The spies of warsaw (10 page)

do expect to be paid back."

"Of course. But I'll tell you something, they won't be so finicky

about it if German divisions come across your border."

"They'll regret it if they do," Vyborg's wife said. "They may overwhelm us, at first, but in time they'll be sorry. And, while we're working on that here, they'll have the French army coming across their

other border."

"That could," the director said, "take a few weeks, you know. In

all fairness. Apologies to Colonel Mercier."

"You needn't," Mercier said. "It took us time to organize ourselves in 1914, and it will again."
No, we're not coming, we're going to

sit on the Maginot Line
.

"I suspect Hitler knows that," the director said.

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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 5 7

Marko's assistant had now climbed into the coffin, bare feet protruding from one end, head from the other. With a lethal-looking saw

in hand, Marko bent over the box and, on the side away from the audience, began to cut. The blade was obviously set between two metal

bands that circled the coffin, but the progress of the saw was loud and

realistic. Suddenly, the girl squeaked with real terror. Had the trick

gone wrong? From the audience, a chorus of gasps. The director's wife

raised her hand to her mouth and said, "Good heavens!"

The magician returned to work, sawing away, while the assistant

raised her head and peered over the edge of the coffin. Finally, Marko

raised the saw, turned to the audience and then, the grand finale, separated the box. The audience applauded, and the magician wheeled

the two halves of his assistant offstage.

"False feet," Vyborg said.

"Or a second assistant, curled up in the other half," Anna said.

"And you'll notice," said the director's wife, triumphantly, "not a

speck of sawdust."

The magician was followed by a
chanteuse,
who sang romantic songs,

then three bearded acrobats in saggy tights who turned somersaults

through a fiery hoop. Each time they landed they shouted "Hup!"

and the Adria's floor shook. Then a trio--saxophone, drums, and

guitar--appeared and began to play dance music. Vyborg stood and

offered a hand to his wife, the director and the major followed his

example. Mercier was the last to stand. "Shall we?" he said to Anna,

his voice tentative, it wasn't
really
obligatory.

If I must
. "I think we should."

A slow foxtrot. Mercier, stiff and mechanical, had never advanced

much beyond lessons taken as a ten-year-old, girls and boys in white

gloves. Anna was not much better, but they managed, going round and

round in their private square to the slow beat. Mercier, his arm circled

lightly about her, found her back firm, then soft above the hips. And

the way she moved, lithe and supple beneath the thin silk of her dress,

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5 8 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

more than interesting--his arm wanting, almost by itself, to tighten

around her waist. As she danced, she smiled up at him, her perfume

intense. Was the smile complicit? Knowing? Inviting? He wanted it to

be, and smiled back at her. Finally she said, returning to polite conversation, "That man from Renault is something of a bully."

"Titles and prerogatives aside, he's a merchant. Selling his wares."

"Still . . ." Anna said. The bridge of the song was slow. Anna's

hand, slightly damp, tightened on his. "You'd think he'd be more, oh,

subtle about it."

"Yes, but the major held his own," Mercier said. As they turned,

a woman behind Anna took a dramatic step backward, bumping

against her and forcing her forward, so that she and Mercier were

pressed together. "Sorry," she said, "I'm not very good at this." After

a moment, she moved away.

"Nor am I," he said.

She looked up at him; she did have lovely eyes, he thought, green

eyes. "Oh well," she said, laughing, "something I never expected, this

evening."

"Not so bad?" Mercier smiled hopefully.

"No," she said. "Not so bad."

The song ended, they returned to the table.

Driving back after midnight, Anna had another cigarette, and this

time Mercier joined her. They were silent, having talked themselves

out during the evening, simply sat and watched the streets go by, a few

lights on in the darkened city. As the Buick rolled up to the street door,

she said, "You needn't see me upstairs."

"You're sure?" he said, reaching for the door handle. He assumed

that fiance Maxim would be up and waiting.

"I am. Thank you, colonel. An evening to remember."

"It's for me to thank you, Mademoiselle Szarbek."
And me to

remember.

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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 5 9

Marek opened the door. Anna left the car, then turned and waved

goodby. When she was safely inside, they drove away.

23 October. In Glogau, a wet morning, a cold front had arrived with

the dawn and strands of white mist rose from the river. In the center of

the city, not far from the railroad bridge, a toy shop occupied the street

floor of the brick building at 35 Heimerstrasse, its windows crowded

with trains and dolls and soldiers. A local institution, the toy shop, it

had stood there for years, closing only briefly, when the Jewish owner

abruptly left the city, then reopening in a day or two, the glass in the

windows replaced by the new owner, and the shop again selling toys as

it always had.

The former owner, having prospered and bought the building,

had installed his family on the second floor, in a large apartment of

eight rooms. After he left, the furniture had been sold, and the apartment had become an office. It was now the Glogau station of the

SD, the
Sicherheitsdienst,
the intelligence service of the SS, originally

part of the security section of the early National Socialist party,

now grown up to stand beside the
Abwehr,
the military intelligence

section of the General Staff. The Nazi party, having come to power

in 1933, required a service more responsive to its particular political objectives, so the SD became an official department, concerning

itself with foreign counterintelligence, while its brother Gestapo functioned as the state security police. The Glogau office, an outstation

of the SD Breslau office, worked against Poland and was staffed by

two secretaries, two filing clerks, three lieutenants, and a supervisor,

an SS Sturmbannfuhrer--major--named August Voss, known by his

underlings as Frogface.

Why? What was so froglike about him? Really, not that much. He

did have pouchy cheeks and slightly bulging eyes, which stared out at

the world from behind thick eyeglasses, but there was more, a certain

predatory fury in the set of his mouth, as though he were eager to

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6 0 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

snap up a bug but could find no bugs in the water that flowed past his

rock. Well, he found one every now and again, but never enough and,

if he didn't find more, he'd remain on this Glogau rock forever. In his

youth, as an economics instructor in Dresden, he'd joined the ambitious young lawyers, engineers, and journalists in the fledgling Nazi

party, which was determined, after a lost war, to raise the nation to

supremacy in Europe. They joined the SS, the Black Order, pledged to

secrecy, pledged to obedience, and to whatever violence and terror

might be required to bring them to power. And, in time, it did.

For August Voss, that meant a position in the SD and, on a wet

October morning in Glogau, news of a potential bug. His office door

stood open, but his senior lieutenant, making sure of the knot in his

sober tie--the SD, a secret organization, wore civilian clothing--

knocked politely on the jamb.

"Yes?" Voss said. Born angry, August Voss, even a single word

from his mouth threatened consequence.

"We are in receipt, sir, of a report from the Glogau police."

"Which says?"

The lieutenant glanced over the form, making very sure he got it

right. "Which says, that a woman from Glogau has observed suspicious behavior by a German citizen. On the Warsaw/Glogau Express."

"What did he do?"

"Acted in a suspicious manner, not described, and possibly evaded

the passport
kontrol
at Glogau station."

Voss extended a hand and snapped his fingers. He read over the

form and said, "It doesn't say how. Just that one minute he was on the

line, and the next he disappeared."

"Yes, sir."

Voss read it again. The lieutenant stood silent. In the quiet office,

with only the clacking of typewriters and the hiss of the steam radiators, the sound of Voss drumming his fingers on the metal desktop

was sharp and loud. "Mm," he said. "The Gestapo has this?"

"No, sir. Only us."

"Why?"

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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 6 1

"Because the police supervisor is persuaded that, for him, it's better so."

From Voss, a faint tightening at the corners of the mouth, which

the people around him had learned to understand as a smile. "Very

good." He paused, placed the report flat on his desk, and read it yet

again.
Perhaps next he will roll around on it,
the lieutenant thought.

"Let him know," Voss said, "that we appreciate his good sense."

"I will, sir."

"And get her in here, this Frau Schimmel. She knows more than

what's written in this report."

"Yes, sir. This afternoon, sir?"

"Now."

"Yes, sir. A bulletin to the Glogau
kontrol
office?"

"No, not yet."

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed, lieutenant."

"Thank you, sir."

The two lieutenants did not leave immediately; they first checked

the registries--suspected communists, socialists, homosexuals, freemasons, and persons of interest--to make certain that Frau Schimmel's name did not appear there. Then they drove to the shabbier part

of Glogau: sad old three-story tenements from the last century.

Frau Schimmel, when she heard the knock on the door, an official

knock, was in housedress and hairnet. A widow with grown children,

she preserved her good dress by leaving it in the closet until it was time

to go outside. She'd been in the midst of preparing breakfast for her

dachshund--meat scraps, a dab of precious lard to improve the shine

on the dog's coat--when she heard the knock. She dropped what she

was doing and hurried from the kitchen, her heart beating hard. It

beat harder still when she opened the door, to reveal two young men in

hats and coats, because they looked exactly like what they were.

"Yes?"

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6 2 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

"Frau Berta Schimmel?"

"Yes, sir."

"Your identity papers, Frau Schimmel."

She went to her purse and, hands trembling, retrieved the card.

The lieutenant handed it back to her and said, "We are from the

security services, Frau Schimmel, you will please accompany us to our

office."

She now suspected this had to do with the report she'd made to

the police, the police in the person of a fat, paternal sergeant at the

Glogau police station, a report she'd been forced to make. Innocently

enough, she'd mentioned the man on the train to a neighbor, who had

first suggested, then insisted, in a delicately threatening way, that she

inform the authorities. Well, now see what that had brought down on

her head. The dog, at her ankles, whined for her breakfast. "Later,

Schatzi," she said. "Be good, now." She knew these men were not

going to stand there while she fed a dog. She threw her coat over her

housedress and pulled the net off her hair--she looked frightful, she

thought, but when men like these came to the door, one did what one

was told.

A new Glogau, for Frau Schimmel, who'd lived there all her life,

the wet streets seen from the backseat of a Grosser Mercedes automobile. She had to resist the urge to make conversation, wanting to persuade them that she was a good, decent citizen who obeyed every law,

but she knew to keep her mouth shut. A few minutes later, the car

rolled to a stop in front of the toy shop on Heimerstrasse. Then she

was taken up to the second floor.

In the office, she perched on a chair by a secretary's desk, and

there she waited. The secretary was the youngest daughter of a local

seamstress, and Frau Schimmel, occasionally employed for needlework when the woman had too much to do, had met her more than

once, but neither woman acknowledged the other. At last, she was led

into another office, where one of the men who had arrested her--so

she thought of it--sat behind a bare desk. He was almost immediately

joined by a second man, a frightening man with heavy glasses, who

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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 6 3

drew a chair to a position just to one side and behind her, so that she