Spies of the Balkans

Back upstairs, Zannis was restless. The street below his window was deserted, the city quiet. No, not quiet, silent, and somehow sinister. Thousands of conversations in darkened rooms, he thought; they could not be heard but they could be felt, as though anger had its own special energy. And this, despite his better, too-well-learned instincts, he found exciting.

At seven the following morning, the telephone rang in his room, no name, no greeting, just an upper-class British voice, clipped and determined.

“Have you everything you need?”

“I do.”

“Tomorrow’s the day. I know you’ll do your best.”

“Count on it,” Zannis said, hoping his English was proper.

“That’s the spirit.”

No way to go back to sleep. He dressed, holstered his Walther, and went downstairs for coffee. When he returned, an envelope had been slid beneath his door: a local phone number, and a few words directing him to maintain contact, using street call boxes or telephones in bars, throughout the following day. Pavlic was going to pick him up at ten and drive him around the city. Until then, he didn’t know what to do with himself so he sat in a chair.

Outside, the people of the city began their day by breaking glass. Big plate-glass windows, from the sound of it, broken, then shattering on the pavement. Accompanied by a chant: Bolje rat, nego pakt! This much Serbo-Croatian he could understand: Better war than the pact! Outside, more glass came crashing down. He could see nothing from his room but, going out into the hall, he found a window at the end of the corridor. Down in the street, students were chanting and breaking store windows. As cars drove by, the drivers honked furiously, waved, and chanted along with the students: “Bolje rat, nego pact!” One of them stopped long enough to tear up a copy of Politika and hurl it into the gutter.

At nine-fifty, Pavlic’s car rolled to the curb in front of the Majestic. Vlatko was sitting in the passenger seat so Zannis climbed in the back where, on the seat beside him, he discovered a pump shotgun with its barrel and stock sawed off to a few inches. As Pavlic drove away, a group of students ran past, waving a Serbian flag. “Brewing up nicely, isn’t it,” Pavlic said.

Vlatko was wearing a hat this morning, with the brim bent down over his eyes, and looked, to Zannis, like a movie gangster. He turned halfway round, rested his elbow on top of the seat and said, “They’re out on the streets, in towns all over Serbia and Montenegro, even Bosnia. We’ve had calls from the local police.”

“They’re trying to stop it?”

From Vlatko, a wolf’s smile. “Are you kidding?”

“Rumors everywhere,” Pavlic said. “Hermann Goring assassinated, mutinies in Bulgarian army units, even a ghost-a Serbian hero of the past appeared at Kalemegdan fortress.”

“True!” Vlatko shouted.

“Well I’ll tell you what is true,” Pavlic said. “At least I think it is. Prince Peter, Prince Paul’s seventeen-year-old cousin, has supposedly returned from exile. Which means he’ll be crowned as king, and the regency is over, which is what the royalists have wanted for years, and not just them.”

Zannis liked especially the ghost; whoever was spreading the rumors knew what he was doing. Ten minutes later, Vlatko said, disgust in his voice, “Look at that, will you? Never seen that in Belgrade.” He meant two SS officers in their black uniforms, strolling up the street in the center of the sidewalk. As Zannis watched, two men coming from the opposite direction had to swing wide to avoid them, because they weren’t moving for anybody. Pavlic took his foot off the gas and the car slowed down as they all stared at the SS men, who decided not to notice them.

They drove around for an hour, locating the addresses that made up their share of the list. Two of the men lived in the same apartment building, two others had villas in the wealthy district north of the city, by the Danube-in Serbia called the Duna. Heading for the prefecture with the holding cell, they drove up the avenue past the foreign legations. The Italian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian legations, in honor of the newly signed pact, were all flying the red-and-black swastika flag. “Does that do to you what it does to me?” Pavlic said.

“It does,” Zannis said.

Vlatko stared out the side window. “Wait until tomorrow, you bastards.”

As they neared the prefecture, Zannis said, “If Prince Peter becomes king, who will run the government?”

“Whoever he is,” Vlatko said, “he’d better be a war leader.”

Zannis, hoping against hope, said, “You don’t think Hitler will accept a new government? A neutral government?”

Vlatko shook his head and said to Pavlic, “A real dreamer, your friend from Salonika.”

At the prefecture, the detectives had been listening to the radio and told Vlatko and Pavlic the news.

“What’s happened?” Zannis said.

“It’s what hasn’t happened that’s got them excited,” Pavlic said. “Cvetkovic was supposed to give a speech at ten, but it was delayed until noon. Now it’s been delayed again. Until six this evening.”

“When it will be canceled,” Vlatko said.

“Why do you think so?” Zannis said.

“I know. In my Serbian bones, I know it will be canceled.”

And, at six that evening, it was.

7:22 P.M.

A warm and breezy night, spring in the air. Pavlic pulled up in front of a villa; the lights were on, a well- polished Vauxhall sedan parked in the street. “They’re home,” Pavlic said.

“You don’t want this, do you?” Zannis said, nodding toward the shotgun.

“No, leave it. It won’t be necessary.”

There was no doorbell to be seen, so Vlatko knocked on the door. They waited, but nobody appeared, so he knocked again. Nothing. Now he hammered on the door and, twenty seconds later, it flew open.

To reveal one of the largest men Zannis had ever seen. He towered above them, broad and thick, a handsome man with blond hair gone gray and murder in his eye. He wore a silk dressing gown over pajamas- perhaps hurriedly donned because half the collar was turned under-and his face was flushed pink. As he gazed down at them, a woman’s voice, a very angry voice, yelled from upstairs. The giant ignored her and said, “Who the hell are you?”

“General Kabyla?” Pavlic said.

“Yes. So?”

Again the voice from upstairs. Kabyla shouted something and the voice stopped.

“We have orders to take you to the prefecture,” Pavlic said. Zannis didn’t get all of it but followed as best he could.

“From who?”

“Orders.”

“Fuck you,” said the general. “I’m busy.”

Vlatko drew an automatic pistol and held it at his side. “Turn around,” he said, producing a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket.

“I’m under arrest? Me?”

“Call it what you like,” Pavlic said, no longer patient.

As the general turned around and extended his hands, he said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

In answer Vlatko snapped the handcuffs closed, took the general by the elbow, and guided him toward the door. Where he stopped, then shouted over his shoulder so his voice would carry upstairs, “Stay right there, my duckling, I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

At the prefecture, there were already three men behind bars. Two of them, disconsolate, sat slumped on a bench suspended from the wall by chains. A third was wearing most of a formal outfit-the white shirt, black bow tie, cummerbund, and trousers with suspenders, but no jacket. He was a stiff, compact man with a pencil mustache and stopped pacing the cell when a policeman slid the grilled door open. As Vlatko unshackled the general, the man in