stay where they were. Meanwhile, the eunuch was watching me carefully, and the general began to talk about Schneider-Creusot cannon,
seventy-fives. Then, right in the middle of it, the sultan cut him off
and began to tell a story, the silliest story, really, about his visit to
France before the war, some hotel in Nice, and shoes left outside the
rooms at night to be shined by the porter, and his cousin switching
them around--two right shoes here, two lefts down the hall. Doesn't
sound so funny, now, but if you'd been there. . . ."
*
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Mercier finished his coffee and left the building. The major's story--
an attache stupifie with hashish in some desert kingdom--had been,
in its way, instructive. Droll, rather than violent, but nonetheless, like
his own experience, a misadventure of foreign service. Perhaps the
major too had been recalled for consultations. Well, Mercier thought,
he'd survived; endured that pompous ass Bruner without losing his
temper, the parting shot no more than an order to replace Uhl, at least
to the extent of having the Schramberg maneuvers observed. But that
was more than reasonable--he would have done that without a trip to
Paris. What lay ahead of him now was a session with the Service des
Renseignements--the clandestine service of the Deuxieme Bureau--
which would not be a scolding, simply an interview. And a meeting
with General de Beauvilliers, which was worth worrying about, but
just then Mercier didn't feel like worrying. On the walk home he took
the rue Saint-Dominique, a commercial street, busy in the late morning, where he saw a bunch of red gladioli in a florist's shop and bought
them for the apartment.
30 November. Sturmbannfuhrer August Voss rode the express back
from Berlin to Glogau. There was only one other passenger in the
first-class compartment and Voss gazed out the window but saw nothing, so much was his mind occupied with anger. He'd gone up to the
central command office on Wilhelmstrasse for the normal monthly
meeting with his superior, but the meeting had not been at all normal.
His superior, Obersturmbannfuhrer Gluck, a bright young lawyer
from Berlin in his previous life, had criticized him for the Edvard
Uhl affair. No compliments for unveiling a spy, only disapproval for
that absurd folly at the hotel in Warsaw. Gluck wasn't sarcastic or
loud, not the type to slam his fist on the desk--he was too high and
mighty for that. No, he regretted the incident, wondered if it wasn't
just a bit precipitous to snatch this man in the middle of a foreign
city, and unfortunate that the abduction had failed. This was Gluck's
typical manner: quietly rueful, seemingly not all that perturbed. But
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then, when you left the office, he had your dossier brought out and
destroyed you. And what came next was a new assignment--where
you'd be tucked away in some cemetery of a bureau where they gathered up failures and kept them busy with meaningless paper.
The deed, for all Voss knew, might already have been done. But, he
vowed to himself, the story wouldn't end there. Zoller, his operative in
Leszno who'd followed Uhl up to Warsaw, had been transferred to the
Balkans--the Zagreb station, let him deal with the Croats and the
Serbs--and Voss had made sure that everyone in his office knew it.
But, much more important, the jackass who'd intervened outside the
Hotel Orla would be dealt with next.
Voss had worked at that, hard, in the days following the aborted
kidnapping. Who was he? The Warsaw operatives knew what he
looked like, and Voss had hauled the leader, a Polish fascist, down to
Glogau and given him the tongue-lashing of his life. "Find him, or
else! " Voss didn't care how. And the man had done the job in less than
a week. His chief thug, once a professional wrestler in Chicago, had
kept watch on the main Warsaw hospital and, lo and behold, there he
was. Visiting in the morning, leaving an hour later, and followed back
to the French embassy. He wore an officer's uniform, but the operative
had gotten a good look at him at the Hotel Orla and thought he was
the same man.
sensing he might need it at the meeting in Berlin. And, he thought at
first, he'd been right. When Gluck's criticism finally wound down,
he'd said, "Well, at least we've identified the man who interfered,"
then paused, anticipating words of praise.
They weren't spoken, only a polite "Yes?"
"A Frenchman, working at the embassy. An army officer."
"Military attache?"
"Perhaps, we can't be sure. But we'll find out, once we've got our
hands on him."
"Your hands on him, Sturmbannfuhrer Voss? A military attache?
In diplomatic service at an embassy?" Gluck had stared at him, his
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blue lawyer's eyes as cold as ice. "You don't mean that seriously, do
you?"
"But . . ."
"Of course you don't. You are irritated by failure, naturally, who
wouldn't be, but an attack on a serving military attache?" Gluck
closed his eyes and gave his head a delicate shake: this must be a night-
mare, where I'm forced to work with fools. "Do we, Sturmbannfuhrer
Voss, need to discuss this further?"
"No, sir. Of course not. I perfectly understand."
In the compartment on the Berlin/Glogau train, Voss's fury rose as
he recollected the conversation--how he'd crawled! The other passenger glanced over at him and rattled his newspaper. Had he spoken
aloud? Perhaps he had, but no matter. What mattered was that this
Frenchman would pay for sticking his nose where it didn't belong. The
Polish operative had described him as "handsome, aloof, aristocratic." Yes, exactly, just the sort of Frenchman one could truly loathe.
Well, Pierre, you will answer for what you did to me. It couldn't be
done officially, but there were always alternatives; one simply had to
take the initiative. In his interior monologue, Voss mocked his superior. That didn't cure him, nothing would cure him, but he felt better.
"Where? " In the apartment, Albertine turned toward Mercier, the bottle of vermouth suspended over a glass.
"The Brasserie Heininger. For lunch, tomorrow."
"Down at Bastille? That place? For lunch with a general?"
"Yes."
"Good heavens," she said.
1 December. Papa Heininger, proprietor of the brasserie just off the
Place de Bastille, unconsciously straightened his posture when he saw
the two officers waiting to be shown to their table. He edged the
maitre d' aside with his hand and said, "Good afternoon, messieurs."
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The older one, at least a general from his uniform and insignia,
said, "Yes. The reservation is in the name 'de Beauvilliers.' " He
turned to the other
officer, who walked with a stick, and said, "We're
upstairs, where it's quiet."
Perhaps it would be, Mercier thought, but it wasn't here. The
Heininger was famously excessive: white marble staircase, red plush
banquettes, pudgy cupids painted on the walls between the goldframed mirrors, golden passementeries on the drapery. The waiters,
many wearing muttonchop whiskers, ran back and forth, balancing
giant silver trays crammed with pink langoustines and knobby black
oysters, and the lunchtime crowd was noisy and merry; in clouds of
cigarette smoke and perfume they laughed, talked above the din,
called out for more champagne.
When they'd climbed the staircase, Papa Heininger showed them
to a table in the far corner, only to discover a silver-haired gentleman
and a much younger brunette side by side on the banquette, whispering tenderly with their heads together. They were also notably welldressed--but not for long. Heininger was aghast and started to speak,
but the gentleman at the table turned a fierce eye on him and he
stopped dead. "There's been a mistake," he said, and began an elaborate apology. The general cut him off. "Just anywhere will do," he
said, his voice midway between a sigh and a command.
They were then taken back downstairs, to table fourteen, which
bore a reserve sign on a silver stand. Papa Heininger, with a dramatic
flourish, whipped it away and said, "Our most-requested table. And
please allow me to have a bottle of champagne brought over, with my
compliments."
"As you wish," the general said. Then, to Mercier, as he slid onto
the banquette, "The infamous table fourteen." He nodded his head
toward the mirror on the wall, which had a small hole with crackled
edges in its lower corner.
"That can't be what it looks like."
"In fact it is. A bullet hole." From de Beauvilliers, a tolerant smile.
In his sixties, he had the face of a sad hound, long and mournful, with
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the red-rimmed eyes of the insomniac and a shaggy gray mustache. He
was famously the intellectual of the Conseil Superieur de la Guerre,
the high committee of military strategy, and was said to be one of
the most powerful men in France, though precisely what he did, and
how he did it, remained almost entirely in shadow. "A few months
ago," he continued, "June, I think it was, they had a Bulgarian headwaiter here who played at emigre politics and got himself assassinated while hiding in a stall in the ladies' WC. The gang also shot
up the dining room, and all the mirrors had to be replaced. All but
this one, kept as a memorial. Makes for a good story, anyhow. Personally, I come here for the choucroute--I've seen enough bullet holes in
my life."
The champagne arrived in a silver bucket, and both men ordered
the choucroute. "You may put an extra frankfurter on mine," de
Beauvilliers said. The waiter twisted out the champagne cork and
poured two glasses. When he'd hurried off, de Beauvilliers said, "I
would've preferred beer, but life has a way of thwarting simple pleasures." He tasted the champagne and had a look at the label. "Not so
bad," he said. "Did Bruner give you hell?"
"He did."
"Don't worry about him, he has his place, in the scheme of things,
but he's kept on a short leash. I want you in Warsaw, colonel."
"Thank you," Mercier said. "There's work to be done there."
"I know. Too bad about the Poles, but they've got to be made to
understand we aren't coming to help them, no matter what the treaties
say. We might be able to, if de Gaulle and his allies--like Reynaud--
had their way, but they won't get it. French military doctrine is in the
hands of Marshal Petain, de Gaulle's enemy, and he won't let go."
"Defense. And more defense. The Maginot Line."
"Precisely. De Gaulle's up at Metz, commanding the Five-ohseventh Tank Regiment. But there won't be many more, no armoured
divisions, not until nineteen-forty, if then."
"May I ask why?" Mercier said.
"It's what I ask myself," de Beauvilliers said. "What some of us
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have been asking since Hitler marched into the Rhineland in 'thirtysix. But the answer isn't complicated. Petain, and his allies, are committed to the theory of Methodical Battle. Hitler to be appeased--to
gain time, to cement our alliance with Great Britain--then a battle of
attrition. The British navy blockades, the Germans starve, and we
launch a counteroffensive in two to three years. It worked in nineteeneighteen, after the Americans showed up."
"It won't work again, general. Hitler is committed to armoured
regiments. He was there, in nineteen-eighteen, he saw what happened."
"He did. And he knows that if the Germans don't win in six
months, they don't win period. But France feels it can't compete:
political constraints, lack of money, a shaky procurement system, not
enough men, not enough training areas. Gamelin, the chief of staff,
has nothing but excuses."
"The Germans are building tanks," Mercier said. "I was watching
them, until I lost an agent. And they're planning maneuvers in
Schramberg--in the Black Forest. They are, I believe, thinking hard
about the Ardennes Forest, in Belgium, where the Maginot Line ends."
"We know. Of course we know. And we've conducted war games
based on a tank thrust through the Ardennes. But what matters in war
games is the conclusion, the lesson drawn."
"Can you tell me what that was, general?"
De Beauvilliers took a moment to consider his answer. "We are, in
France, obsessed by the idea of great men--nobody else would build
the Pantheon. So Marshal Petain, the hero of Verdun, much honored,
idolized, even, has persuaded himself that he is omniscient. In a recent
pamphlet, he wrote, 'The Ardennes forest is impenetrable; and if the
Germans were imprudent enough to get entangled in it, we should
seize them as they came out!' "
"That's nonsense, sir," Mercier said. "Forgive my brevity, general,
but that's what it is."
"I believe I used the same word, colonel. And worse. But now,
what can we do about it?"
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"Les choucroutes! " The waiter served them--for each a mound of
sauerkraut, pork cutlet, thick, lean slices of bacon, and a frankfurter--
two for the general. A small pot of fiery mustard was set between
them. "A perfect dish for a discussion of Germany," de Beauvilliers
said to Mercier. Then, to the waiter, "Bring me a glass of your best
pilsener."
"One should have what one wants," Mercier said.
"At lunch, anyhow, one should. Tell me what's going on in
Poland."
As the general attacked his first frankfurter, Mercier said, "You
know I lost an agent--almost lost him to the Germans, but we have
him hidden away in Warsaw for the moment. Otherwise it's quiet. The
Poles are doing their best to buy weapons, but it's a slow process; the
Depression still cripples their e
conomy. But they remain confident.
After all, they won their war with the Russians, and resolved their border disputes in Silesia and Lithuania, and they haven't forgotten any of
it. They're still fighting the Ukrainian nationalists in the east, who are
secretly armed by the Germans, but they're not going to give away territory."
"Confidence isn't always the best thing."
"No, and Pilsudski's death hurt them. After he died, the government swung to the right, and there's a strong fascist presence in the
universities--actions against the Jews--but the fascists remain a minority. I should add that I'm not expert here. Mostly I concentrate on
the army, not the politics."
De Beauvilliers nodded that he understood, then said, "One bit of
gossip that came my way is the retrieval of von Sosnowski, traded for
a German spy."
"It came my way as well."
"Really? From where?"
"Russians. Intelligence types from the Warsaw embassy. At a cocktail party."
"You'll want to go carefully, there." De Beauvilliers paused, a
forkful of sauerkraut in midair, then a fond smile was followed by,
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"Jurik von Sosnowski, the Chevalier von Nalecz, yes; now there was a
good spy." He ate the sauerkraut and said, "He had a long reach, did
Jurik. Right into Section I.N. Six-- Intelligenz Nachforschung, intelligence research--of the German General Staff, Guderian's office. And
brought out the plan of attack, with tank regiments, for the invasion
of Poland. But, in the end, the Poles suspected that the Germans knew
what he was doing and were feeding him false information."
"That seems odd, to me," Mercier said. "It implies that the true
plan was something else. But what could that have been? Artillery
bombardment of the border fortifications and a slow advance? I
would doubt that, myself."
"He may have gotten his hands on the invasion plans for us as
well, but nobody ever told us he did. Anyhow, he was active for a few
years, and arrested in 'thirty-four, so it's likely the details have all been
reworked."
"Yes, likely they have."
"Only one way to find out, of course," de Beauvilliers said. A certain expression--rueful amusement, perhaps--flickered over his face
for an instant, then vanished. "Invasion plans," he said. "Many gems
in this murky business, colonel, all sorts of rubies and emeralds,