The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 36

Ben walked a fast mile through the night from Blackbird Leys, then managed to flag down a taxi. He offered the happy driver a wad of cash to take him out into the countryside near Wychstone village, where he’d left the Alpina earlier that day. The BMW hadn’t been touched.

Within minutes he was cutting eastwards towards the M40, then racing southwards down the crowded motorway towards London. He made a lightning pit stop for fuel on the M25, where he spent a moment searching online for a last-minute flight from Heathrow to Belgrade. With luck, he might not even have to step aboard a plane, if he could intercept Dragan and Lena at the airport.

But the delay getting back to the car had cost him, as he realised when he discovered that he was going to arrive at Heathrow too late to catch the last flight. He’d have to wait until morning.

With no longer any reason to rush things, Ben reached the airport at a more sedate pace, drove to Terminal 4 and booked himself into a hotel room for the rest of the night. All the comforts, but none that could compensate for the knowledge that Dragan Vuković and his lovely little sister were most likely already in the air and a big step ahead of him.

In his frustration, Ben raided the mini-bar for some cheap and nasty blended scotch. There were No Smoking signs everywhere and a sensor alarm in the middle of the ceiling, ready to denounce him at the first whiff of burning tobacco. Doing his bit for militant smokers everywhere, he pulled the battery out of the alarm and stood at the window, taking alternate sips of whisky and puffs on a Gauloise while he watched the twinkling lights of an aircraft taking off from the nearby airport, and frowned and fretted and thought about what he needed to do next.

The following phase of his plan would now take him into a very different situation. It wasn’t guesswork to figure out that the moment Dragan landed in his home country, he’d be heading straight for Zarko Kožul. From what Lena had told Ben, and Miroslav had confirmed, Dragan’s mission wasn’t to sell the manuscript but to offer it to Kožul as a tribute, hoping to be taken on as a fully-fledged member of the great man’s crew. If Dragan’s plan worked, that meant finding him was going to entail penetrating Kožul’s operation.

That was where things stood to become serious. Tackling a bunch of wannabe gangsters in the comparatively harmless environment of east Oxford was one thing. Tackling the likes of Zarko Kožul was a different matter altogether. For one man, unsupported, without backup, virtually impossible.

Ben liked working alone. But he also liked staying alive.

When he’d finished his cigarette, he refilled his glass with the paltry remnants of the mini-bar whisky and sat on the bed with his phone. It was almost one-thirty a.m. in Italy, but he dialled the familiar number and waited.

The gravelly voice of ex-sergeant Boonzie McCulloch, 22 SAS, now retired to a life of peace and tranquillity in the hills of Campo Basso with his Neapolitan wife, Mirella, answered on the fourth ring.

‘Ben?’

‘I’m sorry to disturb you this time of night, old friend. I need your help.’

Boonzie’s Glasgow accent was still as strong as it had been the day forty-five years ago when he’d left Clydeside to join the army. He was the only person Ben knew who said things like ‘och’ and ‘jings’. Boonzie’s real name was Archibald, but anyone who called him that would get their arm ripped out of its socket and beaten about the head with the wet end.

‘I ken ye wouldnae call if it wiznae wurth callin’. Hud on a minute.’

Ben heard the rustling sounds of Boonzie slipping out of bed and carrying the phone out of the room so as not to wake Mirella. A few moments later, Boonzie’s voice came back on the line. ‘What’s aun your mind, laddie?’

Ben replied, ‘Bosnia.’

The truth was, the SAS had been much more involved in the Bosnian conflict of the mid-1990s than had ever been officially revealed. Elements of 22 SAS A Squadron had been dropped into the country early on in the war, masquerading as regular troops. Once deployed, they had quickly become involved in key intelligence roles, as well as combat initiatives against Bosnian Serb fighters, who were to prove a tough and determined enemy. As the war grew ever more intense, one classified operation had seen a five-man SAS team dropped deep behind enemy lines to snatch a prominent Serb leader and war criminal from his mountaintop hideaway and smuggle him away for interrogation. The mission had helped to turn the tide of the war.

Boonzie McCulloch had been one of that five-man team.

As usual, much of the work of Special Forces units in that war would have been impossible without local help. The SAS were expert in the ‘hearts and minds’ approach to warfare, cultivating contacts on the ground to facilitate infiltration and intelligence gathering. Boonzie had been in the thick of the operation, more so than his younger comrade who had only seen the end of the conflict and the later pursuit of known war criminals.

‘Do you think Husein Osmanović would talk to me?’ Ben asked.

Osmanović was a Muslim Bosniak. On the morning of July 16th, 1995, Serbian troops comprising soldiers of the Vojska Republike Srpske and elements of the Serb paramilitary force known as the ‘Scorpions’ had stormed his village near the town of Srebrenica and perpetrated one of the worst atrocities seen on European soil since the Second World War. Together with other acts of butchery that claimed the lives of some eight thousand innocents over the course of just a few days that month, it came to be known as the Srebrenica Massacre. Soldiers forced the villagers from their homes and lined them up in the street. They began by executing anyone who tried to resist, then started on the women. When Husein Osmanović tried to stop the soldiers from dragging his wife and teenage daughter away, they shot him in both legs and then made him watch as they gang-raped and beat and strangled Dalila and Safija to death in front of him. Afterwards, they shot Husein four more times in the chest and laughed over what they thought was his corpse.

Husein survived, built himself back to strength and devoted the rest of his life to revenge. The name of the fringe political organisation he founded and led, Srbe na Vrbe! meaning ‘Hang Serbs from Willow Trees’, said everything about his attitude to his bitter enemies. He and his followers had played key roles in the SAS intelligence operations that eventually helped to win the war. But Husein, like Yugoslavia, would never be the same again.

‘I dinnae ken, laddie,’ Boonzie said. ‘It’s bin a long time. What do ye need tae ask him aboot?’

‘Everything he can tell me about a Serb gentleman named Zarko Kožul. A little bird told me he was a member of the Scorpions, back in the day.’

‘Diznae surprise me. We never did catch all the fuckers.’

‘Nowadays, Kožul is an organised-crime boss in New Belgrade. A pretty powerful one, by all accounts.’

‘Aye, an’ I can guess the rest,’ Boonzie said with a sigh. ‘Ye’re in trouble again. Am I reet?’

‘You know me.’

‘I do, laddie.’ Boonzie paused, sounding thoughtful. ‘Where are ye noo?’

‘Now I’m in London. Tomorrow I’ll be in Serbia. The clock’s ticking on this one, Boonzie.’

‘Leave it wi’ me. I’ll see what I can do, but no promises.’

‘I appreciate it.’

‘Jesus Christ, you’re a mad basturt, ye really are.’ With that line of flattery, Boonzie ended the call.

An hour and a few cigarettes later, when the mini-bar was somewhat emptier, Ben’s phone rang. He picked up. ‘Husein Osmanović?’

There was a few moments’ silence on the other end. Then a raspy voice with a heavy accent replied, ‘I believe you are mistaken. I have no knowledge of anyone by this name.’

It was all part of the age-old ritual of spy games. Ben said, ‘My apologies for the misunderstanding. May I ask to whom I’m speaking?’

‘My name is Adnan Tatarević. We would not be having this conversation, if it were not for my regard for our mutual friend in Italy.’

‘I understand,’ Ben said. The man’s voice sounded like a blunt band saw cutting ironwood. You get shot four times in the chest and survive, you end up with a voice like that. Ben knew he was talking to Husein Osmanović, but he didn’t contradict him.

‘And I understand that you are in need of information.’

‘Zarko Kožul,’ Ben said.

‘Why?’

‘Let’s just say I have a particular need to get close with him.’

The man calling himself ‘Tatarević’ was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, the raspy voice was dripping with hatred like molten lava. ‘That Chetnik motherfucker is one of the worst of them. He is the most feared organised-crime leader in Serbia, responsible for more murders than anybody knows. As a younger man he was a member of the Scorpion paramilitary unit who butchered many of my people in the so-called “ethnic cleansing”. Srebrenica, Podujevo, and many other terrible massacres. But I am thinking you already know this.’

Ben said nothing.

The voice rasped, ‘May I ask what your intentions are, assuming you can, as you say, “get close”?’

‘I have what you might call a bone to pick with one of his associates,’ Ben replied. ‘My quarrel isn’t with him personally. But that could change, if he gets in my way.’

‘As I understand it from our mutual friend, you generally settle your quarrels in a most decisive fashion.’

‘I do what I have to do.’

‘Yet, I fear this undertaking will be more difficult than even a man of your talents can deal with. Do you not think that many before you have tried, and failed, to penetrate the ring of armour that surrounds Kožul? He is protected by an army. Informants are everywhere, watching, spying. If Kožul sees you as a threat, to come within a mile of his stronghold would be suicide.’

‘Just the kind of odds I like.’

‘Nobody is that good, my friend. Not even you, not even if half of what I have been told about you is true.’

Ben smiled. Boonzie, putting in a good word for him. Osmanović almost certainly wouldn’t have called otherwise. Ben sensed his interest, and knew what was coming next.

‘You walk in there alone, without question Kožul’s men will take you down,’ Osmanović said. ‘You kill five of his, he will only send ten more to take their places. Frankly, I cannot see you coming out of this alive. Not unless you had some assistance.’

Ben flipped another Gauloise from the pack and lit up. ‘Assistance of what kind?’

‘I know some people who would love to get back at Kožul for the things he has done. It seems to me that your plan could serve a mutual purpose. You help them, perhaps they will agree to help you.’

‘How many?’

‘Three.’

Ben had no doubt that Osmanović was talking about himself, along with two associates. ‘You vouch for these people personally?’

‘You have my word, and my word is my bond.’

‘In that case, I would be interested in meeting with them,’ Ben said.

‘When you get to Belgrade, call this number.’