Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (22 page)

In due course he arrived
opposite the Royal Palace. It was a modern building of very moderate size, and
hardly more than a villa by comparison with the vast private palaces of some of
the great nobles in Vienna and Budapest. The sentries outside its gate were
smart and of good physique. As the Duke regarded them with professional
appreciation, he began to wonder if Dimitriyevitch had been speaking the truth
when he said that certain members of the Serbian royal family were sworn
adherents of the Black Hand.

One thing seemed fairly
certain: that King Peter had had no knowledge of the plot to assassinate his
predecessor, so could not have been involved in the origin of that sinister
secret society. Owing to the hatred of the Obrenovitch for his family, he had
lived abroad in exile most of his life. He had been educated in France, passed
through the military college of St. Cyr, and, as a young officer, fought with
distinction for the country of his adoption in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.
Seven years later, on the outbreak of a revolutionary movement in Bosnia, he
had gone there, organised a small army, and for many months carried on a
romantic guerilla war against the Turks. But at the time of Alexander’s
assassination, in 1903, he was living quietly in Switzerland, and, as far as
anyone knew, had been invited to ascend the vacant throne solely because he
seemed to be the most suitable person to occupy it.

Against that, it had to
be remembered that he had shielded the assassins from punishment, even to the
extent of remaining at loggerheads with the governments of most of the Great
Powers on their account, for the first three years of his reign. The Powers had
refused to accord him formal recognition as King of Serbia until he saw justice
done. But he had fought the issue until, at last, conscious of the stupidity of
continuing to deny the obvious, they had given way on his merely agreeing to
retire the officers concerned into private life. And soon afterwards he had
reinstated them.

Such conduct might well
be taken to indicate a strong sympathy for the secret aspirations of the Black
Hand. Yet King Peter was very far from being the type of man whom one would
have expected to associate himself willingly with a gang of murderers. He was
not only a brave soldier, but a man of scholarly tastes and liberal views. Of
that, he had given ample evidence by personally translating John Stuart Mill’s
Essay on Liberty
for the benefit of his countrymen.

By and large, De Richleau
was inclined to conclude that he had been, and still was, under great pressure
from the Black Hand: that, had he attempted to bring its original members to
trial, his own life would have been in serious jeopardy, and that his past
subservience to them must be taken as evidence that he was unlikely to offer
any serious opposition to their plans in future.

Returning to his hotel,
the Duke lunched, then wrote a note to Colonel Dimitriyevitch, informing him
that he was staying for a few days in Belgrade, and asking when it would be
convenient to call upon him. On receiving a few small coins, equivalent in
value to twopence, a grinning hotel messenger ran off to deliver the note at
the Ministry of War, and De Richleau retired to his room to sleep through the
heat of the afternoon.

When he came downstairs
at six o’clock two officers, who were sitting drinking at one of the little
tables in the lounge, immediately sprang to their feet, advanced towards him,
and halted side by side with a sharp click of their heels, at a yard’s
distance. They introduced themselves as Major Olgerd Tankosić and Captain
Marko Ciganović The former was a stocky, prematurely-bald man, with a
bulldog jowl: the latter a tall fellow, almost chinless, and with heavy pouches
under the light eyes of an albino. Both looked as if they could be extremely
tough, but they were now obviously on their best behaviour.

The Major said in French.
“I much regret that Colonel Dimitriyevitch is temporarily absent from Belgrade;
but I am dealing with his correspondence, and I opened your Excellency’s
letter. I immediately recognized your name as that of a distinguished ex-enemy
commander, and also I have heard the Colonel speak of you as the gallant
gentleman who saved him from being butchered by a troop of Kurdish cavalry. He
will, I am sure, be delighted to see you on his return. In the meantime Captain
Ciganović and myself are entirely at your Excellency’s disposal, and we
shall be honoured if you will allow us to show you something of Belgrade during
your visit.”

Dimitriyevitch’s absence
was annoying, but there was nothing that De Richleau could do about it, and he
felt that, with a little luck, he might pick up a few pointers from the Colonel’s
subordinates. So he thanked the Major, shook hands with both officers with a
cordiality that he was inwardly far from feeling, and accompanied them to their
table.

A fresh round of drinks
was ordered, and an inquiry elicited the fact that Dimitriyevitch was not
expected back before the week-end, or possibly later. That seemed to make it
certain that the Duke would not have any opportunity of seeing him on this
first visit to Belgrade, so he settled down to cultivate his new acquaintances
with all the charm that came so naturally to him.

For their part they
treated him with the deference due to the rank he had held in the Turkish army,
and were obviously flattered by his easy friendliness. With all the interest
that different viewpoints give to the discussion of a past campaign by ex-enemies
who have no personal animosity, they talked of the Balkan war. And as the
rounds of drinks succeeded one another, the little group became a merry one.
Later, they dined together, then the Serbians took De Richleau to a musical
show, and afterwards to Belgrade’s one night haunt, which was called La
Can-Can.

The last was a tawdry
place compared with its equivalents in Paris or Vienna, but it had a good
Tzigane band, and there was an air of riotous abandon about it which no longer
arose spontaneously in such places in the cities of the west. The girls danced
the can-can in the fashion of the ’70s, were hoisted on to the tables to make
high-kicks, and sat on the men’s laps. They certainly appeared to enjoy it
every bit as much as the young officers who were plying them with drinks and
shouting applause at every naughty act.

The Duke was quick to
notice that these boisterous young men were of a very different type from the
dashing subalterns he had seen in Vienna. The Austrians were gay, elegant,
charming, but they wore corsets to accentuate the slimness of their figures,
and mentally had become more than a little soft. Whereas, these Serbians were
youngsters only one generation removed from peasant stock. They were not good-looking,
but their physique was excellent, and the moment they stopped laughing their
hard, chunky faces showed determination and grit.

They had hard heads for
liquor too, as was proved by De Richleau’s companions, but he managed to keep
up with them without difficulty, despite their efforts to make him drunk; and
when they saw him back to his hotel at four o’clock in the morning, opinion was
unanimous that they had had a splendid evening.

At mid-day, the chinless
wonder, Captain Ciganović, called upon him again and asked what he would
like to do. Would he care to inspect the barracks of the Royal Guard and visit
the Serbian Staff College, or would he prefer a drive in the country? In either
case Major Tankosić sent his compliments and requested that His Excellency
would honour the mess of the Kargujevatz Cavalry Regiment by dining there that
night.

Not wishing to show any
undue interest in Serbian military affairs before Dimitriyevitch put in an
appearance, the Duke said he would prefer to see something of the country.

Accordingly, they set off
in a Peugeot and were driven out to the National Park at Topchidere. It was a
lovely spot, surrounded by dense forests, and they lunched there at a small inn
off roast sucking-pig. In the afternoon, they continued their drive, making a
wide circle before returning to Belgrade. Then, in the evening, a car was sent
to collect De Richleau and take him to the Cavalry barracks.

The bald, heavy-jowled
Major Tankosić received the Duke and presented the other officers to him.
In addition to the majors, captains and subalterns of the regiment, a bearded
general and several colonels were present, and it was clear that these senior
officers had been specially invited to meet the distinguished visitor. Many of
them had been educated in Switzerland, and the majority spoke fairly good
French or German, and used one of those languages when conversing with their
guest. The effect was therefore all the more telling when, after De Richleau’s
health had been drunk at the end of dinner, he got up and replied to the toast
in a language which most of them took to be heavily accented and somewhat
archaic Serbian.

To win their hearts
completely he had only to stand up again and inform them that he was
half-Russian. It was to Russia, the traditional enemy of Austria, and the
country of their early origin, that they all looked as friend, father and
protector. The applause was terrific.

All earlier restraint
caused by the presence of a foreigner in their midst was now thrown off. They
no longer harboured faint suspicions of him owing to his associations with
their late enemy, but regarded him as one of themselves. Their flat, Slav faces
flushed with the wine they had drunk, they openly toasted the downfall of the
Dual Monarchy and the day when the Serbian Kingdom would once again stretch
from sea to sea.

His face belying his
feelings, De Richleau smilingly drank glass for glass with them. He had his
answer to another question, and it was again the reverse of what he had hoped.
If this was a true sample of the Serbian army, and he saw no reason to doubt
that, the Serbs were very far from being exhausted by their recent conflicts,
and weary of war. These hardy virile men would shout with exultation at another
chance to show their mettle. He wondered gloomily how many of the beardless
ones would reach old age uncrippled by wounds—or even survive the next few
years.

When at length he made
ready to leave, a number of the younger ones reverted to the peasant custom,
always observed at weddings and other festivals, of firing off their weapons.
Waving their revolvers, they cheered him to his car, then, as it moved towards
the gate of the courtyard, they yelled their battle cry and let off a volley of
shots.

Next day a party of
officers he had met the night before came to take him hunting, as they termed
it, although it was shooting that they really meant. There was no close season
and abundant game in the nearby forests. The does they sighted were spared, but
they bagged several buck and a number of small wild pig. Then, when his
companions dropped him back at his hotel, he had a pleasant surprise. It was as
yet only Friday, but Colonel Dimitriyevitch had returned several days earlier
than he was expected, and was sitting in the lounge waiting to greet him.

As they shook hands, De
Richleau was suddenly struck by Colonel Dimitriyevitch’s likeness to General
von Hötzendorf. The resemblance was only superficial, and the Serbian was
considerably the younger of the two: but both had a small, wiry figure,
brilliant, fanatical eyes, hard, thin mouth, and short hair standing straight
up off their foreheads like a thick brush.

Directly they had ordered
drinks, the Colonel said, “I am delighted to see you again, my dear Duke. But
tell me, what brings you to Belgrade?”

De Richleau had long
since made up his mind on the policy he must pursue if he was to render any
real service to those who had sent him; so he replied:

“I came here to see you.
Is the offer that you made me, when we met some months ago in Sofia, still
open?”

The Colonel’s bright eyes
showed quick interest but, instead of giving a direct answer, he put another
question. “Did you come here prepared to take it?”

“I should like to know a
little more about the status you could give me before I commit myself.”

“All right then; dine
with me to-night and we’ll talk matters over. As you’ve been out all day, I
expect you would like to change your clothes, and I have some papers to sign at
my office. I’ll send my car for you at seven o’clock. Better pack a bag. I live
some way outside the town, so it would be more convenient for you to stay the
night.” With an abrupt gesture Dimitriyevitch gulped down the rest of his
drink, stood up, nodded to the Duke, and marched off.

At seven o’clock to the
minute the Colonel’s car arrived, and as De Richleau went down the steps to it,
he saw that it was a brand new Rolls Royce with a limousine body. There were as
yet probably no more than two hundred motor-cars in Belgrade altogether, and
those in which he had been driven about during the past few days had been small
Renaults and Peugeots. As there were no family fortunes to be inherited in
Serbia, her really rich men could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and no
Colonel drawing only the ordinary rate of pay could conceivably afford a
millionaire’s toy like this. If evidence were required that Dimitriyevitch was
not a megalomaniac, whose boasts of possessing unlimited power in his own
country were the product of a diseased imagination, his Rolls was a good start
for such a case. Even a Commander-in-Chief could not have run a finer car, and
the inference was that it had been paid for out of secret service funds, over
the expenditure of which the Colonel enjoyed a control that no one dared
question.