definition of manhood.
“Maybe I can’t.”
“That cocksucker thinks he’s coming down here,” Jovan said.
“He won’t like it,” Draza said.
It was evening by the time Marrano and Serebin walked toward the docks, through mud streets lined by little shacks that served as cafes. Inside, fires glowed in open brick ovens, the patrons laughed, shouted, cursed, and somebody played a mandolin or a balalaika. Where the street curved downhill, Marrano stumbled over a pig on a rope, which gave a single, irritated snort, then went back to rooting in the dirt. Somewhere above them, a woman was singing. Serebin stopped to listen. “Only the moon shines on the heights/And lights up the graves of the soldiers.”
Marrano asked him what it was.
“A Russian army song, ‘The Hills of Manchuria,’ from the 1905 war with Japan.”
“A lot of emigres, here?”
“Thirty-five thousand. From Denikin’s army, and Wrangel’s. Cossacks and doctors and professors, you name it. There was a big IRU chapter in Belgrade but they broke away from the Paris organization. Our politics-you know how that goes.”
Now they could see the docks, where the river Sava met the Danube-lanterns fore and aft on barges and tugs, and their shimmering reflections in the water. A few flood lamps, where work went on at night, a shower of blue sparks from a welder’s torch, red lights on buoys that marked a channel out in the river.
“Peaceful, isn’t it,” Marrano said. “Too bad it won’t last.”
Serebin knew that was true. Another city on fire.
“The Balkans are a problem now, for Herr Hitler. Italian army pushed all the way up into Albania and the Greeks not about to quit fighting. So, he’s got to send a serious force, thirty divisions, say, to calm things down, and they’ve got to go through Yugoslavia to get where they’re going. Which means the Belgrade government had better sign up with the Axis, or else. Right now, Hitler’s at the edge of his patience; ultimatums, bribed ministers, a fifth column-Croatia, and what comes next is invasion. The Yugoslavs know it, and they’ll give in, the government will, but the word at the Srbski Kralj is that the military, particularly the air force, won’t stand for it.”
As they neared the harbor they had to wait while a man came and got his dog, some kind of immense Balkan mastiff, so black he was almost invisible, who stood his ground and growled to let them know they were not allowed to go down his street. “A thousand pardons,” the man said, from the darkness.
“The two captains,” Serebin said. “They’re working for us?”
“For London, technically,” Marrano said. “But the simple answer is yes. There is now a second operation, an alternative plan in case the barges don’t work. In a way, it’s a better idea, but it will require digging and drilling, will require overt cooperation from the Yugoslavs, and it took Hitler to press Belgrade very hard before we got the answer we wanted.”
“What will they do?”
“Take the cliff on the Yugoslav side of the river and drop it in the Danube.”
“By digging and drilling?”
“That’s just to set explosive charges. Once we leave the freight business, we go into mining.”
They circled the harbor on an old wooden catwalk until Marrano found the dock he was looking for. At the far end, past river families cooking over charcoal braziers, past bargeloads of lumber and tar barrels and heavy rope, there was a small machine shop in a rusted tin shed. Inside, a workman at a bench was taking a carburetor apart, dipping each piece in a pan of gasoline to clean it. The shop smelled good to Serebin, oil and burnt iron, scents of the Odessa waterfront.
“Tell him we’re Captain Draza’s friends,” Marrano said.
Serebin translated, and the workman said, “Then you’re welcome here.”
“The magic formula,” Serebin said.
“In some places, yes. Others, I wouldn’t try it.”
“Who are they?”
“Oh, Serbian nationalists. Ultranationalists? Fascists? Anyhow they’re on our side, for the moment, so the name doesn’t matter.”
Beyond politics, Serebin knew exactly who they were. They reminded him of a few of the men who’d served with him in the civil war, and in the Ukraine, during the war with Poland. When you needed somebody to go crawling around in the enemy camp, when you needed somebody to deal with the sniper in the bell tower, it was Draza and Jovan who went. And, not always but surprisingly often, did the job and came back alive. You saw it in their eyes, in the way they carried themselves. They were good at fighting, it was just that simple, and Serebin, the officer Serebin, had quickly learned to tell them apart from the others.
Marrano strolled out to the end of the wharf. “Come and have a look.”
Serebin joined him. Roped to the dock were four barges, riding low in the filthy water, with tarpaulins tied down over high, bulky shapes. Serebin stepped over onto the first in line, put a hand on the canvas, and felt a round iron wall. All that time in Bucharest, this was what they got for it.
“There should be three more,” Marrano said. “Two from Germany, one here in Belgrade, but it looks like the German shipment isn’t coming.”
“What happened?”
“According to Gulian, the honorable gentlemen at the Zollweig factory are having difficulties. They refer, in their wire, to ‘an anomaly in the application for export license.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I would say it means, in German commercial terminology, something akin to fuck you. ”
“They were paid.”
“Oh yes.”
“So it’s robbery. When all the nice language is peeled away, they stole the money.” He paused, then said, “Or, if it isn’t that, it is,” he looked for the right word, “intervention.”
“That’s a possibility. Very, very unappetizing, if true. Polanyi and I spent time on that, in Istanbul.”
“And?”
“Who knows.”
“Well then, four barges will just have to be enough.”
Marrano looked at his watch. “Five, maybe. And, while we’re waiting, let me tell you how we’re going to do this.”
The workman finished his carburetor, drew a shutter down over the entry, snapped a padlock on it, and left for the evening. The weather was warm, it was almost a spring night in the harbor, so Marrano and Serebin sat on the wooden pier and leaned back against the metal shed. Marrano produced a page of typescript and gave Serebin a pad and pencil.
“Here in Belgrade, we’re at kilometer 1170 of the river, which means we’re a hundred and forty kilometers from the high ridge at 1030. The ridge runs for three kilometers, which should be enough-we don’t know how much time it will take to sink these things, but with the weight they’re carrying they’ll go down in a hurry.
“The tug will have to stop at the Roumanian border post-that’s at a village called Bazias, at kilometer 1072. If you leave here at one in the afternoon, figuring a speed of fifteen kilometers an hour, it gets you to Bazias by 7:30. Your papers are in order, and you should be through there in twenty minutes or so. Sometime after 9:45, you pass the pilot station at Moldova Veche, on the Roumanian shore. Supposedly, a pilot must be taken onboard for the passage through the Iron Gates. However, in real life, which is to say Roumanian life, all the big steamers do this, but only some, maybe half, of the tugboats. A pilot would complicate your life, but it isn’t the end of the world, though it might have to be for the pilot if he decides not to be reasonable.
“By this calculation, you come to kilometer 1030-there’s a big granite rock protruding from the water at 1029, it probably has some sort of folkloric nickname-sometime after ten at night. So, when you sight the rock, that’s it. The captain of the tugboat, discovering that one of his barges is sinking and taking the others down with it, now must cut the tow and, as soon as possible, alert the Danube authority.
“But by then, you’ll be long gone. About forty minutes beyond the Stenka ridge, kilometer 1018, the river Berzasca enters the Danube from the north, coming down from the Alibeg mountains, part of the Carpathian range. There’s a village where the rivers meet, and the tug will go a kilometer or so upstream, to a bridge over a logging
