A Portrait of the Terrorist

By Philip Sen

It’s almost exactly 100 years since the shots that blew a hole in history.

Yet little is known about the personalities who triggered the First World War. Who really was Franz Ferdinand’s teenage assassin? What brought the Habsburg Archduke and the Serbian fanatic together that fateful day, 28 June 1914? Was it all just an accident of politics, or was there more to it than that?

Exploring the individual narratives that led to the Sarajevo killing, this novel fills in the gaps about how the gunman and his victim met their destinies. The dramatized account is inspired by extensive research, shedding light on a tragic journey packed with egotism, bungling and deceit. It’s a story that resonates with significance for the post-9/11 era, but it isn’t just another academic study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291894219

Book preview

A Portrait of the Terrorist

PHILIP SEN

A PORTRAIT OF THE TERRORIST

ISBN 978-1-291-89421-9

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all convictions, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Second Coming – W. B. Yeats

PROLOGUE: CONDEMNATION

Garrison Prison, Sarajevo, 2 February 1915

Tomorrow I will be executed. I will hang not for a crime I committed but for a crime I tried to prevent. The one who fired the shots, the killer, my friend, lives on. Good. It is fitting that way, for it is I who should be punished in his place.

My name is Danilo Ilic. My friends call me ‘Danij’, but the guards at the prison call me either by my surname or nothing at all. Once one of them called me ‘terrorist’, spitting the word at me like poison. I didn’t answer. No point inflaming him further.

I am twenty-four years old – old enough to hang by the neck until I am dead, as they put it. It doesn’t make me feel any better or worse. In the last months I’ve had time to reconcile myself with my terror, so of that I should be glad. Hope is the worst of evils – it prolongs your torment. I have no hope any more, just resignation.

The others were ‘underage’ at the time, that day in June last year. Not old enough for capital punishment, but certainly old enough to kill. It was more than six months ago, so I suppose they’ll have passed their twentieth birthdays by now. I’m not sure. But it’s the date of the crime that counts and when the assassination took place they were too young for the noose. Austria, damn it to hell, Austria needed a scapegoat, so here I am. And, as I said, I am far from blameless.

I do not consider myself a terrorist. It’s just a word. Personally I prefer ‘patriot’ but of course the Austrians don’t see it that way. Once defied, the Habsburg Empire’s anger knows no bounds. I think that after the shooting they arrested every Serb they could get their hands on, for all the good it wrought. Anyway, it’s too late now. The deed is done and we can do little in its aftermath but rue the consequences. It certainly hasn’t given us a unified Serb nation; if anything it’s torn the whole edifice apart. So, as it happens, I was right after all. Not that it matters now.

He would never admit that, but perhaps in secret he lies awake at night turning over the consequences in his mind. There is no way for me to know.

It is cold here at night. There is snow outside, I believe, though I am not quite able to see it through the bars of my cell. Only the hint of a reflection, the way the sun has a kind of pale brightness on the stone when it radiates back from the exercise yard's frosty surface. And though I can’t see them, I can hear the other prisoners. Many of them too are innocents, entangled in this insanity by my statement and my confession. At night their screams float to me over the courtyard. They remind me of my guilt.

Sometimes I think that I hear his voice among the cries, though he must have been transferred elsewhere by now. I wonder how he is, how he is feeling. Whether he is shivering under the sting of winter like me. No sight or sound of him since the trial. For a while we were able to communicate by knocking on the walls, but the guards put a stop to that.

In the exercise yard, in the days before this winter, I once heard talk that the consumption is rampant in him now. That’s what these conditions do to you. The damp, the cold, the lack of food and light. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. I wonder if he is disappointed. The pain must be terrible. Death might have been better. That was what Tankosic wanted.

We should get back to my testimony. I was the seventh of the so-called conspirators that day. The ringleader and organizer of the attempt, at least according to the judge. He and the others were the actors, but for my sins I was the director. Mea culpa.

I can only say that I did my best to stop him, but my efforts were in vain. Perhaps I lacked something, perhaps I didn’t try hard enough. Whatever I said, my powers of persuasion fell short. Maybe I could never have stayed his hand; by then he was too far gone. He had an almost supernatural determination to pull it off. The idea of the act was the only thing that gave him life; he would not have given it up for all the treasures of Byzantium.

Or perhaps there was something else at work. Yes, I know about the Black Hand now, though at the time it was merely a shadow, prodding us along with unseen fingers. Its official name – it was anything but official, of course – was Ujedinjenje ili Smrt. Unification or Death. Those bastards – Dimitrijevic, Tankosic, the rest of them – they’re all for the chop too, or so I’ve heard. Perhaps, then, there is some justice in the world. It’s scant comfort.

I digress again. Back to our subject. It must have been quite a journey for he and the others, hiking all that way on their one-way path to Sarajevo. The tunnel, the ringleaders called it, an undercover road for smuggling souls. How appropriate, considering where it has led us. I’m told that two of the men that manned the route, Jovanovic and Cubrilovic, are to die with me tomorrow. They were just bit players, amateurs he stumbled across along the way. It doesn’t seem fair. But in the little time we will have as the executioner prepares us, I doubt there’ll be time for apologies. Again, I am to blame. It’s completely my fault those two were captured. They could have gotten away. But in order for the world to understand our reasons I had to confess everything, and somewhere along the way I must have betrayed them. I am sorry for that. My trial was severe, and I said things in court I now regret.

No, but Black Hand aside, I still yet cling to this sensation that we have been pulled along by forces outside our control. An awareness that something else guided him to this action, something bigger even than Apis – that’s what they called Colonel Dimitrijevic – something bigger than he, let alone I. Bigger even than the government of Serbia, or any government that mankind can place on this earth. Whatever it was, it has certainly got its way.

Perhaps Gavrilo Princip, Gavre, was right all along, not I. Or perhaps he didn’t see it either, or at least not until it was too late.

Nietzsche saw it though. In retrospect, maybe that was why Gavre was so obsessed with him. He could recite some of Nietzsche’s books word for word, would you believe. Why? Nietzsche understood power. And that, I believe, is what my friend sought. Did he find it, in the end? I don’t know. He said he wanted to be born posthumously. He’s not dead yet, but if the rumours are accurate he will soon get his wish after all. It’s certain that a lot of the old truths came to an end that day, so I don’t see why not.

How did Gavre become what he is? None of us really saw it coming. The change in him was magnificent and terrible. I never fully understood it. He is a complex man, as full of contradictions as this war itself. To me he will always be like a younger brother, though at the end he was the master of us all. Cabrinovic and Grabez may know better; they were with him almost all the way, whereas I was not. What a pair. The braggart and the brawler. But they played their parts too.

What were his reasons? Our reasons, up to a point? Our reasons were simple. It wasn’t even about the target so much as it was about the action itself. Don’t get us wrong: we feel sorry that the woman was killed too; that was an accident. But our motivations were just. Yes, we are Nationalists. Yes, we believe in the South Slav nation, Yugoslavia, such as it is. And yes, our intention was to topple the towers of Austria-Hungary, the enemy and oppressor of our people. This is easy to understand. The woman’s demise was just unfortunate.

Our mission, if I may continue, was designed to educate a new generation. To provoke an uprising, to show them what can be done with a will, a way and a pistol in your hand. The Serbians are a small people with a small radius of action. Therefore they need not strong armies but strong personalities to inspire them. Individual action is the key. Unification or Death – it was a good title I suppose. Better to die than to live under the Austrian boot. Gavre took that philosophy and made it his own.

But the assassination was supposed to spark a flame, not an inferno. The consequences of that bullet were even worse than I had feared. It went far beyond our simplistic idealism. It led the world down paths of horror that even our worst nightmares, our darkest, most asphyxiating terrors, did not warn us against. The flower of Serbia has been hacked down and trampled upon with a fury none of us expected. And across Europe the scythe of war is cutting through nations and men like never before.

So I deserve to die.

How will history judge us, then? As terrorists? As patriots? As zealots? As fools? Perhaps history will forget Gavre Princip, myself and the rest of us altogether. History is only the study of what has come to pass and this is not over yet. It has only just begun.

As I said, for my own part I am sure some kind of mystic agency has been at work. Beyond our small band, beyond even Colonel Apis and the Black Hand. No, Gavre wouldn’t believe that. He didn’t believe in anything towards the end aside from his own will. Nietzsche was Gavre’s Gospel, and Nietzsche wrote that God, the old God at least, was dead. So Gavre created a new God in the same way that he recreated himself. Only there were two Gavres, wrestling each other for command of his will. A complex man indeed.

But whatever you believe, whatever religion you follow, in the horror and carnage of the war that rages around us now, perhaps God really has died once and for all. Say what you want. God was a crude answer for the things we have seen, are seeing and will see, but it’s the only answer most of us had.

Tomorrow I will be executed. May God, if he still exists, receive my soul.

PART ONE: INCEPTION

Komite Forward Operating Base, Prokuplje, Serbia-Kosovo border 15-16 October 1912

Prokuplje lies on the river Toplica, a tributary of the Juzna Morava, and is framed by three hills of moderate size: Hisar, Borovnjak, and Racunkovo. Their sides descend sharply to the riverbed, creating an ideal defensive position for those who hold the high ground. Atop the first low peak lies a mediaeval fortress, the Tower of Jug Bogdan, from which one can look over the plains of Kosovo Polje and search for signs of the ancient battle that condemned the Slavs to centuries of Ottoman rule.

One of the oldest towns in Southern Serbia, ordinarily Prokuplje made for a fine holiday spot. But its proximity to the fringe of the enemy made it an ideal staging post for Major Vojislav Tankosic’s komite guerrillas. Through raids, bombings and small-scale ambushes they would soon begin the push into Turkey. The Major had just days to train the latest batch or recruits to walk in off the streets of Belgrade and Serbia’s other cities, but he felt ready. War had been officially declared yesterday. After five hundred years of slavery, it was time for Serbia to become Serbia once again.

That morning, dusty and exhausted, one of those would-be recruits emerged from a train filled with such quantities of army supplies that the sheet steel of its carriages groaned with stress. In the confusion and bustle of Belgrade train station, now a hub in the logistic machine beginning to crisscross the nation, it had not been hard for a group of lightly-built youths like him to slip aboard and make themselves inconspicuous among the piles of baggage, sacks and boxes an army runs on.

From the train station at Nis, Gavrilo Princip and his fellow stowaways and hangers-on had found their way on foot to Prokuplje, a few miles to the west. Here, questions asked of the right people in the right cafes quickly led them to Major Tankosic’s temporary headquarters.

Exhausted and gnawed with the hunger and thirst of a long journey, Gavrilo dodged a feral pig snuffling in the roadside mud and stumbled up to the guard at the door of the red-roofed house where he had heard Tankosic was billeted. This was the time to bring out his lie. Well, not so much a lie as a half-truth. It couldn’t hurt.

I’ve been sent here by Major Vasic of Narodna Odbrana, he said with as much confidence as he could drum up. He knows me from the Sarajevo Mlada Bosna committee.

The guard relaxed his weapon and said that Vasic had sent plenty of men here in the last couple of days. But they were still short. He’d better come in.

Biting his lips to conceal a grin of relief, Gavrilo stepped inside the building and spoke in hushed tones to the clerk seated before him. The orderly pointed to a door on the wall, warning Gavrilo that Major Tankosic was a busy man and that this had better be good. With this, the clerk got up, walked to the entrance, knocked and put his head round the door for a few moments.

He will see you tomorrow, he said, returning to Gavrilo.

Gavrilo was awoken the next morning by birdsong. He got up and shook the dew from his clothing. The stitching under his left armpit was beginning to come undone. He had nothing else to wear and he hoped that the Major would see it as an emblem of his fighting spirit rather than the insignia of poverty. He rose to his feet, coughed new air into his lungs and headed back to the stippled stone façade of the temporary headquarters. The guard remembered him and let him in.

The wall of the anteroom was lined with wooden chairs, each filled with similarly exhausted and bedraggled young men. Gavrilo picked an empty seat and greeted the boy beside him, who was reading a book. Recognition was slow, but through the dirt that patterned their faces they suddenly knew each other.

Mihajlo?

Gavrilo?

For a moment they embraced like the old friends from old times that they were, comrades from their Mlada Bosna schooldays in Sarajevo. Together they had fought petty battles of street demonstrations and civil disobedience against the Austrian regime, and together they had sworn their loyalty to Bosnia, the Serbs and freedom.

After just some minutes, they were interrupted in their catching up by a shout from inside. Pusara! Mihajlo Pusara? His number was already up.

Good luck, mate, said Gavrilo.

With a new maturity that Gavrilo had just begun to perceive, Mihajlo extended his hand in farewell. We have arrived, Gavrilo, he said, But where we go from here I do not know. Here, take my book. I've finished it anyway. He handed over the greased, grimy copy of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo to his friend, who slipped in into an inside pocket.

"It’ll be marvellous if we’re both accepted into the komite," said Gavrilo.

Mihajlo shrugged. I know. But if we don’t see each other again, then pray to God for me.

I shall, said Gavrilo, though he did not believe in God and was surprised to hear these words. It was as if there was some kind of expectation in his friend, something joyous yet something cold. Mihajlo was led away through a door that Gavrilo could not see beyond.

Armed with an eighteen-year-old’s intensity, Gavrilo Princip had the kind of adolescent physique that looks as if it has been flattened by an iron. The angular impressions of his joints poked at the folds in his clothing, mocking the absence of flesh on his bones.

Bookish and not prone to boisterousness, inevitably Gavrilo was not the most popular lad at his school. He either couldn't, or wouldn't, get on with others, at least most of the time. More often than not, he spent his days staring inward at himself. For sure, there was a cleverness about him, but it was barricaded behind introspection. It was an imprisoned intelligence, hampered by a lack of an outlet and a dearth of assurance as to where it could take him.

So his journey to the komite guerrilla headquarters here at Prokuplje, at the inception of what would later become known as the First Balkan War, was something of a mystery even to himself. He was hardly a natural soldier, the nascent consumption that was still just beginning to tickle his lungs saw to that if nothing else. He had some character in him, he knew that; but what he lacked was direction.

Mlada Bosna had given it to him.

Destitute and alone in Belgrade a couple of months before today, on the outbreak of this Ottoman war Gavrilo had resolved to put in one final effort to make something of himself, to follow in the footsteps of Bogdan Zerajic and his other Mlada Bosna heroes. Finally he had made it here, to the very edge of Kosovo’s sacred plain, perhaps days from its final liberation from Turkish rule. He was determined to make something of himself, to become someone, something, only he did not know who or what. This was his chance. But failure had occurred to him too, and as he awaited the call from the commander’s office, its threat rained upon him like a cloud.

Some hours later than appointed, Gavrilo was showed along a narrow corridor littered with broken glass to a secluded bedroom doubling as an office. He held his breath and knocked as loudly and as firmly as he could. He had not eaten for two days.

Enter, came the muffled voice from inside.

Gavrilo opened the door. A low growling snuffle of an autumn cold emanated from across the room. The occupant was not at his best today.

Major Vojislav Tankosic was not a tall man, but burly. He had a sense of austere sincerity, and of cunning more than straightforward intelligence. When Gavrilo entered he was met by the Major’s wolfish gaze, alert, watchful, looking for fault. Though clearly a professional, Tankosic eschewed the usual glamour and glitter of a uniform for a more understated suit and a tie, which he had slightly loosened for a deliberately dishevelled effect. Smartness is all well and good for the brass but it doesn’t really suit guerrilla work, he acknowledged. He was not even sure if he had shaved today.

Almost involuntarily Gavrilo took a step backwards. Doubt flooded him. But he reminded himself that he’d made it this far. Though I may not have the physique of a soldier, his inner voice told him, I have the courage and the conviction. Once I tell this Major I am here to serve my country, my people, he’ll understand, he’ll know how useful I can be to him. Even  then, Gavrilo knew he was deceiving himself. He’d created himself as a character in his own book and had grown so accustomed to his vision that he actually believed it.

Right, let’s take a look at you then, grumbled the figure behind the desk, sharply raising his head and fixing his glare straight at Gavrilo.

Gavrilo brought himself up to his full height, stretching muscles in his back and thighs. The two stared at each other in silence, Gavrilo attempting to stand ramrod straight and as soldierly as he could, Tankosic slumped over his hands, elbows on his desk, disguised by his studied lack of soldierly style.

The Major pursed his lips. He had seen it all before. Idealistic kids from the city wanting to join his komite. Now and again there was one worth the time of day, but they were the exceptions rather than the rule. This one was no exception at all. He needed men, not boys, damn it. By next week they’d be fighting a war. No point wasting rations on this one. He’d just as soon recruit a schoolgirl.

You are too small and too weak, Tankosic said, and waved as if brushing away an insect with the back of his hand.

But I’ve come all the way from Belgrade to join your unit, Gavrilo burst out.

Tankosic said nothing.

"I want to join the komite! I haven’t come here for nothing!" The last remnants of his strength dripped from him like spilled wine cascading from the edge of a table.

Tankosic looked down at his papers again. Gavrilo stood awkward, bewildered, frustrated, angry and ashamed, searching for something to say that would persuade this man to even look at him. Perhaps half a minute passed as he floundered for something suitable, some remark to make the Major change his mind.

But there was nothing there. His will was spent.

The door opened behind him and a lieutenant briskly indicated with a sharp inclination of his head that Gavrilo was to leave. Tankosic still had not looked up. Hardly able to feel the rest of his body through the sickness in his throat and stomach, Gavrilo stepped slowly away and the door was closed behind him, sealing Tankosic back into his invulnerable aura.

As the young officer showed Gavrilo the door it was all he could do to stop the tears from welling. Mustn’t cry in front of a soldier.

Not pausing to offer a final farewell to Mihajlo, who he could see being measured for fatigues through a scratched window, Gavrilo crept unnoticed from Tankosic’s billet and without breaking stride began his lonely march eastwards, back to Bosnia. In the next weeks and months, from the first incursion into the Ottoman Empire to the retaking of the sacred plain of Kosovo Polje, the Balkan wars would proceed without him.

When revelations come to you, they don’t always arrive in an explosive moment of understanding. Real epiphanies are not always