The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  Spring 1914: Blood

  The mountains were a palisade all around him, and Ballentyne thought: I have escaped from the world.

  From somewhere nearby: gunshots, and shouts, sharp into the sky, and instinctively he started to turn; then stopped and smiled.

  Whichever way he might look, the wall of mountains would be in front of him. The village, and the vivid green plain in which it had grown, nestled up here among the eagles. The Cursed Mountains, they said, but the mountains kept the village hidden and safe from the world.

  The snow had shrunk away early this year. A secret Eden, a fertile— and then something thumped into his back and Ballentyne stumbled forwards a step.

  ‘Ehh, English! Have you drunk too much?’ A heavy hand clenching on his shoulder, and he turned. The face now thrust close to his was itself a mountain: craggy bones, and fissured, wind-blasted skin. Ice-clear eyes gazed into his.

  He smiled. ‘O Adem, I have not started to drink yet.’ The old man chuckled hoarse. ‘And then I’m afraid you’re going to make me dance, or no?’ Again the chuckling from the old man, and Ballentyne laughed softly at himself too. The language, the dialect of the northerners, was back with him now, and he enjoyed its taste like the air. A badge of exclusivity; a shared secret.

  Ronald Ballentyne let the old man link arms and lead him back through the village: a dozen timber houses and three towers, squat and yellowstoned in the afternoon sun, tiny black eyes peeking down from the blank faces.

  The civilized continent, with its machines and its fancies, had fallen off behind him like an uncomfortable coat too heavy at the shoulders, as he’d trekked up from the sea and into the Albanian highlands: it was several weeks away now, and at least a century.

  Gunshots again; the usual celebration of the young men in the mountain villages. And, indeed, everywhere. Venerable rifles, Italian Mannlichers and German Mausers fifty years old and gnarled Turkish contraptions, the debris of decades of feuding and skirmishing on the edge of Europe. Adem was wearing two pistols at least, their intricately decorated butts sticking out of the sash around his waist and nodding to each other as he walked.

  A cramped wooden staircase in one of the towers, and the smell of men. A foreigner and a guest, Ballentyne had a more honoured place among the older men than his age warranted. It was Adem’s privilege as head of the village to play host to the English visitor, and Ballentyne sat next to him, settling his tweeds and his Jermyn Street boots down among the patterned woollen trousers and goat-hide slippers. As usual, the surreptitious effort to pull his shins into the cross-legged position adopted easily by men twice his age.

  Adem reintroduced him – ‘our good friend Ronaldi, who is back with us this year and will always have a home here’ – and Ballentyne watched the faces: the lighter hair and eyes and the eagle noses of the highlanders, played out on men from twenty to eighty, slow, watchful, serious in the counsel room. Boys came in with coffee, dark and sweet, and rakia distilled from pears, and the questions began, sober and incessant. Had Ballentyne come through Shkodra, and was the town recovered yet? Had the bridge ten miles down the valley been rebuilt? Was it true about the priest in Shoshi? No one seemed interested that they were now living in an independent Albanian kingdom with an imported German king, until someone asked about the Turks, and Ballentyne explained that with independence the Turks had gone from Albanian life; the faces seemed sceptical about this.

  From outside, the friendly patter of drums and the twang of the two-stringed çifteli, and Adem led the men out. The sweet smell of burning fir-wood easing him towards evening, Ballentyne watched the dance begin, the snaking line of young men with arms around shoulders kicking and swooping in unison, felt his legs begin to catch the rhythm.

  He settled on a log to watch. The bridegroom was an open-faced youngster at once proud and uncomfortable at his celebrity. Ballentyne had spoken to him two or three times, the guileless humourless answers helpful for research. He danced well, an eagle lost in flight. There were women watching now too, emerging with the evening to share the entertainment and to observe the newcomer.

  The bride was a heavy-browed strong-featured girl, the ritual emptiness of expression coming easily in the strange village. Tonight would be her first night here, and it would be a hard living until she produced a son. Ballentyne watched her, with interest and sympathy. More rifle shots into the evening. Extremely unlikely that the couple had met before today.

  Another pair of eyes caught his. One of the village girls – he recognized the face – watching bride and groom carefully. With Ballentyne’s eyes clearly on her she turned her head slightly, but her glance was fixed for a few moments longer. Not the Turkish-taught submissiveness of the townswomen, but the self-containment and discipline of the mountain girls with their old codes. Ballentyne felt his professionalism slipping. The large dark eyes, the high cheeks and the full lips were typical – and lovely.

  Besa – that was the name. A face in the fields or at a window, glimpsed two or three times during his stay and noticed. She would be… yes, the groom’s sister. Hence her watchfulness of the couple. Her glance flicked back to Ballentyne, and away, and she pulled a strand of hair back behind her ear. Older sister. Professionalism again: small household – father dead, mother bed-ridden, two daughters but only one son; two cows, so doing well enough, but until the new bride produced a son the family would be fragile.

  Beautiful women.

  A thump on his leg, Adem’s paw: ‘Ehh, my friend! We find you a lovely Albanian wife and you take her to London, or no?’ They both knew it was inconceivable that Besa or any other village girl should marry a foreigner. ‘Make her princess, or no? He-eh heh heh!’ The corroded chuckles echoed away, and Ballentyne watched the eyes and the wind-scraped parchment face and smiled. Beautiful women, and the best of men.

  A pause in the dance, cheers of approval, and the young men began to drift away from their circle towards drink and meat; the musicians stopped only for sips. The groom, flushed and happy, was walking towards Adem and Ballentyne.

  The warm restless tricks of firelight, the last of the day cool in the sky, the mountains dark beneath it, the pit-pat of the drums and the strained melody, the smell of wood and earth, the heat of the rakia in his chest. More shots, and shouts, and Ballentyne felt himself smiling at the sheer abandoned happiness of it all, and then a single shot and the groom’s chest went scarlet and he pitched forwards into the dust.

  Now the shots came fast, snapping from all sides. The shouts becoming screams. The circle breaking into chaos; a frenzy of running. Ballentyne had one moment of stupefaction, the echo of the groom’s elation and his own dumb happiness still in his head and amid the madness a point of clarity: the face of Besa, the woman, staring cold at her dying brother.

  Then a hand clutching his shoulder and pulling him up and backwards and away. He scrabbled for balance, for control, the gloom crackling with shots and cries, and then he was scrambling down a path after Adem, the rough walls of the houses scratching at shoulders and fingers as he went. At a corner the old man stopped, turned, grabbed him by the arm again and pushed him onwards down another path. Ballentyne hesitated, turned, saw the old man pulling the two pistols from his sash and levelling them deliberately the way they had come. Silence; the narrow eyes of the eagle; then he fired one of the pistols and began to stride after Ballentyne, gesturing him onwards with the gun.

  ‘Kelmendi!’ he spat as he came level. His hand, still holding the discharged pistol, was pushing Ballentyne. ‘They are vermin, but why this?’ A shot suddenly loud, and dust spattered into Ballentyne’s face and Adem had pushed him forwards again. The old man turned, levelled his second pistol and fired and there was a cry. Hurrying on again: ‘They will surely—’ and a shot roared from ahead of them and the old man staggered back and Ballentyne spun to look – the old man sprawled, face angry-pale – and then a crash in his brain and gloom and nausea.

  The nausea thumping and stabbing through his head, and hi
s feet scrabbling over the ground, ankles kicking at stones; he was being dragged, an arm under each of his shoulders. Mind still confusion. Body a mess of sensations: strain in the arms, battering in the feet on the rough ground. Another corner, he was flung against a wall, head and shoulders knocked on timber, and cloth thrust into his mouth – retching and gagging at the intrusion – a blow across his face; stupid surprise, and then the arms under his shoulders and being dragged again.

  The twin breaths and pounding of feet were joined by a third, and something sharp was pushed into his back. ‘Fast! Fast!’ – Albanian, hissed at him, and Ballentyne’s feet scrambled to keep pace.

  They hurried for perhaps ten minutes: ditches, rocky ground, and then a thin stone track and the sound of water below. Had he walked this path? The shock was fading to conscious confusion, the pain to persistent aches and the rhythm of trotting. Had he walked this path?

  Ten years of visits to the wild lands of south-eastern Europe. Robbed three times? Four? Nothing like this.

  The last of the light; pale sky and a grey world of cliffs above and below. Boots blending into the stones beneath him. The river a ribbon of darkness off to the side and down.

  His escort were breathing hard now, with their own heat easing and the ungainly effort to run and drag. Somewhere in Ballentyne’s throbbing clarifying head the flicker of an idea: escape? Then the stab of metal against his spine again, bump and stab as they ran.

  The path opened out, and they slowed to a walk. The arms steering him now, towards the ravine, opening up before him, the rush of water, his legs fighting for control and trying to stall before they pushed… and he was thrown down into the stones at the brink.

  Clutching at the stones, arms and legs shivering, finding himself looking down into the ravine, on all fours, turning, looking up, arm instinctively in front to ward off – looking up into the muzzle of a pistol.

  Is this what death is?

  The end of the world: a little unseen barbarity somewhere in the Balkans. The great hole of a pistol muzzle.

  A word, and the cloth was ripped out of his mouth and the muzzle and the pistol and the man holding it pulled away. Another man stepped forwards, two other men nearby.

  The path had widened into a kind of clearing against the cliff face, stony and patched with grass.

  Kelmendi, Adem had said. Kelmendi, the men of a village a few miles away, described with hatred or humour according to circumstance. The man with the pistol, and the two men now standing back – a glance showed that all three looked Albanian in face and dress. The few words had been spoken in Albanian.

  But the man walking forwards did not look or dress like an Albanian. Ballentyne took him in, from the dust upwards: boots, puttees, trousers, jacket; good outdoor clothes that could have come from any European capital. A European face flushed by recent exercise; dark hair. His own age.

  ‘Good evening.’ He didn’t sound like an Albanian either. ‘Mr… Bahlen-tein.’ The ugly vowels of English cleaned, the syllables delivered evenly.

  He looked and sounded German.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  A moment’s consideration, and then a little smile. ‘My name is Hildebrandt.’ The head came forwards slightly. ‘I am the man who shortly will kill you.’

  Is this what death is? ‘But – but for God’s sake, why?’

  A boot came up and, before Ballentyne’s fuddled head had realized the intention, the sole pushed him hard in the shoulder and sent him sprawling towards the edge of the path. When he had scrambled round again, the man was crouching near him.

  ‘Mr Ballentyne, I… I urge you’ – the ‘urge’ was pushed out emphatically – ‘that you make this easy. I will shortly kill you, yes, I will; but first I will ask you some questions, and’ – a shrug – ‘it were better – cleaner – if you would answer directly. These people’ – he nodded back to the three Albanians – ‘their habits…’ A shake of the head, the teeth clucking sadly. ‘We can be more civilized, yes?’ The head forwards again, a pained frown. ‘May we… behave as gentlemen?’

  The two heads level, close, eyes searching each other.

  Ballentyne launched himself forwards from the crouch, memories of school bullies who’d pushed him too far, hands scrabbling for face and neck as the German fell back under him. Then a thump across his head and the daze and hands under his shoulders and once more he was flung away to the edge of the ravine.

  By the time he was staggering upright again the Albanians were on him, two of them pinning his arms and wrenching his head back. An unseen signal and the third moved in fast. Ballentyne glimpsed the flash of a blade and then his face seared in pain.

  They dropped him. His whole world was his burning cheek, the panic for his eyes, blinking them clear, scrambling in the dust and one hand coming away from his cheek doused with blood.

  Pain scalding. ‘I don’t – know – who you are!’ He heard the desperation in his voice, hoped that the German heard it, hoped that it would overcome this mad horror, the irrational implacable violence. ‘I don’t know what you want!’

  Again the sorry cluck of the teeth, but this time the eyes were fixed and cold; no theatrical shrug or shake. ‘Let us be direct, Mr Ballentyne.’ The voice was low, hard. ‘You are an officer of the Comptrollerate-General. You are in these mountains on some mission of espionage or provocation. You will tell me your mission. You will tell me the name of the Comptroller-General. Or you will have much pain… and then you will tell me.’

  Madness. ‘Compt… This is – I don’t – I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  Hildebrandt’s eyes narrowed. ‘I hope you appreciated the rifle shot that killed the dancer. That was mine. Hardly a challenge – not a great distance; but he was moving, and in a crowd. A little exercise. I hit what I aim at, Ballentyne. I get what I want.’

  ‘He was barely more than a boy. It was his wedding day.’

  ‘I know. We have a pair of spies in the village. All planned, you see? And the youth was a gift to my friends here. One less father of their enemies. They took little enough persuading to attack.’

  ‘Why – why would you do all this?’

  A sigh; almost a growl. ‘Ballentyne: you are an officer of the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey. You are in these mountains on some mission of espionage or provocation. The mission, Ballentyne. The name!’

  ‘I – don’t – know!’ Hildebrandt’s eyes burned angry. ‘’Fore God, I don’t know!’ A gesture, and the Albanians were moving in once more. Ballentyne lunged forwards at the nearest, pushed him back, turned to the German. ‘I don’t know!’ The arms clutching at him, pulling him, twisting his head back. The third Albanian coming for him again, knife high and flashing towards his face. Ballentyne was twisting his whole body against the restraint, terrified, angry, straining to see the knife: ‘Listen, you bastard! I don’t—’

  A shot, echoing along the ravine.

  The knife never came; somewhere below his vision a body collapsed into the stones. Now the other two were turning, loosing their grip, scrabbling for weapons, Hildebrandt turning surprised, and at last Ballentyne could see what they could see.

  It was Adem. The old man, his host, striding into the clearing with bandaged arm and pistols levelled and, as Ballentyne watched, the second of them cracked and one of his captors yelled in pain. The old man dropped the used weapons and reached for his sash, but now another weapon fired and he flinched and broke stride and his shoulder dropped, scorched. The wounded man on the ground had a pistol out too and it came up towards the old man and Ballentyne threw himself sidewards as the trigger strained. He landed on the man as he fired, and the ball just clipped Adem’s arm. Still he came on, a ghost in the evening, two more pistols out of his sash and coming up and Ballentyne rolled away and the old man picked his shots and, one after the other, the two remaining tribesmen died.

  Hildebrandt was alone, a smile of interest at the indomitable old man as he staggered forwards, and hi
s pistol coming up to finish him. Another shot, ricocheting off stone, his smile dropped and his gaze lengthened and he saw other figures hurrying in behind the old man. He spun towards Ballentyne with the pistol raised and Ballentyne ducked his head away and heard the shot roaring in his ear and felt the world opening beneath him in a rush of scree and he was falling.

  An old man, at a desk in London, reviewing the failures of many years and trying to construct, once again and perhaps for the last time, the possibility of success.

  His hair had lost its colour but not found the distinction of whiteness. His face was pale with age and exhaustion. He was an insubstantial thing, and as the net curtains drifted dusty behind him he seemed to drift with them, to fade and to resolidify as if unsure whether he was, after all, alive in this time.

  Through the window came the crunch of boots marching along Whitehall, but he did not hear it. He sat upright, and still.

  Intermittently, a sheet of paper would rustle under his fingers.

  He’d known that the scheme had not produced victory; now he knew that it had been turned against him, and produced defeat. Under his left hand was the report – which he now had almost by heart, from the date the previous summer at the top to the unique ‘SS’ reference at the bottom – detailing the attempt to use the festivities surrounding the marriage of Princess Victoria Louise of Germany to arrange a meeting. While the King-Emperor George V of the United Kingdom, and the Tsar Nicholas II of all the Russias, and the Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany had blessed the pageantry with their greatness and manoeuvred jealously for preeminence, in meaner corridors behind the masquerade the old man’s agent had been about to spring a trap prepared over a decade. Only a meeting, but it would reveal the identity of the greatest of the spies.

  It is one of three men…

  The meeting had not happened. The bait – the hint of a scandal at the top of the British Army, set against the appealing backdrop of all that royal show – had not been enough; or perhaps it had been too much, and his prey had considered it, hesitated, and withdrawn.