The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  Yet here was Nicolai, stiff and watchful on the edge of the room.

  ‘My dear Colonel; I am honoured, humbled that you found time to meet.’

  ‘Germany owes you no little gratitude, sir. Your intervention in the matter of the British attempt to steal our apparatus in Paris was vital. You have saved a secret of great value. I am empowered to pass on to you the thanks of… of the highest levels.’

  Krug frowned, covered it with a smile. ‘I trust my name is not too much mentioned, Colonel.’ Nicolai’s face grasping for the point; getting it. ‘Your own respect – that of a fellow professional – is what matters to me.’ A nod. ‘Sincerely, Colonel, I see no difference between our interests, and no difference between our activities. If there is to be war, your Military Intelligence and my own net of influence and information must be more than partners. Won’t you sit, please?’

  They sat, Nicolai trying to arrange himself with adequate dignity on a plum-coloured chaise-longue. Krug lit a cigarette; Nicolai, he knew, did not indulge. ‘I regret that I have no information on the name your office passed to mine – this man Pinsent. Nothing in my records.’

  ‘Nothing of significance, I suspect. An Irishman picked up in a routine check by our police in Berlin. We had no record of him either. I would not have troubled your office except – this new spirit of cooperation…’

  ‘Quite so, Colonel. A good habit for us both. In that spirit, let me try a little harder for you. Time by time it is possible for me to… to explore certain of the records in London.’ Nicolai’s eyes widened in the otherwise blank face. ‘Let me make an enquiry there regarding this man Pinsent. As you say, it is a triviality, but I want you to feel able to benefit from my little network.’

  ‘Following the success over the spy Hamel, Herr Krug, there is increasing support in Berlin for this partnership. If you are able to accompany me back to Berlin, we may make substantial progress.’

  ‘I should be delighted, Colonel.’

  ‘Your own work does not detain you?’

  ‘Our work, Colonel. I find myself… intrigued, let us say, by certain activities by British Intelligence agents. But this will not stop me travelling with you.’

  Nicolai shifted on the upholstery, and a spring twanged under him. ‘You speak of this… Con-Comp—’

  ‘The Comptrollerate-General. Perhaps. Its strength is in its vagueness. It is rarely seen, and more rarely recognized.’

  ‘A phantom.’ Confusion becoming mistrust becoming scorn.

  ‘If you like, Colonel, yes. And not to be underestimated. The Comptrollerate-General is older than most nations. It was a power in Europe when Germany was still a gaggle of barons slaughtering each other over their superstitions.’

  Nicolai didn’t look convinced. History is not something from which we escape, Colonel.

  ‘You have some… great respect for this piece of history.’

  ‘I do not wish to join the list of men who have made the mistake of not respecting it. Do you know of Fouché, Colonel? Joseph Fouché, the Duke of Otranto.’

  Nicolai losing the thread. ‘He is…’

  ‘He was, Colonel. He was Napoleon’s master of espionage. A very ruthless and clear-sighted man. After our forebears defeated the emperor at Leipzig in 1813, Fouché turned against him. He switched back again for Napoleon’s final campaign, and once more against him after the final defeat. After the restoration he held the same post under the monarchy that he had under the emperor.’

  ‘A disgraceful renegade.’

  Krug could not restrain a chuckle, grinning sleek through the cigarette smoke. ‘You must forgive me, Colonel, but I find him most impressive. As part of my – your words – my respect for pieces of history I have acquired Fouché’s papers. Rather a coup, for they were closely guarded even a century later; I’ll describe it to you some time. Fouché is most illuminating on his contest with the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey.’

  Nicolai still didn’t look convinced. A pause. ‘You have heard the news of Ireland? The British parliament’s decision?’

  Krug nodded, and lit another cigarette. ‘So-called “Home Rule”. It is the least the British could do to stop Ireland exploding. Rather similar to what Vienna had to do with our Hungarians. Give them enough autonomy to hold the empire together.’

  ‘This means that Ireland will be quieter. The patriots there will not distract London as we had hoped. They will not seek their rifles now.’

  A smile. ‘I remain optimistic, Colonel. The Irish nationalists will not trust a decision of the British parliament until they see it enforced; they have been tricked too often. They will want their rifles still. My operations require only a small elaboration.’ Nicolai’s eyebrows came up. ‘I will allow news of the forthcoming shipment to become public.’

  The eyebrows came down hard. ‘But—’

  Again the smile. ‘You must think me terribly cynical, Colonel, but I little care how many Irish, of whichever persuasion, slaughter each other. What matters is that there is unrest. What matters is that Britain is divided and distracted.’

  Duval spent two hours in the submarine dock, pacing its dimensions, understanding the arrangement of the dry dock, counting not only the number of submarines, but also the cranes, the gantries, the workshops, the fuel tanks. He didn’t really acknowledge the new calm he’d achieved, the certainty with which he acted; but sometimes faces came at him out of the past and for once he smiled at them. Knox’s face, too. This’ll shake you, you smug so-and-so. At first he’d reached for the sketchbook, but he couldn’t see to write or draw a line or a figure. So he visualized the dock from above, and its pools became nave and side chapels, the cranes became pillars, the control-tower a pulpit, and in his mind he mapped the cathedral of the submarines.

  He hadn’t thought through the question of how he was to get out. But he got lucky: the sentry did make more than one tour, and when he unlocked the gate and let the dog in to check the submarine dock, Duval gave them thirty seconds and moved to the gate and slipped through, widening the opening as little as he could.

  ‘Wer is da?’

  The shout stabbed out from behind him. He had been stealthy, but the light from the area of the battleships had turned his stealth into a shadow that loomed back through the gateway. Again a shout, and the dog was barking, and then a whistle shrieked cold across the yard.

  Duval ran. The yard in front of the battleships was too open, the space and the light terrifying, and he hurried back along his wall, hands flapping at door handles as he passed. Locked. Locked. Where was the sentry? Locked. The barking roared out again; the sentry had been releasing the collar. Locked. Another whistle, a different direction. Surrounded now. Locked. And then a handle turned and his feet were scrabbling to stop his momentum and he pushed through the door with shoulder and knee and stumbled in and pushed it closed and dropped. A moment: relief; breath; hands steadying himself in the crouch. Then the shouts and the barking nearer outside. He flapped around himself, found a key in the lock and turned it.

  He crouched, gasping and trying to keep it silent. Move from the door? More likely to be heard. Did they know he was in here? The dog. Could they open it? The key. Would they shoot?

  Light reached over him. The door was solid but there was a window just above his shoulder. The beam of a torch swung pale around the room, uncovering ghosts and provoking shadows: a noticeboard, a drawing board, shelves, another drawing board, a table, a hatstand.

  He could hear the dog snuffling somewhere outside, but it didn’t seem to be close to his door; perhaps the trace of sausage had saved him again. A voice. Two voices, scowling at each other in German.

  The rattling of the door smashed into his ears and his heart lurched again. Then the torch swung away and the room was night. The voices moved off, and he heard another door being rattled.

  Twenty cramped minutes huddled there. Then he crawled forwards, and as the blood began to flow and his legs strengthened he pulled himself up into a wary
crouch against the table. As far as he could see through the window, the dockyard was deserted; no sign or sound of sentries. Little light penetrated, and he risked a match and began to patrol the edge of the room where the torch beam hadn’t reached earlier. A series of blueprints and designs pinned to the wall: a gun barrel; what looked like a turret. Didn’t seem likely that they’d actually design things on the spot. Perhaps this was where they copied, or checked, or assessed what materials they needed. Something called the Foster sight; then something detailed and mechanical, a motor or some part of it.

  More productively, his search revealed a window, shuttered – which suggested the public street beyond – and another door. A new hope bloomed; it might not be necessary to cross the cursed yard again. Keys hanging on pegs adjacent, and a moment later David Duval slipped back into a world where he was allowed to be. He found a bar half full of slumped sailors, put on his Irishman again and got a little drunk. A police patrol came in some time later, two men as bored and surly as the men they peered at; Duval produced papers, to indifference.

  Lurching emotions in his head: a little triumph; the sense that if he’d had more nerve he’d have stayed to copy some of the designs.

  In the grey cold of dawn, he got the first train back to Berlin.

  A café in a Constantinople side street: smoke, reek, covens of old men peering at impenetrable card games; wheezing and back-slapping and muttered advice, and cackles of laughter. Cade had chosen it because he’d thought it would be discreet; a place he’d seen in passing, off the beaten track. Actually, he stuck out like a fart at a Morningside tea party. But at least there was no chance of another European seeing him here.

  Jozef Radek, his generous new acquaintance from the Russian Trade Legation, was exactly on time. He was not impressed by the surroundings, sneering at each of the people he squeezed past and then wiping the chair with a handkerchief before sitting. For a junior clerk, and apparently not a flourishing one, he’d picked up some pretty snooty tastes somewhere; which might do us no harm, eh?

  ‘Did you get it?’ Radek said as he sat. There was something of the dandy about him; waistcoat and cravat patterned.

  ‘What’ll you drink?’

  ‘Nothing, I thank you.’ And the suggestion of scent?

  ‘Drink some coffee; pep you up, or calm you down, whichever suits. Two coffees!’ The waiter went away again, and Cade smiled at his man. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I got it. Very civil of you.’

  Jozef nodded, like an overexcited dog.

  Another smile, to fill a space. ‘Kind of you to think of me,’ he said. ‘But I’m – I’m not sure what you expect of me.’ Could it be some sort of ploy to smoke him out? Let ’em know you’re a buyer, and the price goes up awful fast.

  Jozef sat up straighter, and smiled with what he clearly judged was shrewdness. ‘Mr Cade, sir: you are known as the coming man; an up-andat-them businessman, as they say in United States of America. It is known that you have employed two new clerks in the last week.’ He smiled again, as if this success were down to him.

  Their coffees arrived. It was interesting hearing, for Cade; nice that word was getting around – nothing like the impression of success for bringing success. And it increased his wariness of Radek. What did he want – a job?

  ‘Also, sir, you are known as…’ – the stirring of his coffee absorbed him, and suddenly he tapped the spoon twice on the cup – ‘as a man of significant influence with your own embassy.’

  Are you hinting what I think you’re hinting? He kept quiet.

  Cade badly wanted to ask where he was from. It seemed to mean so much to everyone hereabouts; subtle subdivisions of empire, everyone unhappy about something. He’d guessed he wasn’t Russian; but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a subject of the Russian Empire. Or he was from one of the umpteen peoples of the Ottoman Empire. Find what makes a man truly happy, or what makes him truly angry, and he’s yours. But Cade had held back: didn’t want to label the fellow’s motives too casually.

  ‘Frankly, sir, I do not plan to be a junior official for ever.’

  The not-so-subtle hint that Jozef thought he knew that Cade was doing a bit of snooping for the king, and all veiled in the business pitch of a young bull.

  ‘Let me see if I understand you right, Mr Jozef.’ Jozef nodding, eager again. Cade felt for his words, stepping stones in a moor-bog. ‘You, like many businessmen in this new century, distinguish between economic activity and narrow national political interest.’ The face opposite still pleasant, waiting; one step at a time. ‘While continuing to serve your employer loyally as regards your political duty’ – a nod; it wouldn’t last, but perhaps he genuinely wanted to believe it – ‘you are prepared to share information of potential business interest, on an informal and unofficial basis, with me, someone who has no interest in politics’ – his own lie, for form’s sake; is it a lie? for what reasons am I enjoying this? – ‘so that perhaps it might… stimulate some healthy business activity.’ Nodding and a smile. Steady as you go, Jimmy. ‘Now, I’m sure you don’t want to seem to be selling information.’ Watchful now; perhaps you don’t care so much, eh? ‘But it would seem only fair that you would get some share of the return, if an investment was successful. Nothing wrong with a fellow speculating in his own time, on his own account, is there?’

  Jozef shook his head, and smiled wide.

  What now? ‘Until then, perhaps you wouldn’t be offended if I gave you a small token of my respect; businessman to businessman.’ The smile widened. Cade set a box on the table, compact and ribboned. ‘A gift for a wife or mother, perhaps.’ Jozef’s smile flinched; or for you to sell on at the first corner, you kern.

  Cade raised his coffee cup, and released a breath. ‘Here’s to free trade,’ he said.

  Jozef vaguely got it, nodded, and took his box and left. Could have given you a shopping list of questions and a bag of gold sovereigns, couldn’t I? Cade paid the bill, and wondered at the games people played with themselves.

  On their second night at sea, Ballentyne was at the tiller at the dying of twilight, when the immense purple of sky and sea gave way to darkness. Isabella came up from the cabin with glasses of whisky. She handed him his glass silently, sat next to him, and pushed up against his shoulder cat-like.

  Ballentyne glanced round; his whisky arm was now trapped. He transferred the glass out of the way, and shifted slightly so that her head fell more naturally against his, and they waited for the moon to rise.

  Later, they lay on a blanket on the cabin roof, and Isabella told him to tell her a story about the stars, and Ballentyne began quietly to explain the composition of the Orion constellation and its usefulness in locating other stars.

  Her head came round, and for a minute or so she watched this performance with something between amazement and amusement. Then she rolled up onto her elbows and kissed him. They made love there, naked under the moon, and the languid rocking of the boat on the sea became theirs.

  Flora Hathaway had fallen asleep in the Germany of girlhood romance; she woke in the Germany of Daily Express hysteria. She mistrusted both models.

  She had closed the compartment curtain on forest, the mystical empire of princesses and wolves and Saxon heroes with lovely libraries. She opened it onto a city of iron and stone, the Kaiser’s empire of military power and global ambition. Through the window, as she adjusted her hat, she could see tramping people and a uniform with a rifle and a boy selling newspapers – he had a uniform, too – and she tried to catch the headline flapping in his hands.

  Enough of fancy. Let us see what the breakfast tables of Britain are so afraid of.

  The people in the torrent weren’t all that different from those who tramped along the platforms at Euston; quieter, perhaps. The porters were certainly more efficient here; she thought of Purvis at the station at home, leering and lazy, knew he’d take to a uniform like this one, knew he’d look ridiculous. She watched how the passengers behaved with the conductor or the policeman: as if confr
onted by a butler who happened to have power of life and death over them. Everything smooth, respectful. It was rather pleasing to be part of the machine.

  A café, a bookshop and a detour into a museum of clockwork later, she and Gerta were crossing onto Museum Island. A policeman had looked at them as if they might both be English spies, and given them detailed directions to the Schloßplatz and a salute. One feels like an over-protected princess. The river’s expanse allowed even better views of the buildings, imposing and stately, everything with the space proper to its function and architectural requirement. It was managed grandeur.

  As they neared the first crossroads on the island, they could see a line of people moving across in front of them; then they saw it wasn’t a line, but a column – a march. From a distance the marchers all seemed to have the same black-brown clothing, and Hathaway had assumed uniform. Close to she saw it wasn’t a uniform exactly, but a standard of working clothes – for all the difference that makes – trousers in boots, heavy coats, loose caps.

  They marched in silence. It was the most unnerving part of it.

  Instinctively, Hathaway took a few steps in parallel with the marchers.

  Berlin seemed bigger, colder as Duval walked. He’d drowsed on the train, woken with a buzzing head and a sour mouth. He wanted a bath but wanted air more. Grey streets, brown buildings, white sky. Kiel had been… what? A spree, a series of alarms, a demonstration of something – to whom? Now this bland capital, with its smart citizens and uniforms everywhere. He tried coffee, tried brandy; still he needed to move.

  Eventually, a square he hadn’t visited before: yet another great building – they’d got the Italian a little more effectively this time, almost delicate around the windows, columns strong but not oppressive, balustrade along the roof rather fine. And in the middle of the square a fountain, sprays of water that reached out to him, four houris draped around the edge of the basin, strong-thighed, reclining most alluringly, fancy a splash?, and he wanted to know which sculptor had found himself marooned this far north of the Alps and created this oasis.