White Eagles Over Serbia (3 page)

Boris looked shocked. “I should be upsetted to see my friend in a bottle,” he said severely. Sometimes he found it a little difficult to appreciate the English sense of humour. “I am selling these to the Science Museum,” he added irrelevantly. “But my dear, my darling,” he went on in a burst of enthusiasm, “wait till Dombey sees what I have for him.” From a shelf he reached down two large cases of beautiful moths, neatly pinned to corks and classified. “Such beautiful things!”

They chatted for a while until the coffee-pouring ritual was at an end and they sat facing one another across the workbench. Then, idly fiddling with the little lapidary's wheel which stood near him, Methuen disclosed his plans. Boris put his hand to the side of his head and moved his face from side to side repeating “Aie! Aie” very thoughtfully. “It is most difficult,” he said. “I have good informations from a currency smuggler. Most difficult. The countryside is ruined. People starve. And you want to run around Serbia like a tourist with a fishing-rod.”

Methuen felt rather slighted by this description of himself. “Not exactly a tourist,” he said. “I want to know how I could live for a short while, say a week, in this territory which I know like the back of my hand.”

“You must look like a Serb.”

“What must I wear?”

“I will tell you.”

As usual Boris's information was copious and exact. In a series of brilliant and exact strokes he built up a Serbian peasant: baggy woollen trousers tucked into heavy leather riding-boots; greasy fur cap; woollen cape. Methuen for his part wrote out a list of the equipment he intended to carry: a thermos, a pistol and ammunition, a solid fuel stove, matches, a trout-rod. (“He is mad,” said Boris to the ceiling. “A trout-rod of all things!”) But he could not help smiling. “I will find you”, he said, “a three-quarter length duffle jacket and build you in poacher's pockets. Up here a pistol sling,” he slapped his left collar-bone. “You will clink about like the men-at-arms in Drury Lane.”

But already he was entering into the spirit of the thing. Money, for example, was little use. Communism had so debased currency that Methuen would be better advised to carry a few needles and some pack-thread. He could always buy eatables from the peasants with these. If he could fish without getting caught he might live mostly on trout; but he must beware of the police patrols. Nor could he count upon the peasantry to help him, for they had been reduced to a state of cowed subjection by the policy of collectivization and the police terror. They would immediately disown an unknown man living in their midst. “That is just it,” said Methuen. “There
are
only a few scattered villages in this area. It is all mountains, Boris, completely cut off. I lived once for a month in a cave there without seeing a soul.”

Boris shook his head doubtfully. “It is a most difficult thing,” he said. Nevertheless he set his mind wholeheartedly at Methuen's service, examining every aspect of the problem carefully and in detail. Their conversation lasted long into the night and when Methuen at last said good night and turned away down the dark streets in the direction of his club he felt as if he had just returned from a week spent in the mountains of Yugoslavia. Lying in bed in the dark he heard the ripple of the torrents, still mushy with spring snow; saw the twinkle of trout in the dark gulleys and fents of the Studenitsa river. And fragment by fragment recaptured the details of those two lost summers which he spent once with a Serbian friend, climbing the dizzy escarpment near the Janko Stone, or swimming in the black pools of water by the rocky river.

CHAPTER THREE

Further Preparation

I
t was in one of these mountain-pools that he discovered the Mother and Father of Trout, an enormous and insolent brute, loitering among the shallows like a beadle in a church; he doubted if his slender line would take him, but as the shallows offered no impediment in the shape of rocks and reeds he thought that he might manage to play the beast until he tired of it. His fly dropped upon that black and polished surface like a kiss, and languidly the great trout rose to it.… Methuen woke to the rattle of his alarm-clock on the table by his bed. He yawned and sat up. It was ten o'clock and the grey sky foretold a day of drizzle which made the thought of Yugoslavia all the more inviting as a prospect. He shaved slowly while he waited for his breakfast, still mentally playing the great fish, letting him race to the end of the pool until he felt the nylon line stretched to breaking-point.… But there was an infinity of work and planning which stretched between him and that placid trout-stream in the hills.

With difficulty he addressed his mind to the tasks in hand. First he rang Dombey and said: “I'm on.” Dombey pretended to show surprise. “I didn't think you would be,” he said and laughed when Methuen swore at him. “You will proceed,” he added, putting on a throaty accent, as of a duty clerk, “on the seventeenth instant by Orient Express. Travel department will have your papers by this afternoon. I have already signalled Belgrade that you are going. You should see some of the signals I've got back in the last few days about the project.”

“I'd like to,” said Methuen grimly.

In fact he did, spending the morning quietly with the index files on Yugoslavia, studying the telegrams and despatches about the country composed by the little staff of specialists in the Chancery of the Belgrade Embassy there. He looked up Sir John Monmouth in the Foreign Office list and was disappointed to find nothing beyond the bare list of his appointments; he was, however, mixing it up with
Who's Who
which raised his spirits somewhat by listing fishing among the more absorbing of the Ambassador's hobbies.

That afternoon he spent shopping at the Army and Navy Stores, filling out the little green invoice he had been given, and marking up his purchases to Foreign Office Special Orders Department. He treated himself to a new sleeping-bag, made of fine kapok-stuffed quilting, and a supply of fishing-line which he put on the same expense account. He was beginning to feel absurdly light-hearted. This feeling, he realized, would gradually disappear as he neared the theatre of operations. That evening he treated himself to a dinner at Scott's and a theatre, and when he reached his club surprised himself by staying up till past midnight reading a travel-book. He was normally an early bird. But soon these civilized pleasures would be out of his reach and he wanted to enjoy them to the full.

The following morning he walked in the grey bedrizzled streets, drinking in the smells of London, to the river. In the armoury at Millbank he presented his service order and was allowed to play about with pistols of every calibre and shape. Henslowe, the artificer, followed him about benevolently, showing him his wares with absurd pride. “You never turned in that Luger you borrowed, Colonel Methuen,” he said reproachfully. “I have to answer for it to the War Office.” Methuen apologized. “It's lying in a swamp somewhere,” he explained, and was immediately given an elaborate form to fill up with a description of how the weapon had been lost. “Just put L on D (lost on duty),” said Henslowe sorrowfully. “Now you say you want one with a silencer.”

“Small,” said Methuen. “Pocketable.”

“There's a new point three eight,” said Henslowe regretfully, but with the air of a haberdasher finding the right size of neck and wrist for a man of unusual shape. “Only for heaven's sake bring it back! You see,” he added, “it's still on the experimental list. First time they've fitted a silencer of this pattern to a point three eight. It's a sweet weapon, werry sweet.” He pronounced the word “weepon”. He found the pistol in question and pressed it upon his visitor, holding it by the barrel. It was small but ugly looking. “The balance is not all it might be, sir. But it's a werry sweet weapon.”

They tried it downstairs on the miniature range. “It'll do me very well,” said Methuen. “I must say it hardly makes any noise at all.”

“Just a large sniff, sir. Like a man with a cold.”

“Send it to me,” said Methuen, and Henslowe inclined his head sorrowfully with the air of a man who is glad to serve, but who feels that he is in danger of losing a much-cherished possession. “You won't leave it in a swamp, will you, sir?” Methuen promised faithfully not to. “It's hard when we get so few nice things these days.”

“I know.”

On his way to the Shop he could not resist a last look round the Tate Gallery with its harvest of rippling canvases bathed in the cold grey light of a London sky.

Dombey was sitting in his office dictating from a sheaf of papers into the mouthpiece of his dictaphone. “Come in,” he said, switching off, as Methuen put his head round the door. “Come in and tell me all the news.”

“Everything is in order. I came to give you an ultimatum: if I go to Yugoslavia I'm damn well going into the mountains to fish. If you want me to stay in Belgrade then the trip is off, and you can find someone else.”

A crooked smile spread itself over Dombey's countenance. “My dear fellow,” he said, “I should never stand in the way of a trouter. Never.”

“Well, so long as that is understood.”

“You are a free agent. If you think that you want to investigate the place where Peter met his death … who am I to say you nay?”

Methuen strode off down the corridor to the despatch-room and arranged for his parcel of effects to be delivered to the Foreign Office bag-room. They would be sent on to him under seal, while he himself was to travel in the character of the innocent Judson, the army accountant. That gave him an idea. He rang Dombey. “This man Judson,” he said.
“Hist,”
said Dombey. “Not on the phone. Come to my office.” Methuen returned to find his chief glaring indignantly at a minute written in the round feminine hand of the Chief Secretary. “In the past seven days,” he read out, “we have monitored all phone conversations in the SOq building. Out of a hundred conversations ten concerned confidential matters.
This must stop.”
He sighed. “It is perfectly intolerable. We are back in the Middle Ages. We
have
to use the phone for something … what were you asking?”

“Judson,” said Methuen. “What does he look like?”

“Like an accident. Adenoids. Spots, Flat feet. Constipation. Colds. Heavy underwear. Horn-rimmed spectacles.”

“All right. All right.”

“Passport section will give you all the information you need about him. They've fixed up his passport to fit you.”

They had done more than this; they had obliged him with a Yugoslav ration card, an identity card, and a sheaf of points which would, all things being equal, enable him to purchase enough textiles for two shirts in Belgrade. It was quick work. Methuen retired to an empty office and put in a toll call to Ravenswood, the little country pub in which he spent all his holidays. Septimus answered almost at once with his great growling voice of welcome. “But of course, Colonel Methuen; of course we've room. Pity it's only for a night though—can't you make it longer?”

“I wish I could,” said Methuen.

“Never mind,” said Septimus. “I'll see that there's something worth eating for dinner. What time will you be in?”

“About seven-thirty.”

“I'll send the pony trap.”

“Don't worry. I'll walk through the fields.”

Septimus groaned; nobody over eighteen stone can bear to hear the word “walk”.

“I'd rather you than me,” he said.

That night Methuen left the little station of Ravenswood and walked across the wet fields to The Parson's Nose, already preoccupied with the problems of his mission. Septimus and his buxom wife greeted and made much of him and he found that they had given him the best bedroom.

He spent a happy hour playing darts in the tap-room with his village acquaintances before confronting the kind of dinner for which Septimus was famous. Then he read for a while before turning in, full of an unhurried contentment. The book was
Walden
which he never tired of; a little India-paper edition which he always carried when he was out in the wilds and out of which he had evolved a laborious private code for keeping in touch with Dombey. Indeed he had first selected the book as a code-book, only to fall under its spell after many re-readings in solitary places.

He lay for a long time that night in the darkness, listening to the deep stillness of the English countryside and gathering himself together for the new mission which he knew would tax his resources to the utmost. Somewhere a nightingale sang softly, with a magical lazy clarity. The scent of honeysuckle came in at the open windows, and he could hear the soft whisper of rain in the leaves outside the window-sill. Ah! the familiar luxury of England! Why was one such a fool, to trade it against the chances of a nameless grave in an Asiatic swamp or on a Bosnian mountain?

For a wild moment he thought of ringing Dombey up and telling him: “I've changed my mind. I'm going on to the retired list for good. I'll stay right here in Ravenswood until I die.” The longing was so great that he even rose on one elbow in the dark and reached out towards the telephone by his bed; but he knew in his heart of hearts that he would never lift the receiver off its hook. He must go on this new mission. Yet to assuage the thought of telephoning he got out of bed and rang up Boris. The wig-maker's voice sounded remote and crackly, and was half-submerged in a buzz of talk. “I have some friends here,” he explained. “But your fancy dress is delivered this morning. I hope it fits you.
Sbogom,
my dear fellow.”

“
Sbogom
,” said Methuen and the word (“Go with God”) took him back once more to those remote mountain fastnesses where the golden eagle brooded and where the deep swift rivers rushed between wooded banks on their way to the sea. Smiling, he fell asleep.