The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  He poured out a stiff tot, and a cloud must have passed over the sun just then, for the brightness faded from the pretty autumn colours speeding past the window, and to my nervous imagination it seemed that the shadow penetrated into the compartment, robbing the trickling brandy of its sparkle, and that even the rumble of the wheels had taken on a menacing, insistent note.

  “The Holnup intend to assassinate Franz-Josef,” says Willem, filling a second glass for himself. “If they succeed, there’ll be civil war. Oh, pottin’ royalty’s nothing new, and usually there’s no great harm done – various lunatics have tried for Franz-Josef before, there have been two attempts on the German Emperor, and the Tsar was blown up a couple of years ago … but this would be different.15 What, Hungarians killin’ the Austrian monarch, at a time when Hungary’s boilin’ with unrest, when it’s known that Sissi supports its independence, and surrounds herself with worshippin’ Magyars, and corresponds with Kossuth, and there’s even been rumour of a conspiracy to bestow the crown of Hungary on Prince Rudolf, who hates Papa and is as pro-Hungarian as his beautiful idiot of a mother?” He gave a mirthless bark of laughter. “Think what use the nationalists could make of those two half-wits, willin’ or not! Casus belli, if you like! Civil war in Austria-Hungary – and how long before France and Germany and Russia, aye, and perhaps even England, were drawn in? And that is what will happen if Franz-Josef stops a Hungarian bullet.”

  Kralta spoke. “It must not happen. At all costs it must be prevented.”

  She was intent on me, but Willem, as he handed me my glass and sat back, seemed almost amused. There was a look of mischief on the handsome face, like a practical joker about to spring his surprise.

  “Fortunately,” says he, “thanks to Bismarck’s earwig in the Holnup, we know precisely when and how and where they intend to strike. Franz-Josef is to be murdered in his huntin’-lodge at Ischl, a charmin’ but secluded resort in the Saltzkammergut, over the hills but not very far away from where we sit at this moment. They’ll do it this week, by night, a small group of well-armed and expert assassins. They have it planned all to a nicety … and all in vain, poor souls.” His smile widened as he clinked his glass against mine. “Because you and I, old son, are goin’ to stop ’em.”

  * * *

  a understand?

  b quickly (Hind.)

  Chapter 5

  Somewhere or other that downy bird Kipling observes that the lesson of the island race is to put away all emotion and entrap the alien at the proper time.16 I learned it in my cradle, long before he wrote it, and have practised it all my life with some success, and only this difference, that for “entrap” I prefer to substitute “escape”. The putting-away-emotion business ain’t always easy, but I like to think I managed it pretty well in the face of Starnberg’s disgusting proposal, concealing my shocked bewilderment before that grinning young devil and his steely-eyed accomplice as they watched to see how I would respond to their bombshell.

  There was no point in protest or roaring refusal. As you know, I’d been press-ganged aboard the good ship Disaster before, by legions of experts from Palmerston to Lincoln, with the likes of Colin Campbell and Alick Gardner and U. S. Grant and Broadfoot and J. B. Hickok and Raglan and God knew who else along the way, all urging hapless Flashy into the soup by blackmail and brute force, and nothing to be done about it. Ah, but this time there was, you see, with the Austrian border drawing nearer by the minute, so I must bide my time and delude the aliens as seemed best, listening to their lunatic notions as though I might be persuadable, and waiting my chance to cut and run. My strong card was that despite Willem’s menaces, they’d made it plain that they wanted me as a willing ally; I must play on that, but not too hard. The question was, which role to adopt (ain’t it always?), balancing righteous outrage at the way I’d been treated against the chivalrous impulses which they’d expect from an officer and gentleman. So now I let out a soft “Ha!” and gave Willem my most sardonic stare.

  “Are we, indeed? Just the two of us, eh? Well, setting aside your optimism and impudence, perhaps you’ll tell me how, precisely?”

  “You mean you’re game?” cries he eagerly. “You’re with us?”

  “Suppose you tell me why I should be.”

  “How can you not?” Kralta couldn’t believe her ears, like a queen with a farting courtier. “With the peace of Europe in the balance, and the lives of thousands, perhaps millions, at stake?”

  “Ah, but are they? Forgive me if after being hoodwinked, lied to, held against my will, and threatened with prison and pistols, I can’t help wondering if this great tale of a plot is true.”

  “Of course it’s true!” cries Willem. “Heavens, man, why should we invent it?” I gave this the shrug it deserved, and he cursed softly. “Look here, if you’re in a bait ’cos you’ve been bobbled and made a muffin of –” he sounded like a third-form fag “– well, I don’t wonder, but can’t you see we had no choice? Bismarck was sure we’d have to force your hand, and that this was the only way. Havin’ seen you, I ain’t so sure he’s right.” He ran a hand through his hair, and leaned forward, looking keen. “You ask me how you and I can stop the Holnup, and I’ll tell you the ins and outs presently, but in principle, now – ain’t it a stunt after your own heart? As I told you, nothin’ smoky, but a dam’ good deed, and a rare adventure! Why, the old guv’nor would have jumped at it – and you’d ha’ been the first he’d have wished to have alongside!”

  “And if you cannot forgive the deceits we have practised,” put in Kralta, “think of the cause we serve. You have done brave deeds for your Queen and country, but nothing nobler than this.” She hadn’t the style or figurehead to look pleading, but she absolutely laid a hand on mine, and her glance had more promise than appeal in it. “For my part, if I can make any amends …” She ventured a toothy smile, pressing my fin. “Please … say you will not fail us. All depends on you.”

  All of which confirmed my conclusion that they were under the misapprehension which has sustained me for a lifetime – they truly believed my heroic reputation, and thought I was the kind of derring-do idiot who’d answer the call of duty and danger like a good ’un, itching to fight the good fight. Bismarck knew better, which was why I’d been threatened with violence and the law, but now blessed if they weren’t appealing to my better nature. Remarkable … but you have to play the ball as it comes off the wicket, so …

  “All very fine,” says I. “But before I hear the ins and outs, let me tell you that so far you’ve made no sense. You say these Hungarian rascals are going to put paid to Franz-Josef, and you know where and when. Very well – round ’em up and string ’em up, why don’t you –”

  “Because it ain’t that simple!” insists Willem. “Bismarck’s spy in the Holnup knows their plan, but not the names of the assassins, or where they are this minute. All we’re sure of is that they’ll have assembled somewhere near Ischl three days from now, and will strike before the Emperor returns to Vienna on Sunday next. That means the attempt will be made this Friday or Saturday –”

  “Then let him go back to Vienna tomorrow, for God’s sake! Or if he’s fool enough to stay, surround his place with troops! Or hasn’t brilliant Otto Bismarck thought of that?”

  “You do not understand.” Kralta had me by the hand again. “None of these things is possible. No ordinary precautions will serve. You see, the Emperor does not know he is in danger – he must not know.”

  She meant it, too. I could only gape and ask: “Why not?”

  “Because the Lord alone knows what he’d do if he did!” exclaims Willem. “It’s this way – no one knows of this plot except Bismarck, his man in the Holnup, and a handful of his agents, like ourselves. But suppose Franz-Josef, or the imbeciles who compose his cabinet, got wind of it – he’s the kind of purblind ass who would take it as a sure sign that all Hungary’s out for his blood, and he’d act according, orderin’ arrests, repressions, perhaps even executions, or some such folly! He could provok
e the very upheaval Bismarck’s tryin’ to prevent. Hungary’s a powder-keg, and an outraged Franz-Josef is the very man to set it off.” He drew breath. “That’s why he mustn’t know.”

  “There is another reason,” says Kralta. “The Empress and Crown Prince make no secret of their Hungarian sympathies. She is adored in Budapest, and there are those who would welcome Rudolf as king of an independent Hungary. If the Emperor learned of the Holnup plot, he might easily be led to false conclusions.”

  “He wouldn’t be in the mood for a game of Happy Families, at any rate!” snaps Willem. “So there you have it. Now … Franz-Josef is only at Ischl by chance; normally he comes for a summer’s shootin’, with a full retinue, but this week there are only the lodge servants, a couple of aides, and a file of sentries under a sergeant, more for ceremony than anything, and quite useless against assassins who know their business. There’s no earthly way to make him leave early without informin’ him of the plot – so Bismarck has devised a way to guard him secretly, so that he don’t know he’s bein’ guarded!” He laughed at my look of derision. “Impossible, you think? Oh, come, come, you know Bismarck; why, it’s nuts to him!”

  “I’m waiting to hear what it is to me,” I reminded him.

  “Patience, I’m comin’ to that. We leave the train this evening at Linz, where we spend the night, and catch the local train to Ischl in the morning, arrivin’ at about noon. We spend the next thirty-six hours establishin’ ourselves as tourists who’ve come to enjoy the attractions of the spa, browse in its boutiques, partake of the delicious confections for which its cafés are famous, and walk in the delightful countryside,” says he airily. Never mind Bismarck, it was nuts to him, the jaunty ruffian.

  “On Thursday morning, you and I will take a stroll in the grounds of the royal lodge, which lies a little way outside the town, refreshin’ our spirits in the beautiful hilly woodland and admirin’ the picturesque river meanderin’ down to the town below. But now –” he spread his hands in comic dismay “– misfortune overtakes us. You slip, and sprain your ankle. I hasten to find help, and spy a gentleman out with his gun and loader – and damme, if it ain’t the Emperor of Austria! And if you think that’s one whale of a coincidence,” says he, cocking an eyebrow, “it ain’t. Franz-Josef would rather shoot chamois than eat his dinner, and is in those woods at crack of dawn every day bar Sunday. If by some mischance he’s not, I’ll go to the lodge, but one way or t’other he’s goin’ to learn that there’s a foreign gentleman in distress in his bailiwick, and when he discovers that ’tis none other than Sir H. Flashman, old acquaintance and saviour (well, nearly) of Brother Max in Mexico, he’ll be all concern and will undoubtedly offer him and his companion (a German count, no less) the hospitality of the royal residence for a day or two. And there, my dear Harry,” chuckles he, “we shall be, honoured guests chez Franz-Josef, and if the Holnup can come at him while we’re on the premises … well, they’ll be smarter lads than I think they are, what?”

  Taking this as a rhetorical question, and being numb and speechless anyway, I let it pass without remark. Willem rubbed his hands.

  “Now for the fun. Franz-Josef is all for the simple life. He sleeps on a soldier’s bedstead in a plain little room overlookin’ the garden, with a single orderly on a pallet outside the door and his aides snug in their rooms down the corridor, everyone snorin’ their heads off as they’ve done this thirty years past, and why not? What’s to fear? A single sentry under the window, probably half asleep, all quiet in the garden and surrounding woods, God’s in his heaven, and all’s well, until …” he dropped his voice to a hollow whisper “… out of those woods the Holnup come skulkin’ in the half-light before dawn … perhaps a single bravo, more likely two, but certainly not more than three. Say three, two to look out and cover, one to do the dirty deed … all creepin’ unawares into our ambush.” There was a glitter in his eye that took me straight back to the Jotunberg dungeons. “We’ll take ’em either in the house or outside, as chance dictates. And we kill ’em. Stone dead. Every one. Follow?”

  I let that pass, too, taking the advice of his Irishman and being as aisy as I could, while he lighted himself a nonchalant cigarette.

  “It’ll be a noisy business, of course, and there’ll be a fine how-de-do when the sleepers awake to find three dead assassins and the two gallant visitors whose vigilance has saved the day. But once they’ve grasped what’s happened, you can bet your last tizzy they’ll want to keep it quiet.” He grinned, pleased as Punch, tapping my knee. “There’ll be no inconvenient inquiry which might result in the unhappy discovery that this was a Hungarian plot. Why? Because whatever folly Franz-Josef might have committed if he’d learned of the Holnup attempt beforehand, he’ll not raise Cain when it’s all past and no harm done. There’ll be nothin’ to show that the corpses are Hungarians – they may even be foreign hirelings – and whatever he may suspect, the less the public hear of it, the better. No monarch likes it to be known that he’s been a target, not if it can be kept dark, and his aides won’t care to have their incompetence noised abroad. So ’twill all be discreetly damped down, everyone sworn to secrecy, eternal gratitude to the two gallant saviours, perhaps even a pound out of the royal poor-box – why, if failin’ to save poor old Max earned you the Maria Theresa, we ought to get a couple of Iron Crowns at least!”

  “And Europe will remain at peace,” says Kralta quietly.

  “Aye, and we’ll all live happy ever after.” Willem blew a smoke-ring. “So there you have it – all of it. Now you understand what all this to-do, which you’ve found so puzzlin’ and inconvenient, has been about … and why Bismarck chose you, ’cos you’re the only man he could put into Franz-Josef’s house and no questions asked. And you’re … qualified for the work.” He paused, contemplating his cigarette. “Well, there it is. What d’you say … Harry?”

  The honest answer to that would have been to tell him he was stark raving mad, and if he hadn’t been Rudi Starnberg’s son, with a gun in his armpit and the means to railroad me on to the Bavarian rock-pile for life, I might well have given it. Since my present need was to temporise, and give the impression that I might be talked into their ghastly scheme, I played it as they would expect from the redoubtable Flashy, indignation forgotten, narrow-eyed and considering, asking shrewd questions: How could they be sure Franz-Josef would offer us bed and board? What other agents would Bismarck have at Ischl? What if our ambush went wrong? What if it couldn’t be hushed up? What if, by some unforeseen twist of fate, Willem and I should find ourselves facing charges of murder?

  Entirely academic questions from my point of view, but they elicited prompt answers – none of them, incidentally, concerned with the morality of butchering the would-be assassins. Willem, being a chip off the Starnberg block, wouldn’t think twice, but I was interested that Kralta too apparently took bloodshed for granted – and both, you’ll notice, assumed that it was all in the night’s work for me. Flattering, if you like.

  Willem dealt confidently with my doubts. “It’s Bismarck’s scheme, and he don’t make mistakes. Franz-Josef is bound to take us in, but if he didn’t we’d just picket his lodge and deal with the Holnup in the grounds. There’ll be half a dozen stout lads in Ischl at my orders, but they won’t know what’s afoot and I shan’t call on them unless I must. If word of the fracas gets out – well, that’s Bismarck’s biznai, and he’ll see to it that we’re kept clear of embarrassment. Murder? What, when we’ve saved the Emperor of Austria? Don’t be soft. Well, satisfied?”

  I wasn’t, but I chewed my lip, looking grim, while they watched me with mounting hope and encouraged me with occasional reminders of what a fine crusading enterprise it was, and no other way to ensure the peace of Europe and the welfare of its deserving peasantry. Kralta was particularly moving on the score of the juvenile population, I remember, while Willem appealed to what he supposed was my sense of adventure, poor fool; plainly he regarded a hand-to-hand death-struggle in the dark as no end of a lark.
I responded with few words, and at last said I would sleep on it when we reached Linz. They seemed to take that as a sign that I was halfway to agreement, for Willem nodded thoughtfully and refilled my glass, while Kralta astonished me by kissing me quickly on the cheek and leaving the compartment. Willem laughed softly.

  “Sentimental little thing, ain’t she? Gad, what a week you’ll have in Vienna when it’s all over! But I,” says he, fixing me with a merry eye, “ain’t sentimental at all, and in case – just in case, mind you – you’re as foxy as my old guv’nor made out, and have some misguided notion that you’ll be able to slip away once we’re on Austrian soil … well, don’t try it, that’s all. Those stout lads I spoke of will be on hand, and they can have you back in Bavaria before you can say knife.” He patted his pocket. “If I haven’t shot you first.”

  I reminded him coldly that I’d be no use to him dead, and he grinned. “You’d be even less use to yourself. But we won’t dwell on that, eh? You’re a practical man, and I’ve a notion that you’ll fall in with us. Just so long as you understand that you’re going to stand up with me against the Holnup, one way or t’other, what?”

  So I hadn’t fooled him above half, and must just wait and hope. One thing only I was sure of: he wasn’t getting me within a mile of Franz-Josef and the blasted Holnup – supposing they existed, and the tale I’d been spun wasn’t some huge Machiavellian hoax conceived by Bismarck for diabolic purposes that I couldn’t even guess at.