The spies of warsaw Read online

  two hundred American dollars--some of his experts liked having dollars. The money to be paid in cash or deposited in any bank account,

  in any name, that Uhl might suggest.

  The word spy was never used, and Henri was very casual about

  the whole business. Very common, such transactions, his German

  counterparts did the same thing; everybody wanted to know what was

  what, on the other side of the border. And, he should add, nobody got

  caught, as long as they were discreet. What was done privately stayed

  private. These days, he said, in such chaotic times, smart people

  understood that their first loyalty was to themselves and their families.

  The world of governments and shifty diplomats could go to hell, if it

  wished, but Uhl was obviously a man who was shrewd enough to take

  care of his own future. And, if he ever found the arrangement uncomfortable, well, that was that. So, think it over, there's no hurry, get back

  in touch, or just forget you ever met me.

  And the countess? Was she, perhaps, also an, umm, "expert"?

  From Henri, a sophisticated laugh. "My dear fellow! Please! That

  sort of thing, well, maybe in the movies."

  So, at least the worm wasn't in on it.

  Back at the Europejski--a visit to the new apartment lay still in

  the future--the countess exceeded herself. Led him to a delight or two

  that Uhl knew about but had never experienced; her turn to kneel on

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  the carpet. Rapture. Another glass of champagne and further novelty.

  In time he fell back on the pillow and gazed up at the ceiling, elated

  and sore. And brave as a lion. He was a shrewd fellow--a single

  exchange with Henri, and that thousand zloty would see the countess

  through her difficulties for the next few months. But life never went

  quite as planned, did it, because Henri, not nearly so cheerful as the

  first time they'd met, insisted, really did insist, that the arrangement

  continue.

  And then, in August, instead of Henri, a tall Frenchman called

  Andre, quiet and reserved, and much less pleased with himself, and

  the work he did, than Henri. Wounded, Uhl guessed, in the Great War,

  he leaned on a fine ebony stick, with a silver wolf's head for a grip.

  At the Hotel Europejski, in the early evening of an autumn day, Herr

  Edvard Uhl finished with his bath and dressed, in order to undress, in

  what he hoped would be a little while. The room-service waiter had

  delivered a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket, one small lamp was

  lit, the drapes were drawn. Uhl moved one of them aside, enough to

  see out the window, down to the entry of the hotel, where taxis pulled

  up to the curb and the giant doorman swept the doors open with a

  genteel bow as the passengers emerged. Fine folks indeed, an army

  officer and his lavish girlfriend, a gentleman in top hat and tails, a

  merry fellow with a beard and a monocle. Uhl liked this life very well,

  this Warsaw life, his dream world away from the brown soot and

  lumpy potatoes of Breslau. He would pay for that with a meeting in

  the morning; then, home again.

  Ah, here she was.

  The Milanowek Tennis Club had been founded late one June night in

  1937. Something of a lark, at that moment. "Let's have a tennis club!

  Why not? The Milanowek Tennis Club--isn't it fabulous?" The village of Milanowek was a garden in a pine forest, twenty miles from

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  Warsaw, famous for its resin-scented air--"mahogany air," the joke

  went, because it was expensive to live there and breathe it--famous for

  its glorious manor houses surrounded by English lawns, Greek statues, pools, and tennis courts. Famous as well for its residents, the

  so-called "heart of the Polish nation," every sort of nobility in the

  Alamanach de Gotha, every sort of wealthy Jewish merchant. If one's

  driver happened to be unavailable, a narrow-gauge railway ran out

  from the city, stopping first at the village of Podkowa. Podkowa was

  the Polish word for horseshoe, which led the unknowing to visions of

  a tiny ancient village, where a peasant blacksmith labored at his forge,

  but they would soon enough learn that Podkowa had been designed, at

  the turn of the century, by the English architect Arthur Howard, with

  houses situated in the pattern of a horseshoe and a common garden at

  the center.

  The manor house--owned by Prince Kaz, formally Kazimierz,

  and Princess Toni, Antowina--had three tennis courts, for the noble

  Brosowicz couple, with family connections to various branches of the

  Radziwills and Poniatowskis, didn't have one of anything. This taste

  for variety, long a tradition on both sides of the family, included

  manor houses--their other country estate had six miles of property

  but lay far from Warsaw--as well as apartments in Paris and London

  and vacation homes--the chalet in Saint Moritz, the palazzo in

  Venice--and extended to servants, secretaries, horses, dogs, and lovers.

  But for Prince Kaz and Princess Toni, the best thing in the world was

  to have, wherever they happened to be at the moment, lots of friends.

  The annual production of Christmas cards went on for days.

  At the Milanowek house, their friends came to play tennis. The

  entire nation was passionate for the game; in Poland, only a single golf

  course was to be found but, following the re-emergence of the country,

  there were tennis courts everywhere. And so they decided, late that

  June night, to make it official. "It's the Milanowek Tennis Club now,"

  they would tell their friends, who were honored to be included.

  "Come and play whenever you like; if we're not here, Janusz will let

  you in." What a good idea, the friends thought. They scheduled their

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  matches by telephone and stopped by at all hours of the day and early

  evening: the baron of this and the marchioness of that, the nice Jewish dentist and his clever wife, a general of the army and a captain of

  industry, a socialist member of the Sejm, the Polish parliament, the

  royalist Minister of Posts and Telegraph, various elegant young people who didn't do much of anything, and the newly arrived French

  military attache, the dashing Colonel Mercier.

  In fact a lieutenant colonel, and wounded in two wars, he didn't

  dash very well. He did the best he could, usually playing doubles, but

  still, a passing shot down the line would often elude him--if it didn't

  go out, the tennis gods punishing his opponent for taking advantage

  of the colonel's limping stride.

  That Thursday afternoon in October, the vast sky above the

  steppe dark and threatening, Colonel Mercier was partnered by

  Princess Toni herself, in her late thirties as perfect and pretty as a doll,

  an effect heightened by rouged cheeks and the same straw-colored hair

  as Prince Kaz. They did look, people said, like brother and sister. And,

  you know, sometimes in these noble families . . . No, it wasn't true,

  but the similar
ity was striking.

  "Good try, Jean-Francois," she called out, as the ball bounced

  away, brushing her hair off her forehead and turning her racquet over

  a few times as she awaited service.

  Across the net, a woman called Claudine, the wife of a Belgian

  diplomat, prepared to serve. Here one could see that the doubles

  teams were fairly constituted, for Claudine had only her right arm; the

  other--her tennis shirt sleeve pinned up below her shoulder--had

  been lost to a German shell in the Great War, when she'd served as a

  nurse. Standing at the back line, she held ball and racquet in one hand,

  tossed the ball up, regripped her racquet, and managed a fairly brisk

  serve. Princess Toni returned crosscourt, with perfect form but low

  velocity, and Dr. Goldszteyn, the Jewish dentist, sent it back toward

  the colonel, just close enough--he never, when they played together,

  hit balls that Mercier couldn't reach. Mercier drove a low shot to

  center court; Claudine returned backhand, a high lob. "Oh damn,"

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  Princess Toni said through clenched teeth, running backward. Her

  sweeping forehand sent the ball sailing over the fence on the far side of

  the court. "Sorry," she said to Mercier.

  "We'll get it back," Mercier said. He spoke French, the language

  of the Polish aristocracy, and thus the Milanowek Tennis Club.

  "Forty-fifteen," Claudine called out, as a passing servant tossed

  the ball back over the fence. Serving to Mercier, her first try ticked the

  net, the second was in. Mercier hit a sharp forehand, Dr. Goldszteyn

  swept it back, Princess Toni retrieved, Claudine ran to the net and

  tried a soft lob. Too high, and Mercier reached up and hit an overhand

  winner--that went into the net. "Game to us," Claudine called out.

  "My service," Princess Toni answered, a challenge in her voice:

  we'll see who takes this set. They almost did, winning the next game,

  but eventually going down six-four. Walking off the court, Princess

  Toni rested a hand on Mercier's forearm; he could smell perfume

  mixed with sweat. "No matter," she said. "You're a good partner for

  me, Jean-Francois."

  What? No, she meant tennis. Didn't she? At forty-six, Mercier

  had been a widower for three years, and was considered more than eligible by the smart set in the city. But, he thought, not the princess.

  "We'll play again soon," he said, the response courteous and properly

  amicable.

  He managed almost always to hit the right note with these people

  because he was, technically, one of them--Jean-Francois Mercier de

  Boutillon, though the nobiliary particule de had been dropped by his

  democratically inclined grandfather, and the name of his ancestral

  demesne had disappeared along with it, except on official papers. But

  participation in the rites and rituals of this world was not at all something he cared about--membership in the tennis club, and other social

  activities, were requirements of his profession; otherwise he wouldn't

  have bothered. A military attache was supposed to hear things and

  know things, so he made it his business to be around people who occasionally said things worth knowing. Not very often, he thought. But in

  truth--he had to admit-- often enough.

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  In the house, he paused to pick up his white canvas bag, then

  headed down the hallway. The old boards creaked with every step, the

  scent of beeswax polish perfumed the air--nothing in the world

  smelled quite like a perfectly cleaned house. Past the drawing room,

  the billiard room, a small study lined with books, was one of the

  downstairs bathrooms made available to the tennis club members.

  How they live. On a travertine shelf by the sink, fresh lilies in a Japanese vase, fragrant soap in a gold-laced dish. A grid of heated copper

  towel bars held thick Turkish towels, the color of fresh cream, while

  the shower curtain was decorated with a surrealist half-head and

  squiggles--where on God's green earth did they find such a thing?

  He peeled off his tennis outfit, then opened the bag, took out a

  blue shirt, flannel trousers, and fresh linen, made a neat pile on a small

  antique table, stowed his tennis clothes in the bag, worked the cheva-

  liere, the gold signet ring of the nobility, off his ring finger and set it

  atop his clothes, and stepped into the shower.

  Ahhh.

  An oversized showerhead poured forth a broad, powerful spray of

  hot water. Where he lived--the longtime French military attache

  apartment in Warsaw--there was only a bathtub and a diabolical gas

  water heater, which provided a tepid bath at best and might someday

  finish the job that his German and Russian enemies had failed to complete. What medal did they have for that? he wondered. The Croix de

  Bain, awarded posthumously.

  Very quietly, so that someone passing by in the hall would not

  hear him, he began to sing.

  Turning slowly in the shower, Mercier was tall--a little over six feet,

  with just the faintest suggestion of a slouch, an apology for height--

  and lean; well muscled in the legs and shoulders and well scarred all

  over. On the outside of his right knee, a patch of red, welted skin--

  some shrapnel still in there, they told him--and sometimes, on damp,

  cold days, he walked with a stick. On the left side of his chest, a three-Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 15

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  inch white furrow; on the back of his left calf, a burn scar; running

  along the inside of his right wrist, a poorly sutured tear made by

  barbed wire; and, on his back, just below his left shoulder blade, the

  puckered wound of a sniper's bullet. From the last, he should not have

  recovered, but he had, which left him better off than most of the class

  of 1912 at the Saint-Cyr military academy, who rested beneath white

  crosses in the fields of northeast France.

  Well, he was done with war. He doubted he could face that again,

  he'd simply seen too much of it. With some effort, he forced his mind

  away from such thoughts, which, he believed, visited him more often

  than he should allow, and this sort of determination was easily read in

  his face. Not unhandsome, he had heavy, dark hair parted on the left,

  which lay too thick, too high, across the right side of his head. He had

  fair skin, pale, and refined features, all of which made him seem

  younger than he was, though these proportions, classic in the French

  aristocrat, were somehow contradicted by very deep, very thoughtful,

  gray-green eyes. Nonetheless, he was what he was, with the relaxed

  confidence of the breed and, when he smiled, a touch of the insouciant

  view of the world common to the southern half of France.

  They'd been there a long, long time, the Mercier de Boutillons, in

  a lost corner of the Drome, just above Provence, with the title of

  chevalier--knight--originally bestowed in the twelfth century, which

  had given them the village of Boutillon and its surrounding countryside, and the right to
die in France's wars. Which they had done, again

  and again, as far back as the Knight Templars of Jerusalem--Mercier

  was also a thirty-sixth-generation Knight of Malta and Rhodes--and

  as recently as the 1914 war, which had claimed his brother, at the

  Marne, and an uncle, wounded, and drowned in a shellhole, at the second battle of Verdun.

  In a muted baritone, Mercier sang an old French ballad, which had

  haunted him for years. A dumb thing, but it had a catchy melody, sad

  and sweet. Poor petite Jeanette, how she adored her departed lover,

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  how she remembered him, "encore et encore. " Jeanette may have

  remembered, Mercier didn't, so he sang the chorus and hummed the

  rest, turning slowly in the streaming water.

  When he heard the bathroom door open, and close, he stopped.

  Through the heavy cotton of the shower curtain he could see a silhouette, which divested itself of shirt and shorts. Then, slowly, drew the

  curtain aside, its rings scraping along the metal bar. Standing there, in

  a cloud of steam, a lavender-colored cake of soap in one hand, was the

  Princess Antowina Brosowicz. Without clothes, she seemed small but,

  again like a doll, perfectly proportioned. With an impish smile, she

  reached a hand toward him and, using her fingernail, drew a line down

  the wet hair plastered to his chest. "That's nice," she said. "I can draw

  a picture on you." Then, after a moment, "Are you going to invite me

  in, Jean-Francois?"

  "Of course." His laugh was not quite a nervous laugh, but close.

  "You surprised me."

  She entered the shower, closed the curtain, stepped toward him so

  that the tips of her breasts just barely touched his chest, stood on her

  toes, and kissed him lightly on the lips. "I meant to," she said. Then

  she handed him the lavender soap. Only a princess, he thought, would

  join a man in the shower but disdain the use of the guest soap.

  She turned once around beneath the spray, raised her face to the

  water, and finger-combed her hair back. Then she leaned on the tile

  wall with both hands and said, "Would you be kind enough to wash

  my back?"

  "With pleasure," he said.

  "What was that you were singing?"

  "An old French song. It stays with me, I don't know why."