As the Nazis openly plan an invasion, France's military attache in
Warsaw does a little spying, eats good meals, travels a bit and
spends time in pleasant surroundings with a lovely lawyer for the
League of Nations.Wounded in the Great War, Col. Jean-Francois
Mercier is a widower with two grown daughters, a vast Parisian
apartment, a handsome, slightly shabby country estate and two fine
hunting dogs. His current assignment in Poland has him mixing with
the local swells - where he picks up bits of information on the
tennis court and at dinners - and running a modestly successful
intelligence operation involving Herr Uhl, a plump German engineer
who swaps details of the Nazis new tank for nights of love with a
zaftig "Countess" in Mercier's employ. From the various little bits
of information Mercier has gleaned, it becomes depressingly evident
that the Nazis are beefing up their tank warfare capability with an
eye on the Ardennes forest, the quickest way around the
"impregnable" Maginot Line in which France's thick-headed military
leaders have placed their total trust. Then the Uhl operation falls
apart. An obedient hausfrau sharing his train compartment reports
Uhl's nervous behavior to the authorities, resulting in his nearly
successful kidnapping by some overeager intelligence agents.
Mercier's successful intervention in the snatch earns him a place
on the Nazi hit list. Undaunted, the suave Frenchman plans a fake
hike on the German border to photograph the latest tank war games,
obtaining even more evidence of the Huns' strategy, which will yet
again be ignored by the dinosaurs at the top of the French army.
Offsetting the frustrations at work is a dalliance with beautiful
Anna Szarbek, his blind date at an embassy dinner.Furst (The
Foreign Correspondent, 2006, etc.) cuts back a bit on the usual
tension, but there is all of the wonderfully wistful late-'30s
atmosphere that is his specialty. (Kirkus Reviews)
An Autumn evening in 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw
railway station. Tonight, he will be with his Polish mistress;
tomorrow, at a workers' bar in the city's factory district, he will
meet with the military attache from the French embassy. Information
will be exchanged for money. So begins THE SPIES OF WARSAW, with
war coming to Europe, and French and German operatives locked in a
life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French
embassy, the new military attache, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a
decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn in to a world of
abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back
alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds
himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish
heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations. Colonel Mercier must
work in the shadows, amidst an extraordinary cast of venal and
dangerous characters - Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military
intelligence, last seen in Furst's THE POLISH OFFICER; the
mysterious and sophisticated Doctor Lapp, senior German Abwehr
officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian
secret service; and Mercier's brutal and vindictive opponent, Major
August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more,
some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed.
General
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