The Old Bridge

by Andrew Turpin

  They waited another five minutes before Johnson stood and walked to Jayne. “They obviously don’t know this is Simic’s house. Don’t know who that was, though. Definitely not Marco and Franjo.”

  She nodded. “No, but just as bloody dangerous.”

  The front door behind them opened. There stood Filip. “I heard the car, then looked out and saw you.”

  “Yes, we’ve just had a slight skirmish with two gunmen,” Johnson said. “We were at Hasanović’s house, not far from here, and they got in and shot him dead. We’re lucky to have gotten out of there.”

  Filip’s eyebrows rose. “Marco and Franjo?”

  “No, not them,” Johnson said. “Other guys. Never seen them before.”

  “And they’ve killed Hasanović?” Filip asked. “This is crazy. Most likely men working for Marco then.”

  “It must have been,” Johnson said. “But I feel like a damned idiot, frankly.”

  Filip shook his head. “You’d better get inside. Go through to the kitchen. I’ll make you some coffee. I didn’t even know that Hasanović lived near here. Tell me what happened.”

  “Those two assholes burst in while we were talking to him and gunned him down on the stairs of his own house,” Jayne said. “It would have been us as well if we hadn’t moved so fast.”

  “My God,” Filip said. “How did they get in?”

  As they walked to the kitchen, Johnson described how the two men had shot their way through the front door and a couple of internal doors.

  “Haris gave us some useful information,” Johnson said, “but he definitely had a lot more. So we’re still no closer to knowing where Franjo is based or what his alias is or where Marco is. Have you heard any more from the police?”

  “No,” Filip said, as he prepared coffee. “I’ve actually just finished a phone call with the police detective running the inquiry into Petar’s murder. He keeps telling me they can’t find Marco. Trouble is, he knows I’m a convicted war criminal and won’t take me seriously.”

  “You’re right,” Johnson said. “The police should have him behind bars by now. Our problem is I’d prefer to have Franjo arrested outside of Croatia or Bosnia—I think there’s more chance of pinning him for his war crimes that way. And unlike with Marco, who’s obviously going to have to answer for Petar’s killing, I don’t really want to get the local police involved. So it’s tricky.”

  “So you don’t have any leads at all?” Filip asked.

  Johnson paused. “One, possibly. Not from Haris though. Have you heard of an arms company called VMM Oružje Sustavi, based in Sarajevo? It’s listed on the Sarajevo Stock Exchange.”

  Filip filled three cups with coffee and pushed two across the kitchen countertop to Johnson and Jayne. “Actually yes, I know it quite well. What’s the connection?”

  “I heard Franjo is still a shareholder in the business,” Johnson said.

  Filip whistled. “Is he? Interesting. If he bought low and put a decent amount in, he’s probably made a fortune in the past five years. The stock’s gone up around tenfold.”

  He told Johnson that VMM had supplied weapons to the Croatians during the war, then went through a bad time afterward. Corruption had been a major problem, and VMM struggled with that, he explained. A lot of the managers had been siphoning off equipment and selling it to black market outlets all over the world, resulting in huge losses for a few years. But they had gotten rid of the corrupt managers, recovered well, and were now exporting weapons, ammo, mines, blasting caps, and other equipment globally.

  “Fine,” Johnson said. “If it’s doing well, then it will probably be paying dividends to shareholders. So how are they paying Franjo? The company must have a shareholder register, with addresses and contact details, and it must pay dividends by bank transfer or check.”

  “And you want to know how to get those details?”

  “Correct.”

  Filip sipped his own coffee and thought for a moment. “There’s Viktor. A friend of Petar’s from Moscow. He called my father last week after he heard about the shooting and I had a word with him. I hadn’t seen him since ’95 but we had quite a chat. He’s a miserable bastard, but he was extremely angry about what happened to Petar, so he might help.”

  He went on to explain that Viktor, a former defense-industry computer engineer, had gone to the “dark side.” He was part of a group of software specialists that worked for a shadowy Russian outfit specializing in the use of Carbon and Turla software tools. They were infiltrating the systems of defense companies and selling their secrets to whichever state defense departments were prepared to pay for information that might give them an advantage when it came to the procurement of missile systems, weapons, ammunition, and other equipment.

  Johnson grinned. “He told you all this?”

  Filip looked out the window. “Not on the phone.”

  Johnson decided not to ask any more questions. If Filip thought his friend Viktor—whether that was his real name or not—might be able to get the information needed, then he wasn’t going to argue about the methodology. Think of the greater good.

  “Okay. When can you get in touch with him? If you like, I can speak to him, I’m fluent in Russian,” Johnson said.

  Filip leaned against the kitchen counter. “Let me speak with him, and we’ll see what we can arrange. Have you wondered if Marco also invested? He and Franjo did everything together back then. I want to nail that bastard for what he did to Petar. You talk a lot about Franjo, but you need to remember that asshole Marco as well.”

  “Don’t worry,” Johnson said. “We haven’t forgotten him. They’re both going down together.”

  Johnson put the phone back in his pocket. “The other thing Hasanović mentioned was something about an airfield at Sinj. He said arms are smuggled out of there at night to Syria—the same weapons that came in from Iran in the early ’90s. I’d like to take a look.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Monday, July 23, 2012

  Sinj, Croatia

  Robert Watson kicked one of the cardboard crates that stood in a corner of the darkened warehouse, then sat on it and lit a cigarette. A woman handed him a mug of coffee, which he took without speaking. He ran a hand through his white hair and stared at the floor.

  A few dim lightbulbs lit the interior of the small building, its corrugated steel walls pockmarked with rust. A pallet was already loaded on a small forklift. Its driver sat checking his phone. A few other men lounged around, waiting.

  Watson checked his watch. It was half past one in the morning. He yawned deeply and took a sip of his coffee. He had slept only intermittently on his overnight flight from Washington, DC, to Split, via Vienna, and he already just wanted to be home.

  Two days earlier he had been relaxing at his home in Wolf Trap when the call had come in from Zagreb about the demise of his Croatian chief of station. Then there had been the call from RUNNER to tell him that Joe Johnson had somehow got his hands on documents that could potentially blow the whole lid off of a scheme Watson had kept quiet for two decades.

  What a shitstorm.

  Following the death of Edwards, the trip had been an easy one to explain to his boss, the deputy director. There were a lot of loose ends to tie up, and he needed to work out a replacement for Edwards as well as ensure that staff at the station in Zagreb were on top of arrangements for repatriation of the body.

  After he’d done that, Watson had rented a car in Split and had driven the twenty-five miles to Sinj to ensure there were no hiccups with the arms sale agreed between “Stefan” and Mustafa for onward transit to Syria.

  The CIA had secretly been playing quite a significant role across various countries, of which Croatia was one, in helping Syrian rebel commanders and their supporters shop for weapons that could be used to help bring down Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.

  This had given Watson the perfect cover for his side operation. For a long time he had taken special measures to ensure not only that Boris
and Marco got the deals ahead of other suppliers, but that loading and transporting them went through without any interference from Croatian authorities.

  There would be no local police patrols anywhere near the airfield this evening. The police chief in Sinj, whom Edwards, with some assistance from Watson, had finally recruited after almost a year of effort, had made sure of that.

  The logistics were a hassle, but after years of smoothing the way for many deliveries of weapons, Watson had almost $10 million in a numbered bank account in Zürich, which he had opened specifically to store his portion of the proceeds—of which Boris and Marco took by far the lion’s share. The Zürich account was one of several Watson held in tax havens to quietly accumulate the proceeds of such off-the-books operations.

  Not that the deputy director knew anything about the personal payments, the bribes, which Watson had received from Boris and Marco in return. Of that, Watson was certain.

  Now Watson stood and walked over to the large double doors of the warehouse and stepped outside. He peered into the darkness.

  Sinj was a small airfield, known locally as Piket, with a smooth 1,200 yard grass strip normally used only by private aircraft enthusiasts, businessmen and small commercial planes.

  Watson felt the burner cell phone he had purchased at Split Airport vibrate in his pocket. He never took his security for granted: he had removed the SIM card and battery from his CIA phone before leaving Split and had also taken the precaution of having the device checked for bugs.

  He answered the call.

  “SILVER.”

  “SILVER, it’s SUNMAN. Are we ready to go? The plane’s coming in.”

  “Yes, we’re ready to go,” Watson said. He had ensured that, as previously arranged, the road was blocked in both directions by a supposed water leak. There were two local water-company vans and barriers out on the road at both ends of the airfield, including diversion signs, to prevent any passing traffic.

  “Is RUNNER with you?” Watson asked.

  “No, he had to head back to Split,” Marco said. “He has a few jobs he needs to do there.”

  “Okay, we’re good to go here. I’ll confirm when the job’s done,” Watson said.

  Watson could hear a faint drone coming from the darkened sky to the east. The Antonov An-72, a nimble twin-engine cargo jet, which could operate using short, grass runways, was on its way in.

  Johnson braked to a halt in front of the red and white workmen’s barrier and large white van that blocked the road.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  Jayne pointed at the green and blue logo on the side of the van, which was illuminated in the car’s headlights. “Hrvatske Vode . . . that’s Croatian Water,” she said. “They must be repairing a leak or something.”

  She took out her phone, clicked onto her maps app, and scrutinized it carefully. “The airstrip starts over there. You can just about make it out,” she said. “Looks like the airport buildings are a bit farther up this road, on the left.”

  Johnson wound down the window of the Golf and peered out. “We’ll have to park and walk then. Might be a good thing for us. If the road’s blocked, there’ll be no passing traffic to see us.”

  He killed the Golf’s headlights, then turned around. After a short distance, a rough track led off to the left past what appeared to be a timber yard, with piles of logs and wood stacked up inside a mesh fence enclosure.

  Johnson edged cautiously down the track, then turned again and parked behind some bushes so the car was out of sight from the road.

  He leaned over and removed the Zastava from the car’s glove compartment. Then he pushed it into his waistband and put two spare magazines, which Filip had acquired for him, into a small black backpack.

  Next Johnson reached behind his seat and picked up his Olympus mirrorless camera, with its 40–150mm zoom lens, and also placed that into the backpack. He switched on the camera and confirmed that the shutter click sound effect was disabled. “Right, let’s go and check it out.”

  Jayne also put her gun in her waistband and shoved two spare magazines into her jacket pocket, then got out of the car.

  From that point on, they both knew they wouldn’t speak unless there was an operational need.

  They walked back down the track toward the road. The water company van stood side-on behind the barrier, silent and unattended, its lights switched off. Drainage ditches on either side made it impossible to drive a vehicle past—the van completely blocked the road.

  Johnson peered through the van window, then put his hand on the hood. It was still warm; the van had probably only been placed there very recently, he guessed. There was no sign of activity.

  Jayne pointed silently toward the airfield, indicating to Johnson that they should walk there behind the hedge rather than on the road.

  They scrambled down a small ditch and up the other side, onto a mown area of grass, then made their way eastward, sticking tight to the cover afforded by the darkness of the hedge. In the distance, the black outline of the hills surrounding the tiny town of Sinj was just visible against the slightly paler sky.

  Gradually the silhouette of two buildings came into view ahead of them, both of which had lights shining dimly from inside.

  Johnson stopped.

  On the night air, the faint drone of an approaching plane was just audible. Then to their left, in the middle of the grass airstrip, a light flicked on, its narrow beam shining into the sky. The sound of the plane’s engines grew louder, and the light flicked off and on three times.

  Hasanović had been correct. The aircraft wasn’t visible, though. Johnson scanned the night sky, trying to spot it.

  Jayne pointed and he tried to follow her line. Then he spotted it: a black silhouette visible against the sky for a few seconds before it dropped below the level of the surrounding hills.

  The water company van was clearly just a decoy to prevent casual passersby from getting close. Johnson began walking again.

  They hugged close to the hedge and approached the rear of what appeared to be a small hangar, made of corrugated steel.

  An engine started inside the hangar and a small orange forklift emerged, carrying a pallet on which rested several large cardboard boxes.

  The low, insistent drone of aircraft engines grew nearer and then, through the gloom, Johnson saw the aircraft touch down and run three-quarters of the way down the grass strip before turning and heading back toward the hangar.

  It stopped thirty yards short of it and the engines shut off, the whine dwindling gradually until the aircraft stood in silence.

  Johnson took out his camera, turned up its ISO light sensitivity to the maximum, and took a few pictures of the aircraft and the hangars. There was just enough peripheral light to give an exposure. He pointed silently to the back of the hangar, where he could see a few rust holes in the metal, and then to his camera. Jayne nodded.

  They crouched and shuffled behind a grassy bank until they reached the rear of the hangar.

  Johnson flattened himself to the ground and crawled the last ten yards until he could see through a sizable rust hole in the hangar wall. Inside, a few men stood around several boxes on pallets.

  He carefully raised his camera’s zoom lens to the hole in the metal sheeting and pressed the shutter release halfway down to focus the blurred image.

  What appeared in his viewfinder caused Johnson to nearly drop the Olympus.

  The figure was shockingly familiar; angular shoulders, a white mop of hair with a well-shaped cut at the back, an open-necked shirt with a blue and red checkered pattern.

  The man turned his head so his face was visible. It was Robert Watson, sitting on a cardboard box.

  Johnson turned to Jayne and pointed in Watson’s direction. She nodded, having peered through another hole and also recognized him.

  He reapplied his right eye to the viewfinder. The cardboard box on which Watson was seated had a white sticker on the side marked Fragile: Microwave Ovens. He was readi
ng a sheaf of papers.

  So this was how one of the CIA’s top dogs earned himself extra pocket money. Unbelievable. First he arms Bin Laden and his boys. Now it’s the Syrian rebels.

  With his lens at a full 150 mm, equivalent to 300 mm on his SLR, Johnson zoomed the camera in as tightly as he could on Watson and the papers, pressed the shutter release and silently clicked off a few frames. When Watson’s face was visible again, Johnson clicked a few more.

  The forklift sped back into the warehouse and picked up another pallet of boxes. Johnson took a few pictures of the forklift, which then turned and took its load out to the waiting aircraft.

  Johnson clicked on one of the photographs of Watson on the camera’s viewing screen, and magnified the sheaf of papers he was reading.

  He couldn’t read the actual writing, but it appeared to be a list of some kind, running vertically down the page. It was probably a list of the weaponry that was being loaded onto the aircraft, Johnson surmised.

  Microwave ovens, my ass.

  Johnson turned off the display and looked through the viewfinder again, then pressed the camera lens back up to the hole.

  As he did so, he moved his right knee out, which threw him off balance a little. He recovered his position, but as he did, the end of the zoom lens banged gently against the metal wall of the warehouse.

  Maybe it was some kind of sixth sense, a self-protection mechanism, of the kind that had enabled Watson to be a survivor rather than a victim over his four and a half decades of service with the CIA.

  It had kept him alive through a series of gun battles, including, in late 2001, the battle of Tora Bora in the deadly maze of caves in eastern Afghanistan. At the age of fifty-five he had been the oldest member of the team and had injured his knee in the process. That was when the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, together with Special Forces colleagues, had unsuccessfully hunted for Osama bin Laden.