The Great War. Aleksandar Gatalica

      ZHIVKA D. SPASICH, seamstress

      Dr SVETISLAV SIMONOVICH, doctor to King Peter

      King PETER I

      Sergeant DIMITRIYE LEKICH, refugee

      VLADISLAV PETKOVICH DIS, accursed Serbian poet

      Major LYUBOMIR VULOVICH, sentenced to death

      Major RADOYICA TATICH, artillery

      Dr ARCHIBALD REISS, forensic scientist and writer

      ALEXANDER, Crown Prince and later regent

      Four heroic lieutenants with pocket watches

      Austria-Hungary

      MEHMED GRAHO, Sarajevo pathologist

      TIBOR VERES, reporter for the Pester Lloyd

      TIBOR NÉMETH, Hungarian soldier

      SVETOZAR BOROEVICH VON BOINA, field marshal

      HEINRICH AUFSCHNEIDER, psychoanalyst

      BÉLA DURÁNCI, Munich actor

      A VON B, spy

      MARKO MURK, Croatian volunteer

      CHARLES I, the last Austrian emperor

      FRANZ HARTMANN, occultist from Munich

      HUGO VOLLRATH, theosophist from Munich

      KARL BRANDLER-PRACHT, theosophist from Leipzig

      ANDOR PRAGER, young pianist

      France

      JEAN COCTEAU

      LUCIEN GUIRAND DE SCEVOLA, scene painter and stage designer

      GERMAIN D’ESPARBÈS, soldier

      STANISLAW WITKIEWICZ, Polish refugee

      GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

      OLD LIBION, proprietor of the Café de la Rotonde

      OLD COMBES, proprietor of the Closerie des Lilas

      KIKI DE MONTPARNASSE, volunteer and model

      PIERRE ALBERT-BIROT, producer of postcards

      FERRY PISANO, war correspondent

      Fifty heroes of Verdun

      FRITZ JOUBERT DUQUESNE, spy

      MATA HARI, spy

      United Kingdom

      EDWIN MCDERMOTT, bass from Edinburgh

      FATHER DONOVAN, Scottish chaplain

      OSWALD RAYNER, assassin

      FLORRIE FORDE, music-hall singer

      SIDNEY REILLY, spy

      ANNABEL WALDEN, nurse

      Germany

      HANS-DIETER HUIS, opera singer

      FRITZ KRUPP, Zeppelin bombardier and later pilot

      STEFAN HOLM, soldier

      LILIAN SMITH (SCHMIDT), music-hall singer

      FRITZ HABER, chemist

      WALTHER SCHWIEGER, submarine commander

      HANS HENZE, right-handed pianist and left-handed poet

      PAUL WITTGENSTEIN, left-handed invalid pianist

      ALEXANDER WITTEK, architecture student

      MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN, pilot

      Fifty heroes of Verdun

      ADOLF HITLER, lance corporal of the 16th Bavarian Infantry (List Regiment)

      Turkey

      MEHMED YILDIZ, Istanbul spice trader

      CAM ZULAD BEY, Istanbul policeman

      Russia

      SERGEI CHESTUKHIN, neurosurgeon

      LIZA CHESTUKHINA, Sergei’s wife

      GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS

      SERGEI VORONIN, Menshevik, soldier

      BORIS DMITRIEVICH RIZANOV, soldier

      VLADIMIR SUKHOMLINOV, Governor-General of Kiev

      YEKATERINA SUKHOMLINOVA, Vladimir’s wife

      COUNT VLADIMIR FREDERIKS, First Secretary of the Court

      ILYA EHRENBURG

      NICHOLAS II, the last Russian tsar

      Tsaritsa ALEXANDRA

      KARL RADEK, Bolshevik

      YURI YURIEV, acclaimed actor

      LEON TROTSKY, Bolshevik negotiator in Brest-Litovsk

      A fortune-teller travelling in the trains of the October Revolution

      Italy

      GIORGIO DE CHIRICO

      Note to readers: please be aware that in keeping with the standard practice of the period the novel is set, all Serbian names have been anglicised in order to allow easier pronunciation for the English reader. Major city names remain in the original.

      1914

      THE YEAR OF THE PATHOLOGIST

      Suspects arrested in Sarajevo following the assasination, 1914

      PROLOGUE: TWO REVOLVER SHOTS

      The Great War began for Dr Mehmed Graho when he was least expecting it, just when he was told that ‘two important bodies’ would be brought to the mortuary in that June heatwave. But for Dr Graho, hunched and ageing but still hale, with a bald head and prominent flat pate, no bodies were more important than others. All the corpses which came under his knife were waxy pale, with cadaverously gaping mouths, often with eyes which no one had had time to close, or had not dared to, which now bulged and stared away into space, striving with their lifeless pupils to catch one last ray of sun.

      But that did not disturb him. Ever since 1874, he had placed his round glasses on his nose, donned his white coat, put on long gloves and begun his work at the Sarajevo mortuary, where he removed hearts from within chests, felt broken ribs for signs of police torture and searched the stomachs of the deceased for swallowed fish bones and the remains of the last meal.

      Now the ‘important bodies’ arrived, and the pathologist still hadn’t heard what had happened out in the streets. He didn’t know that the Archduke’s car had been backing out of Franz Joseph Street and that there, from out of the crowd on the corner near the Croatia Insurance building, a little fellow had fired two revolver shots at the heir to the Austrian throne and the Duchess of Hohenberg. At first, the bodyguards thought the royal couple was unharmed and it looked as if the Archduke had only turned and glanced away in the other direction, to the assembled crowd; the Duchess resembled a doll in a Vienna shop window, and a moment later blood gushed from her noble breast; Franz Ferdinand’s mouth also filled with blood, which trickled down the right-hand side of his orderly, black-dyed moustache. Only a little later was it established that the important persons had been hit, and within fifteen minutes the male of the couple had become an ‘important body’. Half an hour after that, the important female person hadn’t awoken from her state of unconsciousness, lying in the umbrage of the Governor’s residence, and she too was declared an ‘important body’.

      Now the two important bodies had arrived, and no one had told Dr Graho who they were. But one glance at the male corpse’s uniform with its breast full of medals and one look at the long,