Spying at the Tennis Court

Alan Furst writes spy novels.  In his 2008 The Spies of Warsaw we get a glimpse of the thinking that supposedly underlies the ten Russian sleeper spies who have so bizarrely come into our lives in the last week or so.

In the book we're in Warsaw, 1937,  where the military attache to the French embassy has been playing doubles at the Milanowek Tennis Club, located at "the manor house . .  . owned by Prince Kaz, formally Kazimierz, and Princess Toni, Antowina." He's not a great player - he has war wounds which make it hard to chase the ball.

The author tells us, after the game,

He managed almost always to hit the right note with these people because he was, technically, one of them - Jean-François Mercier de Boutillon, though the nobiliary particule de had been dropped by his democratically inclined grandfather, and the name of his ancestral demesne had disappeared along with it, except on official papers.  But participation in the rites and rituals of this world was not at all something he cared about - membership in the tennis club, and other social activities, were requirements of his profession;  otherwise he wouldn't have bothered.  A military attaché was supposed to hear things and know things, so he made it his business to be around people who occasionally said things worth knowing.  Not very often, he thought.  But in truth - he had to admit - often enough. 

As many commentators have observed, people like Mercier who is attached to the embassy, has a diplomatic immunity the so-called sleeper spies don't have because they're not here under diplomatic cover.  I also wonder whether we need a new word.  Spy ring congers up less wholesomeness than these people portray.  On the other hand, it seems that the media are having way too much fun spoofing these suburban secret agents.  I suspect there is a lot more here than we know and that these people are not as silly as so many seem to believe.  

In any case, assuming Furst knows what he's writing about, this sort of eavesdropping espionage isn't new.