Alan Furst: Spies of the Balkans

Zannis finished his cigarette and returned to the bar. “Maybe bad news,” he said. “There’s a tank out there.”

Pavlic swore, a nearby detective noticed the exchange and asked if something had gone wrong. Pavlic told him. “It could be,” he said, “that Cvetkovic has called out the army.”

Very quickly, the word spread. “If that’s true,” one of the detectives said, “we’re in for it.” He rose, went outside to see for himself, then came back looking more than worried. He spoke rapidly, Pavlic telling Zannis what he’d said. “I think we’d better find the back door.” As most of the detectives left, a heavy engine went rumbling past the hotel and the floor trembled. Zannis went to the door, then said, “Another one. Now they’ve got the street blocked off.”

Vlatko stood up, finished his drink, and said, “I’m going to find out what’s going on.” A few minutes later he returned. “They won’t talk to me,” he said. “Just told me not to ask questions.”

Zannis called the telephone number. When the woman answered, he said, “There are tanks here, blocking Knez Mihailova.”

“I will see,” said the woman, who took the telephone number, and hung up.

Out in the lobby of the hotel, by the overstuffed chairs and potted rubber trees, a large Philco radio stood on a table. Pavlic turned it on and searched for a station, but all he got was a low, buzzing drone.

Zannis stayed up until four-fifteen, waiting by the telephone, but it didn’t ring. The hell with it , he thought, and decided to go to bed. The faithful Vlatko, the last of the Serbian detectives in the bar, wished him a good night, and headed for a kitchen door that led to a back alley.

26 March. 7:30 A.M. Zannis had taken off his shoes, set his eyeglasses and Walther on the night table, and dozed. The roar of engines and rattle of tank treads woke him again and again, and finally he just gave up. He wouldn’t desert his post, but if the army had been called out that was the end of the coup d’etat, and he’d have to slip away somehow and make his way back to Salonika. Soon enough, somebody would discover the Cvetkovic loyalists at the prefecture and then, he hadn’t a doubt in the world, they would enlist their own thugs and come looking for him. So, no trains. Perhaps, he thought, he could steal a car. He would, at least, propose the idea to Pavlic, whose problem was severely worse than his own; he might well have to leave the country. Skata! Well, they had tried, and now he would have company on the run. Where to go? East to Bulgaria was closer than south to Greece, but he well remembered the swastika flag flown by the Bulgarian legation. Would Lazareff help them? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe, more than wouldn’t, couldn’t.

He walked down the corridor and knocked on Pavlic’s door. Pavlic answered immediately, wearing only his underwear, and holding his own Walther PPK by his side. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Well, good morning. Any news?”

“No. We’ll have to run for it, I’m afraid. Marko, I-” He’d started to apologize, but Pavlic waved him off.

“Don’t bother. I knew what I was getting into. Let’s try to find out what’s going on, at least, before we take off.”

He waited while Pavlic shaved-very much his own inclination at difficult moments. If you were going to face danger, even death, better to shave. After Pavlic got dressed, they went downstairs together and found the lobby deserted; no guests, no clerk, eerie silence. Pavlic unlocked the hotel door and they took a walk up the street. The tank crews were sitting on their machines, waiting for orders, content to relax while they had the opportunity.

Pavlic talked to the soldiers, his Serbo-Croatian much too fast for Zannis to follow. Brave sonofabitch, he really laid into them. Finally the sergeant commander got tired of him, sauntered off, and returned with an officer. Pavlic’s tone now altered-serious and straightforward, as though saying, come now, we’re fellow countrymen, you shouldn’t keep me in the dark. But, no luck. The officer spoke briefly, then walked away, back toward a wall of sandbags stacked across a doorway-the barrel of a machine gun poking out of a space that left it room to traverse.

“Well, what did he say?”

Pavlic’s face was alight. More than a smile-the cat had not only eaten the canary, he’d drunk up a pitcher of cream and got laid in the bargain. So, there was a joke all right, but Pavlic wasn’t ready to share it. “He didn’t say much, only that it would all be cleared up as the day went on.”

Zannis was puzzled; one certain detail had provoked his curiosity. “Tell me,” he said. “Why was the officer wearing a blue uniform?”

Pavlic jerked his head back toward the hotel and, as they began to walk, he put an arm around Zannis’s shoulders. “He wore a blue uniform, my friend, because he is in the air force.”

As instructed, Zannis left as soon as he could-the first train out at midday. But they made slow progress; stopped for a herd of sheep crossing the track, stopped because of overheating after a climb up a long grade, slowed to a crawl in a sudden snowstorm, stopped for no apparent reason at a town on the river Morava, somewhere north of Nis, the name on the station not to be found on the timetable. It was the fault of the engineer, someone said; who had halted the train for a visit with his girlfriend. Late at night, Zannis arrived in Nis, where the train that was to take him south was long gone.

At two-thirty on the afternoon of 27 March, he was again under way, headed for Skoplje. On this train he discovered-wedged into a space beside the seat where it blocked a savage draft-a Greek newspaper, printed early that morning. A new government in Yugoslavia! A coup led by General Simovich and the officer corps of the air force, joined by an army tank brigade. Being a Greek newspaper, it spoke from the heart: the people of this proud Balkan nation were “defiant,” they had “defied the Nazis,” and would continue to “defy” them-the journalist couldn’t get enough of it! “Hitler denied a victory,” “fury in Berlin,” “a defeat for Fascism,” Yugoslav “bravery,” “determination,” and, here it came again, “defiance.”

On the front page, a grainy photograph: a street packed with marching Serbs, their mouths open in song, some carrying flags and banners, others with pictures, taken down from walls and mantelpieces, of Prince Peter. Whose radio speech from the afternoon of the twenty-sixth was excerpted in a separate story on page two: Serbs, Croats, Slovenes! In this moment so grave for our people, I have decided to take the royal power into my own hands…. The Regents have resigned…. I have charged General Simovich with the formation of a new government…. The army and the navy are at my orders….

The newspaper story carried supportive statements from American and British politicians. The Americans were passionate and blunt, while the British, as was their custom, were rather more reserved.

*

That same day, in Berlin, the newspapers wrote about Yugoslav “criminals and opportunists,” claiming that ethnic German minorities in northern Serbia and the Banat region were being attacked by Serbian bandits: their houses burned down, their shops looted, their women raped. This was handwriting on the wall. Because such falsehoods had by now become a kind of code: used first in Poland, then in Czechoslovakia, as pretexts for invasion. So the fate of Yugoslavia was that morning already in preparation, and stated openly, for all to see.

One of the people who saw it was Emilia Krebs. She had done no more than skim the newspaper, being occupied with the departure of yet one more friend who had come to the attention of the Gestapo. This was a tall gray-haired woman of Polish descent, the eminent ethnologist and university professor known simply as Ostrova. You know he studied with Ostrova. We went to a lecture by Ostrova . But now, eminence had failed her, and her situation had become perilous. Thus, by eight-thirty, Emilia Krebs had served rolls and coffee, handed Ostrova a set of false documents, and wished her safe journey. Surely the news that morning was disquieting, and they’d talked it over. Yes, there would be war in the Balkans, but not yet. Maybe in a week, they thought. “So I’d better leave today,” Ostrova said and, if the Hungarians had been forced to close the border, she would find a way through the countryside. The two women embraced, and a determined Ostrova set out for the train to Vienna.