Alan Furst: The Spies of Warsaw

“We’re retooling for the Ausf B .” He meant the B version of the Panzerkampfwagen 1, the Wehrmacht ‘s battle tank. “I have the first diagrams for the new turret.”

“What’s different?”

“It’s a new design, from the Krupp works; the turret will now be made to rotate, three hundred and sixty degrees, a hand traverse operated by the gunner.”

“And the armour?”

“The same. Thirteen millimeters on the sides, eight millimeters on the top of the turret, six millimeters on the top and bottom of the hull. But now the plates are to be face-hardened-that means carbon cementation, very expensive but the strength is greatly increased.”

“From stopping rifle and machine-gun fire to stopping antitank weapons.”

“So it would seem.”

Mercier thought for a moment. The Panzerkampfwagen 1A had not done well in Spain, where it had been used by Franco’s forces against the Soviet T-26. Armed only with a pair of 7.92-millimeter machine guns in the turret, it was effective against infantry but could not defeat an armoured enemy tank. Now, with the 1B, they were preparing for a different kind of combat. Finally he said, “All right, we’ll have a look at it. And next time we’d like to see the face-hardening process you’re using, the formula.”

“Next time,” Uhl said. “Well, I’m not sure I’ll be able …”

Mercier cut him off. “Fifteen November. If there’s an emergency, a real emergency, you have a telephone number.”

“What would happen if I just couldn’t be here?”

“We will reschedule.” Mercier paused. “But it’s not at all easy for us, if we have to do that.”

“Yes, but there’s always the possibility …”

“You will manage, Herr Uhl. We know you are resourceful, there are always problems in this sort of work; we expect you to deal with them.”

Uhl started to speak, but Mercier raised his hand. Then he opened his briefcase and withdrew a folded Polish newspaper and a slip of paper, typewritten and then copied on a roneo duplicator: a receipt form, with date, amount, and Uhl’s name typed on the appropriate lines, and a line for signature at the bottom. “Do you need a pen?” Mercier said.

Uhl reached into an inside pocket, withdrew a fountain pen, then signed his name at the bottom of the receipt. Mercier put the slip of paper in his briefcase and slid the newspaper toward Uhl. “A thousand zloty,” he said. He peeled up a corner of Uhl’s newspaper, revealing the edges of engineering diagrams.

Uhl took Mercier’s folded newspaper, secured it tightly beneath his arm, then rose to leave.

“Fifteen November,” Mercier said. “We’ll meet here, at the same time.”

A very subdued Herr Uhl nodded in agreement, mumbled a goodby, and left the bar.

Mercier looked at his watch-the rules said he had to give Uhl a twenty-minute head start. A pair of workers, in gray oil-stained jackets and trousers, entered the bar and ordered vodka and beer. One of them glanced over at Mercier, then looked away. Which meant nothing, Mercier thought. Officer A met Agent B in a country foreign to both, neutral ground, it wasn’t even against the law. So they’d told him, anyhow, when he’d taken the six-week course for new military attaches at the Ecole Superieure de Guerre, part of the Invalides complex in Paris.

With a one-week section on the management of espionage-thus the folded newspapers. And the cold exterior. This was no pretense for Mercier; he didn’t like Uhl, who betrayed his country for selfish reasons. In fact, he didn’t like any of it. “Witness the ingenuity of Monsieur D,” said the elfin captain from the Deuxieme Bureau who taught the course. “During the war, with a complex set of figures to be conveyed to his case officer, Monsieur D shaved a patch of hair on his dog’s back, wrote the numbers on the dog’s skin in indelible pen, waited for the dog’s coat to grow out, then easily crossed the frontier.” Yes, very clever, like Messieurs A, B, and C. Mercier could only imagine himself shaving his Braques Ariegeoises, his beloved pointers, Achille and Celeste. He could imagine their eyes: why are you doing this to me?

Stay. Good boy, good girl. Remember the ingenious Monsieur D.

In Mercier’s desk drawer, at his office on the second floor of the embassy, was a letter resigning his commission. Written at a bad moment, in the difficult early days of a new job, but not thrown away. He couldn’t imagine actually sending it, but the three-year appointment felt like a lifetime, and he might be reappointed. Perhaps he would try, the next time he was at the General Staff headquarters in Paris, to request a transfer, to field command. His first request, using the prescribed channels, had been denied, but he would try again, he decided, this time in person. It might work, though, if it didn’t, he couldn’t ask again. That was the unofficial rule, set in stone: two attempts, no more.

Riding the trolley back to central Warsaw, he wondered where he’d gone wrong, why he’d been reassigned, six months earlier, from a staff position in the Army of the Levant, headquartered in Beirut, to the embassy in Warsaw. The reason, he suspected, had most of all to do with Bruner, who wanted to move up, wanted to be at the center of power in Paris. This he’d managed to do, but they had to replace him, and replace him with someone that the Polish General Staff would find an appealing substitute.

And for Mercier, it should have been a plum, a career victory. An appointment in Warsaw, to any French officer or diplomat, was considered an honor, for Poland and France had a special relationship, a long, steady history of political friendship. In the time of the French kings, the French and Polish royal families had intermarried, French had become, and remained, the polite language of the Polish aristocracy, and the Poles, especially Polish intellectuals, had been passionate for the ideals of the Enlightenment and the Revolution of 1789. Napoleon had supported the Polish quest to re-establish itself as a free nation, and French governments had, since the eighteenth century, welcomed Polish exiles and supported their struggle against partition.

Thus, in the summer of 1920, after fighting broke out in the Ukraine between Polish army units and Ukrainian partisan bands, and the Red Army had attacked Polish forces around Kiev, it was France that came to Poland’s aid, in what had come to be known as the Russo-Polish War. In July, France sent a military mission to Poland, commanded by no less than one of the heroes of the Great War, General Maxime Weygand. The mission staff included Mercier’s fellow officer, more colleague than friend, Captain Charles de Gaulle-they had graduated from Saint-Cyr together with the class of 1912-and Mercier as well. Both had returned from German prison camps in 1918, after unsuccessful attempts to escape. Both had been decorated for service in the Great War. Now both went to Poland, in July of 1920, to serve as instructors to the Polish army officer corps.

But, in mid-August, when the Red Army, having broken through Polish defense lines in the Ukraine, reached the outskirts of Warsaw, Mercier had become involved in the fighting. The Russians were poised for conquest, foreign diplomats had fled Warsaw, the Red Army was just a few miles east of the Vistula, and the Red Army was unstoppable. Captain Mercier was ordered to join a Polish cavalry squadron as an observer but had then, after the deaths of several officers and with the aid of an interpreter, taken command of the squadron. And so took part in the now-famous flank attack led by Marshal Pilsudski, cutting across the Red Army line of advance in what was later called “the Miracle of the Vistula.”

At five in the afternoon, on the thirteenth of August, 1920, the final assault on Warsaw began in the town of Radzymin, fifteen miles east of the city. As Pilsudski’s counterattack was set in motion, the 207th Uhlan Regiment, with Mercier leading his squadron, was ordered to take the Radzymin railway station. A local fourteen-year-old was hauled up to sit behind a Uhlan’s saddle and guide them to the station. It was almost eight o’clock, but the summer evening light was just beginning to darken, and, when Mercier saw the station at the foot of a long, narrow street, he raised his revolver, waved it forward, and spurred his horse. The Uhlans shouted as they charged, people in the apartments above the street leaned out their windows and cheered, and the thunder of hooves galloping over cobblestones echoed off the sides of the buildings.