The Spider of Sarajevo

by Robert Wilton

  Knox stopped. Felt the night with his fingertips, steadied his feet on the cobbles. Waited.

  Expected and acceptable. The figure in front said in English, ‘Good evening.’ Knox nodded.

  Then a wrench at his collar, the man behind trying to pull his jacket down around his shoulders. Not acceptable, and Knox was driving backwards against the man behind, still driving as the back of his head smashed into the man’s nose and he sent him stumbling; only then did he turn, the momentum becoming a backhand that kept the attacker stumbling away, and Knox found his balance and with dancing feet sent two straight punches into the man’s face. Around to the other man, ready for—

  There was a pistol one foot from his forehead, cocked and steady.

  ‘You come with us, or you pass the rest of your life on this spot. You come with us, you come with us on our terms.’

  Knox straightened his jacket. ‘After you, old chap.’

  Yet another corridor in Whitehall, panelling and tiles that carried distant footsteps, like hints or memories. ‘Pardon me, sir.’

  The old man turned. ‘Mayhew. I trust you’re well.’

  ‘Well enough, thank you.’ The colonel came closer. ‘Not wishing to stick my nose in, of course, but we picked up something that might interest you.’

  ‘You’re most kind.’

  ‘Kiel. We’re keeping a particular eye, because of the fleet being there. There’s a set-up called the Baltic Design Bureau. Never noticed them, never meant anything, until your man Duval went through. Because of him, we got the idea they might be some sort of front office for part of the German Intelligence machinery.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘We intercepted a wireless message addressed to that office. It reports that other sources – presumably German spies in Britain – have confirmed that one of our seaplanes participating in the regatta at Kiel has the new engine configuration. It says that a man named von Cramm will be arriving to manage the situation.’

  ‘Manage it, eh? And von Cramm.’

  ‘He was bound up with that business of Hamel; we never proved that von Cramm sabotaged Hamel’s aeroplane, but…’

  ‘Quite. I have suspicions enough of Herr von Cramm.’ The old man absorbed it all, considered it, then looked up. ‘Some preparations will be necessary. Thank you, Mayhew. Public-spirited of you.’ Mayhew nodded.

  The old man turned away, then stopped. ‘Colonel: Duval didn’t make it.’ Mayhew’s uncertainties, suspicions, flickered in his face. ‘He died.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry to hear that.’

  The old man turned to go.

  ‘Doing his bit, what?’

  The old man stopped again. ‘Yes. Yes, he was.’

  Knox’s hands had been tied immediately, which effectively stopped him running as well as resisting. The cord bit into his wrists, unnecessarily tight, revenge from the man he’d knocked down. He’d been escorted a few hundred yards through back streets, then pushed up into a carriage – again, more roughly than was necessary. Then the world went dark, a bag pulled over his head.

  He relaxed his limbs; concentrated on sounds. The presence of his two escorts, shifting and breathing near him; another man – driver, presumably; a horse breathing, and then they were rolling forwards. There were five minutes of swaying through the streets; he assumed back streets, for discretion, and tried to gauge changes of direction. Then they had stopped.

  Pushed down out of the carriage, hands gripping his biceps and steering him. ‘Step!’ But it was too late, and he was stumbling forwards and his escorts were pulling him upright and swearing at him. ‘Down steps!’ And this time they were more careful with him, holding him as he took the steps one clumsy pace at a time. Wooden staircase.

  Odd smell. Sort of thick; sweet-sharp.

  Steered along corridor, through door, then he was pushed down into a chair.

  After a second, he knew there were more people in the room. His escorts behind him, and another body — no, two bodies — breathing and shifting somewhere in front of him.

  He waited. Trying to keep the blood flowing in his fingers; flexing the muscles in his feet and ankles.

  ‘Who are you?’ English, but spoken by a foreigner. Accent thick. One of those in front of him. Heavy smoker.

  ‘That depends on who you are.’

  Someone moving closer in behind him. ‘You are not in a position to play games.’

  Knox said, carefully, ‘When fortune smiles it is easy to be brave.’ Silence.

  He listened for movement; nothing.

  Then, from the man in front again, ‘Adversity does prove the warrior soul.’ Pause. ‘Do you now condescend to answer?’

  ‘I am Major Valentine Knox. I am an agent of British Intelligence.’

  Another pause. Then a word, and his arms were being pulled and twisted and there was a blade at his wrists and he flinched and suddenly his wrists came free. He hissed his discomfort as the blood started to flow again, tried to massage the wrists without too much show of pain. Irritated at his own discomfiture, he pushed on quickly: ‘I seek a meeting with the man known as Apis.’

  Everyone shifted at once. Then settled. Waited.

  ‘That name is a fantasy only.’

  ‘I deal in fantasies.’

  Again silence. The smell: was it malt? A brewery?

  ‘What would you want to say to this Apis?’

  ‘To ask his help.’

  ‘The British Empire needs the help of little Serbia?’

  ‘In Serbia’s interests as well.’

  ‘The British do not care about Serbia. You do not care about the Serbs of Bosnia, suffering under Austrian tyranny. You use us when we are useful to your strategy, then you forget. You are not present in this region; you are not active in this region.’

  ‘My presence says otherwise.’

  ‘You have come; you will go. We will be left alone again.’

  ‘To depend on the promises and the restraint of Germany, and Austria, and the countries you fought last year.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know our resilience. Our diplomacy.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know that on the 26th of May the Kaiser met the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and urged him to deal with Serbia now.’

  Silence.

  Eventually: ‘There was an Englishman named Pickford.’ Knox waited. The name he’d been given by the old man. The contact here, the man Ballentyne had been in touch with. ‘He was found dead.’

  ‘I see.’ They wanted more. ‘If you know who he was, you know that my organization would not have wanted him dead.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t mind that he’s dead, Major. But you people are obviously unhealthy. Accident-prone.’ The idiom was uncomfortable. Pause. ‘Dangerous to know.’ Now the voice was closer. ‘We would think very carefully before associating with you.’

  ‘I represent a man who represents an organization as old as your nation. A man who represents an ancient friendship. A man who knows the three Truths.’ He could feel the uncertainty now, hear the thinking. He hoped he’d remembered the dates aright. ‘The Truths of 1804, 1815 and 1903.’

  Something changed; some signal, and now there was movement all around him again. The disruption of air, the tap of steps towards him – and past him, and then the door closing.

  Silence. No movement now, no presence.

  Then three steps towards him, someone standing over him, the sound of breathing – and then the bag was pulled off his head.

  To: Ports & Consulates Office

  From: SS0

  A representative of this office with highest authority is travelling to SARAJEVO on exceptional liaison business. He will be travelling as MARSDEN. (For operational reasons, he will not arrive before 29 June earliest.) Given the diversity of those he will be trying to meet, and the urgency and sensitivity of his mission, he may contact you directly and at short notice requesting information. You are hereby empowered, on the
authority of this department under FO I.iii.2, to respond directly and with all promptness.

  The knock at the door was soft, single. Krug finished the sentence he was writing before acknowledging it. A clerk entered, carried an envelope to the desk, and left again all in silence. Envelopes even for the movement of messages between rooms of the building; a moment of satisfaction at the order of his world.

  The message was a transcription of another message. The details copied, and smuggled out of an office in London and delivered to a post office for collection; collected by other hands, and – depending on the sensitivity and urgency of the information – either cabled from London or taken to a house in Gravesend and radioed from there; and thence by a series of stages the message would come into his hands wherever he was.

  As soon as he saw the originator’s designation, Krug was sitting forward. The same as before…

  The paper as if electric. He saw a creased photograph in his mind. I have never been this close to you…

  Knox was glad of his jacket, thick like his army rig and hard-wearing for travel. The evenings got cool quickly hereabouts. The last of the sun still clutched at the hilltops to the west, but here in the valley everything was blue-grey shadow and no warmth. The village was a huddle of houses tucked in a bend of the river, and the veranda where he and his companion sat – a timber creeper-wrapped framework projecting from the front of a house, two benches – was the only place to get a drink.

  ‘And now, Major, you fulfil your share of the bargain.’

  His companion was called Rade. Pronounced as two syllables. First name, apparently, and that was all he’d given. A compact, watchful sort of chap.

  ‘Seems odd you needing me to get across the border,’ Knox said. A petulant remark, and he knew it; didn’t like the fellow’s tone.

  ‘As the colonel promised, we deliver you to the border, and our courier will meet us on the other side and deliver you to Sarajevo. For the border, British Intelligence must show its ability.’

  Meaning that British Intelligence must show one of its very few assets. It had indeed been the deal with the colonel, a bull of a man with shaven head and waxed moustache, always in shadow and always watching and calculating. Knox had needed to get Serbian Military Intelligence on his side, to avoid the risk of being stopped as he passed through Serbia; and he needed them to get him to Sarajevo, which Comptrollerate-General assets could not guarantee. The old man had been clear on each point.

  ‘Some sort of problem with your network, is there? I’d have thought you’d be back and forth across the border daily.’

  Some of the mischief went out of Rade’s face, leaving a dead smile. ‘We are, as you say, very active. But after some recent activity – someone was a little casual with his security – the Austrian authorities became more interested in our arrangements on the border. For a week or two now we do not use these arrangements.’

  Knox took a sip of his firewater. Filthy stuff, but welcome in the evening. Cartwheels rattled somewhere behind them. ‘Seems I turned up at the right time, then. Help you across for whatever you need.’

  The mischief was back. ‘Meaning: what I am crossing into Bosnia for?’ Knox didn’t rise to it. ‘We’re both too polite for those questions, eh, Major? Anyway, I’m just a messenger boy.’

  The river was the border. This side of it – the remaining fifty yards of mud and shacks – was Serbia. The other side – one hundred yards of water away – was Bosnia–Hercegovina, the newest acquisition of the Austrian Empire. The river was what Vienna, and Berlin, looked across when they considered how finally to deal with defiant, mischievous Serbia.

  A few hundred yards away was the bridge.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a voice from the shadows beside them. Rade looked stung; Knox had been expecting it, but it was still a jolt. ‘I heard you talking in English; are you with Dr Grant?’ A slight figure in the gloom, face obscured.

  ‘No,’ Knox replied. ‘I’m on a walking holiday. I am interested in butterflies.’

  ‘It is not the best season.’

  Knox nodded to Rade, and stood. Rade finished the last of his firewater, and followed. He’d been unperturbed by the exchange and the outcome. Old hand.

  The figure led them down a track beside the house, to a horse and cart. The horse was a weary grey, with a glorious multicoloured blanket over its back. The cart was open for the driver at the front, but the rear was sheltered by canvas.

  ‘I am curious how you do this,’ Rade murmured. ‘Someone trying to enter who has not already an exit stamp on his papers is checked very closely. If the papers are forgeries, I hope they are good ones. I think the colonel told you I would be a big prize for the Austrian police.’

  ‘Don’t you trust us, old chap?’

  Rade looked at him as if he were insane, and Knox chuckled.

  Their guide gestured them up into the back of the cart. Clambering into its gloom, they found a pair of moth-eaten overcoats and hats, and a mound of blankets. ‘Put on the clothes.’ They did so, and slumped down with their backs against the driver’s bench, and their guide covered them in the blankets so that only glimpses of face showed. ‘You are too sick to move or speak,’ he said. ‘Do not move. Do not speak.’

  He climbed up onto the bench, and chivvied the horse into movement, and they began to sway and bounce along the track towards the bridge.

  At the near end, the Serbian policeman came near and saw the driver and nodded the cart past. The tone of the wheels changed: sharper, clearer as they swung onto the bridge.

  Knox felt his heart in his chest; felt his pistol in his pocket. He couldn’t see anything except a window of Serbian forest shaking and dwindling behind them. Ahead, somewhere behind his shoulders, Austrian sentries were waiting. The dwindling dusky forest, the noise of the wheels on the bridge, and the crossing seemed to take an age.

  Then shouts, and then they were stopped. Words of challenge to the driver that Knox could not understand; a murmured reply, calm. Then boots, and the unique rattle of rifle and sling against shoulder. Something began to glimmer through the gaps in the canvas and then the open back of the cart blazed white and a lantern was thrust in.

  Mumbled words, and the lantern swung away. The boots receded. More words, and the cart jerked into movement again.

  Enemy country.

  They bounced onwards, slumped in the back and unmoving, and Knox through half-closed eyes saw a town around them and then the houses shrank and they were into open country.

  After a mile, darkness only, they rolled to a halt. A moment later the figure was at the back of the cart again. ‘Out now,’ he said, and began to pull at the blankets. ‘Keep the coats and hats.’ He thrust a handful of papers at them. ‘If you need. Not for long.’

  Rade looked at them warily. ‘Forgeries.’

  ‘Two men crossed the bridge yesterday, too sick to speak. Two men crossed back today, too sick to speak. The papers are good.’

  ‘Won’t those two men need them?’

  ‘They were not too sick to speak; they were too dead to speak. Their papers outlived them. Do you know where you are?’

  Rade looked around in the dusk. The cart had pulled in beside a fork in the road. He nodded.

  They shook hands with their guide, and tramped off into the gloom. Ten minutes’ walking brought them back into the outskirts of the settlement, where Rade led them to a single-storey house. The door opened to his knock, and he murmured something and something was murmured back, and they were in. The man holding the door was too tall for the room, and solid. ‘Welcome to imprisoned Bosnia,’ he said to Knox, and with an effort he wrestled the planks of the door back into their frame.

  Off Kiel the ships sat massive against the sky, monochrome and ominous. The bunting and the brass band music, intended to enliven their presence, only emphasized their implacability. Thousands of Germans – princes, officers, sailors and civilians, dressed in the brightest feathers and the dirtiest rags – watched the monsters and con
sidered their own fears. Around them buzzed smaller ships, magnifying the dreadnoughts by their own tininess. The waters of the Baltic seethed with their traffic, but the battleships were impassive. Intermittently, an aircraft – for many, the first they had ever seen – would buzz across the sky, minute and frail against the clouds.

  Two pairs of eyes considered the aircraft more expertly.

  ‘You are determined to proceed with this plan, Mein Herr? If it is a matter of revenge, we have surely—’

  ‘It is not revenge. That action was a necessary intervention to stop German secrets reaching England.’ Von Cramm watched another aircraft disappear into the clouds. ‘The British still owe me an air machine.’

  Knox and his two companions – Rade and a lad now guiding them, Dragan – walked most of the day, away from the road and up into the hills. This was the route they had decided on, it seemed, to minimize the chance of being seen and stopped by the Austrian police. Rade wasn’t all that solid, but seemed fit enough; the lad looked a rather frail specimen: city-raised; a student. Knox didn’t walk as fast as he might have done. But they were proud, and fit enough to last the day without difficulty. Late in the afternoon, they came round the top of a hill and began to drop quickly into a valley. Shortly afterwards, a town was visible below them.

  Halfway down the valley, their way now clearly a path, the Serbs insisted on stopping in a hut – a low thing of stone, with planks for a roof; presumably once a sheep pen – until dusk. Knox approved of the precaution. They passed around a flask of the local firewater, and ate some bread. The lad, Dragan, quizzed Knox on his knowledge of Serb history. Did he know how long their people had been in this place? Did he understand that the border between Serbia and Bosnia–Hercegovina was only an accident of the past, a detail of Ottoman and Habsburg jostling, an unnatural barrier between brothers? Did he know of the oppression of the Serbs in Bosnia–Hercegovina, now forced to live under the Austrians? Even worse than the Turks!