The Old Bridge

by Andrew Turpin

  And perhaps it was partly because now, at an age when most men were retiring, he had experienced no loss of acuity in hearing or eyesight.

  Whatever the reason, Watson heard the faint metallic noise behind him, despite the hustle and bustle going on around him in the warehouse and the clattering of the forklift truck returning from the Antonov aircraft outside.

  He immediately turned from the papers he had been carefully scrutinizing and rapidly scanned the back of the warehouse, about twenty yards away.

  In the corner, not far above the ground, he caught no more than a flicker of light reflecting from something shiny in a hole in the steel hangar wall.

  But it was enough.

  Watson stood and took a few slow paces toward the source of the reflection. Immediately he realized what the shiny element behind it was. But it vanished and the hole went black.

  Watson swiveled and limped quickly over to a security guard who stood next to one of the piles of cardboard boxes, an AK-47 hanging against his back on a shoulder strap. A second rifle rested on the floor, leaning against the cardboard boxes beside him.

  Johnson stood up and stuffed the camera into his backpack, which he swung onto his shoulders. He could see that Jayne had realized immediately from his speed of movement that something had happened.

  She pointed back to the road, turned, and ran ahead of Johnson in the direction they had come, across a rough area of ground littered with pieces of timber and old bricks that were just about visible in the faint glow of light being thrown from the warehouse.

  Johnson took off after her as she veered left toward the hedge. He looked over his shoulder and glimpsed a figure emerging from the side of the warehouse to their right. The silhouette was clear enough for Johnson to see that he was raising a rifle to his shoulder.

  Johnson grabbed the Zastava from his waistband and had no choice but to call to Jayne, five yards ahead of him. “Down!”

  She ran around a stack of railway ties, dived to the ground, and rolled into the bottom of the hedge that separated the airfield from the road. Johnson dived a fraction of a second later, just after a rifle shot had rung out, followed by another two.

  Johnson half cried out as he felt an impact on the side of his left shoulder. As he landed, he instinctively put his right hand to the place and found his jacket was ripped. He’d been hit, but it seemed like a glancing impact that he hoped was more coat than flesh. He found he could still move his left arm freely, albeit with a little pain.

  Johnson raised the Zastava and fired a couple of shots toward the silhouette at the side of the warehouse. The man hit the floor as Johnson’s shots ricocheted with a loud clang off the metal wall of the building, just to the right of his target.

  There were two flashes to his left as Jayne also fired shots at the guard, who was now invisible, flat on the grass.

  Johnson pointed to the road, then jumped up, bent himself double, and ran through a small gap in the hedge.

  But in the darkness, he miscalculated the depth of the drainage ditch at the side of the road. As the ground fell away beneath him, Johnson went headfirst into the grassy bank on the far side of the ditch, certain as he did so that he heard more bullets hissing through the hedge above his head.

  His left shoulder hit the ground as he landed. “Shit,” Johnson muttered involuntarily.

  “Stay in the ditch,” Jayne said as she landed next to him.

  Further shots whined just above their heads; then came fire from a second semiautomatic weapon.

  Johnson gestured along the ditch in the direction of their car. They began to move, crouching as low as possible as they left the protection afforded by the stack of wooden ties.

  Johnson risked raising his head slightly, looking from behind the hedge toward the warehouse.

  Now there were two figures visible, one behind the other. Johnson realized the guard was in front, almost completely blocking his view of Watson.

  Johnson raised his pistol carefully and took aim, resting his right arm and gun on a small rock at the base of the hedge.

  He fired two shots, causing both men to dive to the ground again. Johnson’s instinct was that he hadn’t hit them.

  “Run,” Johnson muttered. “They’re both on the floor.”

  From behind him, near the warehouse, came the deep-throated roar of a diesel engine firing up, followed by a squeal of tires as the clutch on the vehicle was let out quickly.

  Johnson and Jayne jumped up and began sprinting hard down the road toward the Hrvatske Vode water company van. Johnson could now feel wetness down his left arm, coming from the shoulder wound.

  There was another squeal of tires behind them, louder now.

  Johnson and Jayne drew near to the van. Behind them came the high-pitched whining of a diesel engine being thrashed at high revs.

  They sprinted around the back of the white van, Johnson to the left, Jayne to the right, just as a bullet smashed into the metal bodywork.

  Johnson turned and crouched behind the van’s rear bumper, then took two shots at the rapidly approaching vehicle, a Land Cruiser. One bullet hit the windshield, and the Land Cruiser veered right, straight into the ditch where it came to an abrupt halt, tilted at forty-five degrees.

  Johnson made sure he was shielded from the direct line of sight of the men in the Land Cruiser by the body of the van, then made his way toward Jayne, who was heading for the Golf. He followed her around the corner of the timber merchant’s compound to the car, which was just a little farther up the track behind the bushes.

  As they reached the car, there was more gunfire from behind them.

  Johnson jumped into the Golf’s driver’s seat.

  Jayne opened the passenger door. “Do you want me to drive?” she asked.

  “No, let’s go,” Johnson said. He screwed up his face in pain, started the engine and shot off down the lane toward the van.

  “Go, go for it,” Jayne said, her voice level.

  Johnson could see the driver of the Land Cruiser had reversed out of the ditch and onto the road, but the man’s route forward was completely blocked by the van and the twin ditches on either side.

  As Johnson approached, he got a clear view of a man holding a gun who climbed out of the Land Cruiser’s passenger door. It was Marco Lukić.

  Johnson floored the accelerator and looked in his rearview mirror to see Marco aiming the gun in his direction. The Golf sped down the road away from the airfield, its rear end swinging slightly as he steered around a bend.

  For the second time in two days, the rear of the rental car took a couple of bullets, one of which smashed into the rear window.

  Johnson groaned as he shifted into third, but said nothing. Quickly, they were out of range and into the outskirts of Sinj.

  “I’m going to have to fix that shoulder for you,” Jayne said. “We can’t exactly go into a local hospital here. That SIS emergency aid training of mine might finally come in handy. You’d better find somewhere we can park and sort it out.”

  Johnson nodded. He turned down a side street, cut another left down a narrow road, and pulled up under a streetlight.

  Jayne pulled a small first aid kit from her bag and removed a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, two bandages, some tape, scissors and a curved needle and thread and set to work.

  Johnson removed his shirt, gently peeling away the material from the wound, to which it had already begun to stick.

  The bullet had nicked the side of Johnson’s shoulder, leaving a shallow gash, an inch and a half long, which was bleeding steadily.

  “You’re lucky it’s just clipped you. Very lucky. Another inch or two and it would have shattered your shoulder. I can fix this,” Jayne said confidently.

  She splashed some alcohol over the wound, which bit into Johnson’s nerve endings and made him clench his teeth.

  “I can’t stitch this, it’s too wide. But it’s shallow, so I’ll pack it with gauze to stop the bleeding. I think it’ll be fine. If it’s sore in the m
orning we can go to the hospital and come up with some explanation,” she said. She packed a square bandage over the top of the injury and wound the gauze over Johnson’s shoulder and under his armpit to hold it in place.

  “That’s the best I can do,” Jayne said. “I’m going to drive now. We’ll go back to Split and head for Filip’s house. We’ll have to get another car. The rental company will go bloody crazy when they see this one, so I’m not going to take the risk. I’ll just hire another and leave this at Filip’s. We can sort this one out later.”

  “Maybe we could borrow Filip’s Subaru?” Johnson said.

  “No. He’s told me the starter motor’s playing up. I don’t want to risk it.”

  They swapped seats and set off.

  Johnson groaned as the car went over a pothole and jarred his shoulder. “At least I’ve got the pictures of Watto.”

  Jayne nodded. “He’s screwed, frankly.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Monday, July 23, 2012

  Split

  When the effects of ibuprofen and a generous slug of brandy wore off, Johnson awoke on Antun’s living room sofa, where he had insisted on sleeping so Jayne could use the spare bedroom. He looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock, just three hours after he had finally gotten to sleep.

  He dropped his head back on the cushion and stared at the ceiling. He assumed from the slightly reduced throbbing in his shoulder that it had thankfully not become infected during Jayne’s makeshift repair operation.

  Johnson moved his left arm and winced. He looked at the bandage. The bloodstains on the bandage had dried and there was no evidence of fresh seepage coming through.

  Johnson grabbed his phone and tapped out a secure text message to Vic.

  Got injured in a shootout with Watto. Unbelievable. He was overseeing arms shipment from Sinj airfield, near Split. I have photos. Any progress with checks on his bank accounts?

  Then he remembered it was still only two o’clock in the morning in DC and swore to himself.

  Filip poked his head around the door. “How you feeling, Joe?”

  “Shit.”

  “Not surprised. Jayne told me what happened before she went to bed.”

  “Did you hear back from your friend Viktor?” Johnson asked. “Can he get Franjo’s address from the VMM share register? Is Marco’s address on there?”

  “He’s working on it,” Filip said. “VMM is one of the companies they’ve penetrated with Turla. They’ve been in there for over a year, but their focus has been on the weapons technology and sales and marketing side. He said they need a bit of time to get into the investor relations directories. And then they need to work their way through a lot of shit. But it’s moving.”

  Johnson nodded. “Good. Tell him it’s really urgent. It’s the vital missing cog.”

  Then his phone pinged as a text message arrived from Ana.

  Joe, I’ve been exchanging messages with Aisha and I’m worried. Can you give me a call as soon as you can?

  He used his Skype app to call Ana’s cell phone.

  “Ana, it’s Joe here. Are you still in Mostar? I got your message.”

  “Yes, still here. Something’s going on with Aisha. She sent me a message saying she now knows Franjo is still alive, but—”

  “Correct, Ana,” Johnson interrupted, “he is alive. I told her that might be true. The issue is we don’t know where he’s based.” As with Aisha, Johnson decided not to tell Ana about the almost deadly recent encounters he’d had with Franjo and Marco or the fact he had come frustratingly close to the two men but hadn’t been able to have them arrested.

  “But you see,” Ana said, “that’s worrisome. I always wondered why she hated him quite so much after the war. She never really told me. Yes, they split, but so did many couples back then. It was more than that. But I’ve talked to more people here while I’ve been doing my research on the bridge. I’ve been given a few hints about what happened the day the Old Bridge was destroyed.”

  Johnson sat up and winced again at the pain in his shoulder. “What hints? What did he do?”

  Ana hesitated. “Listen, I’ll let you know, as soon as I’m sure of what I’m saying—there’s one more person I need to speak to later today.”

  “Come on, Ana. Can’t you give me a clue?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Okay, but you know I need to get Franjo on trial for the war crimes he’s committed. Better to give me information than withhold it.”

  “Sure, but if what I’m hearing is true, you need to make sure Aisha doesn’t learn where Franjo is before you get to him.”

  “Why do you say that?” Johnson asked.

  “Because if she got to him first I think there’s a chance she might just kill him.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t explain now, but let’s say that I’m starting to think her hatred of him is more complicated. I promise to explain as soon as I understand it all myself, but I wanted to warn you. Don’t call her.”

  Johnson suppressed a groan. “Okay, I won’t.”

  “Thanks, Joe, talk soon.”

  Ana hung up and Joe fell back onto the couch. What’s going to crawl out of the woodwork here, he wondered.

  Tuesday, July 24, 2012

  New York City

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time in Studio One recently, Aisha. Everything okay?”

  Aisha jumped and looked up to see Olly West standing in the doorway, hands on his hips.

  “Yeah, fine,” she said. “Just trying to get the addressing sorted for the extra moving lights we’ve brought in for the Spencer interview. Tim’s asked me to come up with some cues using this new fancy special effects light he’s decided to bring in for the beginning and the end, so I’m just thinking it all through.”

  She paused. “We need to try and do something really good—make it as memorable as possible.”

  “Okay, good. Are you making progress?” Olly asked. It was only quarter to eight in the morning and Aisha knew that Olly would be surprised to see her already in the studio.

  “Yes. I’m just working out how to program this new fixture, because I’ve never seen it before. He wants to use it after the final question, when the interviewer guy, Boris or whatever his name is, wraps up and thanks Spencer for coming on the show. Anyway, I’ve been reading the manual, and I’ve got a few ideas.”

  Aisha scratched her chin and studied the rig above her head.

  Olly stared at Aisha for a moment. “Okay, I’ll leave you to it.”

  He opened his mouth and started to say something else, but then stopped and walked off, shutting the studio door behind him.

  Aisha climbed the stairs to the lighting gallery where the control desk was situated, along with the wall of monitors that allowed the crew to see all the different camera angles.

  She sat down at the lighting desk. Then she opened the control panel for the lighting hoist system, which allowed the lighting bars to be lowered to the studio floor so the electricians could put the various lamp units in place.

  Next Aisha glanced at the lighting plot, which mapped out the design of the TV studio set and the lighting fixtures needed for the interview.

  She noticed that the new special effects light was to be rigged on a bar directly over the set where the interview would take place.

  Aisha then looked out of the big gallery window into the studio and up into the blackness of the lighting grid. There, high in the ceiling, the lighting bar in question was almost invisible against the other black-painted hardware.

  Should she do what she had in mind—or not? Aisha sat there undecided for a full five minutes, staring up into the darkness, her hands clasped together.

  The feelings she had tried to bury for two decades had never gone away. Was now the time to put them to bed for good? Was this the only way? Or was there another way?

  She visualized the studio audience sitting, eager, excited, listening. Mothers, dads, children, grandmothers, and teenag
ers.

  Three times Aisha’s hand hovered over a button on the control panel. Three times she withdrew it again.

  But then she suddenly and decisively pressed it, and the bar, consisting of a large metal enclosure that housed cables, sockets, and other electronic equipment, slowly descended.

  She exited the gallery and stepped down to the studio floor. The bar, on which two normal lamps and the big new special effects lamp had already been mounted, came to rest just above the floor. Aisha now stood right on the spot where she knew Spencer and Franjo would eventually face each other in two armchairs for the interview.

  She walked over to the inner studio door, turned the lock, and pulled down a blind to cover the small window that looked into the area between the inner and outer studio door. Then she went back to the lighting bar and used a screwdriver to remove the side panel so she could see the space inside.

  Aisha reached into her backpack and removed two small black metal boxes. The first was similar in size to a paperback book, with a clip on each corner, the second was the size of a cigarette pack, also with clips on each corner. Adela’s friends from the mosque had not wasted any time in getting what Aisha needed once they heard about the possibility of an attack on Spencer. They had also showed her precisely how to use the equipment she now had in front of her.

  She opened a flap on the larger of the two black boxes. Inside was a small slab of reddish-brown material. She closed it again, took eight screws from a small plastic bag, and used the screwdriver to attach both black boxes to the inside of the lighting bar enclosure. Then Aisha took a length of electrical wire with a plug on each end; she pushed one end into a socket on the larger box and the other into the smaller box.

  Next, she took out her cell phone, called a number, and watched as it rang. After a couple of rings, a small green light on the smaller of the two black boxes started to flash. Aisha cut the call off immediately.

  Then she screwed the side panel back into place on the lighting bar so it looked just as it had before, with the two black boxes fixed firmly in place on the inside, but invisible to any external scrutiny.