White Eagles Over Serbia (2 page)

“Ever been back to the place since?”

“Not since fifty-three or thereabouts.”

“How is your Serbian?”

“It used to be very good once.” He had suddenly begun to watch Dombey's right hand as he might have watched the hand of a hypnotist. A vague image was rising in the back of his mind of high flushed mountains, crested with firs, and resonant with the vibration of icy waters flowing southwards and westwards. Dombey's finger had begun to quest among the mountains of southern Serbia, vaguely, irresolutely. It settled finally on a town in the old Turkish Sanjak of Novi Pazaar. Methuen smiled and sat up. It was as if a doctor had pressed upon an aching place. “Around here,” said Dombey, and Methuen felt the province throb in his memory like a sick member.

“Twenty years ago or more,” he said aloud, “I fished that whole range two years running.”

“Something is going on here, in these mountains,” Dombey paused impressively and lit himself a cigarette.

“What is the brief?”

“There isn't anything as clear as a brief.”

“Where do I come in?”

“I don't know yet.”

The noise of the London traffic murmured outside the window, imitating the ripple of trout streams in Methuen's imagination. “Explain,” he said patiently, and Dombey began his explanation.

“We know the Royalists are working night and day to start a revolution against Tito. Their headquarters is in Paris and they are managing to infiltrate people into Yugoslavia. That's easy to understand. But recently, Methuen, they've been sending in small groups of fairly heavily armed people. Of course they don't stand a chance against Tito's OZNA organization; they are being gathered in like rabbits. There have been a dozen spy-trials in the last few months, all fairly openly reported in the Tito press, and all concerned with bands of
armed
men who are alleged to be roving about these mountains with some pretty decent equipment.”

“War surplus bought in France?”

“Yes.”

“But this is very normal for the Balkans.”

“Nevertheless,
why
always in
this
area? It is easy to seal off this mountain chain. If you or I wanted to bother Tito there are a hundred likelier places to send agents to. Why get so many chaps captured and lose so much equipment in this place particularly? We don't know.”

“What do the people on the spot think?”

“They are completely blanketed. Movements of foreign embassies are restricted to an area of twenty kilometres around Belgrade and Zagreb. Everyone is followed night and day. It is quite impossible for a foreigner to make an excursion into this area and see for himself.”

“Perhaps they want to blow up the railway.”

“Would there be any point in that?”

“None that I can see.”

Dombey picked up a bundle of pin-flags from the tray on his desk and began sticking them on to the map at various points. “Seven different points in the same area,” he said at last, standing back and putting his head on one side. “Now here's
another
thing. There has been of course a great deal of police activity in this area, but no great
military
movements, so obviously the Communists don't regard these incursions as any great threat to the stability of the régime. Nevertheless they themselves are as puzzled as we are.”

“How do we know that?”

“Two refugees who worked for OZNA have recently come over to Trieste.”

“Are you suggesting”, said Methuen, “that I go wandering into this area and get myself bumped off as an agent of King Peter?”

“No,” said Dombey. “I just want your advice.”

“Could I reach Belgrade? There may be some gossip to be picked up there which would explain it.”

“Would you like to?”

“If there were a chance of fishing those mountain streams I'd like to very much,” said Methuen candidly, “but to sit in Belgrade and embarrass the Embassy.…”

“Ah yes,” said Dombey sadly. “The Embassy.” In general SOq made a point of operating independently of Foreign Office establishments abroad, in order not to compromise their work. “This is an exception,” said Dombey sorrowfully. “I'm sorry about it. So by the way is Sir John. You should see his telegrams. He is dead against your going in. And frankly I'd prefer to operate independently. You could go in as a business man, but visas take an age to come through. I am anxious to push on with this show immediately. Particularly since this last accident. That has worried everyone.” He paused.

“Ah!” said Methuen. “At
last
we are getting to the point. What has, in fact, happened?”

“Peter Anson is dead.”

“Ah!” said Methuen soberly.

“You never met him. He was Military Attaché in Belgrade, and a keen fly-fisherman. He found a way of spending his week-ends in these mountains, and last week he didn't come back from a trip. Yesterday the OZNA notified the Embassy that they had found his body in the mountains near Novi Pazaar. Shot through the head. By one of these roving Royalist bands.”

“But how stupid of him”, said Methuen angrily, “to go blundering into an area like this with his trout-rod. I suppose he drove down there in his car, followed all the way?”

“No. He was cleverer than that. You see every week a car is allowed to take a bag down to the Consulate in Skoplje. The road passes through this area and there is a place in the valley where the OZNA car drops behind a good way. Peter used to drop himself off the car, spend Sunday in the mountains fishing, and pick up the car as it returned at dawn on Monday. Only this time he didn't come back.”

There was a long silence. Dombey seated himself behind his desk again and began to draw on the green blotter with a pencil. “You see,” he said softly, “why there isn't any brief? All this may be quite unworthy of our attention. Peter was of course trying to get in touch with one of these Royalist bands to find out what they were up to. It is quite likely that the Communists are telling the truth. He may have made contacts, only to be shot up by them. You see, the Royalists hate us nearly as much as the Communists do. They consider that we put Tito into power and were responsible for the death of Mihaelovic.”

“I know,” said Methuen wearily.

“Will you go as far as Belgrade.
Not
into the mountains, please. Just spend a week or two there and see what you can pick up. I shan't worry if you find nothing. The whole place is under the blanket.”

“How would I go?”

“The War Office is sending out a civilian accountant to inspect their establishment there. His visa has been cleared. You could go as Mr. Judson if you wished, and stay for a week or so.”

“All right,” said Methuen without any marked enthusiasm. “It's a thankless task. Hated by the reds and blacks, distrusted by the Embassy.…”

“Above all, no dicing with death,” said Dombey, picking his nose. “Don't take chances.”

“What does the Ambassador think?”

“He is livid with rage. But the Secretary of State is for us this time so he can't actually stop you.”

“When do I start?”

“When can you?”

“I want a week. I shall ask Boris for a brief on the territory. You won't mind?”

“People don't read files any more,” said Dombrey plaintively. “They always go and see Boris.”

“He should be on your staff really.”

“If there were any justice in the world he should have my job,” said Dombey. “But he prefers to make wigs.”

“He's a good deal more rational than either of us.”

“Yes,” said Dombey sadly. “Yes.”

“I'm getting old,” said Methuen suddenly, standing up. “I can't think why having once retired I shouldn't end my days in the south of France or somewhere nice. Why keep on like this?”

“You would die of boredom.”

“I suppose so.”

“And by the way, if you don't like this job you have only to turn it down and I'll assign someone else.”

“Who
else?” said Methuen not without some pardonable contempt. “Is there anyone who knows that part of Serbia as well as I do?”

“Let us not become boastful,” said Dombey, and he took from his pocket a roll of galley proofs covered in erasures and blotches, and spread them before him gloatingly. “At least if I retired I should have a consuming interest to keep me sane.” (He was the proud author of a monograph entitled “Aberrations of the Chalk-Hill Blue
Lysandra Coridon
”.)

“Butterflies,” said Methuen contemptuously. “I'll bring you back some butterflies to knock your eye out. You should see them in those mountains, settling in clouds along the rivers.”

“Remember,” said Dombey sternly.
“No
mountains.
No
rivers. You are not to go wandering off or I shall get hell from the Foreign Office.

“The Foreign Office!”

To his surprise Methuen found himself feeling all of a sudden extremely youthful and spry. He recognized the familiar feeling of heightened life which succeeded every fresh call to adventure.

“Damme if I don't walk over and see Boris now,” he said, and he was already walking briskly across towards Covent Garden before he realized how skilfully Dombey had baited the hook for him; he was probably sitting up there in his office now, smiling, clasping and unclasping his great hands. Methuen felt the idea of Yugoslavia skidding upon the surface of his mind like a trout-fly, tracing its embroidery of ripples. He had risen right out of the water. “I shall certainly take my trout-rod,” he muttered as he marched along. “Whatever Dombey says.”

CHAPTER TWO

Boris the Wig-maker

B
oris Pasquin's little shop was locked when Methuen reached it, but there was a light at the back of the building so he rattled the letter-box loudly and shouted “Boris” through it. The little theatrical wig-maker very seldom left the premises and there was a good chance that he was in the great rambling workshop at the back busily engaged in polishing a stone or playing patience.

In the gloom the crammed shelves of the showroom guarded their mysterious treasures—enough to delight the heart of a magpie or a child, for Boris combined his wig-making business with that of a general dealer in everything from precious stones to playing-cards. He himself was fond of saying that there were two hubs of the Empire, one official and one unofficial. The official hub was of course Piccadilly; the unofficial was Boris Pasquin's little shop in Covent Garden. This was something more than a flight of fancy for the range of Boris's interests did extend to practically every country in the Commonwealth.

While he had the kind of talent which goes to make millionaires he preferred to deal in small ranges of rare objects which delighted his imagination more than they profited his pocket. Shelves of china; Japanese fans; Byzantine metalwork from the marts of Salonika and Athens; statuettes smuggled from the “digs” of Egypt; hand-painted playing-cards from Smyrna; pages of illuminated manuscripts from the monasteries of the Levant; lovely corals from the Red Sea; dried herbs from China; chess-men carved in wood and ivory by Burmese prisoners. The visitors to his little shop were legion, though they were never men of title or importance. Lascars from the liners brought him precious stones and carvings picked up in the ports of the East; scholars and collectors in the humbler walks of life traded him ancient coins against gems or manuscripts. But no visitor ever escaped sharing a black coffee with him in the work-room at the back of the shop, and these business conversations enabled him to pick up a mass of miscellaneous information about foreign countries which was of the utmost interest to Dombey's little band of enthusiasts in SOq.

Boris was a Galician Jew who had emigrated to London in the early twenties and had rapidly established himself in business as a wig-maker; but his range of interests was too large to be confined, and he rapidly expanded his business in a hundred unorthodox directions. He had also in the past performed several difficult and dangerous missions for the organization to which Methuen belonged, though he never accepted a bounty for them. He would explain gravely that the security of British citizenship was a bounty freely bestowed upon him which he felt that he could never repay. To take money for his services to the Crown was more than he could bear. “What I do, I do because I am proud to be accepted in the British family,” he would say, his hand on his heart.

Many had been the attempts to coax him into SOq, but he valued his independence too much to become a full member of an organization so exacting in its demands upon his time. He remained nevertheless an unofficial ally of the brotherhood his usefulness growing with the years; he had become almost an institution, and there was hardly an operator who would undertake a mission to a little-known country without first asking Boris to offer him a brief. Methuen was no exception to the rule.

“Boris,” he called again, and putting his ear to the flap of the letter-box was relieved to hear the familiar shuffling step of the wig-maker as he crossed the dark floor to the light-switch. The light came on and Boris stood there staring at him through the glass like a small and rather soiled penguin. His black beard was uncombed and he fumbled with the pince-nez which always dangled round his waist on a length of string. He got Methuen into focus at last and smiled. “Methuen!” he said. “Welcome back,” drawing the stiff bolts of the door, and repeating “Welcome back”. He locked the door carefully behind his visitor and led the way to the back of the shop. The great work-room was brightly lit, and full of the smell of coffee which simmered in a pot on the gas-stove.

Methuen looked around him with amused interest. “What have you got here?” he said. Boris rummaged in a cupboard for a cup and saucer. A large silver wig stood upon a wooden pedestal obviously half-finished; next to it, offering a grotesque contrast, were two shrunken human heads in bottles. “Peruvian,” said Boris. “They came in yesterday. One is all that remains of Atahualpa, the Indian who started the revolution years ago, remember?” “My God,” said Methuen, “one of these days someone is going to stroll in to you with my head in a bottle. You won't turn a hair.”