Spies of the Balkans: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  "It does," Zannis said.

  Vlatko stared out the side window. "Wait until tomorrow, you bastards."

  As they neared the prefecture, Zannis said, "If Prince Peter becomes king, who will run the government?"

  "Whoever he is," Vlatko said, "he'd better be a war leader."

  Zannis, hoping against hope, said, "You don't think Hitler will accept a new government? A neutral government?"

  Vlatko shook his head and said to Pavlic, "A real dreamer, your friend from Salonika."

  At the prefecture, the detectives had been listening to the radio and told Vlatko and Pavlic the news.

  "What's happened?" Zannis said.

  "It's what hasn't happened that's got them excited," Pavlic said. "Cvetkovic was supposed to give a speech at ten, but it was delayed until noon. Now it's been delayed again. Until six this evening."

  "When it will be canceled," Vlatko said.

  "Why do you think so?" Zannis said.

  "I know. In my Serbian bones, I know it will be canceled."

  And, at six that evening, it was.

  7:22 P.M. A warm and breezy night, spring in the air. Pavlic pulled up in front of a villa; the lights were on, a well-polished Vauxhall sedan parked in the street. "They're home," Pavlic said.

  "You don't want this, do you?" Zannis said, nodding toward the shotgun.

  "No, leave it. It won't be necessary."

  There was no doorbell to be seen, so Vlatko knocked on the door. They waited, but nobody appeared, so he knocked again. Nothing. Now he hammered on the door and, twenty seconds later, it flew open.

  To reveal one of the largest men Zannis had ever seen. He towered above them, broad and thick, a handsome man with blond hair gone gray and murder in his eye. He wore a silk dressing gown over pajamas--perhaps hurriedly donned because half the collar was turned under--and his face was flushed pink. As he gazed down at them, a woman's voice, a very angry voice, yelled from upstairs. The giant ignored her and said, "Who the hell are you?"

  "General Kabyla?" Pavlic said.

  "Yes. So?"

  Again the voice from upstairs. Kabyla shouted something and the voice stopped.

  "We have orders to take you to the prefecture," Pavlic said. Zannis didn't get all of it but followed as best he could.

  "From who?"

  "Orders."

  "Fuck you," said the general. "I'm busy."

  Vlatko drew an automatic pistol and held it at his side. "Turn around," he said, producing a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket.

  "I'm under arrest? Me?"

  "Call it what you like," Pavlic said, no longer patient.

  As the general turned around and extended his hands, he said, "I hope you know what you're doing."

  In answer Vlatko snapped the handcuffs closed, took the general by the elbow, and guided him toward the door. Where he stopped, then shouted over his shoulder so his voice would carry upstairs, "Stay right there, my duckling, I'll be back in twenty minutes."

  At the prefecture, there were already three men behind bars. Two of them, disconsolate, sat slumped on a bench suspended from the wall by chains. A third was wearing most of a formal outfit--the white shirt, black bow tie, cummerbund, and trousers with suspenders, but no jacket. He was a stiff, compact man with a pencil mustache and stopped pacing the cell when a policeman slid the grilled door open. As Vlatko unshackled the general, the man in evening wear took a few steps toward them and said, "We'll find out who you are, you know, and we will settle with you."

  Vlatko shoved the general into the cell, then took a step toward the man who'd threatened him but Pavlic grabbed his arm. "Forget it," he said.

  The man in evening wear glowered at them. "You can bet we won't."

  "Say another word and we'll throw you in the fucking river," Vlatko said.

  The man turned and walked away, joining the other two on the bench.

  By ten-thirty they were sitting in the bar at the Majestic, having rounded up the other three men on their list, stowing all three in the back of the car, where one of them had to sit on another's lap to make room for Zannis. When the man complained, his dignity offended, Vlatko offered to put him in the trunk and he shut up. On the way to the prefecture the overloaded car crawled along the Milosha Velikog, where Pavlic had to stop twice, tires squealing, when armoured cars came roaring out of side streets and cut them off.

  Throughout the next few hours, until well after midnight, detectives showed up at the bar to report on the evening's work, while Zannis and Pavlic kept score on the master list. Around one in the morning it was over, they had twenty-two of the twenty-seven men in the holding cell at the prefecture. Two of the named subjects didn't exist, according to the detectives--no trace in police or city records of their names. A third had escaped, having run out a back door and, as the story was told, "simply vanished, he's hiding out there somewhere but we hunted for an hour and couldn't find him." A fourth was said, by a woman living at the house, to have been in Vienna for two years, and a search had revealed nothing--no men's clothing. The last wasn't home. The detectives had broken into his apartment and looked for him, but he wasn't there. The neighbors shrugged, they didn't know anything. One of the detectives had remained, in case he came home, and would stay until the morning.

  There had, of course, been a few problems. One of the subjects, having gone for a pistol in a desk drawer, had been knocked senseless. Several bribes had been offered, and there'd been a number of arguments and threats. One of the detectives had been bitten by a dog, another had been scratched on the face. "By his woman," the detective said, "so we arrested her, and now she's in with the rest of them." On two occasions, Pavlic was asked, "What will become of these people?"

  "According to the plan, they are to be released in a day or so," Pavlic said, and left it at that.

  Many of the detectives stayed at the bar; this was an important night in the national history and they wanted to savor their part in it. Zannis encouraged them to eat and drink whatever they liked--the hotel kitchen produced roast chickens, the slivovitz flowed freely--as the money provided for the operation would easily cover the bill. At two in the morning, while the celebration raged around him, Zannis used the telephone at the bar and called the number he'd been given. A woman's voice answered on the first ring. "Yes? Who's speaking?" Her voice had a foreign accent but Zannis couldn't place it.

  "This is Zannis. We have twenty-two of twenty-seven. Locked up in prefecture."

  "Names, please."

  Zannis worked his way down the list.

  "Wait," she broke in. "You say Szemmer doesn't exist?"

  "No record. He is Serbian?" Zannis had wondered about the name.

  "A Slovene. And he does exist. He is very dangerous."

  "They couldn't find him. You know where to look, I'll go myself."

  "No. Captain Franko Szemmer, that's all we know."

  "Maybe, an office?"

  "Where are you?"

  "The bar, at the Hotel Majestic."

  "If I can find something, you'll be contacted."

  After the telephone call, Zannis decided to go outside for a time, have a smoke, look at the stars, try to calm down. The front door was locked but the bolt turned easily and Zannis stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  Half a block away, up at the cross street, somebody else had the same idea, on a tense night in Belgrade, and Zannis saw the red dot of a cigarette. There was one difference, between Zannis and his fellow star-gazer, the latter was sitting on the turret of a tank, its long gun pointing down the Knez Mihailova.

  Zannis finished his cigarette and returned to the bar. "Maybe bad news," he said. "There's a tank out there."

  Pavlic swore, a nearby detective noticed the exchange and asked if something had gone wrong. Pavlic told him. "It could be," he said, "that Cvetkovic has called out the army."

  Very quickly, the word spread. "If that's true," one of the detectives said, "we're in for it." He rose, went outside to see for himself, then came ba
ck looking more than worried. He spoke rapidly, Pavlic telling Zannis what he'd said. "I think we'd better find the back door." As most of the detectives left, a heavy engine went rumbling past the hotel and the floor trembled. Zannis went to the door, then said, "Another one. Now they've got the street blocked off."

  Vlatko stood up, finished his drink, and said, "I'm going to find out what's going on." A few minutes later he returned. "They won't talk to me," he said. "Just told me not to ask questions."

  Zannis called the telephone number. When the woman answered, he said, "There are tanks here, blocking Knez Mihailova."

  "I will see," said the woman, who took the telephone number, and hung up.

  Out in the lobby of the hotel, by the overstuffed chairs and potted rubber trees, a large Philco radio stood on a table. Pavlic turned it on and searched for a station, but all he got was a low, buzzing drone.

  Zannis stayed up until four-fifteen, waiting by the telephone, but it didn't ring. The hell with it, he thought, and decided to go to bed. The faithful Vlatko, the last of the Serbian detectives in the bar, wished him a good night, and headed for a kitchen door that led to a back alley.

  26 March. 7:30 A.M. Zannis had taken off his shoes, set his eyeglasses and Walther on the night table, and dozed. The roar of engines and rattle of tank treads woke him again and again, and finally he just gave up. He wouldn't desert his post, but if the army had been called out that was the end of the coup d'etat, and he'd have to slip away somehow and make his way back to Salonika. Soon enough, somebody would discover the Cvetkovic loyalists at the prefecture and then, he hadn't a doubt in the world, they would enlist their own thugs and come looking for him. So, no trains. Perhaps, he thought, he could steal a car. He would, at least, propose the idea to Pavlic, whose problem was severely worse than his own; he might well have to leave the country. Skata! Well, they had tried, and now he would have company on the run. Where to go? East to Bulgaria was closer than south to Greece, but he well remembered the swastika flag flown by the Bulgarian legation. Would Lazareff help them? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe, more than wouldn't, couldn't.

  He walked down the corridor and knocked on Pavlic's door. Pavlic answered immediately, wearing only his underwear, and holding his own Walther PPK by his side. "Oh, it's you," he said. "Well, good morning. Any news?"

  "No. We'll have to run for it, I'm afraid. Marko, I--" He'd started to apologize, but Pavlic waved him off.

  "Don't bother. I knew what I was getting into. Let's try to find out what's going on, at least, before we take off."

  He waited while Pavlic shaved--very much his own inclination at difficult moments. If you were going to face danger, even death, better to shave. After Pavlic got dressed, they went downstairs together and found the lobby deserted; no guests, no clerk, eerie silence. Pavlic unlocked the hotel door and they took a walk up the street. The tank crews were sitting on their machines, waiting for orders, content to relax while they had the opportunity.

  Pavlic talked to the soldiers, his Serbo-Croatian much too fast for Zannis to follow. Brave sonofabitch, he really laid into them. Finally the sergeant commander got tired of him, sauntered off, and returned with an officer. Pavlic's tone now altered--serious and straightforward, as though saying, come now, we're fellow countrymen, you shouldn't keep me in the dark. But, no luck. The officer spoke briefly, then walked away, back toward a wall of sandbags stacked across a doorway--the barrel of a machine gun poking out of a space that left it room to traverse.

  "Well, what did he say?"

  Pavlic's face was alight. More than a smile--the cat had not only eaten the canary, he'd drunk up a pitcher of cream and got laid in the bargain. So, there was a joke all right, but Pavlic wasn't ready to share it. "He didn't say much, only that it would all be cleared up as the day went on."

  Zannis was puzzled; one certain detail had provoked his curiosity. "Tell me," he said. "Why was the officer wearing a blue uniform?"

  Pavlic jerked his head back toward the hotel and, as they began to walk, he put an arm around Zannis's shoulders. "He wore a blue uniform, my friend, because he is in the air force."

  *

  As instructed, Zannis left as soon as he could--the first train out at midday. But they made slow progress; stopped for a herd of sheep crossing the track, stopped because of overheating after a climb up a long grade, slowed to a crawl in a sudden snowstorm, stopped for no apparent reason at a town on the river Morava, somewhere north of Nis, the name on the station not to be found on the timetable. It was the fault of the engineer, someone said; who had halted the train for a visit with his girlfriend. Late at night, Zannis arrived in Nis, where the train that was to take him south was long gone.

  At two-thirty on the afternoon of 27 March, he was again under way, headed for Skoplje. On this train he discovered--wedged into a space beside the seat where it blocked a savage draft--a Greek newspaper, printed early that morning. A new government in Yugoslavia! A coup led by General Simovich and the officer corps of the air force, joined by an army tank brigade. Being a Greek newspaper, it spoke from the heart: the people of this proud Balkan nation were "defiant," they had "defied the Nazis," and would continue to "defy" them--the journalist couldn't get enough of it! "Hitler denied a victory," "fury in Berlin," "a defeat for Fascism," Yugoslav "bravery," "determination," and, here it came again, "defiance."

  On the front page, a grainy photograph: a street packed with marching Serbs, their mouths open in song, some carrying flags and banners, others with pictures, taken down from walls and mantelpieces, of Prince Peter. Whose radio speech from the afternoon of the twenty-sixth was excerpted in a separate story on page two:

  Serbs, Croats, Slovenes! In this moment so grave for our people, I have decided to take the royal power into my own hands.... The Regents have resigned.... I have charged General Simovich with the formation of a new government.... The army and the navy are at my orders....

  The newspaper story carried supportive statements from American and British politicians. The Americans were passionate and blunt, while the British, as was their custom, were rather more reserved.

  *

  That same day, in Berlin, the newspapers wrote about Yugoslav "criminals and opportunists," claiming that ethnic German minorities in northern Serbia and the Banat region were being attacked by Serbian bandits: their houses burned down, their shops looted, their women raped. This was handwriting on the wall. Because such falsehoods had by now become a kind of code: used first in Poland, then in Czechoslovakia, as pretexts for invasion. So the fate of Yugoslavia was that morning already in preparation, and stated openly, for all to see.

  One of the people who saw it was Emilia Krebs. She had done no more than skim the newspaper, being occupied with the departure of yet one more friend who had come to the attention of the Gestapo. This was a tall gray-haired woman of Polish descent, the eminent ethnologist and university professor known simply as Ostrova. You know he studied with Ostrova. We went to a lecture by Ostrova. But now, eminence had failed her, and her situation had become perilous. Thus, by eight-thirty, Emilia Krebs had served rolls and coffee, handed Ostrova a set of false documents, and wished her safe journey. Surely the news that morning was disquieting, and they'd talked it over. Yes, there would be war in the Balkans, but not yet. Maybe in a week, they thought. "So I'd better leave today," Ostrova said and, if the Hungarians had been forced to close the border, she would find a way through the countryside. The two women embraced, and a determined Ostrova set out for the train to Vienna.

  Twenty minutes later, Emilia Krebs was having a second cup of coffee when she heard the chime of the doorbell. Now who could be calling at this hour? Likely one of her fellow conspirators, she guessed, properly afraid to trust the telephone.

  However, when she opened the door she faced a man she knew she'd never seen before. Heavily built, with a Prussian haircut, he wore steel-rimmed eyeglasses and looked, she thought, something like a mathematics teacher at a military academy. But he wasn't that. He ann
ounced himself as "Herr Albert Hauser," but, as it turned out, he wasn't that either, not quite. What he was, he revealed as he sat on her couch, was Hauptsturmfuhrer Albert Hauser, of, as he put it, "the Geheime Staatspolizei." An official title, the secret state police, simply one more government organization. But in Germany it was common usage to abbreviate this title, which came out "Gestapo."

  "Oh, that name, it's become so ...," he said, hunting for a polite word but not finding one, and instead finishing, "... you know what I mean, Frau Krebs."

  She did.

  "I called because I was wondering if you could shed some light on the whereabouts of a certain couple. Herr and Frau Gruen?"

  Ah yes, she'd known them.

  "Good friends of yours?"

  Acquaintances.

  "Well, it was reported to the local police that they'd disappeared, back in December this was, and when the detectives made no progress, it became my ... concern."

  Not case, she thought. Concern. This Gestapo man seemed quite the gentle soul. Perhaps one could be, umm, forthcoming with him.

  In a pig's eye.

  Emilia's hands lay modestly folded in her lap, because she didn't want Hauser to see that they were trembling.

  "Unfortunately," Hauser said, "I must consider the possibility that they met with foul play. They haven't been seen since then, and there's no record of their having--emigrated."

  They ran for their lives, you Nazi filth. No, she hadn't heard that they'd emigrated, but still, they might've done so. Could the records be at fault?

  "Our records, Frau Krebs?"

  "Yes, Hauptsturmfuhrer. Yours."

  "I would doubt that."

  Very well. In that case, there was little she could add.

  "Please, Frau Krebs, do not misunderstand the nature of this inquiry. We both know that the Gruens were ... of the Jewish faith. But, even so, our security institutions are responsible for the protection of all our German citizens, no matter what people say."