Northern Neighbor
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2023 3:08 pm
Belgrade, July 31st 1978, around 4 PM
Walking down the old cobble streets of Belgrade's old town Draža Pajić couldn't help but remember the first time he came marching through the capital. It was December of 1941, and at only 18 years of age he was the youngest of Marshal Tito's personal guards, who escorted the future President as he entered the newly liberated city. There was twelve of them, to be exact. Three became cabinet members, three became senior officials, three joined the General Staff. One died of a heart attack, one was executed for treason. Only Draža joined the UDBA. But, that was long ago. No one but him and a few ghosts from the past knew much about his fifteen year adventure in intelligence, and he preferred to keep it that way. He was a new man, a policymaker at the Foreign Ministry, and at 55, he was just a few years away from peaceful retirement on a sweet, sweet government pension.
It had been a particularly rainy July. The streets were wet and the sky was dark, you could hardly tell it was only four in the afternoon. As he rounded the corner and approached the door to his 19th century townhouse, a personal gift from the Marshal, he happened to glance through one of the street-facing windows which peaked into the small mansion's salon. Through the silk curtains, lit by the faint sunlight which barely made it through the thick cloudy sky, he saw his gramophone in the corner, a record by Zdravko Čolić, his favorite musician, placed immobile on the record player. Peculiar, he almost always made sure to put his vinyls away when he stopped listening. He didn't remember playing that particular record last time he used the gramophone either - though, granted, he had just come back from vacation the previous day, and hadn't stepped foot in the salon in a good while.
Unlocking the front door, he couldn't help but notice the doormat had been strangely wet even before he rinsed his shoes on it, and as he opened the door and stepped into the small foyer, a dry umbrella in the rack alerted suspicion. He placed his wet umbrella beside it, and turned right, stepping through the open door of the salon, singing jovially in a smooth bass.
"April u Beooograduuuu...."
"...jedno prošlo dooobaaa..."
Berlin, August 1st 1978, around 8 AM
"Mr. Ambassador?" The gentle voice of Ambassador Viktor Kordić's secretary followed a knocking on his open office door. He looked up with a warm smile from a pile of paperwork he had left for himself the previous day, pulling his glasses to the tip of his nose. "Pričaj, dušo." She stepped forward and handed him a single page telegram. "A message from Belgrade." Reading it through quickly, he gave it back to her a few moments later. "Very well. Have a courier forward this to the Ministry."
About half an hour later the German Foreign Ministry would receive a letter addressed from Yugoslav Foreign Minister Edvard Kardelj, inviting 'the foreign minister and/or any other high dignitaries of the Bundesrepublik' to a formal discussion with Minister Kardelj regarding the further opening and expansion of ties between the two neighboring states, with the meeting location already determined to be the quant lakeside town of Bled in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, unless the German Ministry have any objection in this regard.
@German Federal Republic
Walking down the old cobble streets of Belgrade's old town Draža Pajić couldn't help but remember the first time he came marching through the capital. It was December of 1941, and at only 18 years of age he was the youngest of Marshal Tito's personal guards, who escorted the future President as he entered the newly liberated city. There was twelve of them, to be exact. Three became cabinet members, three became senior officials, three joined the General Staff. One died of a heart attack, one was executed for treason. Only Draža joined the UDBA. But, that was long ago. No one but him and a few ghosts from the past knew much about his fifteen year adventure in intelligence, and he preferred to keep it that way. He was a new man, a policymaker at the Foreign Ministry, and at 55, he was just a few years away from peaceful retirement on a sweet, sweet government pension.
It had been a particularly rainy July. The streets were wet and the sky was dark, you could hardly tell it was only four in the afternoon. As he rounded the corner and approached the door to his 19th century townhouse, a personal gift from the Marshal, he happened to glance through one of the street-facing windows which peaked into the small mansion's salon. Through the silk curtains, lit by the faint sunlight which barely made it through the thick cloudy sky, he saw his gramophone in the corner, a record by Zdravko Čolić, his favorite musician, placed immobile on the record player. Peculiar, he almost always made sure to put his vinyls away when he stopped listening. He didn't remember playing that particular record last time he used the gramophone either - though, granted, he had just come back from vacation the previous day, and hadn't stepped foot in the salon in a good while.
Unlocking the front door, he couldn't help but notice the doormat had been strangely wet even before he rinsed his shoes on it, and as he opened the door and stepped into the small foyer, a dry umbrella in the rack alerted suspicion. He placed his wet umbrella beside it, and turned right, stepping through the open door of the salon, singing jovially in a smooth bass.
"April u Beooograduuuu...."
"...jedno prošlo dooobaaa..."
Berlin, August 1st 1978, around 8 AM
"Mr. Ambassador?" The gentle voice of Ambassador Viktor Kordić's secretary followed a knocking on his open office door. He looked up with a warm smile from a pile of paperwork he had left for himself the previous day, pulling his glasses to the tip of his nose. "Pričaj, dušo." She stepped forward and handed him a single page telegram. "A message from Belgrade." Reading it through quickly, he gave it back to her a few moments later. "Very well. Have a courier forward this to the Ministry."
About half an hour later the German Foreign Ministry would receive a letter addressed from Yugoslav Foreign Minister Edvard Kardelj, inviting 'the foreign minister and/or any other high dignitaries of the Bundesrepublik' to a formal discussion with Minister Kardelj regarding the further opening and expansion of ties between the two neighboring states, with the meeting location already determined to be the quant lakeside town of Bled in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, unless the German Ministry have any objection in this regard.
@German Federal Republic