The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  ‘Ah yes; the name seemed familiar.’

  ‘But there was an unfortunate inefficiency here. The patrol were following the man as Duval, and it was only when they checked with headquarters that they found that we had investigated him as Pinsent and – thanks to you – made the connection. A low-level criminal, it seems. A deceiver. If he comes to Germany again he will be arrested, and we will see how many sets of papers he carries.’

  ‘Again, I am pleased to have been of some small service.’

  ‘At any one time we have between fifty and two hundred foreigners under observation; some at the lowest level – that is to say documentary observation – hotel records and so on; up to those at the highest, under twenty-four-hour observation.’

  ‘Most impressive…’ Still the glove hovered over the report.

  ‘Something in the report… interests you, Mein Herr? The subject is known to you?’

  ‘Not until you brought him to my attention. So obvious a rogue would be a poor choice of agent for that part of the British apparatus that most concerns me. But something…’ The eyes blinked rapidly, and then swung up to face Nicolai. The hand was placed discreetly in a pocket. ‘Nothing. Too many foreign names in my life.’

  ‘Then we may continue the tour.’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  ‘While we walk, Mein Herr… I wish to ask you about your relationship with Hildebrandt.’ The colonel’s eyes were fixed on the corridor ahead as he spoke; his guest’s glanced at him politely. ‘You are accustomed to collaborate with him, I realize. He is a German, though, and has been employed by this department.’

  ‘Indeed, Colonel. And I would not dream of trying to strain the loyalty Count Paul feels to his nation and his employers. It was his efficiency, and his reports of the growing efficiency of this department, that first convinced me of the potential of a closer co-operation between us.’

  ‘A man can have but one loyalty.’

  Oh, dear Colonel, you do not begin to understand… ‘Quite. As an individual I find him most efficient, and I trust that he keeps you properly informed of our activities. Might we say that he is the ideal… liaison, between us, as we strengthen our bond?’ A grumble from Nicolai’s throat. ‘Now, that I may be clear: your navy’s two priorities are the latest British oil-fired engines and their new fifteen-inch guns, yes?’

  Later, in the shadows of a Berlin ministry porch: ‘Hildebrandt, your compatriot Nicolai worries that you forget your proper duties to your emperor.’

  ‘I am a better judge than that potato of how I may best serve my emperor.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I trust you wish no change in our relationship.’

  ‘Any change would… would displease me’ – the verb was cold – ‘greatly. But if we are to get what we desire from this collaboration, Nicolai must be kept content.’

  ‘Or removed. You have the influence.’

  ‘Or removed. But for now: play the part of the loyal German, would you? Be busy; be Prussian in your efficiency. Report to him my activities and idiosyncrasies as your amusement dictates.’ Hildebrandt nodded, bored. ‘Your friend Ballentyne has eluded you again.’

  Now Hildebrandt was more alert. ‘He will be found. He was aiming for Split. He is watched for; awaited, in half a dozen places. Belcredi was in that region already; he can do some real work for once.’ Krug was considering it all. ‘Ballentyne will be found.’

  ‘I do hope so. But if you cannot get me the one, perhaps you may do better with another. There is an Englishwoman called Hathaway. Nicolai’s peasants observed her in Berlin. I have read her name within the last week. I don’t approve of coincidences, and I want to know why Fräulein Hathaway has become one.’

  Contrary to the impression she’d given, Isabella di Lascara’s island seemed to be largely hers. No more than a couple of miles in any direction, outcrops and ramparts of rock breaking up fertile stretches of fruit trees and vegetables and even vines. The two of them spent half a day riding it, and the people they met working in the fields, dark and gnarled like their olive trees, acknowledged the contessa with deference. Ballentyne they treated with respect and no curiosity. Ten years ago Isabella had come to the island a stranger, and been absorbed; later she had stayed alone, and this had been accepted without comment. Whatever the world brought to the island would be given its due, and no more. A little feudal Eden in the middle of the sea.

  After their ride they swam, pale in the blue like the limestone, and walked and saw the lemons swelling on the branches, and ate bread and figs in the dusk. Later, dazed and slumped like a pair of armies that had clashed and wrestled and could not overcome, they lay in a tangle of sheets, and traced dreams on each other’s flesh with gentle fingers, and watched the moonlight icing the balcony tiles.

  Ballentyne said, ‘I have to go, Isabella.’

  She stopped tracing, and prodded him very deliberately with her finger. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It seems to be the custom. Usually I get an island, or at least a boat.’

  ‘Don’t—’ He sighed. ‘No. Do. You’re entitled to.’

  She sat up and looked down at him, the sheet pulled tight around her breasts, the torrent of hair falling around her shoulders. ‘I ’ave few illusions, Ronald. But… is there really nothing ’ere that would tempt you to stay?’

  Delicately, he brushed the hair away from her shoulder with the back of his hand. ‘You are a perfect Calypso. I can think of no greater magic than this place – and you. But, like Ulysses, my journey isn’t over.’

  ‘You ’ave your fight; and perhaps your – what was her name?’

  ‘Penelope. No, there’s no Penelope. But there is… there’s an old man, in a village high in the Albanian mountains. I have unfinished business.’

  ‘Always the men, they go off to the war. And always the reasons are stupid reasons: pride, duty, fear of shame, ’atred.’ She dropped back onto the pillow. ‘You know they are stupid reasons.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you go anyway.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is not one man in Europe who will break this ’abit.’

  ‘Those people gave me hospitality. They offered me everything. In return I brought death to them, and I don’t even understand how. I owe it to them to find out; to make it right, somehow, if I can.’

  ‘You can’t make death right. You can only make more death.’

  ‘Someone’s tried to kill me; twice. I can’t just—’

  ‘Of course you can! Men are always trying to kill other men. The reasons are irrelevant. Either you become like them, and do more killing, and continue the stupid game. Or you step away, because a life is more important than a death.’ She stroked his arm. ‘You could stay ’ere. Your slippers by the door and… your pipe by the fire. We could stay ’ere and the world would never know.’

  ‘I’m not… I’m not finished with the world.’

  ‘You don’t like the world, Ronald.’

  ‘If I chose to settle anywhere, Isabella, it would be here. But I wouldn’t be choosing. I’d just be… hiding.’

  ‘This place is out of the world. It belongs to a different element. Perfectly placed between the coasts; between west and east, between the Renaissance and barbarism.’

  He smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t know. There was civilization on the Dalmatian coast when London was a swamp.’

  ‘Brought there by Romans and Venetians.’ Beautiful pride.

  ‘Who also brought the politics, which led to the barbarism.’ She snorted prettily. ‘Truly, I’ve met more civility – a human respect for each other, and that’s the only thing that can make a civium tolerable – in Balkan villages, than I ever have in London, or Berlin, or any of those places.’ He pushed his hand through her hair where it bunched and splayed on the pillow, feeling it rolling over and round his fingers. ‘And there seems to be wildness in Italy still.’

  Her eyes widened, her mouth, and she brought up her hand and very deliberately scratched her fingernails over his
cheek and down onto his chest. Over his heart, she squeezed a little and the nails bit.

  He hissed softly. She glanced up at his face, down to his chest again, and bent and kissed the nipple. ‘You ’ave something in there, then?’

  ‘Yes. Though I’m not always sure what it’s for.’

  ‘I worry you are a scientist only. A brain. Who goes into these villages to examine and to experiment.’ Her eyes were big, sad. ‘That perhaps I am just another experiment.’

  He considered, and shook his head. He pulled the sheet down, uncovering her torso, and bent and kissed her carefully on the stomach. ‘Certainly a valuable specimen.’ Then between her breasts. ‘A journey of discovery, say.’

  She clutched his hair and pulled his face up to hers.

  ‘All right. I go to the villages because I…’ – he watched her eyes flickering left and right as she tried to look into him – ‘because I… I want to understand.’ The eyes – brown gold, like treacle – narrowed. ‘And don’t ask what.’

  ‘Dear stranger.’ She stroked his hair.

  ‘People. If I could understand—’

  ‘Plenty of people in London. In Roma.’

  ‘Too many. I have to start small.’

  ‘Start with one.’ And she pulled his lips down to hers.

  Her name was Anna, whispered to Duval as they came level with the sentries at the platform gate and were waved through. She was a sport, right enough. They amused each other with fictional domesticities for the benefit of the other inhabitants of their compartment, then went and smoked together in the corridor, while the last of Berlin’s suburbs twinkled to nothing outside. She was from Alsace, visiting a younger cousin who was studying in St Petersburg. He was the wandering student of architecture, as ever.

  ‘With a taste for hats too, I think,’ and she looked at him with amusement.

  ‘I’m going to be stuck for hours on this train. Rather do it with a pretty woman than without.’ She dropped her eyelids prettily enough. ‘You seemed… friendly.’

  ‘Russian literature is as long and boring as the train journeys; especially when it’s translated into German.’

  Night and the friendly rattling of the train swallowed them, as they thundered eastwards into Russia.

  Some time around the 27th of May, two rumours began to circulate in Constantinople, around the diplomatic quarter, and the dock offices, and even at the gates of the palace itself, swirling and rising like leaves in a vortex until their strength quite obscured their origins, whatever those might have been. According to the first, the Egyptian government was considering impounding – or perhaps had impounded – certain foreign ships currently trading in Egyptian ports; according to the second, there had been protests – or if not protests, at least words of concern – from certain embassies about the activities and practices of one or two of the smaller private banks.

  The stories were negligible, even if true, but taken together they had the unfortunate effect of causing doubt about the viability of one small banking and insurance firm in particular: the firm of Muhtar Bros. Customers went elsewhere, or hurried to withdraw their money; at one point there were even suggestions of a run on the bank.

  James Cade watched the hullabaloo with grim satisfaction. Let Muhtar stew a little.

  On the 28th, he had lunch with Osman Riza. Riza passed him a copy he had acquired of the accounts sent by General Liman von Sanders, the head of the German Military Mission, to Berlin.

  And another envelope arrived from the man Radek, in the Russian Trade Legation: a copy of a request from the Russian consul in Isfahan, in Persia, for typewriting machines and other items to support their forthcoming tax-gathering activities in the region. That afternoon Jozef Radek learned that a bank account had been opened in his name, with money loaned to him by a friend, who also gave him two investment tips.

  And James Cade spent the late afternoon with Ani Charkassian, feeling pretty spruce.

  It was thirty hours from Berlin to St Petersburg, and the train compartment relaxed and developed its own regulations and domesticities. Snacks were shared among the six inhabitants, and experiences compared, and family histories presented. Duval and Anna joined in sporadically, or chatted to each other, or drowsed, his shin pressed against her boot. Everyone came and went for meals, to the lavatory – seats kept, bags watched – and the two of them had dinner together, fencing cheerfully. When she slept, Duval watched her suddenly younger face, and felt his sins.

  Some time early in the pale blear of the second morning, he was aware of her moving, focused on the way her body twisted under luggage rack and over feet, and then focused on her face. Her eyes wide, considering him. ‘You must excuse me,’ she said quietly. ‘This at least I must do alone.’ A smile, her fingers brushed the back of his hand, and she took her small bag and writhed her way into the corridor.

  Soon there were houses sprouting outside, shadows through the condensation on the window, the slums of another city. Then the train was slowing, and the inhabitants of the compartment began to shake themselves out of hibernation, straightening and brushing and gathering and checking. Duval realized that he was looking forward to seeing Anna’s face appearing in the doorway again. The woman just across from him saw his eyes travelling around the compartment; ‘St Petersburg,’ she said, and smiled encouragingly.

  Then the woman beyond spat a word loud, and then more, rummaging in her handbag. Duval wondered at it vaguely, muffled by lack of language from the reality and the murmurs of his companions. Now the man next to him swore – something vicious, anyway – hand in jacket. The murmurs became a chatter, angry faces, glaring at each other and Duval and the empty seat opposite him. He stiffened in the confusion. Then a uniform in the corridor, the conductor, and the compartment was shouting at him and the woman was brandishing her open bag and he was saying something back to them, and again the glances swung to Duval and the empty seat.

  The train had stopped, he realized, and there were whistles and bustling outside and the unique echo of a station.

  Somehow an unhappy situation, which he’d be better off out of, but as he looked around at the faces he knew he wasn’t going to be allowed to leave.

  The conductor said something in Russian – Duval realized it was directed at him – then: ‘Where has your wife gone, monsieur?’

  ‘My wife? Oh, my w— just – just to the lavatory.’

  A doubtful face in the doorway, and then another uniform beside it. Muttering between them, the conductor saying something down the corridor to someone else. Then, ‘There will also be the small matter of her ticket, monsieur.’

  The woman with the bag said something angrily.

  ‘Her ticket?’

  ‘While you slept; she assured me that you have both tickets.’

  Cold, sick; ‘But she’s – she’s not…’

  The compartment glared at him.

  Duval was two hours in the St Petersburg station police office. The woman called Anna had vanished into the city. Money and valuables were missing from a dozen compartments on the train. Some time during the second hour information arrived that a woman of the same description was sought by the German police, for confidence tricks and thefts at three Berlin hotels.

  St Petersburg station was a beauty, vaults of elegant ironwork, but Duval had seen none of it. He walked head down between his police escort, half awake and stupefied and only starting to think. It brought nothing good. Understanding of his basic predicament was followed by a silly hollow hurt – the luxurious illusion of a night now showed foolish. And only after that, the embarrassment that the schoolboy glowing at his own stealth and importance had got himself pinched before he’d even got off the train. A ghastly vision of Knox and the grey men in London, scornful, outraged. Alone again.

  Keep the lie simple; keep moving. He was plonked on a bench; bare room; vile green walls. Then another uniform appeared in front of him, sharp eyes, watchful, silent – and was there the hint of a sneer?

  For o
ne instinctive minute Duval found himself saying that the woman was indeed his wife. Then, fully awake, he gave that up – a perverse instant of shame at this betrayal – and by some unspoken agreement the policeman never mentioned it again either.

  Out of the layers of pretence, Duval began telling what was almost the truth: that he’d wanted company on the train and picked up the girl, not realizing that she was picking him up. Never seen her before.

  Inspiration: ‘Have to be a hellish risky scheme – wouldn’t it, Officer? – to have one of the confederates deliberately arrested.’

  The uniform – those superior eyes – considered this, then nodded. ‘For you, indeed. I had not imagined that you were an equal partner in the crime, nor the motivating brain.’ The English was crisp, cultured; another aspect of St Petersburg’s style that Duval was ill-placed to appreciate. But the sneering was fine, however much it rankled: better a dupe than a criminal.

  ‘If you checked, I’m sure you’d see we’d been in different places. I could give you a list… I only met her at the station.’ It was out before he realized his mistake.

  If the Russians asked them, the German police could easily discover that this was not Duval the confederate of criminals; but they would as easily discover that this was Duval the breaker of telegraph offices and dockyards, and God alone knew how that would play. Could the Russians send him back?

  The policeman watched him.

  Duval tried to look innocent. Of what, he wasn’t exactly sure.

  ‘I hope a pretty face was worth it.’

  The face alive; the face at rest. Fingertips. Duval made a show of looking around the dingy room, and produced a rueful shake of the head. The memory of their conversation at the edge of the compartment, the rest of the world muffled and unknowing. He’d thought himself quite the lad for breezing out of Germany on her arm. But she…