The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  Ballentyne was back in the Miša House, in his seat on the platform, at one minute before seven.

  He’d no more than glanced at the front row when he’d entered the room. As he settled to ‘The village: an ancient society meets the twentieth century’, hand on the pipe in his pocket as ever, he began to take in more of the audience. Twenty-five of them, perhaps; even thirty. A flicker of pride. Mainly older, mainly genteel-looking. A couple of wizened eccentrics. A clutch of Serbian uniforms, including Captain Tomić. Expatriates eager for any taste of community and culture, and a few Serbs anxious to prove themselves European.

  In the third row, sitting at the end, was a man of about his own age with dark hair, looking up at Ballentyne with the suggestion of a smile; and Ballentyne’s head and heart seemed to freeze and his hand clenched on the pipe and for an instant he was gaping silent.

  It was Hildebrandt.

  Thomson’s knock on the door was exact to time again. The old man watched him come in, sit, prepare his words. Not a chap to be rushed.

  ‘That request of yours,’ he said eventually. ‘We’ve turned every man in the records clearing office upside down as you suggested, and they’re all clean as whistles.’

  ‘The procedures, then. Somewhere in the system. God’s sake, the enemy is actually able to interrogate our own records.’

  ‘I’ve gone through it myself, sir. Not a chink of daylight.’

  ‘There must be. I put four names into that office, and into no other office. The enemy heard about it. Somehow the request was known to be sensitive. Somehow it leaked.’

  ‘Don’t see how.’

  ‘Whoever it is is able to make requests for information too. Look harder.’

  An intake of breath; restraint. ‘That’s all very well, sir. But… Look, if you could give me – just me – those names, I could re-trace the check myself. Try to spot anything out of the ordinary when it went through the system.’

  ‘Double or nothing, eh?’

  ‘With respect, sir, it sounds like you don’t have much left to lose.’

  ‘No, Thomson. I don’t.’

  As Ballentyne began his conclusion, Hildebrandt’s hand slipped into his jacket pocket. He has a gun. His voice distant, muffled. He actually contemplates assassinating me here. A glance at Pickford, but the older man registered nothing of his alarm. How can they occupy the same world? On the old front line between the Habsburg Empire and the Ottoman, these good souls sat unwitting around that lethal smile, the smile of the knife.

  Intermittently, Hildebrandt would nod discreet approval of a point Ballentyne made; once he tapped mute applause on his thigh.

  The pressures of twentieth-century life not themselves a direct threat to the villages. Must get out. But economic and social changes could weaken the traditional structures of the village and leave it vulnerable. Give me a door; give me a yard; give me a second. Was this unavoidable? Was this undesirable? Hildebrandt is the twentieth century, and he will destroy the world of these old souls. A breath; a mad notion; a breath. ‘But, ladies and gentlemen, I am reassured when I look at this audience, that there is a world of people who are themselves most civilized, yet who are sympathetic to the unique world of the highland peoples. I hope I may count on your agreement.’ Polite ‘Hear! Hear!’s from the audience. ‘Will you uphold the obligations of our European civilization? Will you stand as representatives for all that is best in our world, and offer it to the weakest?’ A few more ‘Hear! Hear!’s, and ‘Yes, indeed!’s. ‘You gentlemen at the back – soldiers of free Serbia – will you protect the rights of all your citizens, whether they are in Belgrade villas or the far hills?’ Uncertain glances among the handful of officers, then nods. ‘Will you pledge it, ladies and gentlemen? Do you offer your word to the impoverished peoples of our Continent? Will you show them that this new century offers a new opportunity to spread civilization, and not an obsession with its destruction?’ Louder agreement, bass rumbles and shrill echoes. ‘Here is a paper. Will you sign?’ Louder agreement. ‘You, sir, will you come forwards?’ The man in the front row half standing, uneasy but caught. ‘You officers, will you as our hosts show us the way? Come forwards and sign!’ A hesitation, Ballentyne’s heart hammering, and then the man in the front row was stepping in and one of the officers after a glance at his colleagues was hurrying to the front – ‘Come then!’ – and half a dozen were standing and a gaggle began to build around the table at the front and Ballentyne slipped to the side and through the door and there was a key and he locked it and ran.

  Elation at his ruse, blood thumping in head and chest, dodging down the alleys; eventually a café. A table, a chair, his head in his hands a moment, and Ballentyne ordered a šljivovica. It disappeared, and he ordered another.

  I am thought to have a brain, and I am not using it.

  He sipped.

  A man sat down in front of him. Ballentyne gave a silent gasp, and then a kind of growl.

  Hildebrandt caught the waiter’s attention, pointed at Ballentyne’s glass and held up two fingers. Then he folded his hands together on the table.

  ‘Rather inspired, Herr Ballentyne,’ he said at last. Still the damned pure vowel sounds. ‘Rather amusing. But you really have no idea of following and being followed.’ A self-satisfied smile. ‘You gave poor Belcredi a scare, but you’ve been watched all the way.’ Which confirms you and Belcredi are confederates.

  The drinks arrived.

  Hildebrandt made to speak, then tried a sip of his drink, and grimaced; a scowl of accusation, as if it had been some new trick by Ballentyne.

  ‘Could we begin – as men of logic – by agreeing that you are indeed an agent of the British government?’

  For a moment Ballentyne still thought it wasn’t true. He hesitated, and Hildebrandt’s face opened in wonder.

  Ballentyne cut him off. ‘As it happens, when we first met I really wasn’t.’ Disbelief. ‘But now I am.’ Hildebrandt shrugged. ‘Do you know something? It doesn’t matter any more. I still haven’t much to tell you, and you, I imagine, still don’t care. I find you are my enemy, and I find you are the enemy of my country; and because that means so much to you, it turns out that it means more to me than I thought.’ He gulped at the firewater. ‘You… You’re hatred; and violence; and inhumanity.’

  Hildebrandt was placid. ‘You have been a country for – what? – a thousand years; Germany less than fifty. Your empire dominates the world; ours is merely a tenant on the barren spaces you did not care for. You really think your dominance was achieved and sustained by nothing more than… than tea and cricket and “Fair play, old chaps”?’

  The waiter was hovering nearby, and Ballentyne beckoned. ‘I’m hungry. You?’ Hildebrandt shook his head, amused. Ballentyne spoke in stop-start Serbo-Croat, then turned back. ‘I don’t care about countries and empires; I care about human men. All I know is that I’ve travelled to the darkest, poorest, most primitive parts of this Continent, and I’ve never met a man as base as you.’ This touched Hildebrandt, somewhere in his pride. ‘I don’t especially care who rules the world, but I know that a man like you means only death to it.’

  Something of Hildebrandt’s polish had faded. ‘You are the tool of a corrupted empire; you are my enemy; and shortly I will kill you.’

  Ballentyne watched him. A man who could not be stopped.

  I have no identity to protect me. I am become an outcast.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You probably will. Like you killed that boy in the village. You’ll kill and you’ll keep on killing because that’s who you are.’

  ‘Your optimism about the twentieth century is a delusion, fit only for those old fools back there.’ Ballentyne nodded. ‘Ours is a different approach to the world, and it will triumph.’

  The waiter appeared behind Ballentyne, and muttered something, and then Hildebrandt sensed movement behind himself and glanced back and found two figures pressing close against his shoulders.

  Ballentyne shrugged. ‘Different approaches to
the world, Hildebrandt. You don’t speak Serbo-Croat, and I do. I told the waiter that I was an agent of the British government here to help Serbia, and that you were an agent of the Austrian government trying to organize a coup.’ Hildebrandt’s eyes went wide in disbelief, anger. Ballentyne saw his whole body tensing, preparing, saw the hands slip under the table. ‘Don’t! Think first, man.’ He breathed long, trying to hold himself. ‘Little test of your mettle, now. I’m walking out of here. Smooth talker like you, you can probably negotiate your way out. Or you can kill me; and these men will certainly tear you to pieces.’ Hildebrandt’s eyes were hard, steady, mind working. It’s inhuman. His hands were under the table. ‘Up to you, old chap.’

  A breath. Slowly, Ballentyne stood. Hildebrandt’s hands under the table.

  Ballentyne turned and walked to the door, shoulders tense; step by step.

  Ballentyne disappeared into the city; into alleys that the police did not know, into a community that lived apart. The Albanians of Belgrade, like their ancestors in every place, existed in parallel to the official structures of society. They followed its laws as much as was required of them, but they knew that the only law they could depend on was their own.

  Ballentyne knew a café, and he went there immediately; he knew a name, and he mentioned it discreetly. Within seconds he was in a private room; within fifteen minutes he was talking to a man he had never met but knew he could trust; within an hour he was in a house in the Dorćol quarter, enjoying the taste of coffee in the Turkish style and the highland accent, and chatting politely about everything in the world except why he was there. It would never be asked.

  The Austrian Embassy had their spies in the Belgrade police, and they started enquiries. They learned nothing. Hildebrandt had a handful of men circling the city and trying to pick up trace of the Englishman. No trace was found.

  … in sum the least significant of the men I set up and knocked down in the Cape; so little to him there wasn’t even sport in it. He’ll have disappeared back into the safety of his gentleman’s club where he no doubt makes a brave story of it all. If you’re ever looking for a good hand, Mynheer, I trust you’ll remember those of us who did stouter service – on both sides of the lines. F. J. D.

  Krug sat more distinctly upright; it increased his distance from the paper.

  Such was the opinion of Duquesne.

  Duquesne was a braggart; probably something of a fantasist. It was one of the reasons Krug had never sought his opinion of the man they had fought in Africa – and why renewed contact was a risk to Krug’s anonymity.

  Duquesne said that the Englishman had seemed scared of him. Which more likely meant that he had been suspicious of him. Duquesne had said he was dull, pedantic. Which meant, Krug knew now, that he was intelligent and thorough.

  Duquesne said that he had acted hastily. Which meant, Krug remembered, that in the crisis he had been capable of daring.

  Duquesne said he hadn’t had influence among the British commanders, never seemed to have been considered. Which meant that he had kept himself apart, acted unofficially and in the shadows even then. A habit that would only have increased with experience.

  Duquesne said that he hadn’t had the spirit – the Boer’s word had been cruder – to be a real soldier. Which meant that he might have been an unusually subtle soldier.

  Krug placed his two hands deliberately over the paper, effacing Duquesne and his bravado. He had nothing from it.

  And yet he had corroboration, hadn’t he? Of features that still would not resolve themselves into a face. A man of great patience and great daring. A man preferring to act outside all regular structures.

  What game are we playing, old fox?

  ‘I was followed; I am sure.’ Belcredi was wide-eyed.

  Hildebrandt was tilted back in his chair, cigarette halfway to his lips. ‘How would you know?’ It completed the journey, and he lit it. ‘As it happens, today you are right.’

  Belcredi pulled himself up in the chair. ‘You boasted that you would find Ballentyne, and you have not. My patrons in Germany and Austria would—’

  ‘Your patrons would no doubt send expensive flowers to your funeral. Your idea is powerful enough to outlive you.’

  A knock, and a man entered. He walked round the desk, handed Hildebrandt a telegram, murmured in his ear for a few moments, then left.

  ‘Albanians…’ Hildebrandt said slowly. Belcredi scowled his incomprehension. ‘That is how he has done it, is it? You are followed by Albanians. It seems Ballentyne trusts his mountain men more than he trusts Serbian Intelligence or the British Embassy; he’s probably right…’ The last phrase vague, as he pulled open the telegram. A grunt. ‘I am summoned back to Vienna. We are ordered to keep Ballentyne under observation, but nothing more; he is now part of something larger.’

  ‘You don’t have him under observation, do you? You—’

  ‘I do not have Ballentyne, little man.’ A smile through the smoke. ‘But I do have you.’

  Sir, [HATHAWAY] met as arranged. Suspects enemy aware of role. Encyphered letter intercepted at house. Gist follows. Italy General Staff visited Berlin May. Promised 2 Corps + ? Cavalry Divisions Alsace. General Staff doubtful of Italian, Turkish, Roumanian reliability. Want prompt action before second thoughts. New French and Russian service terms and Corps also encourage General Staff action sooner. Quote could not defeat Russia after 1916/17 unquote. [MOLTKE] encouraging Kaiser. Pushing universal conscription. Kaiser met Austria [FRANZ FERDINAND] in Bohemia. Agreed quote something must be done about Serbia unquote. General Staff fear Austria distracted in Balkans weakens eastern campaign against Russia. [MOLTKE] has told [CONRAD] Austria must delay Russia enough for Germany to win in west. Gist ends. [HATHAWAY] refused return ticket.

  [SS G/1/894/17 & D/3/449 (AS DECRYPTED)]

  ‘Just got that. Takes a second to flash across Europe. Takes a day to get up Whitehall.’

  ‘Never mind, Colonel.’ The old man was still in the paper. ‘In the end we must depend on the calibre of our people. Knox got to Hathaway, and Hathaway is clearly flourishing.’

  ‘Good show. Her information is Grade A. It’ll be circulated immediately.’

  ‘Yes. But not in this form, please, Colonel. No source, no names.’ With finger and thumb he picked up another paper by a corner; it flashed white as it caught the sun from over his shoulder. ‘I received her encyphered letter this morning.’

  ‘Oh. So Knox’s summary was wasted.’

  ‘Not my point, Colonel.’ He laid the paper gently down again. ‘It was intercepted, and then it was released again, with all that precious information in it. I can’t see the German police or Intelligence letting that go.’

  ‘Perhaps they were just checking it; couldn’t see the cypher.’

  ‘If they’re willing to intercept a letter in a private house, they’re more than guessing. If they’d an inkling of what she’d got – and they must know whom she’s talked to, what opportunities she’s had – there’s no chance they’d let it go. No…’

  ‘You’re thinking about this Spider chappie again.’ The colonel didn’t sound impressed.

  ‘I am thinking two things about him, Colonel. First, that if he intercepts and then releases the letter, he is playing a typically dark game. More to do with his own power and interests than any one nation. Second, that he is onto Miss Hathaway.’

  ‘I had Ballentyne, Herr Krug!’

  Krug gave it limited consideration. ‘And once again you did nothing with him.’

  ‘Had not your telegram—’

  ‘Exactly so.’ He contrived a mollifying smile. ‘Your energy and your reflexes do you credit, Hildebrandt.’ Hildebrandt didn’t look mollified. ‘My thinking changed. I have been guilty of… lack of perspective. We heard of Ballentyne first and I sent you after him. We have continued to treat him as a unique case.’ He turned away; the shoes tapped across the floor, and the high ceiling dropped back the echo. His fingers drummed once on his desk. ‘This was a mistake.
There is more going on here. More that I do not understand. A hasty action would compound the mistake. For now, we may leave Ballentyne to play with Belcredi.’ The eyes swung round sharp. ‘As long as your people do not lose track of him.’

  ‘Your instructions were clear, and I gave them clearly.’

  ‘I am reassured.’ A step forwards. ‘I felt I needed you here, Hildebrandt. My arrangement with Colonel Nicolai, this great union of our capacities, is close to fruition. It is the time for circumspection, for clarity, for strategic thought. I feel… I feel I am close to unlocking the last door at the heart of British Intelligence.’

  ‘Berlin is thinking of war.’

  ‘And I, more than any man in Europe, will have the power to give Berlin victory. I will control the board, Hildebrandt; it would be imbecility to become obsessed by the fate of one pawn.’

  A house in Belgrade, though Belgrade was unaware of it: a doorway from a back street, a frontage that blended into the shadows, dirt and crumbling masonry outside, scrupulous order within.

  Two men talking quietly: careful calculations of deference, implicit respect.

  ‘You told of a highlander, that was seeking a foreigner.’

  Silence. Truth is contingent.

  ‘I might have information. Or I might not. It depends upon the nature of the matter. I have the duty of a host to a guest.’

  A nod at this, earnest. A moment’s thought, and then the matter was described; insubstantially, allusively.

  Silence again. The logs shifting in the stove as they burned. ‘Very well. You may pass word to the highlander.’

  Krug at his desk. The sensual lines of its legs were merely something for his shoe to tap at irritably; its antique sheen was covered with papers, which he was no longer reading. He was staring into a photograph.

  It wasn’t a good photograph: more than ten years old, creased, the fuzziness of a more primitive camera with impatient subjects. A posed group of a dozen men, some in British Army uniforms, some in unmarked clothes; behind them a shed, and beyond the shed the landscape was flat and arid. Most of the men were looking at or at least towards the camera, proud or indifferent.