The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  ‘We agree. The foreign secretary is rather pleased.’

  ‘That’s naturally our main concern in the War Office.’

  ‘Gentlemen, if I may venture a generalization, the European situation – and I’m also thinking of Persia, where the Russians have behaved themselves better in recent weeks, and of the Baghdad railway accord – is rather less tense than it has been at not a few points in the last fifteen years.’

  ‘Fat lot of good that is if we have civil war in our back garden.’

  The battlefield. Major Valentine Knox had only known open battle – an enemy with a uniform and a rifle trying to kill you – in southern Africa, as a young infantry officer. The thirst. The sand. The wretched thorny scrub. The faces of his men, sweating and stubbly, watching him and appraising him and waiting for his command. Blood: soaking scarlet on the khaki of uniforms; thickening to a dark paste in the dust.

  But the principle was the same here: the terrain; the enemy; the objective.

  He was up and out early on the morning of the 27th. He’d considered dawn and dusk; and rejected them. Solitary prowler conspicuous; telltale sign. So now he sat in the window of a café, among the first of the morning clientele wanting a hot drink before the working day started.

  The terrain seemed harder now – cobblestones and walls – but there was much more cover than he’d known on the veldt: trees, doorways, alleys, streets clogged with café tables and pedestrians.

  The enemy could be any of those pedestrians; that was the snag.

  The objective was just across the street: the office of the International Cultural Exchange. Three storeys. Rather elegant, you’d say. Fancy stonework around the windows; plaster painted yellow. They went in for colour here; the buildings were a mix of yellow and pink and grey. Front door in the middle of the façade, two steps up to it, push-button bell to the side. That surely wouldn’t be his way in.

  There was another door, in a side street. Much more his cup of tea. Except that the security seemed good. He’d still been in his first café when the side door was opened to allow a cleaning woman to enter. He was sitting at a table in a different café, wearing glasses and reading a different newspaper, watching the side street from the other end when the door opened again and the woman began to ferry sacks of rubbish into the street. It only took her a few minutes, and at least once in that time a head popped out of the door behind her. Cap of some kind; doorman, perhaps, but keeping an eye on her as well. When she left at around eight, the woman didn’t close the door behind her, which meant that once again there was someone there doing the opening and closing and, presumably, the locking.

  Knox shifted position again: another vantage point, a different newspaper, a hat. He saw the doorman – nightwatchman? – leave, and be replaced by a chap in a smarter uniform who fussed around the front step for non-existent shortcomings in the cleaning, then shut himself inside. He wondered at caps and uniforms.

  Around half past nine – from the bow window of a restaurant a little way down the street – Knox saw a closed motor car pull up for a moment outside the front door; the chauffeur went to ring the bell, but it opened as he got there, and then a figure in frock-coat and hat stepped from car to doorway and was gone. The door closed and the car puttered away around the corner. Knox wondered where the chauffeur spent the day. Knox also wondered about the man in the frock-coat.

  After that, he began to explore the surrounding area. He allowed himself no more than half an hour at a time inside a quarter-mile radius of the objective. He came and went by different routes and with adjustments each time to his appearance. He tried to gauge the rhythms of the building, the times when there were many people nearby and when there were not. He found the angle that enabled him to confirm the wireless aerial on the roof of the International Cultural Exchange.

  He had no intention of meeting any of the occupants of the building. But later in the afternoon, as he was turning out of the street in which the International Cultural Exchange was situated and making for the river, an instinctive glance over his shoulder at the ground where he’d have to fight, his shoulder barged into another man’s, and they were both instinctively poised and then stepping back and nodding a courtesy and moving on.

  And Knox thought: I know you.

  The man in the street searching Ballentyne’s body. Probably the man who’d interviewed Cade. Just the type of smooth-looking Hun you’d want for an enemy.

  While Hildebrandt strode on towards the office of the International Cultural Exchange, Knox sauntered away into the city. He would not return to that district again, not until morning.

  Sarajevo

  St Vitus, so the story goes, freed the emperor’s son from an evil spirit. But because he would not recognize the pagan gods, the emperor – Diocletian, who built his palace in Split, near his old home – had him killed. At the moment of his death, in boiling oil, pagan temples in the area were destroyed by a great storm.

  For the Serbs, St Vitus’s Day means the Battle of Kosovo, in 1389, when their prince led a coalition of Balkan peoples against the invading Ottomans. Given the choice before the battle, by an envoy from heaven, of the celestial kingdom or the earthly, the prince chose the former; like all proud rulers, he knew that the risk of war was better than the certainty of shame. The prince was killed in the battle, and his army was destroyed, but they stalled the invasion for a while. So the story goes.

  St Vitus is the patron saint of actors and comedians. In mediaeval times, it was thought that dancing in front of the statue of the saint would bring good health. But the name of St Vitus was given to a sickness, an uncontrollable and apparently inexplicable physical frenzy.

  St Vitus is celebrated on the 28th of June.

  Valentine Knox walked alone through the streets of Sarajevo, the first of the light paling their pastel colours. The shadows still waited thick, in doorways and alley entrances.

  The city was coming awake as he walked, with street sweepers crossing in front of him and waiters carrying tables out onto terraces and maids opening windows, the houses taking their first breaths of fresh air. There seemed to be more flags out this morning, and along the river the street had been strung with bunting. The fluttering and his solitary stride: a memory of running onto Big Side at the end of the cross-country.

  He was in the second of his cafés in time to see the side door being opened to admit the cleaning woman.

  The countdown had started.

  In front of him the window, a shelf running along it. He saw the trench parapet, parched strands of thorn in the sand. Felt the shifting of his men beside him, felt the sun on his neck, heard the men breathing, heard himself breathing, heard his heart.

  The door opened and the woman stepped out with the first of the rubbish sacks, and Knox heard a whistle and he was up and out of the trench and moving.

  A casual trot to another alley, then he was sprinting hard, because these were the seconds where failure waited, first place, Knox V., slowing and out into the main street and swallowing his breaths. As he came past the front of the International Cultural Exchange, he rang the bell and strode on.

  As he turned into the alley a third rubbish sack was on the ground by the door and the woman was disappearing inside. One more. One more will be enough. His jacket came off and he draped it over his shoulders and began to slump and stagger, a beggar in his natural environment, boots trudging through rubbish and slime. The doorway was five yards away, and three, and now he could see that it was open still, and a sack swung out in front of him.

  If the woman saw the beggar nearby, she didn’t acknowledge it. Doorman should still be checking the front. The sound of feet in a corridor and he was pulling his jacket on properly – a breath – and he was in.

  From one pocket he pulled a cap, from another a screwdriver and spanner, staring around for – and then he was bent down over a pipe. He heard the woman come and go behind him. There was a line of pegs in front of him, and beside them another door, frosted panels, a
nd he was through it and into a lavatory.

  Footsteps in the hall again, heavier. The doorman returning to lock the side door. The footsteps dwindled.

  No thinking. Out fast; the coat and the cap went onto a peg, revealing a tweed jacket and a collar and tie. Trousers out of socks, and from an inside pocket a piece of paper. At every stage he had to look right enough. A breath, and he was through the door and into the corridor. At its end a more solid door, with felt on the inside. That was the border between the servants and the quality. He edged around it. Chequerboard floor, walls finished smooth, a window, and then another. This was the main hall. Another inch showed a glazed partition, and through it the front door.

  He edged further, and saw the edge of a table, set back opposite the door, and then on the table a pair of legs.

  Still too early for the doorman to be relieved; that might be a chance. He could rush the man, but he wasn’t desperate enough for that yet. The alternative was just to—

  The bell rang. Immediately the legs swung off the table. Knox pulled back farther. The doorman came into his vision, opening the glazed partition and then unlocking the front door. Someone else? But no – the doorman was accepting something.

  Postman. Knox was out into the hall and crossing it, head down into his piece of paper. Movement to his right on a staircase: the cleaning woman, coming down with a bucket. Head down and keep going; the doorman would see the woman before he saw Knox and that might… The door in front of him – no key – and he was into another corridor.

  He heard the glazed door rattle shut. With his door open an inch, he saw the doorman cross the hall again and drop a pile of envelopes on the table. The woman was by the door leading to the servants’ area, and now the doorman walked over to her. He said something, and then mimed it. Are you done? The woman hesitated, nodded. Another mime? You are going now? She shook her head, pointed to the back part of the house and mimed scrubbing the floor. The doorman gestured her through her door, and she went. Knox thought: you had to be poor indeed to be a foreign immigrant in Bosnia.

  Then the doorman locked the servants’ door behind her, and put the key on his table, and Knox winced. So security-conscious that they didn’t even give the servants the run of the place. More importantly, that was his escape route, should escape become possible.

  The legs swung up onto the table again.

  With the sense of safety disappearing far behind him, he turned. This was a mirror of the servants’ corridor running parallel along the other side of the building. But this side was smarter: tiled floor, finished walls, the doors glossy and brass-handled. Offices for junior staff? He didn’t want to risk trying every door.

  Then he saw the trunking. A few inches thick, it ran from floor to ceiling beside a door at the end of the corridor. He saw it because he was looking for it: a wireless room and a transmitter mean electric cables, and electric cables installed more recently than the main wiring of the building mean trunking.

  A bell rang somewhere behind him. Knox was looking through the crack again in time to see the doorman unlocking the door to the servants’ wing, and disappearing through it. A few minutes later it opened again and a different man came into the hall. It was the daytime doorman, in his uniform. He locked the servants’ door, and put the key on the table.

  Knox waited for the doorman to sit, but he didn’t. Instead he picked up the envelopes from the table, and set off up the stairs.

  Knox gave him a few seconds to get clear, then he was back into the hall, across to the table and picking up the key, on to the servants’ door and unlocking it and putting the key back on the table. A chance, at least.

  He was halfway back across the hall when the servants’ door opened behind him.

  It was the cleaning woman. He’d assumed she’d have gone, but here she was, staring up at him, alarmed. Part of Knox’s mind was noticing that she was a younger woman, handsome in her way, skin a little darker, and still she was staring. He had to trust that she wouldn’t question a man, wouldn’t question a man in a suit.

  She lowered her eyes, and hurried up the stairs and, as he watched, through a door on the landing. Knox kicked himself into movement and was back through the other door and heading for the wireless room.

  When Hathaway walked into the office, the whisper of a dress against the panels, eyes always considering the office as if for the first time, the old man was staring out into the park.

  He didn’t turn round, or say anything.

  ‘It is today?’ she said at last.

  ‘It is today.’

  She realized that he wasn’t actually looking into the park, but into the net curtain, deep into it, where its fog became a fine lattice, and then beyond.

  He half turned, and gave a formal nod of greeting over his shoulder. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘there is only Valentine Knox.’

  ‘There could be none better.’

  He turned again, a flicker of interest in the eyes. ‘I would trust your judgement on him more than most.’

  ‘War is passion applied to unreason. Knox, at his best, is passion applied to reason.’

  The old man considered it, approved it, and merely nodded again slightly. He turned away.

  ‘And if he’s captured? If he fails?’

  ‘If he is captured, Miss Hathaway, then they will torture him. He will tell all he knows about me, about this organization; even Knox will not hold for ever.’ He was still gazing into the net. ‘If he fails, everything fails.’

  The wireless room wasn’t even locked. Knox had his penknife and the screwdriver ready, but the door opened with the handle only. First he checked the door opposite – a filing room – and then he was back across the corridor and in.

  Knox was familiar with wireless and had used it before, but the old man had insisted on him spending an hour in the company of a little goggle-eyed chap from the Post Office who’d told him more than he would ever need, or probably remember.

  It meant that the room felt immediately familiar – the layout, the different pieces of equipment – and without having to think he was switching on the apparatus and getting the satisfying humming and glowing.

  His priorities now were exact. Each second increased his chances of capture. So the maximum had to be achieved in each second. He was sitting at the transmitter, setting the frequency.

  It was a simple message. The first word was a designator, to alert a man waiting in London – and, in case the transmitter here was not as strong as anticipated, men waiting in Venice and on board a cruiser in the Adriatic – that this was the message they were waiting for. He’d no need for acknowledgement; the old man had been clear that they would be there.

  The message contained only three other words.

  Knox adjusted the frequency so that if someone disturbed him now it would not be known. Then he was searching the immediate area around the transmitter for a list of regular frequencies. There had to be one, and an operator might leave it close at hand as a matter of routine.

  But in this office, only strict security was routine. The habits of the doorman had taught him that. Which made his job harder, and capture more likely. Immediately he was up from the chair and quartering the room, just in case the list had been left on another surface. But it hadn’t, of course, which meant it had to be in the wooden cabinet on the other side of the room. He was at the lock with his knife a second later, using the screwdriver as a lever and ignoring the damage to the woodwork. The phase of concealment was past.

  As soon as he was in he began to work methodically through the documents inside. Three shelves, piles of papers and books, and he guessed at what they were – messages recently received, records of messages sent and received, and so forth – and started on a pile of small ledgers.

  It would not be quick, and Knox knew what that meant. Something inside him kicked; a lurch of disappointment.

  He straightened, and continued through the books. He must either have sent the message or be out of the room; either way mean
t the faint possibility of success. To be caught searching was failure.

  As he finished skimming each of the ledgers, he threw it aside. Faster. There were two or three lists of what looked like frequencies, but the destinations were in code, and a part of Knox had to respect the mania for security. Faster. Another ledger thrown aside, bouncing off a desk and flapping to the floor. Then another, a cursory rummage through the piles of papers. There is still a faint chance of success in this. Papers flying over his shoulder and fluttering down. Inside five minutes the cupboard was all but empty, and Knox was slipping out of the wireless room and across the corridor.

  Krug arrived at the International Cultural Exchange at half past nine, as usual. The routine was set, and congenial to him: a cup of coffee; the international newspapers; the post. His secretary brought in each, silently and at the expected time.

  And then his secretary confirmed his appointments for the day. The anthropologist Belcredi was due at ten o’clock. Count Hildebrandt would be present today, and at Herr Krug’s disposal. Herr Krug would visit the Austrian minister in Sarajevo at four o’clock in the afternoon.

  Krug felt well. A pleasant day – not too hot. The city en fête, though he would be avoiding the noise and the ceremonial. A scheme in hand to entrap another of the Comptroller-General’s agents – and this one, it seemed, more knowledgeable than most. His world was functioning as it should. He sipped contentedly at the coffee. Sweet, but not too sweet.

  The world of Hans Martić was not functioning as it should. He considered himself lucky in his work as wireless operator in the International Cultural Exchange. The pay was good, the conditions were not onerous; he was lucky to have a job, let alone one that used his skill. Sometimes he wondered whether the messages that he passed to the clerks for decyphering contained only diplomatic secrets – might there not be something criminal in all the subterfuge? – but he’d seen enough officials and uniforms around the place to be clear that he was on the right side.