White Eagles Over Serbia

CHAPTER SIXTEEN. Sorting Things Out

The staff of the Embassy attended morning prayers in the gaunt billiard-room and ballroom combined. This was a custom upon which the Ambassador insisted under pain of his displeasure. The service was a modest one and consisted only of a hymn and a short lesson which was usually read by the Head of Chancery. After this ceremony the staff trooped upstairs and the servants went about their duties in the residence.

It was seldom that anything ever happened to disturb the tranquil monotony of this short service, and on the morning in question things were going normally enough when the oak doors at the end parted to reveal the distraught features of the Sixth Secretary. He seemed full of some important intelligence, and though the Ambassador frowned savagely at him, he continued to stand at the door and beckon away sundry members of the staff with a long finger. Sir John was particularly annoyed by this behaviour as he was reading the lesson himself this morning, and felt in particularly good voice. The spectacle of his congregation being lured away one by one was extremely annoying.

First Duncan the Embassy doctor tiptoed out, and then Carter. What the deuce did young Porson think he was up to! With one eye on his text the Ambassador fixed the interrupter with a sombre and disapproving glance which should under normal circumstances have been enough to drive him precipitately out of the room. He was meditating a sharp but kindly reproof to be administered to Porson later in the day when all of a sudden he remembered Methuen. Doubtless all this infuriating interruption concerned Methuen — for was it not? Yes it was! Porson had just returned from.…

Sir John beckoned to his Head of Chancery and surrendered the makeshift lectern to him, telling him in a hoarse whisper to continue reading the lesson. Then he too slipped out of the room and turned down the corridor in the direction of the garage. He reached the kitchen entrance in time to see the door into the garage open. Carter and the doctor backed towards him, holding what he took to be Methuen’s corpse, while Porson followed, holding its legs. “How is he?” said the Ambassador, fearing for a moment that Methuen had met with the same fate as Anson. He was relieved to hear the corpse groan in realistic fashion as Porson banged his leg on a door.

“Thank goodness!” exclaimed the Ambassador with genuine fervour. And bearing a share of the burden he helped the trio to carry Methuen up a flight of stairs to the neat white infirmary where they laid him on the table and stood back to give the old Scots doctor room. “I’m feeling perfectly well”, said Methuen, “except for this leg of mine.”

“I’ll just get my carving-knife,” said Duncan sombrely, “and be right with you.”

“My dear chap,” said the Ambassador, catching his hand and wringing it. “I can’t tell you how glad we are.”

“I’m afraid I’m fearfully dirty, sir,” said Methuen who had suddenly become extremely conscious of his sweat-stained clothes and his matted hair. He fingered the stubble on his chin apologetically and added: “One gets simply filthy sleeping out.”

Duncan was back now with a huge pair of surgical scissors and they carefully peeled his clothes from him while he lay at ease on the white operating table feeling rather pleased with himself. “If I could have half an hour to wash up, sir,” he said, “I’d like to report to you, and perhaps Porson would be good enough to draft something for you to see.”

“A hot bath with plenty of soap,” said Duncan who was examining his leg with an air of disappointment. “You have four wee holes in your legs, Colonel. Some bits of lead in the calf. Some, I think, should be left to lie but there’s a wee one here I’ll fish out when we’ve cleaned you up.”

They left him now, and while Duncan swabbed his aching leg with alcohol he lay listening with voluptuous pleasure to the noise of the hot bath running next door. He felt his head. “I’ve got a temperature,” he said and Duncan nodded wisely. “Exposure and fatigue. Twenty-four hours in bed. As for your leg … I’m going to excavate a wee bit now so hold tight.”

Methuen turned over on his stomach and held tight, gripping the edges of the table while the Scotsman probed the wounds, grunting as he did so. This proved to be more painful than anything Methuen had so far undergone and he sank his teeth into the padded pillow in order not to groan.

“There,” said Duncan at last, and he heard the tinkle of lead in a basin. “That’s two I’ve fished out. The others can lie awhile. They’ll not trouble you. And by the way, Colonel, it’s not lead you’ll be glad to know, but bits of rock. Were you peppered by a blunderbuss full of odds and ends?” He chuckled comfortably.

“Rock?” said Methuen.

“Aye. Fragments of Bosnia.”

He lay in the white bath and soaked himself for nearly an hour while Duncan sat beside him on the bathroom stool, smoking and asking questions. Methuen felt his tiredness oozing from his very bones as he lay there. It seemed almost too good to be true. Then Porson appeared with all the clothing shed so recently by Mr. Judson and a fat file of telegrams from Dombey. “Everything has gone wonderfully,” he said. “Mr. Judson has been in bed with ’flu for a day or two, and now he has sprained his ankle. How soon will he be walking again, Doc?”

“It’s a terrible post this for practice,” said Duncan with genuine disappointment. “He should be up day after tomorrow. May need crutches for a day or two if the muscles are seized up. But it’s not serious, unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?” said Methuen indignantly.

“Have pity on me,” said Duncan. “Apart from an occasional cough or cold I have nothing to do. I was full of hope when Porson brought you in. I thought I’d have some real work to do.”

“Selfish fellow,” said Porson.

“I’m beginning to feel apologetic,” said Methuen.

“Oh, it’s not your fault,” said Duncan kindly. “You did your best for us. Lucky you didn’t come back on a slab like poor Anson.”

“By the way,” said Porson, “you are going to be kept here to-day. In the state bedroom. The Ambassador’s orders. He wants to have a long talk with you; and you’ll presumably want to do some dictating.”

“Yes,” said Methuen. “Help me up, will you?”

He was bedded down in some luxury in the bedroom usually reserved for important visitors after Duncan had given him an amateurish shave with the Ambassador’s own razor. Sir John himself came flitting in and out every few moments, obviously most anxious to hear his story and to compose his telegrams to the Foreign Office. “I don’t want to rush you if you feel tired. Do have a sleep. We can talk this evening. I’ll keep a clerk on duty to send anything we need.”

“I’d like just half an hour to lie quite quiet and get it all clear in my mind,” said Methuen, “and then I can dictate something. Perhaps Porson would take it.”

He lay for a while with closed eyes, luxuriating in the feather mattress of the bed, and trying to compose the events of the last few days into a coherent picture; but when Porson tiptoed into the room again he found Mr. Judson sleeping a profound and happy sleep.

They did not disturb him and it was long past teatime when Methuen awoke and rang for the butler. The door opened to admit Sir John himself, wheeling a trolley crammed with tea-things. “Ah!” he said. “So you are awake at last.”

“Yes,” said Methuen shamefacedly.

Over a cup of tea they talked and Methuen gave a slow and detailed account of his adventures while Porson sat in a corner dotting and dashing into a shorthand notebook. Then he disappeared and left the two men to talk in the twilight. “The drafts will be back soon,” said the Ambassador. “And thank goodness we can talk about something apart from shop. Methuen.…”

“Yes, sir.”

The Ambassador leaned forward, balancing his cup of tea precariously on his knee, and said: “Don’t think it frivolous of me, but anything you can tell me about the fishing might come in useful. One day they might relax this ban on travel inside the country and then maybe I should get the chance to try my hand at the … what do you call it … Studenitsa river.”

Methuen smiled and asked for a map and the two of them settled down to one of those delightful and interminable conversations which for anglers is the next best thing to actually fishing a river. Methuen was flattered by the modesty and attention of the great diplomat and quietly stuffing the pipe which he always carried but so seldom smoked, he gave of his best, cross-hatching in the rivers he knew and scribbling a note here and there about more esoteric matters like bait and weather.

Sir John was highly delighted and when Methuen told him ruefully how he had lost his rod his sympathy was so great that he immediately retired to his study and produced his own — a splendid greenheart by McBey — which he forced upon his reluctant guest.

“I really couldn’t, sir,” he said.

“But you really must. I insist.”

“But it’s too much,” protested Methuen feebly. “I’ve never owned anything as beautiful and expensive as this. I should be, well, almost shy to fish with it.”

“Don’t you believe it,” said Sir John.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Nonsense.”

Methuen smiled. “It is by the purest of good fortune that I didn’t leave your book of flies behind. I’ve ticked the two I thought likeliest — though I really didn’t have time to experiment in the way I’d have wished—”

But by now Porson was back with the drafts and a note for the Ambassador. Sir John read it and said:

“There’s a message just come through on the Agency tapes about the submarine which was supposed to take off the treasure in Dalmatia. Apparently the Italian fleet caught it trespassing in Italian territorial waters, and ordered it into Trieste. It’s a poor look-out for the White Eagles.”

Methuen sighed. “It was always a tricky and chancy operation. But something tells me they haven’t reached the karst, let alone the point of rendezvous.” Once more in his mind’s eye he saw those toppling, turning figures spinning slowly down into the icy fastness of the great lake and felt a pang of pain for Black Peter and his band of shaggy ruffians whose devotion to a lost cause had led them to sudden and ignominious death in the fastnesses of Serbia.

While the Ambassador with crisp succinctness dictated his telegrams from the drafts, Methuen ruffled his way through the file of telegrams from Dombey, many of which were already outdated by events.

“What would have happened”, he said when the Ambassador had finished, “if we had got through?” and Sir John sighed and shook his head. “It’s always difficult to predict but a well-found Royalist movement might have been a serious factor for the present régime.”

“But surely that would have been a good thing? These people hate the West.”

Sir John took a turn up and down the floor with his hands behind his back. “I’m not sure,” he said, “I’m not sure. A number of strange reports have been floating in from various missions about reported disagreements between Tito and Stalin. At times I have been almost led to predict some sort of rupture. Of course I can’t go as far as that, but the situation at the moment seems full of unknown factors. We must wait and see. You see, Methuen, at the moment the Russians certainly have influence here but the country is not yet in a Russian stranglehold. It is a willing partner of the USSR, that no one can deny. But if Tito were overturned by any chance the Russians might move troops in.”

“But do you think he is detachable?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Not by us perhaps. He is certainly a Communist. But perhaps by factors outside his own control.”

“This is very interesting.”

“It’s all so speculative that I did not think it worth mentioning to you.”

Methuen lay back and puffed smoke up at the painted ceiling of the state bedroom as he considered the bewildering ramifications of conjecture upon which policy must be built. Four months later he was to recall this conversation with a start as the news of the Tito-Stalin split burst upon an astonished world. Now he simply cocked an interested eyebrow in the direction of the Ambassador and waited for him to continue. Sir John rubbed his chin and gazed sombrely at the log fire. “My feeling is that Tito knows he has gone wrong and is far from blind to the injustices of orthodox Communism. He will have to liberalize or lose the support of the people: indeed he has already lost it. He might yet win it back. Who knows?”

“And the Royalists?”

“Another question mark. By the way, there were one or two small points which I wanted to mention. They slipped my mind. This girl Vida.”

“Yes?” said Methuen with a sudden fierce constraint.

“She got in touch with Dacic in the town and sent a message through to say that she was still alive and kicking. Apparently the Royalists — the White Eagles — were so alarmed when she asked permission to let you into the secret that they decided to tell you she was dead and, so to speak, slam the door in your face. In the meanwhile there came another interesting development. Her actual employers in the secret police have sent her out to Trieste on a mission of their own. They apparently trust her implicitly, though it’s a foregone conclusion that she’ll defect once she gets there. I’ve asked Dombey to make contact through the consular agent there and get her a safe conduct.”

Methuen sat open-mouthed during this recital, his heart beating so fast that he felt suffocated.

“Goodness,” he said at last, “what a relief.”

“I thought you’d be glad.”

“Glad?” said Methuen. “More than glad.”

That night he dined at ease and when Duncan came to visit him he was delighted to find that his temperature was back to normal and his leg much less painful. The Scotsman stared gloomily at his patient and said sadly: “You’ll be up and about tomorrow. Maybe you won’t even need crutches. It’s a sad world.”

At bedtime there came a congratulatory signal from Dombey, curt and brief as always, followed by orders to return as soon as he felt fit enough. Porson, who had decoded the message, said: “I suppose you’ll be burning to get back home. How would you like to go?”

Methuen thought of the long slow train which dragged its way across Serbia and Croatia and said: “I think I’d like to fly, really.”

“When?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

Porson sighed and closed the file with a snap. “Here endeth the first lesson,” he said. “I’ll see that they book you a seat on a plane.”

Methuen slept soundly that night and woke to a delightful sunny day. Crickets buzzed in the grass on the green lawns of the Embassy. A lawn-mower whirred somewhere out of sight. He found to his delight that his leg, though it was painful, easily bore his weight. Crutches would be unnecessary. He walked up and down his bedroom in order to verify this exciting fact.