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

boy with his nose pressed up against a sweet shop window.' A smooth liquid voice brought Johnny out of his stupor. The girl in the pink and white dress was standing next to him. She reached across and picked a small grey, metal fragment from the lapel of his jacket. It took Johnny a moment to realise that it was a piece of the bomb casing which Nedjo had thrown. 'A few inches higher and it would have been in your neck,' she said, handing it to him.

'Thank you. Sorry, do I err…?' Johnny bumbled. There was something about her that turned him into a tongue-tied idiot. It was an uncomfortable feeling for him. He usually put the lady aflutter.

She smiled and arched an eyebrow. 'Don't you know me, Krumpli? This might remind you.' And there in the foyer, surrounded by the leading citizens of Sarajevo, she gave a nimble roll of her hips. Johnny choked, suppressing a laugh as he remembered.

‘Sorry, the bomb blast must have knocked the sense out of me.’ It was all coming back: the auburn hair now tightly tied back and those amber eyes. ‘You're the dancer.’

'At last, Krumpli!' she laughed.

‘Why do you keep calling me ‘potato’ in Hungarian?’

‘Well, what else am I to call you? You are as stupid as a potato and you never took the trouble to introduce yourself. Too busy trying to lift my robes.’

‘That’s not exactly true - it was more your veil, actually. I mean, is it any wonder I didn’t recognise you, when the last time we met, you were dressed like that!’ Johnny flushed. 'Anyway, I apologise. My name is Jonathan Swift, but you can call me Johnny.'

‘Johnny,’ she repeated with a smile. He liked the way she said his name, full with the richness of European culture and sophistication. It was as if she were trying something new and foreign, and she liked it.

‘I am Katalin Zhofia Weisz. You may call me Kati.' They shook hands formally. 'At last we meet properly, just as I am about to leave for Belgium.'

'Belgium - you're going to Belgium?' Johnny bit back his disappointment.

'Yes, in the morning. What's wrong with Belgium? My mother was Belgian,' she said defiantly.

'Nothing. I can see that a lot of good things come from Belgium.…’ he replied appreciatively. ‘And lace, chocolate, beer. Why are you going to Belgium? Is that where you’re from?'

'It's for my father’s work - he’s a civil engineer.’ She pointed out a distinguished man milling around with some austere local dignitaries. He was very different from the showy carpetbagger who’d had Johnny sacked.

‘He looks like a very important chap,’ Johnny said.

‘Yes, he’s been specially brought here to advise on the construction of a new railway line. And before you ask, he doesn't know I dance in cafes. That is just for me.’

'Is that your actual father?' Johnny asked, not sure if he could believe anything she said.

Kati rounded on him, self assured and precise. 'I never said that the gentleman at Prosvjeta was my father. You jumped to that conclusion all by yourself, Krumpli.'

'I didn't actually jump to any conclusion. The chief administrator described you as the chap’s daughter,’ Johnny said, starting to remember why he didn’t trust her. 'Do you work for Breitner?'

'Is this really the conversation you want to have, now that we have found each other and we can be ourselves?' Kati put on a mock pout, which sent Johnny reeling.

‘Are you being yourself? Your real self? I mean, you’ve fooled me a number of times.’ Not that that seemed important to Johnny any more.

‘I was just doing my patriotic duty,’ she said with a bored sigh. 'Can we not talk of how you’re going to entertain me, on my last night in Sarajevo?' Kati’s voice implied every type of promise known to man. Johnny looked into her mischievous eyes and couldn’t believe his luck.

She started to make another teasing motion with her hips but Johnny put up a shaking hand to stop her. 'You'll cause a sensation behaving like that at an official reception for the Heir Apparent.'

They'd had a few strange looks already and Johnny could hear a commotion from the reception room; for a moment, he thought he was going to be asked to leave without getting a chance to speak to the Governor.

‘Don’t look so worried, Krumpli. It’s just the Archduke and his wife preparing to leave,’ Kati said in her usual, mocking manner.

Johnny wondered for a moment who was going to drive the Royal couple, if their chauffeur was in custody. He instinctively felt for the chauffeur's cap he'd stuffed into his pocket and knew how he could put things right.

He started to move away. 'Where are you going, Johnny?' Kati's silky voice stopped him for a moment. He looked up, noticing the domed ceiling for the first time, and then at her, but he couldn't let himself be distracted again, not after the terrible mess he'd made of things the last time a pretty girl called his name.

*

Breitner made a quick search of the foyer for Johnny and wasn’t surprised to find him missing. He left the City Hall and found a position at the bottom of the steps, to add what little protection he could to the Heir; as a civil servant Breitner never carried a weapon.

He considered running to his office to try to find his old service pistol, but before he could, the Archduke and his wife rapidly descended the red carpet, hardly acknowledging Sarajevo's municipal officers who were standing along the steps.

The Royal couple looked nervous when they took their seats in the Graf & Stift. As in the previous journey, the Archduke sat on the left hand side of the back seat, with the Duchess to his right and Potiorek directly in front of him, on