The gates were unlocked and hauled open. When the last of the line had passed through, the guards closed and relocked the gates. The new four trotted after the vehicles as they drove up towards the red house. The original four split back up into pairs and returned to their patrol duties.
‘What do you think’s up?’ Madison asked.
To Ben’s eye, going by the body language and behaviour of the guards, the developments down below looked exactly like the arrival of some kind of top brass or VIP dignitary at a military base. It wasn’t Kožul. Something else was happening. ‘Looks like a meeting,’ he said. ‘Ulysses told you Kožul does business at the house?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Maybe that’s what this is. We’ll soon find out.’
Ben and Madison crept along the rocky ridge to find the best elevated observation point overlooking the house. At this range, the high-powered field binoculars on maximum zoom offered a crystal-clear view of the front.
The SUVs pulled up in an orderly line along the red terrace wall. Black bodywork flashed in the sunlight as doors opened. Men stepped out. Ben scanned left and right, trying to count heads before they all started disappearing inside the house. He’d counted nine when he recognised the man in the white shirt. Kožul’s guy, Alek. Except now he was clad in a black polo and a grey suit that hung well off his slender frame. He’d been in charge of the men last night and he was clearly in charge today, issuing orders to the gorillas stepping out of the SUVs. There were enough weapons on display to fill the armoury at Le Val.
As Ben watched, Alek walked over to the third vehicle in the line and opened the back door. A tall and slightly stooped man in a linen suit got out, clutching an attaché case that had been laid flat across his knees during the drive. He appeared disorientated and unsteady on his feet, probably because of the black cloth hood he was wearing over his head. Once again, Kožul was being extra-cautious about protecting the location of his home base.
‘Not one of the crew, that’s for damn sure,’ Madison muttered. ‘It’s definitely some kind of meet going down.’
Alek took the visitor’s arm to steady him, turned him towards the house and then reached up and removed the cloth hood. Ben focused his binoculars carefully on the visitor’s face. He was older, completely bald, gaunt and grim. The Boris Karloff look.
Alek ushered the visitor from the vehicle towards the house, making apologetic gestures and being as courteous and attentive as a manservant. Maybe the guy was some big cheese they didn’t want to upset too much. Or maybe Alek was just lulling him into a false sense of security before whipping out a box cutter and slashing his throat. You could never tell with these people.
Madison touched Ben’s arm and said, ‘Ben, look.’
The front door of the house had opened and out of it, stepping into the sunlight to meet the arrivals, came one of the shortest adult men Ben had ever seen. He couldn’t have been much over five-feet-nothing in height, but he made up for it in width and muscle mass, both of which were considerable. He might have given the impression of a grotesque child bodybuilder, if it hadn’t been for the swarthy complexion and weathered features of a man around 50. He was wearing mirror shades that glinted in the light and was clad from head to toe, all five feet of him, in crimson red that matched the house. A human pillar box.
‘Zarko Kožul,’ Ben said. His guess about the crime boss being a little guy had been nearer to the mark than he could have imagined.
‘It’s the small ones you need to watch out for,’ Madison said. ‘Goes for snakes and scorpions, too.’
Kožul’s body language wasn’t that of a happy man. He was doing a good deal of pointing and yelling as his heavies milled protectively around him. He didn’t appear to extend the same degree of courtesy towards the bald-headed visitor with the attaché case as Alek. Privileges of rank, perhaps.
The last in the line of black SUVs was also the last to open its doors. As its occupants stepped out, Ben swivelled the binocs to take a look at their faces. ‘Well well,’ he murmured.
Dragan Vuković and his sister, Lena, walked towards the house. Lena was looking nervy and uncomfortable in a short, sleeveless red dress and must have been freezing in the cold breeze. Her brother had the swagger of confidence in his step as though he was completely in his element. He was wearing a dark cotton jacket over jeans, a smart-casual look that was a big departure from his usual pick of the Thugs R Us catalogue. Alek must have taken him out shopping somewhere fashionable.
‘Who’s the chick?’ Madison asked.
‘Her name’s Lena Vuković. She’s on the edge of the gang. The big fellow with her, that’s her brother. Looks like he brought little sister along as window dressing.’
‘The brother’s the guy you have the beef with, right?’
Ben nodded. ‘He certainly is.’
Kožul gave Dragan a cursory wave of acknowledgement, and Ben saw Dragan smile the way a dog wags its tail at a pat from its master. Then Kožul turned towards the house and motioned impatiently for everyone to follow. The small crowd began filtering inside. The four guards remained outside the house, manning the front like sentries.
‘There they go,’ Madison said. ‘All the eggs are in the basket. You ready to do this now?’
‘I was born ready,’ Ben said. He put away the binoculars and snatched up the crossbow.
Madison flashed him a piratical grin. ‘So what’re we waiting for, bud. Let’s rock the house.’
Chapter 52
They stalked their way down the rocky slope, moving cautiously from boulder to boulder, tree to tree, so as not to be spotted from the compound. No yells or alarm sirens sounded from below. No rifle shots cracked out. Reaching level ground they trotted fast towards the cover of the woods.
The ring of forest was about a hundred metres deep, after that they would reach the fence. They walked a few paces apart, treading softly through the trees. The carpet of leaf litter was spongy underfoot and made silent movement easy for people who had been trained to slip unnoticed through hostile territory. Madison Cahill might never have been a soldier, but she worked like one. I’m damn good at my job, she’d told him. And he believed it.
Ben’s nose picked up the faint, acrid tang of cigarette smoke. A second later, he heard the crack of a breaking twig from about thirty metres away through the trees. He froze and made a fist sign for Madison to do the same. They stood very still, listening hard.
Voices. More crackling and shuffling as the pair of guards circled the perimeter with all the stealth and noiselessness of a rhinoceros herd.
In total silence Ben unslung the Excalibur from his shoulder. Cocked, loaded and ready to go. His right thumb found the push-off safety button and pressed it to the fire position.
He could see them now. The original two they’d observed from the ridge earlier, the bearded one and the longhaired one. They were walking side by side through the trees, just a pace or two apart. Following the contour of the perimeter counter-clockwise, with the fence a couple of dozen metres further away to their left. Their rifles were cradled loosely in their arms. Both were smoking cigarettes.
Ben waited, barely breathing. The two men kept walking. The bearded one on the right was about half a head taller than his companion closer to the fence. Neither of them remotely suspected the presence of intruders. Maybe if they didn’t smoke so much on duty, they might have smelled them. Ben would have.
Ben slowly raised the bow stock to his shoulder. Madison was standing to the side, hiding behind a tree with her knife out. She flashed him a look, and he knew what she was thinking. With one shot he could only take down a single guard. Even if he made the cleanest kill in the world, the other would still have all the time he needed to fire off a hundred rounds while Ben struggled to recock the bow, and make enough noise to alert everyone inside the compound. Element of surprise, somewhat compromised.
Ben took careful aim through the scope. The centre of the crosshairs was an illuminated dot. Yo
u could choose between red and green. Green was brighter for visibility. At exactly the right moment, Ben let the shot fly.
The release of the bowstring made a dull thwack, as soft as a kid’s airgun. But there was nothing soft about the impact downrange. The bolt whooshed through the air and hit the taller bearded guard in the neck and passed straight through into the shorter one’s head.
The taller guard’s knees folded under him and he went down like a demolished chimney tower crumpling into its own footprint. The shorter one remained standing, his body posture sagging slightly, long hair drooping limply forwards from under his beanie hat, hands still clutching his rifle.
For an instant Ben half-expected the guy to turn and start shooting – then realised that he was pinned to the tree trunk next to him by the crossbow bolt that had skewered him through the right temple and protruded from the left.
‘Holy fucking shit,’ Madison breathed.
Ben walked up to the dead men. Stepped over the body of the first and tugged at the end of the bolt holding the second one up. The aluminium shaft was bloody and dripping. With a couple of sharp twists and yanks, Ben plucked the tip out of the tree bark. He caught the body as it began to fall, and lowered it to the ground. He left the bolt embedded in the guy’s skull and wiped the blood off his hand on the guy’s trouser leg.
‘Talk about killing two birds with one stone,’ Madison whispered, still shaking her head in amazement.
‘I won’t get that lucky again,’ Ben whispered back. ‘Might have to use our knives next time.’
‘Lucky my ass, William Tell.’
He bent down to pick up one of the fallen M16s. It was the proper military deal, with a three-way selector switch to choose between single shots, three-round bursts and fully automatic fire. Thirty-round magazines loaded up with mil-surp 5.56mm NATO ammunition. Thousands of these assault weapons had been circulating in all kinds of the wrong hands since the end of the Bosnian wars. Now two of them, at least, were back in good hands. Ben tossed one to Madison, took the other for himself and slung it over his shoulder. ‘For after. You know how to use one of these things?’
Madison arched an eyebrow at him. ‘Probably not. I only came second in my urban combat rifle course at Thunder Ranch in Oregon last year.’
‘Only second?’
‘The guy who beat me was ex-Delta Force. Now he got lucky.’
Ben recocked the crossbow and fitted a fresh bolt from the quiver. They gathered up all the spare magazines the dead men had been carrying, then kicked leaves over the bodies and moved on towards the fence. They were stalking their way through the trees some twenty metres short of the wire when Ben gripped Madison’s arm.
The second pair of guards were coming straight towards them. Ben and Madison each ducked behind their nearest tree and pressed themselves tight against it. Ben nodded to her. She nodded back, tense and urgent.
The path of the guards took them between the two trees. They were just ambling along, looking sullen as though they were pissed off with patrol duty. Ben and Madison waited until they had passed by, then stepped out from behind the trees.
Ben went, ‘Psst!’
The guards glanced quizzically at one another, then both turned round to look behind them. Ben let loose with the crossbow and the one on the left fell straight back with the end of the bolt sticking upwards out of his chest. The other one clawed for his rifle. Ben dumped the spent bow and unslung his M16. Now the shooting would begin and their stealth approach would be over.
Or not. Something flashed through the dappled sunlight between the trees. The remaining guard made a wheezing sound like ‘Dooff’ and dropped his rifle, both hands going to his belly just below the ribcage. He fell heavily to his knees and then toppled sideways, sprawled out in the leaves. Madison’s knife was buried in him up to the hilt.
Ben looked at her. She shrugged. ‘As a little girl I could bullseye watermelons at twenty paces. Now I nail ’em at thirty.’
‘What an enchanting child you must have been.’
‘Admit it, you’re impressed.’
‘Let’s get through the rest of today first,’ Ben said.
He left the crossbow where he’d dropped it. The attack would soon be entering its next phase, where the sneak approach would blossom into open combat and noise wouldn’t matter. Reaching the fence, he unclipped his own knife from his belt and fastened it together with its scabbard to turn it into a wire cutter.
Three minutes later, he and Madison had both wriggled through the hole he’d made. He used some cut branches to mask the hole.
Now they were inside the open ground of the compound.
‘So far, so good,’ Madison said. ‘Four bad guys down, only about another zillion to go. Walk in the park.’
Ben checked his weapon. Said nothing.
They moved on.
Chapter 53
The bald man inside the house was a sixty-year-old Bavarian called Conrad Heilbronner. In his time he’d been a museum director and senior insurance underwriter specialising in art and antiquities, before turning to more lucrative pursuits as a professional thief responsible for several major art heists and the deaths of five security personnel. Never caught, he’d quit that game while he was ahead. Nowadays he made his money as a middleman, consultant and broker, part of a network of similarly qualified experts across the world whose skills were constantly in demand.
It was a safer existence for him than his former career in violent crime, while still highly profitable. The illegal multi-billion-dollar trade in stolen art and antiquities ranked third in the world’s big-money rackets after arms and drugs. Pillaged artifacts from Syria and Iraq had provided a wonderful source of income for many years, all the more so now that dimbo terrorists had finally cottoned onto the fact that they could sell off the treasures they looted from UNESCO heritage sites instead of simply smashing them to bits.
Heilbronner had fingers in other pies too, and his own extensive network of buyers – businessmen, investors, private collectors, they came from all walks of life – constantly hungry to acquire more loot. With Heilbronner’s expert guidance they could purchase an item illegally for a relatively reduced price, sit on it for a period of time and then re-introduce it onto the legitimate market for a substantial profit, minus Heilbronner’s fat commission of course. Technically, sellers were required to prove that the item was kosher, in accordance with those pesky regulations of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law, or UNIDROIT. In practice, as usual, the law could easily be circumnavigated: Heilbronner’s use of free-port warehouses in tax-free economic zones like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands allowed his clients to discreetly store their illegal purchases for years, if they chose. Most were in no hurry to resell. As long as the stuff wasn’t too high profile, by the time the goods reappeared on the market at a massive price hike they were clean enough to eat your dinner off.
Alternatively, as some of Heilbronner’s clients preferred to do, they simply added the artifact to their personal collection and enjoyed possessing it, with no intention of ever selling. It takes all sorts.
Whenever the word went out that a special new item was on the market, Heilbronner was well placed to be one of the first to hear about it. On this occasion, as often in the past, it was one of his chief contacts, the Romanian known only as Ulysses, who had put him onto the job, by way of trading favours. Heilbronner already had two interested potential buyers for the Bach manuscript, with the bidding opened at half a mill subject to authentication of the goods for sale: a Saudi prince who was a classical music nut, and a billionaire real-estate tycoon in Miami who would snap up anything he could just for the hell of it.
But first, Heilbronner had to verify the item was what the seller claimed it was, even though it was patently obvious that the seller had not the first clue what they were holding, nor any accurate idea of its value. For that purpose, Heilbronner had flown to Belgrade that morning from his country estate in Schleswig-Holstein. He wasn
’t too happy about being made to wear a hood on the long, uncomfortable car journey to the house, but business was business and Heilbronner was the consummate professional. His mission was to carry out the initial evaluation, pending the outcome of whatever further tests he deemed necessary to validate the manuscript’s authenticity. He had brought with him a custom-made handheld XRF spectrometer, a highly sensitive scanner that used near-infrared light to measure the chemical composition of the paper, such as its gelatin concentration, which would quickly give an accurate reading of its age. It was a more efficient method than many of the older chemical analysis tests, which were often destructive to the sample.
Heilbronner’s case also contained a small electron microscope, with which he could examine the ink on the manuscript and gain a pretty fair idea of how old it was, as well as to compare the markings against digitised images of other original Bach handwriting and musical notation stored in his mini-laptop. The world was full of fakes, but Heilbronner considered himself an infallible judge.
Heilbronner was thinking that the only real sticking point here was this idiot Zarko Kožul. Kožul resented having to wait for test results to determine whether the sale could even go ahead or not. He appeared to consider it a personal insult against his good name – what a joke that was – that any testing should be carried out at all. Kožul wanted the cash, and he wanted it right away. What an ape.
They were all gathered together in the long split-level living room, which, of course, was decked out in crimson leather with a scarlet carpet and ruby wall coverings. Heilbronner was the only one seated as he expertly examined the manuscript on a table in front of him. He could tell it had not been well looked after in its recent history. Its life prior to that appeared to have been pretty rough, too.
‘What is this stain?’ he asked, pointing. He spoke perfect Serbian, plus eight other European languages.