The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  Nicolai sat stiff-backed across the desk. He looked up over his shoulder to a large map of Europe, and with an extended palm began to divide the Continent. ‘As you will I’m sure know, Herr Krug’ – a glance at the visitor, who gave a little smile – ‘St Petersburg: good; Constantinople: excellent, the spies are thieves and of little consequence, but we are well-placed in the Turkish government and this more than compensates; Rome: not bad, would be better if I knew to count them for ally or enemy’ – another little smile from the visitor; and that, my dear Colonel, is why you do not understand espionage – ‘Paris: not as good as I would wish; London: excellent.’ The palm came down and settled flat on the desk. ‘We have an excellent network in Britain.’ He looked up. ‘And you will have your own private sources there, Herr Krug.’

  ‘Together, a most potent force.’ He leaned forwards a fraction. ‘Which must be protected.’

  ‘The British are nowhere.’

  ‘Distracted, Colonel. I told you.’ He pulled a cigarette case from inside his coat. ‘They are more worried by Dublin and Calcutta than they are by Europe.’

  ‘And old-fashioned. An empire that has passed its time.’

  ‘Yes.’ A connoisseur’s breath, a whimsy of memory. ‘They used Latin for secret communication in southern Africa. Charming! Quite charming.’ A slender, dark cigarette tapped precisely against the case twice. ‘Now they are making new efforts; new bureaux, with new men.’

  ‘Indeed. We watch them coming off the boats at Calais and Hamburg.’ The visitor smiled; why Colonel, that was almost witty. Nicolai’s gloved palm floated over the desk a moment, then slapped softly down. ‘We will gather them when we choose.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suspect that we will.’ The cigarette glowed and sagged between two straight fingers. ‘And yet. And yet I think you have never heard, Colonel, of the Comptroller-General for Scrutiny and Survey.’

  British Intelligence adrift. The threats unseen and everywhere. One threat – the threat – somewhere.

  When the four had gone, their faces lingered in the old man’s mind. Ronald Ballentyne: straight and perplexed. James Cade: confident, calculating. David Duval, watched from a window: challenging and sure, until he thought there was no one watching. Flora Hathaway – Flora Hathaway…

  And then they faded, stepped back to the corners of the office, silent observers. The old man looked down at the desktop, at the cloud of papers. In them, he glimpsed a shape, the shape he had been trying to define for more than a decade.

  He is one of three men.

  He is the Spider.

  The Web

  Burim Balaj was not a lucky man.

  He felt this himself. And he knew that the village felt it.

  It happens that every village has one or two families – one or two men – who are simply… unlucky.

  It was surely not his fault.

  It was probably his father’s fault. His father had been a big man physically – bigger than either of his sons – and he should have made more of a success of himself. Then he would have left his sons a more fitting inheritance. But he had been rather stupid, and quick to anger. This made other villagers reluctant to do business with him. His mother had been lovely once – so his father had said. Now she was a shrew, always nagging Burim and his brother. Sick, wrinkled like an old quince, and criticizing.

  The other villagers didn’t like someone who was careful. Who asked questions before doing business. Not one of the handsome, smooth men.

  He tried to get by, but it never seemed to work out. The other villagers said he was unlucky, him and his brother. Said they were cursed.

  A man has to get by as best he can. Sometimes do things he wouldn’t if he wasn’t desperate. Sometimes life is a fight to survive. A little trade with other villages. An unlucky man can’t afford to be choosy about his friends. If the Kelmendi want to do business, why not? And once, when he was visiting them, the terrifying foreigner. So quiet. Whispered threats and whispered promises. Everyone else in his village so friendly to their own foreigner, the Englishman. Why shouldn’t Burim help the other foreigner, in the Kelmendi village? Get something in return for once. Just another stupid village skirmish. Only this time Burim knew what was happening. This time he came out on top.

  But nothing really changed. Same life in the village. Same whispering faces. Same mother. The money didn’t seem to stick.

  Then, from nowhere, from out of the ground, the idea of marriage. Old Adem in the doorway, a nod to his mother, settling himself by the hearth, first time ever. And would Burim consider taking Besa? Not much of a family, no men left since her brother was killed. Not much money, and no one to speak for her. But for looks, now, surely a healthy fellow like Burim might be interested. Keep it all in the village, or no?

  Burim had asked for time to think. Typical superior smile from the old man. But he really did need to think. To him, Besa always seemed… so haughty. Didn’t want to think anything of him. Well, bottom rail on top now, maybe. Surely there’d be a bit of money left to come over with her. And… what might that body be like? He’d get to touch it. He’d have to. And with a woman supposed to look after him, maybe he’d have more chance to be the man he could be.

  So Besa moved in, and brought one of the two cows with her as dowry, and the village had another wedding ceremony, and Burim danced when he had to and sat on the edge when he didn’t, and wondered uneasily about his luck.

  Hidden in the thickest shadow of the deck, the light from the bridge spilling out above his head and illuminating the gangplank and the dockside, the passenger watched the bustle.

  Now this, he thought, is the proper way to start a civil war.

  He had to keep suppressing the urge for a cigarette.

  No fooling around with the odd suitcase or mislabelled crate, a pound to a customs man and half a dozen pistols smuggled in. No, for one hour of one night, these people had arranged their own private dock and were bringing in a whole shipload. Sort of thing you could do in South America, but to do it here, in Western Europe! Not twenty miles from Belfast – he’d seen the lights over the water as they’d approached land.

  His hand flexed, and he told himself it was because of the cold, and stuffed it into his pocket.

  Another crate was carried down the gangplank to the reception committee. Like all the others, it was opened, the contents were methodically checked, and then they were loaded into a waiting car. A word of order, and the car sputtered away into the darkness, and another was waved into its place. The whole business as if they were unloading potatoes on a sunny afternoon, not bringing in an army’s worth of rifles in the middle of the night.

  Another crate, again the checking – the Anglo-Saxon way to run a war – and another car of trouble rattled out of sight. Over his shoulder, from the other side of the ship, he could hear the clank of the crane as it lowered more rifles into a waiting motorboat, to be transported farther down the Irish coast. The clank was muted; they’d thought to grease the chain.

  He’d once been down a coal-mine in Saxony – a small problem of labour activism – and the image of the men beneath the earth had stuck with him. He saw it again now, in these earnest men bent over their work, lantern-lit faces shining orange in the blackness.

  And these were the ones called loyalists. Wonderfully confused, the British Empire.

  The next car had stopped, engine still thumping and shaking. The driver got out to watch the proceedings. ‘All aboard the Tiger’s Bay omnibus,’ he called cheerfully. ‘No standing on top.’

  The passenger stiffened.

  A typical British witticism; swallowed chuckles from the dockside. The one thing he’d not been able to practise, and he’d have to work to adopt the habit again.

  He pulled himself out of the shadow as the next crate approached the gangway, made as if to steady the rearward bearer, and then followed down to the dockside.

  At the bottom – British soil – he glanced at the crate, at the reception committee, and then back
towards the boat, all in apparent satisfaction, then moved over to the driver so he was out of the way.

  ‘Just think what we could do if we went straight,’ he said. The English accent felt awkward in his mouth, and he tried to swallow the self-consciousness while remembering the precise phrase.

  The driver glanced towards him, then quickly away. ‘Next week, ladies’ fashions.’

  ‘Hah. Good opportunities for promising young men.’

  The driver half turned, again avoiding his eyes, and nodded slightly.

  The passenger stepped away, walked around the car, and got into the passenger seat. Behind the car, the line of waiting headlamps stretched up the slope into the night.

  Over mountain passes that carried no more than man or goat, a question travelled the Balkan highlands; along field edges; across rivers; in the frowsty council rooms of villages; creeping through alleys into the fringes of the towns.

  A question; and a name: Ronald Ballentyne.

  James Cade came out of the shadow of the steamer awning and a world of fantasy blazed over him.

  Jimmy Baba and the forty thieves.

  More people than he’d ever seen, more movement, more colour, more life. Constantinople waterfront was an explosion of activity, ten thousand people – it seemed like ten thousand – in sharp suits and exotic uniforms and mostly in bright dirty rags – pantomime costumes, big trousers, strange slippers, reds and yellows and a dozen other colours never worn in western Europe – seething around each other, everyone waving something or carrying something or… or trading something. Fruit, fish, cloth, chickens, goats, carpets, crates of every size. Gangs of men swarmed onto ships and seemed to strip them of their cargoes in seconds, maggots on a corpse, carrying away their prizes to join the mob on the quayside. The noise came at him like a wall, a madness of shouting as if every one of the ten thousand were trying to catch his attention. Beyond, above, the old city rose in waves to the palace, the skyline pricked with the towers of the mosques. It was mediaeval; it was fantastical.

  James Cade found himself in the greatest marketplace on earth and, amid the warmth and the luxurious smells and the waterfall of shrill noise, he felt his heart quickening.

  On the quayside, a man squeezing through between a uniform and an enormous sack apparently with legs of its own, an anxious face scanning those coming down the gangway. Eventually he focused on Cade, as if unable to find anything better. ‘Mr James Cade?’ Cade accepted the offer. ‘Burley. With the embassy. Welcome. I’ll get your stuff sent on.’

  ‘Do you always—’ but the man was off up the gangway; thirty seconds later he was back again, hurrying and hotter. ‘Do you always meet businessmen off the boat?’

  Burley was looking into the mayhem. ‘The carriage—’ They were buffeted backwards by a surge of porters, and regathered. ‘Not always. Got a message. Get you settled.’ This shouted over his shoulder as he pushed into the mob. They weaved a clumsy path, Cade following Burley’s suit as it disappeared and reappeared through the shoving of backs and bags and creamy faces. Once he saw another kind of uniform – grey, less embellished than others – and realized it must be German.

  A clearing, a moment’s breath, Burley checking and pointing a change of course; a jostle at his shoulder and a basket in his face and Cade stepped back and looked in time to catch an apricot as it fell. The man beneath the basket adjusted it on his head with one hand and reached for the rogue apricot with the other and, on a whim, Cade decided he wanted it. The colour shone against his suit and the flesh spoke of moisture and life. He grinned at the man, trying to signal that he wanted it; reached for his waistcoat pocket – ‘Burley!’ – no useful coin, of course. ‘Burley! Ask him’ – Burley was back now, worried and wary – ‘ask him where he gets them, can you?’ Burley more worried, floundering. ‘Well, give me a – no, look: here you go, laddie. All right?’ And he thrust a sixpence into the clutching hand. The basket man looked at it, glanced suspiciously at Cade, then held the coin up to his eye as if wanting to confirm that it was a fair likeness of King George. Then he grinned back, and turned away into the crowd, the swaying basket marking his wake long after he had been swallowed up.

  SECRET M.O.5

  VOLUNTEER MANOEUVRES, BELFAST DISTRICT, 24TH–25TH APRIL 1914

  (A statement on activities by one familiar with the context and many of those involved. See also MO5/14/IRE/27 and MO5/14/IRE/28.)

  As was widely reported, the Command of the Ulster Volunteer Force ordered an exercise for the night of 24th–25th April in the Belfast area. A range of routine manoeuvres was practised: inspections, motor vehicle movements, sentry-points etcetera. These activities incorporated the arrival of supplies for the Volunteers by ship, including weapons. Part of the drill did indeed involve landing, checking and transporting the weapons under close discipline.

  The proceedings were widely reported in local and national papers, reflecting the public and civic spirit behind many of these activities.

  The volume of weapons, predominantly rifles, was not small, so the logistical challenge was significant. In military terms they are second-order at best, being old Mannlichers and Mausers and inferior Italian designs. But it is hoped that it stands as a worthy demonstration of the strength of feeling against any interference to the Union between this island and the rest of the Kingdom.

  The Command of the U.V.F, with the backing of the Unionist Council, declared themselves pleased with the performance of their personnel, who shall be ready to play their part in the defence of the established order in the event of any disturbances.

  [PUBLIC RECORDS OFFICE, CO 904]

  A uniform like a Leven Street commissionaire – and what kind of cloth do you call that? – a minute and exquisite moustache, and a woolly fez to top it all off.

  Cade insisted that the official sit. The official refused. Cade repeated the offer. Again the refusal, and for a moment he wondered if there was indeed some point of protocol or custom he was missing. Surely the host shouldn’t sit first. Or was the fellow worried the cloth in his trouser-seat wouldn’t take the strain? He tried a third time, lowering himself towards his own chair, and this time the man sat.

  So far so good.

  Such a hat he definitely wanted for himself. The rest: at least a photo to show the lads at the Leith custom house. Show them what they were missing.

  The official sat upright, and looked around the office. It was Cade’s first acquisition. Burley at the embassy had spoken vaguely of helping him to find a house, and horses, and servants, and then in a week or two perhaps an office. Cade had insisted on finding the office that afternoon. After the fraught experience of one joint viewing with the Scotsman, Burley had excused himself and left behind one of the embassy servants. Cade was shown a series of wildly inappropriate places, presumably as the man worked through his property-renting relatives, until Cade took him by the shoulder, gave him a gold coin, and explained with simple words and simpler miming that one more cousin would lead to a punch on the nose. He showed a second coin, and described what he wanted.

  The office overlooked the docks. Big windows that let in the light and the noise and the smell of spices and animals and salt and men; the main room for himself, and two smaller rooms that he’d no doubt find a use for; plaster and dark wood throughout. The austerity of the style was good for his discipline; standing with his hands spread on the window sill each morning gazing out across the seething waterway to Asia was good for his spirit.

  Cade’s second acquisition was Ali. Ali had turned up on the steps to the office within minutes of Cade moving in, alerted by some telegraph of the streets. Surname unknown, exact age unknown but somewhere in his teens, he had stood himself in the doorway and refused to budge. Cade had bought him a pair of shoes, which Ali never wore, and taken him on as doorman and general hanger-on, which function he had clearly been going to perform anyway.

  Ali brought coffee. The uniformed official smiled, revealing a battleground of a mouth. Cade had restrained h
imself from asking anything until the coffee had come, and it was followed by fully ten minutes of pleasantry.

  Eventually the man placed the coffee cup, between fingers and thumbs, on the desk in front of him, and looked up sombrely. ‘Mr James Cade, I am required by law – please excuse these most important procedures – to take your documentation for verification.’

  ‘You mean – what, my passport? That’s already been checked.’

  ‘Your documentation.’

  ‘Yes – and I’m delighted to help, old son – but what documentation?’

  The official didn’t really know, and Cade didn’t really have anything meaningful to offer him. In the end he remembered the greasy receipt he’d been given for the first three months’ rent on the office and, seeing it lying on the desk, a letter signed by the ambassador describing the embassy’s limited responsibility for Cade as a British subject resident in Constantinople. The official saw another paper underneath, and glanced at it hopefully, so Cade gave him the list of forthcoming services in the British church. The cumulative effect was so positive on the fellow that, casting around, Cade threw in the Army & Navy catalogue and a letter from his golf club that had somehow got caught up in his papers when he left.

  Delighted, the official put them all in a leather wallet. Then he sat back down, and beamed.

  Cade eyed him. ‘Look, old lad, I’m delighted to have met you. But I probably shouldn’t be keeping you from your duties.’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Cade. I am looking forward to long and mutually rewarding acquaintance.’ And he beamed some more.

  Oh, aye. That’s how we dance here, is it? He tried to look businesslike. Bad as the Clydebank constable. ‘My friend, I’d be delighted to… begin a…