Closed Circle (27 page)

Ministry Press Bureau and wondering what all the fuss was about. Well, on Monday the twentieth of July, I found out.

"I'd got back to my hotel the previous evening to find a note waiting for me. It was from Colonel Alexander Brosch von Aarenau, the former head of Franz Ferdinand's military chancellery. I'd first made his acquaintance during the Bosnian annexation crisis in 1908. He was the Archduke's most loyal and perceptive adviser even after leaving his chancellery. Together, they'd drawn up far-reaching plans to reform the Empire when Franz Josef died. Brosch had all the tact and subtlety Franz Ferdinand lacked. He was especially good at manipulating the press, at using hacks like me to fly kites for his master. But you couldn't resent it. He was too much the gent for that. Besides, there was always the hope he'd drop some gem into your lap. So, a note from Brosch wasn't to be ignored. This one was an urgent scrawl asking to meet me on one of the bridges over the Danube Canal at midnight. It was completely out of character. You might find Brosch smoking a cigar and strolling around the Belvedere Palace at three in the afternoon. But skulking on bridges at midnight? Never. Or so I'd have said. But the summons was there, in his own hand. So, puzzled as I was, I went.

"He was waiting for me when I arrived, wearing mufti and looking, well, if not furtive, then certainly cautious. I'd not seen him since the funeral. He'd been more obviously upset than most of the other mourners, as you'd expect, but now .. . there was something more than grief troubling him. His manner was .. . strange, disturbing. But he wanted to talk, so, like a good reporter, I listened. He led me on a circuitous route towards St. Stephen's Cathedral, using narrow empty streets I hardly knew. Even so, he kept looking over his shoulder, as if he was afraid we were being followed. At first, I thought he was being ridiculously suspicious. But only at first. Soon, I was looking over my shoulder too.

"Brosch started by telling me a state secret. The Joint Council of Ministers had met that afternoon and agreed the wording of an ultimatum to be delivered to Serbia on Thursday, requiring an answer within forty-eight hours. The terms of the ultimatum were intended to be unacceptable. He had no doubt Serbia would reject them. And that would mean war within a week. I could hardly believe it. He was handing me the scoop to end all scoops. And why? Because there was more to it. Much more.

' "Why are you confiding in me, Colonel?" I asked.

' "Because you are the only English journalist in Vienna I trust," he replied in his piping voice. "I need your help. And you need mine. You heard of Major Koszegi's suicide?" I said I had. "A good man. We cannot afford such losses. He came to me the day after the funeral to confess his small part in the conspiracy. And to repent of it."

' "What conspiracy?" I asked.

' "The Archduke's murder," he replied.

' "Koszegi was working for the Serbians?"

' "No," said Brosch. "The Serbs did not kill him, Duggan." '

' "Who did, then?"

' "A secret international organization. It calls itself the Concentric Alliance. It is run by an Englishman. That is why I have come to you. I need to find out as much about him as I can, before it is too late. His name is " '

Duggan broke off and stopped, then turned slowly to look at me. Recollection seemed to have restored a glint to his eyes, a hint of vigour to his bearing. I knew who he was about to name. In my pocket was a piece of paper with two concentric circles drawn on it. In my mind were Charnwood's words as he spun a five-shilling piece on his desk. "A circle and a straight line may be the same thing, depending on your point of view." The circle of his power. The straight line of a bullet's flight. Here, on an empty beach in Northumberland. And there, on a crowded street in Sarajevo. "I don't believe it," I said.

That's what I said to Brosch," Duggan replied." "I don't believe it." And that's what he'd said to Koszegi. But he changed his mind. And so did I. Now it's your turn."

"It can't be true."

"But it is. True as I'm standing here, Mr. Horton, and you're standing there. True as Brosch said it. "His name is Fabian Charnwood."

A man throwing sticks for his dog was approaching from the village end of the beach. Catching sight of him, Duggan turned round and began walking hard in the opposite direction. I followed, struggling as much to keep pace with him as to order the questions I wanted to ask in my mind. Charnwood responsible for the assassination in Sarajevo and hence for the Great War; for the three miserable years Max and I had spent in Macedonia; for the shattered reason of my brother Felix; and for the lost lives of all the men listed on all the memorials in all the lands the war had touched: it was not possible, not credible, not

"Brosch told Koszegi to pull himself together and stop talking nonsense. Where was the proof? What was the motive? Koszegi tried to answer. He'd been enlisted in the conspiracy by Brosch's successor as head of Franz Ferdinand's military chancellery, Colonel Karl von Bardolff."

lKarl von Bardolff?" I interjected, recalling the old man in the white kepi on Vasaritch's yacht.

"Yes. What about it?"

"It's just.. . Is he still alive?"

"Probably. Why?"

Still alive. Consorting, if he was the same man, with a Frenchman, an Englishman and a Yugoslav. Or was Vasaritch actually a Serb? "He calls himself a Yugoslav," Faraday had said. "But what does that mean?" "I'm sorry," I said. "Carry on."

"Bardolff exploited Koszegi's doubts about Franz Ferdinand's plans for the Empire after his uncle's death. An end to Hungarian autonomy. A rooting out of Jews, Freemasons and liberals. Appeasement of the Slavic population. Since Franz Josef was well into his eighties, all this might be just around the corner. And Koszegi liked the sound of none of it, especially the assault on Hungarian rights. He put loyalty to his homeland, Hungary, above loyalty to any prince. He agreed to play his part for patriotic reasons. Bardolff was chairman of the committee responsible for security during the Sarajevo visit and explained it would be deliberately lax. Assassins would be on hand to kill the Archduke during his drive through the town. All Koszegi had to do, as a member of his body-guard, was notice nothing and prevent nothing. The assassination would be blamed on Serbia and the Empire would be spared an unthinkable future. Koszegi joined the conspiracy."

"I don't understand. Why should Charnwood be involved in a plot to protect Hungarian rights?"

"Because they were irrelevant to the plot's true purpose. As Koszegi found out too late. The night after the assassination, one of the other members of the body-guard got drunk and goaded Koszegi with the truth. Franz Ferdinand hadn't been killed to save Hungary. He'd been killed to spark off a world war. The conspirators had acted on behalf of an organization called the Concentric Alliance. Their motive was money. And Fabian

Charnwood was going to give them money lots of it out of the profits he'd make from the war they'd set in motion."

"I still don't understand. What profits? How were they to be realized?"

"Koszegi didn't know. And he didn't want to know. He was an accessory to murder. And the ideals he thought justified the crime were a sham. For him, that was enough. The day after confessing to Brosch, he shot himself. It was only then Brosch began to take his allegations seriously. He'd always had doubts about Bardolff s integrity. And the failure of security in Sarajevo was undeniable. Could something more sinister than incompetence have been at work? He began to ask questions, to prod and probe wherever he could. He went to Sarajevo and enquired into the circumstances of the assassination. And the more he discovered, the more he came to believe what Koszegi had told him. There were seventy thousand troops camped outside the city on the twenty-eighth of June. It was their manoeuvres Franz Ferdinand had gone to Bosnia to see. The Bosnian Governor, General Potiorek, could have lined the streets with them during the Archduke's visit. That's what his predecessor had done for the Emperor's visit in 1910. He could have called in the secret police and had all dissidents and foreigners expelled from the city as also done in 1910. But he chose to do neither. When the Archduke and his wife drove into Sarajevo with him that Sunday morning, a bomb was thrown at them, but it missed, injuring an aide-de-camp. The party went on to the Town Hall and had lunch there. The Archduke asked Potiorek if he thought any more bombs would be thrown. Potiorek said no. But what was his answer worth? He should have urged the Archduke to remain at the Town Hall until troops could be called in to protect him. But he didn't. Instead, he stuck rigidly to the programme. Or would have, but for the Archduke's wife insisting they visit the injured aide-de-camp in hospital straight after lunch. That meant a change of route. Strangely enough, though, nobody told the chauffeur. He followed the original route and pulled up sharply when Potiorek pointed out the error, exactly opposite the spot where one of the assassins, Princip, was waiting with a loaded revolver. He stepped forward and shot the Archduke, then his wife. She died instantly, the Archduke a few minutes later."

"What did Brosch do when he found all this out?"

"He went to see Potiorek and asked him to explain his actions.

But Potiorek didn't answer. He merely drew a pair of concentric circles on a piece of paper and pushed it across his desk. He must have thought Brosch was either a member of the Concentric Alliance or well enough aware of its existence to be intimidated by the suggestion that it approved of what had happened. And he was right. Until he left Sarajevo, Brosch pretended he was one of them. He calculated that, if they were prepared to assassinate an archduke, they wouldn't hesitate to kill a colonel. Potiorek's use of their symbol had convinced him the Concentric. Alliance was real and powerful."

"Hold on," I protested, dragging at Duggan's elbow to slow him down. "You're saying Potiorek was in on it too?"

"Of course."

"But he was in the same car. The bomb could easily have killed him as well as the Archduke."

"According to Brosch, Potiorek certainly wasn't the self-sacrificial type. His theory was that the general thought professional marksmen would be used. Young hot-heads throwing bombs must have come as a nasty shock. But, by the time he realized the dangers '

"Young hot-heads. Exactly. The assassins Princip and the rest were genuine Bosnian nationalists, armed and trained by Serbia. Wasn't that established beyond doubt years ago?"

"Yes. It was. Under interrogation, they confessed to being agents of the Serbian secret society, the Black Hand. And the leader of the Black Hand, Colonel Dimitrievitch, was also head of the intelligence service of the Serbian General Staff. On his orders, Princip and two of the others were smuggled into Bosnia in late May, equipped with bombs, pistols and prussic acid to take if they were arrested. Four accomplices were waiting for them in Sarajevo, making seven in all. When the day came, they posted themselves along the route of the procession and waited for their chance. Six of them were arrested immediately after the assassination. Those who had prussic acid duly swallowed it. But it had no effect. Probably because they'd been given plain water instead. They were intended to live, to stand trial, to confess their loyalty to Serbia."

"But... to achieve that.. . Charnwood would have had to .. ."

"Have members of the Concentric Alliance working inside the Black Hand. Yes, Mr. Horton. You're beginning to grasp the scale of this conspiracy. That's what concentricity means. One closed circle, surrounded by another, surrounded by yet another. And one man at their common centre."

"Planning to provoke a world war?"

"So Brosch believed. So I've come to believe."

"But why? Why would he do it?"

"Neither of us could imagine an adequate motive. And we didn't have time to debate the matter. You see, Brosch returned to Vienna wondering if he should trust his own suspicions. After all, whatever had happened in Sarajevo, there were no sabres rattling in Vienna. Not enough to be sure of the outcome, anyway. If there was no war, the conspiracy had failed. And he misread the signs like the rest of us. He thought compromise was in the air. Only when he learned the outcome of the Joint Council of Ministers' secret meeting on the nineteenth did he realize it wasn't."

"So he came to you for help?"

"He had nowhere else to turn. An English journalist was about the only form of life he could be sure wasn't a party to the conspiracy. And he needed information about Charnwood. He'd met him a couple of times at Trade Ministry receptions. Knew of him vaguely as an international business-man. But he had to find out more and quickly."

"Through you?"

"Through The Topical. I told him I'd do what I could. I wasn't sure I believed him, but I knew I had to follow it up. The allegations were amazing and frightening. If it was true, we had about a week to avert a catastrophe. If not, it was still a hell of a good story."

"What did you do?"

Duggan stopped in his tracks and stared at me. "Not enough, Mr. Horton. It happened, didn't it? The catastrophe wasn't averted. The roof did fall in. On all of us." He shivered. "Let's go back to the car. It's getting cold out here. Besides, I need a fag. And I'll never light one in this wind." We started back towards the edge of the dunes. "I cabled The Topical's London office, asking them to send me everything they had on Charnwood. While I was waiting for the reply, I tried to track down any connections he might have in Vienna. I drew a blank. The British Embassy didn't want to know. And when the answer came back from London on Tuesday, it told me precious little. Charnwood was a reputable international financier. His father had run a munitions company which Charnwood had since sold. Well, munitions suggested an interest in warfare, but even that had lapsed. There was nothing to go on.

"I met Brosch that evening. He was disappointed I'd found out so little and even more anxious than before. The ultimatum was to be delivered to the Serbian Foreign Ministry by the Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Belgrade at 6 p.m. on Thursday. Forty-eight hours later, Austria-Hungary would be at war with Serbia. And pretty soon half of Europe would be at war with the other half. Brosch pleaded with me to do something. Anything. I suggested The Topical might be more helpful if I could tell them the terms of the ultimatum in advance. But Brosch said his informant in the Joint Council would be identified if that happened and so would he. They'd both be as good as dead, with nothing to show for it. Besides, he was no traitor. If war came, he'd fight for his country. But while there was a chance of averting war, we had to try, for humanity's sake, to Duggan stopped and shook his head, then sent up a shower of sand with a sudden violent kick. "For humanity's sake! I ask you. He said that to me. A bloody journalist. What do I know about humanity?"