The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 44

Ben fired out of the shattered rear screen. The guy hanging out of the minivan’s left side dropped his weapon and went limp, dangling from the window like an empty sack. The van began to swerve all over the road. Ben took careful aim at his moving target and snapped off another shot. The guy on the right threw up his arms and sprayed blood from his mouth and slithered back inside the minivan. Two for two.

The minivan faltered and began to slow. Alek couldn’t know that Ben was all out of ammunition. The power of the bluff.

Now the Octavia was quickly lengthening its lead over their pursuers as the woman sped along the banks of the Sava River. Ben clambered back into the front seat and replaced the empty Beretta on her lap. ‘Thanks.’

She glanced at him but said nothing and concentrated on her driving. Which she could do with as much skill as the way she handled a pistol. At the end of the riverside drag she swerved up a side street without losing an ounce of speed, and hammered up onto a main avenue that led into slow-moving traffic through the city. She carved through the traffic as though it were standing still.

‘We might want to slow down a little,’ Ben suggested. The woman went faster.

Finally, she swerved into the car park of an all-night Maxi supermarket and killed the engine. She slipped the empty pistol into the side pocket of her leather jacket and zipped it shut, then flung the driver’s door open and stepped out to frown at what was left of the Octavia’s rear end. Ben joined her.

Aside from the shattered back windscreen and side mirror, maybe sixty or seventy bullets had perforated the bodywork. Not the kind of damage that could easily be hidden, or patched with a little filler putty and a lick of touch-up paint.

‘Crap,’ she breathed. ‘This was a rental. Hertz are gonna kill me.’

‘Story of my life,’ Ben said. ‘Believe me, I’ve been there. But speaking of life stories, maybe it’s time we went on with the “who the hell are you?” thing.’

She looked at him. ‘Fine by me. But seeing as you owe me for stepping in back there, you can go first. Quid pro quo.’

‘Fair enough. What do you want me to tell you?’

‘Whatever there is, mister. I’m not in the habit of picking up strangers.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m Ben Hope. I’m five feet and eleven inches tall and I’m a Sagittarius. I know that’s important to you Americans.’

‘Kiss my ass. Keep going.’

‘I was born a few years before you, and raised in England, but my mother was Irish. I spent a while in the British Army, now I live in France. I’m here to attend to an unresolved personal matter between myself and a man named Dragan Vuković, an associate of one Zarko Kožul, who as you possibly know is the proprietor of the nightclub back there. Is that enough detail for you?’

‘Army, huh? Is that where you learned to shoot like that?’

‘It appears you’re no slouch yourself.’

The corner of her mouth gave a twitch that could have grown into a smile, but didn’t. She cocked an eyebrow, looking at him with a steady, penetrating gaze. ‘And by “unresolved personal matter” I take it we’re talking about the kind that means these folks don’t like you very much?’

‘I’d feel the same way, in their shoes. If I wore that kind of shoe.’

‘And they’d really rather you weren’t around any more.’

‘I’d say their intentions were fairly clear.’

She narrowed her eyes at him and pursed her lips, thinking. ‘So what are you, a collector for the mob? Zarko and his guy welch on a deal and someone sent you here to take names and break bones? I’ve known a few guys with your background who wound up doing that kind of work.’

Ben hated talking about his personal affairs, but under the circumstances he could understand why she needed to know more. He replied, ‘That’s not who I am. Dragan Vuković stole something from a friend of mine, in England. While he was at it, he threw my friend out of a top-floor window that happened to have iron spikes below.’

‘That doesn’t sound so nice.’

‘Vuković isn’t such a nice person. Now he’s here in Belgrade, and he’s passed what he stole to Zarko Kožul.’

‘And you’re here to get it back?’

‘It’s more a matter of principle,’ Ben said. ‘The stolen item itself is of no real interest to me.’

‘So we can’t be talking about money.’

‘This isn’t a business thing. I told you, I’m not in that line of work.’

‘I see. So what line of work are you in?’

‘I help people,’ Ben said. ‘Or try to. This time round, I didn’t do such a great job. I need to make that right.’

‘Help people?’

‘When innocent people are in trouble, when they have a fight that they can’t fight on their own, when things get bad.’

‘You’re there for them. How noble. Like the Equalizer. Chasing down the bad guys, and chewing up a bunch of rental cars in the process?’

‘You make it sound more glamorous than it really is.’

She paused, still eyeing him, still weighing up her thoughts. ‘That big douche back there with the skull tattoo would’ve shot me if you hadn’t got him first. And you had the chance to use that Beretta on me in the car if you’d wanted. All things considered, I might be prepared to take a wild risk and venture to assume you’re one of the good guys.’

‘Assume nothing,’ Ben said. ‘You have my word.’

‘Your word.’

‘Yes. And now it’s your turn to tell me who you are and what this is all about.’

The woman looked at him a little longer, then reached up and took off her baseball cap and yanked the elastic from her ponytail. Glossy black gypsy ringlets tumbled down over her shoulders. She brushed a few curls from her face, and glanced over at the lit-up frontage and windows of the supermarket. ‘I see a cafeteria in there. I haven’t eaten a bite since I landed. I’m lagged as hell and my body clock doesn’t know if it’s coming or going. What do you say to a late-night snack and a cup of coffee with me, Mister Ben Hope?’

Ben said, ‘Lead the way.’

They walked inside the brightly-lit supermarket cafeteria, where the smells of stewed coffee and cheap food hung in the air and a few customers sat about with that hangdog late-night look about them. Nobody glanced up as the two of them came in and sat face to face at a generic Formica table by the window.

The woman scanned the greasy plastic menu card on the table, pulled a face and said, ‘Now it comes to it, suddenly I’m not that hungry.’

‘Your countrymen invented this kind of food,’ Ben said.

‘Doesn’t mean we have to eat it.’

A droopy, limp-looking waitress came and took the order. Two coffees, black, and a cheeseburger for Ben. When it arrived, it looked as droopy and limp as the waitress did. Ben bit into it. Six thousand years of Serbian history and culture and here he was eating the same plastic food you’d find anywhere else on earth. The coffee was as stale as it smelled, but it was hot and strong. Just what you needed when your evening could have ended inside a crusher.

‘Don’t look now,’ the woman said. ‘I think your burger has a severed human ear in it.’

Ben kept munching. ‘First rule of soldiering, eat when you can, sleep when you can.’

‘So you’re going to go to sleep on me now?’

‘No, I’m going to listen to your story now. Start talking.’

She sat with her elbows planted on the table and the steaming coffee cup in both hands. She had draped her black leather biker jacket over the back of her plastic chair. It was hanging heavily with the weight of the Beretta in the zippered pocket, but the cafeteria staff and clientele were too faded to get jumpy about it, even if anyone had noticed. Underneath the jacket the woman was wearing a black T-shirt. Her arms were toned, and her hands were slim and small, but strong. No rings or bracelets. She had an easy way about her, like a relaxed athlete. If the evening’s excitement had left her in any way stressed or shaken, she wasn’t showing it.

‘Okay. My name is Cahill, Madison Cahill. I am, as you have noticed, from the United States. And as you may also have gathered, I’m not here as a tourist. I’m here for the same kind of reason you are. Personal business.’

‘With Zarko Kožul’s people?’

‘Small world, ain’t it?’ Her mouth gave that nearly-smile twitch again. ‘Kožul is a bad guy, what I hear. And chasing bad guys is what I do for a living. Like you.’

Ben swallowed down the last of his burger and wondered whether his first impression of her being a cop might have been correct after all. ‘FBI agents don’t go moonlighting on personal business. Not halfway across the world, all alone, no backup.’

‘Who said I was a Fibbie? I wouldn’t go near that. Not a team player. I work alone.’ Madison reached behind her, took a black leather wallet from the pocket of her jacket, and skimmed it onto the tabletop between them.

He picked it up and looked at the seven-pointed gold star badge. At its heart was an American bald eagle, and around the eagle was a blue circle with gold lettering that sparkled under the neon light and said SPECIAL AGENT — BAIL ENFORCEMENT — FUGITIVE RECOVERY.

‘An American bounty hunter in Belgrade,’ he said. ‘What happened, did one of your chickens get out of the pen on your watch and you have to catch it before anybody notices?’

Two little frown lines appeared above her nose and her eyes hardened. They’d been fairly hard to begin with. Now she looked dangerous. ‘I don’t like being called a bounty hunter.’

Ben put up his hands. ‘I take it back.’

‘And like I said, I’m here for personal reasons. I didn’t exactly plan on things happening the way they did tonight. I don’t know what I was expecting, if I’m honest. All I had was the name of the nightclub. I drove there straight from the airport, heard the shooting going on inside, figured something was wrong.’ She shrugged. ‘You know the rest.’

‘If you’re not here on agency business, where did the weapon come from?’

This time, the twitch did grow into a smile, but it was a nasty one. ‘One of Kožul’s boys was kind enough to let me have it. Another sucker for my feminine charms. He’ll be okay in a couple of days. Might need to see a dentist, though.’

‘But he still has both knees intact.’

‘I guess he was just lucky.’

‘They were all lucky,’ Ben said. ‘A one-legged man can still shoot back. It pays to put them down properly.’

‘Call me sentimental, but I didn’t want to kill anyone. Not off my own turf, not unless I had to. You, on the other hand, seem to have no such scruples.’

‘Whatever gets the job done.’

‘Like the chest-head double tap. They don’t teach that in the regular army. Special Forces, right?’

Ben gave a grim smile. ‘Aren’t we the observant one?’

‘I get paid to be smart. And I’m seldom wrong.’

‘Maybe so. But I still don’t get what kind of personal business brings a sweet young lady to a place like this.’

She paused, sipped coffee, then set her cup down and leaned back in her chair with her arms folded. ‘Sweet. I like that. Sweet is good. Now, you said this guy Vuković took something from your friend and he needs to pay for what he did?’

Ben nodded.

‘Same for me. From what I hear, this Zarko Kožul character is a crook like any other. He steals things he has no right to possess, and right now he has his hands on something that means a very great deal to me, and to someone I care for more than anyone in the world. At least, that’s what I was told by Ulysses.’

‘Who the hell is Ulysses? What are you talking about?’

Madison leaned forward again, and this time when she replied the coolness was gone from her voice and Ben saw anger flashing like summer lightning in her eyes.

‘I’m talking about my father, the once-great Rigby Cahill, a broken-hearted, sad and lonely and wonderful old man who spent the best years of his life hunting for that goddamned music manuscript. How a piece of trash like this Kožul has got his hands on it, I don’t know and I don’t give a damn. What I do know is that I won’t tolerate it. I aim to take it back from that sonofabitch, and I’ll roll right over the top of anyone who tries to stop me.’