June 28, 1914
In the city of Sarajevo, thirteen hundred kilometers to the southeast (as the crow flies), one bomb had already been thrown at the automobile that morning. Deflected by the archduke’s arm, the grenade bounced off the folded top, and ended up under the car following behind. Several dignitaries were wounded in the explosion. But not the archduke, nor his wife. They were very fortunate. The archduke gave a short speech at city hall, and then changing his plans, headed to the hospital to visit the men who’d been wounded.
• • •
The open car carrying the royal couple backed up in order to turn around, stalling briefly in the process. The crowd scurried out of the way.
“Forgive me, Your Excellency,” said the driver. “I should have turned back at the—”
“Damned idiot,” mumbled the archduke. “Doesn’t even know the way around his own damned city.”
The archduke’s wife patted him on the arm and continued to wave at the people lining the city street.
“Stop fretting, dear,” she said, not minding this at all. Not sufficiently royal for her husband’s family, she was rarely allowed to appear at his side for public events. She was also feeling elated because of the child she was carrying.
She stopped waving when she saw the little man with the feverish eyes pull the pistol from his coat. He stepped up to the car that had so conveniently stalled where he stood.
He fired two shots. One struck the archduke’s wife in the abdomen, the other sliced through the archduke’s jugular vein.
“It’s nothing,” murmured the archduke, as they died.
• • •
In the days to come when Coal pored, obsessively, over the newspaper stories, he wondered that not one of the reporters had made mention of a man standing across the street, leaning against one of the big windows of Moritz Schiller’s Delicatessen, a cup of coffee in his hand.
Well, thought Coal, why should they? That’s the whole point. Job done. And no more broken bottles of cognac to cry over.