The spies of warsaw (4 page)

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

2 0 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

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

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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H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 2 3

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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2 4 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW

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

unamused, the ache was in both knees, so not so much the condition

of the wounded warrior as that of a tall man who, the previous

evening, had been making love with a short woman in the shower.

Mercier went first to his apartment, changed quickly into uniform,

then walked back to the embassy, a handsome building on Nowy

Swiat, a few doors from the British embassy, on a tree-lined square