Osmanović shook his head. ‘Forget about the police, my friend. This is New Belgrade, not Little England. Kožul owns most of the cops, and those he does not own have more sense than to step inside his territory. Nobody will come.’
Ben was silent for a minute longer. Still thinking, still not liking.
‘Okay, I’m in,’ he said finally. Osmanović looked pleased, until Ben pointed at the open case and added, ‘But we’re not going with this crap. No drugs. If we do this, we do it my way.’
‘As you wish. I have a reliable source that informs me Kožul will be in his office every evening this week. I propose we hit him tonight.’
‘You seem to want this very badly,’ Ben said.
‘I would gladly risk a bullet to see another of those Scorpion motherfuckers dead. Never forget, never forgive. That is my credo.’
‘What about money?’
‘All I have in the world, I would give up without a second thought if it helped to nail Zarko Kožul’s worthless hide to a wall.’
Ben smiled. ‘Seeing as you’re prepared to be so generous, how much cash can you get together in the next few hours?’
Chapter 39
Hearts and minds. When an experienced and perceptive operator got deep inside the enemy’s way of thinking, it was possible to anticipate their moves. Not to gift-of-prophecy levels of prediction, but accurately enough to provide an edge. Ben was at war, and in warfare, having an edge was everything.
Thanks to Lena, he knew that Dragan was as anxious to prove himself to Zarko Kožul as he was to offload the stolen Bach manuscript. Therefore, Ben could safely anticipate that Kožul would have been Dragan’s very first port of call the instant he stepped on Serbian soil, offering the precious item to his would-be boss in the hopes of winning his favour.
Which led Ben to consider how Kožul might respond to Dragan’s unusual pitch. If he was any kind of businessman, he would have protested and blustered and made a lot of noise about how this wasn’t his marketplace, how am I supposed to flog this piece of crap, yadda yadda, then gone and started making enquiries anyway to find out whether the thing might be worth even just a few bucks. Any gangster worth his salt would have a well-developed network of fences and other criminal handlers through whom all manner of tainted goods could be filtered and converted into nice clean cash. The moment Kožul had possession of the manuscript, he’d be on the phone. Soon afterwards, the word would be spreading to any number of black market connections. It would all have happened fast. A man like Kožul would expect rapid results.
So Ben had decided on the play. He could describe the manuscript accurately enough and – thanks to Nick Hawthorne – had picked up enough scraps of knowledge about its background to be able to pass himself off as expert, at least to the likes of Kožul. If he could talk his way into a meeting masquerading as an interested cash buyer, and if Kožul took the bait, that gave Ben the means to penetrate his defences. Even the thickest armour always had a soft underbelly, if you knew where to look.
Once he was inside, the plan would dissolve into total improvisation. A lot could go wrong. The most obvious of which was that Dragan might be present when Ben turned up at Kožul’s headquarters, or Lena, or both, which would send things instantly south as Ben was recognised. Worst-case scenario, the fight would break out within moments of his arrival. Best case, it was still a hairy and reckless proposition, with many unknown factors of which the quality of his backup was one of the most concerning. He would be walking in there unarmed, which was even less comfort.
But Ben had gone into less favourable situations in his time, and he was still breathing. He’d still be breathing when the dust settled after this one. So he kept telling himself – but the strange feeling of dread that he’d felt at the airport was still there, like a sour taste at the back of his mouth that wouldn’t fade away.
While Ben worked on his game plan, Husein Osmanović was busy assembling enough stacks of cash to pack tightly inside the Samsonite case in place of the heroin and sugar. Nidal went off in search of food and returned with a sack of hamburgers and fries, which the four men consumed in the silence of the warehouse and washed down with Coke. Ben smoked and said nothing to anyone.
Finally, as midnight approached, it was time. Osmanović and his men gathered up their chosen weapons and the four of them walked out into the cold night and piled into the Mercedes, Ben in the front passenger seat with the case at his feet, Nidal and Duša in the back. Osmanović drove across the lit nightscape of Belgrade to a quiet, dirty street a block away from the Rakia nightclub.
Osmanović killed the lights and the engine. The pulsing thump of the dance music could be heard even from here. Ben turned to address the two surly, shadowy faces in the back. ‘Everyone knows the drill. I go first, the rest of you split up and slip inside one at a time. Be ready to act on my signal the moment things kick off. I’ll be relying on you, okay? Let me down, and I swear I’ll shoot you myself.’
The surly faces nodded. Osmanović clapped a hand on Ben’s shoulder. ‘We will not let you down.’
Ben lit a Gauloise. There was a big, empty space behind his right hip where there should have been a fully-loaded Glock nestling in his belt. Feeling naked and unsettled, he grabbed the case, kicked open the car door and began walking towards the nightclub.
As Ben got closer to the Rakia, he craned his neck upwards to see if Kožul’s helicopter was visible on the roof, but the angle was too steep. If they’d had an extra man available, Ben would have posted him on top of the Despot Stefan Tower with a two-way radio to report on any comings and goings. But they were short of manpower as it was.
A street lamp across from the nightclub was flickering. The shadows seemed to contain all kinds of hidden menace. Ben watched the red light spilling out of the Rakia’s main entrance doorway like a fiery glow from the gates of hell. The ear-numbing nightmare primal cacophony coming from inside sounded like hell, too. He didn’t think Johann Sebastian Bach would have approved. Miles Davis would probably have just pulled out a revolver and shot the degenerate responsible. Miles was Ben’s kind of musician that way.
A hundred young males and females thronged around the building, eager to press their way inside past the heavy security. Ben wondered whether all these people really didn’t have anything better to do with themselves. He pushed through the crowd. As he’d expected, a bouncer intercepted him before he reached the door. The guy was seven feet tall and all in black, with a beard like a forest and arms like the steel girders on a battleship. Maybe the demons of hell looked like he did, too. He held up a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt in Ben’s face.
‘Ticket.’ The big man’s voice was about three octaves lower than normal. Genetic freak.
‘This is my ticket,’ Ben said, and showed him the case. ‘I’m here to do business with Zarko Kožul. I’d let me in.’
The big man regarded him with hostility, then ushered him inside with a nod to a pair of other bouncers, just as large, who stepped up and closely flanked Ben as he was led through the wall-shaking noise and flashing lights to a door with a sign that said PRIVATNI. He could have broken their necks without too much effort, but that might spoil the timing of his plan.
Forest-beard opened a door and guided Ben into a small office. ‘Who the fuck wants to see Zarko?’ Even with the closed door muffling the din from outside, the guy still had to shout. His beard quivered when he spoke, as if there were things living inside the tangled mass.
‘The name’s Richter,’ Ben shouted back. ‘Lutz Richter.’ Speaking Serbian with an Austrian accent was hard, but the muted pounding of the music covered up his bad intonation. ‘The word on the street is, your man upstairs has something to sell. I’m buying.’ He pointed at the case.
The word on the street. Why did shady crooks always get the worst lines?
They made Ben open the case and lift out its contents, then frisked him carefully. When they were satisfied that he wasn’t carrying any guns or bombs, they allowed
him to cram the money back inside the case and close the lid. ‘Happy?’ he yelled to Forest-beard. ‘Now lead the way, big boy.’
The big guy said something to the others that Ben didn’t hear, then left the room. He was gone five minutes, during which time seven hundred pounds of flesh, very little of which consisted of cerebral matter, stood guard over their charge. Ben contemplated the pros and cons of bashing their heads together to see what was inside. Same bad timing.
Then the beard was back. He nodded to the others and motioned to Ben as if to say, ‘Let’s go.’ Evidently the green light had been given from upstairs.
Point of no return. Whatever was to happen up there, Ben was committed now.
Zarko Kožul’s men led him deeper inside the building. Rounding a corner, Ben realised that the strange vibration he could feel thrumming through the walls and underfoot was coming from a paternoster lift. ‘If I’d known we were going on a fairground ride, I’d have bought candyfloss.’
They got on, which was like boarding a moving tram, only vertically, and a harder task for Ben’s oversized and less-than-nimble escorts than it was for him. Mistime it and you might lose a leg or an arm, or get crushed between the rising platform and the access doorway, but what was that to hard guys like Kožul’s hand-picked gorillas? The wooden platform creaked and groaned on its perpetual loop. There was another platform about ten feet above, and Ben supposed there would be another ten feet below, all daisy-chained together. Round and round, all day long. Serving fresh victims up to Zarko Kožul and bringing down the remains for the gorillas to cart away and bury in a lime pit somewhere.
As they juddered their way up through the floors, Ben was mentally rehearsing what he would say when he found himself face to face with the crime boss. He’d be winging it all the way and everything depended on how he was received. If it turned nasty, he planned on killing Kožul first and then going looking for Dragan Vuković. If it went well, he planned on killing Kožul first and then going looking for Dragan Vuković.
They stepped off the paternoster at the top of the building, into a dingy narrow passage with badly whitewashed walls and old floorboards that were slick and shiny from decades of dirt and grease. Ahead, the passage led past a set of doors, behind one of which Ben presumed was Kožul’s office suite Osmanović had described. The passage was barred by two more very large guards, both armed with tiny Czech-made Skorpion submachine guns that looked like toys in their hands. They halted him and insisted on frisking him a second time.
‘They don’t breed them for smarts where you come from, do they?’ Ben said as they patted him down. ‘You think I magicked up a ballistic missile on the way up here?’
‘He’s clean.’
By now, Osmanović and his guys Nidal and Duša would be inside the nightclub downstairs. Ben pictured them working their way around the sides of the dance crowd, nervously fingering their concealed weapons, psyching themselves up for the action that might start exploding at any time. Perhaps wondering if any of them would leave this place alive tonight. In Osmanović’s case, perhaps not caring that much whether he went down fighting, as long as he could take a hated enemy with him.
The beard juddered. ‘This way.’ At a door, one of the armed guards said, ‘I’ll take that,’ and grabbed the case from Ben’s hand, letting his submachine gun dangle from his shoulder as he clutched the case under his thick arm.
‘Be careful,’ Ben said. ‘There’s more cash inside that case than you’ll ever make.’
The guard wasn’t impressed. He motioned at the door. ‘In there.’
Ben expected the door to lead into Zarko Kožul’s office. Instead, behind it was a tiny, bare room with nothing in it but a wooden chair.
It wasn’t a place for business transactions. It was a makeshift holding cell.
And that was when Ben realised he’d walked into a trap.
Chapter 40
A big hand shoved Ben into the tiny room. The door slammed, shutting out all light. He heard the clunk of a strong lock closing him in, and knew that there would be little point in trying to force his way out. The guards whose presence he could sense on the other side of the door would just shoot him through the wood.
The holding cell was little more than cupboard-sized, small enough to touch all four walls without moving his feet. No light switch. He sat in the chair and closed his eyes, letting his body relax, his mind drift and his breathing slow. Conserving energy. He would need it soon enough.
Ben could wait like that for hours, days, barely stirring, shutting out his thoughts, only vaguely aware of the passage of time. But fewer than ten minutes went by before he heard movement outside the door, voices, the scrape of the key. The door opened. He didn’t blink at the sudden bright light.
The same massive guards stood outside the doorway, now boosted to half a dozen in number and armed with automatic weapons that were dwarfed in their bear-size paws. All identical Skorpions. Ben wondered whether Zarko Kožul favoured the weapon for its light weight, extreme portability and high cyclic rate of fire, or whether the name just gave him fond memories of his days with the paramilitary Serb Scorpions.
Along with the guards were two smaller men. One was a slender, dark and medium-tall man in his thirties, casually but smartly dressed in jeans and a white shirt, whom Ben had never seen before. One of the better-looking gangsters Ben had come across in his time. Nicely groomed and smelling of some kind of expensive, refined aftershave.
The other man was Osmanović’s guy, Duša, the scraggy gaunt bald one. Duša just smelled of rank body odour, as always. He was standing with them as though he was totally at ease and belonged to their group. Which, as Ben now realised, he did.
It seemed that Husein had contacts a little deeper inside Zarko Kožul’s organisation than Husein had thought, too.
Duša pointed. ‘That’s him. This bastard arrived in town just today. His name’s Hope. He’s working with Osmanović.’
‘Thanks, Duša,’ Ben said. ‘You know, these guys hate a snitch even more than they hate their enemies. You should bear that in mind.’
The dark-haired man in the white shirt nodded, not taking his eyes off Ben. ‘Zarko will be pleased with you, Duša. I’ll let him know the tip-off was good and give him the all-clear to come back. Just as soon as we dispose of Osmanović and the other one. Where are they?’
Duša replied, ‘Somewhere on the bottom floor. The plan was to split up and wait for the signal. We were meant to be backup. This one was gonna rub out Zarko and then go looking for Dragan Vuković. Got some beef with him, apparently, but don’t ask me what. All I know is, he came over from England or someplace to find the guy.’
The dark one gazed dispassionately at Ben. The others all had the dead eyes of dull-witted footsoldiers who just did what they were told. This one had the spark in his eyes that indicated something substantially more was going on upstairs, to compensate for his lack of bulk. Ben made him for a higher-echelon member of Kožul’s forces, a second- or third-in-command. It was a principle he’d noticed in the past. When it came to hardcore gang crime, rank tended to run in inverse proportion to physical size, on a scale with the big stupid ones at the bottom and the small vicious ones at the top. By that reckoning, Zarko Kožul himself was probably a midget.
‘How interesting,’ said the man in the white shirt. ‘It seems Dragan must have made a greater impression in England than we thought. So you are this Ben Hope I’ve been hearing about.’ He considered for a moment, then motioned to the big men behind him without looking round. ‘Get everybody together. Find the other two and bring them to me, dead or alive, doesn’t matter. Duša, you go with them.’
Forest-beard and two of the other large men instantly obeyed, clutching their weapons like toys in their beefy fists as they hurried off. Duša, the snitch, hustled away after them. Ben was left alone with the man in the white shirt and the remaining three hulks. A six-foot-six monster with a faded blue swastika tattoo in the centre of his forehead motioned to
wards Ben with his gun barrel and asked the one in the shirt, ‘Hey, Alek, what do we do about this guy here?’
‘Same thing we always do, you dimwit. Take him to the junkyard, shoot him and put him in the crusher.’
‘So you’re Alek,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll make a note of that.’
Alek paused and looked at Ben with a faint smile. ‘On second thoughts, let’s not shoot him. Let me call Dragan, see if he’s finished the little job Zarko gave him to do last night. I’m sure he’d love to help feed our cocky British friend here into the crusher alive and video him dying in indescribable agony as his guts pop out of his mouth and his eyeballs burst from their sockets like champagne corks. Zarko will be amused to watch that afterwards.’
Ben said, ‘You people must be really stuck for entertainment around here.’
Alek’s mouth downturned at the corners. ‘Take this piece of trash out of my sight.’
Large hands grabbed Ben by the arms and he was hauled out of the tiny room. Fighting back wasn’t much of an option, with three guns pointed at him and surprise not exactly on his side.
‘Nice meeting you, Mr Hope,’ Alek said. ‘At our next encounter, you’ll be as flat as a piece of roadkill.’
‘I’ll be seeing you again,’ Ben said.
Alek chuckled and walked away, shaking his head in disbelief at this guy’s attitude and taking out his phone to dial a number. Ben heard him say, ‘Hey, Dragan. You still over at the yard? Don’t go anywhere. I have a surprise for you.’ Then he disappeared around a corner and was gone.
Now it was just Ben and the three hulks. The one with the swastika motioned back in the direction of the paternoster and grunted, ‘That way. Keep your hands where I can see ’em. You so much as fart at me, I’ll splatter your brains all over the wall.’ He shoved Ben round to face the way he was pointing, and jabbed his gun into Ben’s back. Ben put up his hands like a model prisoner and started walking slowly.
The Bach Manuscript Page 23