Alan Furst - Spies of the Balkans

“It won’t last,” Pavlic said.

“No, big trouble tomorrow.” With this he grinned. He took, Zannis realized, great pleasure, a patriot’s pleasure, from the anticipation of big trouble.

Both Pavlic and Vlatko, taking turns, told Zannis the news of the day: a terrific fistfight in the bar of Belgrade’s best hotel, the Srbski Kralj, King of Serbia. Two American foreign correspondents and an Italian woman, their translator, on one side, five Wehrmacht officers-from the German legation-on the other. The Americans ordered whiskies, the Germans ordered schnapps; the Germans demanded to be served first, the barman hesitated. Next, savage insults, tables turned over, broken dishes. The Italian woman had thrown a drink in a German’s face, he hit her on the head, then the New York Times reporter, a good-sized Texan, had fought two of the Germans. “Knocked them down,” Vlatko said, ramming a huge fist into a meaty palm for emphasis. “Out cold . On the floor.” Once again, he grinned.

“And broke his hand,” Pavlic said.

“Both hands, I heard.”

“One hand,” Pavlic said. “I hope we can do without that, tomorrow.”

Vlatko shrugged. “We shall see.”

From his inside pocket, Zannis brought out the sheet of paper Escovil had given him: a typed list of twenty-seven names. He laid it on the table and smoothed out the folds with his hands. “Here it is,” he said. “We have a day to find out the addresses.”

Pavlic and Vlatko put their heads together over the list. Vlatko said, “Who are these people? Military, some of them, I can see that.”

“Not people who get their names in the newspapers,” Zannis said.

“Traitors,” Vlatko said.

“Possible troublemakers, anyhow,” Zannis answered.

“Well, we’ll find them.”

“Tomorrow night,” Zannis said. “When they’re at home. We don’t want to arrest them at staff headquarters, we don’t want gun battles.”

“No, I guess not,” Vlatko said, bringing forward, with some effort, the sensible side of his nature. “Pavlic and I have enlisted fifteen detectives, so we’ll work in groups of three-that should be sufficient. Do these people,” he paused, then said, “form a conspiracy?”

Zannis didn’t think so. “I doubt it,” he said. “The wives won’t warn their husbands’ friends, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Would be best to start at seven-before people go out to restaurants or whatever it is they do.”

“They won’t go out tomorrow night,” Pavlic said. “They’ll stay home with the radio on.”

“We can’t all come here,” Zannis said. “Vlatko, can you have them meet at six? You’ll have to distribute the names this afternoon, so we’ll divide up the names now and make new lists.”

“Where do we take them?”

“There’s a holding cell,” Pavlic said, “at the prefecture near the foreign legations, on Milosha Velikog. They’re going to move their prisoners-to make room for ours.”

“Stack them one on the other,” Vlatko said. “Who cares?”

“These people might be needed later,” Zannis said. “We want them out of circulation for a day and a half-for them an anecdote, not a nightmare. We’d put them in a spa, if we could.”

Vlatko looked at him. “You’re very kind, in Salonika.”

“As long as it works, we are. If it doesn’t, then we do it the other way.”

“Really? I guess we think differently, up here.”

A group of men came laughing into the bar, calling for slivovitz. They wore-Pavlic explained in an undertone-the black fur hats of the Chetniks, the ancient Serbian resistance movement, with skull and crossbones insignia on the front.

“They’ve come in from the villages,” Pavlic said. “They’re gathering.”

Back upstairs, Zannis was restless. The street below his window was deserted, the city quiet. No, not quiet, silent, and somehow sinister. Thousands of conversations in darkened rooms, he thought; they could not be heard but they could be felt, as though anger had its own special energy. And this, despite his better, too-well-learned instincts, he found exciting.

At seven the following morning, the telephone rang in his room, no name, no greeting, just an upper-class British voice, clipped and determined.

“Have you everything you need?”

“I do.”

“Tomorrow’s the day. I know you’ll do your best.”

“Count on it,” Zannis said, hoping his English was proper.

“That’s the spirit.”

No way to go back to sleep. He dressed, holstered his Walther, and went downstairs for coffee. When he returned, an envelope had been slid beneath his door: a local phone number, and a few words directing him to maintain contact, using street call boxes or telephones in bars, throughout the following day. Pavlic was going to pick him up at ten and drive him around the city. Until then, he didn’t know what to do with himself so he sat in a chair.

Outside, the people of the city began their day by breaking glass. Big plate-glass windows, from the sound of it, broken, then shattering on the pavement. Accompanied by a chant: Bolje rat, nego pakt! This much Serbo-Croatian he could understand: Better war than the pact! Outside, more glass came crashing down. He could see nothing from his room but, going out into the hall, he found a window at the end of the corridor. Down in the street, students were chanting and breaking store windows. As cars drove by, the drivers honked furiously, waved, and chanted along with the students: “Bolje rat, nego pact!” One of them stopped long enough to tear up a copy of Politika and hurl it into the gutter.

At nine-fifty, Pavlic’s car rolled to the curb in front of the Majestic. Vlatko was sitting in the passenger seat so Zannis climbed in the back where, on the seat beside him, he discovered a pump shotgun with its barrel and stock sawed off to a few inches. As Pavlic drove away, a group of students ran past, waving a Serbian flag. “Brewing up nicely, isn’t it,” Pavlic said.

Vlatko was wearing a hat this morning, with the brim bent down over his eyes, and looked, to Zannis, like a movie gangster. He turned halfway round, rested his elbow on top of the seat and said, “They’re out on the streets, in towns all over Serbia and Montenegro, even Bosnia. We’ve had calls from the local police.”

“They’re trying to stop it?”

From Vlatko, a wolf’s smile. “Are you kidding?”

“Rumors everywhere,” Pavlic said. “Hermann Goring assassinated, mutinies in Bulgarian army units, even a ghost-a Serbian hero of the past appeared at Kalemegdan fortress.”

“True!” Vlatko shouted.

“Well I’ll tell you what is true,” Pavlic said. “At least I think it is. Prince Peter, Prince Paul’s seventeen-year-old cousin, has supposedly returned from exile. Which means he’ll be crowned as king, and the regency is over, which is what the royalists have wanted for years, and not just them.”

Zannis liked especially the ghost; whoever was spreading the rumors knew what he was doing. Ten minutes later, Vlatko said, disgust in his voice, “Look at that, will you? Never seen that in Belgrade.” He meant two SS officers in their black uniforms, strolling up the street in the center of the sidewalk. As Zannis watched, two men coming from the opposite direction had to swing wide to avoid them, because they weren’t moving for anybody. Pavlic took his foot off the gas and the car slowed down as they all stared at the SS men, who decided not to notice them.

They drove around for an hour, locating the addresses that made up their share of the list. Two of the men lived in the same apartment building, two others had villas in the wealthy district north of the city, by the Danube-in Serbia called the Duna. Heading for the prefecture with the holding cell, they drove up the avenue past the foreign legations. The Italian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian legations, in honor of the newly signed pact, were all flying the red-and-black swastika flag. “Does that do to you what it does to me?” Pavlic said.