Ben didn’t add that Dragan would also have been content to stand by and watch as Zarko Kožul fed her into a hydraulic car crusher. He might even have done the honours himself. Some things, maybe Lena didn’t need to know.
‘Dragan was a bad man. You told me that yourself, remember?’
She nodded again, more tears rolling down her face. ‘Yes, I knew this. I always knew.’
‘And now he’s gone, you’re free to get on with your life,’ Ben said.
She looked at him. ‘You will let me go? After everything that happened here?’
‘I never saw you, Lena. Because I was never here either. Nor my friend Madison.’
Lena turned away from Dragan’s body and walked a step towards Ben. ‘You are a good man, Ben Hope,’ she whispered.
‘I’ll second that,’ Madison said, and squeezed his arm.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he said to her.
Madison looked over at the attaché case with the manuscript inside. She smiled. ‘Never better. But look at your hand.’
‘Just a scratch.’ Ben smiled back at her, despite the throbbing pain in his damaged fingers.
‘You’re going to need surgery.’
Ben flexed his fingers and the blood pattered to the floor like rain. The agony was enough to take his breath away, but he smiled. ‘See? Perfectly functional.’
He would tell himself afterwards that it was the distraction of the moment, and the pain, that prevented him from reacting fast enough to stop what happened next.
Behind Lena, Dragan Vuković’s bloodied and tattered body suddenly raised itself off the floor as if some demonic force had filled it with a final burst of energy. His eyes snapped open, white in the red mask of his face, and turned towards his sister. The nine-millimetre clenched in his fist came up and pointed at her back.
Madison screamed. Ben yelled, ‘Look out!’ and Lena began to spin around, and then a tongue of yellow-white fire boomed from the muzzle of the gun. Ben was leaping for his pistol.
Lena’s body went as rigid as if she’d been hooked up to a main power line. She tottered back a step and almost fell, but somehow she managed to stay on her feet and bring up the shotgun.
Dragan shot her again.
The shotgun went off in Lena’s hands. Its deadly payload of buckshot and the big .45-calibre slug from Ben’s pistol both slammed at once into Dragan’s chest and the simultaneous impact kicked him flat. This time, Dragan Vuković truly wasn’t getting up again.
But he hadn’t gone down alone. Lena dropped the shotgun and fell backwards as Ben caught her in his arms. Her eyes rolled up to look at him and she burped a red mist, and then she was gone.
Ben did what he could to revive her. Madison helped, the two of them taking turns until they were both slicked with Lena’s blood and there was no longer any chance of bringing her back. Wherever Lena Vuković had slipped away to, Ben could only hope it was a better place than her brother.
The red house, now a deathly tomb, fell into silence. There seemed to be nothing more to say. Ben took Madison’s hand, and she hugged him tight for a long moment. Then he broke away from her and knelt by Dragan’s body to frisk him for the keys to the SUV that had brought him and Lena to the house. Madison picked up the case with the manuscript inside. It would not be out of her sight again until she reached the USA.
Outside, Ben blipped the key fob at the line of parked SUVs in front of the house. The last one in the line flashed its indicators and unlocked itself with a clunk.
‘I’ll drive,’ Madison said. Ben let her. She stowed her case in the back, and he climbed into the passenger seat and lit his last Gauloise with his good hand, and Madison fired up the car and took off. They left the burning ruins of Zarko Kožul’s compound without looking back, and didn’t talk about it all the way to Belgrade.
A new journey was about to begin, for both of them. The final voyage of the Bach manuscript.
Chapter 60
Oahu, Hawaiian Islands
Two days later
The surf whispered on the white sands, driven by the warm ocean breeze that made the palms gently sway and rustle above the beach house veranda. Rigby Cahill sat in his recliner under the shade, gazing out to sea. He had been sitting there for a long time, too lethargic to even go and get himself a drink. Only he could know what was going on in his mind during the endless hours he spent just watching the blue horizon and the waves roll in. He was barefoot in shorts, wearing a battered straw hat with a torn rim and a fresh, crisp hibiscus-pattern shirt that he hadn’t bothered to button up, so that his sunburned belly protruded like a shrivelled balloon. The shirt had been laundered and ironed for him that morning by his housekeeper Noelani, or else he most likely would be wearing the same one he’d worn all week. It didn’t matter very much to him what he wore. Month in, month out, nothing much mattered at all. Just serving out his time, was all it was.
Rigby heard the crunch of tyres on the gravel out front, and car doors opening and closing, followed by the sound of two, maybe more, sets of footsteps creaking up the steps to the front door. He could tell it wasn’t Noelani returning to attend to some task or other, because the car sounded different from the little Honda she drove, and she always came alone. Rigby was aware of all these things, but he didn’t shift in his recliner or pull his tired old eyes away from the ocean. Next, he heard the front door open, and voices. The unexpected sound of his daughter’s voice brought a warm tingle. He never told Madison how much he loved her visits. But who was that with her?
He still didn’t move, but he was listening more intently now. There was a man’s voice, not saying much, one that Rigby didn’t recognise. Then, a different woman’s voice. Rigby’s eyes flickered and something moved deep inside him, as if someone had put a spoon inside a pot of old memories crusted over with time and given it a gentle stir. He knew that voice, but damned if he could remember from where. Rigby let out a long sigh. What the hell?
Behind him, the veranda door creaked open and Madison’s familiar footsteps sounded on the boards. ‘Dad?’ said her soft voice close to his ear as she bent down. ‘I came to see you. How are you doing?’
Rigby shrugged. ‘Okay, I guess.’ He could barely even remember the last time he’d heard his own voice. Sounded croaky and weak.
‘Dad?’
He slowly shifted himself around in his recliner to look at her. His beautiful daughter, looking more like her mother all the time. But the expression in her eyes was different from usual. She always looked worried around him. Now it was worry mixed with excitement. He couldn’t figure out why. She was holding a case. What was that about?
‘Dad, I’ve got something for you. It’s, well, get ready for a surprise, Dad.’
He watched, bemused, as Madison laid the case on the veranda deck next to his chair and opened the lid. From inside she took a slim card folder. She laid the folder softly on his lap. ‘Open it, Dad.’
‘Is it my birthday?’ Not that he celebrated them any longer. Not for decades.
‘Better than a birthday, Dad. Take a look inside.’
Rigby uncurled his hands from the arms of the recliner. They seemed to weigh a ton each as he slowly picked up the folder. He glanced nervously up at Madison.
‘Go on, don’t be afraid,’ she said, smiling. Her eyes were shining.
Rigby Cahill opened the folder and looked inside. He didn’t comprehend what he was seeing at first. Understanding dawned on him like the golden rays of sunrise over an ocean that had been too dark for too long, filling him with light and warmth for the first time in an age. His heart began to pump. It could not be real. But it was.
‘It’s … it’s …’
Madison brushed a tear from her eye. ‘Yes, Dad. It is. This is it. We found it, after all these years. We got it back.’
Ben had stepped out onto the veranda, moving very quietly, unnoticed by the old man. He’d seen so many people die. Watching Rigby Cahill at this moment was like seeing someone who was already de
ad come to life, a small but vital flicker of flame rekindled from the cold ashes. It was a strange thing to witness.
The pages of the old music manuscript fluttered in the old man’s hands. ‘I don’t understand. Where did you find it? Who found it?’
Madison flashed a look over towards where Ben was standing behind her father’s chair. She looked as though she was about to announce his presence and introduce them. Ben shook his head. He pointed his left thumb over his shoulder, back through the doorway. His right thumb was lost in the bandages that covered the two damaged fingers. The doctor in Belgrade who’d done the patching up had been told the injury was a dog bite. He hadn’t looked convinced, but cash is king.
Madison nodded, understanding what Ben was telling her with his signal. She wiped her eyes and bent down closer to her father and put a hand on his arm. ‘Dad? I have another surprise for you.’
Her father blinked up at her. From sitting doing nothing for years on end, to not one but two major life-altering incidents in the space of a single afternoon. Madison had talked at length on the journey here about her concern that their plan might all be too much for Rigby Cahill to handle. Ben reckoned the old guy was tougher than that. They would soon find out who was right.
‘What surprise?’ Rigby said, frowning.
‘You have a visitor. Someone who’s come a very long way, especially to see you.’
Ben turned to open the veranda door, then stepped aside to let the visitor walk out.
Miriam Silbermann wasn’t at all what Ben had expected when he and Madison had met her flight at Honolulu International earlier that afternoon. At the age of 92, she stood as erect as a dancer and was considerably fitter than most sixty-year-olds. Whether it was the clean air of the mountains around Zermatt, or decades of yoga or t’ai chi or simply force of spirit, she carried herself with effortless pride and exuded fierce independence. Anyone who dared to take her arm to assist her up steps or in and out of a car would probably withdraw a stump. Ben was in enough pain as it was.
Miriam was slim and elegant in a Givenchy outfit that was made for a Swiss summer rather than the burning Hawaiian sun, but managed to appear perfectly cool and airy. Nothing whatsoever in her demeanour could have given away the fact that she’d just travelled over 7,500 miles at a moment’s notice to be here. The sea breeze rippled her white hair. She removed her sunglasses to reveal blue-green eyes that were as vivid and bottomless as the Pacific Ocean stretching across the horizon.
Ben could fully understand why Rigby Cahill had fallen in love with her, all those years ago. Even now, Miriam probably still had a horde of far younger suitors back home, tripping over one another to win her favour.
‘Rigby,’ she said.
Rigby Cahill seemed to go rigid for a moment, then slowly turned to look at her. As agile as a ballerina, Miriam crouched down beside his chair to be at eye level with him.
Rigby Ignatius Boddington Cahill, This is Your Life.
The manuscript, still trembling in his hands, now fell into his lap. His mouth hung open. His expression was one of utter bewilderment, but the recognition in his eyes could have been spotted from San Diego.
‘Miriam?’
Her English was as perfect as her ageless beauty. ‘Yes, Rigby, it’s Miriam. How are you, my dear old friend? It has been such a very long time.’ She clasped his hands tightly in hers.
It was hard to tell what was going on inside the old man’s mind as a thousand different emotions played out on his face. He was silent for what seemed like minutes as he stared at her. Finally, apparently accepting that this wasn’t some kind of waking dream, or that he hadn’t died in his chair and woken up in heaven, he said, ‘I feel much better now.’
‘Our manuscript,’ Miriam said, lowering her gaze to look at it resting on his lap. Our manuscript.
‘No, it’s yours,’ Rigby said. As though he’d suddenly received an injection of the Elixir of Life, his voice sounded ten times stronger. He slipped his hands out of hers and picked up the manuscript to offer to her. ‘Madison found it for you. Take it.’
Madison flashed another look over at Ben and he could tell she wanted to cut in and say, ‘Actually, folks, I can’t take all the credit for finding it; meet Ben Hope.’ But he preferred to stay out of the limelight and gave her another shake of his head.
‘May I?’ Miriam took the manuscript gently in her slim, immaculate hands, rose to her feet and turned towards the veranda balcony to gaze at her rediscovered family treasure for a long, long moment. The sadness in her expression would have filled the ocean as she ran her fingers over the yellowed, faded paper. They lingered over the odd brownish-russety stain on the cover sheet. She closed her eyes, and for a strange couple of moments Ben thought she looked like a spirit medium trying to connect with something unseen and otherworldly.
That was when he finally understood.
‘Let’s leave them alone for a while,’ Madison mouthed to him. She nodded towards the doorway. She and Ben drew away from the scene and went inside the house.
Chapter 61
They stood watching through the ocean-facing windows as the two old folks sat together and talked. Madison inched closer to Ben, reached across and took his hand, squeezed it.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘This is happening because of you.’
‘Ouch.’
She realised what she’d done. ‘Oh – I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—’
‘Shh. Look,’ Ben said, pointing with his good hand.
Madison looked back out onto the veranda and put her fingers to her mouth. ‘Oh my God.’
Rigby was getting out of his recliner. Arm in arm, he and Miriam stepped down the three wooden steps that led to the white sand. Five years his senior, she was the one who had to steady him; but he was on his feet and walking, by his own volition, somewhere other than the short journey to the bathroom or his bed.
Madison couldn’t help herself. She gave a sob, and then the tears came flooding. Ben put his arm around her shoulders and she squeezed close to him, crying and beaming and sniffing and laughing all at once. ‘Look at them. Aren’t they beautiful together?’
‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘Yes, they are.’
‘If only this could have happened years ago.’ Madison shook her head, following the two white-haired figures as they moved slowly along the empty sands with the blue ocean and surf beyond. ‘This is a moment I’ll never forget,’ she said. ‘Again, thank you.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ he replied.
‘You only think that, because that’s who you are,’ she said. ‘I’m thanking you. Like a gift. You have to accept it.’
‘Or else?’
She smiled. ‘Or I’ll kick your limey-half-Mick ass so hard, you’ll be wearing it as a ten gallon hat.’
‘Then you leave me no choice. I accept your thanks. But I had a pretty good backup.’
‘Neat team, you and me, huh?’
‘We ought to do it again sometime.’
Madison pressed closer, reached up with her lips and kissed him.
‘Another thank you?’ he said.
‘Or something.’
Later, Rigby was exhausted from his stroll on the beach and retired to his room for a lie down. As the sun began to descend over the ocean, Miriam Silbermann sat in the beach house with Ben and Madison, and they talked. ‘I can’t express my gratitude to you for agreeing to come visit Dad,’ Madison said, for the hundredth time. ‘I could say you don’t know what it means to him, but I guess you do.’
Miriam was sitting perfectly upright in an armchair with the manuscript on her knees. Ben noticed the way she kept touching it.
‘It has been quite a day for him,’ Miriam said with a warm smile. ‘And for me.’ She looked down at the manuscript. ‘It certainly has come a long way, hasn’t it?’
‘Nobody will ever know for sure where it’s been,’ Ben said. ‘But now it’s back where it belongs.’
Miriam nodded. ‘It belongs with your father,’ s
he said to Madison.
‘That’s too much,’ Madison replied, shaking her head. ‘I couldn’t possibly expect you to give it up. Neither would Dad.’
‘Please. I insist. I ask only that you let me hold it a while.’
Even as sundown came, the warmth of the day permeated the beach house and Miriam had finally surrendered to the heat by rolling up the sleeves of her Givenchy outfit. Her arms were thin and pale, but still toned and strong-looking. She wore a gold Cartier on one wrist and a platinum chain bracelet on the other, but it was something else that Ben had noticed. Miriam caught him looking, and Ben felt embarrassed; but instead of trying to hide it, she raised her left forearm to let him see the faded blue tattoo on its underside, midway between wrist and elbow. The tattoo was a six-digit serial number. Beneath the number, a small triangle had been indelibly inked into her flesh.
‘Memories,’ she said. ‘Better never to forget them, Mr Hope. Reflecting on our past, no matter how painful, reminds us of who we are. That is the reason I chose not to have it removed.’
The tattoo could only mean one thing. Ben had seen pictures, but he’d never seen one, literally, in the flesh before. During the Nazi Holocaust only one concentration camp had adopted the policy of marking its prisoners that way on arrival. Miriam Silbermann had been prisoner 135287. The triangle was a way of telling the Jewish inmates apart from other groups, such as Gypsies or political detainees.
‘You were sent to Auschwitz,’ Ben said. ‘You and your family.’
Miriam Silbermann closed her eyes again, and held them shut for so long that Ben began to think she must have drifted off to sleep. Then she opened them again, and the blue-green light seemed to penetrate through him. She said, ‘Yes. After the internment camp at Drancy, we were put on a train along with thousands of others. I will never forget that train. The noise, the darkness, the smell of fear. There were so many of us crammed into the carriages, like cattle. We all knew where we were going. To the death camp. To Auschwitz.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Madison said.
The Bach Manuscript Page 33