road. On the bridge will be a Lancia, the Aprilia sedan, horribly dented and scratched, probably the color gray when first purchased or stolen, and it is not impossible that there was, at some point, a fire in the trunk. You may, if you’re like me, spend an idle hour wondering how such a thing could possibly have happened, but cars don’t live soft lives in this country and it remains a speedy and dependable machine. I’ll be driving, and we’ll take the Szechenyi road back to Belgrade. Then we stay here, see what develops on the river, and attend to our mining interests. Any questions?”
“The Szechenyi road?” Serebin knew it by reputation, a narrow track, hewn out of rock in the nineteenth century, at the direction of the Hungarian count who gave it his name.
“It works, I’ve tried it, just hope for dry weather. We use it also in the emergency plan, which has us bypassing Belgrade, crossing Yugoslavia by train-it is very difficult by car-or, in a real emergency, by plane, courtesy of our friends in the Royal Yugoslav Air Force, to a town called Zadar, between Split and Trieste on the Dalmatian coast. There we will be picked up by boat, probably the Nereide but with Polanyi you never know. The contact in Zadar is a florist, in a small street off the central square, called Amari. If you need to signal for help, no matter where you are, wire Helikon Trading with the message Confirm receipt of your letter of 10 March.
“Eventually, you can go back to Paris, or, if they’ve found out who you are and they’re after you, Istanbul. I should add that when Polanyi was told of your meeting at the bar in Paris, it was his feeling that no matter what went on or didn’t, your margin of safety has been compromised and you ought to get out.”
“He’s right,” Serebin said.
“He often is. So then, Istanbul.”
Serebin began to describe his flight from Paris, but the ragged beat of a tugboat engine approached from the mouth of the harbor and he rose and followed Marrano out to the end of the pier. In the glow of the dock light he could read the boat’s name, Empress of Szeged. So, a Hungarian boat. Which, when he thought about it, was no surprise at all. As the tug, towing a heavily loaded barge, slid cleverly up to the dock, Emil Gulian, looking exceptionally out of place in business hat, scarf, and overcoat, appeared at the stern, waved, then tossed Serebin a rope. “Hello there,” he called out. “Good to see you again.”
Serebin secured the line to a heavy bollard, then boarded the tugboat and walked forward to the pilot cabin. The Empress was manned by its owners, a young couple, both wearing the river sailor’s uniform of dark blue shirt and trousers. Zolti, short for Zoltan, was Hungarian, lean and wiry, face weathered by life on the water. Erma, a Viennese, was a few inches taller, broad and fat, with an immense bosom, sleeves rolled back to reveal a pair of meaty arms, and a face that would stop a clock. A peasant face, broad and fleshy, with shrewd, beady eyes, a bulbous nose, and a wide slash of a mouth, anxious to laugh at a world that had laughed at her. All this crowned by ebony hair that had been chopped off with-Serebin thought about a hatchet, but, more likely, a scissors.
To Serebin the couple spoke German, Zolti very little, Erma chattering away, flushed and excited and, every few seconds, licking her lips. Maybe a nervous habit, or maybe, Serebin thought, she’s beginning to feel it.
He certainly was. On the train down to Belgrade, it came to visit and stayed. Ticking away inside him, a knot in the chest, a dry mouth and, earlier that day, lighting a cigarette, he’d burned his palm with a flaring match.
“Are you going ashore?” he asked them.
“No, no,” Erma said. “We stay here.” With a nod of her head she indicated the barges. “On guard.” She picked up a short iron bar by the helmsman’s wheel, gave it a comic shake and closed one eye, as though she were protecting a tray of cookies from naughty children.
Gulian and Marrano were waiting for him on the dock, both with hands thrust in the pockets of their coats. As Serebin descended the ladder, Marrano said, “So?”
“They’ll be fine.”
“Don’t much care for the Nazis, those two,” Gulian said, shaking hands with Serebin. For the brief moment Serebin had seen him in Bucharest, at the Tic Tac Club, he’d been hesitant, retiring, the diffident escort of his nightclub singer girlfriend. Not now. He was younger than Serebin remembered, had a humorous face-a subtle, powerful smile that never went away, and the air of a man almost religiously unimpressed with himself, though that went for the world as well. He was also, Serebin thought, having a very good time-whatever leash he was off, a very good time.
“You’ll be my guests for dinner,” he said.
The last thing Serebin wanted, but Gulian wasn’t someone you said no to. They walked out of the harbor, found a cafe where Gulian made a telephone call-a nasty business, in Belgrade-then went off in a taxi to a small private house not far from the Srbski Kralj. For an elaborate dinner, served by two graceful young women, cooked by a man who kept opening the kitchen door a crack and peering out. Chicken-liver risotto, fillet of a fillet of pork, puree of roasted red peppers with garlic. Platters of it, which were tasted, then sent back to the kitchen, with Gulian calling out, “Magnificent, Dusko!” each time, to spare the feelings of the chef. There were no other customers-they ate at a large table in the dining room-this wasn’t precisely a restaurant, or it was a restaurant only when Gulian, or others like him, wanted it to be. For the finale, Dusko himself presented confitures of fruit doused with Maraschino.
Gulian hadn’t actually intended to come to Belgrade. But, once “those bastards over at the steel mill” began to procrastinate, he’d grabbed his checkbook and jumped on a train. “They were paid what they asked for-that was my mistake,” Gulian said. “When I didn’t bargain, they said to each other, ‘Well, he really wants this thing, let’s see how much.’”
“What did you do?” Serebin asked.
“First of all I showed up. Second of all I yelled-in French, and a few words in German, but they got the idea. And last of all I paid. So…”
A very good host, Gulian; provident, and entertaining. He knew the country, knew its history, and liked to tell stories. “Ever heard of Julius the Nephew, ruler of all Dalmatia?” No, actually, they hadn’t. “The last legitimately appointed Emperor of the West, designated by Rome in the middle of the fifth century. Despite, I should add, the plotting of one Orestes, former secretary to Attila the Hun.”
Well, it took Serebin’s mind off what he had to do. And the stories were good, Gulian a sort of writer manque, delighted by excess and eccentricity. “When the Turkish vizier Kara Mustapha was defeated at Vienna,” he said, over a forkful of risotto, “he could not bear to leave behind his most beloved treasures, especially the two most beautiful beings in his world. So, with tears of sorrow and regret, he had them beheaded, to make sure that the infidels would never possess them: the loveliest of all his wives, and an ostrich.”
After the dessert was taken away, Gulian called for brandy. “To success, gentlemen. And, when all is said and done, death to tyrants.”
One-fifteen in the morning. Serebin back at the harbor, this time by himself. He alerted the tugboat crew to what he was doing, then settled down to wait, lighting Sobranies with cupped hands in the sharp spring breeze. The tied-up tugs and barges bumped against their moorings, and he could hear boat traffic out on the river, up from Roumania or down from Hungary, sometimes a horn, sometimes a bell. Overcast in Belgrade, as always, maybe one or two faint stars in the northern sky. 1:30. 1:45. Serbian time. Dogs barking, up on the hillside. A singing drunk, a car, whining as it worked its way up a long grade.
2:10. The sound he knew as a military engine; overpowered, untuned, and loud. He watched the headlights, bouncing up and down as the vehicle wound its way along the dirt track that served the harbor. It stopped briefly at the end of the dock, then drove onto it, and Serebin felt the pole-built structure sway and quiver as the old wooden boards took the weight. It was, he saw, an open command car, vintage maybe 1920. “Greetings, Ivan,” a voice called out, Ivan being any Russian whose name you didn’t know.
Captain Draza and Captain Jovan, drunk as owls and only an hour late. In light blue officers’ uniforms, leather straps crossed over the tunics. They banged and rattled in their car, then hauled out a wooden crate, which they carried between them with a burlap sack on top.
“It’s the armorers!” Jovan called out. Draza thought that was pretty funny. They dropped the crate at Serebin’s feet. It landed hard, and Jovan said “Oh shit!”
“No, no,” Draza said. “No problem.” Then, to Serebin, “How are you?”
“Good.”
“That’s good.”
He rummaged around in the sack, found a screwdriver, and began prising boards off the top of the crate and tossing them over his shoulder into the water. When the crate was open, he lifted out a black iron cylinder with a ridged top and a shiny steel mechanism bolted into a recessed circle in the center, the whole thing maybe twenty-
