From 9 A.M. on he stood there. He waited in the gathering crowd. His ear was cocked for the motorcade. His hand was ready for the trigger of his pistol, for the cap of his bomb, for his capsule of cyanide.
Just after 10 A.M. he heard cries of "Zivio!.. Zivio!.." followed by a powerful growl of car engines and then, suddenly, a detonation. The bang faded into shouts. At once Prin cip pressed forward fiercely through the throng and saw, at last, the bomb-smashed wooden shutter of a store front with the Habsburg flag waving above, a big car with gesticulating generals and blown-out tires, some people sitting on the curb bloodying their Sunday best-and Cabrinovic held in a rough grip by two gendarmes… Cabrinovic retching from the cyanide, dripping from the river across which he'd obviously tried to escape. No sign of the Archduke, but Princip assumed his body had been spirited away.
So Cabrinovic, the unstable, had come through after all. Yet obviously he had been prevented from swallowing the cyanide and might not be able to remain silent under tough interrogation. He would give away the Black Hand. Princip's fingers tightened around the Browning. He must kill first Cabrinovic, then himself. That moment a whole new stampede of gendarmes came down on Cabrinovic with their gold-crested helmets and whisked him off. Princip heard the sputter of car engines being cranked up. The motorcade sped off much faster than it had come. And everywhere people who had been closer to the lead car were saying how calm the Archduke had acted, how crazy these fanatics must be with their bombs, how lucky the Archduke had not been hurt.
The Archduke had not been hurt.
It had all been for nothing-at least so far. Desperately Princip looked for his confederates in order to regroup. But they were hard to find in the excitement everywhere and the rapid influx of new spectators. The bomb had made the high visit dramatic. Now the Archduke was much more than an interesting sight. He had become a sensation. Very soon this sensation was due to drive back from City Hall, again along Appel Quay. More and more people brimmed on the sidewalk. Nobody of Princip's team was among them, no matter where he looked. They had all fled. They had scattered. They had deserted. Princip was alone. Alone with his bomb, his pistol, and the knowledge of how unlikely he was to use either because of the precautions the enemy would now take.
But, having driven himself so far without mercy, he decided to go on without much hope. He crossed over to the other side of the Quay. That way he would be closer to the automobiles, just in case the Archduke really did return along Appel Quay, as called for by the original schedule. Once more, he waited, this time at the corner of the quay and a side street. He heard the church clocks strike 10:30 A.M., tolling all is over, all is over, into his ears. He heard the motorcade return at 10:32, and all would have been over indeed-the very spot on which Princip stood would not be memorialized today by two footprints sunk in concrete, the house at his back would not have become a museum enshrining Princip's heroism, the bridge to his left would not now be named Princip Bridge-if…
If two mistakes had not been made by the entourage of the Austrian Crown Prince. The first was nearly logical. Since Cabrinovic had thrown the bomb from the river side of the quay, an officer of the escort stood on the running board on the same side-not on Princip's side-to protect the Archduke with his body. The second mistake was as mysterious as fate itself. The chauffeur of the lead car, filled with police, had been clearly instructed on what route to take to the garrison hospital where the Archduke wished to visit his wounded aide. Nonetheless the chauffeur made the wrong turn on Appel Quay into the side street off Latin Bridge.
This mistake did not escape General Potiorek, who sat in the front seat of the second car, that of the Archduke. The General cupped his hands to shout to the first car, "Turn back! Back to the Quay!" The chauffeur obeyed. To obey he must make a U-turn. To make a U-turn in the narrower side street he must come to a halt. Since he came to a halt, so must the drivers of the motorcade behind him. An inevitability decreed that the second car must stop at the corner, directly in front of a thin, small youth who was reaching inside his coat.
The many days Princip had spent on target practice, the weeks of training and rehearsal, the months of waiting, planning, of steeling himself and disciplining his crew, of patience, cunning, and perseverance-they all converged on this one moment, at 10:34 A.M., on this sunlit corner of the Appel Quay and Rudolf Street, in front of the Schiller Delicatessen Store.
The chauffeur had just begun to work the wheel for the U-turn. Count Harrach of the Archduke's escort stood on the running board, on the river side of the quay. There was nothing between Franz Ferdinand von Habsburg and Gavrilo Princip except five feet of translucent summer air. For this one moment the pale blue eyes of the son of a postman looked into the pale blue eyes of a lord descended from thirteen European dynasties. The next second the son of the postman realized he could not throw the bomb he was already gripping inside his coat: the Archduke was too close and the crowd too dense around him for hauling out his arm. Therefore he pulled out his Browning. He turned his head away (later he would say he had been confounded by the sight of the Duchess, a woman) and, perhaps to compensate for this lapse, pressed the trigger twice.
And then all was really over. After the two bangs Princip saw the car pull away fast, the Archduke still sitting upright, unaffected, unscathed, even after this final effort.
Princip put the pistol to his own head, but someone wrested it from his hand. He reached for the cyanide capsule, managed to get it between his teeth, bit it open, already felt a taste of bitter almonds, but a policeman's stick came down on his head and knocked the thing out of his mouth. From everywhere arms reached for him, gripped him and punished him, yet nothing punished him more in this nightmare tumult than the fact that he was still alive and so was the Archduke.
General Potiorek, the Military Governor of Bosnia, was under that same impression, but only for about five more seconds. After the explosions he looked back instantly at the august pair; the two sat erect and unruffled. But just as the car turned back onto the Quay, the Duchess began leaning oddly against the Archduke. The Archduke's mouth began to dribble red. Count Harrach on the running board, appalled, fumbled for his handkerchief and leaned over to wipe the blood from the Archduke's lips. The Duchess, leaning, cried at her husband, "For heaven's sake, what has happened to you?" The Archduke, who usually roared at any irritation, sat stiffly and silently as he bled. The General shouted at the driver to proceed at top speed to his residence. The Archduchess's head had drooped onto her husband's knees. Blood from the wound in her abdomen soaked through her white silk dress and stained the red and white bouquet of roses clenched in her hand. The Archduke, still sitting stiffly, whispered with his blood-filled mouth: "Sopherl, Sopherl, stirb nicht!.. Bleib am Leben fur unsere Kinder!" ("Little Sophie, little Sophie, don't die!.. Stay alive for our children!") Then he, too, began to droop forward. Count Harrach tried to hold him up as the car hurtled and veered. He asked, "Is Your Highness in great pain?" The Archduke's head had slumped down onto the head of his wife resting on his knees. "It's nothing," he said, quite clearly even above the car engine's roar. "It's nothing," he said again. He kept saying it, more softly, seven more times, the last time just before the car stopped at the Governor's residence. When the two were lifted out of the automobile, her blood had mingled with his on the leather seat.
In the residence a doctor tore open the Archduke's collar to reach his smashed jugular. The gold collar had turned scarlet. Inside the collar seven amulets against seven evils became visible, all wrought of silver and gold. They, too, were dripping scarlet. By the time the church clocks of Sarajevo struck 11 A.M. Franz Ferdinand and Sophie had both stopped breathing, she less than ten minutes before him. They died as they had lived, in unison.