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

‘I never really understood the difference between Kropotkin and Lenin.’ Johnny said. When he was at school all he’d ever wanted to do was revolt against the oppressive forces that kept him down - the whos and whys of it all were just detail.

Breitner gave Johnny a worried look, ‘There’s no time to explain everything to you now.’

Breitner carried on, leading Johnny around a blind bend where the houses curved outwards. 'So am I meant to walk up to this Ilic, start quoting a revolutionary tract and he’ll let me into his cell?'

'Don’t worry, I’ve got some ideas about that. Just try and make friends for now. His mother runs a boarding house - that boarding house.' Breitner pointed at a corner house as they came round the bend. 'Be in the park opposite the embankment at lunch time tomorrow and make sure you bring the Kropotkin book. If I’m not there don’t worry, just send me a note when you find something out. Oh, and good luck.'

Chapter 18

Archduke Franz Ferdinand watched as the ‘battue’ began, his beaters driving tiny roebuck towards him, through a narrow wattle trap. Hunting, for the Archduke, as with most of his contemporaries, was not an exercise in tracking but a test of marksmanship. He lifted his double barrelled Mannlicher rifle and took aim. The rifle had been specially made for him, as Franz Ferdinand believed that repeater rifles didn’t enter into the spirit of the hunt.

The first roebuck sped gracefully past the stand, the sun shining on its gold-red fur. When it came to marksmanship, the Archduke was in a league of his own. He pulled the trigger, hitting the roebuck cleanly on the shoulder. The Archduke fired again and again, bringing down a roebuck with every shot and pausing only to reload.

A dark shadow drifted over the traps. Franz Ferdinand instinctively switched target and fired at an itinerant pheasant, surgically bringing it down, then turned back to the roebuck and without missing a beat, felled the final one of the batch.

"You haven't lost your touch Franzi," Sophie said, while the next roebuck were brought up. 'You're still King Gun.' She occasionally liked to join him when he hunted; hunting was part of the story of their relationship.

Franz Ferdinand had first met Sophie during a hunting party organised by his cousin Archduke Friedrich and his indomitable wife, Isabella. They'd been good friends at the time and they were Sopherl's employers. It had been the Archduke's first hunt since returning from his grand tour of India, the Far East and America, however nothing could replace the sport of his homeland. He'd been "King Gun", at that hunt - the person with the biggest “bag”.

'But that was not the prize I sought,' Franz Ferdinand said, taking Sophie's hand. Sophie may have been a lady-in-waiting, forced into the shadows by the rich and highborn, but she had stood out instantly.

She was one of eight children, five of whom were daughters. Her father, a career diplomat, did not have the means to support unmarried daughters. The only choice they had when coming of age, if unmarried, was either to become a lady-in-waiting or a nun, both of which were considered equally untouchable for a man in Franz Ferdinand's position.

'Don't you think you should have left me alone? Surely, I was more trouble than I was worth,' she responded teasingly.

'Not for a moment,' he answered. She'd enthralled him from the first. There was something defiant in her large, brown eyes that betrayed intellect and strength, and had captivated him, like the dark eyed dancers he’d seen on his grand tour. She was the self-assured swan he'd been seeking in a pool of inbred ducklings. To prove the point, Sophie had been unimpressed by the advances of the heir to the throne, rejecting him with firm politeness.

Unbowed, the Archduke continued to pursue her whenever they met at balls or hunting parties. He even arranged for a transfer to an infantry regiment near his cousin Friedrich’s palace in Pressburg, where he could visit Sophie twice a week. In the elegant gardens of that majestic chateau, they eventually fell in love. It was when Franz Ferdinand came down with tuberculosis that he resolved to marry her, regardless of what society thought.

'I don't regret anything, Sopherl. Your letters were my lifeline when everyone else had given up on me.'

'Are you certain your health can stand up to a Bosnian summer, Franzi?' The memories of that time still ran raw in both of them. Sophie was ever worried that he would relapse.

'I am determined to do my duty, Sopherl,' he answered, but he knew it wasn't his health that really concerned her.

Franz Ferdinand watched Janaczek, his estate manager, personally oversee the beaters as they drove the next roebuck through the traps, before he opened fire. This was his passion, his release from the endless wait for the throne. His power may have been limited, but that did not stop him from exerting influence. He'd invited the German Kaiser to his country retreat in Konopiste. It was vital that a strong union with Germany be maintained and Franz Ferdinand hoped to build on their friendship by obtaining the Kaiser’s support for the reforms he planned to implement when he finally took the throne.

He brought down the last of the roebuck and waited for the next lot to be driven up, while the beaters cleared away the dead. It was an impressive total; Franz Ferdinand would at least be "King Gun" today. The Archduke's total bag as a huntsman was close to a quarter of a million head, all carefully recorded in his game book and mounted on the walls of his country retreats, with the date and place the trophy was taken. Most of Europe's leading sportsman had similar totals, including Franz Ferdinand's British equivalent, the Prince of Wales.

'What kind of