The Bach Manuscript

by Scott Mariani

  What happened next all took place within the space of a second. Duša’s eyes suddenly darted downwards as a strange glowing green dot of light, the size of a beetle, appeared on his chest. The gun faltered in his grip as he stared at the hovering dot for a moment and the grin quickly evaporated from his face. Then he dropped the gun and started frantically brushing and swatting at the green dot, as though it were a bee attacking him.

  The dot abruptly fell to the level of his knees.

  The sharp crack of a pistol shot sounded from across the street.

  Chapter 43

  Duša let out a screech and instantly hit the ground. In the same instant, more pistol shots were popping out of the darkness. Alek darted towards the black minivan while the rest of the men scattered. Duša was screaming and writhing on the ground, clutching his shattered right kneecap. A second later, one of the big guys gave a loud yell as his left shin exploded in a spray of blood and he, too, went down.

  Ben alone had realised that the green laser sight was pointing from the pool of darkness beneath the dead street lamp opposite. Now the dark-clad shooter stepped from the shadows, holding the pistol in both hands and firing in a steady, rapid stream. The side window of the minivan burst apart, the shot narrowly missing Alek as he ducked down for cover. Without a split-second’s hesitation the shooter swivelled the pistol back round towards the heavies, chased them with the green laser dot and kept firing. A third one had his leg shot out from under him as he tried to escape.

  Ben stared at the shooter. He couldn’t understand why the guy wasn’t shooting to kill. Maybe he was a cop; whatever the case, the speed and precision of his surprise attack was the mark of a trained professional.

  Then the shooter moved further out of the shadows and Ben saw that he was wrong.

  The shooter was a woman. She was wearing a black leather biker jacket and had her dark hair scraped back in an unruly ponytail under a black baseball cap. Ben had no idea who she was, only that at this moment she was his best friend in the world.

  Not all of Kožul’s men were scattering for cover. A porker with a screaming skull tattooed on one cheekbone raised his Skorpion and was about to return fire at the woman, when Ben dived for Duša’s fallen weapon, kicked Duša out of the way, and double-tapped the skull guy in the chest and head before he had time to pull the trigger. Duša’s face was contorted in agony and he was trying to get up. Ben saw his hand go to his belt and start drawing out the heavy Colt Magnum that was stuck through it. Ben shot him once through the heart and once more between the eyes, so fast the two shots sounded almost like one. He would have preferred to make the moment linger, but you couldn’t have everything.

  The black minivan started up and took off with a screech of tyres. Ben popped off four shots at its rear, but he was worried about bullets going through the windows of background buildings. He wheeled round to engage any more threats, and saw there were none left. Kožul’s injured were lying about the pavement, groaning and clutching their wounded limbs. The rest had fled.

  Ben turned to the woman. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked in Serbian.

  The woman seemed not to understand what he was saying. Now it was his turn to have the little green laser dot hovering over his body as she pointed the pistol at him. Her eyes were hard. They flicked to the Skorpion in his hand.

  ‘DROP IT!’ Speaking English.

  And Ben’s second surprise that evening was that she wasn’t Serbian, which also meant she couldn’t be a local cop. She was American. New York, by her accent, but the regional phonology of her speech was a detail Ben could think about later. Right now, she was burning with energy from the gunfight and ready to take him down next.

  ‘I SAID DROP IT, MISTER!’ She wagged the pistol towards the ground. The universal sign language for ‘put down your weapon right now or I will shoot you’.

  Ben’s choice was either to shoot first, which he didn’t want to do, or get shot himself, which didn’t appeal to him either, or drop his gun. He dropped his gun.

  ‘Who are you?’ he repeated, in English this time.

  She frowned at him over the gunsights, picking up his accent the same way he had hers, and just as surprised as he was.

  ‘I thought you were police,’ Ben said.

  She gave a snort. ‘Funny, I thought the same about those guys until I saw they were about to plug you. I couldn’t let that happen.’

  ‘Appreciated. If you don’t mind I’ll express my gratitude later. First, we need to get out of here. Have you got a car?’

  ‘Forget it, buddy. This is not a rescue mission for your Limey ass. You’re on your own, whoever you are.’

  He was about to reply when they both heard the urgent revving of a vehicle approaching at high speed. Its lights appeared around the corner of the street. The black minivan was back, and it seemed that Alek had picked up some reinforcements. Two men were hanging out of the side windows with submachine guns, and they’d be within effective range in about three seconds.

  ‘No time to argue,’ Ben said.

  ‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’

  They broke into a sprint just as the gunfire erupted from the oncoming minivan. The woman ran around a corner, Ben right behind her. Their racing footsteps and the roar of the chasing vehicle echoed off the walls of the narrow street. The smell of the nearby river was strong.

  A beige Skoda Octavia sedan was parked up ahead. The woman blipped the locks as they ran towards it. She piled into the driver’s seat and Ben clambered into the passenger side. The engine burst into life and she took off with a wail of spinning tyres, the rear end of the car sliding all over the road. Bullets punched out the back windows and the side mirror.

  Now the chase was on. The Octavia skidded around another corner and onto a long illuminated stretch that ran alongside the river. The black minivan was right behind them. Ben twisted around and glimpsed Alek at the wheel, his face obscured by the riverside lights flashing over the windscreen. His two men hanging out the open windows left and right were rattling off bursts from their Skorpions. Most were going wide, but some weren’t. The Octavia was getting badly riddled from the rear.

  ‘Damn it, I don’t know these streets!’ the woman yelled. She had the pistol cradled in her lap as she drove. Ben said, ‘May I?’ and snatched it. She was too distracted to stop him.

  He pressed through the gap between the front seats, keeping low. The pistol was a Beretta 98 with a nineteen-round capacity. He checked the magazine and found only two cartridges left. ‘You have a spare mag?’

  ‘Sorry, I forgot to ask the moron I took it off back there if he had any,’ she shouted back at him.

  ‘Touchy,’ Ben muttered.

  Fine. Then he’d have to make do with two rounds.

  Chapter 44

  Ben fired out of the shattered rear screen. The guy hanging out of the minivan’s left side dropped his weapon and went limp, dangling from the window like an empty sack. The van began to swerve all over the road. Ben took careful aim at his moving target and snapped off another shot. The guy on the right threw up his arms and sprayed blood from his mouth and slithered back inside the minivan. Two for two.

  The minivan faltered and began to slow. Alek couldn’t know that Ben was all out of ammunition. The power of the bluff.

  Now the Octavia was quickly lengthening its lead over their pursuers as the woman sped along the banks of the Sava River. Ben clambered back into the front seat and replaced the empty Beretta on her lap. ‘Thanks.’

  She glanced at him but said nothing and concentrated on her driving. Which she could do with as much skill as the way she handled a pistol. At the end of the riverside drag she swerved up a side street without losing an ounce of speed, and hammered up onto a main avenue that led into slow-moving traffic through the city. She carved through the traffic as though it were standing still.

  ‘We might want to slow down a little,’ Ben suggested. The woman went faster.

  Finally, she swerved into the car pa
rk of an all-night Maxi supermarket and killed the engine. She slipped the empty pistol into the side pocket of her leather jacket and zipped it shut, then flung the driver’s door open and stepped out to frown at what was left of the Octavia’s rear end. Ben joined her.

  Aside from the shattered back windscreen and side mirror, maybe sixty or seventy bullets had perforated the bodywork. Not the kind of damage that could easily be hidden, or patched with a little filler putty and a lick of touch-up paint.

  ‘Crap,’ she breathed. ‘This was a rental. Hertz are gonna kill me.’

  ‘Story of my life,’ Ben said. ‘Believe me, I’ve been there. But speaking of life stories, maybe it’s time we went on with the “who the hell are you?” thing.’

  She looked at him. ‘Fine by me. But seeing as you owe me for stepping in back there, you can go first. Quid pro quo.’

  ‘Fair enough. What do you want me to tell you?’

  ‘Whatever there is, mister. I’m not in the habit of picking up strangers.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m Ben Hope. I’m five feet and eleven inches tall and I’m a Sagittarius. I know that’s important to you Americans.’

  ‘Kiss my ass. Keep going.’

  ‘I was born a few years before you, and raised in England, but my mother was Irish. I spent a while in the British Army, now I live in France. I’m here to attend to an unresolved personal matter between myself and a man named Dragan Vuković, an associate of one Zarko Kožul, who as you possibly know is the proprietor of the nightclub back there. Is that enough detail for you?’

  ‘Army, huh? Is that where you learned to shoot like that?’

  ‘It appears you’re no slouch yourself.’

  The corner of her mouth gave a twitch that could have grown into a smile, but didn’t. She cocked an eyebrow, looking at him with a steady, penetrating gaze. ‘And by “unresolved personal matter” I take it we’re talking about the kind that means these folks don’t like you very much?’

  ‘I’d feel the same way, in their shoes. If I wore that kind of shoe.’

  ‘And they’d really rather you weren’t around any more.’

  ‘I’d say their intentions were fairly clear.’

  She narrowed her eyes at him and pursed her lips, thinking. ‘So what are you, a collector for the mob? Zarko and his guy welch on a deal and someone sent you here to take names and break bones? I’ve known a few guys with your background who wound up doing that kind of work.’

  Ben hated talking about his personal affairs, but under the circumstances he could understand why she needed to know more. He replied, ‘That’s not who I am. Dragan Vuković stole something from a friend of mine, in England. While he was at it, he threw my friend out of a top-floor window that happened to have iron spikes below.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound so nice.’

  ‘Vuković isn’t such a nice person. Now he’s here in Belgrade, and he’s passed what he stole to Zarko Kožul.’

  ‘And you’re here to get it back?’

  ‘It’s more a matter of principle,’ Ben said. ‘The stolen item itself is of no real interest to me.’

  ‘So we can’t be talking about money.’

  ‘This isn’t a business thing. I told you, I’m not in that line of work.’

  ‘I see. So what line of work are you in?’

  ‘I help people,’ Ben said. ‘Or try to. This time round, I didn’t do such a great job. I need to make that right.’

  ‘Help people?’

  ‘When innocent people are in trouble, when they have a fight that they can’t fight on their own, when things get bad.’

  ‘You’re there for them. How noble. Like the Equalizer. Chasing down the bad guys, and chewing up a bunch of rental cars in the process?’

  ‘You make it sound more glamorous than it really is.’

  She paused, still eyeing him, still weighing up her thoughts. ‘That big douche back there with the skull tattoo would’ve shot me if you hadn’t got him first. And you had the chance to use that Beretta on me in the car if you’d wanted. All things considered, I might be prepared to take a wild risk and venture to assume you’re one of the good guys.’

  ‘Assume nothing,’ Ben said. ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Your word.’

  ‘Yes. And now it’s your turn to tell me who you are and what this is all about.’

  The woman looked at him a little longer, then reached up and took off her baseball cap and yanked the elastic from her ponytail. Glossy black gypsy ringlets tumbled down over her shoulders. She brushed a few curls from her face, and glanced over at the lit-up frontage and windows of the supermarket. ‘I see a cafeteria in there. I haven’t eaten a bite since I landed. I’m lagged as hell and my body clock doesn’t know if it’s coming or going. What do you say to a late-night snack and a cup of coffee with me, Mister Ben Hope?’

  Ben said, ‘Lead the way.’

  They walked inside the brightly-lit supermarket cafeteria, where the smells of stewed coffee and cheap food hung in the air and a few customers sat about with that hangdog late-night look about them. Nobody glanced up as the two of them came in and sat face to face at a generic Formica table by the window.

  The woman scanned the greasy plastic menu card on the table, pulled a face and said, ‘Now it comes to it, suddenly I’m not that hungry.’

  ‘Your countrymen invented this kind of food,’ Ben said.

  ‘Doesn’t mean we have to eat it.’

  A droopy, limp-looking waitress came and took the order. Two coffees, black, and a cheeseburger for Ben. When it arrived, it looked as droopy and limp as the waitress did. Ben bit into it. Six thousand years of Serbian history and culture and here he was eating the same plastic food you’d find anywhere else on earth. The coffee was as stale as it smelled, but it was hot and strong. Just what you needed when your evening could have ended inside a crusher.

  ‘Don’t look now,’ the woman said. ‘I think your burger has a severed human ear in it.’

  Ben kept munching. ‘First rule of soldiering, eat when you can, sleep when you can.’

  ‘So you’re going to go to sleep on me now?’

  ‘No, I’m going to listen to your story now. Start talking.’

  She sat with her elbows planted on the table and the steaming coffee cup in both hands. She had draped her black leather biker jacket over the back of her plastic chair. It was hanging heavily with the weight of the Beretta in the zippered pocket, but the cafeteria staff and clientele were too faded to get jumpy about it, even if anyone had noticed. Underneath the jacket the woman was wearing a black T-shirt. Her arms were toned, and her hands were slim and small, but strong. No rings or bracelets. She had an easy way about her, like a relaxed athlete. If the evening’s excitement had left her in any way stressed or shaken, she wasn’t showing it.

  ‘Okay. My name is Cahill, Madison Cahill. I am, as you have noticed, from the United States. And as you may also have gathered, I’m not here as a tourist. I’m here for the same kind of reason you are. Personal business.’

  ‘With Zarko Kožul’s people?’

  ‘Small world, ain’t it?’ Her mouth gave that nearly-smile twitch again. ‘Kožul is a bad guy, what I hear. And chasing bad guys is what I do for a living. Like you.’

  Ben swallowed down the last of his burger and wondered whether his first impression of her being a cop might have been correct after all. ‘FBI agents don’t go moonlighting on personal business. Not halfway across the world, all alone, no backup.’

  ‘Who said I was a Fibbie? I wouldn’t go near that. Not a team player. I work alone.’ Madison reached behind her, took a black leather wallet from the pocket of her jacket, and skimmed it onto the tabletop between them.

  He picked it up and looked at the seven-pointed gold star badge. At its heart was an American bald eagle, and around the eagle was a blue circle with gold lettering that sparkled under the neon light and said SPECIAL AGENT – BAIL ENFORCEMENT – FUGITIVE RECOVERY.

  ‘An American boun
ty hunter in Belgrade,’ he said. ‘What happened, did one of your chickens get out of the pen on your watch and you have to catch it before anybody notices?’

  Two little frown lines appeared above her nose and her eyes hardened. They’d been fairly hard to begin with. Now she looked dangerous. ‘I don’t like being called a bounty hunter.’

  Ben put up his hands. ‘I take it back.’

  ‘And like I said, I’m here for personal reasons. I didn’t exactly plan on things happening the way they did tonight. I don’t know what I was expecting, if I’m honest. All I had was the name of the nightclub. I drove there straight from the airport, heard the shooting going on inside, figured something was wrong.’ She shrugged. ‘You know the rest.’

  ‘If you’re not here on agency business, where did the weapon come from?’

  This time, the twitch did grow into a smile, but it was a nasty one. ‘One of Kožul’s boys was kind enough to let me have it. Another sucker for my feminine charms. He’ll be okay in a couple of days. Might need to see a dentist, though.’

  ‘But he still has both knees intact.’

  ‘I guess he was just lucky.’

  ‘They were all lucky,’ Ben said. ‘A one-legged man can still shoot back. It pays to put them down properly.’

  ‘Call me sentimental, but I didn’t want to kill anyone. Not off my own turf, not unless I had to. You, on the other hand, seem to have no such scruples.’

  ‘Whatever gets the job done.’

  ‘Like the chest-head double tap. They don’t teach that in the regular army. Special Forces, right?’

  Ben gave a grim smile. ‘Aren’t we the observant one?’

  ‘I get paid to be smart. And I’m seldom wrong.’

  ‘Maybe so. But I still don’t get what kind of personal business brings a sweet young lady to a place like this.’

  She paused, sipped coffee, then set her cup down and leaned back in her chair with her arms folded. ‘Sweet. I like that. Sweet is good. Now, you said this guy Vuković took something from your friend and he needs to pay for what he did?’