Alan Furst - The Spies of Warsaw

Mercier nodded and lit a Czech cigarette from a packet he’d bought at the railway station. It was after five when a man, dressed in worker’s blue jacket and trousers, entered the house across the street. Mercier looked at his watch: where was Halbach? Two young women came through the door, joked with the barman, then took one of the tables and began to conspire, heads together, voices low. Mercier now realized he could hear music. In a room above the bar, someone was playing a violin-playing it well enough, not the awful squeaks of the novice, but working at the song, slower, then faster. A song Mercier knew, called “September in the Rain”; he’d heard it on Anna’s radio at Sienna street. Was this, he wondered, a classical violinist, forced to play in a nightclub? A man with a small dog came into the bar, then two old ladies in flower-print dresses. And then, suddenly, Mercier was again overtaken by a certain apprehension, a shadow of war. What would become of these people?

Busier now, out on Opava street-work was over for the day-time to chat with neighbors, time to walk the dog. Mercier ordered his third beer, set a few coins down on the counter, and looked back out the window in time to see Julius Halbach enter 6, Opava street. Anyhow, a man who looked like a teacher, in his mid-fifties, tall, wearing an old suit, expensive a long time ago, and carrying a bulging briefcase. Mercier glanced at his watch: 5:22. I hope you’re Halbach, he thought, as the man plodded wearily up the steps and disappeared through the door. Too much to ask for a photograph, he’d decided, before his meeting with Dr. Lapp. That would have been dangerously close to an act of treason, whereas, a genial conversation in a bookstore, while conferring on another matter …

Mercier stayed where he was, now numb and slightly dizzy from an afternoon of beer drinking, for another thirty minutes, then gave up. The family was home, their lodger was home, in for the night. Tomorrow would be the day, 20 April, 1938, at approximately 5:22 in the afternoon. Tomorrow, Herr Halbach was in for the shock of his life.

Mercier stopped at the cafe across from the railway station, had a sausage and a plate of leeks with vinegar, bought a newspaper-Tesin’s Polish daily-and returned to the hotel. Was the room as he’d left it? Yes, but for the maid, who had moved his valise in order to mop the floor. Opening the valise, he was relieved to find his few things undisturbed, though the important baggage stayed with him, in the briefcase.

It was quiet in Tesin, a warmish evening of early spring. When Mercier pulled the shade down, a streetlamp threw a shadow of tree branches on the yellowed paper. He turned on the light, a bulb dangling from the ceiling, and worked at the newspaper-what he wouldn’t give for a Paris Soir ! Still, he could manage, once he got going. Henlein, the leader of the Sudetenland German minority in Czechoslovakia, had given a speech in Karlsbad, making eight demands on the government. Basically, he called for the Czechs to allow German-speaking areas to have their own foreign policy, in line with “the ideology of Germans”: a demand that surely came directly from Adolf Hitler, a demand that could never be met. The fire under the pot was being stoked, soon it would boil.

Then, on the same page, news that the Anschluss, joining Austria to Germany, had been approved in a plebiscite by Austrian voters. A triumph-nearly all the Austrians had voted, ninety-nine to one in favor. Now there was a victory that deserved the word rousing ! Just below that, a correspondent reporting from the Spanish civil war; the city of Vinaroz had been taken by Franco’s forces, isolating the government-held city of Castile from Catalonia. Another victory for fascist Europe. Mercier turned the page. A grisly murder, a body found in a trunk. And the soccer team had lost again. Followed by a page of obituaries. Mercier threw the newspaper on the floor.

He lay there, smoked, stared at the ceiling. He had no desire to read, and sleep was a long way off. On the other side of the wall, a man and a woman in the adjacent room began to argue, in a language Mercier couldn’t identify. They kept it quiet, secretive, almost a whisper, but the voices were charged with anger, or desperation, and neither one would give in. When it didn’t stop, he got up, went to the window, and raised the shade. Across the square, the outdoor terrasse of the cafe was busy-a warm night, spring in the air, the usual couples with drinks, a few customers alone at tables, eating a late dinner. Then the barman walked over to a large radio set on a shelf and began fiddling with the dials. Mercier couldn’t hear anything, but most of the patrons rose from their tables and gathered in front of the radio. He rolled the shade back down, undid the straps on his briefcase, and made sure of its contents.

20 April.

Mercier strolled up Opava street at 5:10 P.M., but Halbach was nowhere to be seen. Keeping the house in sight he walked to the corner, then started back the other way. He felt much too noticeable, so turned into a cross street where he discovered a tram stop. Was this how Halbach returned from work? He waited for ten minutes, then walked back out onto Opava, and there he was, almost at the house. Mercier moved as quickly as he could and caught up to him just as he reached the door. “Herr Halbach?”

Frightened, Halbach spun around and faced him, ready to fight or run. “What is it? What do you want?”

“May I speak with you a moment?”

“Why? Is it about the bill?”

“No, sir, not that at all.”

Halbach calmed down. Mercier was clearly alone; the secret police came always in pairs, and late at night. “Then what? Who are you?”

“Is there somewhere we can speak? Privately? I have important things to tell you.”

“You’re not German.”

“No, I’m from Basel-a French Swiss.”

“Swiss?” Now he was puzzled.

“Can we go inside?”

“Yes, all right. What’s this about?”

“Inside? Please?”

Downstairs, the family was at dinner. Mercier could smell garlic. Halbach called out “Good evening,” in Polish, then climbed the stairs and opened a door just off the landing. “In here,” he said. “Just leave the door open.”

“Of course,” Mercier said.

A small room, meagerly furnished and painted a hideous green. On one wall, a clothes tree held a shirt and a pair of trousers; on the other, a narrow cot covered by a blanket, and a nightstand with four books on top. At the foot of the cot, a single rickety chair completed the furnishings. The window looked out on the plaster wall of the adjacent building, so the room lay in permanent twilight. Halbach put his briefcase down and sat on the edge of the cot, while Mercier took the chair. When he was settled, Halbach opened the drawer in the nightstand, then gave him a meaningful look, saying, “Just keep your hands where I can see them.”

Mercier complied immediately, resting his hands atop the briefcase held on his knees. Was there a pistol in the drawer? Likely there was. “I understand,” he said. “I understand completely.”

For a moment, Halbach stared at him. He was, Mercier thought, perhaps the homeliest man he’d ever seen: a long narrow face, with pitted skin, and small protruding ears emphasized by a Prussian haircut-gray hair cut close on the sides and one inch high on top. His Hitler-style mustache was also gray, his neck a thin stem-circled by a collar a size too large-his restless eyes suspicious and mean. “Well?” he said. “Who are you?”

“My name is Lombard. I represent a chemical company in Basel. My card.”

Mercier drew a packet of cards from his pocket and handed one of them to Halbach, who said, “Solvex-Duroche?”