herr Uhl. If nothing else, you erred on the side of caution, and we admire that. Clearly, you have a gift for this sort of business.”

Uhl didn’t answer.

“On the fifteenth,” Mercier said, “we can talk it over, if you like. We want you safe and sound, do keep that in mind. And, after all, you do have other interests that bring you to Warsaw-would you simply remain in Germany?”

“No, but-”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll be waiting for you. Or, if there’s a problem, I’ll make sure you know about it.”

“All right,” Uhl said. He wasn’t happy but he would, Mercier thought, hold up. For a while, anyhow.

Mercier said goodby, hung up the phone, and wrote himself a note: Send Uhl a postcard. “All going well here, hope to see you soon, Aunt Frieda.” There was no possibility of finding out if Uhl was under Gestapo surveillance-maybe the Deuxieme Bureau had spies inside the German security apparatus, but Uhl was not important enough for such an effort. The lie had been recommended at his training class and it had evidently worked the way they’d said it would. From the telephone call, Mercier sensed that Uhl had frightened himself.

He returned to the conference room, where the meeting continued, in a fog of cigarette smoke. “Everything all right?” Jourdain said, concern in his voice.

“A problem with an agent,” Mercier said.

“Not going to lose him, are we?”

“I don’t think so. I suspect he saw phantoms.”

“They like what he’s bringing, at deux bis, ” Jourdain said. He referred to the Deuxieme Bureau by its Paris address, 2 bis, rue de Tourville.

Mercier nodded. Perhaps they liked it at the General Staff as well-they never said, simply took what there was, then asked for more. Nevertheless, you didn’t want to lose agents, you’d find yourself transferred to some fever-ridden island in a distant ocean- far-flung barely described the remote outposts of the French colonial empire.