126 World War Two and the Partisan Struggle
another sign of Soviet mistrust of the “perfidious Albion,” which went back to
December 1943 when Stalin, setting his sights on the Partisans, had begun
alluding to a possible assassination of Tito by “foreign friends.” “Do not forget,”
he said during his talk with Djilas, “that airplanes break up easily when in the
air.”^398 In February 1944, upon learning that Churchill had sent his son Ran-
dolph to Tito, he told Air Marshal Golovanov: “Consider that the sons of prime
ministers are not parachuted in for nothing, and they don’t go to foreign head-
quarters without precise goals.” When the news came about the attack on Drvar,
which he followed from hour to hour, he acidly commented: “I would like to
know what is brewing.... Evidently little sons do not waste their time.”^399
The fact that the sky was full of Allied aircraft before the assault on Drvar,
whereas there was no trace of them in the days around 25 May, abetted these
suspicions, both his and those of the Yugoslavs, that a conspiracy was under-
way. Only three days later the English and American air forces took control
of western Bosnia.^400 Meanwhile, in an audacious move on the night of 3–4
June, Shornikov landed from stormy skies on the improvised airstrip, demar-
cated by fires, where the members of the Supreme Staff and foreign missions
were waiting for him. There was room for only twenty people on the small
plane. In all this chaos, Tito still found time to shout to Žujović: “Crni, take
care of my horse!” Žujović was not at all amused: “He worries about his horse
and leaves us in this shit!”^401
When they arrived in Bari Tito tried to avoid the British and sought hos-
pitality in the Soviet barracks. After an animated discussion, Vlatko Velebit
convinced him that he should not risk alienating the landlords and that he
should take up residence in the villa assigned by them to the Yugoslav mis-
sion.^402 The fugitives were under such psychological pressure that they still
suspected that the British might attempt to assassinate Tito. In reality, it was
the Germans who had not given up the idea of killing him. After the failure
of Operation Rösselsprung, they started to plan another operation called
Theodor, this time counting on just one person, Andreas Engvird, a Nazi col-
laborator who had formerly fought in Spain and was a member of the Dutch
Communist Party. With such a past, they figured he could easily approach Tito
and eliminate him with a miniature bomb hidden in a fountain pen. Thanks to
the vigilance of the Partisan secret services, which were by then well organized,
this attempt also failed.^403
The Tito-Churchill MeetingOperation Rösselsprung was unable to destroy the bulk of Tito’s army, thanks
in part to the Western Allies, who launched more than a thousand air sorties
against the German units in Yugoslavia from their Mediterranean bases. The