The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ Kumanovo, Bitola, Prilep, Skopje. He passed on some information in Skopje, and two Russian agents were arrested. He saw how one of them was beaten up; he only just managed not to vomit, ashamed of his own weakness.

      Back in Belgrade. Roša had earned a rare holiday, she said. She took him on an old steamer down the Danube, brown with all the corpses of history. They stopped at Smederevo. Smederevo Fortress was one of the places Roša sang about when drunk. In its time it had been the largest fortress in all the Balkans. Its gigantic and ruinous towers stood against the Danube. It was a cold, depressing place; the wind blew from Russia. Masses of peasants had been forced to pile stone on stone, to erect this monstrous stronghold against the Ottoman Empire.

      There was no defence against history and the Turk. When Smederevo fell in 1459, the medieval state of Serbia was quenched like a torch in the river.

      A man was waiting for them in Smederevo. He was big and black-bearded. His name was Milo Strugar, and he became Squire’s friend. On that first occasion, he was hostile. He drove Roša and Squire away in an old black German car to a wooden-tiled house in the woods. There Squire was made privy to some of the plans of Yugoslav counter-intelligence.

      He never saw Roša again after that occasion. The bastards had sent her away, just to show him that you did what you were told. He learned the lesson.

      Long before the war, the Yugoslav and Soviet communist parties had forged close links; they were brother Slavs. But Stalin had offered Tito little support in his struggle against German invasion. The old channels of communication were now being obliterated. Yugoslavia had to stand on its own legs or fall under Soviet domination.

      Squire saw evidence of how ruthless both sides were. In this corner of Europe, in the broken towns and forests, the Cold War was real. Yugoslavia stood between East and West, mistrusting both; the fight was not merely of words, but of guns, fists and boots.

      Living became more complex while its issues simplified. The remnants of the fascist Ustache in Croatia, once linked to Hitler, were allying themselves with the Soviet Union. Their plan was to kill Marshal Tito. They had to be smashed. There were weeks, months, when tank movements on the other side of the frontier suggested that Soviet invasion was imminent.

      Squire thought much of his gentle father in those times. He thought of the dogs that had devoured his face. To some acts, there was no adequate response but killing. So in Serbia.

      He slept rough, became familiar with the forest. War was not a natural activity of man, but the equations of life forced it on him. He understood perfectly that the Yugoslavs had no alternative but to resist the Russians. Like tigers, they loved their freedom, and would defend it.

      More important to the strategists in the West was the fact that here communist was fighting communist for the first time. It gave cause for hope. The struggle was of immense significance for the rest of the world. As he identified with the Yugoslav cause, he saw clearly a parallel between his lonely war at one end of Europe and the role played at the other end of Europe by Britain, only seven years earlier.

      After Milo Strugar had tested him, the Yugoslavs began reluctantly to trust Squire. The Serbs preferred him to the Croats. In part, they trusted him because he was British. The label ‘Englishman’ was sweet in their mouths.

      Early in the ill year of 1948. Countries of Central Europe like Czechoslovakia sinking further under Russian ice. Romania becoming more sovietized, and more hostile to Yugoslavia. The USSR beginning to hamper traffic between Berlin and the West.

      The BIA sent Squire to the Yugoslav port of Rijeka, where mixed elements in the population caused unrest. Snipers still lurked in the hills above the city. Squire’s contact was a Serb called Slobodan, who ran a printing press as a cover for his other activities. Slobodan was a wild and unkempt man, extremely emaciated, who had lost his left eye in the mountains during his term as one of Tito’s partisans.

      Over cigarettes and slivovitz, and through many curses, Slobodan in his little oily shop explained how a shipment of arms of British manufacture had arrived in Rijeka from the British Zone in Germany. It was delivered in an armoured freight train, and the train was hauled into railway sidings near the docks, where it was guarded by a Special Operations unit of the Yugoslav Army. Regulars, not conscripts, said Slobodan, spitting. After some delay, the officer commanding Rijeka Arsenal – sited some miles inland from Rijeka – arrived with a convoy of trucks to take charge of the shipment. The train was empty.

      The major had immediately arrested the captain in charge of the guard unit, the driver and engineer of the train, the train guards, and just about all the officials connected with port operations. But the arms were not recovered.

      A full-scale search of Rijeka was in progress when Squire arrived. Slobodan, a true anarchist, had no patience with the blundering military. With mighty curses, he told Squire that he had better ideas of his own.

      ‘I’ve got orders to contact the major i/c arsenal,’ Squire said.

      ‘Screw that, I have more genius in my arse than him in his head. Listen to my report.’

      Slobodan had received a tip from an informant that a barge or barges had been sighted off-shore during the previous night, a few miles to the north. The barges were showing no navigation lights. All was obvious to Slobodan – you cut out the floors of the freight cars, remove the crates of arms, and steal them away by sea, not land. Sea is safer by night than land by day or night.

      ‘Barges don’t get far in one night. Come, we go see for ourselves in my fast car.’

      Squire found himself packed into a tiny Zastava, bumping dangerously over the coast road, while Slobodan gave him an almost incomprehensible résumé of his family history, in which dismemberment figured rather largely.

      After making a few enquiries, they stopped at a small bay west of Opatia, under the humped slopes of Mount Ucka. A black-clad widow-woman who lived up the mountainside swore she could see from her window a newly risen rock or a newly sunken ship under the surface of the Adriatic.

      They parked the car and went down to examine the situation. The waters of the Kvarner Bay lapped a line of beach rare on this rocky coast. There were fresh but confused marks in the sand – someone had obliterated tell-tale signs with a sack. The steeply shelving shoreline would allow a shallow-draught barge to pull in to the beach without trouble, and under cover of dark unloading operations could be effected with little risk of discovery: this region, Istra, was under dispute between Yugoslavia and Italy, with parts still administered by British forces; many of the inhabitants had fled, leaving the country almost deserted. The ravages of incessant warfare were plainly seen.

      Slobodan and Squire prowled the beach. On trees and bushes fringing the sand they found freshly broken branches, as if vehicles had moved in. They were searching among the bushes when they came on the body of a man dressed in fisherman’s clothes. His jersey was clotted with blood. He had been stabbed several times in the rib-cage. His beard was matted with mud and blood. Anger and pain still contorted his rigid face. Ants crawled between his teeth.

      ‘It’s Milo,’ said Squire. ‘Milo Strugar …’

      ‘Jebem te sunce!’ growled Slobodan, thrusting a rampant fist up at the sky. When he recovered, he stuck a cigarette into Squire’s mouth and asked, ‘What do you know of this man?’

      ‘Milo was my mentor, the first Serb to trust me. As to what he was working on hereabouts, it was secret. I know of it only in general.’ He hesitated, not entirely trusting the savage Slobodan, then plunged on, still overcome with shock. ‘Milo had a lead given him by a Croatian member of the СКАЧАТЬ