The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 49

The next morning, Madison demonstrated that she’d regained her appetite by attacking the biggest breakfast Ben had ever seen in a truck stop down the road from the motel. Even the largest truckers were gawking at her in awe. ‘Eat when you can, right?’ she said between mouthfuls of egg, sausage and bacon. It might not have been traditional Serbian fare but at least there was little danger of finding a human ear in there.

Ben had only a cup of coffee in front of him. He generally didn’t eat much before a battle. And a battle was coming that day. That was for sure.

‘Finished?’ he said, draining the last of the bitter dregs. ‘Then let’s go shopping.’

‘Boy, you’re so much fun to be with.’

It took an hour of scouring the city before they found what Ben was looking for. The backstreet army surplus, camping equipment and sporting goods store was run by a little old man with a Fu Manchu beard and a shopkeeper’s apron, who never stopped smiling the entire time. Ben was wondering if a stroke had frozen his face in a permanent grin.

The store had everything Ben needed. He built a pile of goods on the counter as the old man went on grinning, now maybe for another reason. Two pairs of zoomable field binoculars; a pair of walkie-talkie radios with a kilometre range; a coil of strong, thin rope; a sheet of plastic waterproof tarp; two identical heavy-duty survival knives with blackened carbon steel blades, pretty faithful copies of the US military M9 bayonet right down to the lug on the scabbard to enable the weapon to double as a scissor-action wire cutter.

Madison was watching Ben as though wondering what they needed so much kit for. He held up one of the knives and asked her, ‘Do you know how to use one of these?’

Madison frowned at the weapon. ‘Uh, is the pointy end the part you stick into the other guy?’

‘Good enough.’

Ben was about to settle up with the old man when he noticed the item hanging on the wall at the far side of the store, and asked to see it. The old man happily took it down to show him. The crossbow’s stock was made of glass fibre painted in gaudy camo colours, and up close the weapon looked cheap and flimsy. ‘Let me show you something else,’ the old man said. Still grinning, he vanished into the back shop to return a moment later holding another crossbow. This one was a very different proposition. Black and businesslike, with a carbon fibre stock, scope, onboard quiver and a carrying sling like a rifle’s.

‘An Excalibur hunting crossbow, made in Canada,’ the old man said proudly. ‘Expensive. But for the buyer who appreciates real quality, what is expense?’

Ben would sooner have been able to purchase a firearm, but this was Europe, not America. Firearms required permits; bows didn’t. ‘I’d need the right kind of bolts,’ he said. ‘Hunting tips.’

‘May I ask what kind of game you have in mind?’

‘Wolves. Big nasty ones. Lots of them.’

The old man reached under the counter and came up with a box full of aluminium crossbow bolts. Their bladed tips were so razor sharp that you could shave with them. He explained to Ben that from this bow, these bolts would launch at four hundred feet per second. Half the speed of a pistol bullet. Nothing on earth could outrun them. Not even the biggest, baddest wolf.

‘How much for everything?’ Ben asked.

‘I like wolves,’ Madison said as they were leaving the store. ‘I hate the idea of skewering one with an arrow.’

‘I feel the same way,’ Ben said.

By mid-morning they were setting off in the stolen Range Rover, using Ben’s smartphone as a sat nav to guide them the ninety-plus kilometres to Zarko Kožul’s private residence. Madison’s thick black mane of gypsy ringlets was tied back under the black baseball cap. Her combat hairstyle. Her eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviator shades. She had gone very quiet, sitting motionless by Ben’s side, emanating a brooding energy that told him she was mentally preparing for whatever they might find when they got there. He left her to it, and drove in silence with just his dwindling supply of Gauloises and his own thoughts to occupy him.

As far as he could, he’d worked out his strategy. The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that they would find Dragan Vuković at Kožul’s private residence. If his suspicions proved right, Ben intended to capture Kožul and force him into luring Dragan out to meet him with the offer of a cushy full-time position in his gang. No wannabe gangster would refuse such an opportunity. Dragan would be dead before he’d even realised he’d walked into a trap.

That was, if things went to plan. Assuming they could get past the guards. Assuming a lot of things.

As midday approached, the city was a distant memory and the terrain had grown forested and mountainous. Kožul’s use of a chopper to commute back and forth to his Belgrade base meant that he could choose to live in the middle of nowhere, and that was exactly what he had done. The satellite led Ben onto a succession of ever-smaller, rougher roads, not a farm or homestead in sight for kilometre after kilometre. When the metalled road ran out altogether and became a steep, rock-strewn track, he shifted the Range Rover’s four-wheel drive into low range and locked the axle differential to help the transmission scramble over the rough ground. If you were going to steal a car, make it one appropriate to the conditions. The Range Rover bounced and lurched on, kilometre after kilometre, higher and deeper into the craggy mountains where majestic white-tailed eagles soared and circled far overhead.

Eventually, the 4×4 could go no further. If the terrain didn’t kill it, the hot, complaining engine would. Ben pulled up and shut it down. ‘We walk from here.’

Madison nodded. Her mental preparation was over. She was ready.

Ben jumped out of the cab, opened up the tailgate and hefted out the big holdall he’d bought from the old man in Belgrade to carry his gear. Silence hung over the mountains, just the whistle of the cold wind through the pines and the distant shrill cry of a bird of prey. By his reckoning they were still about six kilometres from Kožul’s place.

He shouldered the bag and nodded to himself.

He was ready, too.

They hiked onwards, speaking little. Madison had removed her jacket and carried it slung over her shoulder. She moved with agility and ease over the heavy terrain. Ben felt confident that he could trust her capabilities, if things got nasty. Which he was confident they would. He sensed she was thinking the same thoughts, about him, about what was coming, about potential outcomes. The banter between them was gone, just as Ben had experienced a thousand times before between military comrades when a fight is imminent and the mind clears itself for more serious considerations.

Sometimes the rocky track took them through wide open terrain, where Ben kept glancing up and around in paranoia that Kožul might have spotters posted on the higher ground to watch for approaching danger. There were none. Other times, the path of the track was swallowed up by a thicket of gnarly trees and overhanging branches, and Ben could feel the presence and cautious eyes of the creatures that lived there, watching unseen from the deep cover of the forest. Serbia was home to brown bears as well as wolves.

Ben felt a sense of kinship with the wild things. His quarrel was with a far more dangerous species. Predator against predator. And he was the most dangerous of all.

The track left the forest behind and followed the curve of a sweeping rocky ridge that teetered high above the wooded valley below. Ben no longer had to check the GPS coordinates. He was one with this place. As he made his way towards the vertiginous edge of the ridge, he looked down and saw that he’d calculated their bearings perfectly.

There, two hundred feet below them, nestling at the end of a private road that cut through the trees, lay the remote private residence of Zarko Kožul.