Alan Furst - The Spies of Warsaw

“I’m just finishing up,” the naval attache said. “Baltic maneuvers off the Gdynia coast. A destroyer squadron.”

“They hit their targets?” Mercier said.

“Now and then. They almost hit the towing ship, but we all do that.”

Mercier finished his paperwork at six, then headed back to his apartment. He had the Renault dinner at eight-thirty, with Madame Dupin, the deputy director of protocol at the embassy. He sighed, inside, at the prospect of a long, boring, political dinner, where one said nothing much and could only hope it was the right nothing much. As for Madame Dupin, she was a noble soul, able to sparkle and chatter endlessly at social functions, an ability that some might find frivolous, until they joined the diplomatic service.

He appreciated her efforts, but the evening reminded him of what had been-of Annemarie, his wife, who’d died three years earlier. He recalled how, as they’d dressed for the evening, they would banter about the awful people they would meet, would have to entertain. That made it easier, theatre for husband and wife, shared misery and the instinct to find it some way, somehow, amusing.

The apartment provided for the military attache was on the second floor of 22, aleja Ujazdowska-Ujazdowska avenue-the Champs-Elysees of Warsaw, though not so broad, a street of elegant five-story buildings, exteriors lavishly wrought with every sort of decorative stonework, set well back behind trees and shrubbery, which was fronted by ornamental iron palings that ran the length of the block. The French embassy had for a long time been on Ujazdowska but had moved, two years earlier, to Nowy Swiat. Still, it was only a fifteen-minute walk from his apartment, just enough to clear the fog of work from his mind.

The apartment came with a maid, Wlada, thin and nervous, who lived in the maid’s room, a cook, heavy and silent, who came every day but Sunday, and a driver, Marek, a tough old bird who’d served as a sergeant in Pilsudski’s Polish Legion and drove Mercier around in what he persisted in calling the “Biook,” in fact a 1936 S41 Buick sedan. The choice of the French and several other embassies, it was a heavily sprung eight-cylinder bear of an automobile, with a bulbous trunk, that negotiated Polish roads as long as you kept at least two spare tires with you, though nobody went anywhere in the spring and autumn rains-Poland’s seasonal barrier against German expansion.

Entering the apartment, Mercier glanced at the mail on the foyer table, then headed for his dressing room. This took time. The place was enormous; ten vast rooms with high ceilings, plaster medallions at every corner, and, thanks to the inordinately wealthy wife of a previous tenant, sumptuously furnished. Better to have private means if you were a diplomat of higher rank, the salary didn’t begin to pay for the necessary show. Thus the heavy floor-to-ceiling drapes at the windows, couches covered in damask, ebony drum tables, exotic oriental lamps with creamy silk shades, and a silver service to sink a small ship. In the apartment, Mercier felt forever a temporary guest. The rough, weary, mostly ancient furnishings of his country house in central France-dog hair everywhere, how did they still have coats? — the only style that felt, to him, comfortable.

In the dressing room, Wlada had laid out his best uniform, perfectly cleaned and ironed, and his kepi, visored military hat, which she’d ruthlessly brushed. The damn thing was expensive, but there was, in such matters, no interfering with Wlada. The more she thought it important, the harder she punished it. Opening the bottom drawer of his dresser, he brought out a square of blue felt with cardboard backing, which bore his service decorations, pinned in neat rows. There were a lot of them; twenty-eight years in the military brought medals. For the Renault crowd, much the best to go top class, so Mercier unpinned his Croix de Guerre and Virtuti Militari and set them on the dresser. A bath? No, it could wait. He took off his work uniform, shoes, and socks, put on a wool bathrobe, walked into the adjoining bedroom, and stretched out on a settee by the window. Twenty minutes, no more . Outside, the avenue was quiet under the streetlamps, a horse-drawn cab went clopping past, a dog barked, a couple spoke in gentle voices as they walked by. Peace. Another nineteenth-century evening on the Ujazdowska.

As he often did, Mercier thought of Annemarie as he drifted off. He was lonely for her, three years gone with influenza-thought at first, and for too long, to be a winter grippe. Despite all the time he’d spent away from her, they’d been a close couple, given to the small, continual affections of married life. They’d had two daughters, both now in their early twenties, one married to an archaeologist and living in Cairo, the other working at a museum in Copenhagen: adventurers like their father and, alas, like him, terribly independent. It was what he’d wished for, and what he got-so life went. Every now and then, a newsy letter, but it had been a long time since he’d seen either one of them. They were attractive, not beautiful, and moderately celestial, floating just above the daily world, not unlike Annemarie. Annemarie. Now and then, with a late supper for two planned, after the girls left home, they would make love at this time-that seductive hour between afternoon and night, l’heure bleu, in the French tradition, named for its deepening shadow. Sometimes she would …

From the study, several rooms away, the rattling bell of the telephone. He heard Wlada scurrying across the chestnut parquet, a breathless “ Rezydencja panstwa Mercier, ” a few more words of Polish, then the footsteps headed his way. “Colonel?” she said. “Are you awake?”

“Yes?”

“It is Madame Du-peen.”

“All right. I’m coming.”

He tied the belt of his bathrobe as he journeyed toward the study. “Madame Dupin?”

“Good evening, Colonel Mercier. Forgive me, please, for calling so late.”

“Of course, no problem.”

“I’m afraid there is, I’m unwell. Something”-she paused; how to say it? — “something I ate.”

“I am sorry. Do you need anything? I can send Marek to the pharmacy.”

“That is very kind of you, but no, thank you. What it means is that I can’t attend the dinner tonight.”

“It’s nothing to worry about, I can go alone.”

“Oh no, that won’t do at all. I’ve found a substitute, a friend of mine. She lives with some Russian, a journalist, but he won’t care. Anyhow, she’s agreed to go, my dear friend. Otherwise, an empty place, an unbalanced table, it simply can’t be done. Do you have something to write on?”

“A moment,” he said, then found a tablet and a pen on the antique desk. “Yes?”

She gave him a name, Anna Szarbek, and an address. “Your driver will know where it is,” she said.

“Just feel better, Madame Dupin, I’m sure we’ll manage.”

“You’ll like my friend,” she said. “She’s terribly bright.”

“I’m sure I will,” he said.

Promptly at eight, he climbed into the back of the “Biook” and gave Marek the address. “Yes,” Marek said, “I’ll find it.”

But it wasn’t so easy. Mumbling curses to himself, Marek worked back and forth through tiny streets north of the central city. Mercier had a street map-in his desk at the office, naturally. He looked at his watch, trying to keep it below the back of the front seat, but Marek caught him at it and mumbled louder. Finally, at twenty minutes past eight, they found the building. Now they would be late-which might, for some, be fashionable, but Mercier wasn’t fashionable.

The building was two stories high, and the janitor, when it suited him, answered his knock at the street door and swung an ill-tempered hand toward the staircase. On the second floor, two doors, and a powerful fragrance of boiled cabbage. He knocked at the first door, waited thirty seconds, then, as he knocked at the second door, the first one opened.