Alan Furst: The Spies of Warsaw

“I’ve thought about this night and day, since Halbach approached me. And I came to a certain conclusion. Which is, if I can be of service, and you are willing to pay …”

It was the last thing Mercier expected to hear, but he recovered quickly. “We have your address, Herr Elter. And we always pay people who help us.”

Elter nodded. “Then I’ll expect to hear from you.”

“Good night, Herr Elter,” Mercier said, turning back toward the door. “And be careful.”

“Yes, good night,” Elter said.

Mercier left the room and descended to the lobby. He checked out, retrieved his passport, found a taxi at the entry to the hotel, and returned to the Adlon.

The briefcase held seventy-three papers, now laid out on the bed in his hotel room. Some of it useless- Meet with Klaus, 4:30 Thursday -some of it valuable. A draft for a report on the fuel consumption of Panzer tanks. A hand-drawn sketch of an area within the Ardennes Forest, with arrows showing potential attack routes. A roneo copy of a forest survey map, made by French military cartographers in 1932, according to the legend in the lower corner. This copy bore handwritten symbols and numbers-meaningless to Mercier-which implied that copies of the map were being used as worksheets. A draft for a memorandum on the ground clearances of various tank models, some of the designations unknown to Mercier. Planned? In production? A significant proportion of the documents had originated with a certain Hauptmann -captain-Bauer, including a note from Guderian himself, thanking Bauer for his contribution to a discussion of meteorological patterns on France’s northeast frontier.

But what particularly interested Mercier was what wasn’t there; nothing on the subject of the Maginot Line, nothing to do with the defense system built on France’s eastern frontier-no forts, no bunkers, no pillboxes. If Germany were to invade France, the attack would come with tanks, through the Belgian forests. That was the position of the I.N. 6, that was the position of the German General Staff, that’s what was laid out in seventy-three papers on a bed in the Hotel Adlon.

Was this enough? For the generals in Paris? Well, there was more to be had; they could go back to Corporal Elter. Surely they would. A gift from the gods-the gods of greed-and entirely unanticipated. Nonetheless, a victory.

But if this was victory, it had taken him somewhere very close to exhaustion. Weary beyond strength, Mercier managed to rid himself of socks, shirt, and trousers, made sure of the lock on the door, turned off the lamp, and lay down on the other bed. He lit a cigarette and stared at the papers. In the morning, he would hide them below the false bottom of his valise, take a taxi to Tempelhof airport, and fly to Le Bourget. A taxi ride to de Beauvilliers’s apartment in the Seventh Arrondissement, a report to be written, and then back to Warsaw. A job well done.

Or so he thought. In Warsaw, a hero’s welcome on Sienna street-where Anna went shopping and returned with the best Polish ham, rye bread from the Jewish bakery on Nalewki street, and a bottle of Roederer champagne. Then, later on, a black negligee, purchased for the hero’s return, which turned her shape into a pale image obscured by shadow-for as long as it stayed on. At the embassy, the following morning, again the hero. They didn’t know what he’d been doing, but they knew it was some sort of operation, and they could see he had returned safe and sound and in a good mood. “It went as you wished?” Jourdain said. Mercier said that it had, and Jourdain said, “Good to have you back.”

Over the next few days, perfectly content with meetings and paperwork, he waited for word from Paris. It came on a Monday, the eighth of May, a telephone call from General de Beauvilliers. A series of oblique pleasantries, “Overall, we are quite impressed here,” not much more than that, one had to be cautious with the telephone. And then, finally, “I’d very much like to have a talk with you, I wonder if you could come over here. I believe there’s an early flight in the morning.” Merely a suggestion, of course.

Mercier hung up and called Anna at the League office. “I’m flying to Paris tomorrow.”

A sigh. “Well, I hate to give you up. Is it for long?”

“A few days, perhaps.”

“But I’ll see you tonight.”

“You will, but that’s not why I called. Would you like to come along?”

“To Paris?” She said it casually, but there was delight in her voice. “Maybe I could. I’m supposed to be in Danzig on the tenth, but I can try to move it back.”

“Do what you can, Anna. There’s a LOT flight at eight-thirty. We can stay on the rue Saint-Simon, at the apartment. What do you think?”

“Paris? In May? I’ll just have to make the best of it, won’t I?”

9 May.

At five-thirty, he met with de Beauvilliers in an office at the Invalides, in the maze of the General Staff headquarters. Gray and Napoleonic as it was, the trees were in new leaf and birds sang away outside the window. “Surely you are the hero of the moment,” de Beauvilliers said. “I have to admit, the day we had lunch at the Heininger, I didn’t really believe it was possible, but you did it, my boy, you did it to perfection.”

“Some luck was involved. And, without Dr. Lapp-”

“Oh yes, I know, I know. Credit goes here and there, but we’ve broken into the I.N. Six, and we’ll go back for more.”

“Will you want me to handle the contact with Elter?”

“We’ll see. Anyhow I wanted to congratulate you, and I wanted to talk to you before your meeting with Colonel Bruner; he’s waiting for you in his office. First of all, you’re going to be promoted to full colonel.”

“Thank you, general.”

“Bruner will tell you again, so you’ll have to pretend to be surprised, but I wanted to be the one to give you the good news. And that isn’t all. You will want to think this over, but I’m requesting, officially, that you come here and work for me. It’s a small section, very quiet, but you’ll find people like yourself. And what we do is meaningful, sensitive, far beyond the usual staff drudgery. Does it appeal to you, colonel, work in the upper atmosphere?”

“It does. Of course it does.”

“Good, we’ll talk again, maybe tomorrow, but best go see Bruner and have your meeting.”

Mercier walked over to 2, bis, avenue de Tourville, then waited for fifteen minutes in Bruner’s reception before he was admitted to the inner sanctum. The colonel’s freshly shaved face glowed pink, and he sat at attention, puffed up to his grandest hauteur . “Ah, Mercier, here you are! A great success, our brightest star. Congratulations are certainly in order-bravo! There will be a promotion in it for you, you can depend on that, colonel .”

Mercier was dutifully surprised, and grateful.

“Yes, you’ve surely given us a view into the I.N. Six,” Bruner said. “We’ve had meeting after meeting, and we’re still working on the documents. This information will, believe me, be taken into account as we make our own plans.”

“That’s what I hoped for, colonel.”

“And so you should have. Of course, we do have to consider the possibility that we’re being misled.”

“Misled?”

“Well, it’s almost too good to be true, isn’t it. And a recruitment as well. No doubt the future material will support what we already have.”

“ No doubt? Why do you say that, colonel?”

“The Germans are clever people, not in any way above misleading an opponent. It’s the oldest game in the world: guide your enemy away from your true intentions. Are you unable to look at it from that perspective?”