The Old Bridge

by Andrew Turpin

  Johnson stared up at the sky. The white cloud formation hanging over the Adriatic horizon west of Split had turned a vivid scarlet as the sun began to set. He realized as he watched that it was a metaphor for the Balkans: white to scarlet, a blood-red sky.

  “Joe, are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m here. Sorry, just thinking.”

  “There’s more. The guy I talked to said that the details of what happened were actually recorded during one of the international tribunal hearings in The Hague. One of the tank crew, who my source thinks is the only survivor, gave evidence as part of the prosecution inquiry into how the Stari Most was destroyed and referred to this incident. That’s the testimony that would cement it. But my source said we would have to go to The Hague to look at the transcripts to check it out. I think we should go there and get them.”

  “Ana, thanks for all this,” Johnson said after a few seconds. “It opens the door to a lot of evidence that we need to nail Franjo.”

  He went on to explain to Ana what he had discovered about Franjo’s apparent alias, Boris, from the shareholder register, and that it now appeared Franjo was based in London and was working in TV.

  “You’ve done well to get that information, then,” Ana said. “You didn’t share all that with Aisha, I assume?”

  “No, of course not. Anyway, I only just learned it myself.”

  “Oh . . . but, Joe. The other reason for this call is that I received a text message from Aisha. It just said that she’d had a vision that Franjo would be dead inside three days.”

  “You serious?”

  “Yes. It might be just her hatred coming out now that she knows he’s alive, but it crossed my mind that she might have discovered his identity and location too.”

  Johnson pursed his lips. “Was there anything in her message to suggest she had a plan?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Three days? Damn it,” Johnson said. “Okay, I’m going to locate Franjo, but for the war crimes case against him, I need those files at the Hague. You’ve done some of the research on this. You’re close to it. So I have a big favor to ask.”

  “You want me to go to The Hague?”

  “Will you do it? I need to get to London.” Johnson said.

  “Yes, sure. Tomorrow morning?”

  Johnson let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you so much. You get yourself on a flight and I’ll sort out the costs with you.”

  He ended the call, then tapped out a secure text message to Vic, whom he knew was busy trying to get more detail on Watson’s involvement with the Syrian arms sales out of Sinj, following Johnson’s text detailing the shoot-out at the air strip.

  Urgent…two things. First, we think Franjo Vuković has an alias Boris Wolff and is a TV interviewer based in London for SRTV. He’s apparently due in the US to interview Patrick Spencer (Speaker of House) on Friday. We don’t know where. Can you find out? I’m heading to London ASAP to check out his house—hoping to locate your Sarajevo docs there and gather other evidence. Second, can you keep an eye on Aisha. She sent friend Ana a msg saying she had a “vision” Franjo would be dead in three days. That was two days ago. I’m worried about her intentions, especially if Franjo is heading to the US. Can you put tail on her ASAP? Will send address and details separately.

  He sent the message, then forwarded, also by secure text, Aisha’s phone number, email and street address to Vic, then he checked through his emails.

  At last, there was an encrypted reply from Darko Beganović at the Intelligence-Security Agency.

  Having spent most of the previous day trawling through old Ministry of Defense files, Darko had found references to an F. Vuković and M. Lukić as being among those benefiting from the Iran arms imports. The documents stated that Franjo had received weapons to the value of $3 million and Marco to the value of $2 million. The details were in a scanned attachment.

  Johnson couldn’t help himself. He punched the air and immediately winced at the pain in his shoulder. But he didn’t care. Now, at last, he was making progress.

  The scan was a copy of an internal memo, typewritten in an abbreviated style not dissimilar to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs documents that Johnson had already seen. He skimmed through the file.

  Under a single-word headline, “Iran,” and a date, March 4, 1993, it stated simply:

  Regarding facilitating delivery arms/ammunition from Tehran (air), MoFA has given clearance for weapons allocation to eight persons:

  A. Dizdar $5m

  F. Vuković $3m

  J. Pašović $1m

  Z. Bouchnak $1m

  M. Romanić $2m

  N. Škiljan $4m

  K. Gunić $1m

  M. Lukić. $2m

  Recommendation: set surveillance operations against the above persons pending security and integrity clearances (Ref: 7619).

  The email from Darko said:

  Joe, this is all I could find, but it may be enough? There’s no clear sign that the surveillance operations recommended were ever set up. Certainly there’s no files relating to that. Sorry.”

  Too right it was enough.

  Johnson picked up his glass of brandy from the patio table and turned to Jayne, who had finished her call with Natasha.

  “How was she?” Johnson asked.

  “She didn’t take it well. She doesn’t want to be in that hotel, but accepted it was for her own safety,” Jayne said, shrugging.

  Johnson nodded and updated Jayne on the details Ana had unearthed of Franjo’s role in Erol and Zeinab Delić’s deaths.

  Jayne started to ask questions, but Johnson interrupted her. “Wait,” he said, passing over his phone so Jayne could read the email from Darko. “There’s more. Take a look at that.”

  He watched as Jayne read it, her eyes widening. While she was reading, he put two painkillers in his mouth and washed them down with the brandy, completely disregarding the instructions not to mix with alcohol. Who cares?

  “Bloody hell,” Jayne said in disbelief. “So Vuković is Wolff. And Vuković deliberately killed Aisha’s father and sister on the Stari Most, in addition to all the others he doubtless murdered. And now we have clear evidence of both Franjo and Marco landing a windfall of millions of dollars worth of weaponry from Iran.”

  “That’s one thing I love about you,” he said to Jayne. “Your deadpan way of summing up the essentials.”

  To Johnson, an important factor was that details about the payments Franjo and Marco had received definitely wasn’t in the dossier from Izetbegović’s office.

  Maybe Franjo doesn’t even know these other incriminating documents exist? In which case I’m holding the aces.

  Johnson suddenly started to feel as though the fog was clearing. But then a thought struck him, and he felt his scalp tighten. What was it Aisha had said to him in New York? If you get to Franjo before I do, just let me know.

  He reached for his phone and tapped out a text message to Ana.

  Do you think Aisha’s actually capable of killing?

  A couple of minutes later, a reply came back.

  Aisha was normally never violent. But in the war she killed more than once. Grenades, I think. Yes, she could do it.

  Wednesday, July 25, 2012

  The Hague, Netherlands

  Ana walked confidently into Churchillplein 1, the former Aegon insurance company building in The Hague that housed the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

  A notice indicated the prosecution case against Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb military leader captured in 2011 after sixteen years on the run, was continuing in Trial Chamber One.

  Three lawyers wearing black legal gowns and white wing collars, deep in conversation, swept past. A pair of security guards, both in short-sleeved pale blue shirts, stood near the door.

  Ana approached a man at the information desk who pointed her toward a court officer in the corner. “He will get whichever court transcripts you require. Go and take a seat.”

 
; Shortly afterward, she was poring over a bound file containing transcripts of a 2009 trial hearing for General Slobodan Praljak, the former commander of the Bosnian Croatian army, the HVO, and several others.

  It took her more than an hour to find the witness statements she was searching for.

  First, there was one from Praljak denying that he had anything to do with ordering the tank to fire on the Stari Most. And there was another from another soldier, Branko Perić, who claimed he was standing next to the tank on November 9, 1993, when the bridge went down.

  Ana looked around her and spotted a sign that said no cameras or videos were permitted. But nobody was watching her. She quietly took out her phone and took pictures of the relevant sections of the files.

  The first one, quoting Perić, read:

  “The tank commander, Franjo Vuković, ordered the three men in the tank to keep firing at the bridge. He told them they had to destroy it and complete the job. So they continued to pound shells at the bridge most of Monday, the eighth of November, and then continued on Tuesday morning, the ninth. On Tuesday, the tank commander was very busy on his walkie-talkie, communicating with another man who was near the Stari Most and who was giving him directions. I could hear what the other man was saying. At one stage, when they had stopped firing shells for a period for some reason, I heard the other man tell the commander that the man he was interested in was approaching the bridge, along with three other people, and they were carrying a man on a stretcher. They were standing near the archway on the western side.”

  She turned the page and photographed the next section, still quoting Perić.

  “The commander immediately ordered the guys in the tank to adjust their line of fire by a number of degrees, I can’t remember what, and to resume firing immediately. The next shells that were fired crashed into the bridge at the western end. A few minutes later, the man called again on the walkie-talkie and told the tank commander that the target had been eliminated and others also killed. After that, the tank commander, Franjo Vuković, said something like, ‘Well done, a good job,’ and thanked him. Then they switched their fire back to the original spot. And soon after that, the bridge fell down into the river, at about ten o’clock.”

  The text corroborated exactly what Ana’s informant had told her: that two of the five people killed that morning were definitely Erol and Zeinab Delić and that it had been done deliberately.

  She left the building and sat on a bench next to a fountain, emailed the photographs of the files to Johnson, and then called him a few minutes later. He was already at his hotel in London.

  Ana talked Johnson through what she had found.

  “Okay, we’ve got what we need,” Johnson said. “Well done.”

  “I would guess that Zeinab was unfortunate to be with her father, who was undoubtedly the real target,” Ana said. “So, what’s next?”

  “I need to get into Franjo’s, or Boris’s, house here tonight.”

  “Get in? As in break in?”

  Johnson remained silent.

  “I’ll assume that’s a yes. Good luck with it,” Ana said.

  “Breaking and entering’s not my scene,” Johnson said. “I hate doing it, but sometimes you just have to think of the greater good. Now that we know what’s driving Aisha, we must move. I don’t want some sort of street justice handed out here.”

  Part Four

  Chapter Forty

  Wednesday, July 25, 2012

  London

  After four hours, Johnson was certain no one was home. It was ten minutes to midnight and he had been watching Franjo’s home in Ennismore Mews since eight. And still there were no lights on.

  He had left Jayne with Filip in Split to continue the search for Marco while he went after Franjo. She was less than keen on getting involved in breaking and entering in London, her home city, so she left it to him.

  Johnson scanned up and down the street, which was lined on both sides by terraced homes and was lit only by the dim glow from a quarter moon.

  Johnson’s rented Mazda sedan was parked across the street from Franjo’s house, but he had moved the car several times over the course of the four hours, switching between his current location and the neighboring Ennismore Gardens, from where he had instead patrolled on foot to keep an eye on the property.

  The street was full of builders’ dumpsters. Clearly many properties were being refurbished, including the house next door to Franjo’s, which, like several others, had scaffolding up the front of the building and appeared empty.

  At ten minutes to one, Johnson picked up a small canvas roll-up bag of tools that he had bought, and after checking carefully once again that there was no surveillance, got out of the car.

  He could see that finding a way into the house would be tricky. There were no alleyways between the terraced mews houses and there was no easy access to the rear. He had decided to try the empty house next door first, hoping to find a way into Boris’s property that way.

  The ground floor windows were bolted shut; he would have to climb the scaffolding and try the upper windows. There was no ladder, so he levered himself up to the planks at first floor level by standing on a window ledge.

  He winced as he did so. Thankfully, his shoulder had improved significantly over the previous twenty-four hours, but it remained sore and he knew this break-in wasn’t going to help the healing process.

  Johnson glanced left and right down the street. There was still no movement. At the back of his mind he still worried that this might not be the right house, that it might not actually belong to Franjo. But he knew he only had one option if he wanted to be certain.

  He peered through the first-floor bedroom window. The property looked completely empty. There were no carpets. Workmen’s tools lay on the floor along with a couple of stepladders, bags of plaster, buckets, drills, hammers, and planks.

  The window had an old-fashioned sash. Johnson checked the latch fastener in the center, between the upper and lower window panels. It had barely been closed properly; the swivel latch clip was rotated only a fraction of an inch into the housing that kept the window shut.

  From his tool bag, Johnson removed a long knife, which he slid between the two sash windows and applied some pressure to the latch. After a few seconds, it unclipped.

  Johnson slid the bottom window up and climbed into the property.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor, which appeared to be a converted attic, with skylight roof windows in three rooms. He climbed up an aluminum stepladder and opened one of the skylights, which led out onto a shallow sloping roof, and scanned his surroundings.

  Johnson realized that the property he was in, and Franjo’s next door to the right, had very similar shallow, sloping roofs, so he could easily climb across. They had virtually identical skylights.

  Johnson levered himself up onto the roof, then scrambled down about three feet to a V-shaped channel between the properties that funneled rainwater to a drainpipe.

  The nearest skylight on Franjo’s property was three feet up on the other side. Johnson considered it, weighing his options. It was an old-style, single-glazed pane.

  He took out his tool kit and removed a small diamond-tipped glass-cutting tool, similar to a drawing compass. He stepped onto the other roof and leaned against the tiles while he fastened the cutter firmly to the glass with a suction cup. Then he rotated the diamond tip around the suction cup, cutting a perfect circle in the glass, which he scored over several times.

  Next, he attached two strips of duct tape across the etched circle; he removed the compass cutter from the suction cup, replaced it with a flat circular wooden disc, and banged gently on the disc with his elbow until the glass circle fell down into the room inside.

  Johnson waited five minutes to ensure there was no reaction inside the house, which was still in darkness. Then he reached through the hole in the glass and opened the skylight.

  A couple of minutes later, Johnson was tiptoeing down the stairs of Fran
jo’s house.

  The third room he tried on the first floor was clearly an office, with a desk, a computer, and three filing cabinets. Johnson closed the curtains, then turned on the small flashlight on his phone and looked around.

  Where to start?

  Johnson worked his way through the top drawer of the first filing cabinet, which contained mainly notebooks, reports, and background information on leading UK and European politicians: Ian Owen, Angela Merkel, the new French president François Hollande, and others. All were in labeled cardboard file partitions. There was no doubt now that the property belonged to Boris Wolff the TV interviewer.

  The second drawer down contained a few yellow cardboard folders. The top one had a sticker on the front marked “Patrick Spencer printouts.”

  Johnson took it out. Inside were photocopies of some handwritten notes listing a series of questions about how Spencer viewed his role as speaker of the House, his future intentions toward the US presidency, his views on immigration, Muslims, foreign policy, Arab nations, domestic policy, poverty, religion, and so on.

  He continued to flick through the papers.

  Near the back was a folded sheet of paper that appeared to be some sort of invoice, from a Drago Planić, for three hundred euros. The invoice, written in Croatian, said it was for “repairs to safe.”

  But it was the name and address at the top of the printed invoice that caught Johnson’s eye: Marco Lukić. The address was Unit 6, Koplica Street, Split.

  Johnson stared at it and breathed a sigh of relief. He had definitely got his man. The Marco connection proved it.

  Better still, this might also lead him to Marco—was this address on the invoice where Marco lived? Unit 6. It sounded more like some kind of business premises. Either way, it could be crucial. He made a mental note to ask Jayne to follow it up.