The spies of warsaw Read Free

Or, if Uhl preferred, a thousand zloty, or
    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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    1 0 * T H E S P I E S O F WA R S AW
    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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    H OT E L E U RO P E J S K I * 1 1
    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