An extract from HB Lyle’s new novel Spy Hunter published by Hodder & Stoughton in November 2023.
Sunday 28th June 1914
Magnificence on wheels. The most wonderful thing he’d ever seen. A line of them, catching the sunshine in metallic bursts. A motorcade of power. Mehmed Mehmedbasic watches as the glorious cars go past and onwards down the Appel Quay. His hand closes around the pistol in his pocket but he does not draw it, does not do what he promised.
Nedeljko Cabrinovic did not care so much for cars. He stood on the thin riverside pavement, pressed between idiots waving imperial flags. The approaching cars winked and glared in the flitting sunshine. Heat crinkled the dusty quay. Faint cheers rolled towards the nineteen-year-old Serb. Young girls crowded the upper windows of the school opposite.
He could see the Archduke, now, 50 yards and closing. The purpled plumes of his ridiculous hat bent and fluttered in the wind. 20 yards now. The third car in the line. Light blue, like the clear Bosnian sky, his country’s sky, not Austria-Hungary’s.
Cabrinovic ripped the cap from his grenade and stepped forward. He flung it at the car. But the speed of the magnificent motorcar surprised him. He threw too late. The grenade bounced off the rolled down roof at the back and trickled along the road.
Kaboom! The grenade detonated under the car behind, blowing it over. The explosion shocked even Cabrinovic. His ears rang. Women screamed. Men roared out in pain. The Archduke’s car burst forward, a smacked horse.
Cabrinovic cursed. Across the road a man stared at him, pointed, shouted. Then another. Then a gendarme came running. Whistles blew. More police now, and other men, shouting, running, screaming. Cabrinovic turned, vaulted over the wall and dropped 15 feet into the Miljacka river.
The water only came up to his knees and for a moment the shock stalled him. But gendarmes streamed over the wall after him, and he began to stumble across the stones out into the river. He fumbled the cyanide pill from his pocket. He had no idea if the dose would be enough. None of the Black Hand did, but they’d all vowed to go down in glory. Death and glory and the Empire would never be the same again.
He jammed the pill into his mouth just as the gendarmes closed. The public too, each to get a boot or fist in where they could, before Cabrinovic was hauled away. The cyanide had failed to kill, just like he had.
Further up the Appel Quay, the Archduke’s car sped on. It passed Trifko Grabez, Cvjetko Popovic, Vaso Cubrilovic and Gavrilo Princip. The men, teenagers, students, each alone in the crowd at points along the route, each armed with pistol, grenade and cyanide, could only watch on as the limousine raced by.
Once they realised that the Archduke had survived the blast – his speeding car, his ridiculous plumage signalling to all that he lived – Grabez, Popovic and Cubrilovic presumed their deadly game was up. Their chance had gone, and so they slunk away. News of the bombing rippled along the crowd, but they had seen Franz Ferdinand motor by at pace. He was alive. They had failed.
Princip, 19, did not make that decision. He had smuggled into Bosnia from Belgrade, hiding in his own country, a Slav, and he would not give up so easily. He felt the FN10 Browning semi-automatic pistol in his pocket. Cold comfort, but comfort all the same. The flag-waving disciples dispersed around him. Some complained about the Archduke’s rudeness, the speed of his car, while others speculated about the commotion further along the river. Princip too wondered about this and he set off towards the site of the first bomb, to see what damage had been wrought. But then he stopped, and turned back. He remembered the Archduke’s itinerary.
The bombing will have thrown those plans awry but he looked up at the street sign on the wall. Franz Joseph Street. On his left, the Latin Bridge over the Miljacka. Behind him, the smell of dark, thick coffee caught in his throat. Schiller’s, a German cafe. No, . Here on Slav soil. A reminder he needed. For if the Archduke did stay on schedule, he would come back down the Appel Quay and turn right here, into this street towards the old town. Princip decided to wait.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, together with his wife Sophie, did indeed change his plans. He spoke at the town hall, he joked about the ‘warm’ welcome the city had given him, and then he resolved to skip the tour of the old town and head straight to the hospital to look in on those injured by Cabrinovic’s grenade. Unfortunately, no one told his driver.
The magnificent motorcar trundled back down the Appel Quay, this time with the river on its left. The crowds had thinned, especially on the river side of the road, for the sun burned fearfully hot, despite the early hour.
Princip sensed the car’s approach before he saw it. A throaty roar, a ripple among those watching on. He stepped back, around the corner into Franz Joseph Street, out of the glare of the sun and the oppression of the blue, blue sky. He waited. Hoped, hand on the FN10 Browning in his pocket.
The motorcar did indeed slow when it came to the bridge, and turned right into Franz Joseph Street. An army officer riding the tailboard shouted out. Someone cried. The car screeched to a halt. Another shout, then the engine stalled. Finally, the magnificent Graf and Stift PS 28/32 Double Phaeton failed.
Gavrilo Princip saw this all happen, right in front of him. He stepped forward and discharged two bullets at the passengers in the car. The first bullet lodged deep in Sophie’s stomach. The second nicked the aortic vein in the Archduke’s neck.
Gendarmes scragged Princip in seconds. He stood as they engulfed him, shocked and stilled by what he had just done. He did not feel the blows, nor hear the shouts and screams.
Nor did he hear the man, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, utter the words which turned out to be his last. ‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing.’