Field of Mars (40 page)

He passed it by Dima and Hokhodiev, who'd finally pulled himself away from the Swede, and used the last of his paper before they arrived in Budapest to add as many details as he could remember of Lavrik's corrupt business deals.

In Budapest there was a thundershower and time to kill. He walked through the dark station and posted the letter himself and purchased a copy of the Vienna paper
Neue Freie Presse
. In the society section there was an additional report on Franz Ferdinand's route. The festivities were scheduled for twenty-eighth, there were still four days to go.

When he came back to the train Hokhodiev and Dima were still talking it over. ‘No, this is crazy. We're
Russians
, as far as the Austrians are concerned we're supposed to be the enemy, right? So when we get there, what do we do? We go to the police, tell them everything we know?' Dima said laughing.

‘And we promptly get ourselves arrested,' Hokhodiev stopped him. He leaned forward and spun the bottle of schnapps in the ice bucket, took it out in the towel and poured Ryzhkov a glass. ‘It's more simple than that,' he said to Dima. ‘It's basic. It's chemistry . . .'

‘Yes . . . yes . . .' Ryzhkov heard himself agreeing.

‘We go and kill them. That's the magic formula, they kill us, we kill them,' Hokhodiev said. ‘Russia or whether you love her has nothing to do with it, eh? If you're a Slav or a Teuton, or a Spartan or an Athenian, or a fucking Albanian or Turk or shit knows what, who cares really? It comes down to the fact that they're going to kill us if they can, they've ruined our shabby little lives, changed everything around.'

‘We go on . . . we can't go back,' Dima nodded. ‘I think I can adjust to that,' he said with a shrug.

‘Adjust, yes. Because we cannot ever go home. Our lives are over.' Hokhodiev took a moment to let it sink in. ‘So . . . I have one or two breaths left in the old bag yet,' he patted at his pockets. ‘And I have my ticket on this very nice train, so . . . I don't stop until it's all over.

You—' he turned to Dima, ‘you, I can understand if you start to run out.'

‘Hey—' Dima complained.

‘You're young, you've got a future. You can get married, have a home. Have something to be proud of. Get out at Belgrade, run away to Greece. The girls there like it in the ass, you'd do fine.'

‘Go to hell, old man.'

Hokhodiev laughed. ‘Here . . .' He emptied the bottle into Ryzhkov's glass. ‘One last
katzenjammer
before we go and save the House of Hapsburg, eh, brother?' Ryzhkov smiled and raised his glass. Of all of them Hokhodiev, who'd lost the most, seemed the best at taking it in his stride. He drained the glass. Dima watched him and shook his head.

‘Forward, then . . .' he said as the train rattled southwards through the hot, broad valleys fed by the Danube and Tisa, past the fortified city of Subotica, along the ramparts at Topola, beneath the crenellated towers of Novi Sad, and once again back to the Danube.

Forward.

Three knights on a great quest to save a prince. Three drunken knights of the brave new modern age. Forward into the maelstrom, armed with their pathetic tools (only three revolvers!) and the righteousness of their cause. Now they sally forth, now they go to their deaths. Perhaps the knight is lucky and his magic works one more time. Perhaps this is his last, final triumph.

Three knights unable to sleep. One twisting in his dreams, one having a listless conversation with the barman in the buffet car. One finding a simulacrum of love with a secretary from a leather goods manufacturer, a pretty Hungarian with nothing to do but courier documents her boss had forgotten, and Ryzhkov catching his own reflection in the window as they sped through the heat of a summer's day in Bosnia.

The rhythm of the engine changed, slowing as they entered the city, so unlike Petersburg, a chaotic tangle of yellow plaster and broken roof tiles that climbed the hills above the River Miljacka.

He saw a dividing of tracks, of points, pathways that might be taken but were not. Solitary men in strange uniforms standing about in the wilderness of the sidings puffing on their pipes, rocking back and forth on their heels.

The platform came into view. Baggage trolleys pulled by sweating boys through the dusty heat. The shrill scream of the whistle sounded as they stepped out of the carriage, through the press of the mob, a tangle of screaming Muslims, women begging in the shadow of the cathedral.

The heat slammed Ryzhkov in the face. By the time he reached the street he was bathed in perspiration.

Ahead of him was a labyrinth of narrow streets hung over with laundry and brightly coloured awnings. A dusty motorcar entered the square and the driver began squeezing the horn. Everything was noise and confusion. The Swede from the train bounded across the street and jumped into an open carriage across from them. ‘Gentlemen!' he yelled, whipping off his fedora and waving to them as he drove past. ‘God has smiled on you! Welcome to Sarajevo!'

THIRTY-SEVEN

They took the first place they found, rooms in a small commercial hotel, tucked in behind the station, put their mineral samples in the cupboard and then went right back out again.

Sarajevo was a maze of meandering streets, narrow bumpy lanes that twisted in on themselves the deeper one delved into the old quarter. Street signs were missing or contradictory; yellow stone buildings with crumbling tile roofs leaned precariously over the narrow lanes filled with children squalling like gulls. It was a city of mosques and cathedrals, where the Austrians had allied themselves with the infidel Muslims in their long campaign to suppress the orthodox Serbs. A city divided in a dozen directions, where everyone was on edge, watching their wallets. A city where sanity was a disadvantage, where life was running backwards.

Ryzhkov tried to shake it out of his mind, failed, and then made a sort of accommodation with the city, becoming invisible, floating through it all, ignoring the bizarre sights and sounds.

Splitting up, they walked along the entire parade route. Along with the royal itinerary, the exact route of the archduke's procession had been published in all the newspapers. Recommendations for the best viewing spots were posted in cafés and restaurants. From a security standpoint Ryzhkov thought that it couldn't be worse. Many of the roofs were gently pitched, and from the grilles and balconies of the city, behind the open, awning-covered windows, were hundreds of places where a marksman could choose his cover. For a bomb-throwing assassin there were also advantages; most of the route was along the main street that ran alongside the river—the Appel Quay, and there were few routes off it wide enough for a motorcar—the parade could easily be immobilized by a bomb, and the marksmen would have still targets for their long rifles.

By the afternoon the Okhrana men were hot, dusty and depressed. They found a café on Franz Josef Street and sat nursing glasses of warm beer. Dima was reading a greasy copy of the local newspaper. ‘Well, if we assume we're thinking like the Black Handers, we can just, you know . . . follow in their footsteps . . .'

‘And end up one step behind,' Hokhodiev said. He was staring at his half-empty glass of beer.

‘We go forward, that's all . . . just like you said, eh, Kostya?' Ryzhkov wanted to cheer Hokhodiev up, make him happy, make him forget all his worries about Lena. All it produced was a nod from the big man, his eyes never left the beer glass.

‘You know that they're coming into town on a tour tomorrow, they're going to visit the bazaar in the Turkish quarter.'

‘We'll follow them all the way,' Ryzhkov said. He stood up, wanting to leave. In spite of himself, he was getting angry. So what if Evdaev's hired assassins killed the Austrian heir? So some stocks and bonds went up, so some arms merchants grew rich selling howitzers? So what . . .
tryn-trava
? He had a sudden vision of Vera twirling on stage like some dervish dressed in diaphanous silk. He could just stop, sneak back into Russia using a forged identity, find her, escape . . . A big hand on his shoulder interrupted his thoughts. Hokhodiev was smiling at him.

‘Let's go little brother. We sleep tonight, for tomorrow we may die, yes?'

In the heat of the day they came shopping; the archduke and his wife, Sophie; by the looks of them, both pleasant enough. It was an ‘unofficial' spontaneous gesture designed to please the mostly Muslim crowd, and it seemed to be working. It was difficult to move in the press of happy onlookers. The archduke was a tall man, with dark hair running to grey. Well fed, well groomed, with extraordinarily clear blue eyes. He seemed younger than his age of fifty-one. Today he was dressed informally, wearing fine civilian clothes that made him appear more prime minister than prince. He asked polite questions about the foodstuffs that were on display, marvelled over the work of the silversmiths, admired bolts of fabric that had been hung from sticks above the narrow lanes, shook hands, and patted children on the head. The countess was quiet, well-behaved, modest. She looked like the mother you wished you had, always with a little half-smile, happy to be out with her husband touring the foul-smelling Turkish quarter of Sarajevo.

Ryzhkov moved through it all with pained eyes and a headache that he kept pushed out to the very edge of his consciousness. He scanned the windows and rooftops, saw dozens of suspicious faces. Dozens of potential sites from which a bomber could step and throw. Everyone looked suspicious, even the children. It was like a deathwatch. A macabre dress-rehearsal for a royal funeral; as soon as he saw him Ryzhkov knew the archduke was going to be killed.

It was noisy, hot, pungent with the odours of humans, animals, fruit, vegetables, spices and charcoal smoke from the braziers. General Oskar Potiorek, the Austrian-appointed Governor of Bosnia, himself a potential target, and a clutch of sweating bureaucrats hovered around the royal couple. Bespectacled translators struggled with the dialects of the Muslim merchants. At times a rhythmic ‘Zivio!' could be heard round the fringes of the crowd. When it got loud enough the archduke would look up, acknowledge that he'd heard the happy hurrahs and then everyone would laugh like a horde of trained monkeys.

Through the ancient market they continued. It seemed like hours. The three Russians triangulated themselves around the procession. In the packed lanes and narrow aisles the Austrian and Bosnian police were obvious in their blue and tan uniforms. They too seemed to be enjoying the day; everything was amiable, hospitable and delightful, as they all wound their way through the ancient labyrinth. At the food stalls samples were being given out and merchants were bowing to their customers. Ryzhkov even found himself trying to smile so that he wouldn't stick out.

Everything was so relaxed and secure that the royal couple took it in their fancy to explore, turning even deeper into the market. Ryzhkov, Hokhodiev and Dima turned with them. Now Hokhodiev was at the point of the triangle as they strolled from stall to stall. Ryzhkov's eyes swept the crowd, looking for the momentary predatory glance, the quickened movement of a man about to hurl a deadly object. Now they were nearing a line of ice-filled troughs with suspicious fish arrayed on them in perfect display. He saw Hokhodiev move ahead to check the street just beyond the fish stalls. Their eyes met and Kostya shook his head.

And then—

It came suddenly—only a noise at first. The sound of men's voices raised in protest. He whirled and saw that there was a scuffle in the crowd, someone shouting something in a language that Ryzhkov did not understand. He quickly forced himself to turn his eyes away, searching for someone looking, tightening his field of vision, eliminating possible threats and finally seeing Franz Ferdinand as he, too, became aware of the fracas— turning with a distracted smile across his face. His hand went to the countess's arm in a gesture of protection.

Ryzhkov desperately scanned the crowd. At the corner he saw a man on a ladder. A young man carrying his dark jacket over his sleeve. Now he was seeing the hard young faces everywhere: another flint-eyed student at the corner of a stall that was hung with carpets. Their eyes met for a moment, and the young man looked back with something like recognition, a flicker crossed his face and he suddenly looked down and away.

A diversion, Ryzhkov was thinking, his hand reaching beneath his jacket for the pistol he had tucked into his pocket, moving towards the carpet stall where the young man had vanished. He pushed his way behind the archduke, through the trailing bureaucrats. Looking for other faces, others who were watching, trying to pick out the bodyguards. Yes, it's what I would do, he was thinking as he pushed his way through the crowd; make a little noise, make a little test, see how they react, see which way they jump.

And then as quickly as it had happened it was over; the archduke turned his gaze back to the fish, the countess raised her handkerchief to her nose. No security, he thought. No security anywhere. ‘A thief,' people were saying to each other, nothing to worry about, only a thief who was trying to steal from one of the jewellers.

He reached the edge of the lane that opened on to a plaza dominated by a large grilled fountain, the centre of the crowded quarter. The young man was, of course, gone.

He turned back and ran right into the chest of a blue-clad Austrian policeman.

‘Excuse me,' the Austrian said, and pushed his way into the alley.

Ryzhkov headed back into the labyrinthine streets of the market, caught up in time to see Franz Ferdinand and Sophie as they were leaving. A huge covered Hispano was there in the blinding sun, its engine purring, waiting to take them back to the station. The royal itinerary flashed through Ryzhkov's memory. The archduke would return to his lodge outside Ilidze for the night; the ‘official' visit to the city was set for ten the next morning. Less than twenty-four hours, Ryzhkov thought. Hokhodiev came up beside him, his face grim.