The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 50

Ben had seen criminal kingpin mansions as grandiose and magnificent as regal palaces, but one glance at the distant group of buildings told him Kožul’s home wouldn’t be joining that list. He took a pair of binoculars from the kit bag and settled himself behind a large rock to observe the place more closely. It was more like a paramilitary compound than a country estate, roughly three acres in size and oval in shape. Judging by the halo of thick green woodland that densely surrounded it, the whole area had been levelled out of what had once been forest. The approach road carved through the trees and led up to a set of tall iron mesh gates inset into the high-security fence that encircled the compound. Once inside the gates, the road snaked towards a collection of buildings that occupied a rough semicircle across the rearmost half of the fenced area.

The largest of the buildings was the house itself. It was a rambling single-storey hacienda-style affair with a lot of big windows. Aside from the expanses of glass and the terracottatiled roof, every inch of the house was painted bright red. Red walls, red doors and window frames. A fancy red mosaic-pattern patio area stretched out to the rear, with a covered pool. The terrace at the front of the house was enclosed behind a low wall, also painted red.

Madison had grabbed the second pair of binocs and positioned herself a few metres away from Ben among the rocks. ‘Looks like hell,’ she said. ‘The man has taste, make no mistake.’

Ben scanned back across the compound. Moving clockwise from the house he traced the semicircle of other buildings, lingering for a moment on each one to study it. Nearest to the red house was a whitewashed block building with a flat roof and square windows facing in the direction of the gates. It could have been anything from a storage facility to an accommodation block for Kožul’s men. He guessed Kožul must keep a number of personnel on full-time duty here at the compound, maybe alternating them in shifts with the men who guarded the Rakia.

A little distance from the whitewashed building stood a large sheet-metal hangar that was very likely to be for Kožul’s helicopter. The hangar’s steel roller doors were closed, making it impossible to tell whether the chopper was inside or not. A smaller building adjoined the hangar, block-built like the other but windowless, unpainted and rough-hewn with a rusty corrugated roof. Maybe a workshop or generator room, Ben thought, judging by the aluminium electrical mast sticking upwards from its side wall with wires stretching to each of the buildings and the house.

Nearest to their side of the fence was an elongated carport, open front and back, under which sheltered a variety of utility vehicles and big-wheeled offroaders. Those might belong to the men, Ben thought, or else maybe were Kožul’s own little fleet.

Madison was still watching the house. She said from behind her binocs, ‘I can’t see a living soul down there.’

‘Nor me.’

She lowered the glasses and glanced anxiously across at Ben. ‘What do we do if the sonofabitch isn’t home?’

‘Then we hang around until he is.’

‘Could be days.’

‘I’m sure you’ve been on stakeout plenty of times before now,’ he said. ‘There are worse places.’

‘Sure are. This is like a picnic next to the bayous of Louisiana. Or the wilderness of northern Minnesota. Shot my first man there, after stalking him for four days straight, no food, no sleep. He was holed up in a cabin with a thirty-ought-six hunting rifle and all I had was my Kimber.’

‘Who fired first, him or you?’

‘I’ve been shot at plenty of times. If you’re thinking I’m liable to go all hysterical when the shit starts hitting the fan, think again.’

‘That’s good to know.’

She paused a beat, then asked, ‘What was your first time?’

‘First time doing what?’

‘Killing a man.’

He thought about it. ‘I don’t remember.’

Madison humphed, put the binocs back up to her eyes and resumed watching, now scanning away from the house and sweeping her field of vision carefully back and forth. Ben looked up at the sky. A bank of dark rainclouds was moving in from the east, pushed by the cold mountain wind that was whistling around their ears. He crouched lower behind his rock and used the sheltered space to light a cigarette. He offered the pack to Madison. She waved it away and went on watching.

A moment later she stiffened and said, ‘Wait, I see something. Six o’clock from the western edge of the fence, in the woods.’

Ben shifted position and snatched up his binoculars. The view in his lenses blurred as he swivelled across to pinpoint what she’d seen. Then he spotted them. ‘Got it. Good call.’

The figures of two guards were slowly ambling among the dense thicket of spruce and beech trees that enclosed the compound. Ben zoomed in as close as he could without losing focus. They were big guys in keeping with Kožul’s evident recruitment policy, both in their thirties. One had a beard and the other had long hair, which made them look like irregular militia troops in their surplus-store combat fatigues and black woollen beanie hats. Both were armed with what looked to Ben like full-size M16 battle rifles. Out here in the wilderness there was no need for compact urban-style weaponry, just as keeping up with the latest Belgrade dress fashions didn’t matter quite so much. The bearded guy was holding his gun diagonally across his chest and the longhaired one had his slung pointing downwards behind his left shoulder. Casual carry positions, the body language of for-hire soldiers with not much to do and little interest in their duties but following orders nonetheless. They were talking. Longhair turned towards his comrade, who rocked backwards on his feet as if he was laughing at a joke.

‘That’s something, at least,’ Madison said in a hopeful tone. ‘If the guards are on patrol, must be they’ve got something to guard, right? Means Kožul might be home.’

‘Or they might be guarding something else. For all we know, they’ve got forty tons of heroin or Saddam’s missing WMDs stashed in that big building down there.’

‘My gut tells me he’s home,’ Madison said firmly. Her eyes had narrowed to fierce slits and her jaw was set. ‘He’s home, all right. Probably had a late night and is tucked up all nice and warm in his little bed. Which would make this the ideal time to hit the sonofabitch.’

Ben didn’t want to approach the compound until the time was right. The time wouldn’t be right until he knew for sure Kožul was at home, because to spring an attack on an empty house would be disastrous. They had to wait for visual confirmation. Ideally for Madison, Kožul would magically signal his presence by appearing at the window waving the Bach manuscript in his hand and yelling, ‘Yoo-hoo, come and get it.’ Ideally for Ben, when Kožul showed his face Dragan Vuković would be standing there next to him, with a big target stuck to his chest. For both to happen at once seemed unlikely, but stranger things had happened.

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘We keep waiting and watching for now.’

They kept waiting and watching. Time ticked slowly by. The two guards continued their endless meandering circuit of the perimeter. Ninety minutes later, they were joined by another pair who emerged from the block building. Ben watched as the four men stood around for a few moments, visible in a clearing among the trees, talking and sharing cigarettes. Then they split back up into twos and resumed their patrol of the woods outside the fence. The doubling the guard had to mean something, but Ben didn’t know what.

Still no movement from the red house.

Ben unzipped the crossbow from the bag and used his waiting time to familiarise himself with how it worked. The prod was so powerful that the bow couldn’t be drawn back into the firing position without a special rope cocking aid. The weapon might be super-effective and quieter than any silenced firearm, but the trade-off was that it would be as slow to reload as an antique musket. Ben cocked it, fitted one of the hunting-tipped bolts into position and six more into the onboard quiver, ready for action. Being shot with a bullet wasn’t a nice prospect at the best of times, but the idea of an aluminium shaft driving a razor-sharp arrowhead through your body at four hundred feet per second was ghoulish enough to make even Ben shudder.

They waited. The sky darkened steadily as the rainclouds closed ominously in, ready to dump a million gallons of rain over the landscape at any moment. The guards kept circling. Madison’s body was tense and her face was tight and pale as she constantly scanned the compound through her binoculars.

‘This is taking too damn long,’ she muttered.

‘Look on the bright side,’ Ben said. ‘No guard dogs, at least none I’ve seen or heard yet.’

‘Maybe Kožul’s allergic.’

‘Bad for him, good for us.’

Two hours and sixteen minutes into their stakeout, the first heavy splat of a raindrop hit the rock next to Ben. Within the next minute, the sky opened up and delivered its promised downpour. Ben unrolled the waterproof tarp from the bag, crawled over to Madison’s position and the two of them huddled together under their makeshift bivouac shelter as the rain drummed hard on the plastic sheet and ran down in rivulets to pool in the hollows around them. Up close like this, Ben could feel the tension coming off Madison like heat ripples.

Two hours and forty-two minutes in, the rain stopped and the sun crept out from the clouds, painting the landscape in vivid colour as though the deluge had washed off a layer of dust. Three minutes after that, something else happened.

‘You see them?’ Madison said in a voice husky with anticipation.

‘I see them.’