Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (24 page)

As a Corps commander
designate, De Richleau did not wish to give the impression that he had any real
doubts about Serbia’s chances, so he laughed and said: “Of course you’re right,
mon Colonel.
I fear I have been leading you on a
little by painting the picture far blacker than I know it to be. Austria’s
commitments will unquestionably prevent her from sending more than about forty
per cent of her forces against us, and I would back one Serbian fighting-man
against three Austrians, any day. Besides, I take it there are good grounds for
believing that Russia would take the opportunity of settling her
long-outstanding differences with the Dual Monarchy at the same time. Then it
would prove a walk-over.”

Dimitriyevitch’s burning
eyes narrowed a little. “She will certainly be tempted to, and, of course, we
shall do our utmost to draw her in. It would ensure our own victory being so
much quicker and less costly.”

“That would almost
certainly bring Germany to Austria’s assistance.”

“What of it? Russia and
France between them would take care of her, and if France showed signs of
failing, England would have to go to her assistance. But we are not counting on
Russia. Whether she begins hostilities or not will make no difference to the
eventual outcome of our own war against Austria. We are quite capable of
forcing her to sue for peace, without outside help. And now that we have grown
strong enough to revenge ourselves for the many injuries she has done us, we
shall not wait very much longer before settling our account with her.”

“Perhaps, then,” said the
Duke quietly, “it would be as well if you were to let me know the approximate
date by which you wish me to place myself formally at your disposal?”

“I must speak to the
Voyvode Putnik about that,” replied the Colonel after a moment. “Are you free
to do so at any time?”

“More or less, but not
absolutely,” the Duke hedged cautiously. He then proceeded to tell a glib lie. “You
see, I am still officially on the Turkish Army List, or, to put it more
exactly, committed to them under my original contract. But it is obvious that
they have no further use for me, so I have been granted indefinite leave on
half-pay. I’m sure you will agree that I ought to regularize the position by
obtaining my formal release from them before donning a new uniform. But that
should not take long.”

The Colonel nodded. “I
quite understand your position, and I will see Putnik about you tomorrow
morning. If you care to remain here and take a gun out, I will return to lunch
and let you know then what we have arranged.”

De Richleau willingly
agreed, and they talked on for a further two hours, mainly about the general
state of Europe. Then they doused the oil lamps which hung at intervals along
the walls, and went to bed.

As the Duke got into his,
he sighed heavily. The few hopes he had had when leaving England, that peace
might yet be preserved, were now dimmed almost to vanishing point. On the one
hand there was Conrad von Hötzendorf spoiling for a war with Serbia, in the
belief that Austria’s enemies must be dealt with one by one, and that he could
smash her utterly in a three weeks’ campaign. On the other, here was Dragutin
Dimitriyevitch with his Black Hand gang of vultures, who believed that the Dual
Monarchy was already half dead, so that they had only to find a suitable excuse
to go in and rip the flesh off her body. Worse, Dimitriyevitch had made it
plain that since his vultures would meet with less resistance should the
Russian bear decide to maul the victim at the same time, however frightful the
final consequences, he meant to do his damnedest to bring Russia in.

It seemed now that the
only thing remaining to be done was to find out when Dimitriyevitch intended to
press the detonator of his terrible mine, and from a line that De Richleau had
already laid out he had good hopes of succeeding in that.

Next morning, by the time
the Duke got down to breakfast he found that the little Colonel had left an
hour before for Belgrade; so, after he had eaten, he followed his host’s
suggestion and took out a gun. But his heart was not in the business and his
eye, for once, inattentive to the opportunities offered him by the game. For
appearance’s sake, he eventually shot a hare and returned to the châlet with it
soon after mid-day. At half past one the Colonel’s gleaming Rolls purred
smoothly up to the door and, giving himself barely time to swallow an apéritif,
he ordered lunch to be served.

Over the meal he seemed a
little distrait, and again made only general conversation while the servants
were present. But after coffee had been brought, and they were left alone, he
quickly came to business.

“I saw the Voyvode Putnik,”
he said in a low voice. “And as I expected, he fully approves my ideas. You are
to be given the rank of Lieutenant General with the full pay and allowances it
carries. To begin with, you will be employed at Headquarters. We propose to
create a special post for you of Chief Liaison Officer between the High Command
of the Army and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That means you will work in
very close collaboration with myself. Later, should suitable circumstances
arise, you will be offered the reversion of an Army Corps. Does that suit you?”

De Richleau nodded. He
saw that Dimitriyevitch meant to keep him near himself for as long as possible,
and was glad now that he had not pressed too hard for a field-command. If
circumstances made it necessary
for him to go
into the Serbian army for a time before war broke out, such a post would suit
his secret purpose very much better. After a moment the Colonel went on:

“You had better
set about securing your formal release by the Turks at once, although we do not
think it would be wise to give you immediate employment. Your presence at
Headquarters in Serbian uniform might arouse undesirable speculation. Nearer
the time that won’t matter so much, but we don’t want to give anyone in the
Austrian Legation here an idea that we are preparing anything, until we are
ready to strike.”

The Duke’s face
showed nothing, but inwardly he glowed with satisfaction. Dimitriyevitch had
swallowed the bait he had put out the previous night about getting his release
from the Turks, and was taking just the line he had hoped. He simply shrugged,
and remarked:

“Just as you
wish. But I sha’n’t be much use to you unless I have a week or so to read
myself into your plans, get some idea of your forces, and meet some of the most
important people in your Foreign Office, before you begin hostilities.”

Dimitriyevitch
nodded. “There, I agree. But it is not as though you are to command troops in
the field to start with. A week or ten days should be enough. To-day is the
16th of May. I suggest that you should leave Belgrade to-night or to-morrow and
return here in a month. That should give you ample time to settle matters with
the Turks; and I take it there is nothing else likely to prevent your getting
back here by mid-June?”

“Nothing,” replied
De Richleau. He now had the final answer. If he was to report a week or ten
days before the crisis was due, that meant that Serbia intended to give Austria
cause for declaring war within a few days of June 25th.

After a moment
he said: “I shall not bother to go down to Constantinople. Even allowing for
the dilatoriness of the Turks, I am sure I can obtain a satisfactory answer
from them in writing in a fortnight or three weeks, because they will naturally
be anxious to get me off their pay roll. And I know a way in which I can employ
my time much more profitably.”

“How?” inquired
the Colonel.

“Why, by
spending the coming month in Vienna, of course,” replied the Duke with a
blandly innocent air. “I should be able to collect quite a lot of little bits
of information there, which may later prove useful to us.”

Dimitriyevitch
gave a short, harsh laugh, and exclaimed: “Devil take me! I knew you would
prove worth your weight in gold to us if only I could get hold of you.”

“Thanks,” said
the Duke with the smile of a cat that has just tipped over the cream jug and
lapped up all the cream. And silently he chuckled at the ease with which he had
covered his retreat to the other centre of trouble without arousing the least
suspicion.

Evidently
Dimitriyevitch favoured a simple meal in the middle of the day, as only two
courses were served, and when an iced sherbet was put on the table with some
fruit, he said: “I hope you don’t mind: as I came in I told one of my men to
pack your bag. 1 am holding a conference here this afternoon, and the car may
be needed later. I thought it had better run you into Belgrade directly we have
finished lunch. Would you care for a brandy?”

Realizing that
his host had simply fitted in this lunch at the châlet because he had already
planned to return there for his meeting, and was now anxious to get rid of him
as soon as possible, De Richleau declined the liqueur. So ten minutes later he
was on his way back to the capital.

As the car left
the forest and entered the agricultural belt that lay outside the straggling
suburbs of the town, peasants and their children working in the fields looked
up to grin and wave at this shining chariot of a new age.

Since Serbia had
never known the feudal system, there were practically no large estates in the
country, and the greater part of its cultivable areas was divided up into
innumerable small-holdings. On many of these the poorer peasants lived in
miserable round-roofed mud huts as primitive as the Eskimo igloos that they
resembled. The more prosperous lived in the villages, but even there few of
them owned houses. The majority still dwelt in shapeless, one-storied
buildings, each occupying up to a quarter of an acre of land and often housing
as many as a hundred people, which were called
zadrugas.
These had
originated from the Turkish custom of taxing only the head of each household,
from which it followed that the more people who could be accommodated under one
roof, the lighter the taxation on them all. So, as the young men married,
instead of building a cottage for themselves, they simply knocked up another
lean-to against the family building, and brought the bride to live there.

Yet, if they
lived in squalor they were at least well fed, warmly clothed, and appeared
quite content to remain within their limited horizon. As De Richleau waved back
now and then to groups with smiling, sun-bronzed faces, he was suddenly
conscious of the awful burden of responsibility borne by the ruling class and
their all-too-frequent neglect of it for selfish ends.

As a
professional soldier, he enjoyed war, finding its problems more stimulating to
the brain and its actions more exciting than those of the very best expedition
after big game. But he realized that he saw war from a privileged angle, where
playing a part in its planning, direction, and leadership more than compensated
for its hardships. Whereas, for the vast majority it meant an uprooting from a
secure and reasonably happy way of life, enforced severance from loved ones,
family and friends, the indefinite postponement of all personal plans, the
harsh discipline of the barrack square, gruelling forced marches, indifferent
food, exposure to torrid heat and bitter cold; and finally, often mutilation or
death while still in the prime of life.

It seemed intolerable
that ambitious fanatics like Dimitriyevitch, or coldly calculating patriots
like von Hötzendorf, should have the power to inflict such suffering on
millions of innocent people; yet humanity had so far devised no way of stopping
such catastrophes, and there was no reason to believe that if kings and
aristocracies were abolished things would be any different. Leaders of the
people had often arisen in the ancient city states, who had driven their
ex-co-workers into suicidal conflicts; and the greatest wars so far recorded in
the annals of the world had been launched by a small-town youth, educated on
charity, who, when first commissioned, had been so poor that he could not pay
his washing bills, but whose name was indelibly stamped on history as Napoleon.

On arriving at
his hotel, the Duke wrote notes of thanks to Major Tankosić and Captain Ciganović
for having entertained him and, there being nothing further to detain him in
Belgrade, left on the night train for Vienna.

At Sacher’s he
found a sheaf of invitations that had arrived for him during his absence. Among
them was a note from the Duchess of Hohenberg, in which she reproached him for
not having called upon her, and asked him to lunch on the 20th.

After writing an
acceptance of her invitation, and of most of the others, he set himself to try
to forget for a few hours the terrible implications of his meeting with
Dimitriyevitch, by going that afternoon to see again the unrivalled collection
of Breughels in the National Picture Gallery and, in the evening, to a
Beethoven concert at the Philharmonik. Nevertheless he felt gloomy and
depressed.

He still had his
luncheon appointment to meet Frau Schratt, but had little hope that anything he
might learn from her would materially alter the final result of his mission.
Now that he knew the violently belligerent Intentions of the Austrian and
Serbian war chiefs, he thought it very doubtful if the aged Emperor, once
caught in the web of events, and under pressure from far more dynamic
personalities, would be able to influence their outcome. If he were, that would
be good news indeed, but the hope was as fragile as a reed.