by Alan Furst
"Oh, reasons," she said, who knew why anything happened.
"Do you sing in the shower?"
She turned her head so that he could see that she was smiling.
"Perhaps in a little while, I will."
The skin of her back was still lightly tanned from the summer sun,
then, below the curved line of her bathing suit, very white. He worked
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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 1 7
up a creamy lather, put the soap in a dish on the wall, and slid his
hands up and down, sideways, round and round.
"Mmm," she said. Then, "Don't neglect my front, dear."
He re-soaped his hands and reached around her. As the water
drummed down on them, the white part of her, warm and slippery,
gradually turned a rosy pink. And, in time, she did sing, or something
like it, and, even though they were there for quite some time, the hot
water never ran out.
17 October, 5:15 a.m. Crossing the Vistula in a crowded trolley car,
Mercier leaned on a steel pole at the rear. He wore a battered hat, the
front of the brim low on his forehead, and a grimy overcoat, purchased from a used-clothing pushcart in the poor Jewish district. He
carried a cheap briefcase beneath his arm and looked, he thought, like
some lost soul sentenced to live in a Russian novel. The workers
packed inside the trolley, facing a long day in the Praga factories, were
grim-faced and silent, staring out the windows at the gray dawn and
the gray river below the railway bridge.
At the third stop in Praga, Mercier stepped down from the rear
platform, just past the Wedel candy factory, the smell of burned sugar
strong in the raw morning air. He walked the length of the factory,
crossed to a street of brick tenements, then on to a row of workshops,
machinery rattling and whining inside the clapboard sheds. At one of
them, the high doors had been rolled apart, and he could see dark
shapes shoveling coal into open furnaces, the fires flaring yellow and
orange.
He turned down an alley to a nameless little bar, open at dawn,
crowded with workers who needed a shot or two in order to get themselves into the factories. Here too it was silent. The men at the bar
drank off their shots, left a few groszy by their empty glasses, and
walked out. At a table on the opposite wall, Edvard Uhl, the engineer
from Breslau, sat stolidly with a coffee and a Polish newspaper, folded
on the table by his cup and saucer.
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Mercier sat across from him and said good morning. He spoke
German, badly and slowly, but he could manage. As the language of
France's traditional enemy, German had been a compulsory course at
Saint-Cyr.
Uhl looked up at him and nodded.
"All goes well with you," Mercier said. It wasn't precisely a question.
"Best I can expect." Poor me. He didn't much like the business
they did together. He was, Mercier could see it in his face, reluctant,
and frightened. Maybe life had gone better with Mercier's predecessor, "Henri," Emile Bruner, now a full colonel and Mercier's superior
at the General Staff, but he doubted it. "Considering what I must do,"
Uhl added.
Mercier shrugged. What did he care? For him, best to be cold and
formal at agent meetings--they had a commercial arrangement;
friendship was not required. "What have you brought?"
"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
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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 1 9
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 jack-Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 20
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ets 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 preten
se 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.
*
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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,
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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-yearold 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.
As they rode down the street, the Uhlans began to fire at the station, and rifle rounds snapped past Mercier's head. The answering
Russian fire blew spurts of brick dust off building walls, glass showered onto the cobblestones, a horse went down, and the rider to
Mercier's left cried out, dropped his rifle, tumbled sideways, and
was dragged by a stirrup until another rider grabbed the horse's
bridle.
They poured out of the street at full gallop and then, at a call from
Mercier's interpreter, split left and right, as drivers ran from the
Radzymin taxis, and passengers dropped their baggage and dove full
length, huddling by the curb for protection. Only a small unit, a platoon or so, of Russian troops protected the station, and they were
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quickly overcome, one of them, an officer with a red star on his cap,
speared with a Uhlan's lance.
For a few minutes, all was quiet. Mercier's horse, flanks heaving, whickered as Mercier trotted him a little way up the track, just
to see what he could see. Where was the Red Army? Somewhere in
Radzymin, for now the first artillery shell landed in the square surrounding the station, a loud explosion, a column of black dirt blown
into the air, a plane tree split in half. Mercier hauled his horse around
and galloped back toward the station house. He saw the rest of the
squadron leaving the square, headed for the cover of an adjoining
street.
The next thing he knew, he was on the ground, vision blurred, ears
ringing, blood running from his knee, the horse galloping off with the
rest of the squadron. For a time, he lay there; then a Uhlan and a shopkeeper ran through the shell bursts and carried him into a drygoods
store. They set him down carefully on the counter
, tore long strips of
upholstery fabric from a bolt--cotton toile with lords and ladies, he
would remember it as long as he lived--and managed to stop the
bleeding.
The following morning found him in a horse-drawn cart with
other wounded Uhlans, heading back toward Warsaw on a road lined
with Poles of every sort, who raised their caps as the wagon rolled
past. Back in the city, he learned that Pilsudski's daring gamble had
been successful, the Red Army, in confusion, was in full flight back
toward the Ukraine: thus, "the Miracle of the Vistula." Though, in
certain sectors of the Polish leadership, it was not considered a miracle at all. The Polish army had beaten the Russians, outmaneuvered
them, and outfought them. In crisis, they'd been strong--strong
enough to overcome a great power, and, therefore, strong enough to
stand alone in Europe.
A few months later, Captain Mercier and Captain de Gaulle were
awarded Polish military honors, the Cross of Virtuti Militari.
After that, the two careers did, for a time, continue to run parallel, as they served with French colonial forces in the Lebanon, fighting
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bandit groups, known as the Dandaches, in the Bekaa valley. Divergence came in the 1930s when de Gaulle, by then the most prestigious
intellectual in France's military--known, because of his books and
monographs, as the "pen officer" of the French army--won assignment to teach at the Ecole Superieure de Guerre. He was, by then, well
known in the military, and oft-quoted. For a number of memorable
statements, particularly a line delivered during the Great War when,
under sudden machine-gun fire, his fellow officers had thrown themselves to the ground, and de Gaulle called out, "Come, gentlemen,
behave yourselves."
For Mercier there was no such notoriety, but he had continued,
quite content, with a series of General Staff assignments in the
Lebanon. Until, as a French officer decorated by both France and
Poland, he'd been ordered, a perfect and appealing substitute for
Colonel Emile Bruner, to serve as military attache in Warsaw.
At the central Warsaw tram stop, Mercier got off the trolley. The gray
dawn had now given way to a gray morning, with a damp, cold wind,
and Mercier's knee hurt like hell. But in truth, he told himself, not
