White Eagles Over Serbia

CHAPTER ONE. The Gift of Tongues

Though Methuen usually lived at his Club whenever he was in London it was seldom that he was seen in the bar or the gaunt smoking-rooms. This afternoon in June was something of an exception — and he surprised himself when he found that he was crossing the marble staircase by the porter’s lodge, to push open the swing doors which opened on the private lounge. He was in search of congenial company, he told himself, and added under his breath, “And I am not feeling very particular.” Four months in the jungles of Malaya had starved him for the sound of his own language and he was glad — yes, glad — to catch sight of old Archdale, the bore of bores, in one corner of the room. “You’ve been away a hell of a time,” said Archdale mistily, out of his gold-rimmed monocle, and Methuen warmed to the familiar greeting. “Welcome back to the camp-fire, old man.”

The camp-fire was in fact burning rather low and Methuen drew attention to it, as well as giving an order to the steward, before he sank into the arm-chair facing Archdale. They chatted idly for a while, and Archdale was really putting himself out to repay the sense of gratitude he felt for Methuen’s company by retailing one of his longer stories, when the latter suddenly felt that he was being watched. He turned round in time to see the reflection of Dombey glide across the hall mirror. “O dear,” he said, “I do hope Dombey isn’t looking for me.” Archdale gave a satisfied chuckle. “Well, it’s not me he’s after.”

Methuen drank deeply and said by way of explanation: “You see I’ve just left him. Just reported and was given indefinite leave after this Far East show.”

He looked nervously over his shoulder again and saw the doors open to admit the heavy dilapidated-looking figure of his chief — Dombey with the ant-eater’s profile and the threadbare Old Etonian tie. He stood inside the door and pointed his long nose in Methuen’s direction. “It is me,” said Methuen sadly; but in order to make sure he waggled his hands interrogatively and pointed at himself. Dombey nodded slowly, smiling, and shuffled into the far corner of the room where he settled into a chair like some great bird and folded his great hands in front of him on the mahogany table-top with a gesture of a man closing a dossier. His half-closed eyes gave him the appearance of being perpetually dozing; an innocent owlish smile played upon his features. “Damn him,” said Methuen vindictively, finishing his drink. “I’d better go and see what he wants.” Archdale gave another fatuous chuckle. “What a life you chaps in the ‘Awkward Shop’ have. Thank God I have never been co-opted for that cloak-and-dagger stuff. Simple gunner. Suits me best.”

At that moment it would have suited Methuen as well as anyone; Malaya had heartily sickened him and he was looking forward to a fortnight’s fishing on a river he knew in Ireland. Dombey hung over these plans like a shadow. “How the devil,” said Archdale testily (for he was loth to lose the only bit of company that was likely to come his way that afternoon). “How the devil do you get into that damned Hush-Hushery of Dombey’s, eh?” Methuen answered in a voice pre-occupied by private regrets: “A gift of tongues in my case.” “I see.” He stood up and finished his drink: “They discovered I could talk languages.” Archdale settled himself more firmly and said: “Parley you francay? Thank God I never had any languages.” Methuen coughed and braced himself: “Well, old man,” he said with genuine regrets, “so long.” Archdale made a sad little gesture and his monocle fell out. “Maybe it’s nothing,” he said hopefully. “Come back afterwards and I’ll finish my story. It’ll amuse you.” “Thanks. If I can.” Methuen picked his way across to Dombey’s table like a man walking over a mine-field. “Ah!” said Dombey sleepily, “I was looking for you.”

“I’ve just left your office, remember?” said Methuen acidly. Dombey nodded carefully, consolingly. “I wasn’t ready to talk, then,” he said. “Sincere apologies.” Methuen lit a cigarette and said: “I’m on leave now. Remember you telling me?” Dombey made a soothing gesture in the air like a magician stroking a cat. “Yes,” he agreed. “Of course you are.” Then he fell silent for a good minute and studied his huge hands.

There was something distinctly Oriental about Dombey’s personal approach to matters of business; he would skirt the subject which preoccupied him for ages before coming to the point. He would start, so to speak, at the furthest point from what he intended to say and work circuitously towards the point of impact which was always encapsulated in the phrase: “I just want you to go and have a little look.” This he uttered in the oily tones of a Pasha soothing a creditor. He would begin, for example, by saying: “Any idea what the mean summer temperature of Baffin Land is?” or else “How far would it be from Rome to Geneva for a bicyclist?”

In this case he remained silent for a long time looking at Methuen with an air of reflective sobriety before he said: “How far would it be if one walked from Belgrade to Salonika?”

Methuen was used to this approach. Despite Dombey’s high rank in the unit known to a few highly placed officials as SOq or Special Operations Q Branch, he was Methuen’s junior by a number of years; and it was abundantly clear that you could not have a career as meteoric as Dombey’s unless you had brains to back it. The slow and tortuous approach was not that of a slow-witted man; rather it was the approach of a man whose life-work consists in the fitting together of elaborate jig-saw puzzles in which the separate pieces were made up of intrigues, follies and human lapses: of dangers and alarms which beset the stability of British policy or design.

“Belgrade to Salonika?” said Methuen. “It depends how you walk. I personally would not and if that is what you are planning for me.…”

Dombey began to purr. “Wait,” he said. “My dear fellow, don’t rush me. Wait a second.”

“I know your tricks,” said Methuen severely, “and usually I don’t mind. But really, Dombey, this last job was terribly tiring. I must have a rest.”

“I promise you,” said Dombey solemnly, “that I only want your advice. Nothing will be wished on you. Of course I would like you to go, I won’t disguise it. But for the moment I only want your advice, see? Maybe the trip will appeal to you! How do either of us know that?” He sighed and sank back in his chair.

“What about Danny and the Professor?”

“No,” said Dombey and shook his head decisively. “Enjoyable as it is to send you off together this is no territory for the three-ringed circus you make. It’s a lone job, and as far as I can see, a damned difficult one. Of course I won’t have you considering it as your job. I’ll assign someone else. But your advice would be invaluable.”

Life, thought Methuen to himself, was getting boring at SOq. The last three of his missions (with the exception of the Malayan one from which he had just returned) had been enlivened by the two friends he had named. Three was certainly better company than one when it came to high adventure, and the three oddly-assorted men had shared a number of exciting experiences together in various parts of the Balkans. But this was a lone job.… Well, the lone jobs had to be done by some one. Behind the resentment he felt (for he could see quite clearly that Dombey was baiting the hook for him), he felt also the sluggish stirrings of curiosity. He would at any rate like to know what he was refusing. “What is it all about?” he said at last, and Dombey stood up abruptly like an angler striking. He lit himself a cigarette and stretched out his long arms. Methuen sat looking up at him soberly. “Just give me a brief outline,” he said, “and then I can clear off to a theatre.”

Dombey blew out the match and stood up, exhaling a long streamer of smoke through his nose. “I can’t talk clearly unless I’m in front of a map,” he said. “Are you free now?” He must have seen the slow resentment in Methuen’s eyes, for he caught his arm and said: “Let’s go down to the ‘Awkward Shop’ together. I have everything arranged there.” Methuen stood up and sighed. “One condition,” he said. “I’m not leaving for anywhere before next Friday.” Dombey made a large accommodating gesture in the air with his two arms. “But of course. But of course,” he said almost plaintively.

The two men walked slowly out into the grey London dusk, arm in arm, like bondsmen, and crossed the Mall towards Charing Cross Road, talking in desultory fashion; darkness was falling as they reached the anonymous square where, in the shadow of the Seven Dials, Special Operations Unit lived and had its being. A duty clerk sat sorting letters on a green baize table-top. The darkness had closed in by now and Methuen, gazing up for a moment at the smoke-blue night sky caught a glimpse of the battered angels which ornamented the roof of the building, riding there in the darkness like twelve ancient figure-heads. The building had once housed a Victorian insurance company, and the incidental sculptures which decorated its massive and now dirty cornices were eloquent reminders of the artistic criteria of the ’90’s. It was a strange flavourless barrack of a place, full of cold corridors and cramped lifts.

“Okay, sir,” said the duty clerk, setting aside the wooden hurdle and admitting them to the darkened hall where they stood for a minute while he groped in his safe for the tagged keys to Dombey’s office. The lift was, as always, out of order. They walked down a long corridor, turning on the lights as they went, and thence climbed the two floors to Dombey’s office in silence. Vaguely from the dark depths below them, where the radio section lived, there came the tapping of static in a receiver, knocking on the darkness with monotonous iteration like a finger-nail on the surface of a drum. From behind a half-dosed door on the first landing leaked a smear of fluorescent light which turned from purple to green and went out. Dombey fumbled with the door and threw it open with a crash.

Together they walked into the warm carpeted darkness of the room, and Methuen paused in his tracks to give his chief time to find the switch to the desk-lamp. How well he knew this room; it had been the starting-place of so many adventures. Mentally he built it up in all its detail, which the bright green desk-lamp would confirm: bookcases, the little mahogany bar, the stacks of map-cases, the camp-bed and the dictaphone with its rolls of wax stacked like ammunition on the shelf behind the desk. Dombey snapped on the light and as he did so delivered himself of the pregnant word: “Yugoslavia.” Methuen groaned and fumbled for another cigarette before stretching himself out in an arm-chair. “I know,” said Dombey soothingly. “I know.”

He took off his coat and crossed the room to the wall where the thick stack of maps stood, each in its stout cellophane-covered frame, and each attached to the wall by a brass member so that the series could be turned like the pages of a book. With his large white fingers Dombey leafed his way through Austria, Istria, Slovenia, and worked his way south towards Serbia. “You know the political background, Methuen,” he said, “so I won’t try and describe the Communist dictatorship of Tito. You were at Bari, weren’t you, when the war ended?” Methuen nodded.

“Ever been back to the place since?”

“Not since fifty-three or thereabouts.”

“How is your Serbian?”

“It used to be very good once.” He had suddenly begun to watch Dombey’s right hand as he might have watched the hand of a hypnotist. A vague image was rising in the back of his mind of high flushed mountains, crested with firs, and resonant with the vibration of icy waters flowing southwards and westwards. Dombey’s finger had begun to quest among the mountains of southern Serbia, vaguely, irresolutely. It settled finally on a town in the old Turkish Sanjak of Novi Pazaar. Methuen smiled and sat up. It was as if a doctor had pressed upon an aching place. “Around here,” said Dombey, and Methuen felt the province throb in his memory like a sick member.

“Twenty years ago or more,” he said aloud, “I fished that whole range two years running.”

“Something is going on here, in these mountains,” Dombey paused impressively and lit himself a cigarette.

“What is the brief?”

“There isn’t anything as clear as a brief.”

“Where do I come in?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The noise of the London traffic murmured outside the window, imitating the ripple of trout streams in Methuen’s imagination. “Explain,” he said patiently, and Dombey began his explanation.

“We know the Royalists are working night and day to start a revolution against Tito. Their headquarters is in Paris and they are managing to infiltrate people into Yugoslavia. That’s easy to understand. But recently, Methuen, they’ve been sending in small groups of fairly heavily armed people. Of course they don’t stand a chance against Tito’s OZNA organization; they are being gathered in like rabbits. There have been a dozen spy-trials in the last few months, all fairly openly reported in the Tito press, and all concerned with bands of armed men who are alleged to be roving about these mountains with some pretty decent equipment.”

“War surplus bought in France?”

“Yes.”

“But this is very normal for the Balkans.”

“Nevertheless, why always in this area? It is easy to seal off this mountain chain. If you or I wanted to bother Tito there are a hundred likelier places to send agents to. Why get so many chaps captured and lose so much equipment in this place particularly? We don’t know.”

“What do the people on the spot think?”

“They are completely blanketed. Movements of foreign embassies are restricted to an area of twenty kilometres around Belgrade and Zagreb. Everyone is followed night and day. It is quite impossible for a foreigner to make an excursion into this area and see for himself.”

“Perhaps they want to blow up the railway.”

“Would there be any point in that?”

“None that I can see.”

Dombey picked up a bundle of pin-flags from the tray on his desk and began sticking them on to the map at various points. “Seven different points in the same area,” he said at last, standing back and putting his head on one side. “Now here’s another thing. There has been of course a great deal of police activity in this area, but no great military movements, so obviously the Communists don’t regard these incursions as any great threat to the stability of the régime. Nevertheless they themselves are as puzzled as we are.”

“How do we know that?”

“Two refugees who worked for OZNA have recently come over to Trieste.”

“Are you suggesting”, said Methuen, “that I go wandering into this area and get myself bumped off as an agent of King Peter?”

“No,” said Dombey. “I just want your advice.”

“Could I reach Belgrade? There may be some gossip to be picked up there which would explain it.”

“Would you like to?”

“If there were a chance of fishing those mountain streams I’d like to very much,” said Methuen candidly, “but to sit in Belgrade and embarrass the Embassy.…”

“Ah yes,” said Dombey sadly. “The Embassy.” In general SOq made a point of operating independently of Foreign Office establishments abroad, in order not to compromise their work. “This is an exception,” said Dombey sorrowfully. “I’m sorry about it. So by the way is Sir John. You should see his telegrams. He is dead against your going in. And frankly I’d prefer to operate independently. You could go in as a business man, but visas take an age to come through. I am anxious to push on with this show immediately. Particularly since this last accident. That has worried everyone.” He paused.

“Ah!” said Methuen. “At last we are getting to the point. What has, in fact, happened?”

“Peter Anson is dead.”

“Ah!” said Methuen soberly.

“You never met him. He was Military Attaché in Belgrade, and a keen fly-fisherman. He found a way of spending his week-ends in these mountains, and last week he didn’t come back from a trip. Yesterday the OZNA notified the Embassy that they had found his body in the mountains near Novi Pazaar. Shot through the head. By one of these roving Royalist bands.”

“But how stupid of him”, said Methuen angrily, “to go blundering into an area like this with his trout-rod. I suppose he drove down there in his car, followed all the way?”

“No. He was cleverer than that. You see every week a car is allowed to take a bag down to the Consulate in Skoplje. The road passes through this area and there is a place in the valley where the OZNA car drops behind a good way. Peter used to drop himself off the car, spend Sunday in the mountains fishing, and pick up the car as it returned at dawn on Monday. Only this time he didn’t come back.”

There was a long silence. Dombey seated himself behind his desk again and began to draw on the green blotter with a pencil. “You see,” he said softly, “why there isn’t any brief? All this may be quite unworthy of our attention. Peter was of course trying to get in touch with one of these Royalist bands to find out what they were up to. It is quite likely that the Communists are telling the truth. He may have made contacts, only to be shot up by them. You see, the Royalists hate us nearly as much as the Communists do. They consider that we put Tito into power and were responsible for the death of Mihaelovic.”

“I know,” said Methuen wearily.

“Will you go as far as Belgrade. Not into the mountains, please. Just spend a week or two there and see what you can pick up. I shan’t worry if you find nothing. The whole place is under the blanket.”

“How would I go?”

“The War Office is sending out a civilian accountant to inspect their establishment there. His visa has been cleared. You could go as Mr. Judson if you wished, and stay for a week or so.”

“All right,” said Methuen without any marked enthusiasm. “It’s a thankless task. Hated by the reds and blacks, distrusted by the Embassy.…”

“Above all, no dicing with death,” said Dombey, picking his nose. “Don’t take chances.”

“What does the Ambassador think?”

“He is livid with rage. But the Secretary of State is for us this time so he can’t actually stop you.”

“When do I start?”

“When can you?”

“I want a week. I shall ask Boris for a brief on the territory. You won’t mind?”

“People don’t read files any more,” said Dombrey plaintively. “They always go and see Boris.”

“He should be on your staff really.”

“If there were any justice in the world he should have my job,” said Dombey. “But he prefers to make wigs.”

“He’s a good deal more rational than either of us.”

“Yes,” said Dombey sadly. “Yes.”

“I’m getting old,” said Methuen suddenly, standing up. “I can’t think why having once retired I shouldn’t end my days in the south of France or somewhere nice. Why keep on like this?”

“You would die of boredom.”

“I suppose so.”

“And by the way, if you don’t like this job you have only to turn it down and I’ll assign someone else.”

“Who else?” said Methuen not without some pardonable contempt. “Is there anyone who knows that part of Serbia as well as I do?”

“Let us not become boastful,” said Dombey, and he took from his pocket a roll of galley proofs covered in erasures and blotches, and spread them before him gloatingly. “At least if I retired I should have a consuming interest to keep me sane.” (He was the proud author of a monograph entitled “Aberrations of the Chalk-Hill Blue Lysandra Coridon”.)

“Butterflies,” said Methuen contemptuously. “I’ll bring you back some butterflies to knock your eye out. You should see them in those mountains, settling in clouds along the rivers.”

“Remember,” said Dombey sternly. “No mountains. No rivers. You are not to go wandering off or I shall get hell from the Foreign Office.

“The Foreign Office!”

To his surprise Methuen found himself feeling all of a sudden extremely youthful and spry. He recognized the familiar feeling of heightened life which succeeded every fresh call to adventure.

“Damme if I don’t walk over and see Boris now,” he said, and he was already walking briskly across towards Covent Garden before he realized how skilfully Dombey had baited the hook for him; he was probably sitting up there in his office now, smiling, clasping and unclasping his great hands. Methuen felt the idea of Yugoslavia skidding upon the surface of his mind like a trout-fly, tracing its embroidery of ripples. He had risen right out of the water. “I shall certainly take my trout-rod,” he muttered as he marched along. “Whatever Dombey says.”