The lieutenant, palms sweating, ran out of the office. “Bar-gumf,” he said, under his breath, the German version of a frog’s croak.
He was back in eighteen minutes, having bullied clerks-Voss could hear him shouting on the phone-in government bureaux from Glogau to Berlin. The major looked up from a railway timetable spread across his desk.
“Herr Edvard Uhl is a resident of Breslau,” the lieutenant said. “I have the address. He is employed by Adler Ironworks in the same city, where he is the senior engineer on a tank design project for the Krupp company. According to his employer, he is this morning at the office of a subcontractor in Gleiwitz.”
“And the photograph?”
“On the way, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, by motorcycle courier from Breslau.”
“Get that woman in here, immediately. Anything else?”
“Herr Uhl has received an exit visa, to visit South Africa. For himself only, not his family.”
Voss nodded, and rubbed his hands. “A scenic country, lieutenant. But he’ll never see it.”
15 November, 5:45 A.M.
Standing amid a silent crowd of factory workers, Mercier rode the trolley to Praga for his meeting with the engineer Uhl. It was snowing, not the massive snowfall of the Polish winter, but a taste of the future-big, lazy flakes drifting through the gray light, the street white in some places, wet and shiny in others. Would Uhl show up for the meeting? Maybe not. He’d wobbled badly, the last time out. So, probably not. Mercier put it to himself as a bet and decided he’d bet no. And then? Then nothing. Uhl would never be betrayed to the Germans, not by him, not by anyone. Because if Uhl was compromised, all he’d given them would be compromised as well, not that the Germans could do much about it. Change the tank design? The other possibility, that Uhl might have been arrested, was, to Mercier’s thinking, unlikely. He’d sent the promised postal card-Hans was enjoying his visit to Warsaw, which meant all was well in Germany.
Mercier stepped off the trolley car at the third stop in Praga, walked past the burnt-sugar smell of the candy factory, and down the narrow alley to the nameless bar. Particularly nameless that morning; the lone drinkers lost in their shot glasses, the bartender bored with the morning paper, one office worker in a shabby suit, untasted coffee going cold in his cup. And, bet lost, Edvard Uhl, sitting at a table in the far corner.
After they’d greeted one another, Mercier said, “And the train ride yesterday, Herr Uhl, how was it? Packed with Gestapo men?”
“All was normal,” Uhl said. “From Gleiwitz to Glogau, only a few passengers. Then, on the express to Warsaw, a crowd, but nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual people looking into the compartment to see if there were any seats.”
Mercier nodded: there, that’s better. “So now, to work, Herr Uhl.”
Uhl had brought the formula for the case-hardened steel to be used for the new tank bodies, as Mercier had requested. “It’s in here,” Uhl said, gesturing toward his newspaper. “I had to copy it by hand, the roneo machine was in use all morning.” Otherwise, not much new in Breslau: design work on the Ausf B version of the Panzerkampfwagen 1 continued, none of the specifications had changed, the final engineering blueprints would soon be completed.
“Our next meeting will be the fourteenth of December,” Mercier said, feeling for the envelope of zloty in the pocket of his battered overcoat. “I will look forward to copies of the blueprints.”
“The fourteenth?” Uhl said.
Here we go again.
“Not the fourteenth, I’m afraid,” Uhl said. “I cannot come to Warsaw until the night of the seventeenth.”
“Why not the fourteenth?”
“I must go to Schramberg, on business.”
“Schramberg?”
“In the Black Forest. There are three of us going, from the ironworks, all engineers. We are to observe tank exercises; then we will be asked for opinions and recommendations. There will be a dinner that night, at the inn in Schramberg, with Wehrmacht officials, technical people, and we leave the following morning, the fifteenth. So, you see I cannot come to Warsaw until the night of the seventeenth, and we can meet the following morning.”
“Where is there terrain for tanks, Herr Uhl, in the Black Forest?” To Mercier, it sounded like a story-this little sneak of a man was up to something. What?
“I don’t know where, exactly, but I was told the maneuvers will take place in the forest.”
“Tanks don’t go in forests, Herr Uhl. There are trees in the forest, tanks can’t get through.”
“Yes, so I thought. Perhaps they wish to have us suggest modifications that might make it possible. The fact is, I don’t know what they’re doing, but, in any case, I’ve been ordered to attend, so I must.”
Surely you must. “You’ll write us a report, Herr Uhl, about the exercises. Be thorough, please: formations, speeds, angles of ascent and descent, how long it takes to go a certain distance. And, also, the names of the Wehrmacht officials. Do you need to make a note to yourself?”
Uhl shook his head. “I know what you want.”
“Then we’ll meet again on the morning of the eighteenth.”
Uhl agreed, though Mercier sensed a growing reluctance, as though the day would come, soon enough, when these meetings would end. He slid the envelope into his newspaper and received the steel formula in return. Uhl signed the receipt, then left the bar.
Mercier lit a Mewa, his mind working on what Uhl had told him. Just precisely what forest were the Germans thinking about? The mountains on the border with Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland region? There was no forest on the frontier between Germany and Denmark, as far as he knew. And the Polish steppe had virtually been made for tank formations. Where else? The forests between Germany and France? Under the artillery of the Maginot Line forts? Suicide. Austria? Hitler might attack Austria, but it would be a political, not a military, invasion.
That left what? That left the Ardennes, in Belgium, north of the Maginot Line. No. For a thousand reasons, a very remote possibility. But, he thought, somewhere.
Mercier finished his coffee, bad as it was. The bar felt oppressive; he disliked waiting for Uhl to leave the area and kept glancing at his watch. Finally, twenty minutes-well, almost. The doctrine on agent meetings said last to arrive, first to leave, but Mercier did it his own way, and, to date, nothing had gone wrong.
Out in the street, he hurried through the floating snowflakes, heading toward the tram stop. He was anxious to return to the apartment, to change out of his disguise, this old coat and hat, and be off to the embassy, where he could look at his maps. He peered ahead, to make sure he didn’t catch up to Uhl, though anyone dawdling in this weather seemed unlikely, and Uhl had to get his train back to Breslau. Did he use the same tram stop? Mercier couldn’t decide; the alley lay almost midway between two stops. As he neared the corner where he took the trolley, he heard its bell ringing behind him and broke into as much of a run as he could manage. In the event, the motorman saw him loping along and waited, and Mercier thanked him as he climbed aboard.
He started to move through the standing crowd toward the rear platform, then stopped dead. Uhl! At the center of the car. Well, they would just have to ignore each other. Evidently, Uhl had gone to the other stop, and the trolley was running late. Mercier found room on the opposite side of the aisle and stared out the grimy window, then chanced one fast look at Uhl. What was this? He wasn’t alone. Holding the back of a wicker seat with one hand, briefcase under his arm, he was engaged in animated conversation with-who? An angel. That was the word that sprang into his head. Because she stood on Uhl’s left and was turned toward him, Mercier could see her face, could see that she was very young, barely twenty, and, even in a city of striking blond women, extraordinary-innocent as a child, the rabbit-fur collar of her coat turned up, her long flaxen hair set off by a knit cap, sky blue, with a tassel. Standing close to Uhl, face upturned, she was rapt, transfixed by what he was saying, laughing, gloved hand over her mouth, then giving her hair a seductive shake. Had this just begun? On the trolley? Mercier guessed not-it had started at the tram stop. Again she laughed, leaning toward Uhl, almost, but not quite, touching him. Was she a prostitute? No sign of that, to Mercier’s eyes. Or, if she was, an extremely rare version of the breed, not the sort who would pick up a man at a tram stop at six-thirty on a snowy morning.