The Quest Read online

  THE QUEST

  Christopher Nicole

  © Christopher Nicole 2000

  Christopher Nicole has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2000 by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  A Voice from the Past

  The Daughter

  The Homecoming

  Nazis

  Catastrophe

  Part Two

  Pursuit

  The Trap

  The Spring

  Vengeance

  The Father

  Part Three

  The Quarry

  The Has-Been

  The Assassin

  Duty

  The Return

  ‘Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?’

  Robert Bridges

  Part One

  A Voice from the Past

  ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’

  William Shakespeare

  The Daughter

  Even more than a year after the guns had ceased firing, Belgrade remained a wrecked city; four years of occupation by the Austrian army had seen to that. Those houses that had not been destroyed by shell fire were crumbling from neglect and looting; many of the streets remained cratered; people still looked anxious and they were poorly dressed; the odd automobile manoeuvered cautiously and with much blowing of horns. Rebuilding was certainly going on, but it was going to take some time yet.

  “Did we cause this to happen?” Lockwood asked.

  Harry Lockwood was a big, bluff man, who had spent most of his life serving Berkeley Townsend, and was now entitled to call his employer, friend.

  “No,” Berkeley Townsend said. “It was going to happen anyway, because of the nature of these people, and their politics. And their hatreds. We just happened to be around.”

  Which was not altogether true, he reflected, however essential it might be for his peace of mind to believe it. The truth of the matter was, he had been around, with Lockwood at his side, in 1914 simply because the British Government had wanted him to be there, stirring the pot. That the pot had been about to explode had not been accepted by Whitehall, despite his warnings.

  Berkeley dismounted outside the police station. The railway line from Athens was still in a disrupted state, as were the roads; the best way to travel over this war-torn country was by horse, and besides, having been a cavalryman throughout his military career, he preferred sitting on a horse to sitting in a motor car.

  Forty-two years old in this summer of 1920, Berkeley Townsend remained very much a soldier, even if he was wearing obviously British civilian clothes at the moment, a loose jacket over his jodhpurs, and a flat cap. Tall and straight-backed, he still walked with a slight limp, a legacy of a Dervish spear at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, when, as a very junior subaltern, he had supposed his military career was finished before it had properly begun. But with his gift for languages, his skill as a military draughtsman, and his ability as a horseman, together with his ruthless dedication to duty, the War Office had found him employment, in a variety of secret and often illegal capacities. His experiences, which had brought him close to death on several occasions, were reflected in his features, somewhat aquiline and not unhandsome, but hard-mouthed and strong-chinned; his blue eyes were permanently watchful, yet always revealed the unchanging good humour that dominated his personality, and which, he did not doubt, had helped to preserve his life on more than one occasion.

  Now he nodded to the sentry on the gate, as he and Lockwood led their horses into the courtyard. This building too had been severely damaged during the various bombardments, but it had not been looted; the Austrian police had taken it over during the occupation.

  “Your business, please?” asked an officious sergeant at the desk within the door. Lockwood had remained outside with the horses, watched by several curious policemen.

  “I’m looking for Colonel Savos, if he’s still about,” Berkeley said, his voice as always deceptively quiet.

  The sergeant frowned. “You know Colonel Savos?”

  “Very well.”

  The sergeant was still frowning. “Your face is familiar.”

  “Then I suggest you start calling me sir,” Berkeley said. “I hold the rank of brigadier-general in the Serbian Army.”

  The sergeant gulped, and the two policemen standing behind him instinctively came to attention.

  “But you are not Serbian,” the sergeant protested.

  “I have the honour to be English,” Berkeley agreed. “It’s a funny old world. You were going to tell me where I can find Colonel Savos.”

  “Berkeley Townsend,” said a voice from the stairs. “I thought I recognised you, in the yard.”

  Berkeley turned towards his old . . . well, he supposed, after all this time, they were actually friends, even if he knew the police colonel to be an unscrupulous rogue.

  He held out his hand, and had it taken and himself brought close for an embrace. Savos matched him for height, although he was much the thinner man; his face was more hatchet than aquiline, his mouth even more of a steel trap, his dark eyes permanently cold, although at this moment they were warmer than usual. His hair was grey. He wore a dark blue uniform, like his men, but at the moment, no hat. There was a revolver holster on his belt.

  “Come upstairs.” He led the way. “Do you know, I did not ever expect to see you in Belgrade again?”

  “I did not expect to see you here again, either,” Berkeley admitted. “How did you survive the occupation?”

  “I went with the army, to Albania. The Austrians did a lot of shooting, of people like me.”

  “And came back with the army,” Berkeley suggested.

  “As you once said to me, the wheel always turns, eh?” He ushered Berkeley into his office, dismissed a dark-haired young woman who had been waiting there with a wave of his hand, and gestured his visitor to a chair in front of his desk. “Schnaps?”

  “A short one. Perhaps you could send one down to Lockwood.”

  “Of course. Martina!”

  The girl returned, and Savos gave her a full glass. “For the big Englishman with the horses.”

  She nodded, and left the office again.

  Savos sat down himself, behind the desk, raised his glass. “Here is to old times.”

  “I would have said they were best forgotten.”

  “They were all part of a plan which has brought us fame and fortune.”

  “You can’t have looked out of the window, recently,” Berkeley remarked. “Tell me about Sabac.”

  Savos frowned. “You are going back there? To the house?”

  “If it’s still standing, I’d like to sell it.”

  “As far as I know, it is still standing,” Savos said. “There was little destruction in Sabac; the Austrians were in there before anyone even knew war had been declared . . . But, is it yours to sell?”

  “It was my wife’s. And she had no other relatives, to my knowledge.”

  Savos nodded. “There will be legalities. You know that all the conspirators in the plot to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand were executed. All that were captured, anyway. With the exception of the boy Princip. By Austrian law he was too young to be hanged, so they locked him up for the rest of his life.” He grimaced. “That wasn’t very long, anyway. Officially he died of tuberculosis, after only a couple of years.”

  “But you don’t believe that.”

  “I believe he was murdered. Whether by starvation or
neglect or sheer ill-treatment is not relevant.” Savos shrugged. “It is all history, now, and we are the victors. I do not think you should go back to Sabac, Berkeley.”

  “I seem to remember you gave me that advice before.”

  “More than once. And you ignored me each time. I presume you are going to ignore it now.”

  “We don’t want to alter the pattern, do we. Tell me why I should not go back? You’re not going to pretend that the Black Hand is still operating?”

  “I do not think so. The Austrians certainly intended to destroy it. But you had a part in that too.”

  “I was obeying orders.”

  “Just like the Austrians,” Savos pointed out. “And there were a lot of them. You have Lockwood. Oh, your record indicates that the pair of you are worth a company, when it comes to a fight. But still . . . two men . . . Have you ever heard of the IMRO?”

  Berkeley frowned. “The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation. They were fighting for Macedonian independence around the turn of the century. But they got swallowed up in the Balkan Wars, and presumably even more in the Great War.”

  “Don’t you believe it. The organisation was founded to fight the Turks, yes. Then it found itself, as you say, caught up in our conquest of their country. And then, during the War, as we had lost authority to the Austrians, it surfaced again as a patriotic front. Then it became openly terrorist. Some of the things it did are unbelievable. Now we believe they are working with the Bulgarians to do what damage they can. They are a nasty lot.”

  Serious words, Berkeley thought, coming from a man like Savos. “And they were operating around Sabac?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know that they absorbed what was left of the Black Hand. Listen, we are old friends. Let me look after the business for you. I will find you an advocate, to investigate the matter of ownership, and if the property is legally yours, then he will place it on the market for you, and remit the funds when it is sold.”

  “It would be more help if you’d give me an escort of a few policemen.”

  Savos’ face seemed to close. “I cannot do that. Please understand. Things in my country are still in a very confused state. My business is to keep the peace in so far as I can, and look out for the interests of the Serbian people.”

  “What about all the other people in this new federation? Aren’t you to look out for them too?”

  Savos snorted. “Another one of President Wilson’s brain children. It is amazing to think that that man actually taught history at a university before he became President of the United States. His knowledge of the subject is amazing, in its lack of knowledge. Oh, yes, we are now to become a great nation. Croats, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Montenegrins, and of course Serbs and Macedonians, Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Muslims, all bound together in perpetual friendship and co-operation . . . simply because some addle-pated politician who has more power than sense, and who has never set foot in the region, says that it should be so.”

  “The alternative would have been to let all those nationalities become separate countries, with the consequent risk of more squabbles and wars.”

  “It will come to that, anyway,” Savos said. “At some time in the not too distant future.”

  “But if the Serbs are going to dominate this federation, and your King Peter is to rule it . . .”

  “That is the single ray of hope in the whole business. But King Peter will never see seventy again, you know.”

  “He has a son . . .”

  “Yes,” Savos said drily. “We must hope for the best. However, what I would like you to understand is that I cannot allow myself to be involved in personal affairs, private vendettas.”

  “What you mean is, if I am shot or knifed in the back, you will arrest my assassin and hang him. But you will do nothing to prevent the crime being committed.”

  “I can do nothing, without a crime being committed.”

  “At least you can tell me who I’m to look out for.”

  Savos shrugged. “Who can say. It may be no one at all. But . . . all of those young men who went to Saravejo in June 1914 had mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters . . . all of them know you were in Sarajevo on that fateful day.”

  “Trying to prevent an act of madness.”

  “As you say. They do not see it that way. They only know their loved ones were captured and executed.”

  “And they think I betrayed them?”

  Another shrug. “I do not know what they think. I am only suggesting that you are careful.”

  Berkeley nodded. “And if, by any chance, I shoot my assassin before he shoots me?”

  “You will have my blessing, as I will assume it was self-defence.”

  “Would you like to put that in writing?”

  Savos frowned. “What, exactly?”

  “That I am visiting my home in Sabac as a brigadier-general retired in the Serbian army, which I still am, and that I have the permission of the police to do whatever I have to do.”

  “My dear Berkeley, that virtually gives you permission to commit murder.”

  “If I do, my dear Savos, it will be only in self-defence.”

  They gazed at each other for several seconds, then Savos pulled a sheet of headed notepaper towards himself.

  *

  The line from Belgrade to Sabac had been repaired, and Berkeley and Lockwood caught the train the next morning, having stabled their horses in the capital. Berkeley had of course told Lockwood what the police chief had had to say.

  “So, you watch my back and I’ll watch yours,” he said.

  Both men were armed with service revolvers, but they kept these concealed in their coat pockets.

  “Do you really think there’ll be any bother?” Lockwood asked.

  “I’m hoping there won’t be. We should be in and out in a couple of hours, really before anyone knows we’re there at all.”

  Lockwood looked out of the window at the water; the railway track followed the line of the river. Sabac was a river port of some importance, and barges constantly made their way up and down, appearing and disappearing amidst the trees. But even the barges moved slowly, and there was a most pleasantly relaxed air about the town.

  “I really am fond of this place,” Lockwood said.

  Like his master, he had married a Serb woman, and created a family here – but he had got Maria out when the War had started, and she, and the children, were safely in England. As were his children, Berkeley thought, as the train drew to a halt in the station.

  But not their mother.

  They got down, and walked the short distance to the huge, dark Slovitza House, rising starkly amidst its small neighbours. Immediately, and inevitably, they attracted attention, not because anyone recognised them, Berkeley was sure, but because in a backwater like Sabac two well-dressed and obviously foreign gentlemen were always going to attract attention. Small boys paraded beside them, begging for money, dogs followed, tails wagging, and even some adults stopped to stare, especially when they reached the house.

  “There is nobody there,” a woman said.

  “It is empty,” added another.

  Berkeley grinned at them, and went up the steps. When he had left Sabac, six years ago, on that mad dash to Sarajevo, he had locked up the house securely. But six years was a long time. Presumably the Austrians had got to the house before the local vandals. The building still stood, tall and four-square and forbidding, and superficially undamaged, but both the lock and the padlock had been smashed, the door hung half off its hinges.

  “That house belonged to the famous Anna Slovitza,” one of the onlookers said.

  “I knew her well,” Berkeley said, and pushed the door in. It promptly fell a little more, now hanging by a single hinge.

  He stepped into the dark entry hall. He had been assaulted here, the first time he had visited this house, by one of Anna’s bodyguards. That had been twelve years ago, and he remembered it as if it had been yesterday. Because on that day he had fi
rst met Caterina.

  Lockwood came in. “Bit of a mess,” he remarked.

  There was certainly a lot of detritus on the floor, giving off a rank smell.

  “Do you think you can fix that door?” Berkeley asked. “I don’t want anyone following us in.”

  Lockwood examined the door. “I can patch it up. It won’t be very good, but it’ll stay shut.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

  Lockwood nodded, and took the door right off the hinge to make his repairs, keeping an eye on the street and the small crowd of spectators.

  Berkeley climbed the stairs to the first floor, opened the door of the dining room. In this tall, narrow house there was a separate floor to each of the main rooms. Now he looked at the huge mahogany dining table, amazingly still intact, although its once immaculate surface was scratched and cut. The sideboard was also still there, but the vast collection of wine bottles had all gone, as were the crystal glasses and decanters. He stood by the dining table for several moments. On that unforgettable first day, in Anna’s absence, he had sat at one end of this table, Caterina at the other. They had gazed at each other, had both known, instinctively that they would love each other. Very soon.

  He mounted the next flight of stairs, to the drawing room. His first impression of this room had been one of quiet elegance. Now the furniture was slashed and broken, the carpet torn, several of the dark-stained tables had had their legs smashed, and as he had expected, the large collection of silver-framed photographs had been stolen. At least, the frames had been. He stooped to pick up a photograph, torn and rumpled where it had been ripped from its frame and thrown to the floor. It was one he remembered well, of Anna Slovitza and her husband, who stood in a Napoleonic pose, chin thrust forward, right hand buried in his jacket.

  All gone.

  He let the piece of cardboard slip from his fingers back to the floor, straightened, went up the next flight of stairs to the bedrooms. Here there were three rooms. One of them had belonged to Anna. He had never entered it until after her death. The second had been Caterina’s. Here they had honeymooned, and he had loved, desperately, while with every second he had realised this family had the seeds of self-destruction within itself.