The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 37

The next day just after midday, Ben’s flight touched down at Nikola Tesla Airport. Belgrade felt chilly after southern England. The sky was a shifting mosaic of grey slates, and a diagonal rain was slanting down out of it, the kind of rain that finds its way into every crevice and soaks a man to the deepest core of his soul.

He was tired. Tired of chasing, weary of fighting. He’d left his near-empty bag in the boot of the Alpina at Heathrow, and felt oddly naked without it hanging over his shoulder. As he stood under the rain outside the airport and dialled the number he’d been told to call, he had to struggle against a strange feeling of dread that rose up inside him. It was like no sensation he’d felt before, going into a hundred battles. If he’d been a superstitious man, he’d have thought his peculiar apprehension was a premonition of something bad about to happen.

A different voice from the one he’d spoken to last night, but with the same heavy accent, answered the phone on the third ring and told him to take a taxicab to the Despot Stefan Tower. ‘It is a well-known landmark of the city. Climb the steps to the top of the tower and wait there for a man in a green hat.’

Ben found a taxicab for hire a minute later, and the car took off on its eighteen-kilometre journey towards the city. The driver wanted to chatter, but Ben wasn’t in the mood. He tossed the guy a bunch of the dinar notes he’d got from the airport bureau de change, closed his eyes and didn’t open them again until they’d reached their destination.

Back in the mists of antiquity, the then-tiny population of Belgrade had dwelt within the thick walls and ramparts of a stone fortress. The Romans had conquered it, various besieging armies had hammered it over the course of many centuries, and all that had survived to the present day were the scattered gates at its four corners. The Despot Stefan Tower was attached to the north-eastern fortress gate, named after a fifteenth-century Serbian ruler. It was the last piece of Belgrade’s older history still standing, and now a tourist attraction giving sweeping views from its ramparts over the breadth of the city skyline. Four astronomical telescopes stood mounted on posts, presumably to encourage visitors to observe the heavens. Ben didn’t suppose that the man in the green hat had chosen this rendezvous point out of an interest in astronomy.

Unsurprisingly on a gloomy day like today, the tower was deserted. The rain had thinned to a drizzle, which Ben didn’t mind so much except that the dampness made his cigarette fizzle out. Standing at the ramparts gazing across the city, he hadn’t been waiting long before his phone buzzed in his pocket. More instructions, he thought. Or else maybe the man in the green hat had got cold feet.

But it was a different voice, and a more familiar one, that spoke when he answered.

‘It was you, wasn’t it? Don’t tell me it wasn’t you, because I know it was. I warned you.’

‘Detective Inspector McAllister, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it sounds like you’re accusing me of some heinous act.’

‘You sound like you’re on Mars. Where the hell are you?’

‘A long way away from your turf, so relax. I’m not even in the country.’

‘Germany? Russia?’

Ben frowned. ‘That’s an odd question. Why would you ask me if I was in Germany or Russia?’

‘Because of the Silverman or Silbermann manuscript, or whatever the frig it’s called,’ McAllister said impatiently. ‘That’s what this is all about. Nazis, KGB, and some guy called Bird Leg. That’s why I’ve got an impaled organ player in the morgue, a music professor with his face blown off, and half my city looking like frigging Beirut on a bad day. And it’s all down to you, Hope.’

‘Bird Leg?’

‘Don’t change the subject.’

‘You have nothing on me, Inspector. As you know very well, or you wouldn’t be calling me like this. Besides, I thought we were friends.’

‘Oh, sure. Bosom buddies. Two peaches in a blender.’

‘Always with the cooking metaphors, McAllister. You’re in the wrong job. Should get back into the kitchen, where you can do something worthwhile for a change.’

‘Wherever the hell it is you’ve run off to, Hope, you’d better stay there. Show your face in my city again, I’ll be down on you like… like…’

‘A sack of potatoes?’

‘Watch it.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be attending more college reunions any time soon. Everyone I knew is dead.’

‘Aye, and the rest of us will soon be joining them, if you get half a chance. So do us a favour and don’t ever come back to Ox—’

Ben ended the call and cut him off. He was still trying to figure out what the hell McAllister had meant about Nazis, the KGB and someone called Bird Leg when a figure appeared at the top of the stone tower steps. A man in a long black coat and green baseball cap walked towards Ben, hands in his coat pockets, shoulders hunched. He looked in his mid-fifties, heavyset, greying beard, cautious eyes. As he came within a few steps of where Ben was standing at the rampart, the man stopped and pulled a small automatic from his pocket.

The pistol pointed at Ben’s stomach.

‘Major Hope?’ said the raspy voice.

‘I might have expected a more friendly welcome, Mr Osmanović.’

Osmanović glanced down at the pistol, hesitated for an instant and then slipped the gun back into his pocket. ‘Forgive my lack of trust, Major. It is in short supply these days. I am taking quite a chance meeting you like this.’

‘You know who I am, I know who you are. If I’d thought you intended to use that pistol, you’d already be learning to fly.’ Ben jerked his thumb behind him over the top of the rampart. ‘And you can call me Ben.’

‘Husein.’ They shook hands.

Osmanović beckoned Ben over to one of the telescopes. He angled it downwards on its pivot, so it aimed across the city skyline like a miniature cannon. He pointed through the drizzle. ‘Do you see that square concrete building in the distance, there by the river?’ Ben looked through the scope at the faraway building magnified several times in the eyepiece. The most unexpected feature was the rooftop helipad on top of the warehouse, marked with a big H.

‘That is the objective,’ Osmanović said. ‘The Rakia nightspot, on the site of an old slaughterhouse, owned and operated by our friend Zarko Kožul. He uses it chiefly as a money-laundering operation and legitimate business front, while the vast bulk of his profits come from peddling misery and death. The upper floor is where he has his offices, if you can call a dive of degeneracy an office. To reach it, one must pass through several layers of security. A gauntlet of Kožul’s men surrounds the building and guards their master’s lair day and night.’

‘If you have doubts about this target, why not hit his home instead?’

‘I have already lost two good men trying to discover its location. This is a secret known only to Kožul’s very closest associates. You see the helipad on the roof? Kožul never crosses the city by car. He flies into work each day from a private airstrip outside the city. He uses multiple vehicles to transport him between home and a hangar at the airstrip, always changing routes, and fitted with dark glass so that it is impossible to know which one he is in. Believe me, he is as devious as he is cruel. And so, we have no choice but to hit him here, at the Rakia. Though it will not be easy. His fortress is virtually impregnable.’

‘Look around you,’ Ben said, pointing at the ruins where mighty walls and turrets had once stood. ‘If history teaches us anything, it’s that nothing is impregnable.’

Osmanović smiled. ‘Your reputation is clearly no lie. I have a plan for getting inside, which requires the skills and bravery of a man like you. I will tell you all about it. But first, let me introduce you to my associates. They are waiting.’

Osmanović led the way back down the tower steps, to where a shabby, grime-streaked old-model Mercedes sedan was parked on the street below. Its interior hadn’t been cleaned out in at least ten years. Ben sat in the front passenger seat and lit a fresh Gauloise without asking permission. Osmanović didn’t object. Not car-proud, seemingly.

They drove through the glistening wet streets in silence, heading westwards from where the Danube and Sava rivers split and carved the city into segments. On the western fringes they arrived at what might once have been a thriving industrial park but now looked like a ghost town of old abandoned warehouses and cracked concrete, with weeds that sprouted tall in the car’s headlights.

Osmanović stopped the Mercedes outside the dilapidated entrance to one of the warehouses. It looked like the kind of place you might take someone to execute them. Belgrade, city of culture and beauty.

Osmanović got out of the car. He said, ‘Follow me.’