Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (49 page)

Now that daylight had
come he soon found a steep but possible way down into the gorge, and it
consoled him a little to think that losing his way had enabled him to cross the
frontier without difficulty. To prevent smuggling, guards were, he knew,
stationed along it at intervals, and he had feared that if he ran into a patrol
they might hold him up. But that risk of further delay had now been averted.

On reaching the river, he
watered his horse, knelt down to drink himself, and, remounting, took the track
southward along its bank. When he had decided to attempt crossing the mountains
to the Drina on the previous evening, his map had shown him that its course
would not lead him to Yardiste, but to Visegrad, a small junction one station
down the line which also served another short branch to a place called Uvac.
That was all to the good, as he would now strike the railway almost ten miles
nearer to Sarajevo. But the river twisted most maddeningly and he dared not
attempt short cuts across its bends in case he lost his way again, or found it
blocked by unforeseen obstacles.

Soon after six o’clock,
he entered a village, but as it was Sunday few people were yet astir, and those
he saw had the same flat Slav faces as their brethren on the other side of the
frontier. They waved to him and shouted greetings in the same incomprehensible
tongue, so he waved back to them but did not pause to ask them if he was on the
right road. He felt certain they would not be able to understand him, and was
now obsessed with the necessity of not wasting a moment.

By seven o’clock he reckoned
that he had covered over twenty miles and began to be worried by the thought
that, after all, he might be following the course of some river that was not
the Drina. The nightmare idea came to him that during the previous evening he
might have doubled on his tracks, and now be cantering along the bank of the
Morava, back to Užice. But a quarter of an hour later he came in sight of a
single track railway line and a small town which was certainly not the one he
had driven through in the Rolls just twenty-four hours earlier.

A glance at the map and
the surrounding heights confirmed his belief that it must be Visegrad, so he
pushed on into it and made straight for the station. It was shut, but a
name-board above the entrance to the building showed him to be right, and a few
minutes later, to his ineffable relief, he saw a man dressed in the uniform of
an Austrian postman.

All Austrian civil
servants, whatever their race and however lowly their degree, had to possess at
least a rudimentary knowledge of German. With a sigh of thankfulness, De
Richleau found that he could once more make himself understood. The postman
proved both friendly and intelligent. He said that on Sundays the telegraph
office did not open, and that there was only one train from Visegrad to
Sarajevo. It left at eleven-thirty, so that after church people could set off
to whichever village up the line happened to be celebrating its summer Saint’s
day, and dance there in its beer gardens during the afternoon. At the same hour
a train left Sarajevo for Visegrad to convey people coming in the opposite
direction. Then at eight in the evening the two trains left their termini to
pick up people who had gone to these village f
ê
tes,
and convey them home.

A pleasant manner and a
handsome tip swiftly secured the postman as a guide to the postmaster’s house.
That official was just getting up but, unshaven and bedraggled as the Duke was,
he had not lost his natural air of authority. Within ten minutes he had the man
at his office. A telegram was promptly written out and dispatched to the Mayor
of Sarajevo. It ran:

Have positive information
that attempt will be made to assassinate Archduke on his arrival in Sarajevo
this morning stop Imperative that you should prevent his entering city stop Am
proceeding there by first train stop
Königstein Count and
Colonel Archduchess Ilona Theresa’s regiment Imperial Hussars.

At the thought that he
had, after all, succeeded in getting a warning through in time, De Richleau
felt a warm glow of elation. But his night in the woods had been far from the
type of rest he needed. His twenty-three miles’ ride had taxed him severely and
his wound was now making him a little feverish, so he gladly accepted the
postmaster’s offer to look after him.

His kindly host, greatly
excited by the alarming tidings he had brought, took him back to his house,
sent for a doctor to dress his wound, provided him with shaving things and a
good breakfast, changed some of his Serbian pieces into Austrian coin, and
finally saw him into the train at eleven-thirty.

It was a
tinkel-bahn
affair which stopped at every
station to collect country girls and their bucolic swains who were going to the
fête which, as this Sunday was St. Vitus’ day, and St. Vitus the patron saint
of Sarajevo, was in the Bosnian capital itself. Normally the distance would
have deterred some of the pleasure seekers, but the visit of the Archduke was
an added attraction, so the train soon filled up with young people. Their
healthy pink faces, gaily embroidered local costumes and shy tittering would,
normally, have aroused in the Duke a sympathetic feeling of happiness and
well-being; but he was much too concerned with the thought of what might be
happening, or have already happened, in Sarajevo, to pay any attention to them.

With maddening slowness
the little train chugged its way along the valley of the Praca. The journey
seemed interminable, but at last it completed its fifty miles’ trip and, at
half past two, puffed into Sarajevo.

Although the town was not
much more than half the size of Belgrade, it was far more beautiful. It had for
many centuries been an outpost of the Turkish Empire and had not yet lost the
oriental imprint through cheap and shoddy modernization. The river, which was
broad enough here to be navigable, ran through it, and from the valley bottom
in which it lay rose the minarets and domes of its hundred mosques, many of
which were set in groves of tall cypress trees.

As soon as De Richleau
reached the barrier of the station platform he asked the ticket collector if
the Archduke had arrived that morning. To his relief the man answered, “No sir.
I do not think he is expected till about three o’clock.”
[i]

The Duke, having expected
Franz Ferdinand either to enter the town before mid-day, or, if his telegram
had had the desired result, not enter it at all, thought the reply cryptic but
at all events it was clear that no tragedy had yet occurred.

Hurrying outside, he got
a cab and told the driver to take him as quickly as possible to the Town Hall.
The way lay through streets decorated with flags and gaily coloured rugs hung
from balconies and windows; and De Richleau was considerably perturbed to see
that along the side walks there were crowds of waiting people. Evidently, if
the Archduke’s visit had been cancelled, the fact had not yet been made public.

At the Town Hall he
inquired for the Mayor and was informed that His Worship had gone out with the
Military Governor, General Potiorek, to welcome the Archduke at the limits of
the city. That could only mean that the warning telegram had either not been
delivered, or had been ignored in the belief that it had been sent by some
irresponsible practical joker. Now, frantic with anxiety, De Richleau ordered
his jehu to drive him at full speed to the spot where the city officials were
waiting to receive the Archduke.

As the carriage moved at
a fast trot through the main streets the Duke noticed that among the banners
hanging at intervals across them were some bearing the words ‘
Welkommen
zu uttser Erzherzog und die Herzogin von Hohenberg
’;
which informed him for the first time that the Chotek was expected as well as
her husband. He also noticed that the streets were not lined with troops and
that there were very few police about. Many of the men in the crowd wore the
turban or fez of Mohammedans, but the majority had on the flat round hats of
Serbs or cheap caps manufactured in western Europe. As they stood lining the
route in the bright sunshine they appeared cheerful and well-behaved, but in
view of the known political hostility of the Bosnian population to the Austrian
regime it seemed that the authorities had been extremely lax in not taking even
reasonable precautions to keep order.

After a moment De
Richleau guessed the explanation. Potiorek was von Hötzendorf’s rival and the
Emperor’s favourite soldier. Naturally he would do anything he could to curry
favour with his aged master. As the military Governor of Bosnia he would be
responsible for all arrangements, and he must have taken deliberate steps to
put a slight upon the Chotek. In accordance with the Emperor’s expressed wishes
no function to which she accompanied her husband need be regarded as an
official one, so that was an ample excuse for the General to have refrained
from ordering any troops to be paraded.

A few minutes’ drive
brought the Duke to within two hundred yards of the bridge across the river,
over which the procession was expected to enter the centre of the town. There
was a policeman there who halted the cab, told the driver that he could go no
farther, and diverted him into a side street. Realizing that it was useless to
waste time arguing with an underling, or attempting to explain matters, De
Richleau jumped out, thrust a coin into the cabby’s hand and hurried forward on
foot. When he was half way to the bridge a cheer broke out beyond it.

Thrusting his way through
the bystanders, he got into the open road and broke into a run. The bridge was
lined with spectators on both sides. Between them he could now see some cars
approaching. A policeman tried to stop him, but he dodged the man and ran on.
The first car was an open six-seater yellow and black Mercedes with a low flat
bonnet. To the left of its windscreen was tied the Imperial flag, a square of
bright yellow with a black eagle and a border of black triangles. In its back
seat were sitting Franz Ferdinand and his wife. He was wearing the cocked hat
crowned with black cock’s feathers of an Austrian Field-Marshal, and she a
wide-brimmed, floppy straw decorated with pink roses. The car was moving at
little more than walking pace. Waving wildly, De Richleau shouted to its driver
to halt, but the man took no notice. Another policeman ran at the Duke, but he
dodged again. Next moment he was level with the car bonnet. At that instant he
glimpsed a movement in the crowd lining the side of the bridge. A shabbily
dressed youth had raised his arm. In his hand he held a black object the size
of a cricket ball. He was just about to throw it.

Swerving violently, De
Richleau leapt at him. As he grasped the young man’s upraised arm the bomb shot
from his hand. But his aim had been deflected. Instead of landing in the car,
it bounced off the hood at its back, fell into the road, and exploded with a
loud bang.

The Duke felt a violent
pain in his right leg, and, almost at the same instant, a sharp blow in the
side of the head. For a second he heard the screams, shouts and roaring of the
crowd about him. Then he fell unconscious among it.

When he came to he found
himself in hospital. Through a mist of pain he wondered how he had got there.
But after a few moments the pains localized themselves. There were three: his
old wound in the shoulder, a new one in his right leg, and his head bandaged
and aching. The scene on the bridge flashed back into his mind. He had
succeeded in diverting the bomb from the Archduke’s car, but as it had exploded
two fragments of it must have hit him.

As he struggled up into a
sitting position a pretty young nurse came over to his bedside.

“The Archduke!” he
gasped.

“You needn’t worry,” she
replied in German. “The bomb rolled off the back of his car and exploded in the
road. Two of the officers of his suite were wounded by splinters, and yourself:
but he was not even scratched. Lie down now, or you will increase the bleeding
of your leg.”

De Richleau’s brain was
now working quite clearly, so he knew that his head wound was not serious. It
could have been only a glancing blow from a piece of flying metal that had
temporarily knocked him out. Tankosić had spoken of ‘those crazy boys’ and
‘pistols’. He had said nothing of bombs. That meant that there must be more
than one assassin, and that the other, or others, were armed with automatics.
The Archduke had not been shot at but, as long as he remained in Sarajevo, he
might be at any moment. Pushing back the sheets, the Duke began to get out of
bed.

The young nurse tried to
stop him. Thrusting her aside, he insisted that he must get up to warn the
Archduke that another attempt might be made upon him. Thinking him delirious,
she abandoned her efforts to prevent his getting out of bed, and ran from the
ward to fetch the doctor.

The Duke’s clothes had
been neatly folded and temporarily laid on a chair beside his bed. The chairs
of the two beds next to his had uniforms similarly folded on them; so he knew
that the occupants of the beds must be the wounded officers. One was watching
him from dull eyes and moaning a little, the other was unconscious: so it
seemed they had fared worse than he had.