The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  Knox had something to prove. The old man had let his agents be lured into enemy territory, and he’d known and accepted the risk as he did so. But Knox had thought he was protecting them. He’d swanned around Europe acting the uncle. Now, to lose all of them… And to lose Hathaway, who’d doubted his qualities and then needed him, Hathaway who’d pressed on deeper and deeper into enemy country. ‘Faster, damn you!’ And the cab careered across a square in a storm of horns and whistles and shouts.

  He stopped it at the entrance to the street, and walked the rest of the way. No sense just getting arrested again. When he saw the Conservatoire across the street, he checked his watch by some habit of precision: seven forty. An alley opened beside the building; might prove useful. He kept walking, scanning the façade. Nothing out of the way about it: elegant; pocket grand; shutters on the ground floor and no signs of life above.

  Another alley ran along the other side of the building. That’ll do. He wasn’t just going to be a spectator this time. He crossed the street, glanced again to see if the façade was showing life at all, and ducked into the darkness.

  For a moment it was total. Then he saw a trace of light at the end; presumably a window at the back of the Conservatoire. Gradually, hints of the buildings in the square beyond began to clarify. He started to walk down the alley, one careful step at a time. A doorway became apparent in the side of the building; he kept on past it, watching as if it were a drowsy snake. Now the window at the end showed itself as part of a conservatory. He shut one eye to keep his night sight, while with the other he watched for life behind the glass. Nothing. He started forwards again.

  And at once he went stumbling over something on the ground, something heavy but oddly yielding. Immediately he was scrambling forwards on elbows and knees a few feet, seeking out the darkest shadow he could find, against a buttress on the left-hand side of the alley. There he tucked himself small and started to look around.

  Nothing at door or window. Thirty long seconds he watched.

  Seen at ground level, the thing he’d stumbled over was more clearly a body. Still uninterrupted, he scurried over to it.

  Unconscious at the least; then he felt at the neck. The cold told him before the absence of pulse. The body was slumped face down, and he wrestled it over onto its back. Now his hand was wet.

  Another glance at the door, and he risked a match. The first thing it showed was that his cupped hand was scarlet. Whoever it was had been shot – no, more likely stabbed – in the back. Shielding the flame as best he could, he moved it over the face.

  He let out a long hiss.

  Life had at last caught up with David Duval; come up behind him in an alley. Restlessness and daring had somehow brought him to the enemy citadel; and here his chancer’s luck had left him. A flower in the buttonhole. The face was young, and strangely serene.

  Knox laid his palm over the face, and closed the heavenward eyes, and did not feel the match burning his fingers as it expired. Then he was up. For a moment he was going to knock on the door and start shooting, but managed to restrain the urge. Instead he walked into the square at the rear of the building, and the first thing he saw was a woman’s back through the window and he knew it was Hathaway.

  An instinct to get her attention, but then what? He had to get decisively in or, preferably, get her safely out. The door? What was she doing in there, anyway? Did she know the danger?

  He walked on into the square, keeping to the limited shadow by the wall but not otherwise bothering to conceal himself, looking all around as he went, taking in the other buildings, the parked motor car, and then the back of the Conservatoire. He was looking for signs of activity, and ways of entry; and he saw neither. Just Flora Hathaway, standing alone and thoughtful and rather proud.

  He had a pistol, for God’s sake. But what then? Shoot patterns in the glass? Smash a hole and expect the opposition to wait patiently as he clambered in or tried to get Hathaway to clamber out? He could pick them off one by one, but if there were more than six he’d have achieved nothing. He paced, glaring from the gloom towards the luminous prison. Just a pane of glass between them. Like a bird in a cage. And even if he did break her out?

  Only one option. And by the time he saw a door inside the conservatory open, saw a man come in with a pistol pointing at Hathaway, saw her lift her head, Knox was in the motor car and halfway across the square with the accelerator pedal hard to the floor. They only heard him in the instant before he hit and the car had reached maximum speed and he adjusted the wheel a touch to aim for the gunman and ducked his head and the night exploded in timber and glass and noise.

  Then he was up out of the seat, shards and splinters cascading off him as he slid over the bonnet looking for the gunman. But the man was down, thrown between car and wall and back again, and unmoving. Now Knox turned to her. ‘You all right, Hathaway? Come along.’ And he was in front of her. Shocked; he could see it. He put his jacket around her shoulders, gripped her arm and began to lead her towards the wreckage of the window.

  ‘Stop!’ It came harsh from the doorway, a man hurrying in with pistol drawn.

  Knox pushed her farther towards the window, and then his hand dropped from her shoulder, and he edged away from her. Another man was in the doorway behind the first, and they stepped forwards together. The pistol followed Knox. ‘All right, old chap; I’ll come quietly.’

  The second man was surveying the chaos of the conservatory: the grotesque anomaly of the car wedged among the plants; the fragments of glass everywhere. ‘This evening has become…’ He shook his head. Then he looked at Knox, and seemed to relax. ‘But it ends well. You are the soldier, aren’t you? An additional prize for us, and our success is complete.’

  The man with the gun waggled it at Knox. ‘Lift your hands.’

  Knox obliged. ‘You can’t be expected to realize it, I suppose, but she’s more of a threat than I’ll ever be.’

  They didn’t get it. The gun stayed on Knox, and their attention stayed on Knox, and it was still on Knox when Hathaway pulled his pistol from the jacket around her shoulders, considered the mechanism a moment, and shot the gunman in the chest.

  The other man stared at her, and back at Knox, as if to complain at such a trick, and then her second shot hit him in the shoulder.

  Knox took the pistol from her and grabbed her arm again and began to drag her out with new haste. ‘Now we do have to— Can you run?’

  She stepped swiftly through the gap into the evening; he was looking back at the door as he followed her, gun ready. ‘I claim the right to try,’ she said, kicked off her shoes and hitched up her dress and set off across the square.

  It wasn’t an outcome he’d fancied, having to escape through the streets with a woman in a frock and taking pot-shots at policemen if they came too close; it threatened only one outcome in the end. But no choice now. They were out of the back of the square in seconds; she was breathing evenly – healthily – but he could hear the hiss when her bare foot hit a rough stone and once she slipped and gasped. They took the first turn they came to, kept running. Knox put the pistol in his pocket. The second turn, and ahead were the lights of a main street and he slowed them to a walk, took his jacket off her shoulders. ‘Normal as possible now,’ he said as they came into the lamplight and were among people again.

  A cab came near the kerb and Knox was waving at it and reaching for the horse’s bridle as it neared. They were up, and in answer to the driver’s question he hesitated. ‘Heldenplatz,’ Hathaway said, and the cab swung away from the kerb and off. ‘Not too close, and should have plenty of people.’ She was right. They crossed the square, he grim-faced and she stumbling more, and into another cab. This time Knox directed it to the Hotel Stefanie.

  ‘No doubt you… Is that wise?’ she hissed.

  ‘No choice. Something I have to check.’

  She sat back. She didn’t like it. She was also, obviously, cold; and the evening was starting to catch up with her. ‘I’m sorry I can’t give
you my jacket for now. Shirtsleeves too odd.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Is there anything essential in your room – truly essential – or incriminating?’ She thought a moment, and shook her head. ‘You can’t go back up there, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I understand.’

  At the Stefanie, Knox told the driver to wait, and helped her down to the pavement.

  ‘Knox: your hand; you’re hurt.’

  ‘Not my own. But a friend of ours, unfortunately.’

  ‘Oh – oh, I’m sorry.’ Of course; she wouldn’t know any of it.

  Then she seemed to sag a moment, and he reached for her shoulder. ‘Are you—’

  ‘I shot a man!’ she hissed at him, venomous.

  He stared into her eyes. Then nodded. ‘Two men. If you hadn’t, they’d have killed me; perhaps you too.’ She considered it; she wasn’t convinced.

  His eyes dropped a moment. ‘A boy,’ he said, looking up again. ‘A boy, in the Cape. The first person I killed. For an instant I felt like a god. Inside a minute I couldn’t remember if he’d even been holding a rifle.’ He shook his head. ‘Sometimes it’s necessary. Pray that it… that it never becomes easy.’

  A deep breath. A nod.

  ‘Listen: you walk to the desk; you’re asking for a man named James Cade. James Cade, yes?’ She nodded. ‘Whether he’s come back; any idea where he might be.’ Lord knows what I do if I get an answer.

  She nodded again. ‘James Cade. And you?’

  ‘I’ll be in the doorway. If there is anything awry – the slightest thing, Hathaway, the slightest subtlest thing that feels out of place – you turn around and walk straight out again. If someone moves on you…’ He patted his pocket.

  ‘In a crowded hotel lobby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you noticed you’ve stopped calling me “Miss”?’

  He scowled. ‘Battlefield rules.’

  She nodded, and turned. Then stopped, and looked back. ‘Thank you for getting me out.’ He grunted, and she was away.

  It took her fifteen steps to cross the lobby to the desk, and each one hammered in his chest. His eyes moved constantly around the room: every face; every hand movement. And always back to her slender figure, farther and farther away.

  The desk. She had to wait for the chap to finish with someone else. Knox’s hand hovered near his jacket pocket, unnaturally still.

  Now she was talking. The clerk checking something. A reply. She was talking again. Come on, woman… Another reply. Now she was saying something else. Come on.

  She turned. She started to walk back across the lobby. Fifteen steps, as to the gallows. She wasn’t looking at him; wasn’t looking at anything in particular. Good girl. Five steps away and he moved back onto the pavement and checked the cab was still there. And she was out, down the steps, and he was handing her up into the cab.

  ‘Taborstraße,’ he said to the driver, and they were away. ‘Taborstraße?’

  ‘It’s near the main station.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting we head back into Germany. You’re not that cold.’

  ‘In one door of the station and out the other. Italy. What about Cade?’

  ‘The clerk wasn’t sure himself, but he thought Mr Cade checked out of the hotel about ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Checked out?’ She nodded. Knox frowned. ‘What were you gassing about at the end?’

  ‘Checking they do room service. On that basis, I said I’d pay off my cab, and asked him to have a light supper sent up to my room.’ He grunted approval. ‘Knox, if we’ve a moment to breathe, could you tell me what on earth’s going on?’

  ‘Very well.’ He breathed out, long, and he knew that at last the night was catching up with him. ‘An old man sent four agents into Europe. Now they’re all gone, except for you.’

  The Spider

  The sky over the English Channel was white, and the water reflected its emptiness. Not a warm morning, but there wasn’t a wind either; nothing to suggest life. It was too early in the season for trippers, and Knox found himself alone on the beach. A mile of grey shingle in either direction. It was as if the world had stopped.

  Purgatory, wasn’t it? Where you waited. Between life and death.

  Europe on the brink; crisis of empire, fiends plotting chaos, agents being sent on desperate missions: Valentine Knox had known – somehow he had always known – that this would be his time.

  He hadn’t expected to spend it in a boarding house in an anonymous town on the south coast.

  He turned, parade ground-style, and began to march along the shingle again. Sky and sea white; beach grey; the land a low brown smudge off to his right.

  Orders. Barred from even entering London. Quarantine.

  What happened when you botched the job. Not much he could have done, but no excuses. On his watch. Take one’s medicine.

  But like this?

  He’d overheard the landlady say she thought he might be a German spy. Might as well be. Still had to ask his help to get her blasted cat down off the roof.

  Mess revolver; honourable way out. But that wasn’t his style. Little Val just kept on going. French Foreign Legion, perhaps. Better yet, take the mess revolver and head back to Vienna; unfinished business. Or just keep marching straight ahead; straight into the bloody sea.

  A sound from his right: high and indistinct, and for a moment he thought it was a bird call. Again: ‘Major!’

  It was the old man.

  Where had he even come from, that he was suddenly standing there, suit blending against the slope of shingle?

  They walked along the beach together; like a pair of geriatrics off a charabanc tour. Knox glanced sidewards occasionally, trying to catch a glimpse of the face under the tweed hat; trying to guess at the age.

  ‘I’m washed up, is that it, sir?’ Knox’s first words; back straight. ‘Tainted now? I do understand, believe me.’

  ‘If that was the case, Major, you’d currently be on the troopship for Calcutta and a new assignment in Indian Army stores.’

  ‘Sir, I realize that—’

  ‘Knox, your prep school virtues make you a fine man and a brave soldier, but we’ve no time for that sort of stuff now. If you’re not boiling angry at what’s happened, and what’s happened to you, and if you’re not as a result determined even more coldly to fight this to the end, then you’re no use to me.’

  Knox stopped; it sent the old man a step ahead, and he stared after him. ‘If that’s how it is, it might be a start if you’d tell me what’s actually going on.’ The old man seemed to consider this; a surprising suggestion that might after all have merit. Knox set off again. ‘For an opener – pardon me, sir, but – well, where do you fit into the department?’

  ‘The Secret Intelligence Bureau, you mean? M.O.5? The new Military Intelligence apparatus? I don’t.’

  ‘I thought you were a colleague of Colonel Mayhew. That he reported to you, or you—’

  ‘A convenient misunderstanding.’

  ‘But I work for Colonel Mayhew.’

  ‘No, Major, you don’t.’

  ‘Well, I was working for him, at any rate.’

  ‘No, Major, you were not.’

  Knox felt that his brain had emptied like the sky.

  ‘You were working for me, Major.’

  ‘The colonel—’

  ‘The colonel is a worthy and able officer of the new Military Intelligence departments. It suited me to have everyone – with one exception – thinking that this was a Military Intelligence operation: everyone in Whitehall; everyone in Berlin. And you.’

  Lost. Knox stopped, with a crunch of the shingle; pulled himself straighter. ‘Do I get to know? With two of my agents dead?’

  The old man considered him a moment or two; appraised him.

  ‘Major Knox, for the last six weeks you have been working for the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey.’

  He set off walking again, as if uncomfortable at the indiscretion.
/>
  ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘I am relieved to hear it. Ninety-nine in one hundred officials in British government service, including those who think they deal in intelligence and counter-intelligence, have not heard of it. Or if they’ve heard of it, they’ve had a most inaccurate view of what it does. The same, I’m happy to say, is true in Berlin.’

  Knox was losing his way, in the featureless sky. ‘And this operation?’

  ‘The secondary motive was to identify a leak. For there is a leak – I’ve seen it even more clearly during these last weeks – and it has tainted my own organization. The primary motive was to prompt a reaction. Flush out that great brain that I told you of in Paris: the Spider, if you’ll pardon my schoolboy fancy; last flicker of my professional innocence, if you like.’

  ‘And you didn’t mind if the agents were identified.’

  ‘Not at all. Once they’d got going – had a chance to get up a bit of steam – I wanted them identified.’ His pace slowed a moment, and his voice was somehow more sympathetic. ‘You – ah – you were the guarantee of that, Major.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Major, as I say, it is my hope and aim that our new Military Intelligence departments will grow strong and effective. But – promising start, and all that – so far they’re floundering around like first-week platoon commanders. Since 1911 I have become increasingly sure that the Germans have a very good picture of their operations; they’re perhaps not actually infiltrated, but I’ll bet that of the bods that Cumming and Mayhew and their Secret Intelligence Bureau think are their contacts in Europe, a handful are working for everyone including the enemy, and one-third to one-half are well-known to Berlin.’

  ‘That would mean—’

  ‘Knox, you’ll have been spotted as soon as you stepped off the boat at Calais. Probably while you were still walking along Queen Anne’s Gate. If I’d wanted those four agents to remain truly invisible to the enemy, the very last thing I’d have done would be to give them a liaison officer from British Military Intelligence.’

  Knox exhaled heavily; bewilderment and self-restraint. ‘And this – this scheme cost two of them their lives.’