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

His new office might be hot and stuffy but it was private; Breitner was thankful for that as he passed Johnny his coffee. Dressed in his new clothes, the young Englishman looked suitably belligerent. It sent a shiver down Breitner's spine to think that his plan could actually work.

So far it had all been pretty textbook - beat the suspect up and then be nice to him. He’d even started to build a fairly credible back story for him. Breitner offered Johnny some bread rolls and cold cuts. It had been simple enough to find him, after Detective Vila had alerted him to the arrival of the Young Bosnia cell. Breitner had telephoned all of the high end establishments in the vicinity and sure enough, a concierge at the Hotel Bosnia had encountered a young Englishman, purporting to be from the British Consulate. The rest of the plan had been the best Breitner was able to come up with on the spur of the moment.

'Breakfast?' Breitner spoke in Serbo-Croat, wanting to see how good Johnny's grasp of the language was.

'Yes, thank you.' Johnny started chewing the bread with some difficulty. Breitner suspected that his kick to the jaw might have been over zealous.

'My job is to monitor the nationalist problem in Bosnia and report back to the Joint Ministry of Finance, whose administration it falls under.' Breitner knew this was going to be a risk, but there was no one else.

'So tell me what's going on.' Johnny cringed as he bit on a loose tooth but somehow he managed to keep his composure. If it wasn't for the colouring of his cheeks it would have been hard to guess that he was in discomfort.

'I've been receiving anonymous warnings of a plot to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, when he visits Sarajevo this month.' Breitner watched as Johnny's face registered the news.

'Is there anything definite?' Johnny asked, clearly assessing the information to see how it could be used to benefit him. ‘Do you think the threats are connected to the army manoeuvres your Heir will be attending?’

'It’s reasonable to assume so, but these sort of rumours are not uncommon, Johnny. However, they tie in with information I've gathered from intercepted mail.' Breitner had seen a clipping announcing the Archduke's visit, sent from Bosnia, to one Nedeljko Cabrinovic, care of a cafe in Belgrade known to be a place where Young Bosnia dissidents congregated. Cabrinovic had also sent a number of postcards in allegorical form from a border town, but the meaning was fairly clear that an act of great Serb patriotism was being planned.

'I've also had a report of a Young Bosnia cell returning to Sarajevo,' Breitner added. He was sure it was a cell - everything he'd seen so far pointed to it. Vila had even told him that he thought Cabrinovic had two travelling companions who'd been trying to distance themselves from him. Vila had said that one of them was called Gavrilo Princip; his name had cropped up in the piles of intercepted mail Breitner spent his day sifting through. Breitner couldn’t quite believe that Cabrinovic had given Vila his name, but Gavrilo Princip was a known associate of Cabrinovic’s in Belgrade so it was possible that they were travelling together.

'Two members of the cell have registered with the police in Sarajevo. One of the addresses is of a known police sympathiser, so nothing much will be going on there. The other is altogether more interesting.'

Breitner saw that Johnny was fully alert now, taking in every word and analysing it for this report he'd been shouting about all over town. 'Have you passed your concerns on to the Archduke? Doing that should clear things up nicely and draw my report to a logical conclusion,' he said.

'There are protocols for such things, Johnny,' Breitner replied.

‘Even so, if you went directly to him, it could be a feather in our - your cap. I mean do you want to spend the rest of your life in a place like this?’ Johnny waved his hand at the drab surroundings.

‘I doubt the Archduke would listen, even if that were possible. He’s not overly fond of Hungarians, especially Hungarians with my heritage. Also, I’m not currently in favour with our illustrious Heir. How do you think I ended up in this place?'

Breitner had had to clear up the mess when Colonel Redl was exposed as a spy. Conrad von Hotzendorf, the Chief of Staff, had ordered Breitner to go and see Redl, give him a gun and make it plain that he should do the honourable thing.

That should have been an end to it. A discreet announcement was made, explaining that the Colonel had been overworked and had taken his own life; he was to be buried with full military honours. Unfortunately, the full extent of the Colonel's treachery was discovered by the press. Redl had been living a secret life of debauchery well beyond his means. To pay for it, or because he was blackmailed as a result of it, the Russians had induced him to give away his nation's secrets. When the story broke, Breitner and the Chief of Staff had been summoned by Franz Ferdinand.

Breitner had heard stories about the Archduke's temper - it was still part of the folklore of the Ninth Hussars years after his tenure as colonel, but nothing could have prepared him for the maelstrom that confronted him. Breitner had thought Franz Ferdinand was going to choke with rage.

He was incensed that Colonel Redl had been allowed to take his own life, firstly because it was a mortal sin and secondly because he hadn't been properly interrogated to discover the full extent of the damage he'd done.

Breitner and Conrad von Hotzendorf both tendered their resignations. The Emperor refused to accept the Chief of Staff's, but