The Old Bridge

by Andrew Turpin

  But what was it his boss had said?

  We can’t afford for anyone to get their hands on those papers . . . There’s a promotion in it for you.

  Watson had been very clear that Edwards should do whatever was needed to retrieve those papers.

  He stood and scratched his chin. He had been stuck in Zagreb, something of a CIA backwater, for almost three years. Thoughts of a bigger job, maybe in Moscow or a large European capital, went through his mind. Maybe Paris or Berlin.

  He couldn’t afford to upset Watson at this juncture.

  Almost without making a conscious decision, he began to walk slowly up the poorly defined path where the trail of footprints led.

  Thursday, July 19, 2012

  Moseć

  It had taken them some time to cross the ground to the barn. Mino had carefully dealt with four more PROM-1 mines, coiling the trip wires and placing them at the side of the path.

  Johnson put on a pair of thin rubber gloves and handed pairs to the others. Then he banged his fist on the large oak door to the old barn. “We could just blow it in, but I don’t particularly want to leave a calling card.”

  He scrutinized the battered old corrugated iron roof, which came down to just above head height. “Could we get in through the roof?”

  “We could try,” Mino said. “We could unscrew a couple of those metal sheets at the bottom, then wedge them up enough to get through. I just need some wood or something to hold them up.”

  He dipped into his bag and took out a screwdriver and a few attachments; then he walked around to the back of the barn and came back a minute later holding three lengths of wood. “These’ll do the job.”

  Jayne eyed an iron drainpipe attached to the wall on the corner of the barn. “I think we can shimmy up that pipe.”

  Johnson nodded. “I think best I go in there with Mino. You and Filip had better wait here. Just knock on the door twice if you see anyone.”

  It took Mino several more minutes to clamber up the drainpipe and unscrew the roofing sheets. He eventually managed to prop them up sufficiently with the wood to create a two-foot gap through which he could climb.

  Johnson followed, feeling glad that he had made some effort to keep in trim at the gym. He clung to one of the horizontal wooden purlins that stretched across the rafters from one side of the barn to the other. Then he reached down and grabbed a length of climbing rope that Mino had knotted to one of the joists. Johnson used the rope, which had knots at intervals, to lower himself. He landed on his feet next to Mino in the gloomy interior of the old building.

  The interior walls, like the outside, were composed of a rough unplastered stone surface. The floor consisted of concrete slabs laid over crushed brick.

  Johnson looked around. “It’s basic, that’s for sure,” he said.

  Mino grinned. “There’s hundreds of these old semi-abandoned barns and cottages all over rural Croatia. Most of them were wrecked during the war. You can pick one up for a pittance if you want a restoration project.”

  “Or somewhere to hide something,” Johnson said. “We’d better go over this place quickly. If there’s anything in here, it has to be in a wall cavity or maybe under the floor. There’s nowhere else. I’ll do the walls, you do the floor.”

  He took a small flashlight from his pocket, turned it on, and went to the other end of the barn. Then he began to sweep the beam slowly and deliberately over the rough surface of the wall.

  After fifteen minutes, the only thing he had found was an old crowbar that had been wedged deep into a crack between two of the wall stones. They carried on searching.

  About five minutes later, Mino called to him. “Hey, Joe, come over here. Check out this paving stone. It’s been moved. See, there’s tiny scrape marks around the edge. They look recent.”

  Johnson joined him and examined the floor slab on which Mino’s torch was focused. He was right: there were minute signs of activity.

  He scoured the room, then picked up the crowbar, which he had extracted from the wall crevice. “Let’s see if we can lever it up with this,” Johnson said.

  But then it crossed his mind that the slab might have been booby-trapped. “Pity we can’t get Slobodan in here to check this out” Johnson said.

  The two men stood silently for a short time, weighing up the risk.

  “Frankly, I doubt they’d have boobytrapped this slab,” Mino said. “If it went up, the whole house would be blown up with it.”

  That was true. But Johnson felt his stomach turn over as he maneuvered one end of the crowbar under the slab, then pushed down on the other end of the bar. The slab rose enough for Johnson to get his fingers underneath and lift it.

  Mino shone his flashlight into the cavity below.

  The unexpectedly large hole was lined with metal sheeting. At the bottom lay four large metal bolts and a document box made of thick cardboard.

  “Surely that can’t be it? Or maybe it is. I was expecting something more secure,” Johnson said. He had envisaged a steel vault or a safe or something similar, not just a hole in the ground.

  Johnson picked up the box, then flipped its lid open. Inside was a bundle of yellowing papers, some of them bound together with lengths of string. Most were typewritten.

  “These are all in Serbo-Croat. What’s that say, at the top? Bosnia Ministry of something or other, isn’t it?” Johnson pointed to the header of one of the documents.

  “Yes. Bosnia and Herzegovina Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Mino replied.

  Johnson flicked quickly through the papers. He looked at Mino and grinned. “This has got to be it. Let’s get out of here.”

  Thursday, July 19, 2012

  Moseć

  The path led through bushes and past a couple of trees. The footprints continued, but there was still no sign of anyone. Working on the assumption that if he planted his feet where the fresh prints were he should be safe, Edwards continued toward a ridge ahead of him.

  Suddenly, Edwards heard the very faint sound of voices drifting on the breeze that blew toward him.

  He crouched next to a bush, then edged forward until he reached the top of the ridge. There he cautiously lifted his head until he could see what lay beyond.

  Roughly eighty yards ahead, at the bottom of a natural bowl in the terrain, stood an old stone barn.

  At the right-hand side of the barn, one of the iron roofing sheets was curved up at the bottom, supported by lengths of wood.

  Outside the barn door stood the man and the woman he had seen with Johnson when they emerged from the house in Split. A large dog, probably an Alsatian or a German shepherd, lay next to them.

  It was obvious to Edwards what was going on. He remained there for some time, just watching. The man, woman, and the dog outside the barn hardly moved.

  Then at the top of the barn wall, from underneath the iron roofing sheet, a man appeared. It was Johnson. He straddled the top of the wall, swung his legs over, then lowered himself to the ground, using a drainpipe as support.

  Then the Jeep driver also appeared from under the roofing sheet, clutching a small box. He passed it down to Johnson on the ground. Then he reached behind him, pulled up a length of rope that he threw to the ground, then lowered himself down the drainpipe.

  Surely, Edwards assumed, the box contained the set of documents that Watson wanted.

  He scrutinized the ground in front of him. A variety of bushes, olive trees, and other undergrowth dotted the ground between him and the barn, but he could see a clear, narrow trail of footprints in the dust.

  Edwards calculated that provided he stuck closely to the prints, he could continue at a crouched walk through the bushes and probably get quite close to the barn without being seen.

  There was a sizable clump of scrub halfway to the barn. From there, a distance of probably thirty-five or forty yards, Edwards was very confident that given the cover and the element of surprise, he could accurately take out all four of them with his semiautomatic.

 
The unknown factor was the dog. Would it smell or hear him? The wind was blowing toward him, which reduced the likelihood, but Edwards was uncertain.

  He half stood and started to edge slowly forward until he drew near to the clump of bushes, ten yards ahead of the ridge.

  Just then, he heard the dog bark. The sound made him instinctively look up. He saw the dog was on its feet, facing his direction, its tail in a rigid curl over its back. It let rip with a series of loud, aggressive, deep-pitched barks, interspersed with snarls and growls. The damn animal must have either smelled or heard him.

  Edwards cursed to himself and in a moment of confusion, involuntarily stepped forward, his focus on the dog rather than on the trail of footprints in the dust and his foot placement.

  Through his trouser leg, he felt some resistance against his shin as he moved forward.

  There was a small explosion just to his left.

  Edwards had just whipped his head around in reaction to it when there came a much greater, deafening blast.

  It was the last thing Edwards heard.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Thursday, July 19, 2012

  Moseć

  The three men and Jayne were left momentarily stunned by the ear-piercing blast that echoed around the bowl-shaped depression, sending shrapnel ripping through the bushes and grasses to within yards of where they stood.

  Johnson was the first to recover his faculties. His mind flashed back to his conversation with Vic the previous day about Watson also chasing after the set of documents.

  Surely it isn’t Watson himself up there. Could it be Marco or Franjo?

  “Shit! Whoever triggered that will be fox supper,” Mino said, visibly shaken. “We’d better go check.”

  Again letting Slobodan take the lead, he went back along the path, carefully making sure he didn’t stray from the trail of footprints they’d made earlier. When he reached the bush, he stopped.

  Johnson caught him up, then saw the mangled and bleeding body lying on the ground. “My God,” he muttered. The man’s face was pulped and almost unrecognizable, while the upper torso oozed blood from a series of large puncture wounds.

  After taking a few seconds to compose himself, Johnson handed the document box to Mino and carefully stepped over to the body. He put on his rubber gloves.

  In the corpse’s right hand, still being grasped firmly, was a Beretta.

  Johnson bent down and went through the man’s pockets. There was a set of car keys, which were undamaged, and a thin wallet, which had a hole ripped through it by shrapnel. There was also a spare magazine for the Beretta and a cheap cell phone.

  Inside the wallet was a bank card and a handful of notes. Alan R. Edwards was the name embossed on the card.

  “Unbelievable,” he said. “CIA. It’s their damned Zagreb station chief, Alan Edwards.”

  Jayne stood, hands on both hips, staring at the body. “Bloody hell. Watson must have sent him,” she said.

  Johnson nodded. “I’d guess so.”

  He turned on Edwards’s phone and scanned the call register, which was empty. There were no contacts stored and no messages. A burner phone. He gave a thin smile.

  Johnson replaced the phone and wallet in Edwards’s pocket, and put the car keys in his own pocket. He momentarily thought of taking the Beretta, which was standard issue for CIA operatives in the field, but decided not to. It would probably be traceable, and maybe even had an inbuilt GPS tracker.

  He removed his rubber gloves, took the documents box back from Mino, and placed it carefully into his bag. “We need to get moving, quickly. If someone comes we’re in trouble. You do realize this is going to cause a diplomatic nuclear war. Langley will go ballistic.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Mino said. “First we need to screw that roof panel back as we found it. Then I’m going to replace the trip wires as we leave. All of you stay still.”

  Mino handed Slobodan’s lead to Johnson, walked back to the barn, shimmied back up the drainpipe, and used his screwdriver to restore the corrugated iron roof panel to its original state.

  On Mino’s return, they retraced their steps along the narrow path and to the top of the ridge. Every so often, Mino paused and replaced the trip wires that he had removed earlier.

  As they drove back down the track, they passed a black Audi, which had clearly belonged to Edwards. Johnson stopped, put his rubber gloves on again, and used Edwards’s keys to open the Audi. He gave it a quick search, but the car was immaculately clean and contained nothing of interest. Johnson locked the vehicle and threw the keys underneath.

  They drove on, back to the main road, the D56. About fifteen seconds after they turned onto it, a black Lexus 4x4, traveling far faster than the speed limit, flew past them in the other direction.

  Johnson, surprised at the Lexus’s speed, glanced in the Astra’s mirror just in time to see the car brake hard and swing left with a squeal of tires onto the narrow lane from which they had just exited.

  Thursday, July 19, 2012

  Moseć

  Boris stood at the top of the ridge and surveyed the scene below him. “What the hell’s gone on here? Someone’s trodden on one of our mines. There’s body bits everywhere.”

  He took a few steps forward, then turned to look at Marco. “It’ll be some idiot hiker again. Probably the guy who owns that black Audi parked on the road.”

  Boris walked down the shallow incline to where the mangled remains of a human body lay. He edged his way carefully around the corpse and stood, hands on hips. That was when he noticed the gun in the man’s hand.

  “Hikers don’t normally carry Berettas, do they?” Boris muttered. He prized the gun from the man’s hand and checked the gun’s chamber was empty and the safety was on.

  Marco scanned the path in both directions. “I don’t know what the hell’s been going on. Several people have been along here, you can see different footprints. And a dog’s paw prints.”

  Boris went through the man’s trouser pockets, which were soaked with blood, and pulled out a phone and a wallet, which he flicked through. “Alan Edwards. Who’s he? I think I’ve heard the name somewhere.”

  Boris pocketed the gun, wallet and phone, then continued on toward the barn at the bottom of the dip, carefully stepping over the trip wires as he went.

  At the second one, Marco bent down. “Someone’s moved this wire,” he said. “It’s not as taut as when we left it and the pole’s in a slightly different spot.”

  When they reached the barn, Boris unlocked the door. He strode to the far wall, retrieved the crowbar, and used it to open the underfloor cavity.

  Then he uttered a kind of primeval roar, jumped up and kicked the floor. “Bastards! Bastards! The papers have gone.”

  Marco walked to the cavity and looked down. After several seconds, he said, with some finality, “It’s Johnson.”

  “It can’t be, you shot—”

  “I don’t know, I don’t think I did,” Marco said. “I had a strange feeling. The way those bodies fell back when I shot them through the window—there was something not quite right. I tried to tell you on the phone.”

  Boris glared at him. “What the hell are you talking about? There was nobody else in the house.”

  “They just didn’t look right. I don’t know how to describe it. I didn’t like to say at the time because I felt a bit stupid.”

  “I was watching that window through the binoculars, and you definitely hit them,” Boris said.

  It was then that Boris remembered: his mother’s old dress-making mannequins had been stored in that room.

  But surely not?

  Marco shrugged. “I might be wrong—I hope I’m wrong—but it’s my gut feeling.”

  Boris grimaced. “Either way, I told you, it’s that damned safe. If that idiot Drago had finished the repair on time and we’d got it back in here, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “You’ve got copies of the documents.”

  Boris stood up. “Yes, I�
�ve got electronic copies, but that’s not going to be any good for what I’ve got in mind. I need the originals. And I need to be able to prove they’re originals, otherwise they’re worthless. And more to the point, if it is Johnson, what’s he going to do with them? That’s my concern.”

  Marco spread his hands. “I think it is Johnson.”

  Boris was about to rebuke his friend again, when another thought struck him. “There was an odd thing. Last night at the airport, I found someone had been into my Dropbox folder and read the instructions on how to get into the minefield. But if that was also Johnson, how the hell did he get into it?”

  Marco folded his arms. “The ‘how’ of it isn’t really important anymore—it’s done. Is there anything in the documents that could blow your cover? Will he be able to track you down in the UK?”

  Boris bowed his head. “Just trying to think it through. There’s no mention of me or you in there, nothing that incriminates us or references any involvement. And there’s no onward trail that could lead to any of our addresses. I’ve made sure of that. So the answer is no. But I don’t want to take the chance, so we’ll have to try again to get rid of Johnson. He’s got to go. There’s too much at stake.”

  “You’re certain there’s nothing on either of us in those documents?”

  “Absolutely certain. 100 percent.”

  Boris bent down and replaced the slab over the floor cavity. Then he returned the crowbar to its spot in the wall. “Come, we’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “I don’t want police coming here and linking us to the death of that guy out there.”

  “All right. Where to next?”

  “First we need to check if Johnson really is alive.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Thursday, July 19, 2012

  Split

  “Aisha was right. These are pure dynamite,” Johnson muttered as he leafed through the documents in Antun’s living room.