The Old Bridge

by Andrew Turpin

  He stood and folded his arms.

  “Might as well try the Dropbox link if it’s been used,” Jayne said. She leaned over the machine and clicked on the link in the history list.

  Slowly, the web page loaded up. “Unfortunately it’s not saved the login and password,” Johnson said. “Sometimes it does. Too much to hope for.”

  He was interrupted by a massive bang as the window pane exploded and fragments of glass flew across the room. There was a whining sound, and two large chunks of plaster fell off the wall next to the computer.

  Before Johnson could move, there came another bang, a whine, the plastic side and screen of the computer monitor shattered into pieces.

  “Get down!” Jayne screamed and threw herself to the floor.

  Johnson hit the floor a second later.

  Two more bullets smashed into the computer, which fizzed and then threw out a bright electrical flash, followed by a small bang.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Johnson said. He crawled flat on his stomach across the wooden floorboards and through the doorway onto the landing.

  Jayne followed. “Get into one of the other rooms,” she said tersely.

  They crawled down the landing to the next doorway. Johnson twisted to look at Jayne. There was enough light to see that blood was running down the right side of her neck from a cut and then he noticed another cut on her ankle. He pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “You must have been hit by some glass,” he said, pressing the handkerchief to her neck. “And your ankle.”

  Jayne put her hand to her neck and then looked at it. It was covered in red. “Shit,” she said. “I felt something hit me when the window went.” She took the handkerchief and pressed it to the wound.

  Blood from the cut on her ankle left a trail on the landing where she had crawled along.

  “I’m going to put the light on in this room, so they think we’re in there, then we’ll move into the next one,” Johnson said.

  He reached up and flicked on the bedroom light switch, then ducked straight down again. Two bullets immediately smashed through the now illuminated window and the lace curtain hanging in front of it, then hit the wall, causing another hail of broken glass and plasterwork. The lightbulb popped and went out.

  “They’re going to pepper anything that moves,” he said. “We’re sitting ducks in here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Monday, July 16, 2012

  Pobrežje

  “Don’t think I hit the bastard, but I got the computer,” Marco said from the top of the ladder.

  Boris removed the pair of binoculars from his eyes. Above him, Marco had his Zastava M76 propped on the top of a stone wall near the lane that led to Boris’s old family holiday house in Pobrežje village.

  “Good job. It’s been years since I used that PC,” Boris said. “I don’t think there’s anything on there, but I’m not taking the risk. I couldn’t see Johnson or the woman. Could you?”

  “Too damned dark,” Marco said. “All I saw was the PC monitor, so I went for that. Then I hit the second room when the light went on. If they come out and break cover, we’ll pick them off.”

  Boris glanced at Tomislav, who was sitting on a cinder block next to the wall, and Monika Kovač, who was perched on her moped. She had done a good job tailing Johnson while waiting for them to arrive from Moseć, he thought. As soon as she reported back to him that Johnson was at Pobrežje, he had known what they were there for. It seemed like a good opportunity to take care of the American and his helper while they were out in the country, well away from the city crowds.

  Marco put his eye back to the scope mounted on top of the Zastava, which rested on a folded sweater.

  “Nothing, no sign of them now,” Marco said.

  “Just keep watching,” Boris said. “They’ll show themselves at some point.” He reapplied the binoculars to his eyes.

  The group fell silent. Darkness was rapidly descending. An owl called from some trees to the left of the house.

  Suddenly a light flicked on in the window nearest to the lane, at the opposite end of the house from the room with the computer.

  Boris focused his binoculars on the window. He saw the thin net curtains in that room were pulled closed. A shadow flicked across the curtain and a hazy image appeared behind it. Maybe an arm?

  Then the clear silhouette of a head appeared briefly from the left-hand side and moved back again. Another silhouette appeared on the right side of the curtain and moved back immediately.

  “See that, Marco? They’re in there. Can you hit them?”

  “Yes,” Marco said. “I’m seeing shadows on the curtain.”

  The light remained on. Then the shadow of a head appeared again on the left, followed by another shadow from the head on the right.

  Boris squinted through the binoculars. “Hit them,” he said.

  There was a loud bang. Through the binoculars, Boris saw the window glass explode inward, the curtain move, and the head jerk backward. Marco immediately fired again, and the other head disappeared.

  “Got the bastards,” Marco said in a calm voice. “Got both of them.”

  Boris was startled by a cracked, reedy voice from behind him, beyond where Tomislav and Monika were sitting. “Who are you and what are you doing with that gun? I heard shots. Are you shooting at that house? My husband is calling the police right now.”

  Boris turned to see through the gloom a small white-haired old lady standing on the lane, a walking stick in her right hand.

  “It’s actually my house,” Boris said to the old lady. “We’ve had terrible problems around here with foxes. They’ve been killing our ducks.”

  He went over to her. “The only way we can get rid of the foxes is to wait until it’s dark, when they come out to chase the birds, and then try and shoot them. I don’t like killing animals but sometimes it’s the only way.”

  The old woman frowned at Boris and said nothing. She screwed up her eyes and furrowed her brow. “I’m not sure . . . You really shouldn’t be doing that. You’ll have to explain it to the police. They’ll be here soon.” Then she hobbled slowly back down the lane into the darkness.

  Boris watched her go. “We’d better get out of here,” he said to Marco. “The job’s done anyway. I don’t want to explain to the police why we were shooting the shit out of my own house with a sniper rifle or why there’s two dead bodies in an upstairs bedroom.”

  “Yes, let’s go,” Tomislav said. “I’m not getting into all this. Come on, Monika, we’re out of here.”

  Boris surveyed the house. “Marco, can you shoot that light out in the house first. It’s going to attract attention otherwise.”

  Marco raised the rifle to his shoulder, squinted into the scope and took careful aim through the bedroom window, where a bare light bulb was still shining from behind the net curtain. He pulled the trigger.

  From the house came the distant sound of a minor explosion and the light popped out.

  “Right,” Boris said. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Monika started the engine on her moped, put her crash helmet on, and handed the spare one to Tomislav, who jumped on the back. They drove off down the lane while Boris and Marco jogged behind them back toward the road.

  Marco climbed into the driver’s seat of the Lexus. Near to it was a gray Opel Astra, which Monika had identified as Johnson’s.

  “Hang on a minute,” Boris said. “I’m just going to let the American’s tires down, just in case.”

  “What do you mean, just in case? I just shot the bastard,” Marco said, his voice rising sharply. “Come on, leave it. We need to get out of here, quickly.”

  “Okay, okay, go then.” Boris got into the passenger seat and checked his watch. “I think we should head straight to Split. I’ve got a flight back to London tomorrow for a meeting with my editor that I can’t miss. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  Marco rammed the Lexus into gear and accelerated dow
n the mountain road, his tires squealing.

  As they rounded the first hairpin bend, they heard the sound of a siren from farther down the hill. The flashing blue-red, blue-red of a police car roof light came into view as the vehicle screamed up the hill past them in the other direction.

  “That was close,” Boris said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Monday, July 16, 2012

  Pobrežje

  Johnson was on his haunches and about to stand up when another bullet smashed into the light bulb in the center of the room and continued into the wall, bringing down another shower of plaster fragments and dust. It went dark.

  “My God,” he muttered and flattened himself to the floorboards again.

  Being under siege, the dilapidated state of the house, and the knowledge that one wrong move could mean taking a bullet—it all combined to give Johnson a momentary flashback to the shoot-out in Jalalabad, in 1988, that had marked the beginning of the end for his CIA career.

  “I thought they’d fallen for it,” Jayne said from the corner of the room. She held Johnson’s blood-soaked handkerchief firmly to her neck.

  “Yes, I thought so after he hit the second one,” Johnson said. “Maybe he’s realized.”

  He picked up one of the two decrepit, battered mannequins that were lying on the floor next to him and pushed it against the wall, then did the same with the other.

  Both mannequins had holes in their heads where the bullets had gone straight through the moth-eaten cotton covering and the polystyrene underneath.

  “Don’t know,” Jayne said. “Good thinking on your part, but we’ve still got to get out of here somehow.” She shot Johnson a sideways look.

  Johnson gave a slight nod. “Have to just sit it out for a bit. He’s definitely going to have to come in. He won’t leave thinking he’s left two dead bodies up here.”

  “Agreed,” Jayne said. “Best option is to take him when he comes up the stairs, probably from behind that wooden cabinet on the landing. I could get a shot from just underneath it as his head appears.”

  Jayne tightened the strip of cloth she had wound around her ankle. “Of course, that’s provided I don’t damn well bleed to death in the meantime.”

  She removed her Walther from its holster.

  They lay on the floor in silence for another five minutes. There was the faint sound of an engine starting somewhere away from the house, followed by what sounded like the squeal of rubber on the road.

  Johnson looked at Jayne. “Hear that? Think they’ve gone?”

  “Doubt it. Must be someone else.”

  “I’m wondering if we can get out through the back of the house then away down the far side of the paddock,” Johnson said.

  “Yeah, there must be a back door downstairs, or a window.”

  They both crawled to the top of the stairs and only then stood up, when they were out of sight of the windows. The house was lit only by slivers of light from the rising moon that slanted in through the windows.

  Johnson, his eyes now adjusted to the darkness, led the way slowly down the stairs, which emerged into the living room area.

  He moved through the kitchen, then turned to Jayne, who was just behind. “Here, we can go out the back door; we’ll just unlatch it. Are you okay to walk?”

  “Yeah, just about. I’ll hobble.”

  Johnson clicked the door open and stepped outside onto ground that was covered in broken pieces of brick and concrete. He flattened himself against the rear wall of the house and looked to his left.

  “We’ll have to go this way, not up the lane—they’ll be waiting there. Then we can go down the other side of the paddock. We can get behind that hedge. Nobody’s going to see us there.”

  Jayne nodded.

  They moved behind the hedge to the far side of the paddock, then kept inside the line of a long row of trees that ran down the eastern perimeter of the property as they made their way through the long grass back past the tall stone wall toward the road.

  “There’s nobody around. I think they’ve gone,” Johnson said.

  Then came the unmistakable wail of a police siren farther down the hillside. “Oh hell, somebody’s heard the gunshots,” Johnson said. “We’d better get out of here, or else we’ll be hauled in for burglary.”

  Now they moved at a fast pace to the end of the paddock, just as a police car flew around the corner. Its roof lights flashed and its siren screamed as it sped down the lane toward the house, its suspension squealing at intervals.

  “They’ll check the house first. Can you run?” Johnson asked.

  “I guess so. I’m not feeling too great to be honest, Joe. And I’m leaving a trail of blood behind me. That cloth bandage has come off my ankle.”

  Johnson studied her with concern. “Okay, let’s give it a try. If we can just get to the car you’ll be fine. Tell me if you need supporting. Let’s go.”

  He broke into a jog through the long grass, Jayne stumbling behind.

  When they reached the lane, Johnson glanced back. The lights on the police car strobed across the front of the house, the siren still blaring.

  They jogged along the lane and within half a minute were back at the Astra. Jayne was looking ashen. The handkerchief she clutched to her neck was covered in blood, as was her shirt.

  Johnson let out the clutch and shot off down the moonlit road. It was only when he was out of the village and around the bend that he turned on his headlights.

  They had gone around the second hairpin bend when Johnson saw Jayne move out of the corner of his eye. She had slumped against the passenger door. Her head lolled sideways, and her eyes were closed.

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Monday, July 16, 2012

  Dubrovnik General Hospital

  Jayne winced as the needle pierced her skin.

  “I think you’ll need about six in here and a few in that ankle,” the doctor said in his heavily accented English.

  He pulled the thread through and slowly tightened it. “You were fortunate this cut in the neck just missed the artery. That will teach you to be more careful next time you try such a tricky repair job.”

  She had told him that the injury had occurred while she and Johnson were trying to mend a glass greenhouse at their holiday house. A pane of glass had broken and slashed her neck as it fell, catching her ankle as it hit the floor, she had said.

  The doctor looked skeptical, but said nothing.

  Johnson buried himself in a magazine he had picked up from the waiting room.

  “Your friend here says you passed out in the car,” the doctor said. “You’ll need to take it easy for the next couple of days.” The doctor finished stitching her neck, then moved on to her ankle.

  Johnson stood up. “Jayne, I’m just going outside to make a call,” he said. She nodded without looking at him.

  He walked out of the doctor’s cubicle into the reception area, took out his phone and pondered for a few seconds.

  Which one to try first?

  On a hunch, he dialed a number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Natasha, it’s Joe Johnson. You’ll remember me from this morning. I’m sorry to call late—”

  “Thanks for the apology.”

  “Well, I—it’s just that I need something urgently, and you probably can’t help with this, but I’m a bit desperate, so I’m calling just on the off chance that you can.”

  There was a pause on the other end. “What is it?” she said.

  “It’s to do with the inquiry, about Franjo. Have you ever received an email from him?”

  “No, never.”

  “Nothing at all? Ever?”

  There was silence for a couple of seconds. “You want to try and contact him, I suppose. Several years ago I did get one about a bank issue. That must have been at least ten years ago.”

  “Could you find the email?”

  “You’ll have to wait. I need to look.”

  There
was a long silence, followed by a thud, then the rhythmic clicking of a computer keyboard. Presumably Natasha was scrolling through her old emails.

  After what seemed like an interminable period of time, Natasha came back on the line and gave him an address: blackbrown186543@hotmail.com.

  “That was it,” she said. “But it was in 2001, so I’ve no idea whether he still uses that address. Unlikely.”

  She was probably correct, Johnson thought as he took out his notebook and wrote it down. The address looked designed to be disposable and anonymous, Johnson thought as he took out his notebook and wrote it down.

  He sighed. “One reason I need it is because there’s a website, Dropbox, to which I need access. I have a strong hunch Franjo may have used it to store information, but it requires an email log-in and a password. Obviously, people choose passwords based on places, names, and so on that are important to them. I was hoping you might be able to think of something he might have used.”

  Natasha gave a half laugh, then went silent. “You’ve really got nerve,” she said eventually.

  “Well, I need access for very good reasons, relating to probable criminal activity. Listen, we’re not having this conversation, and you’re not giving me any information. We can think of it that way.”

  Another silence. “I’ve no clue, really. I’ve only got one suggestion: Luka.”

  “Sorry, Luka?”

  “Yes, Luka. The name. L-U-K-A. Luka.”

  “Is that it? Four letters? Any other letters or numbers attached to it?”

  “I really don’t know . . . I suppose you could add the number ten after it. I actually haven’t got any idea. I’m guessing.”

  “Okay, I can try that. Luka10. Any other ideas? Is there a particular reason why it might be Luka?”

  “It’s just a name that might be meaningful, and no, I can’t think of any others,” Natasha said.