back-up, the weapons and ammunition, the medical kit, and the various IDs, official letters, bills and currencies.
Time passed quickly. Winter turned to a surprisingly old-fashioned spring and a rare period of clement weather made the campus beautiful. Young female undergraduates seemed to blossom like fresh flowers among the ancient stones, wafting about the place in their breeze-rippled summer dresses.
‘Enjoy the view,’ McCluskey said as she and Stanton crossed the quad one morning. ‘Won’t be any short skirts where you’re going. Not till about 1926 anyway. Perhaps not even then. After all, it was the Great War that liberated the independent woman and there isn’t going to be one this time.’
They were on their way through the town to West Road where the History faculty was situated.
‘I brought sandwiches,’ McCluskey said, tapping her vast handbag, ‘so we’ll have a working lunch.’
‘I’ve often wondered what you keep in those handbags of yours. Looks like you could fit the kitchen sink in.’
McCluskey was a woman who never ventured out without a substantial handbag over her shoulder. She had a fine and varied selection, some of which appeared to be actual antiques.
‘What a woman keeps in her handbag is one of the ancient secrets of our sex and were I to tell you I should have to have you castrated.’
‘Well, don’t then. Where are we going, by the way?’
‘The Incident Room.’
‘Incident Room?’
‘Well, it’s just a tutorial room in the History faculty really but our espionage bloke was with the Special Branch before he retired and he wants to call it the Incident Room, so who are we to argue? Today we are investigating a murder. The tragedy at Sarajevo. The killing that screwed the twentieth century.’
The Incident Room had been well named, for that was just what it had been turned into. An old-style police murder room. The walls were covered with maps and diagrams of Sarajevo and Belgrade and of the mountainous area between, with routes traced upon them and arrows pointing to significant locations. There were numerous photographs of buildings, streets and of weapons, all connected by strips of various coloured ribbons. And of course the main protagonists in the tragedy: the Archduke and Duchess themselves staring grimly out from the centre of the display; Gavrilo Princip, the killer, closest to them, as he had been at the moment of their deaths. Princip was surrounded by various other sallow-faced young men who had been his comrades on the fateful day. Then the soldiers, Serbian army officers at one end of the wall and Austrian at the other. The former who plotted the murder, and the latter who so spectacularly failed to prevent it.
‘It’s all on the computer you’ve been given,’ a hawkish-looking old man remarked. He had a granite-hard Glaswegian accent and a great hooked nose that could have torn flesh from carrion. ‘But Ah like things old school, stuck up on a wall where Ah can see ’em.’
‘This is Commander Davies,’ McCluskey explained. ‘Late of the Scottish Special Branch. Now retired. Our chief strategist.’
‘Happy Easter,’ Stanton said, shaking his hand.
‘Nothing very happy about it as far as Ah can see,’ Davies snapped back. ‘The country’s buggered, the planet’s buggered and Ah’m buggered. We’ll get straight down t’ business, shall we?’
‘By all means.’
‘Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević,’ Davies said, levelling a laser pointer at the central picture on the Serbian end of the display. ‘As hard a bastard as ever drew breath. Known then and now as Apis. The man who organized the killing that started the Great War. Do y’know anything about the man?’
‘He was the head of the Serbian Secret Service,’ Stanton replied.
‘Aye, he was, and also, as is the way with spies, its principal foe. As fervent a pan-Serbian nationalist as ever drew breath. Led a secret terrorist organization inside his own department called
Time passed quickly. Winter turned to a surprisingly old-fashioned spring and a rare period of clement weather made the campus beautiful. Young female undergraduates seemed to blossom like fresh flowers among the ancient stones, wafting about the place in their breeze-rippled summer dresses.
‘Enjoy the view,’ McCluskey said as she and Stanton crossed the quad one morning. ‘Won’t be any short skirts where you’re going. Not till about 1926 anyway. Perhaps not even then. After all, it was the Great War that liberated the independent woman and there isn’t going to be one this time.’
They were on their way through the town to West Road where the History faculty was situated.
‘I brought sandwiches,’ McCluskey said, tapping her vast handbag, ‘so we’ll have a working lunch.’
‘I’ve often wondered what you keep in those handbags of yours. Looks like you could fit the kitchen sink in.’
McCluskey was a woman who never ventured out without a substantial handbag over her shoulder. She had a fine and varied selection, some of which appeared to be actual antiques.
‘What a woman keeps in her handbag is one of the ancient secrets of our sex and were I to tell you I should have to have you castrated.’
‘Well, don’t then. Where are we going, by the way?’
‘The Incident Room.’
‘Incident Room?’
‘Well, it’s just a tutorial room in the History faculty really but our espionage bloke was with the Special Branch before he retired and he wants to call it the Incident Room, so who are we to argue? Today we are investigating a murder. The tragedy at Sarajevo. The killing that screwed the twentieth century.’
The Incident Room had been well named, for that was just what it had been turned into. An old-style police murder room. The walls were covered with maps and diagrams of Sarajevo and Belgrade and of the mountainous area between, with routes traced upon them and arrows pointing to significant locations. There were numerous photographs of buildings, streets and of weapons, all connected by strips of various coloured ribbons. And of course the main protagonists in the tragedy: the Archduke and Duchess themselves staring grimly out from the centre of the display; Gavrilo Princip, the killer, closest to them, as he had been at the moment of their deaths. Princip was surrounded by various other sallow-faced young men who had been his comrades on the fateful day. Then the soldiers, Serbian army officers at one end of the wall and Austrian at the other. The former who plotted the murder, and the latter who so spectacularly failed to prevent it.
‘It’s all on the computer you’ve been given,’ a hawkish-looking old man remarked. He had a granite-hard Glaswegian accent and a great hooked nose that could have torn flesh from carrion. ‘But Ah like things old school, stuck up on a wall where Ah can see ’em.’
‘This is Commander Davies,’ McCluskey explained. ‘Late of the Scottish Special Branch. Now retired. Our chief strategist.’
‘Happy Easter,’ Stanton said, shaking his hand.
‘Nothing very happy about it as far as Ah can see,’ Davies snapped back. ‘The country’s buggered, the planet’s buggered and Ah’m buggered. We’ll get straight down t’ business, shall we?’
‘By all means.’
‘Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević,’ Davies said, levelling a laser pointer at the central picture on the Serbian end of the display. ‘As hard a bastard as ever drew breath. Known then and now as Apis. The man who organized the killing that started the Great War. Do y’know anything about the man?’
‘He was the head of the Serbian Secret Service,’ Stanton replied.
‘Aye, he was, and also, as is the way with spies, its principal foe. As fervent a pan-Serbian nationalist as ever drew breath. Led a secret terrorist organization inside his own department called
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