The taxi rank was twenty yards away. Mustn’t run. He realized how silent the corridor had felt now that Berlin was roaring with life around him. Hooters and hooves and wheels and voices and people moving everywhere. Mustn’t run. He’d worked this bit out. Mustn’t run.
Twenty yards, and the crowd seemed to go silent and drift apart and he was alone in a narrowing corridor of cobbles, peering towards a taxi distant on the horizon. I am about to be shot.
Sir,
my vainglorious acquaintance with the vainglorious son has shared with me certain confidences regarding the latest discussions between the general staffs of Great Britain and France. Full details have been agreed for the deployment of British Army Corps in France in the event of hostilities; my acquaintance brags that the details extend to the railway transport: how many men in how many cars on which line, where the British troops will stop to drink how much tea, where their horses will find how much forage &c &c; codes and cyphers have been shared. There is a calculated vagueness regarding the command arrangements, and the French will not push the point until British troops are safely across the Channel. The French are delighted, judging the British fingers trapped firmly in the mangle.
As we had hoped, the release of Caillaux’s letters to the newspapers has ensured that his soothing voice will not be heard at the French ministerial table. This will help to temper the pacifism of the new radical administration here. In truth, French calculations remain subtle; another acquaintance, lately retired from military service, told me just recently of a memorandum prepared by the general staff as far back as 1912 calculating that war in the Balkans would serve French interests by weakening Austria–Hungary and thus freeing Russia to fight Germany. Of such brilliant couplings of logical links are strategy and optimism engendered! It is rumoured that the government’s Cabinet Noir is breaking the codes of Britain as well as Germany, who are too free with their use of the telegraph.
Permit me to drop one additional word into your ear. I have lately discovered that a long-standing acquaintance has among his many duties that of secretary to the committee responsible for the Carnet B – the list of suspected persons automatically to be arrested in the event of mobilization. It occurs to me that discreet intimations or suggestive disclosures could cause additional names to be added to this list, of a type calculated to increase confusion in Paris at a critical juncture.
‘Metz’
Read twice through, in an office in Vienna of great discretion outside and great elegance inside. Read among other such letters, from Veracruz talking of American naval dispositions, from Calcutta talking of British Army gossip. Read with a connoisseur’s smile.
Duval was back at the telegraph office two hours later, by which time it had become a brandy-seared nightmare of a quest. Ma reading King Arthur to him. And Beowulf. Taxi halfway to the Monopol, walk a bit, the borrowed clothes pushed into a bin, walk the rest of the way. An hour in his room, bent over the table with the telegraph forms and a dictionary and a bottle. Never could stomach desk work. Exams. Sitting still. Couldn’t possibly translate… The bottle draining steadily.
He could identify the time Valfierno must have been at the office more closely, and that gave him – what? – say a ten-minute window; half a dozen message forms. None of the names familiar. Most sent within Berlin. The dago might have stayed in the city. Disappeared. Easy enough. He skimmed the Berlin messages, wrote down the addresses, hotels and houses. So what? So what if Valfierno went to one of these? In one of the messages someone’s plans had changed. One message, to ‘Mendel GmbH’ – seen that on a few signs; some sort of company – said that because of a competitor the timetable would have to be shorter. He noted that down, this time concentrating on his handwriting more particularly. What was he supposed to do anyway? Frankfurt was probably too early. London? Surely Valfierno couldn’t have been heading to London. But was it suspicious? Oh, for God’s sake… Someone called Carter would be arriving on the 18th. He copied it down. Kiel was more likely. Someone called Becker telling someone called Niedermayer that… he got the gist of it, wrote it down. Someone in Geneva was told that someone in Berlin had… ignition? Infection. The pen scratching on the paper. A company in Dresden being asked to keep a complete something of somethings – set of… couldn’t be… swans?
David Duval wrote it all down, and the bottle drained, and each time the chair creaked it was the door knocking and the telegraph clerk and the police.
And what was making him unhappy was the growing knowledge that the forms had to go back. Surely. If they hadn’t been missed yet, they would be eventually; probably notice at shut-up shop that the pile was half its size – the quickest flick would show a block of hours missing, and that would be when the clerk would remember the Englishman who… when would the office close, anyway? There’d been some kerfuffle in England about the police monitoring telegraph forms; guarantee the Germans would do that sort of thing. The brandy glass rattled hollow on the tabletop.
The old romances, Ma’s mouth in the lamplight, had become first embarrassing to him, then nostalgic. Now he was eight again, wide-eyed and white-knuckled and a dragon waiting under the bed. Get a grip, old lad. Put Grendel in a telegraph uniform and glasses and – the taxi pulled up at the station.
Meant to pay it off earlier; now the driver could link the hotel and the station and the police could… Make the taxi wait? More memorable; no. Into the station and wait for a crowd. Steam under the vault of the roof, the evening somehow humid. A fat smell, grease and meat. Noise rising, footsteps and more footsteps and a night train was getting ready and Duval took a breath and pushed through a press of people and headed for the telegraph office. Bought a newspaper, idled against the side of the telegraph office, the crowd still high and someone talking at the counter and behind the newspaper he pushed the telegraph forms through the vent above the transmitter and turned and hurried away. Mustn’t run. A tentacle of people moving away from the platforms – and had the customer seen anything and what was he saying to the clerk just yards behind him? – and Duval pushed through the crowd and joined it and was carried away out of the station. Like a long sigh.
In the taxi, straining to look over his shoulder, but no running men in uniforms, arms waving guns, and for the first time in a day he felt himself breathing, felt the air reaching all the parts of his chest.
The damnfool business was over. Brisk report to London, done all he could. What the hell were they expecting, anyway? He sat back in the seat, arms outstretched.
The evening was coming alive. Shopfronts were still lit, a business Berlin of dresses and hats and confectionery, of frock-coats in first-floor windows pacing and dictating. And the twinkles of night were firing up, the Berlin of theatre porticos and grand glazed restaurants and glimmers of invitation down side streets. He deserved a night on the town. The taxi swung through… Potsdamer Platz, a glimpse of the gothic sign, an amphitheatre of haughty façades watching a circus of life, horse-drawn buses rattling among the crowd and trams cutting through all. Was there anything more continental than a mansard roof? The avenues rather fine, as an idea – perspective, a sense of proportion and place to everything – but the general building style uninspired. The last fifty years hadn’t been kind to the frontages of Europe, had they? And Berlin had suffered more than most. Too much fussing over cornices and pediments, affectations of Renaissance styling on long slabs of barracks. Like a fat man considering himself cultured with half a dozen words of French and a gay bow tie.
Handsome women, the Germans; been told so. Ye Gods, what’s that? Like an old tit sagging up into the sky. Church of some sort. The crimes of the baroque. All very pleasant to glide through. Again the strange whine of the taxi. Some innovation of the engine – always rather enjoyed engineering drawing, but never got the hang of how automobile cylinders – no, different; and a memory… Berlin’s taxis were all electric. Whatever that meant. Now, this was more like it: roof was a witch’s hat stolen from some fairytale castle on the Rhi
ne, unfortunately, but the frontage now, elegant windows and the surround restrained; good proportions… Leipzigerstraße. A walk tomorrow. And so back to his hotel, the promise of hot water and a change of clothes and then out into the lights.
In his hotel room, a shadow was sitting in the corner and Duval’s heart stopped.
And started again, hard: ‘Who the hell are— Look! I’ve had about enough,’ and sickly he knew he should have turned and run.
‘Hallo, Duval.’ Steady, quiet.
‘Who—’ but he knew. His shoulders dropped. ‘Knox.’
A table lamp clicked on. Major Valentine Knox watched him for a moment, then stood and came forwards and reached out his hand.
London pub or Berlin shadow, always bloody watching like a block of bloody wood with a private joke. ‘Look, you bastard,’ – an angry finger up into Knox’s face and then Duval growled and turned and checked the door was locked – ‘I’ve had e-bloody-nough of…’ He subsided again, and shook hands.
Then he brushed past Knox and strode to the desk, picked up the brandy bottle, found it empty, thrust it down towards the bin, and was already searching vainly among the glasses and mineral water as the bottle bounced from bin-rim to desk-leg and so under a chair.
Knox said: ‘You all right, old chap?’
Duval spun and glared at him. ‘You know, for about ten minutes I actually was? Then you showed up. You and your bloody secret messages, Knox, messages and run here and bloody there. Have you any idea—’
‘Brought you a present.’ Knox held up a bottle. ‘Seem to remember…’ Duval was on it in two strides and gripping the neck. ‘If you’re sure you haven’t had…’
‘Don’t get funny, General. Doesn’t suit the pose of military stolidity.’ Knox let go of the bottle and Duval stepped away with his prize. ‘Armagnac indeed. That is, quite literally, the spirit.’
They sat, Knox back on his chair and Duval on the bed, a cigarette in his hand. Knox sipped at the brandy.
Duval took a gulp of his. ‘I lost him, Knox. I tried, I… He gave me the slip at the station here.’
‘Gave you the slip? He knew you were following him?’
‘Must have – I don’t know. I assumed—’
‘Best not, eh?’
Duval took a deep breath. ‘It’s just possible he changed his plans at the last minute, but… sending his bags to the hotel and not showing, that looked like a deliberate wheeze. Maybe he’s just super-cautious; habits of a man in your business. You’d know better.’ Knox considered this. ‘Maybe it was nothing to do with me. I don’t know. But he’s a wrong ’un, certainly. The business with the – he sent a telegram, from the station – except he didn’t, not in his name—’
‘Valfierno isn’t his only name. Apparently. Also goes by Perez and Bollino and a couple of varieties of the same.’
Duval pulled a folded sheet of paper from inside his jacket, and scanned it.
‘Didn’t use any of those names.’
‘How do you know?’
Duval fluttered the paper at him. ‘I, er, broke into the station telegraph office. Pinched the forms from—’
Knox’s voice was flat as ever, but the eyes were a fraction wider. ‘You broke into the telegraph office? A German, official, telegraph office?’
‘Only way to find out where he was going. But none of the messages at that time is obviously him. Some kind of code, clearly. But which?’ Knox was watching him with interest. ‘Oh, don’t worry: I went back and replaced them.’
Emphasis in the voice now: ‘You broke into a telegraph office twice?’
‘It has been, my dear Knox, quite a day.’ He described the messages. Knox stretched out his hand for the paper. Duval watched his eyes moving slowly down it.
Eventually the eyes came up, as if something in Duval’s face would give away the answer, and then down into the page again. ‘Don’t see how flu in Berlin could change plans in Geneva,’ he said conversationally.
‘That’s what I thought. But I checked; there’s no train to Geneva; nothing like.’ Duval was up off the bed and pacing. ‘He can’t have gone on there.’
‘Mm. Maybe Kiel then. A date set. Don’t remember the German, do you?’
‘No, Knox, I don’t remember the German. The Berlin one seemed more promising.’ Knox glanced down, grunted. ‘And “swans”?’
‘Yes, that does seem unlikely, doesn’t it?’
‘And what’s that London one about, then?’
‘Mm. Need checking, that one.’ Knox folded the paper, and slipped it into his jacket. Duval watched it go with a vague sense of loss. ‘They want you in St Petersburg in a week or two. For now, since you’re in Berlin rather than Rome, there’s a different set of people for you to rootle out, of course; different questions. Kiel too.’ Knox stood, and passed a single sheet to him.
‘Of cou— But – well, hang on, what about Valfierno?’
‘What about him?’
‘That’s it?’
‘Put out a lonely heart if you like. But keep an eye out for these birds now. The first in particular, apparently. Same drill.’ Duval glanced at the page: half a dozen names, short notes after each; as many questions. ‘Lots of interest in Kiel: naval construction, ship movements, that sort of thing. Let yourself go: break into the new submarine dock, why don’t you?’ He smiled maliciously, and then was serious again. ‘It’s all on there. Get that lot into your head and then burn the page, obviously.’
‘Oh, obviously.’ Duval looked at the face, impassive and waiting. ‘Is that what it’s all about? Little piss-drops of information on odd-bods and unknowns?’ Knox reached for a coat from the back of the chair. ‘You off somewhere?’
‘That’s about it. And yes, I am off.’ Knox checked around himself, adjusted the cushion on the chair.
Duval watched, faintly dazed. ‘Who was he, anyway? The dago.’
A little shrug from Knox. ‘No idea.’
‘That’s it? I’ve hared across Europe – you’ve done the same—’
‘It’s not a coconut shy, Duval. You don’t get a prize every time.’
‘It’s all a bust, then.’
‘Usually is.’
Duval splashed more of the Armagnac into his glass. ‘I had high hopes for this evening, Knox. Don’t suppose you fancy a night on the tiles? Horse Guards let you do that, would they? Fraternize with the Hun in the interests of the cloak and dagger stuff?’
The smile came unexpected, as usual. ‘Oh, fraternizing with the Hun is half the reason I’m here. That’s quite all right.’ His hand was on the door handle. ‘But not fraternizing with you.’
Becalmed on the other side of the room, one of however many rooms in the hotel, in the city of uniforms and telegraph clerks and electric taxis and grand buildings, Duval suddenly felt the lack of a decent meal, felt somehow thinner with the brandy rather than warm.
Knox’s fingers drummed on the handle. ‘Duval,’ he said; ‘I confess it: I took you for a fop and a poseur; didn’t know why the great men were bothering with you.’
‘Thank you very much.’
Knox stood there, appraising him.
He didn’t speak. ‘Well? Sounded like you were going to deign to modify your opinion.’
Knox’s mouth twisted into discomfort, and then into a smile, and he was gone.
HIGHEST SECRECY
Sir, further to telegram, with greatest urgency I report the destruction of air machine Ex.7 in a fire in our hangar at the Paris aerofield. The MERCURIUS device was destroyed in the machine.
The cause of the fire cannot be determined. Investigation by the French police was not conclusive, and I have not wished to allow the police to extend their presence. The unavoidable combination, in the wooden hangar, of electricity, machinery, fuel and combustible material (both the framework of the machine and its covering) offers many possibilities.
Although there is no indication of it, I do not exclude the possibility of sabotage by our enemies. This section of the field is f
enced and guarded, and the hangar was locked, yet these obstacles are not insurmountable. The building and the machine, an ALBATROS of B.1 type, was completely burned, and of the Milewski apparatus, which had been installed for experimental flights, only fragments of metal and wire remain. (No hint of its design or purpose may be seen from the residue, but nevertheless I have prevented all further inspection by outsiders.) This has cost us one ALBATROS, and it will no doubt take 1–2 weeks for a replacement MERCURIUS to be assembled and installed in a replacement air-machine. Berlin will know the true cost of this delay better than I.
The embassy, at my direction, are pressing the police to put extra guards around the field, and improve arrangements at the gate. The companion air-machine was in a separate hangar, and is undamaged. We may continue unrelated testing and our other activities. I shall remain in Paris, pending your further orders.
v. C.
[DEUTSCHE BUNDESARCHIV (AUTHOR TRANSLATION)]
ALBANIA: A ‘REBEL’ VILLAGE; POSSIBLE AUSTRIAN INFLUENCE Italian Legation acquaintance ROSSI raised concerns of Austrian attempts to exacerbate unrest of rebel Muslims in villages of central Albania. Also made loose claims about international collusion against Italian interests.
Rossi dropping into the seat in front of him at breakfast. The eyes; the hands never stopping; the anger. Trying to calm him; trying to find clarity in the fog of words.
Ballentyne wasn’t sure about the style of the report. There had been no guidance in London. He was allowed a bit of analysis, presumably. But he had the sense that a more telegraphic style would be appropriate – more military. He’d tried to imagine Mayhew reading the report.
Superficially, the circumstances of the rising are clear. Men mobilized and armed by Minister of War ESSAD to go south to fight rebels there have themselves rebelled. That they are Muslim is a factor of identity, and perhaps a reason for some concern about what they hear of Durrës politics, but not a strong motive. Real grievances are likely to be simpler, and neither political nor religious. Nevertheless, their religion remains potentially fertile ground should any external actor wish to stir mischief.
The Spider of Sarajevo Page 12