Sarajevo, Bosnia 1914
The cavalcade of cars carrying Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, his wife, staff and certain dignitaries, passed along Sarajevo’s Apel Qui. They were on a visit to the city for the opening of a museum.
As the cars proceeded past a line of onlookers, a man threw a bomb at the Archdukes vehicle, but it bounced off the side and exploded under the following car. The resultant explosion crippled the car and injured twenty people. Other cars, including the one carrying the Archduke sped away.
The wrong car was demobilized in the attempted assassination of Ferdinand, and Gavrilo Princip stuffed the self-loading pistol he had drawn back into his jacket. He then walked down Apel Qui and entered a food shop beside the Latin Bridge where he sat gazing out at the crowds.
After leaving the shop he saw a car similar to the vehicle carrying the Archduke reverse out of a side alley. He realised in fact it was the Archduke’s car, and that the driver had taken a wrong turn.
He ran toward the car, pulled out his gun and pointed the barrel into the car then, while maintaining eye contact with the Archduke pulled the trigger twice. The first shot passed through Ferdinand’s jugular, the second hit his wife, Sophie, in the abdomen.
As the driver stalled the car and jumped out screaming Princip ran off stopping to swallow a cyanide pill. He ran to the end of the street, then realizing the pill was ineffective pulled the gun. He was going to shoot himself when a crowd of onlookers grabbed him and the gun, before he could pull the trigger.
Further back along the street at the rear of the crowd a figure in a long, grey coat turned around with eyes ablaze. Fabian Fortin put on a brown cap and headed toward the train station. He smiled as he walked; one of the newer, more reliable self-loading pistols he had supplied a terrorist group with had worked well.
Fortin had smuggled the weaponry across the Greek border and sold them to the head man of the Black Hand: a group of Serbian freedom fighters.
The train for Athens left the station at ten to three in the afternoon. Fortin settled down for the long journey. The world was a powder keg, he thought, as he gazed at the dry countryside, which sped past his window. What had happened that day should ignite it, and there would be great demand for the weapons he supplied, he mused?
At the Greek border several guards with rifles boarded the train and checked passports. Fortin handed over his, which had the name Christophe Belanger a Jeweler, born in Paris. The guard checked it then handed it back and moved on; fifteen minutes later the train moved away.
After settling up with a gunrunner in a taverna in the centre of Athens, Fortin made his way to the docks at Piraeus. He would take the night sailing to Bari in Italy.