Blood of Victory

by Alan Furst

  A small café was packed with men in dark suits, Serebin waited for one of them to leave, then tried to ask him the name of the village. It took some effort by both of them, but eventually the man saw the light and cried out, “Ah, Berzasca. Berzasca!” Serebin kept walking. A few minutes later, he found the river, and an arched bridge built of stone block. Not the bridge he was looking for but, at least, the right river.

  There was no path to the logging road—Serebin was supposed to have been on the Empress, having unloaded his cargo at the Stenka ridge—so he had to walk beside the river, forcing his way through the high reeds of a flooded marsh, with water above his knees. This took a long time, but he kept at it, and eventually saw a rickety bridge, moss-covered boards nailed across two logs. At the end of the bridge he found a pair of ruts that wound through the trees—probably the logging road and not the worst one he’d ever seen. But no sign of a car, and no sign of Marrano.

  Serebin sat on the edge of the bridge and thought about what to do next. Fishing boat down to Constanta? Oxcart, or car, up to Hungary? Try to cross the river? Well, that was a problem. Because one thing they didn’t have in this part of the world was bridges. Not where the river formed a border between nations, they didn’t, and that was the Danube’s fate once it left the plains of Hungary. Not that they hadn’t built bridges, they had, at optimistic moments over the centuries, but then somebody always burned them, so why bother. And, in fact, for pretty much all the recorded history in this part of the world, most of the bridges had been built by conquerors—Romans after Dacian gold, Ottoman Turks, Austrian engineers—and had thereby earned themselves a bad reputation.

  So then? He didn’t know. He was tired, and sore, and cold, and that, just then, was all he knew. God, send me a packet of dry Sobranies and a box of matches. Something made him look up and there, at the other end of the bridge, a figure stood in the shadows at the edge of the forest. A sylvan deity, perhaps, but not the common sort—its hands hung casually at its sides, one of them holding a revolver, the other a briefcase. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” Marrano said.

  They had to follow the river back to Berzasca—the only other choice was to walk a long way east, where the logging road met the main road. Serebin told his story, Marrano listened thoughtfully, and now and then asked questions, most of which couldn’t be answered. “Certainly,” Serebin said, “they knew we were coming.”

  Marrano sighed. “Well, at least we did something. Any idea what happened to the people on the tugboat?”

  “They ran, with everyone else, when the first mine went off. They could’ve gone north, into Hungary, or maybe they stole a boat, somewhere downriver. With any luck at all, they got away.”

  Pushing the tall reeds aside, they plodded on through the marsh until they reached the village street. “Where’s the car?” Serebin said.

  “In an alley. I waited overnight, but when you didn’t show up, I thought I’d better hide it.”

  “So,” Serebin said, “that’s that. Now it’s up to the Serbs.”

  Marrano stopped for a moment, unbuckled his briefcase, and took out a newspaper. A Roumanian newspaper, from a nearby town, but the headline was easy enough to read, even in the darkness, because the print was quite large. COUP D’ETAT IN YUGOSLAVIA, it said.

  “Who?”

  “Us.”

  “Will it last?”

  “Not for long, the Fuehrer’s chewing his carpet.”

  “Too bad. What happened?”

  “British agents kidnapped Stoyadinovich, Hitler’s man in Belgrade. But then, forty-eight hours later, the government caved in anyhow and signed with the Axis. So, yesterday morning, the coup.”

  “Back and forth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it the army?”

  “Led by air force officers. Nominally, the country is now run by a seventeen-year-old king.”

  They turned down a long alley. In a courtyard at the end, two boys were sitting on the hood of an Aprilia sedan, sharing a cigarette. Marrano spoke to them in Roumanian and gave them some money, clearly more than they expected. One of them asked a question, Marrano smiled and answered briefly.

  “What was that about?” Serebin asked, sliding into the passenger seat.

  “Could they drive it.”

  Marrano started the car, eased back out of the alley, and drove through the village, back toward the Szechenyi road. “We’ll have to avoid the border post,” he said. “By now, they’ve got themselves organized and they’re certainly looking for you.”

  The idea of cars, in 1805, did not occur to Count Szechenyi. On the dirt road, the speedometer needle quivered at thirty kilometers an hour but, once they reached the hewed rock, it stayed well below that. And they were soon enough in mountain weather; rising mist, like smoke, and a fine drizzle—the stone cliffs at the edge of the road shining wet and gray in the glow of the headlights. The road was, at least, empty. They worked their way past a single Gypsy wagon, and after that there was nobody.

  “How far is it?” Serebin asked.

  “To the border? About sixty kilometers.”

  Serebin watched the speedometer. “Five hours, maybe.”

  “Could be.” Marrano glanced at his watch. “It’s after nine. We’ll want to get rid of the car and take to the fields before dawn.”

  They crept along at walking speed, water gathering on the windshield until it began to run in droplets and Marrano turned on the single wiper, producing a blurred semicircle above the dashboard and a rhythmic squeak.

  Marrano peered into the darkness, then braked carefully and the car rolled to a stop.

  “What is it?”

  “A hole.”

  Serebin got out of the car and inspected it. “Not bad,” he called out. “But sharp.” He motioned Marrano forward, used hand signals so that the wheels ran on either side of the hole, then took a step back, and another, to make room for the car. Glancing behind him, he saw that the cliff fell away down to the river, black water flecked with white foam.

  The Aprilia drove past the hole, Serebin got back in, and they managed a few kilometers without incident, until a doe and her fawn appeared from the brush and the car slid a little as Marrano braked. The deer galloped away from them, then bounded off down the hillside.

  1:20. A light in the distance, a suffused glow from somewhere below the road. Marrano turned out the headlights, drove slowly for a few hundred feet, than shut off the ignition and let the car roll to a silent stop. Even before they opened the doors, they could hear the sound of working engines as it rose from the river. They walked up the road and looked over the edge of the hill.

  The Moldova Veche pilot station was floodlit by a giant river tug, with crane barges working at either end of the canal, and patrol boats anchored offshore. A few wisps of smoke still rose from the ruined structure, and two German officers stood on the dock, pointing as they talked. The last barge in line was nowhere to be seen, and the Empress had apparently been taken away.

  “Turbines in the canal?” Marrano whispered.

  Serebin nodded.

  “Not so bad—they’re working day and night.”

  He was being decent about it, Serebin thought. “Probably won’t stop anybody from going anywhere.”

  “No? Well, they’ve got the Germans in here, must mean something.”

  They got back in the car. Marrano kept the lights off and drove close to the cliff wall, staying as far as he could from the sight line below them. When they were safely around a curve, he turned the lights back on. “Is it getting narrower, here?”

  “A little, maybe.”

  The Aprilia climbed for a few minutes, the road swung away from the river, then descended, Marrano pumping the brakes as the sedan whined in first gear. In the sky ahead of them, a white flicker, followed by a zigzag flash against the clouds and a long, low roll of thunder as the rain intensified. “Spring storm,” Marrano said. The wiper squeaked as it cycled back and forth. “Must get that fixed
,” he said.

  2:00. 2:15. Hard work for Marrano, leaning over the wheel and squinting into the rain, shifting back and forth between second and third gears. The engine didn’t seem to like either one and, as it labored, Serebin watched the needle on the temperature gauge.

  “Road’s not meant for cars,” Marrano said.

  “Horse and carriage.”

  “Yes. Make a note of that, would you. For next time.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  A few minutes later, Marrano said, “What was that?”

  The road curved, hanging on the side of a mountain, and he’d seen a light, thought he had, somewhere ahead where, for a moment, a distant section of the road came into view.

  “Some kind of light,” Serebin said.

  “Another car?”

  “Yes, maybe.” But on reflection he didn’t think so. “Was it fire?”

  Marrano had to slow down as the road drifted to the left, then narrowed to the width of a single car. “We’re back on the river,” he said. Barely crawling, they approached a sharp corner to the right, then back to the left. On the other side, an army roadblock.

  In the flickering light of pitch pine torches driven into crevices in the rock, a squad of soldiers, most of them trying to shelter in a hollow at the foot of the cliff, and a command car with a canvas top, parked against the cliff wall. Marrano managed to get the Aprilia around it with inches to spare, then stopped in front of a barrier—a pole laid across two x-shaped sawhorses made of cut logs.

  Marrano unbuckled his briefcase, on the floor by the gearshift, and found what he was after just as an officer, water streaming down his rubber cape, stepped into the headlights and held up a hand.

  Marrano rolled down the window. “Yes, sir?”

  The officer came around to the driver’s window and peered into the car. He was young and vain and very pleased with himself, stared first at Marrano, then at Serebin, and said, “Passports.”

  Marrano took his passport from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to the officer. “He doesn’t have one,” he said casually, nodding at Serebin.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s coming from the Bucovina. The Russians took it away.”

  Serebin got just enough of this—the USSR had occupied the province a few months earlier.

  Not an answer the officer expected. “He’ll have to wait, then. You can go ahead.”

  “He can’t wait, sir. It’s his wife, she’s giving birth in Belgrade.”

  “Too bad.” He looked directly at Serebin and said, “You. Get out of the car.”

  “His wife, sir,” Marrano said. “Please, she needs him by her side, she’s not well.”

  The officer’s mouth grew sulky. “Get out,” he said, flipping his rain cape aside and resting a hand on the flap of his holster.

  Marrano held his fist just below the edge of the window, where only the officer could see it, paused a moment for effect, then uncurled his fingers. Four gold coins gleamed in the torchlight. The officer stared, transfixed. This was a fortune. He reached through the window, took the coins, and put them somewhere beneath his cape. Then he stood up straight. “Now get out,” he said. “Both of you.”

  Serebin was watching Marrano’s left foot, where it pressed the clutch pedal against the floorboard. It rose—quickly, but under control—as his other foot stepped on the gas. There was a soft thump—the officer sideswiped by the car, then Marrano drove full speed into the pole. Didn’t work—the sawhorses slid backwards, so Marrano jammed the accelerator to the floor, the engine howled as the tires spun on wet rock, one of the sawhorses tipped on its back and the other disappeared over the edge of the road. The car leaped forward, bouncing over the pole, past a soldier’s white face, his mouth open wide with surprise. Marrano hammered his hand against a knob on the dashboard and the lights went out. Something pinged against the trunk, something else made a spiderweb in the rear window.

  Maybe Marrano could see ahead of them, Serebin couldn’t. Only rain and the dark bulk of the cliff flying by on the right. Marrano speed-shifted, lost the road, and Serebin’s side of the car went scraping along the rock. Marrano jerked the wheel, the car fishtailed and slid toward the outer edge of the road, then he took it back the other way, the right front fender caught the cliff, a headlight ring flew up in the air, and the car straightened out.

  The road twisted, cornered, switched back on itself, rain streamed across the black windshield. Marrano, hands in a death grip on the wheel, powered through every turn, worked mostly in second gear, slammed his foot on the brake until the rear wheels began to slide, then accelerated out of the skid.

  Then, on a long, even climb, the car lit up—a pair of headlights behind them, glaring yellow beams that sparkled on the fractured glass in the back window. Marrano ducked, grabbed Serebin by the shoulder of his jacket and pulled him down. A stone chip hit Serebin’s door and he said, “They’re shooting at us.”

  The car swerved violently, Marrano fought the wheel and said, “Tire.” The headlights moved closer, the car wobbled on the flat tire, ground it off, then bounced along on the rim. “It’s over,” Marrano said. They were sideways for a moment, then off again as the back window blew in.

  “Now,” Serebin said. “Go ahead.”

  Marrano said shit and turned left.

  In the air, the silence went on for a long time. Serebin’s mind was empty, or maybe just a name, as though it were the first word of an apology.

  Then they hit some saplings, which bowed before they broke, then brush, then earth; then a sudden drop that stood the car on its front end. It stayed there for a moment, canted over in slow motion, and came to rest upside down. Serebin wound up sprawled across the roof, facing the windshield, where two red impact marks pocked the glass. He felt the blood, seeping from his hairline, then smelled gasoline, kicked savagely at the door, which was already open, and slid himself out on the ground. He crawled around the car, found the driver’s side door jammed shut, reached through the broken window, and cranked it up—with the car on its roof—until it was out of the way. Marrano’s foot was caught in the steering wheel, Serebin got him loose, then hauled him out through the open window. This took some time, because only one hand worked, his wrist either broken or sprained.

  He could see the lights of the command car, parked up on the road, and he could hear voices. Excited, he thought. Somebody had a flashlight, up there, and tried to find the sedan. “Briefcase,” Marrano said.

  “Can you walk?”

  Marrano mumbled something he couldn’t hear.

  From the opposite shore, thunder, but not close, the storm moving west, the rain a light, steady beat on the river. Serebin leaned into the car and searched for the briefcase, finally found it pinned between the floor and the brake pedal, which had been bent on its side. He took out a small bag of gold coins and slid the revolver in his belt.

  Some of the soldiers were now working their way down the hill—the flashlight, masked by a hand, was still clearly visible. Somebody fell, somebody swore, somebody whispered angrily. Serebin drew the revolver and thumbed the safety off. Turned around and took a good long look at the river, perhaps forty feet away. He put the safety back on, got his good hand under Marrano’s arm, and began to drag him toward the water.

  Plenty of driftwood logs on the shore, all sizes. Serebin got one of them launched, draped Marrano over it, held on and kicked, carefully keeping his feet well below the surface, until he felt the pull of the current. Back on the hillside, the search party was getting near the car. Serebin hung on to the log by looping his arm around it, kept his good hand on Marrano.

  On shore, they’d apparently reached the car, and there was a loud conversation with somebody up on the road. Search the woods. Looking down the river, Serebin saw a low shape ahead of them, some kind of promontory jutting out from the shoreline. It took quite some time to get there, his legs numb and lifeless when he finally beached the log on the sand. Marrano was unconscious, S
erebin pulled him a few feet up the slope, then fell. Done. No more he could do. He tried to force himself to get up, couldn’t, passed out.

  29 March.

  “Good morning to you, sir.”

  Logically, there was something in this Balkan opera of a city that could surprise the doorman at the Srbski Kralj but it sure as hell wasn’t Serebin. With four days’ growth of beard, wearing a sheepskin fisherman’s vest one of his rescuers had given him, a bloody rag around his head, his left wrist bound to a stick with fishing line—just good old Mr. Thing in Room 74.

  “Good morning,” Serebin said.

  “Lovely day.”

  “Yes, thank you, it is.”

  “Need any help, sir?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Limping, he got himself up the stairs to the top floor, then down a long hallway. Stained carpets, green walls, the aroma of yesterday’s dinner; all very appealing to Serebin, who was lucky to be alive and knew it. That went for Marrano as well. In the hospital for a day or two but he would live to fight again.

  He stopped in front of the door numbered 74. He’d had a key to this door, once upon a time, but it was long gone. Or was it this door? Because, if this was his room, why was somebody laughing inside? Tentatively, he knocked. Then knocked louder and Captain Draza, wearing only undershirt and underpants, threw the door open and gazed at him with surprise and delight. “Say, look at you!”

  A fine party, it must have been. Or, perhaps, still was. Captain Jovan, in underpants only but wearing a uniform cap, was sleeping in the room’s easy chair, a bottle between his thighs. The air was thick with black tobacco and White Gardenia, the bed occupied by three young women, one very young, all of them striking, but striking in different ways. Mysterious, Milkmaid, and Ballerina, he named them. Mysterious and Ballerina sound asleep, Milkmaid sitting propped up on pillows, reading the book of Anya Zak’s poetry she’d given him for the train. “Hello,” she said, rather formally, and, an afterthought, pulled the sheet up over her bare breasts.