Here indeed was a task.
"Understand," continued von Stammer, "you will have the assistance in this case of Austrian Secret employees. But, as I need not point out to you, it is inadvisable to take any of them with you, as all the Austrian agents are known to the Russian agents down in the Balkans. I suggest that you stop at Budapest and get all connecting links of possible help to you. You will obtain these from Kasimir Kowalsky, an Austrian agent whom you will find at Donaustrasse 24. By the way, do you know him?"
I said no.
"In this case," went on von Stammer, "I shall give instructions to facilitate matters. It is necessary for you to have passports. Have you any reason to fear your previous mission to the Balkans?"
He referred to that incident in 1903, current with the assassination of King Alexander and Queen Draga of Servia--an incident I don't like to think of, for it landed me on a blank wall looking into twelve ugly Mauser tubes, as you will recall from a previous chapter.
I considered that there were only two men in the Balkans who could have placed me from the 1903 incident. One Colonel Niglitch was dead, slain at the time of the Alexander assassination; the other was Stamboul and he was no doubt moving in the circles where my mission would take me. Were I to meet him it would mean recognition, a possible knife in the back. No, I was in no way keen to undertake this mission. My previous experience in the Balkans and all that ilk had given me a thorough distaste of the people there. There is no mixture of races so dangerous. Nearly every man is for a small sum a traitor and potential assassin. I had had a taste of their methods and I didn't want another. Von Stammer must have noticed my hesitation, for he grinned and said:
"Nervous about it?"
I frankly was. I told him so.
"Yes, I understand your attitude." [I had been on the go for over five months solid and I wanted a rest.] "I beg of you to consider though that you are the only man we have at our disposal who can see this thing through."
He then began to hint in such a way that it became obvious to me that refusal on my part would not be at all to the liking of the Wilhelmstrasse. Refusal would mean loss of favor and with it the choice jobs. As an added inducement, von Stammer promised double the usual remuneration. Frankly this was a point. I considered that the mission would not take me over three or four weeks and he had agreed to pay me $2,500, aside from the bonus always attached to successful and quick work. Still, I wasn't sure that I wanted to go. I knew there was the danger of recognition, and I knew the kind of irresponsible, hotheaded, temperamental people I was going among. It was far more difficult, far more hazardous, than any mission I had ever undertaken, in England or France; even the tremendous responsibilities of the affair in the Black Forest carried with them none of the personal dangers that this did. When he pressed me for a decision I requested some little time to think things over. Asking me to telephone his home before midnight and let him know what I was going to do, he departed.