Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (59 page)

Count Tisza stroked his
beard thoughtfully, then went on: “That man is of the type most dangerous and
unsuited of any to be an absolute monarch—a mixture of timidity, impulsiveness
and vanity. When Hoyos returned from Berlin early in the month we were given to
understand that, although we could count on Germany’s support to the limit, the
Kaiser did not believe that there was the least danger of our quarrel with
Serbia leading to a European war. He took his decision to support us without
consulting his Cabinet, and we have since learned that afterwards he did not
bother to summon it in order to hear its views on possible repercussions to his
rash act. Instead, he seems to have suddenly changed his mind about the
likelihood of war; but even then he did not ask the opinion of his principal
advisers at a council. That afternoon and evening he sent for his Chancellor,
his military chiefs, and his armaments’ director, Krupp, one by one, and told
them impulsively to be prepared for an outbreak of hostilities. Then, having
set the German war machine secretly in motion, he calmly went off next morning
on a holiday cruise to Norway. Naturally, with no hand left to check them, the
delighted Generals took the bit between their teeth. And now, having been
accused by them so often in previous crises of having shown the white feather
at the last moment, his vanity will not allow him to climb down.”

“What you tell me tallies
with the sort of situation I have always feared,” said the Duke. Then, so that
his friend should not make any further disclosures that he might afterwards
regret, he added as a deliberate warning, “And so, Count, it seems that you and
I will soon find ourselves in enemy camps. May I say that in this frightful
tragedy there are few things that I shall regret more deeply.”

“And I.” The Count
smiled. “But at least I am happy to think that, for people like ourselves, war
does not mean the breaking of a friendship. It is one of the greatest blessings
granted to educated and travelled men, that they are not subject to the blind
hatred of the mobs. The less fortunate know next to nothing of other nations,
so regard them with either jealousy or contempt, and can be roused by any
alarmist parrot-cry to howl for their blood. Whereas we who have seen many
cities and walked the countryside of many lands, know that all races differ
only in small, unimportant things; and that they hold in common the golden
thread of charity, humour, courage and goodwill. For you and me war will mean a
separation, during which each of us will do his duty to his country; but
attributes of the spirit, such as love and friendship, can survive unsmirched
by the dirt of man-made conflicts. Even if we met as two scouts upon a
battlefield, instead of attempting to hack one another to pieces, I am sure we
should sit down and have a drink; then return to our respective lines without
giving away one another’s position.”

The Duke nodded gravely.
He too had been brought up in the tradition of chivalry, and he agreed
whole-heartedly with every word that the noble-minded Hungarian had said.
Soldier as he was, he regarded war as an evil thing, arising always from the
ambitions of unscrupulous men; and, although he had fought in many for the sake
of the interest and excitement they afforded him, he had always observed the
traditional courtesies of war, and counted his personal relationships with people
who chanced to be on the other side, as a thing apart, concerning only his own
honour.

“You have expressed
exactly my own feelings, Count,” he declared warmly. “And we can only pray that
the conflict will be a brief one. That it should occur at all is beyond words
tragic. In spite of your pessimism when you came to see me three weeks ago, I
must confess I lapsed into a fool’s paradise until I learned that the ultimatum
to Serbia had actually been sent. To have thrown that bombshell after such a
long delay seems really wanton. And, even knowing what I do of von Hötzendorf’s
ideas—I mean his theory about waging a series of wars against the Empire’s
potential enemies in turn as the best hope of holding it together—I still
cannot understand how your Government could have allowed him to persuade them
into opening hostilities after they had received Serbia’s abject submission.”

“I understand it only too
well.” Count Tisza rose from his chair ami began to pace up and down the room
with his hands behind his back. “Berchtold wanted to secure the complete
elimination of Serbia as a factor in Balkan politics, and he made up his mind
to use the Archduke’s murder as an excuse to achieve that. The delay in sending
the ultimatum is easily explained. The French President, M. Poincar
é
,
and his Prime Minister were on an official goodwill visit to St. Petersburg.
They were not due to leave until 23rd July. In order to prevent their
conferring personally with the Czar and his advisers, so that Russia and France
might formulate a common policy, it was decided to pigeon-hole the ultimatum
till that date. In fact, Berchtold actually delayed its delivery for an
additional hour in order to make quite certain that the Czar’s French visitors
should have started on their way home before the Russian Foreign Office learned
of it.”

“Then your pessimism was
well-founded. But, even so, the meekness of the Serbian answer must have been
quite unexpected. Surely it gave Count Berchtold all that he required? In fact,
I find it inexplicable that he should have courted condemnation of
Austria-Hungary
as
an aggressor by pressing the matter further.”

The Count shrugged. “For
that the Kaiser is to blame. It was he who gave us the blank cheque. Its use
was even urged upon us and implied that if Russia attempted to intervene,
Germany would attack her. Is it not plain to you how the minds of von
Hötzendorf and Berchtold must have worked? They said to themselves, ‘Here is
our chance to eliminate not only our little enemy, Serbia, but our big enemy,
Russia, as well. But unless we force a war upon Serbia, Russia will not
threaten us; so we shall have lost the God-given opportunity of involving the
Germans in a war which should cripple the mighty Empire of the Czars for many
years to come.’ From that moment the tone of Serbia’s reply became a matter of
indifference to them. Nothing but war would any longer serve their full
purpose; and they were determined to have it.”

“I see that; yet I still
marvel that either the Kaiser or the Emperor should have been willing to go to
such lengths, once all grounds for aggression had been cut from beneath their
feet by the humility of the Serbian reply.”

“You may well do so. But
I think the Kaiser is caught in the web created by his own initial impetuosity.
His Chief of Staff, von Moltke, has stated that Germany could never hope to be
in a more favourable condition to enter on a general conflict than she is at
present. The German Foreign Office agrees to that. During the Kaiser’s absence
all preparations that could be made for war, short of actual mobilization, were
hurried forward. He returned to find all his high officials not only ready for
war, but awaiting his signal to press the trigger. It is possible that a return
of his timidity might restrain him from taking the final plunge, but I fear his
people have made up their minds that it should be given no opportunity to do
so. I was told this morning on good authority that on one pretext or another
they prevented him from seeing the Serbian reply until sixty hours after it had
been delivered. When he did see it, apparently, he was astounded, and said at
once how delighted he was that we had secured everything we could possibly wish
for without resorting to war. But it was too late. By then we had already begun
hostilities against Serbia.”

Count Tisza coughed, then
went on sadly: “The case of my own sovereign is even more distressing. He was
tricked into acquiescence in a manner positively revolting to honourable people
like ourselves. When the declaration of war was handed to Count Paar for him to
obtain the Emperor’s signature to it, the old man said: ‘Well, this may be all
right; but all I can say is that monarchs of eighty-four don’t plunge their
countries into war without a just cause for doing so’. On this being reported
to Berchtold, he quickly formulated a statement to accompany the declaration
when it was submitted to the Emperor. Having urged such reasons as he could for
going to extremes, he went on to say that there was now no choice, as
hostilities had already begun. And he ended with the announcement that Serbian
troops had attacked Austrian detachments at Temes-Kurbin that morning.”

After taking a drink of
wine, the Count added quickly: “That was not true. It was a deliberate lie to
induce the Emperor to sign the declaration. Today, Berchtold has had that last
sentence erased from his statement, with the glib excuse that he had later
learned that the report of the Serbian attack was unconfirmed.”

De Richleau sighed. “How
horrible! How unutterably shocking that such unscrupulous men should have the
power to secure by fraud what amounts to a death warrant for Heaven knows how
many innocent people. Was there nothing you could do?”

“By the time I learned of
this awful deed, it was too late. And as far as the bigger picture is
concerned, everything points to all attempts at mediation or restraint being
similarly smothered by evil machinations. Russia has made it plain that she
will not stand by and see Serbia annihilated. The Kaiser is ringed around by
men who are now spoiling for a fight. Neither he nor the Czar are any longer
the real masters of their countries. Neither of them can afford to risk being
charged later with having betrayed their people by restraining their Generals
from taking measures to guard against a surprise attack. They are now no more
than cogs in a machine. It needs only a clash between frontier patrols and the
great war which we have so long dreaded will have started.”

“Again,” said the Duke, “you
have expressed my own thoughts as clearly as I could do it myself.”

“I would to God there
were more who thought as we do, and could see the bottomless abyss towards
which the criminal few are driving the helpless many. Needless to say, these
confidences I am making to you should go no further, either here in Vienna or
when you reach London. But I am so surrounded by honest fools, misguided
patriots, and self-seeking knaves, that it is a great relief to be able to talk
freely for a while to a man of my own stature, who puts the welfare of humanity
before a narrow nationalism.”

“I consider myself much
honoured; and you may rest assured that everything you have said, or may say,
is safe with me,” replied De Richleau; and, even had he not given his word on
that, he would have regarded Count Tisza’s confidences as sacred.

For a further half hour
they talked on about the impending catastrophe. Then a knock came at the door
and, on Count Tisza’s calling “Come in”, it opened to reveal a footman carrying
a silver salver. Advancing into the room, he presented the card upon it to his
master, and said:

“Excuse me, Excellency,
for interrupting you, but two men have called who ask to see you urgently; and
I understand that one of them is a high police official.”

Count Tisza glanced at
the card and murmured, “Major Maximillian Ronge. Yes, I know him, but I am
engaged. Tell him I cannot see him until to-morrow morning.”

The footman’s eyes
flickered towards the Duke. “He asked me to tell you, Excellency, that the
matter he has come upon concerns the gentleman who is with you at the moment.”

With a smile the Count
turned to his guest, and asked jocularly: “What trouble have you been getting
yourself into?”

De Richleau returned the
smile and answered, with a slight uneasiness which his voice did not betray: “None
that I know of.”

“With your permission, we
will have them up, then; although I must apologize for their intrusion on you
while you are my guest.”

“Don’t think of it,” the
Duke smiled again. “I shall be only too pleased to help them in any way I can.”

As the footman left the
room, the Count remarked: “Major Ronge is the head of the
Kundschafts Stelle,
our espionage and counterespionage
service. He is a very able fellow and it may be that he has ferreted out some
new angle to the Sarajevo murders, on which he wants your opinion. If so, it
must be something rather startling for him to bother us at this time of night.”

At the Count’s words De
Richleau’s uneasiness increased to apprehension, but his shrug conveyed that
the matter hardly concerned him any more.

A moment later the two
officials were shown in. Major Ronge was a jovial-looking fat man with sly eyes
and a small dark moustache that was waxed into a pair of stiff sharp points.
His companion, whom he introduced as Herr Höller, was a small wizened individual,
with grey hair and a long, sad face. Ronge did nearly all the talking and,
having bowed to the Minister-President, said deferentially:

“I thank your Excellency
for receiving us at this unusual hour. We would not have dreamt of troubling
you so late had we not learned that the gentleman who is with you took a cab
from Sacher’s to your house about an hour ago. I beg that your Excellency will
excuse the apparent impertinence of the question; but what do you know about
him?”