The Old Bridge

by Andrew Turpin

  “Okay, thanks, I really appreciate it,” Johnson said.

  “All right,” she said, and hung up.

  Johnson went back to the doctor’s cubicle to find Jayne standing, a wraparound bandage now covering her ankle and a large rectangular one taped to her neck.

  “I’m extremely hungry. Can we get something to eat?” she asked.

  Johnson nodded. “Yes, I’m feeling starved too. Let’s do that.”

  “How was the call?”

  “Informative. You know that Dropbox account, the one we saw on the machine in the house?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ve got a possible password, and an old email address for Franjo.”

  “A password and an email? Where from?”

  “I just had a hunch to call Natasha. She really doesn’t like Franjo.”

  Tuesday, July 17, 2012

  Dubrovnik

  It was after midnight by the time Johnson finally checked himself and Jayne into a hotel, the Neptun on the Lapad peninsula. It was just down the road from the hotel where his Croatian visit had started twelve days earlier, the Valamar Lacroma.

  Now, half an hour later, after taking a shower, he sipped a whiskey on the balcony overlooking the nighttime blackness of the Adriatic Sea and the Elaphiti Islands, the outlines of which he could just about make out under the moonlight across the water.

  Johnson opened his laptop, which he had placed on the wooden outdoor table, navigated to the Dropbox website, and keyed in what he hoped were the correct email address and password.

  Jayne walked out on the balcony past him wearing just a skimpy white camisole, with no bra underneath, and a pair of equally skimpy pajama shorts.

  Johnson groaned. “Do you have to do that?”

  “Do what?” Jayne said.

  Johnson motioned at her body.

  Jayne laughed. “It’s a warm night. I thought the look would be spoiled by these bandages, so I didn’t really worry about it.”

  “For the record, it’d take more than a few bandages to spoil the look . . .” Johnson muttered. Now he was having another flashback, this time to Islamabad in 1989 and the sparsely furnished bedroom in a dusty house where most of his brief affair with Jayne was conducted.

  Johnson shook his head, trying to refocus. The details Natasha had given him weren’t working. “Damn, this password is no good.”

  “What did she give you?”

  “Luka, then the number ten.”

  “Are you trying upper and lower case?” Jayne asked.

  “Let’s try with a lowercase first letter,” Johnson said. “Nope, no good. To be fair, she did say it was just a guess. She didn’t actually know.”

  He leaned back in his chair and sipped his whiskey. “We don’t even know if the email is correct.”

  Jayne put her hands on her hips. “Just try it with the number first, then lowercase and then uppercase. Try all combinations.”

  Johnson turned back to the keyboard. “All right, digits in first, then uppercase . . .”

  Five seconds later, Johnson whistled softly. “Well, I’ll be . . . how the hell did she know? She hasn’t seen the guy for twenty years. Or so she said.”

  “So she said,” Jayne said as she came around the back of his chair and looked over his shoulder at the laptop screen. Johnson felt her nipple rest on his right shoulder as she leaned in close.

  He groaned again. “Jayne, I’m not complaining, but don’t start a fire if you’re just going to put it out again.”

  She chuckled. “How do you know I’m going to put it out?”

  Johnson shook his head. “Okay, there’s not much here, just a folder marked Moseć with a few documents in it. A couple of maps and a Word document.”

  “Moseć?” Jayne said. “That’s north of Split. I went through that area once. Let’s see those maps.”

  Johnson opened the first map. “What’s this? A CROMAC MIS portal map?”

  “Ah, CROMAC. They map and clear land mines. The Croatia Mine Action Centre. I dealt with them when I worked here, when they started.”

  “Looks like a map showing mined areas; presumably these areas marked red are the danger zones?”

  “Yep, I’d guess so. Mines are a major problem around here. Loads of farmers, kids, walkers and so on were getting blown up regularly in rural areas. I’m sure it still happens,” Jayne said.

  Johnson opened up the next map, which was much more detailed and showed an area just outside the village of Moseć. There was a circle marked around a dot in the middle, which Johnson estimated was several hundred yards off the road.

  Jayne again leaned in behind Johnson again to look at the screen.

  The third document was just a text file, comprising a set of short instructions.

  Park behind trees down rough track, follow path past mini cairn to right of rock. Twenty meters straight to large bush, right ten meters to barbed wire.

  It continued in similar vein for four further paragraphs, describing what was very obviously a precise route through a minefield.

  Johnson accidentally caught his laptop keyboard with his thumb and typed a Z at the top of the document. Jayne immediately noticed what he had done and pointed it out.

  “You’d better erase that,” she said.

  He pressed the delete key. “You know what I think this might be?” Johnson said. “Those documents that Franjo stole from Aisha’s father—the place where they’re hidden. What else would it be?”

  Jayne stood up straight. “Possibly. But it doesn’t say that. And in this part of the world, who knows? Could be guns, ammo, whatever. Can you copy those documents to your laptop? Let’s have another look at them in the morning. We need to talk to Filip about these.”

  Johnson turned back to the keyboard and copied the documents to his hard drive, then logged out of the Dropbox account.

  She checked her watch. “It’s half past one. Let’s get some sleep. I’m absolutely exhausted.”

  “Sleep?” he asked casually, intending it as a joke.

  Jayne eyed him steadily and raised her eyebrows. “Now who’s starting a fire?” She paused and glanced at her bandages. “I’m too wounded, can’t you see? And I’m not sure you quite know what you want from me, Joe . . . Is that a fair comment?”

  With that, Jayne stepped into her room in the suite they shared.

  She’s right, Johnson thought. Maybe I don’t know.

  Tuesday, July 17, 2012

  Heathrow Airport

  Boris was striding through the Heathrow arrivals hall when his phone rang. He read the number—it was Marco.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “I just got off the plane.”

  “I was wondering if you’d heard anything from the police yet?”

  Boris had thought it odd that there had been nothing in the Croatian media about the discovery of two bodies in a house in Pobrežje. He’d been checking all the news websites on his phone since his plane from Dubrovnik had landed.

  But one thing was certain: police wouldn’t be contacting him very quickly.

  “That’s unlikely,” he said. “Remember I transferred the ownership of that house to an offshore company registered in Mauritius. There’s no easy way for them to get contact details.”

  “Okay. So that means we won’t have any confirmation?”

  “No. The best thing is to keep checking news websites. It’s bound to be reported at some stage. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried about it. It’s just that I have this feeling—”

  “Relax, Marco. We did well down there. You did a good job. Sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.”

  He hung up.

  Wednesday, July 18, 2012

  Washington DC

  “Why am I so keen to help Joe?” Vic said. “Well, first, I hired him for this particular job. Two, he saved my life once in Afghanistan. And three, Watto hates him. And anyone who Watto hates is my buddy.”

  “Fair enough. I was just wondering,”
Helen Lake said. She leaned her head on Vic’s shoulder and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Nice to be having a lunch out with you.”

  Vic smiled. “Yes, it’s nice.”

  They sat in a neatly maintained Victorian garden adjoining the intricate brown-gray stonework and balconies of the Heurich House building, also known as Brewmaster’s Castle.

  Helen sighed. “Actually, you know, I don’t know how much longer I can keep working for Watto. He’s such a dog. Rude, unreasonable, never says thanks, always criticizes.”

  Vic nodded and snaked his arm around Helen’s shoulder. “You put up with him remarkably well and don’t grumble, usually. That’s one of the many things I like about you—you’re discreet with everyone at Langley, apart from me. I feel privileged you share the truth with me, and that’s no lie.”

  Vic paused. “So what have you picked up that might help our friend Joe?”

  “Well, it looks complicated,” Helen said. “Watto has spent a lot of time talking to the guys in Croatia, Bosnia and also Turkey and Saudi. He’s had phone calls, teleconferences, you name it. He was in Turkey for a visit only a couple of months ago. An odd bunch of contacts he’s got there in Istanbul, I can tell you. From what I can gather, he helps smooth the path for arms of various kinds to be shipped out of Croatia to Turkey and Saudi. From there, they go onward to help the Syrian rebels who want to bring down Assad.”

  Vic pursed his lips. “Just smoothing the path? Making sure they don’t get interfered with? Is that what you mean?”

  “No. More than that. I’ve seen paperwork that talks about a 10 percent cut to the facilitator, as they call it. Now, this is 10 percent of a multi-hundred-million-dollar contract, so we’re talking a large amount of money. At the bottom of the sheet there’s an account number where the 10 percent should be sent. Some company registered in Bermuda.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Vic said.

  “Nothing obviously wrong,” Helen said. “It’s just a gut feeling I have. Watto just seems to take an oddly hands-on approach to his Syrian responsibilities for someone at his level. He delegates far less than other senior people I’ve worked for. Not always, but just in some areas.”

  “Hmm,” Vic said. “But he’s not got a house that’s out of line for someone of his age who’s ridden the housing market up over the decades, and has been regularly promoted, even if it is a government job. His lifestyle doesn’t invite suspicion.”

  “Of course not. He’s not stupid,” Helen said. “I’ve never said anything to anyone. I don’t have any proof. If I did say something and I was wrong, I’d be out of work. In fact, I wouldn’t say it to anyone other than you.”

  Vic remained silent for a few moments. “Okay, so you’re suggesting that the reason Watto is after the same set of documents that Joe’s chasing for me is because it might throw light on something that he’d rather keep in the dark?”

  “Like I said. It’s just my woman’s intuition based on what I see him doing, the meetings he has, and the way he operates. I could be wrong. But if large amounts of money are being funneled to him through some arms deal, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Vic shook his head. “Shit. I don’t know. But I’d best warn Joe what we suspect might be going on. He’ll need to watch his back. Is it okay if I tell him?”

  “Yes, you’d better do that, provided you can absolutely trust him.”

  “Yes, we can trust him all right. No problem with that.”

  “Good. Now, shall we go for that drink?” Helen asked. “You owe me one.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Wednesday, July 18, 2012

  London

  “I’ve got the studio guys at CBA to confirm your plan,” David Rowlands said. “So, you’re all set to interview Patrick Spencer on Friday the twenty-seventh, at their headquarters in New York. They’re happy for us to use their facilities near Penn Station. I think they hope we can do the same for them in London sometime.”

  “Excellent, well done for sorting that out so quickly,” Boris said. “We haven’t got long to plan this, so I’ll make a start this morning. I’ll get a couple of the researchers to pull together all of Spencer’s recent speeches and stuff from his website. Then we can start building a grid of potential questions in different topic areas. I really want to nail him on a couple of things.”

  “Yes, absolutely,” David said. “One thing I’d like to focus on is what he thinks the impact of his anti-Muslim rhetoric is going to be across the States. All the evidence says it’s divisive and that it’s triggering aggression among non-Muslims.”

  “Yes, so then if he tries to deny it, we hit him with hard evidence and make him seem either ignorant of what’s going on or just an out-and-out liar,” Boris said. He scribbled in his notebook.

  David’s secretary came into his office and put a latte in front of Boris and a tea next to her boss. “There you go—some refreshments.”

  “Thanks, Vicky,” David said without looking up from his notes.

  When she left the room he said, “We’ll need to get the New York studio up to speed on what we want on the technical side. They’ve already asked if they can have some footage of your previous interviews so their set designer and lighting director, a guy called Tim Burroughs, can prepare.”

  David spooned sugar into his tea and stirred it, then glanced at the bank of monitor screens at the end of his desk, which showed their own SRTV programming as well as satellite TV news programs from the BBC, Sky, and CNN.

  “So what’s the plan for marketing the interview?” Boris asked.

  He sat back as David talked him through the strategy, which, as he expected, was to market the interview just to advertisers over the next few days. They’d push it hard and sell as much airtime as possible but otherwise keep it quiet.

  Then, for maybe three or four days prior to the event, SRTV would run some ads to grab the attention of viewers. It was a well-trodden road.

  David sipped his tea. “Actually, with that marketing plan in mind, it would be useful to have some big exclusive story about Spencer a day or two before the interview, to generate some headlines and get some publicity.”

  Again, this was a proven formula. It had worked spectacularly well in the run-up to an interview Boris had conducted with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. The exclusive story which SRTV had run about her and the German presidential corruption scandal two days before the interview had doubled the forecast audience and the company sold a huge volume of advertising.

  David tapped the desk. “Thing is, Boris, the ratings have slipped over the past year or so. We’re getting fewer viewers per show on average. Things like the Owen interview definitely help, but the trend is down. If that continues, we’ll be in trouble with the powers that be here. Funds are tight. We’ve been very generous with your contract both in terms of money and also the amount of time you get off between shows. If you want that to continue and to keep your profile, we need to deliver something really special.”

  David leaned back in his chair.

  Boris sucked the end of his pen. “Hmm, I’ve been thinking along the same lines myself, actually. There is one thing we might be able to do. I’ve picked up wind of some documents that go back to Bill Clinton’s time at the White House when he screwed up US policy toward Bosnia during the war in the early ’90s.”

  “That’s your part of the world, isn’t it, originally?”

  “Yes, originally. But anyway, these documents, as I understand it, could throw Clinton in quite a bad light. He supported the Muslims in Bosnia and offered a lot of them refugee status or asylum in the US when they were being shelled to pieces by the Serbs on one side and then the Croats. That was when the Bosnian Croats and the Bosnian Muslims—the Bosniaks—were fighting each other.”

  “So how is that relevant now? And how’s it relevant to Patrick Spencer? I don’t get it,” David said.

  “It’s partly the refugees. Spencer is bound to start ranting about immigration policies in t
hat regard. And it’s also how Clinton, a Democrat, supported the Islamic government of Izetbegović. It’ll get Spencer all heated up about his Christian principles and how Democrats are too liberal helping Muslim countries and Muslim refugees that only want to destroy the States. See where I’m going? He’ll lose it.”

  David shrugged. “You mean, to get Spencer worked up, you’ll use these documents detailing how a past president supported an Islamic government in a war and then took in their refugees? Is that it? Do we really need the documents to do that?”

  “No, we don’t. But if we do it this way, it would be a good one to discuss with Spencer, given that Clinton’s lovely wife, Hillary, is clearly thinking of running for president in 2016. He’s bound to take some outrageous jab at Hillary. Republicans hate her. Democrats will defend both her and Bill. A double whammy, potentially.”

  “Yeah, that could be good,” David said. “We’ll just need to make sure we get the toughest possible story angle from these documents then. Can I ask what your source is?”

  “Not at this stage,” Boris said, “I’m still waiting to get the documents, but it sounds promising. Dodgy practices at the highest levels—it’s all in there and it’s copper-bottomed, believe me. I need to go to Croatia to sort it out. I’ll probably go tonight.”

  He paused. “If what I’ve got in mind comes to fruition it’ll be an absolute blockbuster story. It’ll go global. I’m not going into exact details now just in case it doesn’t all pan out, but watch this space.”

  Wednesday, July 18, 2012

  Split

  Johnson and Jayne were on the outskirts of Split, heading toward Antun Simic’s house, when Vic called from one of his burner phones.

  “Vic, you’re going to have to be quick—I’m driving,” Johnson said.

  “Don’t worry, Doc, this won’t take long. On a completely confidential basis, my friend Helen has come up with some info—on Watto.”

  “Your friend Helen?”