The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  He’s uncomfortable. Not only disapproving, but uncomfortable. The world of the Colonel Mayhews was not supposed to involve being polite to the David Duvals. Things must be getting bad, mustn’t they?

  ‘Is that who I am? I’d often—’

  ‘Mr Duval.’ Hard, and then strangely a smile across the soldier’s face. You’re not stupid, are you, Colonel? ‘Your lack of deference suits me as much as it amuses you. A man who unthinkingly accepts and does what he’s told in this office will do the same in Rome or Berlin. That man is useless to me. I need a man who questions, who challenges, who’s always looking beyond what he sees and hears.’

  Duval nodded slightly. ‘Mayhew, I love old England dearly, but I can’t—’

  ‘Thirty pounds a month.’

  ‘Not enough.’

  The eyebrows rose slowly under the careful haircut. ‘Not enough for what?’

  ‘To live. To live… as flexibly as I’d need to. Cultivate useful friendships. I won’t corrupt the Kaiser’s wife from a railway hotel, will I?’

  Again the smile. ‘You’re even more impressed by your potential than we are. What’s the going rate these days, then? For a corrupter of queens?’

  ‘One hundred.’

  ‘Fifty, and you’ll get three months of it in advance.’

  ‘Taking rather a risk with me, aren’t you, Colonel?’

  ‘The benefit of a rank and a uniform, Mr Duval, is that one is less likely to get hanged as a spy.’ He stood. ‘If at any time, on reflection, you decide you’d rather join the regulars, you’ll find we’ve always room for enterprising young men there too.’

  The world of men.

  Flora Hathaway sat with deliberate poise, and considered the waiting room. Mosaic floor; dull rug. Furniture solid; functionality as done by an affluent people wishing to impress others and reassure themselves. One chair a piece of ludicrous baroque; some imperial souvenir. Fire laid economically but burning steady – that hadn’t been done by one of the elegant sons of glory who glid along these corridors – and the hearth swept immediately afterwards. A clock on a dark stone mantelpiece, grotesque and thumping the seconds at her. Two portraits: middle-aged men in the formal wear of two decades ago. To help the awestruck visitor know what to look for; like the signs on the cages at the zoo.

  The letter had been a surprise. Unexpected, of course. But also the style: neither patronizing nor commanding; courteous; frank about her achievements and frank – albeit in opaque terms – about what would be expected of her. Research, requiring a high degree of discernment and initiative, while remaining directed and in the service of a wider object. It appealed to her, certainly.

  It had been written by someone who understood people. Someone who understood her.

  Her parents’ reaction: once again the weary hope that their troublesome-but-beloved might find something to meet her unrealistic standards; and then, unspoken after too many past missteps but still clear in their faces – the sudden formality in her father’s, her mother’s glance at her clothes – the admonitions to propriety and to the highest achievement.

  Her parents in their distant parlour, set against this palace of national greatness.

  I shall be worthy of the rare chances I am given.

  Glancing down into the courtyard – and this time she thought of an aquarium – she watched two of the resident creatures striding across it, two men.

  Ballentyne felt the odd dislocation washing over him again: the sense that the familiar world was unfamiliar, as if he were seeing it in a mirror, or in a dream.

  The delirium of the fall, of the pain of rocks and the icy water, of unknown hands and a week of fever, of emerging weak and bewildered from the Albanian highlands; of huddling on station platforms, drowsing in night trains. Then England at last, the details of the dream fading with each full night’s sleep, each familiar face. But now the soldier, this Knox: into his world of colleges and mountains a uniform, the lunatic distortion that convinces you you are dreaming.

  ‘Easier if I explain as we walk,’ Knox had said, ushering them into movement. Which might have been true, and yet he had not taken advantage of this easiness. Ballentyne walked across the Foreign Office courtyard in expectation, head half turned, waiting for words that never came.

  They strode up the steps and into the porch – and moved as promptly backwards again, as the double doors swung outwards and a woman emerged. Murmured etiquettes from the two men, then: ‘Why, young Ronald Ballentyne!’

  Ballentyne focused properly on the face. ‘Miss Durham. Good to see you.’

  Knox frowned slightly; the visit was already even more public than he’d feared. Woman in her fifties. Solid-built and caped, a strong face under a tam-o’-shanter. Ballentyne’s courtesy seemed genuine.

  She glanced critically at Knox, and back again. ‘Been in the mountains yet this season?’

  ‘Yes. Yes – in the valley of Shala, and thereabouts.’

  ‘How do our friends?’

  ‘Well enough. I stopped with the priest in Breg Lumi.’

  ‘And off there again, I hear.’

  Ballentyne hesitated. ‘No – well, I haven’t planned—’

  She flicked at him with a pair of gloves. ‘Quite right, Ronald Ballentyne. No good shouting about it before you’ve got the thing worked out yourself, eh?’

  ‘Well, I…’ He gave up trying to understand. ‘And how are you, anyway?’

  The mighty torso heaved. ‘Oh… Well enough, for myself. Mustn’t grumble. But Albania! It’s grim. Have you heard what’s happening in the south? Ghastly. Ghastly.’

  Ballentyne nodded.

  ‘And trying to get these people to—’ She shuddered, and shifted her shoulders under the cape as if trying to shake the whole of Whitehall behind her. ‘I’ve just come from Terrence, and that was a waste of time, of course. I don’t say he’s half-witted, though he might be, but the most insipid, wheedling little excuse of an official you ever saw.’ Another shudder. ‘And now I’ve got this young woman along with me’ – she gestured over her shoulder, and the voice didn’t make clear if it was help or hindrance – ‘wants to follow in my footsteps, or something.’ A jolly guffaw. ‘Well, if she’s that determined!’

  In the shadow, Ballentyne saw a younger, slighter version of Durham herself: the handsome profile, the close-bobbed hair, the strong shoulders; in her thirties, perhaps, and festooned with bags.

  The gloves flicked at him again. ‘Have a go at Terrence yourself, will you? He might take it better from you. Tell him it’s not cricket, or straight shooting, or whatever it is men say.’ The eyes were grave. ‘They must see, Ballentyne. Those poor folk in the villages.’

  Then she pulled herself straighter, and set her profile towards the courtyard. ‘Come along, Miss Gowing!’ she said over her shoulder. ‘They’ll be waiting for us at Precha’s.’

  She strode off, the younger woman following resolute in her wake and glancing at Ballentyne with a warm, distracted smile.

  Where does she think I’m going? Ballentyne watched the two women sailing across the courtyard; then turned back to the porch and to Knox. Where am I going?

  Knox was looking the question.

  ‘Edith Durham. Sort of the… patron saint of those of us trying to open up and understand south-eastern Europe. And a heroine to the Albanians, for all she’s done for them.’ He reached for the door, and hesitated. ‘Well, Mr Liaison Officer? Do you know what she seems to know?’

  Knox pushed the door open for him. ‘Better not keep this Foreign Office johnny waiting, eh?’

  Terrence, departmental sub-chief for the Adriatic and south-eastern Europe, was slumped in his chair, fingers pressed into his forehead. On the blotter in front of him, a pair of scarlet knitted objects.

  The fingers came away as Ronald Ballentyne was shown in with Knox a pace behind him, and the head lolled back against the chair. He glared at Ballentyne.

  ‘I’ve just had Mad Edith in,’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s all terrible a
nd it’s all my fault, apparently. Gave me these… these slippers.’ He waved a hand towards the objects on the desk.

  ‘Opinga,’ Ballentyne said. ‘Rather a good example. You give them to guests to use in your house.’

  ‘I…’ Terrence was clearly trying to recapture a picture of whatever suburban villa was home. ‘Look, Ballentyne, I won’t waste your time. You’re off again, I know, and I’ve been told I’ve got better things to worry about.’

  ‘But don’t you want to hear—’

  ‘Love to, old chap. But no point you doing it twice. You’re down to meet someone else; not sure I had the name…’ – he looked warily towards his desk, reluctant to disturb the slippers – ‘military involved, somehow.’ He nodded towards Knox.

  Ballentyne turned, face grim. Knox, neutral smile, had the door open and was gesturing him out.

  For as long as he could remember, James Cade had loved ports. From Whitehall he followed the open sky the short distance to the river, and on the Embankment he turned left, for the heart of the City and the sea.

  Fresher air and the sense of the world’s possibilities. No better place than a port to make a decision.

  As he walked, juggling the balance sheets of enterprises present and prospective, watching the crowds around him and wondering as always at London the great market, the ships got bigger. Bridge by bridge they evolved, sprouting funnels and the funnels multiplying, as if the river was itself a parade of the history of maritime engineering.

  Risk. Some drop of impetus and activity at home; brother Tam must compensate. The image of a dwindling office; the old ’un would present it as expansion. Financial loss; beyond the negligible effects of the above, limited. The government investment in setting him up would make stock his only net outlay; and a Cade who couldn’t make a running profit in one of the world’s great bazaars didn’t deserve the name. Personal risk?

  He found himself slowing. Impossible to quantify. A calculation he wasn’t used to, algebra with unfamiliar variables.

  Fifteen minutes’ walking had brought him into the City – the old London, the London of merchants and bankers and insurers that predated by centuries and pre-conditioned the London of imperialists and diplomats he had just left. Across the water, the wharves and warehouses of the great merchant houses. To his left, the ground rising, up to where the Romans had had their forum and where the Bank of England now ruled the world. Still he went east. Now the ships soared up beside him, three- and four-masters, fully 500 feet long, bringing the world to London for men like the Cades to deal. The fat squat bow of a cargo steamer darkening the day next to him, a dribble of smoke escaping from her funnel into the jungle of masts and spars beyond. Below, between the behemoths, tugs and single-sailed traders and ferries chanced the swell.

  Return. A potential new sector for Cade & Cade, with the risks underwritten by others. The possibility of turning a profit on it. And – he tried to scold himself, tried to hear his father – in a way, a little bit of a spree.

  He came clear of the steamer and gasped in the pleasure of the sight: a windjammer, a four-master, six spars to a mast, able to unfurl an acre of sail: among the dark funnels a queen of elegance. Careful, old lad. In business, money can buy a dream but a dream can’t buy money. Beyond her, her sea grey making her a ghost against the morning, a warship.

  No better place than a port to make a decision; but not necessarily an even-minded decision.

  As Duval stepped out into the corridor in front of Colonel Mayhew, another soldier rose from a bench to meet him. Perhaps his own height, his own age or a bit older; bigger built. Duval took him in, polished leather peak to polished leather boots. This one wore the uniform well; fit sort of fellow.

  He glanced back at Mayhew. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is the moustache I want. If not a uniform, do I at least get one of those?’

  ‘This is Major Valentine Knox. He’ll be your liaison officer.’

  Duval mouthed the first name, and then stepped forwards. ‘So what does that mean? Bodyguard, prefect, nursemaid?’ Knox was still; his face was still. Duval held out a hand. ‘You’re the fellow who’ll stop me getting into trouble, is that it?’

  The moustache chewed on this. ‘I like trouble, Mr Duval. I might be the man who gets you into it.’ And at last he shook the offered hand, holding it and the glance a little longer than Duval expected.

  ‘We have things to discuss, I take it.’ A grin. ‘And I’ve a hell of a thirst.’

  Knox considered this. ‘Come along, then.’ He gestured Duval towards the marble stairs. Before he turned to follow, a last glance of shared meaning between the two soldiers.

  Lectures from men. Her father. The vicar. The MP. (What had he wanted? A daughter-in-law? A wife?) Professors. Ralph, trying a pose of gravity like an outsized hat. The policeman, after the march. Her father again. All so wise and so uncertain. Hopeful because strange, precocious Flora’s dominant characteristic is her intelligence, ergo she is halfway a man; but then uneasy, because Flora does not follow the languid rules of chat, and watches, and challenges, and has breasts, and is all in all a most peculiar sort of man.

  This man sat with his back to the net curtains, which glowed white around him and left his face in shadow. As if he were an absence. She’d not stifled a gasp at the cheapness of the attempt at advantage.

  Then she’d entertained a vague fancy that he was embarrassed – perhaps disfigured, even. And now she realized it was probably one of the habits that men adopted in their strange world of deceit and intrigue.

  ‘I shan’t try to appeal to patriotism or duty, Miss Hathaway; I think you—’

  ‘And yet by invoking them you have tried to do just that. Diminishing them, while implying vaguely that you have some yet stronger claim.’

  ‘I do not belittle patriotism or duty, believe me. They are both of them admirable values, and we have sore need of them. Nor’ – he shifted – ‘before you exercise your reasoning at my expense again, do I imply that you are not patriotic or dutiful. But patriotism and duty should be felt, not appealed to.’ The old man watched Flora Hathaway’s eyes carefully; they had the habit, when thinking, of hardening. ‘They might, moreover, seem insufficient cause to send a young person – a particular young person, chosen rather than innumerable others – on a journey that will certainly expose them to loneliness, anxiety and doubt, and conceivably to hostility and to danger.’ Still she stared back at him. ‘It is a journey for which one must discover one’s own motives.’

  Still the eyes, unblinking, reasoning.

  The old man shifted again, and took in a long breath. The words came faster: ‘Because we may be involved in a national fight for survival. And in such a fight, we must use our every capacity to its uttermost. We can’t afford to exclude people on the basis of irrelevant aspects of their background or physiology. As individuals, by extension, we must use our strongest talents to the fullest. Success will depend on each of us being all that he – she – can be. I don’t put a thoroughbred to pulling a cart. I don’t put a scholar to checking a grocery bill.’

  Flora Hathaway stared into the shadow. She felt oddly alive in the conversation. ‘Sir, I loathe you for the cynicism with which you exploit the point. But I give you credit for being perhaps the first man I’ve met to understand it.’

  ‘You’re most kind, Miss Hathaway. But I’m not playing a game. Our every last capacity. To its uttermost.’

  ‘Someone already thinks I’m working for you!’ Ballentyne had hoped for more impact. This Mayhew just raised his eyebrows in polite interest.

  ‘They attacked me because of it.’

  ‘Ah. Yes, rough business, sometimes. Foreigners get the funniest ideas about the British. Chap in your line – research and so forth – not the first time you’ve been accused of spying, perhaps.’

  ‘The first time I’ve been cut up and shot at.’

  Mayhew watched him for a moment. ‘Look here, Ballentyne: I can’t pretend there’s not an element of… risk here. No
, that’s a foolish British understatement. Danger, is the word. We think you’re the chap for this sort of work; but… you need to be aware of that. Consider it; earnestly. Reflect. No reason why you should be known. We take all precautions. But still. Europe is a tinderbox. The highest tension; mutual suspicion. That’s before you even start on what the Germans are doing in Turkey, and what the Russians are doing in Persia. Everyone looking at everyone else. Particularly in the rougher parts, where you’ve tended to—’

  ‘They – this German said I was working for a particular department. The – something… General-Co-’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bit of muddle here. Different departments. New outfits starting up. The Admiralty, the War Office; everyone’s getting their own little intelligencing shop and no one’s talking to anyone else. Quite properly but, well, the Sub-Committee sometimes… Look: quite understand if, on reflection, you feel…’

  A knock, and a head thrust into the room. ‘Ah, Ballentyne, isn’t it?’ Ballentyne couldn’t quite make out the face; the bearing and voice seemed old. ‘Good man. Tylor, at Oxford, speaks very highly of you.’

  Ballentyne had half risen. ‘He’s a great man, truly.’ The sun was in his eyes. ‘I’m not sure our anthropology and ethnography are much use to your espionage; European politics—’

  ‘On the contrary, Mr Ballentyne. European politics is all anthropology. I’m not interested in political philosophers and diplomatic flim-flam. You’re a man who thinks about human animals. About tribes. And that will serve you in Paris and Vienna and Berlin, at least as well as in your Albanian hamlets. Don’t let the frock-coats and feathers fool you, Mr Ballentyne. Modern Europe is essentially primitive.’

  In the shadows that attended on the Kaiser, the honoured visitor settled himself in a chair and began to investigate the cigarette box in front of him. ‘Now, Colonel: you’re a soldier as well as a chief of espionage. What – in discretion, of course – can you tell me of your dispositions?’ A finger still hovering, he looked up. Come now: a little Prussian boastfulness… ‘How is our battlefield?’ A pout, and he closed the cigarette box untouched.