The Assassins by Alan Bardos (best novels in english txt) 📗

visit, if indeed Apis had ordered the cancellation of the assassination. Ilic's mother is reported to have said that a man with big feet came to see her son on the eve of the assassination, but the reason for his visit is unknown. Apparently, Malobabic had big feet, so it could have been him. There are many theories about Malobabic’s presence in Sarajevo, but I’ve tied it into Johnny’s story, having him there to warn Ilic of a possible attempt to foil the assassination.

No explanation has ever been put forward as to why Danilo Ilic was late meeting Misko Jovanovic to collect the weapons, putting the whole plot in danger, so it seemed fitting to me that Johnny should have kept him out drinking the night before (from the accounts I’ve read I think that the Semiz wine shop, where Gavrilo used to go, was on the opposite bank of the river to Franz Ferdinand Street, overlooking Lateiner Bridge).

The assassination itself happened as a result of a whole series of mistakes and missed opportunities. Nedjo Cabrinovic met Detective Vila on the way to Sarajevo; Vila was a friend of his father's, whom he’d recently seen. Vila saw Trifko Grabez and Gavrilo Princip sitting in the same train carriage and asked who Gavrilo was, but his suspicions were not raised. A simple request to see his papers would have revealed that he was travelling illegally.

There was no central coordinated intelligence to counter the activities of the nationalist movements in Austro-Hungary’s Balkan provinces; the conspirators’ letters were not intercepted or deciphered. The repeated warnings of a possible assassination were ignored by General Potiorek, the Archduke and the Austro-Hungarian Government. 'The Archduke and the Assassin', by Lavender Cassels, is particularly interesting on this point. If Bogdan Zerajic had been identified as a nationalist after his assassination attempt on General Varesanin, the authorities may have been more aware of the growing militancy of the Young Bosnians and reconsidered the Archduke’s visit, or at the very least increased the security around it. Viktor Ivasjuk, the Chief of Detectives, was said to have been a student of Lombroso's theory of criminology and to have kept the skull of Bogdan Zerajic on his desk, which he used as an inkpot (see Vadmire Dedijer and David James Smith).

All the accounts that I've read agree that Nedjo Cubrilovic threw his bomb at the Archduke's car from the river side of Appel Quay, just before Cumurija Bridge, but there is some inconsistency as to where exactly he, Ilic, Mehmedbasic, Cvjetko Popovic and Vaso Cubrilovic stood at the junction when this happened. Some accounts have the plotters lined up along the river side of the embankment in the open, with Nedjo. Some suggest they were on the city side, in the shade. This is largely because the assassins themselves gave varying accounts and changed positions from the ones Ilic gave them, when he led them down the Quay the day before the assassination. The lengthiest investigations of where they stood are given in, 'One Morning in Sarajevo', by David James Smith and, 'The Road To Sarajevo', by Vadmire Dedijer, which I've tried to follow in this book.

I've made an educated guess as to what the surrounding buildings were at the junction, having studied maps, old postcards and photographs of the time. The wooden picket fence where I think Mehmed Mehmedbasic stood and the place where I think the Mostar Cafe was, at the bottom of Cumurija Street, have long gone, (along with the trees). A road now goes through the place where I've depicted them. I know that there was a doctor's surgery where the injured from Nedjo's bomb were treated and a tobacconist’s where Cvjetko Popovic stood, but not exactly which buildings they were. The Girls’ High School and the bank were in the places described in the book and the Prosvjeta building is still there and is now a hostel. Gavrilo Princip worked for Prosvjeta prior to the assassination, so I'm assuming it was in this building. Popovic also hid his weapons in its basement after Nedjo threw his bomb.

There was a great deal of confusion in the City Hall after Nedjo's attempt and the decision to change the route added to the complications. Dr Grade, Sarajevo's Chief of Police, who was riding in the first car of the motorcade, was apparently told to repeat the instruction that the route had changed, but whether he understood what he was being asked to repeat as he hurried to join the motorcade, or that he was supposed to inform the drivers, doesn't appear to have ever been fully established. If the Archduke's motorcade had carried on down Appel Quay after leaving the reception in the City Hall then the whole catastrophe would have been prevented. No one investigated the reason why the car went the wrong way and followed the original route, probably either to save face or because the authorities didn't want to be distracted from the real issue of blaming Serbia for the assassination.

Lastly and perhaps most poignantly, the Archduke's car stopped in front of Gavrilo Princip after it had made the wrong turning. A policeman saw Gavrilo Princip point his gun at the Archduke’s car and ran to intercept him, but a spectator stopped him with a kick. Many people have attributed this action to Mihajlo Pusara, the actor who worked as a clerk in Sarajevo’s City Hall and who had sent Nedjo the newspaper cutting announcing the Archduke's visit. However, there is another account of a policeman trying to stop Princip after he'd fired the first shot, but it states that he was punched in the stomach by someone in the crowd.

If you would like to read more about the assassins and what motivated them I'd strongly recommend David James Smith's, 'One Morning in Sarajevo', Vadmire Dedijer's, 'The Road To Sarajevo', or, 'The Desperate Act', by Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht. If you're more interested in Franz Ferdinand and Sophie's story