“And Warsaw? Is that a good place to be, for you?”
He nodded. “I certainly see enough of it-hotels, restaurants, cocktail parties, receptions.”
“The glamorous life!”
His tart smile told Albertine all she needed to know about that.
“Always difficult, a new job. But I assume you’re good at it,” she said.
“It has its ups and downs-as you say, a new job.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, but I’m a soldier. I do what they tell me.”
“What is that? Are you a spymaster?”
“Nothing so dramatic. Mostly I am a liaison between the French and Polish General Staffs. Everybody has to know what everybody else is up to.”
The omelettes-aux fines herbes-arrived, with mounds of frites, crisp and golden and powerfully aromatic. Albertine, suddenly maternal, salted both their portions. “Still, you must learn secrets.”
“Bad manners, Albertine, when the host country is an old friend.”
“Yes, of course, that makes sense,” she said, thinking it over. “Maybe German secrets.”
“Well, if they come swimming by in the stream, I net them.”
“Evil bastards, Jean-Francois, they’ve got their whole country in prison. I have friends who are Jews, a couple, fled from Frankfurt with the clothes on their backs. Surely great threats to the government: cellists, both of them. Did you know that, by German law, persons of more than twenty-five percent non-Aryan blood are forbidden to play Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, or any other Aryan composer? Can you imagine? I know I shouldn’t pry, but if you get a chance to put a boot up their backsides I trust you’ll give it an extra shove for me.”
“I’ll remember that,” he said. “You never know what might happen.” He poured more wine for both of them. “And you, Albertine? What goes on with you?”
She shrugged. “I work hard at what I do-charities, boards of directors, and so forth, wherever they need people they don’t have to pay. Oh, speaking of boards, some awful woman, Madame de Michaux is her name … had dinner with you in Warsaw? She was eager to tell me about it. Very taken with you, she was.”
“Yes, I’d forgotten her name. The dinner was a banquet, at the Europejski.”
“Perhaps, since you’re in Paris, you’ll go and see her.”
“Albertine, don’t be wicked.”
She smiled. I can be, as you well know. “Here’s one bit of news. I’m going to Aleppo, in December.”
“Any special reason?”
“I might buy something for the collection, we’ll see. I’m going with a friend of mine, she’s a professor of archaeology at the Sorbonne, so that will give me entree to the local collectors-and the tomb robbers.” She paused, then said, “Have you a secret mission for me, as long as I’m there?”
“I’m not concerned with Syria, dear. And best not to say such things.”
“Oh foo,” she said. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
He laughed and said, “Albertine, you are incorrigible.”
Albertine’s eyes wandered, then fixed on a nearby table. Mercier ate some frites, then looked over to see what interested her. A very handsome man was having dinner with his daughter, maybe twelve, who was chattering away while she worked at eating a plate of escargots. She was quite adept, using the shell-holding tool with one hand, probing for the snail morsel with a special fork, yet more than keeping up her end of the conversation. The father listened earnestly. “Yes? … Really? … That must have been interesting.”
Albertine leaned toward Mercier and said, “Are you watching this?”
“What’s going on?”
“Can’t you see?”
“No, what is it?”
“He’s teaching her how to have dinner with a man.”
Mercier took another look. “Yes, I do see, now that you mention it.”
Albertine was amused, and pleased with what she’d discovered. “How I love this quartier,” she said. “And, come to think of it, this country. I mean, where else?”
Back at the apartment, Albertine made sure that Mercier had everything he needed, then went off to her room, down the hall. He tried to read Guderian, but it had been a long day, they’d finished the Saint-Estephe, and German military theory wasn’t the best bedside companion. He thought about the following morning: Bruner, the others. Would he defend himself? Or just sit there and listen? The latter, an easy decision, the best way to keep his job. His pursuit of the Wehrmacht‘s intentions-the abandoned tank trap, a careful reading of Guderian’s book-had changed the chemistry of his assignment in Warsaw. This, along with the abduction of his agent Uhl, had turned a desk job into something very much like a fight, so to walk away now would be to walk away from a fight. He had never done that, and he never would.
It was quiet outside, in the hidden rue Saint-Simon, quiet in the building, and quiet in the apartment; private, cloistered. Warm enough, with the radiators going, the room mostly in shadow, with only a small lamp on the night table lighting his bed. From down the hall, he heard the faint sound of music-Albertine apparently had a radio in her room-a swing orchestra playing a dance tune, then a woman vocalist, singing a song he recognized: “Night and Day.” Was Albertine reading? Or lying in the darkness, listening to her radio? Not, he thought, that he would ever find out. Not that he would walk down the hall and knock at her door. Not that she wanted him to do that. Nor would she-walk down the hall and open his door. Not that he wanted her to, not really. Not that much, anyhow.
29 November. In his best uniform, shoes polished to a high gloss, Mercier walked up the rue de Grenelle, past the walled Soviet embassy, then along avenue des Invalides to the avenue de Tourville. The chill gray morning, typical for the city this time of year, did nothing to soften the official buildings, the heart of military Paris. Saluted by the sentry, he entered 2, bis, climbed the stairs to Bruner’s office, and at ten hundred hours sharp, as ordered, he knocked at the door.
Bruner took his time, and after he got around to calling, “Come in,” his greeting was subdued-polite and cold. “How was your flight, colonel?”
“It was uneventful, sir. On time.”
“When I served in Warsaw, I always found LOT to be dependable.” Bruner took a sheet of paper from his drawer and placed it before him, squaring it up with his fingertips. He had, Mercier sensed, flourished with his promotion to full colonel and his new position. Short and tubby, with a soft face and a dapper little mustache, he virtually glowed with vanity, and its evil twin, the infinite capacity for vengeance when insulted. “So then,” he said. “Our lost spy in Germany.”
“Yes, colonel.”
“How did this happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll have to find out, won’t you.”
“He thought he was under surveillance on the previous trip. Somehow the Gestapo, or a counterespionage unit of the SD, uncovered him. I’ve questioned him at length, and he’s been forthcoming, but he doesn’t have the answer.”
“And what do you propose to do about it? It’s a serious loss, a view on German armaments, which imply tactics, and that is information crucial to our own planning. We’re in the midst of a political conflict these days, the politicians don’t want to spend money on tanks and planes-we still have serious unemployment-but Hitler has no such problem. He spends what he likes.”
“I am aware of this, colonel.”
“Perhaps this position, in Warsaw, is not to your taste, Colonel Mercier. Would you like me to arrange a new assignment?”
“No, colonel. It is my preference to remain in Poland.”
Bruner returned to their lost spy, then spent some time on the shooting incident in Silesia, and around again. He was like a terrier-once he took hold, he wouldn’t let go. But, at last, with a final threat or two, Mercier was dismissed. “There will be more meetings, Colonel Mercier, so please be good enough to stay in contact with my adjutant for the next two days. You are also scheduled to see General de Beauvilliers. Call his office for the details.”