“No good,” Jack groaned.
At the far end of the orangery, the guards were starting to scramble through the shattered window. Soon they would be upon them.
“What’s this?” Jack had noticed something else in the time phone’s read-out. “Another message! Must have been sent just before the signal was lost.”
Sure enough the read-out was blinking.
Message 2…
Jack tapped a button.
Have lost contact with P-shape. Rescue may
have failed. Can only help when we have a
signal. If P-shape alive — he will help you.
In frustration, Jack snapped the time phone shut.
Next to them, Anna kissed Dani lightly on one cheek and rested his head on the stone floor. She looked back down the orangery where they could now see the shadows of the guards approaching. Then she got to her feet. She had stopped sobbing. She was suddenly cold and emotionless. There was steel in her voice. “Now I want one thing… only one thing: justice.”
It took them two hours to creep from the grounds of Schonbrunn and make their way cross-country to the pre-arranged meeting place. They worked their way through thick woodland, where shards of moonlight ghosted through the canopy above. Eventually, they arrived at some farmland, where a rustic timber barn nestled between the edge of the wood and the fields beyond. The crude structure was raised from the ground on four wooden stilts and in the grey light Jack saw that a large stone rested on each stilt, supporting the barn — the smooth surface of the stones deterred rats and mice from the barn’s contents. Gingerly, Anna approached the wooden ladder that led to the elevated doorway. She climbed up and levered open the door. Soon all three of them were safely inside. It was clear that this was to have been the rendezvous point with Vaso and Goran. But worryingly there was no sign of them. They had no idea what had happened to Pendelshape either, following his escape from the burning Tiger. They were alone and they would not be able to stay long.
Through cracks in the crude wooden walls, the moonlight washed eerily into the barn. Anna curled up in a corner and for a while remained motionless — brooding. Finally, seeking comfort from distraction, she pulled some bread and cheese from her bag and shared it out. They sat and tried to eat, but Jack’s mouth was dry and the bread and cheese rolled up in his mouth in a papery ball. When Anna finally spoke to them, her voice was strangely calm, “So — you will help us — as we planned, yes?”
It was clear what she meant. They had not staged the rescue from Schonbrunn for fun. Dani’s death was not to be in vain. They were still expected to travel to Sarajevo to help in the assassination attempt and help Anna find justice.
Zadok the Priest
“Doboj, eh? I tell you what, they’ve got some daft names around here…”
Jack could not summon the energy to respond to Angus. The night in the third-class railway carriage had exhausted him.
Anna scanned the thronging crowds from the steps of Doboj’s main railway station. “There!” she whispered.
Further up the street stood a pony and hay cart. A dark-skinned boy — he couldn’t have been more than ten years old — was perched high on a wooden seat at the front of the cart.
“Our transport…”
“It just gets better and better,” Angus groaned.
Soon they were slumped on the hay in the back of the cart and the contraption rumbled off.
Jack reflected on their escape from Schonbrunn the day before and their six hundred and fifty kilometre journey from Vienna to Doboj — one hundred and sixty kilometres north of Sarajevo. It had been long and exhausting. On Thursday afternoon Anna had managed to get them aboard a train from Vienna to Belgrade and then on to Doboj. The Bosnian Serb underground network was proving to be remarkably pervasive and efficient. Jack had lost count of the times Anna had started a sentence with the words, “I have a friend who…”, or “I know someone who…”. The valuable train tickets had been procured from just such a source — a young train porter who was part of the network, and also, as Jack was starting to notice, one of Anna’s many male admirers.
Since Schonbrunn, and the final message from Jack’s dad, the time phone had gone back into hibernation and the telltale yellow bar had remained stubbornly unlit — making any pursuit by VIGIL very difficult. It also meant that there had been no communication with Pendelshape. There was still the risk, however, of being picked up by the regular Austro-Hungarian authorities — but so far they had avoided this fate.
Jack had begun to understand more about Anna as they rumbled south. Her desolation over the loss of her brother became buried under a brooding and renewed hatred of her Austro-Hungarian masters. Jack had persuaded her to tell them how she had orchestrated the daring rescue from Schonbrunn.
She had explained, “We are planning raid in Vienna for long time. It is heart of Austrian Empire. We have plans already. After I meet you, and realise you are sent by the English teacher, Dr Pendelshape, I know we must protect you… get you to Zadok to help us in Sarajevo. After capture at Vienna Station, we activate the Vienna cell. We know where they take you — so we organise raid.”
“You took a big risk to save us,” Jack had said.
“We must. You sent by English teacher. You will help us.” Anna’s eyes had softened, just for a moment.
Anna had not explained, however, what form this ‘help’ was supposed to take, and exactly how he and Angus, in particular, could possibly bolster the cause of the Southern Slavs. Clearly Pendelshape had mightily impressed them on his visit and any connection with the ‘English teacher’ meant access to great, if as yet unrevealed, powers. Of course, Jack had not explained to Anna the strange history of Pendelshape, and how they really came to be there. They had also pleaded ignorance about the battle at Schonbrunn. In the moonlight, it had been confusing, and only Jack and Angus knew what had really happened. But even using the extraordinary powers of VIGIL, Inchquin and the Rector would surely have their work cut out to minimise its historical impact.
Anyway, Anna was only interested in one thing. There was no question in her mind as to the righteousness of their mission in Sarajevo. Nothing would persuade her to deviate from her chosen path. Now she was doing it for her brother… as well as her family and her nation. To have this certainty, Jack thought, must be good. It would make everything so… simple.
Jack recalled the conversation that he and Angus had had with Anna on a sleepless moment on the long journey from Vienna.
“Anna, why do you hate them so much? Why do you want to kill the Archduke?” he had asked. There’d been a pause. A shadow had passed across her face and her eyes had moistened.
“You need to understand who I am… where I am from.” She had spoken softly — in monotone. It was almost as if she had been trying to distance herself from the words that came out of her mouth. “My family is poor. Some years ago my father had argument with neighbour. One day there was knock at the door… my father was murdered…” Anna wiped a tear from her eye, “in front of me… and Dani.” Jack was speechless, but he heard the bitterness in her voice. “To the authorities, it was just another peasant dispute. They do nothing. This ‘great power’. And for this we could never forgive. Then they take Dani. And now I want justice.”
They lay down in the hay and the gentle rocking of the cart finally put them all to sleep. Jack woke up as one of the cart wheels hit a pothole. He didn’t know how long they had been going… but it must have been some time, because the dust and smell of the coffee shops of Doboj had long since gone and now they were surrounded by verdant woodland. The road had changed to a rutted and bumpy track.
