The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  On the Poseidon, Ballentyne took a last look at the morning and the sea, a wistful glance at the yacht gliding near but unattainable, and then squeezed down the ladder to reach the only internal deck.

  The passenger accommodation was a curtained-off space in the bow, and he dropped his kitbag on a mattress, against a pillow and blanket; the second mattress didn’t even have those luxuries. Back in the main space, the captain was squatting over a hatch in the floor, yelling something into the clanking and coughing of the engine space.

  A fixed desk doubled as chart table and eating area; two tin bowls, stained with the remains of a stew, were starting to leave their own brown notations on a chart. The captain looked up, then pointed towards the passenger berths. ‘Other,’ he said, hoarse, ‘no come. Agent say: we go.’ Ballentyne nodded and the engine throbbed and the boat swung and moved away from the quay.

  There were perhaps six charts splayed under the bowls; no locker or drawer to keep them in – they were stored where they lay. Instinctively he moved one of the bowls aside and looked at the uppermost sheet: Durrës. He pulled up the corners of the sheets beneath: the southern Adriatic, though the captain would be hugging the coastline rather than taking any more elaborate course; Bari; Vlora and Saranda farther south in Albania; a chart in Greek. The regular destinations of a boat carrying cargoes licit and illicit up and down the Albanian coast and occasionally across to Italy.

  What there was not was any chart showing Split, or indeed any destination farther north in the Adriatic than the Durrës quay from which the boat was now departing.

  Ballentyne turned away, absorbing the point and uneasy, as the captain stood from beside the hatch.

  A second passenger for whom no preparations had been made; a destination for which there was no chart. Perhaps Ballentyne gave the suggestion of a frown, saw the captain registering what he’d been looking at, the captain’s immediate discomfort. He didn’t know it was saving his life, just heard his own words instinctive, pleasant: ‘Know where we’re going, Capt—’; and then the captain’s face hardening and his hand reaching for his pocket, and Ballentyne knew that something, somehow, was badly wrong.

  Two men over-reading each other and over-reacting. Ballentyne took a step back, knocked into the desk. The captain’s hand came out of his pocket holding a knife. He stepped forwards, knife first, and Ballentyne twisted his way around the desk and scrambled up the ladder. Something brushed at his foot and he kicked out and pushed himself up through the trapdoor into the wheelhouse, hands and knees, turned and slammed down the door, no bolt, just two useless rings to take a long-lost padlock and he pressed down with shoulders straining as the captain thumped against it from below. ‘Knox!’ he yelled into the madness. The door juddered under him and Ballentyne knew he couldn’t move and knew he couldn’t hold the door for ever and wasn’t there another— ‘Knox!’ A screwdriver! On the deck, a yard or two off, and he reached out a foot and his toes stretched and the boat shifted and his boot kicked the screwdriver two fatal feet across the wheelhouse.

  A massive thump through the trapdoor and he pressed down, stiff arms and knees. Then the deck tipped again and the screwdriver rolled a smooth swift arc to knock against his wrist. He snatched it, jammed it through the two rings, and edged his weight off the trapdoor.

  The quay was fifty yards away and shrinking. Turn the boat? He reached for the wheel, and knew it was nonsense, heard the trapdoor thumping, stumbled out of the wheelhouse and gazed at the distant figures on the quay; swim? Must deci— and his collar jerked back and he was thrown to the deck.

  The other crewman soared into his vision. Dirty torn shirt and face angry and a knife held high; a crack and a slam as the trapdoor gave way. Ballentyne saw a shift in the hand and the eyes widen in the last instant of anticipation of the leap, and then the shirt burst scarlet and the man dropped.

  Ballentyne scrambled up and for one stupid moment he and the captain were staring towards the quay. A strange tableau: the sentry sprawled on the stones, and a figure standing rigid beside him, the primitive rifle still level and rock steady in the hands, the eyes set in the moment of the shot that had found its man on a rolling boat eighty yards off.

  The rifle stayed level and the eyes stayed set as Knox wrenched the bolt back, slipped in a cartridge and snapped the breech shut, a blink, a breath, and the wheelhouse window beside the captain’s head exploded.

  The captain lunged into the wheelhouse, and an instant later was back into the sunshine with a pistol. One hasty shot towards the quay and he turned. The pistol was a yard from Ballentyne and enormous, and he pushed backwards and there was a shot and his arm was burning. A cry, high and unplaced in his head: ‘Jump!’ He had to jump, but where was the quay? Where was Knox? Only the open sea ahead of him, his arm burning and his shoulders flinching at the thought of the shot that was about to split them and he leaped for the rail and kicked off it and dived clumsily into the swell.

  He came out of the wave coughing and disoriented: waves and sky and salt stinging his eyes and he rolled; now the Poseidon turned into his vision, ten yards away with the captain crouched over the rail with his pistol arm steadied on it. Again a cry, and Ballentyne turned again and gaped and jerked his head back and dropped under the surface as the hull of a boat soared over him.

  The hull shouldered him aside and down and his legs fought for traction in the water and tried to kick him away and his head was exploding airless and he burst out of a wave and turned and his whole vision was the timbers gliding past him. Splashing and coughing, and somewhere there was the cry again. He couldn’t place it, couldn’t understand it. Where was the Poseidon? Where was the pistol? ‘Catch ’old!’ A husky scream: ‘Wake up, damn you!’ A rope dropping across the vision of the hull and at last he understood: the hull was protecting him from the Poseidon, the hull was – the rope moving past him and he lunged out of the water and clutched at it, a straining and a shrieking in his wrecked arm and then someone clutching at his jacket, a body reaching over him, clutching at his belt and rolling him over the rail and he tumbled into the boat.

  Above him the snapping of a sail loose in the wind, around him his limbs, aches. ‘I must go about! Keep your ’ead down!’ Ballentyne’s head came up, and he saw the Poseidon and the captain rising and the pistol arm lifting. ‘Get the sheet!’ And the boat lurched around, the boom rushed at him and he ducked away; he saw the rope, wrapped it round his good hand and pulled it through hard and locked it in the cleat, and the boat settled on her new course, at a racing angle in the water with the sail full of wind and the water rushing along the hull.

  Slumped in the cockpit, the sheet rope still wrapped around his fist, Ballentyne spat out the last of the Adriatic and blinked his eyes clear of salt and looked up. Sitting low in the stern with a slender forearm on the tiller, glancing between the mainsail and the Poseidon disappearing fast behind, a headscarf and an open shirt and a cigarette poised at the lips, was a woman.

  Cade managed to get out through the dancing wisp of curtain to the terrace and down into the wicker chair before he spoke.

  ‘I had a visitor. Man named Muhtar.’ Immediately she was concerned: straighter, eyes worried. ‘You know him, presumably.’

  She said nothing.

  He took a deep breath. ‘I’ll do nothing for bluster or threats. But if I’m interfering in another… association; if I’m—’

  ‘You are not.’ The eyes were wider, angrier.

  He breathed out more quickly. ‘Well, that’s all right then. He tried to warn me off.’

  ‘To—’

  ‘To suggest I should not see you.’

  The anger was still there, hot in her lovely face. But she was thinking hard too. She said nothing.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘The bank has existed a generation or two. I understand that its decisions are sometimes… very speculative. So it has not always prospered. They also offer insurance; there is a suspicion of… of unscrupulousness. My brother can tell you.�
�

  ‘And – pardon me – he’s just a concerned citizen, or does he have a reason for making himself your protector?’

  It was all anger again. ‘I need no—’

  ‘I know. I told him as much.’

  She subsided. ‘Time by time the Muhtars have been our competitors in business. Also, he has sometimes… pressed his attentions on me.’ She folded her arms. ‘He has had no encouragement. Perhaps he thinks he can absorb or neutralize my brother’s interests through me.’

  ‘Aye, I could see he was a romantic.’

  ‘James, please be careful.’

  ‘I’m careful to a fault; but he’s the one who’d better watch himself.’

  ‘You are fine and brave. But you do not know this place, and you do not know these people.’ There was a passion in her he’d not seen before. And it’s ‘James’ now, is it? ‘It were better that I… moderate my behaviour; be a little less selfish with my attentions.’

  ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean? I’m damned if I’m going to be hustled off by that pudding. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let you show him anything more than a closed door.’

  ‘You speak of “letting me”?’

  ‘Easy, lass; I’m not for melodrama – duelling pistols and such nonsense. But I’m a stubborn so-and-so, and I’m not for pushing.’

  She had to leave first and, as she was leaving, he took her hand and bent to give it the suggestion of a kiss that had become their habit, half affection and half joke. But now her finger was under his chin, pulling his face up again. A moment as she stared into him, and he tried to read the look but couldn’t, and then she was kissing him hungrily.

  A moment later she was gone.

  Dear Uncle P.,

  I’m still enjoying both life and library with the too-generous von Waldecks. A privately printed selection of correspondence includes several documents relating to the dispute with the Teutonic Knights – the Freiherr is really most uncomplimentary about them! – which I know is only of marginal interest to your work; but there are two addresses by representatives of the Knights which, in passing, assume significant pretensions to omnipotence by the Council and then rebut them on grounds of both theory and prevailing reality. Anyway, I shall transcribe them, and you may judge. The Freiherr also has a beautiful original proclamation by the Council, posted in towns in this region, combining observations on the Easter festival and tetchiness about shortfalls in the supplies being provided – free, of course – to the Council; transcript, with some attempt at the layout and style, attached.

  When discipline has failed me I have been enjoying the countryside, usually with Gerta von Waldeck. We had one visit to Leipzig; one is obliged to see the new monument to Napoleon’s defeat, and the station building, while older baroque Germany fusses around one. Gerta wanted us to attend a lecture at the university – all most earnest and impressive, a hunger for scholarship and for experiment – on the Central American canal; proceedings ended with three cheers for the Kaiser, at which point someone pointed out that they had an English guest as well, and the convenor led the group in three cheers for the king too. My little bit for European amity.

  Gerta is insisting that I should accompany her on a forthcoming visit to a man called Auerstein, farther east. He apparently is another of these splendid country gentlemen like the Freiherr, but rather better off, with a famous estate. I am promised a library – which might compensate for the ghastly country pursuits that are apparently the principal attraction of the place – and many interesting guests. If I can finish my researches here satisfactorily, I am minded to go. I think the journey includes a night in Berlin, which might be fun.

  I am, with best wishes and respects to you, yours sincerely,

  Flora

  [SS G/1/894/15]

  The old man scanned the letter with interest. The salutation told him that there was no cypher, but the young lady’s insights on Germany were of interest, and he found himself curious how she was faring. Sentiment. Miss Hathaway herself would not approve.

  A knock, and Colonel Mayhew appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Yes, Mayhew; I’ll be along directly.’ He half lifted the papers off the desk. ‘One of our pigeons.’ Mayhew slipped into the office. ‘The young lady.’

  ‘Getting along all right, is she?’

  ‘Bearing up well enough, and putting herself in the way of interesting people, which is what we wanted.’ He glanced up again. ‘Come across a chap called Auerstein? I know him by reputation, I suppose; but has he cropped up in any of your doings?’

  ‘Don’t know the name off-hand. I’ll check.’

  ‘Mm.’ The grey head dropped towards the desk. ‘Careful with those checks, eh, Colonel?’ He refolded the papers and slipped them back into the envelope. The head came up. ‘We worry about telling people what we know; telling them what we don’t know can be just as damaging, can’t it?’

  She was the Contessa Isabella di Lascara, and in the madness of the preceding five minutes this new exoticism barely registered in Ballentyne’s battered mind. Slumped against the side of the boat, beginning to get a grip of where he was and what had happened, he’d introduced himself with something like embarrassment. She’d replied with formality and a suppressed smile.

  ‘Brandy,’ she said. ‘On a shelf in the cabin. Get it now.’ He did what he was told, with a vague sense of seamanship and the vestiges of crisis. ‘Now, your jacket off. ’old the tiller.’ Again he obeyed; the jacket was sodden and fought back. Crouching over him, she glanced for a second at his upper arm, then took the torn material in two hands and ripped it open. Then she poured brandy over the wound – Ballentyne’s pride managed to restrict him to a gasp – and pulled off her headscarf and wrapped it around his bicep with deliberate ferocity.

  She patted him on the cheek. ‘Brave boy. Now move over.’ He surrendered the tiller and – another check of the sail and the sea around them – she took over. ‘First we get clear away, then we do fancy nursing.’

  Ballentyne didn’t reply, didn’t challenge. He felt light-headed, took a swig of the brandy, slumped down in the floor of the cockpit again and began to get a hold of himself. The boat was a yacht; thirty-five foot, perhaps; not new, but well-kept. In his hunt for the brandy he’d vaguely registered the cabin, compact and neat. Probably a motor as well – then he saw the lever next to his arm which presumably regulated it. But for now she was under sail, and being sailed well. Jib and mainsail were swollen with wind and the boat was heeled over and racing above the water. The sun and the purity of the sail and the speed all seemed one.

  The woman doing the sailing he’d saved until last. She fitted the sun and the sail and the speed too. With her scarf now doing service as bandage, her hair streaked away behind her, and this and the set of her face and the elegant line of her arm on the tiller all flowed with the momentum of her boat.

  And she was, of course, really rather beautiful. In her thirties, surely. More strong than delicate, more handsome than pretty. Ballentyne caught himself looking for too long, and turned away and began to coil the main sheet where it straggled loose under his boot.

  ‘You are English?’

  He turned back. ‘How could you tell? How did you know to shout in English?’

  She was keeping her eye on the sea ahead. ‘You didn’t look Italian, and I only know to speak English otherwise. Now I know you are. Only an Englishman would make a priority to introduce ’imself while ’e’s bleeding and the bandits are still shooting. Don’t you ’ave no visiting card?’

  ‘Of course. But they got wet. Pardon me… did you say you’re a countess?’

  ‘You disappointed? I know a duchess; she ’as a twenty-metre boat – crew, everything. Pity she’s always in Amalfi this time of year.’

  ‘And you’re out here alone?’

  ‘You were out ’ere alone too. At least I ’ave a boat.’

  ‘I mean – I mean that you sail the boat very well. To her limit. Well, I mean… Most impressive.’ />
  Now she looked at him. First as if to check something, and then the face opened, big eyes and bright teeth, a face for life. She turned away to the sea, took a cigarette from her breast pocket and stuck it between her lips. ‘And they say the English are not passionate,’ she said to the waves. ‘I should watch myself, I think.’

  Another sheet laid precisely in the centre of a desk in Vienna, and plucked at like a vine for fruit. The letterhead advertised a sanatorium in southern Germany.

  My Dear Sir,

  I should first thank you for yet another generous testimonial on my behalf. The prince, apparently on your recommendation alone, spent a week as our guest. I hope and believe he left a little better in mind as well as body; he certainly enriched our community here. If there is one thing more pleasurable for our visitors than indulging their ailments, it is indulging their ailments in good society.

  I offer you this month no grand illumination, but the usual selection of what I hope might be enlightening details. The public reports of Ryczynski’s condition are overstated; he has a good chance of lasting a year or more, and his staff are relaxed about the Bank’s prospects accordingly. Entelmann I give three months at the most. Speyer, a lawyer known to be familiar with Minister von Jagow, made two visits to the town when staying in the district in March, at the same time as we had with us Tommasi, who as you will know is on San Giuliano’s staff in Rome. Stefania, the wife of Kupfer, the banker, is here again with her younger companion, Miss Divisi. That the lady is an invert is mere speculation based on certain signs and habits, but it is certain that she spends freely on the young person and on their joint amusement, and more than would seem prudent if her comments about Kupfer’s condition are to be taken as truth. Trott of the Naval Staff takes his annual cure; his casual remarks to me about the grand admiral no more than reinforce common gossip about the latter’s lack of influence, but of perhaps greater interest are two urgent and apparently unhappy visits to him by more junior officers involved with engineering or design. James Rice, of whom I have previously written, was here again two weeks past. This time one of my staff made sure to see him quite definitely enjoying the company of one of the waiters down in the town. A single goldmark would buy the boy’s testimony, though in truth I think Rice’s nerves would need no more than a threat to be quite compliant. Zu Herford arrived last week in the grand style _ in a carriage hired by the day in town _ and asked for a cheaper room, while his one servant lodges in an inn; naturally I have given him his usual room, at the cheaper price.