Free The Polish Officer by Alan Furst

goat?”
    “A sheep, I believe it was, sir.”
    “In diplomatic sash.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The colonel pinched the bridge of his nose. “And then . . . a cook, wasn’t she?”
    “A laundress, sir.”
    “My God, yes! He married her.”
    “A large, formal wedding, sir.”
    The woman called Agata cleared her throat.
    “Yes, of course, you’re right. You were at Jagiello university?”
    “I was.”
    “In mathematics?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “How’d you do?”
    “Very poorly. Tried to follow in my father’s footsteps, but—”
    “Tossed out?”
    “Not quite. Almost.”
    “And then?”
    “My uncles helped me get a commission in the army, and an assignment to the military intelligence service, and they sent me off to study cartography.”
    “Where was that?”
    “First at staff college, then at the French military academy, Saint-Cyr.”
    “Three years, it says here.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “So you speak the language.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And German?”
    “My father’s from Silesia, I spent time there when I was growing up. My German’s not too bad, I would say.”
    Colonel Broza turned over a page, read for a moment. “Vyborg recommends you,” he said. “I’m going to run the ZWZ intelligence service, I need somebody to handle special operations—to work with all the sections. You’ll report directly to me, but not too often. You understand what I’m saying?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Do you know Captain Grodewicz?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Spend a little while with him. He’s going to run the ZO unit.”
    “Sir?”
    “Zwiazek Odwety. Reprisal. You understand?”
    It snowed, early in November, and those who read signs and portents in the weather saw malevolence in it. The Germans had lost no time stealing Polish coal, the open railcars rattled ceaselessly across the Oder bridges into ancient, warlike Prussia. The men who ran the coal companies in ancient, warlike Prussia were astonished at how much money they made in this way—commercial logic had always been based on buying a little lower, selling a little higher. But buying for virtually nothing, well, perhaps the wife ought to have the diamond leaf-pin after all. Hitler was scary, he gave these huge, towering, patriotic speeches on the radio, that meant
war
for God’s sake, and war ruined business, in the long run, and worse. But this, this wasn’t exactly war—this was a form of mercantile heaven, and who got hurt? A few Poles?
    The wind blew down from Russia, howled at the windows, piled snow against the door, found every crack, every chip and flaw, and came looking for you in your house. The old people started to die. “This is war!” they shouted in France, but no planes came. Perhaps next week.
    Cautiously, from a distance, Captain de Milja tried to keep an eye on his family. He knew where one of the maids lived, and waited for her at night. “Your father is a saint,” the woman said at her kitchen table. “Your mother and your sister are in Hungary, safe, away from the murderers. Your father managed it—I can guess how, there’s barely a zloty in the house these days.”
    “What is he doing?”
    “He will not leave, he will not go to the country, he will not admit that anything has changed,” the woman said. “Will not.” She shook her head, respect and apprehension mixed together. “He reads and writes, teaches his classes. He is a rock—” She called de Milja by a childhood pet name and the captain looked at his knees. He took a sheaf of zloty notes out of his pocket and laid it on the table. The maid gave him a wry look:
How do I explain this?
    “Don’t talk about it. Just go to the black market, put something extra on the table, he won’t notice.”
    He had the woman turn out her oil lamp, they sat in the dark for a time, listening to the wind whine against the old brick, then he whispered good-bye and slid out the door into the night. Because of the curfew he went doorway to doorway, alert for the sound of German