sighed. ‘Young Hans is well enough in a tank but subtlety is not really his métier. I did not, by the way, insult you. Following you was entirely his own idea. I knew what he was up to, of course, but I didn’t try to stop him. For hardly won experience a sore head is little enough to pay.’
‘He hasn’t even got that. An ally, you see.’
‘Pity. It might have reinforced the lesson.’ He broke off as a knock came to the door and the concierge entered bearing brandy and glasses. Petersen poured and lifted his glass.
‘To Operation Weiss.’
‘Prosit.’ Lunz sipped appreciatively. ‘Not all Gestapo officers are barbarians. Operation Weiss? So you know? You’re not supposed to.’ Lunz didn’t seem at all put out.
‘I know lots of things that I’m not supposed to.’
‘You surprise me.’ Lunz’s tone was dry. He sipped some more brandy. ‘Excellent, excellent. Yes, you do have a penchant for picking up unconsidered—and classified—trifles. Which leads to your repeated use of the world “ally”. Which leads, in turn, to what you possibly regard as our undue interest in you.’
‘You don’t trust me?’
‘You’ll have to improve on that injured tone of yours. Certainly we trust you. Your record— and it is a formidable one—speaks for itself. What we—and especially myself—find difficult to understand is why such a man with such a record aligns himself with—well, I’m afraid I have to say it—with a quisling. I do not hurt your feelings?’
‘You’d have to find them first. I would remind you that it was your Führer who forced our departed Prince Regent to sign this treaty with you and the Japanese two years ago. I assume he’s the quisling you’re talking about. Weak, certainly, vacillating, perhaps cowardly and no man of action. You can’t blame a man for those things: nature’s done its worst and there’s nothing we can do about nature. But no quisling—he did what he thought was best for Yugoslavia. He wanted to spare it the horrors of war. “Bolje grob nego rob”. You know what that means?’
Lunz shook his head. ‘The intricacies of your language—’
‘ “Better death than slavery”. That’s what the Yugoslav crowds shouted when they learned that Prince Paul had acceded to the Tripartite Pact. That’s what they shouted when he was deposed and the pact denounced. What the people didn’t understand was that there was no “nego”, no “than”. It was to be death and slavery as they found out when the Führer, in one of his splendid rages, obliterated Belgrade and crushed the army. I was one of those who were crushed. Well, nearly.’
‘If I might have some more of that excellent cognac.’ Lunz helped himself. ‘You don’t seem greatly moved by your recollections.’
‘Who can live with all his yesterdays?’
‘Nor by the fact that you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to fight your own countrymen.’
‘Instead of joining them and fighting you? War makes for strange bed-fellows, Colonel. Take yourselves and the Japanese, for instance. Hardly entitles you to a holier-than-thou attitude.’
‘A point. But at least we’re not fighting our own people.’
‘Not yet. I wouldn’t bank on it. God knows, you’ve done it enough in the past. In any event, moralizing is pointless. I’m a loyalist, a Royalist, and when—and if ever—this damned war is over I want to see the monarchy restored. A man’s got to live for something and if that’s what I choose to live for, then that’s my business and no-one else’s.’
‘All to hell our own way,’ Lunz said agreeably. ‘It’s just that I have some difficulty in visualizing you as a Serbian Royalist.’
‘What does a Serbian Royalist look like? Come to that, what does a Serbian look like?’
Lunz thought then said: ‘A confession, Petersen. I haven’t the slightest idea.’
‘It’s my name,’ Petersen said kindly. ‘And my background. There are Petersens all over. There’s a village up in the Italian Alps where every second surname starts with “Mac”. The remnants, so I’m told, of some Scottish regiment that got cut off in one of those interminable medieval wars. My great-great-great grandfather or whatever, was a soldier of fortune, which sounds a lot more romantic than the term “mercenary” they use today. Like a thousand others he arrived here and forgot to go home again.’
‘Where was home? I mean, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, what?’
‘Genealogy bores me and, not only don’t I care, I don’t know either. Ask any Yugoslav what his ancestors five times removed were and he almost certainly wouldn’t know.’
Lunz nodded. ‘You Slavic people do have rather a chequered history. And then, of course, just to complicate matters, you graduated from Sandhurst.’
‘Dozens of foreign countries have had their officers graduate from there. In my case, what more natural? My father was, after all, the military attaché in London. If he’d been the naval attaché in Berlin I’d probably have ended up in Kiel or Mürwik.’
‘Nothing wrong with Sandhurst. I’ve been there, as a visitor only. But a bit on the conservative side as far as the courses offered are concerned.’
‘You mean?’
‘Nothing on guerrilla warfare. Nothing on espionage and counter-espionage. Nothing on code and cypher breaking. I understand you’re a specialist on all three.’
‘I’m self-educated in some things.’
‘I’m sure you are.’ Lunz was silent for some seconds, savouring his brandy, then said: ‘Whatever became of your father?’
‘I don’t know. You may even know more than I do. Just disappeared. Thousands have done so since the spring of’41. Disappeared, I mean.’
‘He was like you? A Royalist? A Četnik?’ Petersen nodded. ‘And very senior. Senior officers don’t just disappear. He fell foul of the Partisans, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps. Anything is possible. Again, I don’t know.’ Petersen smiled. ‘If you’re trying to suggest I’m carrying on a vendetta because of a blood feud, you’d better try again. Wrong country, wrong century. Anyway, you didn’t come here to pry into my motives or my past.’
‘And now you insult me. I wouldn’t waste my time. You’d tell me just as much as you wanted me to know and no more.’
‘And you didn’t come here to carry out a search of my belongings—that was just a combination of opportunity and professional curiosity. You came here to give me something. An envelope with instructions for our commander. Another assault on what it pleases you to call Titoland.’
‘You’re pretty sure of yourself.’
‘I’m not pretty sure. I’m certain. The Partisans have radio transceivers. British. They have skilled radio operators, both their own and British. And they have skilled code-crackers. You don’t dare send secret and important messages any more by radio. So you need a reliable message boy.
