The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  Soon, and mercifully, the meeting was over. Polite emptinesses from both sides, and Riza was escorting his guests out. He insisted on helping redistribute the hats and coats and sticks; it was a charming courtliness, and Cade felt a pang of loss for their pleasant relationship.

  ‘No coat, Mr Cade? But this last hat must be yours, I think.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He took it, managed a nod of thanks, and started to put on the hat.

  But stopped. Something… There was a paper tucked into the lining. Instinctively his fingers were reaching for it, then he pulled them back, stuffed the hat onto his head, glanced up and round. The others were drifting into the corridor. Riza was already back in his office, door closed.

  ‘Dalton, I beg your pardon. Could I delay you for one moment?’

  The old man; never quite gathered which department he represented on the Sub-Committee. Never seemed to say anything. Dalton smiled pleasantly.

  ‘I assume that you have people who can monitor German international financial transactions; conversion of assets, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, we don’t like—’

  ‘I said that I assume.’ There was a coldness in the face. ‘Don’t expect you to comment on it one way or t’other.’ Dalton smiled again, while he re-evaluated the old man. Bankers and spies; nice to do business with discreet men. ‘Chum of mine – don’t want to say who, exactly; embarrass the chap – got a titbit the other day. Thought it might mean something. There’s a banker in Germany, name of Kuhn, K-u-h-n; I assume he has at least semi-official status. Thing is, his department are calling in gold.’

  The politeness dropped out of Dalton’s face. ‘Are they now?’

  The paper tucked into his hat was the most up-to-date draft of the headline items for the next year’s state budget, including the various new military additions. Office door locked, the paper unfolded on his desk, Cade had let out a long whistle: at the usefulness of it, and at his luck, and at the strange ways of humans.

  But where did it leave him and Riza? Had this been a one-off, an attempt to placate, to make him go away?

  He was wondering at it as he strolled through his appointments the following day, wondering what he was supposed to do next with the relationship. He was still wondering as he trotted down the steps of the Imperial Customs Department – struck, as he was every time, by the transition from the cool grandeur of a state office to the bustle and smells of the street outside – and bumped into someone coming up them.

  ‘Mr Cade, surely. Good day to you.’

  ‘Mr – Mr Riza! That’s… a surprise.’

  They stood there. What does one say? ‘Thanks for betraying your country; we must play golf some time’?

  ‘I was… most grateful for your time yesterday. To meet our delegation.’

  ‘It was my pleasure.’ Nothing in the eyes.

  ‘Really. You were… you were very generous.’

  ‘I am happy to help, Mr Cade.’ Nothing in the eyes.

  The deal is there on the table! ‘You – yours is a – a relationship that I value very much, Mr Riza.’

  Was there the suggestion of a smile there? ‘Likewise, Mr Cade.’

  Close the deal. Make the trade. ‘I do hope that we can continue it.’

  All his instincts screaming at him: offer him something!

  ‘That would be most agreeable, Mr Cade.’

  Close the deal. Make the offer. ‘Let’s lunch together again soon.’

  ‘Let us.’

  Offer him something.

  Very slowly, Cade extended his hand. Riza took it and gave it one heavy shake.

  When Cade got back to the office there was an envelope on his desk. Inside, a compliments slip: ‘With deepest respect, J. R.’ printed in anonymous capitals. Cade didn’t know a J. R. Pinned to the compliments slip, three or four pages of typing – not original type, but carbon-paper copies. He dropped them onto the desk for later.

  By the 23rd of May, there were rebels within sight of the Albanian capital. It had come to seem natural, as if according to some law of physics, that Major Valentine Knox should be at that part of the line closest to them. Ballentyne found him settled comfortably against a hummock, rifle alongside and scanning the ground ahead. He scrambled over to him.

  Knox continued to look ahead through field glasses. ‘How’s the town?’ he asked.

  ‘Chaos.’ Ballentyne stretched out beside him. ‘Bumped into a chap I vaguely know at the palace, running for the docks.’ Knox snorted, still not looking round.

  Ballentyne pulled the field glasses down, forcing Knox’s attention. ‘It’s not good, Knox. They’re evacuating the king. Onto an Italian ship. On Italian advice. Unless the situation changes very quickly, he’s an Italian puppet for good – if he ever comes back, that is. In the worst case he never returns, and this place is left to anarchy.’ He shook his head, and looked out over the terrain, bumpy and dusty and sprinkled with scrub, rising with the Tirana road to the heights. ‘How is the anarchy?’

  ‘Rather sedate, actually. Got a match?’ Ballentyne pulled a box from his jacket, and Knox lit a cigarette. Holding it with the glow cupped in his hand, he defined the battlefield. ‘Rebels on the heights: there, there and… there. King’s forces out to our left here – see, towards the huts? – and more advanced to the right here. Under a German tearaway called Baron Gumppenberg; chap after my own heart. Now they’ve got the artillery working from the town, it’s keeping the rebel heads down tidily. Who’s manning the guns?’

  ‘A scratch team of enthusiasts. A handful of European travellers – the sportsmen and layabouts from the hotels – who think it’s fun.’

  As if to prove his point, two thumps barked out behind them; Knox lay his cigarette down and snatched up the field glasses. A few seconds later, part of the slope ahead exploded in dust. ‘That’s the stuff,’ he said, and puffed the cigarette into action again.

  ‘Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, if they’re guarding an empty capital. Rossi, my Italian, was full of doom. All be murdered in our beds. The sort of guff they’ve been spreading to scare the king. The Italians have their way, the king’ll lose without the rebels ever reaching the town.’ Ballentyne gazed out over the slopes. ‘If only the palace could see it wasn’t so bad.’

  ‘Mm.’ Knox puffed at the cigarette. ‘Trouble is, it might yet get bad. The rebels aren’t in a hurry, but they’re pushing forwards right enough. Show you.’ He rolled over, and picked up the rifle. He loaded it, settled himself comfortably against the crest – ‘Watch now; but head low, eh?’ – and fired. There was a clang from out in front, and seconds later a sputtering of rifle fire. What had seemed like an empty stretch of ground three hundred yards in front was now movement and puffs of smoke from the rifles. ‘Water can,’ Knox said happily. ‘Get ’em thirsty as well as surprised. See? There’s a dip there, and an advance detachment of the rebels in it. Can’t be sure how many, but they’ve been filtering in during the day. Guns aren’t shifting them, and tonight if not sooner they’re going to get bored enough or bold enough to make a dash for the bridge. And I don’t know if my Hun friend over on the right there will be able to stop them.’

  ‘The king has to be persuaded that it’s worth sitting tight in Durrës.’

  Knox considered this. ‘Better if there was a bit of good news to take back.’

  Half an hour later, a rush of horses burst into the slumbering afternoon. Silence and stillness became thunder and a fist of cavalry that swung out from the right of the royal lines and charged for the rebels. The landscape came alive, the rebels in their forward position firing off a few panicked rifle shots and those on the heights firing at random; then the king’s gendarmerie, first stunned by the idea that their side was attacking, were joining in the indiscriminate fire, and finally the cannon were roaring out as well. It took only seconds for the attackers to cover the two hundred yards, blood up and yelling and horses wild, a monocled German aristocrat out in front yelling snatches of Heine, an Englishman
beside him silent and smiling and willing himself on the enemy. The rebel detachment was routed before the charge even reached them.

  A village marking the end of the old, rural France of the eighteenth century and the beginning of metropolitan modern Paris was also the place where that Paris – the nineteenth-century city of grey townhouses with an artist in the attic and a barricade on the doorstep – was meeting the twentieth century. When a venue was sought for the first flight trials in Paris, those gentlemen used to making their weekend excursions to the forest around Clamart and Meudon, or beyond them to Versailles – to pursue one sport or other – remembered the large flat meadow on the left bank of the Seine, where the barns became terraces, thatch turned to tiles, and the roads sprouted cobbles. Issy-les-Moulineaux was the capital’s first aerodrome – fateful start-point of the 1911 Madrid air-race when 300,000 people watched an aeroplane crash into the spectating French cabinet – and nursery of the French aviation industry.

  A take-off could still draw a crowd. On the 23rd of May 1914, a few hundred had gathered to watch the English pioneer, M. Gustav Hamel, fly his new Morane-Saulnier for the first time. A chance to share the world of the most advanced technology, without expense and without risk. French engineering, of course, from the frail bird-like fuselage to the angry black ring of cylinders behind the propeller. A chance for fresh air and a picnic, after days of cloud and rain, and the crowds came out dressed for Sunday, and milled around the field with muddy boots and jostling parasols, and felt rather fine as they smoked cheroots and flirted and pointed, and it was all the gendarmes could do to keep a bit of space around the aircraft itself.

  Two men were watching the crowd from a short distance off. Behind them was a hangar, closed, and twenty yards to the side of it a scorched skeleton that had once been a hangar.

  ‘It must be him. It must be in the machine.’ A tall man, very blue eyes, which did not blink as they stared at the day-trippers and over their heads to the sweep of the aircraft’s wings.

  An overcoat accentuated his height, and covered knee-length boots. The man next to him, conventional, wore a suit and a hat. ‘We have no proof, Mein Herr.’

  ‘Proof…’ It came out as a growl. ‘The British have little interest in destroying an apparatus that can be replaced in a week, and every interest in stealing it. We learn th—’

  ‘There were traces of the Mercurius after the fire, Mein Herr.’

  ‘A few remnants of metal and wire; they mean nothing. No interest in starting a fire to destroy it, and every interest in using a fire to conceal its theft. Now we learn that Hamel and his flight to England are the concern of their Military Intelligence. Almost impossible to get the apparatus out through the airfield perimeter unobserved, but easy to hide it, and easiest to hide it in a machine like that one. It is no surprise that Hamel is so anxious to leave.’

  An open-topped car turned in at the airfield gate, and began to lumber over the grass towards the crowd.

  He watched it for an instant, and then turned and took two strides into the hangar, buttoning his overcoat as he went. He was out as quickly, and he slowed only to snatch the hat from his companion’s head and pull it onto his own, brim low.

  ‘Mein Herr, we should not—’

  ‘Nothing that cannot be achieved with this’ – with an effort he brandished a camera in his left hand – ‘and this.’ From his pocket he pulled a pair of pliers, then replaced them and hurried towards the crowd.

  Hamel stood at the centre of the ring of faces; a chattering, calling, pointing wall constantly murmuring and shifting as he watched. His back was to the aircraft; the leading edge of the wing hung over his head, a shelter. The week of waiting had numbed him. Each morning of rain or of mechanical difficulty flared in his gut as disappointment and – say it – fear. He spent too much time pottering around the plane: extra checks, routines; little gestures of superstition, which he’d never succumbed to before. Long walks. Supper with a pretty girl, trying to lose himself. He’d not been eating enough; he’d found himself – just a glass or two over – drinking too much. Every face had its accusation.

  Now there was a mob of them, so many he couldn’t distinguish any one face, an encirclement, black and brown and white, gesturing and restless, hats and moustaches and parasols and the bicycles that some idiots would try to chase him with – if he ever broke free, that is – and always the noise, the buzzing of angry insects.

  A stirring in the crowd, new jostling, and he heard a horn, honking windily. At last the nose of the car pushed through the bodies, and Morane was clambering over the side, hopping down and striding over the turf towards him. Hamel didn’t like to move away from the shelter of his plane. Morane’s greeting was as enthusiastic as ever, handshake like he was pumping fuel, grin, hair perfectly combed and all terribly elegant. Good chap; very French. Then three or four photographers were stepping out of the mass, bent over cameras cradled like babies, waltzing tripods forwards clumsily, calling instructions and requests, and the crowd was newly unsettled and noisier and Morane was turning to face the cameras, handshake gripped and the grin for the newspapers and Hamel stepped forwards and did his bit. Then the young Frenchman was speaking to the fluttering notebooks – proud, honoured, British pioneer, best of French engineering, eighty horsepower, development of the Garros model – and more noise from the cameras and Morane had unclipped and opened the engine casing and the photographers were gathered around and more smiles and more pictures, and Hamel was fretting about his routines and making sure he should be the last person to touch the engine, and smiling at Morane, and it was all like school again and everyone crowding round him when he won the mile and all he wanted was to be let loose to run.

  At last: the engine resealed, his hand pressed on the casing like a thoroughbred’s neck, his feet gliding up the side of the aircraft, and the engine exploded in noise and smoke and the sweet reek of fuel, and the beast was roaring and straining to be moving, and he was in the cockpit and free.

  Ballentyne and Knox rode back into Durrës together, the ghost of the smile still on the soldier’s face.

  As they came level with the cannon, Knox called out his compliments, and there were answering enthusiasms. He turned back. ‘If we can get this lot settled for more than ten minutes, Ballentyne, might be time for you to push on. Me too, but we’re on different roads.’ Ballentyne was silent. His road ought to head into the hills, to the villages, to his real work. He could pretend Durrës was merely prelude to that. But it wasn’t. ‘Serbia; that’s where the great men want you. You know it, I think.’

  ‘A few visits.’

  ‘Speak Serbian?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Rather similar to Albanian, is it?’

  ‘Utterly different.’

  Knox had a cigarette in his mouth and was frisking his pockets for matches. ‘What – rather like English and German, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Rather like English and Chinese.’ He passed Knox the matches.

  ‘Oh well, sure you’ll muddle through.’ The words blurred around the cigarette.

  ‘Have to, won’t I?’ He had unfinished business in a village, and he wanted it righted. That was what had made him accept; the scar that still burned. But it was to be by the longer road. ‘Should be able to arrange a boat up the coast in town.’ Evil comes quickly, as the Albanians said; good comes slowly-slowly.

  ‘Odd business,’ Knox murmured through his cigarette as they passed the Venetian tower that marked the edge of the town. ‘Riding out with that Hun back there. Good chap, that. They say the Germans are rather like the British, don’t they? More your bailiwick, that sort of thing.’ Ballentyne watched the walls rising around them, whitewash and yellow mud brick, and didn’t want to debate European anthropology. ‘Place is a bit topsyturvy. We’ve put this king in place—’

  ‘Who’s a “Hun” himself, of course, if that means—’

  ‘Well, quite. We’ve put him here, and until we receive orders to the contrary I s
uppose we must assume our masters want him kept in place. And right now it’s the Austrians – our likely enemy – who are doing their best to support him, and the Italians – hopefully our allies – who seem to be undermining him.’

  ‘You’re worrying about Sir Edward Grey again, aren’t you?’

  ‘Constantly.’

  ‘Knox… you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

  At the royal palace, an Albanian face yelled down from a window that the king had gone, and all the Europeans with him, and no, there was no one they could speak to and no, he certainly wouldn’t open the door. They cantered through boarded-up streets to the dockside, where the quiet of the city was immediately overwhelmed by a crowd that filled the quay, moving with no purpose and chattering with no real facts. They nudged their horses through to the water’s edge, where a gendarme pointed to an Italian warship a few hundred yards across the water. There Europe’s foothold in Albania wavered, waited.

  ‘A boat?’

  ‘And stand in the prow yelling up at a warship and demanding to speak to the king?’ Knox was stolid again, and it took the edge off the words. ‘The British Legation?’

  ‘Might give us tea, but we need someone who’ll get a message onto that ship, and be believed.’

  ‘Sounds like the Austrians or your Italians, then.’

  Ballentyne nodded, and they pushed their way back through the crowd, knees nudging past shoulders and the horses’ heads high and wary.

  As they came clear of the crowd, Ballentyne put his hand to Knox’s bridle. ‘Austrians or Italians,’ he said. Knox waited. ‘Been nagging at me. Chap in your hotel register: Belcredi, right?’ A grunt. ‘No reason to believe he was Italian?’

  ‘None. Just sounded—’

  ‘You see’ – he kicked his horse forwards again – ‘there is an Austrian called Belcredi. Anthropologist. So he calls himself. Don’t know much about him, but the consensus has always been that he’s as mad as a hatter. Something of a charlatan, and in his way a lunatic.’