by Alan Furst
Mercier’s mind raced. “We might.”
“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?”
“I suppose I can, still . . .”
“Now see here, Mercier, nobody’s taking anything away from what you’ve done. You deserve credit for that, and, as a full colonel, you’ll have it. But you must accept that we have to take other possibilities into consideration, and that includes an Abwehr operation using rogue Nazis, supposedly rogue Nazis, to send us down the wrong path.”
Mercier worked hard to conceal his reaction fro
m Bruner, but he failed. “Halbach was the real thing, Colonel Bruner.”
“Yes, so your report suggested, but how can you be sure? Was the Halbach you found the real Halbach? Or an Abwehr officer playing the role of Halbach? Well, I can’t pretend to know that for a certainty—can you?”
“Not for a certainty. Nothing is ever certain, particularly in this work.”
“Ah-ha! Now you’re on to the game! I’m not saying this is final, but it’s one view, and we would be negligent if we didn’t take it seriously. No? Not true?”
“Yes, sir,” Mercier said, now eager to be anywhere but Bruner’s office. “I understand.”
“I’m glad of that. We know you have ability, colonel, you are an excellent officer, that’s been proven. Surely wasted on an attaché assignment in that Warsaw rats’ nest. General de Beauvilliers has asked for your transfer, and you can pretty much count on our agreement. Does that please you? Colonel?”
Mercier nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“Well then, I won’t keep you. I expect you’d like to go out and celebrate.”
Mercier walked home through a rich spring afternoon, a Parisian spring, that mocked him in every way. Amid chestnut blossoms fallen on the sidewalk, the outdoor tables of a café were at full throb with city life—the lovers, with their hands on each other; conversing businessmen, afloat on a sea of genial commerce; the newspaper readers, solemn, intent on the politics of the day and a favored journalist’s acid comments; and the women, lovely in their spring outfits, alone with an aperitif, and perhaps, perhaps, available. A wondrous theatre, Mercier thought, each and every spring, now, next year, forever.
As he walked, his soldier’s heart steadied him. Bruner and his cronies, all the way up to Pétain and his cronies, had denied him, would not have their version of military doctrine spoiled by what he’d learned—there would be no German tanks, no attack through the forests. The current thinking could not be wrong, because they could not be wrong.
Had they betrayed France? Or just betrayed Mercier? He would, in time, find a way to accept their decision and in the future, working for de Beauvilliers, he would certainly press on, trying to prove that his discovery had been true. That’s what an officer did, forever, down through the ages. If an attack failed, you gathered your remaining troops and attacked again. And again, until they killed you or you took their position. He knew no other way. Yes, he was angry, and stung. No, it didn’t matter. He could only remain true to himself, there was no other possibility.
And the people on these lovely old streets? The crowd at the café? Would they be forced to live with a lost war? He hoped not, oh how deeply he hoped not, he’d seen the defeated, the occupied, the lost—that could not come here, not to this city, not to this café.
Then he sped up, walking faster now. Now he wanted to be back with people who cared for him, his private nation.
Back on the rue Saint-Simon, as Mercier let himself in the door, he heard a raucous laugh from the parlor. Then Albertine’s voice. “Is that you, Jean-François?”
Mercier walked down the hall to the parlor.
“Welcome back, love,” Anna said. “We’ve been having the best time.” Clearly they were. On a glass-topped bar cart, a half bottle of gin stood next to a seltzer bottle, alongside a squeezed-out lemon and a sugar bowl.
“We’ve taught ourselves to make gin fizzes, right here at home,” Albertine said. Both she and Anna were flushed, the latter sitting sideways in an easy chair, her legs draped over the arm.
“The conqueror has returned,” Anna said. “Covered in laurels.”
Mercier collapsed in the corner of the sofa, took his officer’s hat by its stiff brim and sailed it across the room, where it landed on a brocaded loveseat. “They fired me,” he said. “The bastards.”
“What?” Anna said.
“We’d best make a new batch,” Albertine said, rising unsteadily and making her way to the drinks cart.
“I gave them treasure,” Mercier said. “They threw it on the dung pile.”
“Oh, those people,” Albertine said. “I’m sorry if they’ve treated you badly, but you ought not to be so shocked.”
“What happened?” Anna said, twisting around in order to sit properly.
“I found a way to acquire important information. They, the officers of the General Staff, have chosen not to believe it.”
“Half of them are in the Action Française,” Albertine said, naming the high-brow French fascist organization. She worked a cut lemon around a glass corer, then poured the juice into a highball glass. “They want France to be allied with Germany, the only enemy they think about is Russia.”
“Who knows what they want,” Mercier said. “They tossed me a promotion and they’re transferring me back to Paris.”
“And that’s so bad?” Albertine said.
“My highly placed ally likely went to war, but he didn’t win. Now he’s rescued me, I’m going to work for him. I guess that’s a promotion as well.”
“Nothing quite like winning and losing at once,” Albertine said, adding sugar to the glass. “You’ll feel better in a moment, dear.”
“You’re leaving Warsaw?” Anna said.
“Yes. I don’t suppose you’d care to come along, would you?”
“Am I de trop?” Albertine said.
“No, no. Stay where you are,” Mercier said. “Could you do that, Anna? Move to Paris?”
“If you want me to. I’d have to resign from the League.”
“They hire lawyers in Paris,” Albertine said. “Even woman lawyers.”
“Well, we don’t have to decide all this tonight,” Mercier said. “But I’m not going to have us living in two places.”
“Ah, good for you,” Albertine said. Then, to Anna, “He’s the best cousin, dear, is he not? And he might do for a husband.”
“Albertine,” Mercier said. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. For now, where’s my gin fizz?”
“Just ready,” Albertine said. She brought Mercier his drink and settled down at the other end of the sofa. Then she raised her glass. “Anyhow, salut, and vive la France,” she said. “It’s the good side, and I do mean the three of us, who will win in the end.”
They didn’t.
Twenty-four months later, with Guderian in command, a massive German tank attack through the Ardennes Forest breached the French defenses, and—on 22 June, 1940—France capitulated. The former Colonel Charles de Gaulle, by then promoted to general, left France and led the resistance from London. After many adventures, Colonel Mercier de Boutillon and his wife, Anna, also made their way to London, where Mercier went to work for de Gaulle, and Anna for the Sixth Bureau, the intelligence service of the Polish resistance army.
And on 25 June, 1940, Marshal Philippe Pétain accepted the leadership of the Vichy government.
READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
MISSION TO PARIS
BY
ALAN FURST
PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE
IN PARIS, THE EVENINGS OF SEPTEMBER ARE SOMETIMES WARM, EXCESSIVELY gentle, and, in the magic particular to that city, irresistably seductive. The autumn of the year 1938 began in just such weather and on the terraces of the best cafés, in the famous restaurants, at the dinner parties one wished to attend, the conversation was, of necessity, lively and smart: fashion, cinema, love affairs, politics, and, yes, the possibility of war—that too had its moment. Almost anything, really, except money. Or, rather, German money. A curious silence, for hundreds of millions of francs—tens of millions of dollars—had been paid to some of the most distinguished citizens of France since Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933. But maybe not so curious, because those who had taken the money were aware of a certain shadow in these transactions and, in that shadow, the people who require darkness for the kind of work they do.
The distinguished citizens, had they been willing to talk about it, would have admitted that the Germans, the political operatives who offered the bounty, were s
urprisingly adept. They knew how to soften a conscience, presented bribery as little more than a form of sophisticated commerce, of the sort that evolves in salons and offices and the private rooms of banks—a gentleman’s treason. And the operatives could depend on one hard-edged principle: that those who style themselves as men of the world know there is an iron fist in every velvet glove, understand what might await them in the shadows and so, having decided to play the game, they will obey its rules.
Still, human nature being what it is, there will forever be somebody, won’t there, who will not.
One such, on the fourteenth of September, was a rising political star called Prideaux. Had he been in Paris that evening, he would have been having drinks at Fouquet with a Spanish marquis, a diplomat, after which he could have chosen between two good dinner parties: one in the quarter clustered around the Palais Bourbon, the other in a lovely old mansion up in Passy. It was destiny, Prideaux believed, that he spend his evenings in such exalted places. And, he thought, if fucking destiny had a shred of mercy left in its cold heart he would just now be hailing a taxi. Fucking destiny, however, had other things in mind for the future and didn’t care a bit what became of Prideaux.
Who felt, in his heart, terribly wronged. This shouldn’t be happening to him, not to him, the famously clever Louis Prideaux, chef de cabinet—technically chief of staff but far more powerful than that—to an important senator in Paris. Well, it had happened. As tout Paris left for the August migration to the countryside, Prideaux had been forced to admit that his elegant world was doomed to collapse (expensive mistress, borrowed money, vengeful wife) and so he’d fled, desperate for a new life, finding himself on the night of the fourteenth in Varna, the Black Sea port of Bulgaria. Bulgaria! Prideaux fell back on his lumpy bed at a waterfront hotel, crushed by loss: the row of beautiful suits in his armoire, the apartment windows that looked out at the Seine, the slim, white hands of his aristocratic—by birth, not behavior—mistress. All gone, all gone. For a moment he actually contemplated weeping but then his fingers, dangling over the side of the bed, touched the supple leather of his valise. For Prideaux, the life preserver in a stormy sea: a million francs. A soothing, restorative, million, francs.
