The Old Bridge

by Andrew Turpin

  Everywhere people were screaming.

  Johnson knew instinctively that although a good portion of the studio audience would have made it out, some would not have. There were too many.

  He lifted himself onto his hands and knees but was immediately hit on the back of the head by another piece of plaster.

  Johnson raised himself again and instinctively looked right, just in time to see Franjo, his dark suit covered in plaster dust, stand and run straight toward the huge vehicle exit doors.

  One of the CIA men whom Vic had instructed to detain him lay motionless, a large chunk of cinder block next to his head, which was bleeding heavily from a long gash. Next to him lay both of the Capitol Police officers, one of them seemingly unconscious, the other groaning and clutching his head.

  Somehow, Johnson got to his feet, feeling slightly dizzy as the blood drained from his head. But he forced himself to pursue Franjo.

  “Sonofabitch,” Johnson muttered.

  Somebody had opened the vehicle entrance doors into the parking lot. Franjo charged straight through the gap toward the daylight outside.

  Johnson ran after him, his legs feeling as though they would give way at any point. But as he moved through the bay, the dizziness started to clear.

  Now he was a good ten yards behind Franjo, who crossed the parking lot in the direction of the West Side Jewish Center and the busy chaos of 34th Street.

  Johnson saw a black Jeep 4x4 waiting at the curbside. Someone opened the back door, and Franjo altered course slightly to head straight toward it.

  “Stop him,” Johnson screamed.

  As he shouted out, a car reversed rapidly out of a parking space, forcing Franjo to change tack yet again to get through the rapidly decreasing gap between the reversing car and a van that was parked against the wall of the synagogue.

  The car then moved forward, but by the time Franjo recovered his momentum, Johnson was just two yards behind him and gaining ground rapidly.

  He reached out, seized Franjo’s collar, and pulled back as hard as he could, causing the TV interviewer to overbalance and crash heavily to the ground, his legs collapsing under him.

  Johnson, his lungs now bursting, landed on top of Franjo and pinned him down. He pulled Franjo’s right arm sharply behind his back and wrenched it hard. Franjo let out a yelp of pain.

  From behind him, there was a burst of gunfire and Johnson saw through a shattered car window the Jeep driver’s head jerk back in a spray of blood.

  Within seconds, three NYPD officers ran up to them, one of them clutching a semiautomatic pistol. “That guy in the car had a gun, he was about to drop you,” he said to Johnson.

  Vic, who was behind the NYPD officers, flashed his CIA identity card at them. “We need to hold this guy,” he said, pointing at Franjo. “Can you keep him near the studio door? I’ll explain everything in a few minutes.”

  The officers seized Franjo, one on each arm, and frog-marched him back the way they had come.

  As they passed Johnson, Franjo spat straight into his face. “You’ll pay for that, you bastard. You’ll pay,” Franjo said.

  Johnson and Vic trailed the two NYPD officers as they propelled Franjo back toward the television building, then forced him facedown to the ground just outside the loading bay, where one of them knelt on his back and restrained his arms.

  Four more NYPD cars, plus three fire engines, arrived in convoy and screeched to a halt outside the building. Officers and crews piled out and ran in. Ten seconds later, ambulances began to arrive.

  The scene that unfolded in front of Johnson as he made his way back through the loading bay and into the corridor behind was one of utter carnage.

  Six dead bodies, disfigured and bloody, lay in the corridor, covered in debris.

  In a corner, flanked by two security guards, a dazed Capitol Police officer, and four armed NYPD officers, was Spencer, sitting on a chair. Blood streamed from a large cut on the side of his head, his clothes were covered in white dust, and his hair was disheveled. He looked shell-shocked. One of the NYPD men was gesticulating at the speaker of the House, clearly trying to get him to move, but Spencer was shaking his head.

  At least he’s alive, Johnson thought.

  That was more than could be said for a number of audience members for whom the evacuation had not been rapid enough.

  One glimpse through a hole in the wall of the now wrecked Studio One confirmed to Johnson what his instincts had told him earlier. Several bodies, contorted beyond belief—many of them covered by the debris of plaster, mangled lighting bars and fixtures, steel poles, and other metalwork from the overhead grid—lay near the two audience exits.

  Handbags, briefcases and backpacks were strewn across the whole area. Johnson could hear several cell phones ringing.

  The sound of more sirens came from outside.

  Johnson and Vic walked to the police officers who were standing next to Spencer. One of the officers stepped forward and barred their way.

  Vic again produced his CIA identity card. “I know you need to get Mr. Spencer to safety,” he said, “but we also need to speak with him.”

  The officer nodded. “Noted,” he said. “Talk to my superior.” He pointed at another NYPD officer who was making his way across the parking lot toward them.

  Johnson glanced at the officers holding Franjo, who was now sitting on the ground, his hands handcuffed behind his back. Johnson walked over and squatted down before Franjo.

  “Do you know who did this?” Johnson asked Franjo, indicating with his thumb over his shoulder toward the wrecked TV studio.

  Franjo stared at him and shook his head a fraction.

  “It was your ex-wife. She works at this TV studio.”

  “Aisha? Did this? No.”

  “That day you destroyed the Stari Most, what else did you do? Who did you target deliberately with those tank shells?” Johnson asked.

  The corner of Franjo’s mouth curled upward. “You have no idea what it was like back then. If your father-in-law gave the go-ahead for your brother and friends to be tortured to death in a rat-infested Mostar dungeon you might feel differently, asshole.” Now Franjo was snarling.

  “What?” Johnson asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the truth. Erol ordered it. In the basement of the Fourth Primary School in Mostar. That was where the Muslims locked up the Croat prisoners. I was so angry. You ask me why I used that tank the way I did. Well, I’m telling you now. That’s the war crime you should be chasing.”

  Johnson shook his head, realizing in a moment of clarity that Franjo had just summed up precisely why the war had escalated so violently on both sides and why the peace continued to be such a difficult one.

  “Make no mistake,” he said. “I would have chased him just as hard as you—if you hadn’t killed him first.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Friday, July 27, 2012

  Manhattan

  Fifty minutes later, the chaos at the CBA TV studios building and in the parking lot outside was starting to abate.

  Johnson would have liked to have had a conversation with Spencer; he wanted to tell him about the documents from Bosnia and the evidence of his actions to allow mujahideen into Bosnia, and question him about his hypocritical stance on Muslims and immigration, and to explain exactly why his career was now over. But the NYPD and Capitol Police officers, predictably, had whisked him away.

  Johnson wasn’t worried. He knew Spencer would have to explain himself publicly and in court, probably on charges relating to corruption, trafficking in arms, and whatever else the FBI uncovered. Before that, though, he would have to face an absolute media frenzy. His life, at least in its previous form, was over.

  Meanwhile, Franjo had been taken to a nearby NYPD station for questioning. The process had begun.

  A man in a black suit approached Vic, who greeted him warmly, then introduced him to Johnson as Dirk Hassbender, from the FBI.

  Hassbender said, “Some good news. We’ve traced Aish
a Delić. She was at a friend’s house in Queens. We’ve just picked her up. She still had the phone on her that was used to trigger that bomb. Although there’s some confusion about whether she or her friend triggered it, so we’ve brought them both in. We’ll run the fingerprints, but either way, it seems as if they both played a part in this chaos.” He gazed at the studio entrance. “We think there’s at least sixteen dead in there. Many others are injured, so the death toll is going to rise.”

  Johnson stepped forward. “Vic, does Dirk here know about Robert Watson?”

  “Yep, we’re on it,” Hassbender said before Vic could reply. “We’ve had a trace on him for the past twenty-four hours. Got a whole team on him.”

  Hassbender paused. “By the way, you might want to know about this. We found it near the set inside the studio. It’s Boris Wolff’s briefcase.” He held up an old leather case and opened it.

  Inside, Johnson could see a crumpled folder stuffed full of slightly yellowed papers bound together with pieces of string.

  “The Sarajevo dossier,” Johnson said. “I owe you, Dirk. I think you’ve just salvaged my fee for this job.” He grimaced at Vic. “That’s what you wanted me to get. There it is.”

  “Is that it?” Vic asked. “The papers? The ones Franjo got back off you?”

  Johnson nodded.

  “We’ll need to keep that in case it’s needed as evidence,” Hassbender said. “I’ll arrange for copies to be made if you need them immediately.”

  “I certainly do,” Vic said. “There’s someone I need to get them to extremely urgently, so if you could get the copies done now, that would be great.”

  Hassbender nodded and walked off.

  “Perhaps you can tell me now,” Johnson said.

  “Tell you what?” Vic said.

  Johnson pressed his lips together. “Who asked you to track down the papers and why.”

  Vic looked away. “It’s difficult.”

  “Difficult?”

  “Yes. I’ll tell you one day. But you’ve done a great job here, and they’ll be grateful, despite all this shit.” Vic looked over his shoulder toward the chaos behind him. “At this rate the director will be offering you your old job back.”

  Johnson almost managed a smile. “Just remember I’m going to need those documents to put my case together for the prosecutors in Sarajevo, so make sure your man Hassbender keeps them safe. They’ll need the originals.”

  “No problem, that’s fine,” Vic said. “I’ll work all that out.”

  Johnson nodded. As Vic checked for messages on his phone and then took a call, Johnson paced slowly away from the TV studio building, past a tangle of police cars and ambulances, across the parking lot to the side wall of the old stone synagogue.

  Then he turned, squatted on his haunches, and surveyed the chaotic scene before him. He knew he needed to take a few moments, to think through the situation clearly. Was there anything he was missing? What about Watto?

  But instead of thinking clearly, Johnson bowed his head. Sixteen dead. Why didn’t I see this coming? Why didn’t we catch it?

  He started running through the events of the previous couple of weeks in his mind.

  The self-blame game—my favorite. Aisha’s reluctance to talk about her father and sister’s deaths that day and his unwillingness to press her harder about it . . . his reluctance to have Franjo taken into custody at an earlier time . . . Had he overplayed the problems around getting Croatian police involved earlier?

  Should have done more, should have moved faster . . .

  At the end of the day, wouldn’t a bullet into Franjo’s head a couple of weeks earlier have saved dozens of other people’s lives? What was this obsession with proper justice, real justice? Was it always the answer?

  Is it all worth it?

  The answers he heard, in the voice of his dead mother, were the same as ever.

  Truth and justice, truth and justice, truth and justice.

  The words spun slowly inside his head like a vortex of water in a whirlpool, all congregating in the center.

  Johnson stood. His phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket. It was Jayne. The sight of her name on his phone screen jerked him out of his self-absorption. He pressed the answer button.

  “Jayne, how—”

  “I’ve just seen a newsflash, Joe. It sounds awful there.” Her voice was stressed.

  Johnson exhaled. “Yes, shocking. It’s hard to describe.”

  There was a pause. “Did you get Franjo?” she asked.

  “Yes, we got him. We got Spencer too. And you’ve got Marco—”

  “We got him, yes, but only after I just managed to stop Filip from running off and killing him first,” Jayne said. “I stupidly let him see the address of Marco’s business unit place that you sent me. I went to the bathroom at the hotel, came out, and he’d vanished. It was only because that Subaru of his wouldn’t start that we’ve got a live Marco to take to court rather than a dead one. I then talked him out of the revenge option.”

  “Shit. Well done. I had a feeling that might have been the reason he was tagging along with us so closely. So we have the main guys, though I’m still waiting to hear about Watson. But as for the carnage here, we were just too late. Sixteen dead, so far. I don't know, Jayne, this thing. It’s beyond terrorism in some ways—it’s a whole different ball game from hunting down solitary Nazis. I’m having a hard time landing on the side of right.”

  “Listen, Joe, don’t beat yourself up. Sounds as if you did a great job.”

  “You too, but it doesn’t feel much like it right now.” Johnson walked back across the parking lot toward the TV studio as he spoke, his phone clamped to his ear. “By the way, you need to call Natasha and tell her she can go back home now. I think it’s safe, given both Franjo and Marco are being held.”

  “Yes, will do.”

  As Johnson drew nearer to the CBA building, he saw Vic with a group of men, including the FBI agent Hassbender.

  Vic turned and spotted him. “Joe, we’ve lost Watson. He’s gone off radar. We missed him.”

  Johnson spoke wearily into his phone. “Hang on, Jayne, I’ve got Vic here trying to talk to me.”

  He lowered the phone and looked first at Vic, then Hassbender, a blank expression on his face. “What d’you mean, lost him?”

  Hassbender shook his head. “My guys arrived just in time to track his car from his house in Wolf Trap all the way up to Ronald Reagan Airport. We were certain he was in it—had a positive visual ID on him, even tracked his cell phone, everything. But then when we pulled him over, near the airport, it wasn’t him. It was some look-alike, a stunt double, almost a spitting image. But not him.”

  “A double? So where the hell is he?” Johnson asked.

  Hassbender shrugged. “We’ve no idea where he is.”

  “Jayne?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to have to call you back.”

  Friday, July 27, 2012

  Leesburg Executive Airport, Virginia

  Watson wiped the mud off of his shoes as he got out of the black BMW sedan. The rainstorm had left the path through the woods next to Difficult Run River something of a quagmire. But a short trek across country from the rear of his house to the waiting car had been a small price to pay for a safe escape.

  Once in the vehicle, the CIA veteran had a thankfully uninterrupted half-hour journey northwest from Wolf Trap to Leesburg Executive Airport, just three miles south of the town of Leesburg.

  Now Watson gazed across the airport’s apron at the twin-engine Learjet 60 that stood on the tarmac, its taillights flashing.

  He gave a brief wry grin at the thought of the look-alike he had sent in his own car, carrying his own cell phone, southeast to Washington’s Ronald Reagan International Airport, a similar distance in the opposite direction from his house, pursued by the FBI’s finest.

  Bunch of amateurs, he thought.

  Although, to be fair, time had been on his side. He was go
ne by the time the FBI had arrived; if they’d gotten there half an hour earlier it would have been far more difficult.

  From his jacket pocket Watson took out a brand-new, deep navy blue Canadian passport. He glanced inside. There was his photograph, with the name Warren Smithson underneath. He replaced it in his pocket. Then he picked up his bag and walked across the tarmac to the steps of the aircraft, where the pilot, Carlos Herrera, was waiting.

  “Evening, Carlos,” Watson said. “Good to go?”

  “Yes, sir,” Herrera said. “We’re sticking to the original plan? Costa Rica?”

  “Yep, same plan. We can get going as soon as you’re ready. I don’t want any delays getting off the ground now. It’s urgent.”

  “Noted, sir. Should be about nine hours’ flying time to San José. I’ve got food and drink on board as requested. I’ll be good to go in a couple of minutes.”

  Watson nodded and climbed into the cabin, where he chose one of the eight comfortable leather seats.

  A few minutes later, Herrera put his head around the cabin door. “We’re cleared for the flight to Juan Santamaría Airport. Takeoff in two minutes. Buckle yourself in.” He retreated back to the cockpit.

  A few minutes later, the Learjet’s twin engines increased in pitch and it began to taxi toward the main runway. Watson buckled his seat belt and sat back.

  The engines roared as Herrera pushed open the throttle. The plane accelerated down the runway and took off into the darkness.

  Epilogue

  Friday, August 3, 2012

  Mostar

  Johnson glanced down at the sliver of gleaming white on the stonework as the four of them walked over the apex of the Stari Most. The damage from the sniper’s bullet was still clear for all to see, three weeks after their narrow escape.

  He, Jayne, Filip, and Ana continued down the slope to the eastern bank of the Neretva River, past the tourist souvenir stalls and bars.