The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 59

Dragan’s gaze went to Kožul’s twisted shape on the floor and lingered there for a moment, before he turned his look on Ben with murder burning brighter than blazing jet fuel in his eyes. He clawed the pistol from his belt and ran into the room, blasting like a crazy man. His first shot hit a television screen. His second shattered the glass top of the little coffee table where Ben and Madison’s weapons were piled. The third would have hit Ben, if Ben hadn’t already been diving for cover behind one of the red leather sofas. As large and sturdy as they were, they offered little protection. Dragan’s bullets ripped through the wood and leather and ploughed into the red carpet inches from Ben’s body.

Dragan was screaming, ‘You killed Zarko. You fucked up everything. Now you die!’

Kožul’s pistol was lying nearby on the floor. Ben snatched it up and hurled it at Dragan’s head. He was better at throwing than Kožul. The gun bounced hard off the middle of Dragan’s brow and made him cry out in pain. The skin of his forehead was ripped open. He faltered for a second, trying to wipe away the blood that poured into his eyes.

Which bought Ben enough time to belly-crawl over to the shattered coffee table. He could see his Colt lying among the broken glass on the floor beneath it. Dragan had cleared the blood from his eyes and was coming after him again. Ben reached out for the Colt. His middle finger touched the end of its chequered butt, but it was just beyond his grasp to pick up. A couple more inches, and he’d have it. But Dragan had realised he was going for the gun, and fired again. The bullet passed between Ben’s fingers and smacked into the floor. He felt the searing pain and the sudden wetness of the blood and drew his hand sharply away.

Now Dragan strode up to him, aiming downwards with the nine-millimetre for the kill shot. Blood was still pouring freely from the flap of skin torn loose from his brow. His face was twisted in hatred, veins standing out on his neck like ropes. Ben rolled on his back and lashed a kick out at him and caught Dragan’s shin with his heel as the shot went off. Dragan’s aim wavered and the shot burned into the floor beside Ben’s left ear.

The back-force of the kick was enough to slide Ben a couple of inches along the floor. Close enough to the table to reach out behind him with his uninjured left hand and grab the Colt from the pile of broken glass. His fingers locked around its butt and he found the trigger and brought the weapon up over his head in an arc and flashed the sights on Dragan’s chest and—

The percussive blast of the gunshot that filled the room was twice as loud as a pistol going off. Like a Claymore mine exploding at close quarters. Dragan was thrown violently forwards as though a horse had kicked him from behind. He hit the floor next to Ben, landing on his face with his arms outflung. There was a bloody raw mess of pulped flesh the size of a dinner plate in the middle of his back.

Ben hadn’t fired. For an instant he was confused and didn’t understand what had just happened. Then he looked up and saw Lena Vuković standing there.

Her hair was wild and her face was covered in tears. The red dress she was wearing was ripped at the shoulder. There were speckles of dried blood on her throat, on her arms, and on the small slim hands that were clutching the black short-barrelled shotgun. A trickle of blue smoke was oozing from its barrel, which was still pointing towards where Dragan lay inert on the red carpet. She slowly lowered the weapon, came a faltering step closer and gazed down at her brother’s body.

‘Is he… is he dead?’ she whispered, barely audible.

Ben made no reply. He rolled to his feet, dropped his pistol and scrambled past Dragan and over to where Madison was lying. She still hadn’t moved. Kneeling by her side, he looked for the gunshot wound where Kožul had shot her in the chest. When he saw the blood on her his stomach clenched tight. Then he realised it was his own blood dripping and flecking everywhere from his injured hand.

Madison opened her eyes. ‘Ben?’ she croaked.

She was alive, but how? ‘He shot you.’

She groaned and lifted her head off the floor, then propped herself up on one elbow. ‘Hurts.’

She tugged open her biker jacket. Something solid and rectangular slipped out of her inside pocket and hit the floor between her and Ben. He picked it up with his good hand. It was the slim black wallet containing the Fugitive Recovery Special Agent’s badge she’d showed him in the cafeteria back in Belgrade. The wallet had been punched through on one side. When he flipped it open, a nine-millimetre jacketed bullet fell out, squashed as flat as a coin. The seven-pointed gold star badge attached to the inside of the wallet had a deep circular impression dented into the steel where the bullet had struck. If Ben had a badge that lucky, he would have hung it on the wall back home as a memento.

Madison felt the back of her head and winced. Her fingers came away red. ‘Must’ve knocked myself out when I hit the deck.’ Then she saw the blood on Ben’s hand, and the sight seemed to shock her back to the reality of the moment. She gasped and looked around her.

‘Kožul’s dead,’ Ben said. ‘Dragan too. Lena shot him.’

Madison said, ‘Lena?’

Lena Vuković was still standing there over her brother’s still form, gazing down at him with a vague expression on her face as if she didn’t yet fully grasp what had happened. She turned her unfocused gaze slowly Ben’s way. ‘Did I kill him?’ she asked.

Ben stood up, helping Madison get to her feet. ‘It’s over for him, Lena. The world’s a better place now.’

She nodded, slowly. She was still holding the ugly black shotgun, its weight sagging down to point at the floor by her feet. She looked at it and blinked. ‘They were going to sell me to that man. I try to get away. He… he stabbed himself. I don’t know how it happened. Then I am hiding, because I know they will come for me. Suddenly there is so much noise, gunshots and explosions and shouting, and I get scared. I found this gun in the room where I hid. I—’

She hung her head and screwed her eyes shut, then reopened them and tears leaked down her cheeks. ‘Dragan, he was searching for me. Then I hear more shooting inside the house, and I run, and that was when I find you. He was going to kill you. I had to shoot him. I would have killed him anyway.’

‘You did the right thing,’ Ben said. ‘He wasn’t much of a brother to you.’

‘He would have stood by and seen me sold like a slave.’

Ben didn’t add that Dragan would also have been content to stand by and watch as Zarko Kožul fed her into a hydraulic car crusher. He might even have done the honours himself. Some things, maybe Lena didn’t need to know.

‘Dragan was a bad man. You told me that yourself, remember?’

She nodded again, more tears rolling down her face. ‘Yes, I knew this. I always knew.’

‘And now he’s gone, you’re free to get on with your life,’ Ben said.

She looked at him. ‘You will let me go? After everything that happened here?’

‘I never saw you, Lena. Because I was never here either. Nor my friend Madison.’

Lena turned away from Dragan’s body and walked a step towards Ben. ‘You are a good man, Ben Hope,’ she whispered.

‘I’ll second that,’ Madison said, and squeezed his arm.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he said to her.

Madison looked over at the attaché case with the manuscript inside. She smiled. ‘Never better. But look at your hand.’

‘Just a scratch.’ Ben smiled back at her, despite the throbbing pain in his damaged fingers.

‘You’re going to need surgery.’

Ben flexed his fingers and the blood pattered to the floor like rain. The agony was enough to take his breath away, but he smiled. ‘See? Perfectly functional.’

He would tell himself afterwards that it was the distraction of the moment, and the pain, that prevented him from reacting fast enough to stop what happened next.

Behind Lena, Dragan Vuković’s bloodied and tattered body suddenly raised itself off the floor as if some demonic force had filled it with a final burst of energy. His eyes snapped open, white in the red mask of his face, and turned towards his sister. The nine-millimetre clenched in his fist came up and pointed at her back.

Madison screamed. Ben yelled, ‘Look out!’ and Lena began to spin around, and then a tongue of yellow-white fire boomed from the muzzle of the gun. Ben was leaping for his pistol.

Lena’s body went as rigid as if she’d been hooked up to a main power line. She tottered back a step and almost fell, but somehow she managed to stay on her feet and bring up the shotgun.

Dragan shot her again.

The shotgun went off in Lena’s hands. Its deadly payload of buckshot and the big .45-calibre slug from Ben’s pistol both slammed at once into Dragan’s chest and the simultaneous impact kicked him flat. This time, Dragan Vuković truly wasn’t getting up again.

But he hadn’t gone down alone. Lena dropped the shotgun and fell backwards as Ben caught her in his arms. Her eyes rolled up to look at him and she burped a red mist, and then she was gone.

Ben did what he could to revive her. Madison helped, the two of them taking turns until they were both slicked with Lena’s blood and there was no longer any chance of bringing her back. Wherever Lena Vuković had slipped away to, Ben could only hope it was a better place than her brother.

The red house, now a deathly tomb, fell into silence. There seemed to be nothing more to say. Ben took Madison’s hand, and she hugged him tight for a long moment. Then he broke away from her and knelt by Dragan’s body to frisk him for the keys to the SUV that had brought him and Lena to the house. Madison picked up the case with the manuscript inside. It would not be out of her sight again until she reached the USA.

Outside, Ben blipped the key fob at the line of parked SUVs in front of the house. The last one in the line flashed its indicators and unlocked itself with a clunk.

‘I’ll drive,’ Madison said. Ben let her. She stowed her case in the back, and he climbed into the passenger seat and lit his last Gauloise with his good hand, and Madison fired up the car and took off. They left the burning ruins of Zarko Kožul’s compound without looking back, and didn’t talk about it all the way to Belgrade.

A new journey was about to begin, for both of them. The final voyage of the Bach manuscript.