The Bach Manuscript

by Scott Mariani

  ‘And I understand that you are in need of information.’

  ‘Zarko Kožul,’ Ben said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Let’s just say I have a particular need to get close with him.’

  The man calling himself ‘Tatarević’ was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, the raspy voice was dripping with hatred like molten lava. ‘That Chetnik motherfucker is one of the worst of them. He is the most feared organised-crime leader in Serbia, responsible for more murders than anybody knows. As a younger man he was a member of the Scorpion paramilitary unit who butchered many of my people in the so-called “ethnic cleansing”. Srebrenica, Podujevo, and many other terrible massacres. But I am thinking you already know this.’

  Ben said nothing.

  The voice rasped, ‘May I ask what your intentions are, assuming you can, as you say, “get close”?’

  ‘I have what you might call a bone to pick with one of his associates,’ Ben replied. ‘My quarrel isn’t with him personally. But that could change, if he gets in my way.’

  ‘As I understand it from our mutual friend, you generally settle your quarrels in a most decisive fashion.’

  ‘I do what I have to do.’

  ‘Yet, I fear this undertaking will be more difficult than even a man of your talents can deal with. Do you not think that many before you have tried, and failed, to penetrate the ring of armour that surrounds Kožul? He is protected by an army. Informants are everywhere, watching, spying. If Kožul sees you as a threat, to come within a mile of his stronghold would be suicide.’

  ‘Just the kind of odds I like.’

  ‘Nobody is that good, my friend. Not even you, not even if half of what I have been told about you is true.’

  Ben smiled. Boonzie, putting in a good word for him. Osmanović almost certainly wouldn’t have called otherwise. Ben sensed his interest, and knew what was coming next.

  ‘You walk in there alone, without question Kožul’s men will take you down,’ Osmanović said. ‘You kill five of his, he will only send ten more to take their places. Frankly, I cannot see you coming out of this alive. Not unless you had some assistance.’

  Ben flipped another Gauloise from the pack and lit up. ‘Assistance of what kind?’

  ‘I know some people who would love to get back at Kožul for the things he has done. It seems to me that your plan could serve a mutual purpose. You help them, perhaps they will agree to help you.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Three.’

  Ben had no doubt that Osmanović was talking about himself, along with two associates. ‘You vouch for these people personally?’

  ‘You have my word, and my word is my bond.’

  ‘In that case, I would be interested in meeting with them,’ Ben said.

  ‘When you get to Belgrade, call this number.’

  Chapter 37

  The next day just after midday, Ben’s flight touched down at Nikola Tesla Airport. Belgrade felt chilly after southern England. The sky was a shifting mosaic of grey slates, and a diagonal rain was slanting down out of it, the kind of rain that finds its way into every crevice and soaks a man to the deepest core of his soul.

  He was tired. Tired of chasing, weary of fighting. He’d left his near-empty bag in the boot of the Alpina at Heathrow, and felt oddly naked without it hanging over his shoulder. As he stood under the rain outside the airport and dialled the number he’d been told to call, he had to struggle against a strange feeling of dread that rose up inside him. It was like no sensation he’d felt before, going into a hundred battles. If he’d been a superstitious man, he’d have thought his peculiar apprehension was a premonition of something bad about to happen.

  A different voice from the one he’d spoken to last night, but with the same heavy accent, answered the phone on the third ring and told him to take a taxicab to the Despot Stefan Tower. ‘It is a well-known landmark of the city. Climb the steps to the top of the tower and wait there for a man in a green hat.’

  Ben found a taxicab for hire a minute later, and the car took off on its eighteen-kilometre journey towards the city. The driver wanted to chatter, but Ben wasn’t in the mood. He tossed the guy a bunch of the dinar notes he’d got from the airport bureau de change, closed his eyes and didn’t open them again until they’d reached their destination.

  Back in the mists of antiquity, the then-tiny population of Belgrade had dwelt within the thick walls and ramparts of a stone fortress. The Romans had conquered it, various besieging armies had hammered it over the course of many centuries, and all that had survived to the present day were the scattered gates at its four corners. The Despot Stefan Tower was attached to the north-eastern fortress gate, named after a fifteenth-century Serbian ruler. It was the last piece of Belgrade’s older history still standing, and now a tourist attraction giving sweeping views from its ramparts over the breadth of the city skyline. Four astronomical telescopes stood mounted on posts, presumably to encourage visitors to observe the heavens. Ben didn’t suppose that the man in the green hat had chosen this rendezvous point out of an interest in astronomy.

  Unsurprisingly on a gloomy day like today, the tower was deserted. The rain had thinned to a drizzle, which Ben didn’t mind so much except that the dampness made his cigarette fizzle out. Standing at the ramparts gazing across the city, he hadn’t been waiting long before his phone buzzed in his pocket. More instructions, he thought. Or else maybe the man in the green hat had got cold feet.

  But it was a different voice, and a more familiar one, that spoke when he answered.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it? Don’t tell me it wasn’t you, because I know it was. I warned you.’

  ‘Detective Inspector McAllister, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it sounds like you’re accusing me of some heinous act.’

  ‘You sound like you’re on Mars. Where the hell are you?’

  ‘A long way away from your turf, so relax. I’m not even in the country.’

  ‘Germany? Russia?’

  Ben frowned. ‘That’s an odd question. Why would you ask me if I was in Germany or Russia?’

  ‘Because of the Silverman or Silbermann manuscript, or whatever the frig it’s called,’ McAllister said impatiently. ‘That’s what this is all about. Nazis, KGB, and some guy called Bird Leg. That’s why I’ve got an impaled organ player in the morgue, a music professor with his face blown off, and half my city looking like frigging Beirut on a bad day. And it’s all down to you, Hope.’

  ‘Bird Leg?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  ‘You have nothing on me, Inspector. As you know very well, or you wouldn’t be calling me like this. Besides, I thought we were friends.’

  ‘Oh, sure. Bosom buddies. Two peaches in a blender.’

  ‘Always with the cooking metaphors, McAllister. You’re in the wrong job. Should get back into the kitchen, where you can do something worthwhile for a change.’

  ‘Wherever the hell it is you’ve run off to, Hope, you’d better stay there. Show your face in my city again, I’ll be down on you like … like …’

  ‘A sack of potatoes?’

  ‘Watch it.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be attending more college reunions any time soon. Everyone I knew is dead.’

  ‘Aye, and the rest of us will soon be joining them, if you get half a chance. So do us a favour and don’t ever come back to Ox—’

  Ben ended the call and cut him off. He was still trying to figure out what the hell McAllister had meant about Nazis, the KGB and someone called Bird Leg when a figure appeared at the top of the stone tower steps. A man in a long black coat and green baseball cap walked towards Ben, hands in his coat pockets, shoulders hunched. He looked in his mid-fifties, heavyset, greying beard, cautious eyes. As he came within a few steps of where Ben was standing at the rampart, the man stopped and pulled a small automatic from his pocket.

  The pistol pointed at Ben’s stomach.

  ‘Major Hope?’ sai
d the raspy voice.

  ‘I might have expected a more friendly welcome, Mr Osmanović.’

  Osmanović glanced down at the pistol, hesitated for an instant and then slipped the gun back into his pocket. ‘Forgive my lack of trust, Major. It is in short supply these days. I am taking quite a chance meeting you like this.’

  ‘You know who I am, I know who you are. If I’d thought you intended to use that pistol, you’d already be learning to fly.’ Ben jerked his thumb behind him over the top of the rampart. ‘And you can call me Ben.’

  ‘Husein.’ They shook hands.

  Osmanović beckoned Ben over to one of the telescopes. He angled it downwards on its pivot, so it aimed across the city skyline like a miniature cannon. He pointed through the drizzle. ‘Do you see that square concrete building in the distance, there by the river?’ Ben looked through the scope at the faraway building magnified several times in the eyepiece. The most unexpected feature was the rooftop helipad on top of the warehouse, marked with a big H.

  ‘That is the objective,’ Osmanović said. ‘The Rakia nightspot, on the site of an old slaughterhouse, owned and operated by our friend Zarko Kožul. He uses it chiefly as a money-laundering operation and legitimate business front, while the vast bulk of his profits come from peddling misery and death. The upper floor is where he has his offices, if you can call a dive of degeneracy an office. To reach it, one must pass through several layers of security. A gauntlet of Kožul’s men surrounds the building and guards their master’s lair day and night.’

  ‘If you have doubts about this target, why not hit his home instead?’

  ‘I have already lost two good men trying to discover its location. This is a secret known only to Kožul’s very closest associates. You see the helipad on the roof? Kožul never crosses the city by car. He flies into work each day from a private airstrip outside the city. He uses multiple vehicles to transport him between home and a hangar at the airstrip, always changing routes, and fitted with dark glass so that it is impossible to know which one he is in. Believe me, he is as devious as he is cruel. And so, we have no choice but to hit him here, at the Rakia. Though it will not be easy. His fortress is virtually impregnable.’

  ‘Look around you,’ Ben said, pointing at the ruins where mighty walls and turrets had once stood. ‘If history teaches us anything, it’s that nothing is impregnable.’

  Osmanović smiled. ‘Your reputation is clearly no lie. I have a plan for getting inside, which requires the skills and bravery of a man like you. I will tell you all about it. But first, let me introduce you to my associates. They are waiting.’

  Osmanović led the way back down the tower steps, to where a shabby, grime-streaked old-model Mercedes sedan was parked on the street below. Its interior hadn’t been cleaned out in at least ten years. Ben sat in the front passenger seat and lit a fresh Gauloise without asking permission. Osmanović didn’t object. Not car-proud, seemingly.

  They drove through the glistening wet streets in silence, heading westwards from where the Danube and Sava rivers split and carved the city into segments. On the western fringes they arrived at what might once have been a thriving industrial park but now looked like a ghost town of old abandoned warehouses and cracked concrete, with weeds that sprouted tall in the car’s headlights.

  Osmanović stopped the Mercedes outside the dilapidated entrance to one of the warehouses. It looked like the kind of place you might take someone to execute them. Belgrade, city of culture and beauty.

  Osmanović got out of the car. He said, ‘Follow me.’

  Chapter 38

  Ben did as he was asked, and walked into the warehouse after Husein Osmanović. Rusty old lifting equipment and bits of chain lay around the bare floor. The walls were daubed with graffiti and scorched in places where kids or vagrants had lit small fires.

  Osmanović muttered ‘This way’ and led Ben deeper into the building and down a flight of crumbly concrete steps that led to a steel door. Their footsteps echoed off the bare walls of the large, empty space. If this was Osmanović’s HQ, it was a little more spartan than Ben imagined Kožul’s to be.

  The other side of the door was a smaller room, just a bare concrete cube lit by dirty skylights. In the middle of the room stood a long, rough wooden table covered in an array of miscellaneous weaponry. At a glance Ben saw there was a mixture of modern hardware and stuff dating back to the Second World War. Old guns never died; they just fell deeper into the dodgy black market underworld. The other item on the table was a Samsonite cabin-size suitcase, its lid closed. Ben could only wonder what was inside.

  Two men stood by the table, one scraggy and gaunt and bald, the other wide and swarthy. They watched Ben keenly as he walked into the room. The scraggy one badly needed a wash. Ben could smell the sour body odour from several metres away.

  ‘These are my associates, Duša and Nidal,’ Osmanović said. ‘They have my complete trust. Aside from that, all you need to know about them is that they have reason to hate and despise Zarko Kožul almost as much as I do, which is saying a great deal.’

  ‘All these years he’s been operating,’ Ben said, ‘and nobody’s put a stop to him?’

  ‘I told you, many have tried. It would be a mistake to underestimate his power. However, we are not completely without the means to rid our country of scum like Kožul.’ Osmanović waved a hand over the rows of weaponry.

  Ben stepped closer to the table. It looked as though someone had raided a firearms museum and loaded a small truck with everything from American M16s to Russian Kalashnikovs; a massive Nazi-era heavy machine gun on its field bipod; an assortment of submachine guns that ranged from slick Steyr machine pistols to agricultural-looking British Stens from the 1940s. At the smaller end of the scale, Ben’s hosts had laid out a mixed collection of pistols and revolvers, some modern, others that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Adrian Graves’ secret collection of historic arms.

  ‘This selection is all we could assemble at short notice,’ Osmanović said, noticing Ben’s expression. ‘You have a preference for a specific make and model?’

  ‘Whatever works,’ Ben said. ‘If I need to bang in a nail, I don’t worry about who manufactured the hammer.’ He picked up a Glock .45 auto, checked it over, inspected the fully-loaded magazine, and worked the action a few times to make sure it functioned properly. Duša and Nidal were watching his every move like a pair of hungry dogs.

  Osmanović smiled. ‘A good choice. The Glock is a reliable tool and the forty-five slug will put a man out of action every time, with just one hit.’

  Ben tossed the gun back onto the table. ‘As long you can get the hit on the man when it counts. Are Tweedledee and Tweedledum here up to the job?’

  The scraggy one, Duša, seemed to understand. He flushed red, snatched a big chunky Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum off the table and twirled the revolver around his index finger like a cowboy. Proving what a fearsome gunslinger he was. Maybe Ben was supposed to be impressed. Instead he turned to Osmanović and said, ‘Being able to do tricks with a sixgun doesn’t make you a shooter, any more than owning a Fender makes you Eric Clapton.’

  Osmanović signalled to Duša to put the gun down, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who would understand your wariness of us better than I? But you must believe that I would not expect you to walk into the lion’s den without expert backup. Be assured, these men are among the best you will find in Serbia. Nidal was with the Military Police Battalion. Duša has spent three years with the Falcons, 72 Special Brigade, fighting terrorism.’

  ‘And avoiding soap, by the smell of him,’ Ben said.

  If Serbia was anything like Britain, it was full to the brim with wannabe warriors going around bragging to anyone who’d listen that they’d been part of this or that elite unit. Ben had encountered more SAS fakers in his time than had ever actually served with the regiment. But he was just going to have to take Osmanović’s word for it.

  ‘You said you had a plan.’

  ‘Here it
is.’ Osmanović went up to the table and opened the Samsonite case. It was filled with polythene-wrapped bricks of white powder, stacked in three tiers.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  Osmanović chuckled. ‘The bottom layers are nothing more than white sugar. But the top layer is pure uncut heroin, taken from a dealer who, shall we say, will no longer be needing it. Street value, thirty euros a gram. Not what it used to be worth, but you can be sure Zarko Kožul will be interested in purchasing it from us for the right price. To be more precise, from you.’ He pointed at Ben.

  ‘Not exactly my cup of tea, Husein.’

  ‘If you can think of a better way to get inside his fortress, Mr Hope, I would welcome any ideas. This will get his attention better than anything.’

  ‘Until he discovers the sugar.’

  ‘By which time, you will have made your move against him.’

  Ben paused, weighing up the options, visualising the scenarios as movie images unrolling on a screen in his head. ‘And you?’

  ‘On your signal, we will launch the attack from below. This will create a diversion and keep Kožul’s men busy. If the man you seek—’

  ‘Dragan Vuković.’

  ‘—if Vuković is in the building, he is yours to deal with however you like. All we want is Kožul.’

  ‘Want, as in, taken captive?’

  ‘I would just as soon put a bullet in his head myself. But if you were to beat me to it, I would not shed tears.’

  ‘In other words, you want me to kill him for you.’

  Osmanović spread his hands. ‘We would consider it a great favour. For a long time we have waited for someone like you to come along.’

  ‘I’m not an assassin,’ Ben said.

  ‘But you want your man. This is the price for getting inside. Are you with us, or not?’

  Ben didn’t like the arrangement one bit, and he was liking it even less the more he thought about it.

  ‘We haven’t talked about the police. Things start kicking off, it won’t be quiet. We’ll have five minutes, ten maximum, before they roll in.’