No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
—A. J. P. Taylor
He had been unconscious for forty-eight hours, they told him. Each time he picked up a paper, he saw news of the assassination again. This led to a vicious circle of headaches, terror visions, and sedation. The nurses were unaware of the link, and so the local newspapers with their sketchy, biased news kept coming. One time when he woke, he was met by a second and a third angel. The second stood to his left, another vision in white, with pale skin and an Irish lilt, soft and generous. This beauty introduced herself as Josephine. It appeared that Mickey, the sick, confused wreck, had been carrying a picture of his own daughter—not his beloved.
The third angel looked at him from behind a curtain to his right. He was a tiny, hollow boy who had risen from his own hospital bed for the first time in weeks. The boy smiled an incongruous smile. Then he shuffled weakly back to his bed, where he clambered onto the mattress. He lay down on his left-hand side. His head (like Johan’s too big for his body) faced Johan, his sick eyes holding the softest gleam, trying to say something.
“Calm yourself, love,” came the smooth Irish voice, with the same dialect as the degenerate Mickey. That accent was all the Celtic duo had in common other than their current coordinates to the east of Mostar.
Johan shifted his legs and felt as though a weight was about to drop from his bed. The nurse leaned over and held something out of Johan’s view under the lip of the covers, to prevent its falling to the floor.
“How are you feeling, my love? Here’s a newspaper for you.”
Johan picked up the crispy rag from the bed and, finding it at page twelve, set about returning it to its rightful front-page first state, which was not easy given his current lack of coordination.
There he saw talk of ultimata to the Serbs from Vienna, which, the commentators seemed convinced, could never be accepted by Belgrade. Vienna demanded the dissolution of the Black Hand, and that the group renounce all Serbian claims to Bosnia and turn over all suspected Odbrana members, including Major Dragonivic (aka Apis), for trial. Johan feared seeing his photograph or his name each time the Black Hand was mentioned.
There was more fighting talk from the British, the French, and the Russians. Bullish noises from Wilhelm II.
Johan scanned for talk of the assassination. There were a couple of pictures on page ten of Franz Ferdinand lying in state, and a mug shot of Princip. Johan needed a cigarette but remembered that the only one he was likely to find would be currently resting on or adjacent to Mickey’s diseased prick in the Irishman’s dressing gown. Princip’s rakish face stared out of the paper, mad bug eyes. A caption beneath pondered his likely fate.
Johan lay back on his pillow. He felt like crying, but caught sight of the skeleton boy to his right, who had not taken his eyes off Johan. Johan did not cry. But then neither had Gavrilo Princip.
The boy nodded, seemingly down to where Johan had felt the heavy weight. The weight was now in the hands of Josephine, who, coming round the other side of his bed, placed the object in Johan’s hand.
“He said you were going to need it,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder to the sick youth.
“Lord only knows where he got it from, but he said it’s yours now.”
Johan looked down. In his right hand, he held a crucifix.