by Alan Bardos
He had to get out of the cell before she did something stupid, like give the money to Sir George. There wasn't much point in Johnny going back to Paris; he’d totally failed to stop the Archduke’s assassination and all of the information he'd gathered for Sir George had been superseded by events.
Johnny spent most of the time thinking about what he'd do next; once he got his half of the money from Libby he could do as he pleased. He hadn't given it much credit before, when he was winning at the club, but the world was on the cusp of untold creativity and innovation. He could be part of that and starting with Belgium, he could go anywhere.
After six days, Breitner finally turned up with a supercilious grin on his face and his ridiculous pince-nez gleaming. For a moment, Johnny was overjoyed.
‘'Breitner, thank God!’ he blurted out, before managing some semblance of self control. 'Where the hell have you been? I’ve been in this stinking hole for nearly a week!'
'I needed to keep you somewhere safe, Johnny. You have a tendency to wander off,' Breitner grinned. 'Also, I was quite angry with you. If you'd done what you were told we might have prevented the assassination.'
'You deliberately left me in here?' Johnny almost punched him. 'I told you what was going to happen!'
'Yes, that’s true, but you drove the Archduke right in front of his assassin and stopped. That took some explaining.'
'The Governor told me to stop.' There was a whiny tinge to Johnny's voice that made Breitner smile.
'Apparently, you drove the wrong way, as well.'
'I was following the cars in front!' Johnny shouted. He didn’t know how many more times he was going to have to say it. ‘Which were following the official programme.’
Breitner gave Johnny a hard look. 'Evidently no one thought to tell the drivers that the route had changed. There's an unholy row and I doubt that we'll ever get to the bottom of it all. I can only imagine what you thought you were hoping to achieve by getting into the Archduke’s car at all. Did you honestly think he’d stop and chat with his driver?'
Johnny shrugged - none of that seemed important now. 'Look, have you been able to clear this mess up? The chap who owned the car was bloody angry.'
'I've spoken to Colonel von Harrach and explained that as one of my operatives you were doing your duty by stepping in and driving the car when his chauffeur became involved in an altercation with the crowd. Von Harrach is mortified that his driver was taken into custody, minutes before he was due to drive the Heir Apparent, and as I pointed out, he didn't notice you were driving the car until it was too late. He's willing to let the matter drop. Your part in the whole sorry affair will be quietly forgotten and expunged from the records - so you won't receive a commendation.'
'Oh well, that’s what I expected. I might as well be on my way.' Johnny made to leave the cell; he needed to get back to Libby and the money. Breitner didn't move out of the way and Johnny thought that he must want a proper farewell, so he went to shake his hand. 'Thanks a lot, old man. It's been fun, but I have urgent matters to attend to.'
'I still have need of you, Johnny.'
'But I've done everything you asked. We tried and failed. It's time to cut our losses and make a run for it.'
'I need you to come with me to Vienna.'
That was the last place Johnny wanted to go. As far as he could see, there was nothing for him in Vienna. 'Why on earth do you want me to go there?'
'For the good of the Monarchy and of course, the gratitude of a thankful nation.'
'How long are you going to keep dangling that carrot?' Johnny asked. He waved at the walls of his cell. 'I've had about as much as I can stand of your nation's gratitude. 'You need to offer something new to get my attention.'
'I understand that a lady of your acquaintance went to Vienna a few days ago. She might even still be there.' Breitner handed Johnny a folded piece of paper. 'This was left for you at the Hotel Europe.’
*
Breitner was satisfied to see that Johnny was as upset by the note as he'd planned he would be and so didn’t have any difficulty hurrying him out of his cell. Breitner had paid Johnny’s hotel bill and collected together the belongings he’d brought to Sarajevo, after he’d placed him in Mrs Illic’s boarding house. He gave them to Johnny as they left the City Hall Police Station and then guided him into an official car.
There wasn’t much time before their train was due to leave and it had already taken most of the morning to obtain Johnny's release from the local police. Breitner had downplayed Johnny's significance as a source to the investigating judge, in an effort to reduce the embarrassment of having an operative of the Joint Ministry of Finance involved in the shooting of the Heir Apparent and his consort and then consequently being interrogated by Viktor Ivasjuk.
As a result, Breitner had been kept on the periphery of the investigation by Leo Pfeffer, who ignored the information Breitner gave him with the same disdain which General Potiorek had shown. Breitner’s reputation from Vienna had again preceded him.
He was, however, as a representative of the Joint Ministry of Finance, allowed to observe Princip and Cabrinovic's interrogations. The conspirators initially denied that they'd been working together, and Princip had expressed regrets at Sophie's death, stating that his target had been General Potiorek.
Not expecting to survive the assassination, neither of them had given any thought to what they'd say if they were caught and because of this lack of preparation, they let slip a few important details.
Princip mentioned that he'd been living in Ilic's house and so the house was quickly searched and Ilic arrested. Breitner had tried to tell Pfeffer that Princip was registered at that address and that Ilic had been heavily involved in organising the plot, but he’d been ignored.
Nedjo Cabrinovic also told the investigators that he'd come from Belgrade with two other youths, which led them to deduce that he'd been working with Princip, and that there was a third person on the loose. At first they suspected that it might have been Ilic, but when Trifko Grabez was discovered trying to leave Bosnia without a permit, he was quickly identified as the third man.
When Breitner’s car pulled up at Sarajevo Station, he was immediately hit by a feeling of sorrow; the last time he'd been there it had been with the Royal couple, on the day of the outrage. He fought off his regrets, knowing that he still had work to do. He pulled Johnny to the ticket office and purchased two first class train tickets; it was going to be a long journey to Vienna and he needed to rest. The past week had been a very difficult time for Breitner. He hadn't approved of many of the methods used by his fellow investigators, but had been totally powerless to stop them, he reflected.
Over two hundred Serbs had been arrested in Sarajevo and many of them were placed under the cell windows of the conspirators, so that Princip and the rest could hear as the guards beat them. All of the known associates of the four were rounded up, including the staff at the Cabrinovics’ cafe. Eventually, the conspirators agreed to cooperate with the investigation to prevent any further innocents from being hurt.
As the conspirators gave up more information they corroborated what Breitner had been telling Pfeffer and he was eventually allowed to participate in the investigation fully, helping with the capture of Cvjetko Popovic and Vaso Cubrilovic. Mehmed Mehmedbasic managed to cross the border into Montenegro and remained the only conspirator to evade capture.
Breitner was less successful in preventing inflated reports of Belgrade's involvement in the plot from being sent to Vienna. The police had been keen to make a connection between the assassins and Belgrade from the start. Viktor Ivasjuk had even said that Nedjo had admitted to him that he and Princip had received their weapons from the General Secretary of Narodna Odbrana, a pan Slavic organisation which had largely abandoned para-military activity. This was something which Cabrinovic violently refuted when he was questioned by Breitner and the investigating judge.
More importantly, Princip and Cabrinovic revealed that they had planned
the assassination in Belgrade and mentioned the involvement of a man named Milan Ciganovic, a government employee on the Serbian State Railway.
All of this was interpreted in Vienna as evidence of the Serbian Government’s participation in the assassination. The Serbian Government strenuously denied these claims and pointed out that the assassination had been carried out by citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
The noise of the trains brought Breitner out of his thoughts. Instinctively, he looked round for Johnny and saw him watching the train being shunted. He turned to Breitner. ‘Is it true that Kati Weisz’s father is an engineer and that he was working on the railway in Sarajevo?’
‘Is that what she told you?’ Breitner frowned at the lapse in security, but he didn’t suppose that it mattered now. ‘Yes, her father has worked on every railway from Transylvania to Cairo. She was brought up as wild as a gypsy - how do you think she learned to dance?’
Johnny smiled, apparently pleased that he’d managed to substantiate that much of her story, at least. Breitner moved forward, shepherding Johnny onto their platform.
‘So how do you know her?’ Johnny asked.
‘I knew Miss Weisz while I was stationed in Vienna. We recently became reacquainted at a local Chamber of Commerce function, which her father was giving. He needed a Hungarian translator, so I attended and had the privilege of seeing her perform an extraordinary interpretation of a classic Hungarian folk dance.’
Breitner remembered the intriguing, spiralling movements of her dance. ‘We have a similar interest in mathematical conundrums. Kati’s quite an accomplished mathematician. Her father would be lost without her and her sister, Esther. They’ve been checking his work for years.’
‘Kati’s a mathematician?’ Johnny asked with surprise. It was clearly the last thing he had expected to hear.
‘Yes, although it is Esther who is truly brilliant.’ Breitner gave him his most condescending smile. ‘When she dances you see the provocative movements of a sensual and accomplished woman. For Kati, she’s solving complex mathematical problems, mapping out patterns, searching the rhythms of the universe, the symmetry of a seashell, the spiral of the human ear.’
Johnny walked on in silence towards their train, taking in the information, then asked, ‘Does she work for you, Breitner?’
‘I'm not a spymaster, Johnny, I'm just a humble civil servant. I have to improvise and make use of whatever I can, as I did with you. I have a few informants who do me the odd favour, picking up coffee house gossip and such things. Kati wasn't a great deal of help until you came along.’
‘You planted her at the cafe?’ Johnny stopped and looked at Breitner.
‘I asked her to perform - it was easy enough to arrange. She is quite fearless and I thought I might need something to tempt you back into the fold.’ Breitner had been shocked by how well his plan had worked. ‘It hadn’t been my intention to get you sacked from your job, Johnny. She was only supposed to pass you a message. I hadn’t anticipated the strength of your attraction.’
‘No, that surprised me too,‘ Johnny smiled.
‘Haven't you got enough trouble with the ladies, without adding any further to it?’ Breitner asked as they clambered aboard the train.
Johnny looked downcast. He had a very mercurial temperament, Breitner noted. A porter showed them to their compartment on the train and Breitner tipped him and asked for a newspaper; he needed to keep abreast of the latest opinion in Vienna.
Ilic had been interrogated earlier that day. Breitner hadn't been present but he had been told that his interrogators had made Ilic false promises, playing on his fear of the noose. Ilic had given them a more detailed account of Ciganovic's involvement in the plot. He told them how Ciganovic had helped Princip and the others to get in contact with Major Tankosic, a Serbian army officer who not only approved the assassination, but provided weapons and support for the assassins.
This revelation was now being loudly flaunted as proof of the complicity of the Serbian Government in the assassination, adding weight to calls by Generals Conrad von Hotzendorf and Potiorek for a pre-emptive strike against Serbia.
Johnny had told Breitner of Tankosic's involvement when they had met on the tram prior to the assassination and Breitner had duly passed the information on to his superiors at the Joint Ministry of Finance and his contacts in Budapest and Vienna. He'd assumed the report had been lost in the biggest bureaucracy in Europe. Then today, he had received immediate instructions to bring his informant to Vienna.
*
Johnny looked blankly at the picturesque mountain ranges that streamed past as the train chugged its way towards the Austro-Hungarian homeland.
Libby's note had been written in her usual curt style. She couldn't wait around anymore and had gone to Vienna. She was sure he could make his own way there and that he would appreciate that the spa season was starting and that she didn't have time to play ‘silly buggers’. The money wasn't mentioned - Libby would have thought that too vulgar.
Johnny looked over at Breitner sitting opposite him in the compartment, reading his newspaper. He would have liked to have told Breitner where he could stick his precious monarchy, but he didn't even have the money for the train fare home.
They'd barely said a word since they'd got on the train. Johnny had been too busy reflecting on what to do about Libby and what Breitner had told him about Kati. He felt some consolation that she hadn’t been lying to him; the sooner he got this over with the sooner he could go and find her in Belgium, he decided.
'What's all this about, then? Why are you dragging me to Vienna?' Johnny asked.
Breitner looked up from his paper with a sigh. 'The hardliners in my government are blaming Serbia for the outrage and are demanding punitive action be taken.'
'The assassins received help from Serbian nationalists, but Princip was acting independently.'
'Well, that's why we're going to Vienna. I need you to tell your story.'
'Surely, General Potiorek is to blame. There were hardly any police on the streets and he told me to stop the car in front of Princip.'
Breitner waved his newspaper. 'There is amazement that the General hasn't been reprimanded. Potiorek's brazening it out, deflecting attention away from himself by blaming the Serbians.'
'You mean, he's kept his post?'
‘The Emperor has forbidden any internal investigation into the organisation of the visit and hasn’t pressed for the punishment of the local officials, whose negligence led to the assassination.’ Breitner shrugged. 'I imagine that this is all very embarrassing for him. There is a lot of blame to go round. It is a mess from start to finish. Also, there is a lot of support for General Potiorek within the government. Potiorek might have been able to do more but he was in the line of fire. The shot that killed the Duchess could have hit him and, God help us, he's one of our top generals. We'll need him if there is a war.'
'The deaths of the Archduke and his wife could have been so easily prevented,' Johnny said, wondering if the assassination was going to be put down to the Viennese love of a muddle.
'Potiorek claims that you can't legislate against an assassin who isn't scared of dying, unless you evacuate the whole city,' Breitner said.
'Why didn't he do that then, after Nedjo threw his bomb? Johnny asked.
'Cabrinovic was given that bomb by members of the Serbian military. Don’t you think they should be called to account?’
'Yes, but Nedjo shouldn't have been allowed to get anywhere near the city, let alone the Archduke,' Johnny said and Breitner gave him a reproachful look. Johnny felt momentarily guilty; he had his share of blame for the debacle.
'The point is, Johnny, they attacked and killed the Heir Apparent and his consort - that can't go unanswered and whether or not it could have been easily prevented is irrelevant. To even suggest that an Austrian might have been negligent lessens the guilt of Serbia.'
'But you've caught the people who carried out the assassination.'
&n
bsp; 'Don’t be so naive, Johnny. Do you think the hardliners will be content with executing a few Serb peasants?'
'So what's the alternative? Declare war on Serbia, because a few rogue members of the Serbian Army gave their support to Gavro and his friends?'
'The assassination is a godsend for the hawks. It's given them all the moral reason they need to bring the Serbians to heel and make them fear Vienna again. They think the Monarchy can then at last reassert itself in the Balkans, at the same time halting the flood of nationalism that is ripping it apart.'
'So the hardliners are in control?'
'Paradoxically, it was Franz Ferdinand who was the main bulwark against them,' Breitner sighed.
'So is there nothing that can be done to force a diplomatic solution?' Johnny asked.
'That brings us back to the purpose of our mission,' Breitner answered wryly, before reopening his newspaper.
Chapter 39
The Honourable Pinkston Barton-Forbes watched patiently as the black flags flew over the Hofburg Palace, the sprawling assortment of buildings that had been the centre of Habsburg power for centuries. The dynasty had survived the Turks, Napoleon and revolution and he had no doubt that it would survive this crisis.
Pinkie had positioned himself at the outer gateway of the palace, alongside representatives from the Monarchy's oldest families and from Vienna's diplomatic corps. It didn't, however, seem like a good moment to try and add to his list of contacts. His chief had sent him on behalf of the Embassy, to pay last respects when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg were taken to their final resting place. The cortege was due to leave shortly at 10.00pm, and Prince Montenuovo, the preening martinet of a Court Chamberlain, was ensuring that everything ran like clockwork.
Pinkie looked at the crowd gathering opposite him along the Burgring. There wasn't a great feeling of mourning in the city, but during the prescribed four hours, thousands of people had filed past the Royal couple as they lay in state. Then the doors had been slammed shut, regardless of the mourners still waiting outside.