by Alan Furst
gust of wind hit the greenhouse, then the sound of hail, loud against
the glass roof. It stopped almost immediately. "I don't know anybody
either," Mercier said. "You're supposed to introduce yourself around,
at these affairs."
"Not me. You have to be the bright and cheerful sort to do that.
I'm not. Are you?"
"No."
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"I didn't think so."
"I depend on introductions, then I can socialize. Otherwise--"
"It's the dreadful corner. And the hopeful smile."
They circled around the professor, now with an older woman
wearing a cloche hat and still raving on about Matisse. Then Madame
Dupin materialized in front of them. "Hello you two, I see you found
each other."
"We did," Anna said. "You've got a good crowd."
"Marc is pleased, anyhow I think he is; he doesn't talk, I was
afraid of the weather, but, as you see . . ."
"We're in search of an ashtray," Mercier said.
"Over by the food. Try the smoked sturgeon while you're there,
it's from the chef at the Bristol." Again the wind moaned. "Oh my,"
Madame Dupin said. A brief shower of hail rattled furiously against
the greenhouse. "Listen to it, perhaps we'll have to stay all night." She
scowled up at the heavens, the embattled hostess, then said, "I'm off,
my dears. Please try and circulate."
When she'd gone, Anna said, "Maybe we should."
Mercier shrugged. "Why?"
She grinned. "Such a scoundrel," she said, and gave him a playful
push on the shoulder.
"Oh yes, that's me," he said, meaning very much the opposite, but
wishing it were so.
At the food table they found an ashtray, then tried the sturgeon,
the smoked trout, and salmon roe with chopped egg on toast. Anna
ate with zeal, once making a small sound of satisfaction when one of
the hors d'oeuvres was especially good. Next, back to the bar for
another vodka, and they clinked glasses before they drank. Outside,
the storm began to beat wildly against the glass.
"Maybe we'll have to stay all night," Mercier said.
"Please!" she said. "You'll get me in trouble."
"Well, at least let me see you home."
"Thank you," she said. "That I would like."
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Twenty minutes later, they said good night to Shublin and Madame
Dupin and left the greenhouse. Mercier looked around for a taxi, but
the street was deserted. "Which way is home?" he said.
She pointed and said, "Up there. It's a block off Marszalkowska,
where we can take a trolley car, or we're much more likely to find a
taxi."
They set off, heading west, then north, against the wind, which
howled and moaned in the narrow street, sent a sheet of newspaper
flying past, and made it difficult to walk. It wasn't so bad at first, but
soon enough striding boldly into the storm changed to walking sideways, hunched over, eyes half shut, the hail stinging their faces.
"Damn!" she said. "This is worse than I thought."
Mercier kept searching for a taxi, but there wasn't a headlight to
be seen anywhere.
"I'm going to have to hang on to you," she said. "Do you mind?"
"Not at all."
She held his arm with both her own, tight against her body, and
hid her face behind his shoulder. Moving slowly, they made their way
to Marszalkowska avenue, the Broadway of Warsaw. "How much further?" Mercier said. He sensed she wasn't doing well.
"Twenty minutes, on a nice day."
She was trembling, he could feel it, and, when he turned to look at
her, there were frost crystals in her eyelashes. "Maybe we'd better get
inside somewhere," he said. The cold was brutal, her sweater thin, and
her winter coat more stylish than warm.
"Allright. Where?"
"I don't know. The next place we see." Up and down the avenue,
the Marszalkowska cafes and restaurants were shuttered and dark. In
the distance, a man made slow progress, holding his hat on his head,
and the streetlamps, coated with ice, glowed dimly on the whitened
pavement, with not a tire track to be seen.
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"My father used to talk about these storms," she said. "They blow
down from Siberia, a gift to Poland from Russia." Her teeth chattered,
and she held him tighter.
Mercier had begun to consider doorways, maybe even trying the
door of one of the cars parked on the avenue, when he saw, up ahead
somewhere, light shining on the sidewalk. "Whatever that is," he said,
"that's where we're going."
He felt her nod, urgently: yes, anything.
The light came from a movie theatre, from a ticket booth set back
beneath a small marquee. The old lady in the booth wore one shawl
over her head and another around her shoulders. As Mercier paid, she
said, "You shouldn't be out in this, my children."
In the theatre, the audience, unaware of the storm outside, was
laughing and having a good time. Mercier found seats and rubbed his
frozen hands.
"That was awful," Anna said. "Really. Awful."
"Maybe it will die down," Mercier said. "At least we'll be warm
for a while."
On the screen, a diminutive soldier with a Hitler mustache was
saluting an officer, a vigorous salute yet somehow wrong--a parody
of a salute. A close-up of the officer's face showed a man at the end of
his patience. He spoke angrily; the soldier tried again. Worse. He was
the classic recruit who, believing he has assumed a military posture,
only manages to mock the prescribed form. Mercier leaned over and
whispered, "Do you know what we're watching?"
" ' Dodek na froncie, ' Dodek Goes to War. That's Adolf Dymsza."
"I know that name."
"The Polish Charlie Chaplin."
"Have you seen it?"
"No, actually I haven't." After a moment, with a laugh in her
voice, she said, "Were you concerned?"
"Of course," he said.
"You can be very droll, colonel."
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"Jean-Francois."
"Very well. Jean-Francois."
From behind them: "Shhhh! "
"Sorry."
Mercier tried; but the film was more romantic comedy than farce,
and the hiss and crackle of the sound track was particularly loud, so
he missed much of the dialogue, and that's what was making the audience laugh. At one point, Anna also laughed, and Mercier whispered,
"What did he say?"
In order not to annoy the man behind them, she whispered by his
ear. "In French, it's 'That's odd, my dog said the same thing.' " But
then, she didn't turn away, she waited, and, when he turned toward
her, her eyes closed and they kissed--tenderly, her lips dry, moving
softly against his. After a few long seconds, she sat back in her seat,
but her shoulder rested against his,
and there it stayed.
Forty minutes later, the film ended and they had to leave the theatre. The storm had not abated. They walked quickly, her hands in the
pockets of her coat; neither one of them wanted to be the first to
speak. Then, as the silence grew heavy, Mercier saw a horse cab. He
waved and shouted, the driver stopped, and Mercier took Anna's hand
and helped her into the carriage. This might have been an opportunity
sent down by the gods of romance, but it wasn't to be. Anna was
quiet, and thoughtful. Mercier tried to start a light conversation, but
she, politely enough, made it clear that talking was not what she
wanted to do, so he sat in silence as the intrepid horse, its blanket covered with melting hail, clopped along the avenue until Anna directed
the coachman to turn into the street that Mercier remembered from
the night he'd taken her to the Europejski.
He helped her out of the carriage as he asked the driver to wait--
he would take the cab back home--then the two of them stood facing
each other. Before he could say anything, she put her hand flat against
his chest and held it there--a gesture that silenced him, yet somehow,
and he felt it strongly, meant also attraction--desire mixed with
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regret. He could see in her face that she was troubled: about what had
happened in the movie theatre, about what had happened all evening.
"Good night," she said, "Jean-Francois."
"May I see you again?"
"I don't know. Maybe better if we don't."
"Then, good night."
"Yes, good night."
In Paris, during Mercier's meeting with the people at the Deuxieme
Bureau, the Wehrmacht's planned tank maneuvers at Schramberg had
been discussed at length. And so, on the tenth of December, four German agents of the Service des Renseignements had been sent into the
town: an elderly gentleman and his wife, who were to celebrate their
wedding anniversary by walking the low hills of the Black Forest; a
salesman of kitchenwares from Stuttgart, calling on the local shops;
and a representative of UFA, the Berlin film production company, in
search of locations for a new version of the Grimm brothers' fairy
tales.
Not a bad choice for a fairy tale, the older part of Schramberg:
winding streets, half-timbered cottages with sloping rooves, shop
signs in Gothic lettering. Adorable, really. And the townspeople were
eager to talk, to praise their charming Schramberg, understanding
perfectly the benefits to be had from film crews, who famously threw
money about like straw. The best kind of business: they came, they
annoyed everyone, but then they went away and left their money
behind.
So the local dignitaries, the mayor, the councilmen, went on and
on, describing the gemutlich delights of the town. Though this was,
please understand, not the best moment to visit. The Wehrmacht was
coming, everybody knew it, one of the roads that wound up into the
hills had been closed off, all the rooms at the inn had been reserved,
and a few supply trucks were already there, with more to arrive at
any moment. Oh well. Still, the good gentleman could see for himself
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how picturesque the forest was, and, if the area up on the Rabenhugel,
Raven Hill, was torn up by the army's machines, there were plenty of
other places just as scenic. More scenic! And would the company
be hiring local people to perform in the film? In a crowd, perhaps?
Or even, say, as a mayor? Naturally they would, said the UFA man,
it was always done that way. What about those two hefty fellows,
seated by the window in the Schwarzwald coffeehouse, having their
second breakfast? Oh no, they weren't local! They had just arrived,
they were here to make sure that, that--um--that everything went
well. Wink.
For the anniversary couple, in loden-green outfits and matching
alpine hats--a vigorous yodel could not be far in the future--the same
story, as they produced their touring map for the lady who'd rented
them a room. No, no, not there, that was forbidden, until after the
fourteenth. You cannot go east of the town, to the Rabenhugel, but to
the south--ah, there it was even lovelier, the magnificent pines, the
tiny red birds that stayed the winter; south, much better, and would
they care to have her make a picnic to take along? They would? Ach,
wunderbar! She would see to it right away.
And so for the salesman, in his Panhard automobile with sample
pots and pans in the backseat, headed over to the town of Waldmossingen. Halted at a sawhorse barrier manned by three soldiers, he
was told that this road was closed, he would have to go back to
Schramberg, and then down to Hardt and circle around. Of course he
knew the way, and only took this road for the scenery. Was this permanent, this road-closing? No, sir, only for a few days. "Heil Hitler!"
"Heil Hitler!"
13 December. Mercier took the early LOT flight to Zurich, then the
train to Basel and a taxi to the French consulate. Climbing the stairs to
the consul's office, he was his darkest self, tense and brooding and in
no mood for polite conversation, a pre-combat condition he knew all
too well. But the consul, a Mediterranean Frenchman with a goatee,
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was just what the doctor ordered. "So, colonel, a stroll in the German
woods?"
Maybe the best approach, Mercier thought, irony in the face of
danger. And it would be dangerous. The Wehrmacht wouldn't care
much for a foreign military attache observing maneuvers--there to
discover strengths and weaknesses, what certain tanks could do in the
forest and what they couldn't. Because, if it came to war, such intelligence would lead to casualties, and could be the difference between
victory and defeat.
The people at 2, bis, in receipt of reports from their German
agents, had acted quickly, sending to Warsaw maps of the Schramberg
district: the roads, the walking paths in the forest, the hill known as
the Rabenhugel, and two nearby hills with a view of the site to be used
for maneuvers. A coded wireless message from the General Staff
Meteorological Service predicted a nighttime temperature of 28
degrees Fahrenheit, reaching 35 degrees by noon, and a possible light
dusting of snow on the morning of the fourteenth. Mercier had his
own field glasses, and the rest of his equipment, as promised in Paris,
had been brought down to Basel by courier; a suitcase stood behind
the consul's office door.
The consul hefted it up onto a table, handed Mercier the key, and
watched with interest as the contents were brought out: a Swiss army
greatcoat--its insignia long ago removed--a peaked wool hat with
earflaps, a blanket roll, a knapsack. When Mercier unwrapped a Pathe
Baby, the 9.5-millimeter movie camera, the consul said, "Thought of
everything, haven't they
."
With the camera, a typed sheet of instructions. Simple enough:
one cranked the handle; the action was operated by a spring. One roll
of film was in the camera, ten more could be found in the knapsack;
directions for reloading followed, with a diagram.
"What about distance?" the consul said.
"I would assume the lens has been refitted. Otherwise, they'll have
the march of the tiny toys. But even so, it can be enlarged at the laboratory. At least I think it can."
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"So, just aim and press the button?"
Mercier pointed the camera at the consul, who waved and smiled,
then went to a closet and produced a six-foot walking staff fashioned
from a tree branch. "I won't tell you what we went through to obtain
this, but Paris insisted that you have it."
"War wound."
"Then it will help. But please, colonel, try not to lose it," the consul said. "Now, you'll be leaving at dusk, your driver will arrive in an
hour. If you'd like to rest until then, we've set aside a room for you.
Care for something to eat?"
"No, thank you."
The consul nodded. "It was always that way for me, in la der-
niere. " The phrase was common among people who'd been there, it
meant the last one. He opened a drawer in his desk, produced a Swiss
passport, and handed it to Mercier. Albert Ducasse, from Lausanne,
thus a French-speaking Swiss. The photograph, applied at 2, bis, was
a duplicate of the one in his dossier in Paris. The consul cleared his
throat and said, "They've instructed me to ask you to leave your
French passport with this office."
Whose idea was that, Bruner's? Out of uniform, on foreign
ground, in covert surveillance, he was, by the rules, a spy. But out of
uniform, with a false identity--that made him a real spy.
"Of course," the consul said, "if you are caught, in that situation,
you could be shot. Technically speaking, that is."
"Yes, I know," Mercier said. And gave the consul his passport.
In the early dusk of winter, Mercier climbed into an Opel with German plates. The young driver called himself Stefan and said he was
from an emigre family that had settled in Besancon. "In 'thirty-three,"
he added. "The minute Hitler took power, my father got the suitcases
down. He was a socialist politician, and he knew what was coming.
Then, after we settled in France, the people you work for showed up
