The Old Bridge

by Andrew Turpin

  He walked over and pressed the call button to summon the bank official.

  When he arrived, Johnson asked the man if there was an alternative exit other than the front door. The man didn’t ask why and, in fact, seemed utterly unsurprised at the request.

  “There is a way, down the back staircase,” the official said. “Follow me.” He led the way through two sets of secured double doors, nodded at a security guard manning a desk near the second of them, and then went down an uncarpeted staircase to the ground-floor level.

  The official steered them along a corridor until they came to a steel door that opened into a small courtyard at the rear of the property. “You can go out here and turn left along the path, and that will take you onto a road that leads to a parking lot at the side of the building, not the front. Less chance of being seen, which I assume is the objective. Good luck.”

  Johnson, who clutched his backpack containing all the papers from the vault as well as the minefield, looked at Natasha. “Doubtless it’s unnecessary, taking the back door, but you never know who’s watching.”

  They took the path until they reached the side road and then made their way behind a brick wall to a corner where the wall stopped and the green iron railings began.

  Johnson paused and leaned against the wall of a small Tisak newspaper kiosk while he checked his wallet, scanning carefully up and down the road as he did so.

  All seemed quiet, and he could now clearly see his car at the other end of the parking lot, around eighty yards away. The lot was full, but there was nobody anywhere near the gray Astra.

  “All looks fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Now Natasha was visibly nervous. “I’m not used to this kind of thing.”

  They walked up to the Astra. Next to it, on the far side, was a black Lexus 4x4 with blacked-out windows.

  Something stirred at the back of Johnson’s mind when he saw the Lexus, but events then unfolded too quickly for him to process his thoughts.

  He clicked his remote to unlock the Astra and was just about to open the driver’s door when the front passenger door of the Lexus, right next to him, jerked open sharply and smashed into his ribs and hip.

  Winded by the impact, he looked up just as a man dressed in black jumped out and pressed a hard, cold metal object into the base of his skull.

  “Don’t say a word, get in the back of your car, stay silent.” The voice was English with a hint of a local accent.

  “Franjo. Shit! What the hell are—”

  But Natasha’s exclamation, in a high, panicky voice, was cut short. Johnson saw that on the other side of the Astra, another man had clapped his gloved hand over her mouth and pushed her into the rear seat.

  “Get in, now,” said the man who Johnson now knew to be Franjo Vuković. He dug the gun harder into Johnson’s skull.

  Johnson, stunned, complied and climbed into the back seat, realizing as he did so that there was nobody in the immediate vicinity to see what was happening.

  “I’ll take that,” Franjo said. He grabbed Johnson’s backpack and tossed it into the front of the car. “And I’ll have that, too,” he said, grabbing the car key from Johnson’s hand.

  “Hands behind your back and keep them there,” he said, continuing to level the gun at Johnson’s head.

  Franjo opened the glove compartment. He looked unsurprised to discover the Beretta, which he put into Johnson’s backpack.

  While Franjo pointed his gun at Johnson, the other man stuffed a rag in Natasha’s mouth, secured it with duct tape, and tied her hands tightly together behind her back with thin cord. He then moved on to Johnson and did likewise.

  Once Johnson and Natasha were trussed and gagged, the two men closed the doors of the Astra.

  Johnson cursed inwardly. He had failed at a fairly basic level to carry out sufficient surveillance detection measures upon returning to his car, and had now paid the price.

  Franjo jumped into the Astra’s driver’s seat; the other man slid into the passenger seat, from where he pointed his gun straight at Johnson.

  “Do you want to blindfold them as well?” the man asked Franjo.

  “Not necessary.”

  Within seconds, the car shot out of the parking lot and sped down the road.

  Johnson, who interpreted the lack of a blindfold to mean his end was now very near, nevertheless instinctively followed training received many years earlier and recorded in his mind the route they took.

  He resigned himself to a trip out into the country where, he assumed, the inevitable would follow in a dark forest somewhere.

  But instead, the journey was over inside ten minutes. Rather than heading out of the city, Johnson recognized the route toward the hotel he and Jayne were staying at, the Neptun on the Lapad peninsula.

  Just before reaching the Neptun, the car doubled back down a road that ran parallel to the sea; after what Johnson estimated was no more than half a mile, the car pulled up outside a large black steel gate that slowly slid open.

  Franjo steered the car through and down a short, steeply sloping driveway that zigzagged left, then right; he stopped in front of a double garage door, which also opened automatically.

  The car edged into the garage and stopped. The electronic door closed behind them.

  Franjo, without speaking, opened the Astra’s rear doors and indicated to Johnson and Natasha to get out. He then opened a door at the rear of the garage that led into the hallway of a house.

  “Go, move, down the hallway, then down the stairs,” Franjo ordered. He pointed the gun at them and waited until they were on the stairs, then followed them down.

  The house was sparsely furnished, almost unlived in, based on the glimpses Johnson had of a few rooms through open doorways.

  Franjo grabbed Johnson by his shirt collar, the other man steered Natasha, and they then pushed both of them into a room that was carpeted but otherwise completely empty, as if it was waiting for new occupants to move in. Franjo removed Johnson’s phone and wallet, turned off the phone, then placed the items into a plastic bag along with Natasha’s phone and threw it into a corner of the room.

  Through a window, Johnson briefly glimpsed the sea, probably no more than thirty yards away through some bushes, before Franjo pushed him onto the floor next to what looked like a steel heating or water pipe that ran along the bottom of the wall.

  Franjo held Johnson’s hands in place, still behind his back, next to the pipe while the other man used more thin cord to tie him to it. They repeated the process for Natasha, who audibly sniffled behind her gag. Franjo used more cord to lash Johnson’s feet together, and the other man did the same to Natasha.

  Unable to speak because of the rags in their mouths, Johnson and Natasha could only exchange glances. Her eyes, now red-rimmed and teary, had taken on a haunted, desperate aspect.

  Johnson hoped for her sake that his own eyes were telling a more positive story. But he didn’t feel as though they were.

  Franjo stood, then left the room with the other man. The last thing Johnson heard as they closed the door was Franjo muttering something about fetching the Lexus.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Saturday, July 21, 2012

  Dubrovnik

  It had been a relaxed start to the day for Jayne. But by one o’clock in the afternoon, she had become quite concerned.

  She spent the morning sitting on the balcony of the two-bedroom suite she was sharing with Johnson at the Hotel Neptun.

  She read several chapters of her novel, a spy thriller by John le Carré, then went for a long swim in the large roped-off area of sea next to the hotel.

  After that she rented a Jet Ski and went for a fifteen-minute spin around the bay. When Jayne, wearing a chic one-piece blue swimsuit, returned to shore, she even got a couple of wolf whistles from a group of youngsters in their early twenties. It made her laugh a little.

  But once she had toweled herself dry, her concern about Johnson and Natasha deepened.

  The a
rrangement had been that Johnson would call and update her as soon as he and Natasha had finished at Erste Credit Bank.

  But now, four hours later, he still hadn’t called.

  Very unlike him, she thought.

  But what to do? She wasn’t sure.

  At two o’clock, Jayne made a decision. She took a taxi to the bank branch, where she knew Johnson would have driven with Natasha.

  There was no sign of the gray Astra in the parking lot. She went into the bank offices, where she found a bespectacled official who was extremely reluctant to give her any information other than to confirm that there was nobody by the name of Ms. Jukić or Mr. Johnson currently on the premises.

  Jayne mentally ran through her other options. The only other obvious location she could check was the address Johnson had given her for Natasha’s house, high on the hill overlooking the Old Town. While the taxi driver waited, she went up to the house and knocked several times. But it was clearly empty.

  Jayne knew that if she really needed to, she could get Alice or one of her other contacts at GCHQ in the UK to attempt a trace on Johnson’s cell phone. But that would involve potentially opening a whole new can of worms.

  “You have a problem, lady?” the driver asked when she returned to the taxi.

  “Maybe. I was trying to find someone, a traveling friend of mine. He’s got a rented car and was meant to return to the hotel in it, but he didn’t turn up and hasn’t called. It’s a bit odd,” Jayne said.

  “You worried about him?”

  “Possibly.” She tried to understate her concern, but the driver seemed to pick up on it.

  “GPS,” the man said. “Some of the car hire companies have it these days so they know exactly where the vehicles are. They don’t like them going cross-border without them knowing about it. If it’s urgent, that’s your best bet. Try the rental company, and with luck you’ll get someone helpful.”

  Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?

  Jayne nodded. “Good idea, thanks.”

  Saturday, July 21, 2012

  Dubrovnik

  Johnson struggled to see how he and Natasha were going to extricate themselves from the mess they were in.

  He surveyed the room. There was nothing he could use to free his hands, which had been expertly trussed to the heating pipe behind him. He couldn’t communicate with Natasha verbally because of the gag, and he struggled to breathe properly.

  The pipe dug painfully into the base of his spine and his feet felt increasingly numb from the tight cord that bound them together and limited his blood circulation. He could see the bindings were cutting hard into the flesh around Natasha’s ankles as well.

  Franjo’s sudden attack and the method of it had left Johnson in little doubt about his intentions. The fact that Franjo hadn’t even bothered to blindfold him told him all he needed to know.

  And when he tried to put himself in the Croatian’s shoes, he could see the logic. Johnson now knew too much, had seen too much. In reality, there was probably little time left.

  Johnson knew he wasn’t far from the Hotel Neptun, where, he imagined, Jayne was probably relaxing on a sun lounger, drink in hand, awaiting his return.

  Surely she would realize after a while, though, that something had gone wrong. But the chances of her locating him were minimal.

  The plastic bag containing his phone was tantalizingly close. He could see it just a few feet away in the corner of the room.

  But he had seen Franjo turning it off, making it extremely difficult to trace, and there was no way of reaching it.

  He was out of options.

  Saturday, 21 July 2012

  Split

  It had been a frantic morning for Mate Glavas. His small car rental company only had twenty cars, but eleven of them had been returned, cleaned, and rehired in the space of five hours.

  The usual Saturday morning influx of tourists on early flights, together with others heading home after a couple of weeks in the Croatian sun made for a stressful burst of activity in the office.

  Now his plan was to lock up for a half hour and walk to the delicatessen down the road to get something to eat, drink an espresso, and take a breather.

  Then the phone rang.

  Mate would normally have let it go to voice mail at a time like this. But he could see from the +44 international prefix it was a British cell phone number, and a good slice of his summer business came from that direction.

  So he picked it up.

  “Hello, Go-Cro, how can I help?”

  He listened as the female British caller identified herself as Jayne Robinson, the partner of an American, Joe Johnson, who had hired a car from Go-Cro on the tenth of July; he had gone missing after a trip from their hotel into Dubrovnik. Could he help her?

  When she described the gray Opel Astra, Mate didn’t need to ask for the registration number.

  He had been keeping an eye on that particular car, with some rising degree of concern, ever since he had received a visit from a man asking him to locate it in exchange for an envelope full of US dollars.

  Of course, his vehicles were well insured with a company that paid out when they were stolen or involved in accidents, as inevitably they occasionally were. But the hassle and paperwork involved, not to mention the drain on his precious time, made it something that Mate dreaded dealing with. So he kept a particularly careful watch on his vehicles that didn’t stick to normal tourist driving patterns.

  “I have to say, madam, I’ve been a little worried about that car.”

  “Why is that?” Jayne asked.

  “It’s been to a few locations that I would describe as high-risk,” Mate said.

  “Ah, so you’re able to track where your vehicles are?” she asked. “That might be useful.”

  “Like many of the rental companies, I’ve got a GPS system here. Yes, of course.”

  Mate had seen the car parked some distance off-road in an area where land mines were known to be a danger, in the countryside north of Split, near Moseć. It had also traveled across the Bosnian border to Mostar, which was forbidden under Go-Cro’s rental terms without an additional payment. It had also been driven at speeds significantly higher than the legal limit between Split and Dubrovnik, although no police notices had come in so far.

  “So you have GPS,” Jayne interrupted. “Would you be able to pinpoint where it is right now for me?”

  “No, madam, we have client confidentiality rules.”

  “Okay, I appreciate that,” Jayne said. “But I have a strong feeling that my partner has possibly encountered some difficulties. I’d make it worth your while.”

  It was too much to resist. Two hits on the same car. “There is a cost attached to providing those details, madam,” Mate said. “It’s a service I do sometimes provide, but I would require payment of one hundred and fifty US dollars.”

  He waited. Jayne said nothing for a few moments. Then he heard her sigh heavily. “I’m in Dubrovnik, and you, I assume, are in Split. So how would I pay you?” she asked.

  “I would take a PayPal payment to my personal account,” Mate said. He gave her the details, waited for her to confirm the transaction, and then told her to remain on the line.

  A few minutes later, he’d checked that the payment had gone through and had run a search through his GPS system. “The car currently appears to be parked right next to a house in the Babin Kuk area of Dubrovnik,” he said. “It’s right next to the sea and down the road from a hotel complex, the Neptun and—”

  “The Neptun?” Jayne asked.

  “Yes, you know it?”

  “We’re staying in it.”

  As soon as he had given her the address she thanked him and hung up.

  Mate stared at the phone for a minute. Then he shook his head and went back to his computer screen. Perhaps he should just double-check the position of that Astra, he thought. It seemed worryingly close to the water.

  He flicked on the screen, refreshed it, and then waited while the
GPS map showing all his vehicles scattered across Croatia loaded up once more.

  A minute later, the refresh was complete. Mate zoomed in on Dubrovnik until he was focused on the point where the Astra had been. It had gone.

  “Shit,” Mate said. He zoomed out and spotted it about a kilometer or so away, clearly moving, because each time he refreshed the screen automatically it had gone farther up the road.

  Mate watched it until it stopped outside a building marked as a bank. He wondered briefly whether he should call the woman back and tell her the car had moved on but decided he couldn’t be bothered. She would have to work it out. He shrugged and turned off the screen again.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Saturday, July 21, 2012

  Dubrovnik

  “I need a quick beer before we head back to the house,” Boris said. “Johnson can stew for a while with Natasha. You know, I thought I could trust her but obviously I can’t. We can chat and decide what we’re going to do with them.”

  Marco nodded. “All Americans are the same. Stuck their noses in here twenty years ago, backed the wrong side and what happened? It backfired big time. And now they’re still at it. Never learn their lesson.”

  “Correct, that will be the subtext of what I’ll be saying when I get the story on air about those documents. It’s going to be a huge story. That should be my bonus in the bag for this year. It’ll earn the commercial guys an absolute fortune.”

  Boris brought Johnson’s rented Astra to a halt on the road outside the Erste Credit Bank parking lot.

  “We’ll dump this car here, instead of keeping it at your house,” Boris said. “They might have a tracker on it or something. I don’t want to take the risk.”

  They left the Astra, then Marco drove the Lexus back to his house.

  “I just need to be clear what to do with Johnson,” Boris said. “I’ve got the documents back, but I can’t just walk away and leave him. He might not know where I live or what my cover is now, but when I break that story, he’ll see it for certain.”