‘Dragan wiped his ass on it, what do you think?’ Kožul said loudly, and all his men laughed. Heilbronner didn’t smile. He carried on with his analysis, working meticulously and with full focus, as though he were alone in an empty laboratory and not surrounded by a gawking crowd of armed crooks.
Lena Vuković didn’t share their interest in what was happening. She was standing to one side feeling stupid in this dress and wishing she hadn’t allowed Dragan to bring her here. Ever since they’d arrived back in Serbia he insisted on taking her everywhere with him, as though he didn’t trust her not to run off.
Lena watched Dragan with his new comrades, and thought about the change in him. For as long as she could remember, her brother had been a violent and hard man – but the long-wished-for opportunity to finally go to work for Zarko Kožul seemed to have brought out his worst tendencies even more. He would do anything to prove his loyalty to his new boss. Like what he’d done last night, with his own sister watching.
Before they’d received the late-evening call from Alek, Dragan had been carrying out a ‘little task’ for Kožul. Namely, the disposal of a fellow gang member whose wife’s second cousin’s brother-in-law had been seen drinking in a Belgrade bar with a member of the police Žandarmerija and therefore could no longer be trusted. Given what a fine job Dragan had done with Radomir Orlić that time, Kožul had ordered him to take care of it personally.
Lena had never known what the man’s name was. She only knew what they’d done to him, and she didn’t think she could ever forget.
Dragan and two others had taken him out to the junkyard Kožul owned on the edge of the city. Lena, of course, had been made to come along and spectate as the bound and bloodied victim had been given the choice between being burned slowly to death or put in the crusher.
He’d chosen the crusher.
Lena could still hear the screams ringing inside her mind, and taste the nausea that had kept her on her knees in the bathroom most of the night. This was how Zarko Kožul brought his men closer to him, by making them do such sick and awful things. How could Dragan obey such a person? What kind of man did that make him?
When they’d got the call about the capture of Ben Hope, Lena had feared that they would do something as horrible as that to him, or even worse. She had been thinking a lot about this man Hope. She felt bad that she’d betrayed him before, in Oxford. He had been fair with her, and not hurt her the way most other men did. She wanted to burst out laughing when the next call had come to say Hope had escaped. But she didn’t dare show her relief to anyone, least of all to Dragan. Lena was more like his prisoner than his sister. Suddenly, she had never felt more trapped in her life.
Heilbronner finally looked up from the manuscript and folded his laptop. Zarko Kožul had been pacing furiously about the room, his face as red as the walls. ‘Well?’
‘I am ninety-nine per cent certain that the item is genuine,’ Heilbronner said coolly. ‘However, without further testing I can’t guarantee my assessment.’
‘Then get the fuck on with it,’ Kožul said.
Heilbronner shook his head. ‘Not here. I would have to take it away.’
Kožul stared at him the way a mad bull stares at a toreador. ‘No. You want it, you buy it now. You don’t want it, get lost. That’s how it is when you do business with me.’
Heilbronner replied, ‘But it’s not how things work, my friend. I didn’t come here to buy it, only to broker the sale. I thought we were clear on that point.’ He looked at Alek. Alek suddenly seemed to develop an overwhelming interest in the view from the window.
‘Do you know what happens to motherfuckers who waste my time?’ Kožul said. The room went deathly quiet. All eyes were on Heilbronner.
Heilbronner was no fool, and knew he had to think fast before this psycho maniac dwarf pulled a pistol and started blasting. Maybe there was an angle here. If the manuscript was his, he could get a lot more selling it on than he’d make on commission. ‘Perhaps I might be prepared to reconsider, and make you an offer here and now,’ he said slowly. ‘I value the manuscript at one hundred thousand dollars. I could have the funds transferred to you immediately.’
Kožul spat. ‘That all? I didn’t set this whole fuckin’ thing up for a few nickels and dimes. You know what my operation pulls in every week?’
‘Given its dubious origins and condition, that’s all you’d ever get for it, believe me,’ Heilbronner lied. ‘This is the black market, not an auction house.’
Kožul stepped closer. The two of them squared off. ‘Hundred fifty,’ Kožul snarled.
At a hundred and fifty, Heilbronner knew he could still make three-fifty plus back on the deal, especially if he sold to the real-estate tycoon in Miami who couldn’t tell shit from sugar anyway. He put on a big show of looking cagey. ‘You’re hurting me. At that price, you’ve got to offer me something to sweeten the deal.’
Kožul’s face darkened to a shade of puce and twisted as though he was chewing on a live hornet. Then he pointed at Lena and said, ‘What about her?’
Heilbronner had contacts in Saudi where he could make a buck trafficking human flesh, too. He gave her a once-over. Blond hair, not bad-looking, still young enough to fetch a reasonable price to the right buyer. He acted indignant. ‘What good is that to me?’
‘You wanted a sweetener,’ Kožul said. ‘That’s a sweet piece of ass, for a stinking filthy whore. Take her away, do whatever you want with her.’
Lena yelled, ‘I am not a whore!’
Kožul’s men all laughed, Dragan included. Lena backed away, suddenly very frightened and shocked by this sudden turn of events. She looked at her brother. How could he let them treat her this way?
Heilbronner shrugged. ‘Okay, one fifty and you throw in the whore. On condition that I get to examine the goods first. For all I know, she’s full of disease.’
‘Like I said,’ Kožul replied with a dismissive gesture. ‘Do what you want with her.’
Lena had no possible hope of escaping what was coming. She turned empty eyes on Dragan. ‘You’d let them do this to me. Your own sister.’
Dragan snapped back, ‘Shut your mouth, you stupid bitch.’
Kožul had two of his men show Heilbronner to a room where he could check out the merchandise. It was a bedroom Kožul sometimes used to entertain prostitutes, who were generally the only women who entered the house. The bed was red satin and the ceiling was tiled with mirrors. A real tigerskin rug adorned the floor, with bared fangs and glass eyes that seemed to watch them as they came into the room. Heilbronner shoved Lena towards the bed. ‘Get your clothes off. I need to inspect you.’
She retorted, ‘Fuck you. I’m not anybody’s slave.’
‘You soon will be, so better get used to it.’ Heilbronner reached inside his jacket and slipped out the stiletto blade he kept concealed there. He waggled the knife at Lena. ‘Now do as I told you, or it will go badly for you. Understood? Quick, quick.’
‘Why don’t you just kill me? I would rather die than be sold like a horse.’
‘You want to do this the hard way, that’s fine by me,’ Heilbronner said. He slipped the knife back in its sheath. Stepped towards her and shoved her down so hard on the bed that she bounced. Next thing he was clambering on top of her, his foul breath in her face, pinning her down with his weight and batting away her arms as he reached down and started tearing at her dress. Lena screamed, but then his hand clamped over her mouth, twisting her neck painfully and stifling her cries. She felt the dress rip off her, heard him laugh. ‘More fun this way, no? Stay still, whore, or I’ll cut you. You need to learn some respect.’
She bit his hand and his laugh turned into a sharp yell. She bit harder, tasted blood on her lips. Then the knife was back out again and at her throat. Lena drove her knee upwards and caught him hard in the groin, and he cried out again. She wriggled and struggled and bit and gouged like a wildcat fighting for its life in the jaws of a wolf, no longer thinking about the knife in his hand.
They rolled off the bed together and hit the floor, him on top of her, knocking the wind out of her. She wrestled him off her and realised he wasn’t fighting back any longer. He was groaning and clutching at his chest.
That was when Lena saw the spreading crimson flower on his shirt and realised that he’d accidentally stabbed himself in the struggle. She staggered to her feet, gaping down at him. The blood was pouring out of his wound, his shirt now black with it. She held up her hands in front of her and saw they were wet and red and dripping. Heilbronner was trying to prop himself up on one elbow, reaching out with his other shaking hand for something solid to pull himself upright. But the knife had gone terribly deep and his strength was already failing him. He fell back with a gasping groan.
Seized by a surge of hatred that went far beyond what she felt about this repulsive man, she dropped to her knees and yanked the bloody blade out of his chest and stabbed him again, and again, and again. The needle-sharp stiletto made a kind of shtick sound at every thrust. Throat, stomach, face, she didn’t care. Heilbronner spouted blood from his open mouth. He screamed and squealed, but she wouldn’t stop with the knife. Just kept on stabbing him, more and more. Shtickshtickshtick.
They heard the commotion in the living room. ‘Jesus Christ, what the fuck’s happening in there?’ Alek said.
Dragan Vuković had turned fishbelly white, frozen immobile with his champagne glass in his hand. One instant they’d been toasting the morning’s modestly successful financial score and his acceptance into the gang, the next it sounded as if piglets were being butchered in the house.
Kožul turned to Dragan. ‘Go check. That bitch sister of yours better not be fucking this deal up, or I’ll roast her eyeballs on a skewer.’
Dragan set off at a run towards the bedroom. But he never got that far, because in the next instant the house was shaken to its foundations by a massive explosion outside, followed by the crackle of gunfire.
Chapter 54
Pressed tight against the western wall of the carport, Ben edged to the corner for a glance towards the red house, a hundred or so metres across the compound on the far end of the row of other buildings. He drew quickly back to rejoin Madison and held up four fingers, signalling to her that four guards were posted in front of the house.
Ben and Madison had managed to come this far from the trees without being spotted, but slipping across the relatively short distance from the fence, using the cover of the carport as a shield between them and the house, was the easy part. Things would get trickier from here. It wasn’t so much the four men he could see that troubled Ben, but the rest of Kožul’s guards scattered about unseen inside the other three buildings. The larger block was a concern. The more he studied it, the more it looked to him like a barracks or hangout for the men. For all he knew, there were thirty guys in there shooting pool and drinking beer, heavy weaponry at the ready for any sign of trouble. Or maybe he was just being paranoid.
Ben crept along the row of parked vehicles to the eastern end of the carport, from where he could get a clear view across to the hangar and smaller building beside it. During the time they’d been making their way through the woods to the fence, some activity had taken place at the hangar. The large steel doors were rolled open, and the helicopter housed inside had been wheeled half out into the sunlight.
The chopper was a Bell 206L LongRanger, sleek and bright red, the seven-seater version with enough room in the back to allow luxury-loving crime bosses to commute back and forth to work in that extra bit of comfort. Ben could see one of Kožul’s men standing beside the helicopter, attending to a flap on the fuselage where the fuel tank was. He had a big electric pump set up beside him and a thick rubber pipe lay like a limp, dead snake across the hangar floor from the aircraft. From the adjoining workshop or generator room another man emerged pushing a handcart on which was loaded a large blue steel drum. It looked heavy. The man wheeled his load to the hangar, and the two of them got busily to work connecting the drum to the pipe and pump. Their boss’s daily travels between here and New Belgrade must take a toll on fuel, and keeping it topped up must be their job, on top of regular sentry duties. The handcart guy had a Glock in a belt holster. The other was armed with an M16 that was lying on a metal table near the mouth of the hangar, where he could get to it quickly.
Now Ben knew what the smaller building was used to store. He waved for Madison to join him, and she trotted over with her head low. He pointed forked fingers at his eyes, then pointed in the direction of the building. Saying, I want to check that out. She nodded.
To make the dash to the fuel store was to cross more than twenty-five metres of open ground, risking being spotted. But the same risk applied no matter which way they tried to go from here, and the only safe alternative was to stay hidden behind the carport all day and let Kožul go about his business undisturbed. Ben counted to three, and they took a deep breath and broke cover and sprinted across the gap as fast as they could, clutching their rifles tight against their bodies and keeping their heads down.
Nobody saw them from the house. The two men working on the helicopter were too occupied with their activities to notice. Ben slipped inside the open doorway of the fuel store with his knife ready in case anyone else was in there, and Madison followed closely behind.
Ben didn’t have to knife anybody. He looked around him. The storeroom was lit by a single dusty bulb on a wire. The craggy walls were cobwebbed and thick with old dirt. On a concrete plinth was an ancient diesel-powered generator connected to a spaghetti of wiring that ran through a hole in the wall to the overhead mast outside. The generator was running loudly, making all kinds of clattering noises and giving off a pungent stink of exhaust fumes. Next to it stood a grime-streaked mechanic’s workbench with a metal tool rack on one side and a bay of industrial shelving units on the other, full of motor spares and maintenance parts for the cars and trucks.
The other end of the storeroom was an arsonist’s dream. Against one wall stood a cluster of at least a dozen tall propane gas bottles that might be for heating or welding purposes, or perhaps to supply the blowtorches Kožul used to torture his enemies. A large collection of black and green jerrycans for diesel and gasoline took up space nearby. Then there was the mother lode: four large wooden pallets stacked with red metal two-hundred-litre drums with JET B lettered across their sides in white. Fuel for the chopper.
The wall above the drums displayed a big ZABRANJENO PUŠENJE No Smoking sign. Even murderers and gangsters cared about health and safety. Or maybe not, judging by the cigarette butts lying about the concrete floor. Nobody had managed to blow the place up yet, clearly. All the job required was a little care and expertise.
They didn’t have much time. Ben said to Madison, ‘Time to start warming things up around here. Get ready to run like hell.’
She moved closer to the doorway and peered cautiously out towards the hangar to check on the two men. ‘Whatever insane thing you’re about to do, do it fast.’
Ben started twisting open the wheel valves on each propane bottle in turn, working his way along the row until they were all hissing in unison and he could smell the rotten-egg smell of gas filling the storeroom. He moved quickly over to the pallets of Jet-B drums. Pressed the tip of his knife against the side of one of them, struck the butt of the handle a sharp blow with his other hand and the tempered carbon steel blade punched through the softer metal. Straw-coloured fuel came sluicing out and pattered on the floor.
He did the same with five more of the drums, until the fuel was beginning to pool rapidly on the concrete and he had to take care not to let his boots get soaked in the stuff. Jet fuel was less highly flammable than gasoline, so Ben stabbed holes in all of the green jerrycans as well. If a job was worth doing, it had to be done right. The air inside the storeroom was getting hard to breathe with all the mixed toxic fumes.
‘Hurry,’ Madison rasped from the door.
Ben grabbed an oily rag from the workbench, wrapped it around a short length o
f scrap battening timber, and wet it in the fast-spreading pool of gasoline. ‘I’m done. Let’s go.’
He stepped outside and breathed oxygen. The two men at the hangar were still refuelling the chopper, and had their backs to them. One was standing by the pump, the other supervising the hose that fed up the side of the fuselage to the tank. It was pulsing and quivering like a living thing as fuel gushed through it under pressure. If either of the two men turned around, they would see Ben and Madison standing there and instantly raise the alarm. But about two seconds from now, that would no longer be an issue.
Ben played the flame of his Zippo under the petrol-soaked rag on the stick and it burst alight.
‘Party time,’ Madison said. Ben tossed the blazing torch back through the storeroom doorway.
They ran.
There was an angry yell from the hangar.
Chapter 55
The guy by the pump had spotted them. He started to give chase, pulling the Glock from his belt holster and shouting in Serbian. He pointed the pistol as he ran and was about to squeeze off a wild shot at the two fleeing intruders heading for the carport. Nobody would ever hear the shot.
The man was a few paces from the entrance of the storeroom building when it blew, engulfing him in a massive explosion that tore the building apart and hurled its corrugated roof high into the sky. A gigantic fireball rolled upwards. Shrapnel from the ruptured propane bottles flew in all directions, hammering like deadly hailstones off the wall of the carport where Ben and Madison had taken cover an instant before the blast. Windows and headlights of the parked vehicles shattered. Alarms began shrieking. Roiling flames gushed from the windows of the shattered storeroom. A monumental tower of black smoke that could probably be seen from Belgrade was filling the sky and blocking out the sunlight. Small secondary explosions sent stabs of flame through the heart of the smoke.
‘There goes our element of surprise,’ Madison yelled in Ben’s ear.
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