The Old Bridge

by Andrew Turpin

  “Very funny.”

  “Anyway, I’m okay. It’s been a busy few days,” Marco said. “Are you still coming here for the meeting with our Turkish friend?”

  “Yes,” Boris said. “They’re still buying heavily. The Syrians seem to be taking everything we can channel through, so I’m hoping to tie up another big order with Mustafa. I’ll be there on Saturday to see him in Split. I was thinking, as I’ve got a several days off after that, we could go to Mostar and chill out for a bit, have a few beers?”

  “Yes, good idea. We can spend some of Mustafa’s money, assuming you complete the deal. Is he still paying on time?”

  “Yes,” Boris said, “They pay all right. Straight into Zürich, no problem. So you’ll get your cut as usual.”

  “Good,” Marco said. “And if you feel like increasing my cut, that’d be even better, as I’m doing most of the work these days.”

  “Yes,” Boris said, “but if you remember, it was me who secured all the hardware in the first place, twenty years ago. Remember that. Back then it was me taking all the risks, not you.”

  “Hmm, well it’s different now,” Marco said. “I’m starting to feel as though I’m being ripped off.”

  Boris stared into his webcam. He knew that Marco had an image of him doing a three-days-per-week TV job that paid a fortune but demanded little. If only he knew the reality: the long hours working at home, preparing questions, researching and reading until he knew his subjects well enough to ensure they received a thorough examination, no matter the topic of discussion.

  Marco shrugged. “Anyway, there’s something else I need to tell you. Two days ago I did something. Remember Petar Simic?”

  Boris nodded.

  “Well, I heard a few weeks back he’d been talking to people about our wartime activities, and I gave him a warning about it. Then I was in Dubrovnik on Wednesday and Thursday and had a tip-off from someone I know at Sarajevo University who was at a conference at one of the big hotels down there. The guy said Petar was trying to get close to a war crimes investigator, an American guy with a big reputation. I checked him out—Joe Johnson’s his name. He finds people and brings them to trial. A Nazi specialist. I can think of only one reason why Petar would want to talk to a big-league war crimes investigator.” He paused.

  “Go on,” Boris said.

  “So, anyway, I tailed Petar Thursday morning, and sure enough, he spent an hour or more deep in conversation with this guy Johnson down in the Stari Grad, up on the city walls. Very secretive. I didn’t like it. So I did what I should have done years ago.”

  “What?”

  “What do you think?”

  Boris remained silent for a bit. Then he said, “What, right there in the Stari Grad?”

  “Yes. Outside the men’s room in a café.”

  Boris took a piece of chewing gum from a pack on his desk and put it into his mouth. In a café? His friend was losing his mind. “That’s extremely risky. Why there?”

  “I was up on the walls and saw Petar and Johnson at a table in a café in the harbor,” Marco said. “I sent him a message, warned him against talking to Johnson. He was drinking a lot of water, and I figured he would use the men’s room at some stage. So I sat nearby, then followed him when he went.”

  Boris sat speechless. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would have expected from an experienced campaigner like Marco—especially not in such a high-risk area as Dubrovnik Old Town, which was normally swarming with tourists and uniformed police.

  “But you didn’t touch the American?” Boris asked. “Did he see you?”

  “I left the American. Didn’t get an opportunity anyway. And no, he wouldn’t have seen me, I’m fairly sure of that. He was at an outside table.”

  “Well, surely he’s going to link it to you,” Boris said. “Petar must have mentioned you in the conversation. Isn’t the American now going to follow up?”

  “How?” Marco asked. “He wouldn’t know who did Petar in.”

  “Hmm. That’s what you think. There’s Filip. He might put him on your trail.”

  “Nah, he’s still in prison, over with you in the UK, as far as I know.”

  Boris shook his head. “You said you sent Petar a message. Did you grab his phone, then, after you shot him?”

  There was silence. Boris could see on his screen that Marco was frowning. The answer was clearly a no.

  Boris ran his forefinger down his nose, which angled a little to the right from a car crash he was in during his eighteen months in Munich in 1995. “Not smart,” he said. “Anyway, we can discuss it further in Mostar.”

  Marco shrugged. “Sure. I think it’ll be okay. Like I said, should have done it a long time ago. If the American proves a problem, we can think again.”

  Chapter Five

  Friday, July 6, 2012

  Astoria, Queens, New York City

  The barman increased the volume on the television in the corner of the restaurant Ćevabdżinica Sarajevo as Patrick Spencer began his much-anticipated speech, which was being broadcast live on CBA’s special afternoon political news program.

  Aisha Delić sat up in her chair and pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head. “Great, this idiot Republican,” she said to her friend Adela. “I tell you, he makes me ashamed to be a New Yorker . . . and an American.”

  She picked up her glass of iced tea from the wooden table. The amount of airtime her employer, the broadcaster CBA, was currently giving to Spencer, the recently elected speaker of the House of Representatives, sometimes made her feel embarrassed to admit she worked for them. She, like many of her friends, struggled to believe so many people were buying into his rhetoric—even other Republicans in his party had difficulty accepting its extremism.

  The afternoon crowd of late lunchers and coffee drinkers in the Bosnian restaurant, on the corner of 38th Street and 34th Avenue in Astoria, fell quiet as Spencer leaned toward a bank of microphones on the stand in front of him.

  “We’ve got a problem in this country, a problem with immigrants. Yes, we all know about illegal immigrants, and we’ll deal with those. We need a wall to keep them out, because the current system just doesn’t work. But I’m also talking about Muslim immigrants—some of whom are even legal.”

  Aisha shook her head. “Here we go,” she said, flipping her long dark hair over her shoulder.

  Spencer squared his shoulders and ran a hand through his coiffured mop of iron-gray hair, then continued. “Muslims gather in neighborhoods, and they influence each other. Some become radicalized—and dangerous. They become anti-American, anti the country they’ve chosen to live in. And that’s a big problem for all of us. That’s what I want to see sorted out. For the next few years this issue is going to be at the top of my list. My goal is to draft new legislation to address this endangerment to the American people. President Obama chooses to downplay this concern, as does Secretary Clinton, and I think that’s very wrong. Just take a look at what’s going on in the Middle East—Islamic fundamentalists chopping people’s heads off, torturing people. Until we can understand what Muslims are trying to do, I think we shouldn’t allow any more into the United States.”

  As Spencer talked, the silence in the restaurant was broken by a hum of chatter, which became increasingly angry and vocal. One man shouted, “Republican scum, turn that TV off.” Another yelled, “Shoot the racist bastard.”

  Spencer’s televised speech, to a community group in Brooklyn, continued for another ten minutes as he moved away from immigration and on to health care and other issues before concluding. By then, few in the restaurant were still listening.

  What a joke, Aisha thought. She cupped her chin in her right hand, her olive-tanned forearm propped on the table. “America was built on immigration,” she said. “When I moved here in ’95, I was welcomed. Now you’ve got people like that just stoking up hatred. He thinks he’s going to solve an issue, but it’s going to have the opposite effect.”

  She looked at Adela. “How do
you feel? I know you’ve always tried to fit in—even changed your name. Then we get this shit.”

  Aisha was referring to when her friend switched her name from Ademović to Adamson many years earlier.

  Adela sipped her drink. “It makes me angry. The imams I listen to, mostly reasonably moderate guys, hear people like him, Spencer, and a few are becoming more interventionist, more anti-American. Can’t blame them.”

  “It’s getting worse at work,” Aisha said. “I keep getting blocked from promotions. It’s discrimination. I’ve been there nine years, and I’m still no closer to being a broadcast lighting designer. If you’ve worked at CBA as long as I have, you should at least get annual inflation-linked pay rises. I’ve performed well, but I’ve had three small rises in nine years. And I’m still just a lighting board operator. What’s the point?”

  Adela nodded her head in sympathy.

  Aisha finished her drink and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. “I’m telling you, if Spencer ever decides to run for the White House in the future, like some people think he might, I’m going back to Mostar, seriously.”

  “You wouldn’t, surely, not after everything that happened?” Adela asked.

  Would I? It was a question Aisha often asked herself and never really answered. Maybe it wouldn’t be Mostar, where there were too many bad memories and nothing to go back for. But somewhere. Would she want to stay in the States if the country started implementing a discriminatory political agenda? She doubted it.

  “It won’t come to that. We won’t let it,” Adela said.

  “What can we do?” Aisha asked, a skeptical look on her face. “It’s not exactly a war zone here, is it, where you just move on and do what’s necessary, like we used to back home.”

  “Well, there’s a meeting going on at my mosque next Tuesday about some of this stuff. There’ll be an interesting speaker who’s a bit more radical and a chance to chat more. We shouldn’t stand by doing nothing while this man spreads his hatred. Do you feel like coming along? There’s one most Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  Aisha hesitated. As much as she hated Patrick Spencer, she didn’t feel like getting involved with anything that had the label of “radical” attached to it. She knew only too well what “radical” could do to a person.

  “No thanks, that’s not really my scene.”

  “Okay,” Adela said. “But you’ll see that it’s going to be all of our scene soon enough.”

  Chapter Six

  Saturday, July 7, 2012

  Split, Croatia

  Joe Johnson hauled himself up a steep set of stone steps that led from the promenade around the harbor toward Marjan, the imposing pine-covered hill at the western end of Split.

  He checked his map against the address he had received earlier that morning from Jayne; her contact at GCHQ had quickly traced an address for the cell phone number and found the name of the owner, Antun Simic, Petar’s father. Johnson walked on.

  At the top of the steps, he stopped and took out his phone, then pretended to dial a number and held a two-minute imaginary conversation with someone about an equally imaginary restaurant. While he was speaking, he turned around and looked down the stone steps, then along the road on which he now was standing. There was no obvious sign of a tail. He pocketed the phone.

  Johnson was more than a little concerned after the incident in Dubrovnik, about one hundred miles south of Split. If someone had tracked Petar and warned him about speaking to Johnson, then it seemed logical to assume he too might be targeted.

  Johnson turned left onto Marasovića Street, a road with old stone houses on the left and the green expanse of Marjan on the right. Partway up the hill, Johnson stopped. Another imaginary call, another check.

  By now he was sweating in the morning heat, the sun glaring down from a cloudless sky. Behind and below him he could now see Split’s harbor.

  This is going to be a waste of time, I can feel it, he thought. And a tough conversation.

  As he resumed walking, another encrypted text message arrived from Jayne. Her friend Alice at GCHQ now had a name for the owner of the cell phone from which the warning text had been sent: it was Marco Lukić, the man whom Petar had said ratted on his brother Filip, causing him to be imprisoned.

  Interesting.

  Johnson continued until, halfway up the hill, on the left, he came to a red-tiled house set back from the road, down a driveway, behind a dense hedge of conifers. The house was built of white stone and had green shutters and a wide balcony running across the length of the first floor.

  Johnson walked cautiously down the driveway to the front door, paused, checked the address details again, and then pressed a brass doorbell next to the front door. A loud set of melodic chimes came from within the house, but nobody came to the door.

  He rang again. Still no response. Johnson walked carefully along the house toward the side that overlooked the harbor.

  Now Johnson could detect the unmistakable musky smell of cannabis in the air. He reached the corner of the house and poked his head around. There, on an expansive stone patio, shaded by three tall pine trees, sat an old man in a deck chair. He puffed away at a large joint.

  “Hello, are you Mr. Simic?” Johnson ventured, in Croatian.

  The old man jerked, startled. “Who are you?” he asked, also in Croatian.

  “My name’s Joe Johnson. I’m an American here on some business. Sorry, I did ring the doorbell, but there was no answer. I was hoping to speak to Antun Simic.”

  The man put his smoldering joint on an ashtray next to the deckchair, got to his feet, and walked to Johnson. He appeared to be in his seventies, with a full mop of white hair, slightly hunched shoulders, a wrinkled face, and deep-set dark eyes.

  “What do you want?” he asked, now speaking in English. “I’m Antun.”

  Johnson’s first thought was that the old man didn’t seem to be in mourning. His second was that he was glad he didn’t have to worry about the old man’s English. It was crystal clear, if heavily accented.

  Johnson held out his hand and shook the old man’s. “Hello,” he said. “Good to meet you, and I’m sorry about your son.”

  Antun nodded sharply. “Thank you. You knew Petar?”

  “Yes. That’s actually why I’m here. I wanted to talk to you—but particularly to Filip, about his death.”

  “What do you know about Petar’s death?” Antun asked.

  “Well, I was actually with Petar when it happened.”

  Antun stood momentarily speechless. “Are you the man the police mentioned? The one he was having coffee with?”

  “Yes,” Johnson said.

  “So have you come here to tell me about it?”

  “Yes. And I was hoping you might be able to help me find a way to talk to Filip. I know he’s in prison, but there were a few things that Petar spoke to me about, and he wanted me to discuss them with Filip.”

  Antun peered at Johnson suspiciously. “Are these things you told the police?”

  “Not entirely. That’s what I’d like to explain to you.”

  The old man hesitated. “Come this way.” He led the way over to a bench just outside the door that led into the house from his verandah.

  “Sorry, I get all kinds of odd people coming here. Do you have any identification? Passport, driver’s license, or something.” Antun was clearly not going to take any risks.

  “Sure,” Johnson said. He pulled his passport and a business card from his pocket and gave them to Antun, who scrutinized them closely, then handed them back.

  “Do you want coffee? I was making some.”

  “Thanks,” Johnson said. “An espresso would be good.”

  Antun disappeared into the house, and Johnson sat down on the bench outside. He took out his phone and switched on the voice recorder, then placed the device in the breast pocket of his shirt.

  A few minutes later, Antun reappeared, carrying two cups of espresso. He gave one to Johnson, sat down, and studied him for a momen
t.

  “So tell me—tell me what my son told you.”

  “Mr. Simic, you should know that I’m a war crimes investigator. That’s why Petar approached me at a conference in Dubrovnik on Wednesday, where I was speaking. He told me he wanted to talk to me about some crimes that were never accounted for, back in the war. Then when we met on Thursday morning, he told me about Filip, about how his so-called friends betrayed him while they went free. He told me what those friends did during the war, how they escaped justice, and that he wanted me to track them down and ensure they paid for their crimes.”

  Antun stared at Johnson. “Did he name these ‘friends’?”

  “Yes. Franjo Vuković and Marco Lukić.”

  Antun let out a huff. “Petar was trying to get you to investigate Marco?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then Marco killed him, most likely. You need to tell the police.”

  “Mr. Simic, I can’t. Not until I speak with Filip and not until I have the evidence I need. Trust me, if Marco is responsible for the things Petar told me about, he’ll pay for his crimes. But we can’t spook him into disappearing now.”

  Antun narrowed his eyes a little. “Petar hated the fact that those two were free when Filip wasn’t. But I thought he’d let it go. Clearly not.” He paused, then added, “Okay, we don’t let Marco Lukić disappear. Understand? We will have our justice for Petar, or we will have our revenge.”

  “I understand.”

  Johnson decided not to mention that he had read the text that Marco had sent Petar. That would lead to awkward questions about when and why he had picked up Petar’s phone.

  Antun continued to study Johnson, but he seemed to let his guard down a notch, apparently satisfied with what he was hearing. “You need to speak to Filip?”

  “Yes. But I don’t know where he’s in prison,” Johnson said.

  “Filip’s been in Wakefield prison, in the UK,” he said. “He was sentenced to sixteen years in 1996. The tribunal in The Hague sent him there, along with a few others. I’ve traveled there many times to visit him.”