The Old Bridge Read online

  The indictment described how Muslims were forced to dress like HVO soldiers, ordered to carry wooden rifles, and made to walk toward Bosnian army positions in order to draw fire and enable the HVO to identify enemy gun positions.

  Johnson shook his head as he read a paragraph that described conditions at the Heliodrom. “Conditions were inhumane, with severe overcrowding, inadequate medical and sanitary facilities, insufficient food and water, inadequate ventilation, and in the summer, suffocating heat. Detainees often slept on concrete floors with no bedding or blankets. On some occasions, HVO guards withheld all food and water from the detainees in retaliation for HVO military setbacks.”

  It said that HVO soldiers often beat detainees until they were unconscious, causing severe injuries, fired bullets at them indiscriminately, set attack dogs on them and subjected them to sexual assaults.

  The indictment referred to numerous acts of torture, inhumane treatment and killing of Muslims between April 1993 and March 1994.

  “Is there more of this?” Johnson said as he handed the sheets back to Petar.

  “Yes. That’s just a few extracts. The indictment’s eighty pages long. And of course, that’s just the crimes and offenses they could identify, which were a tiny fraction of the whole,” he said.

  Johnson knew very well that there had been many serious war crimes committed during the civil war on all sides, but the ones listed here were extreme.

  Petar put the sheaf back into his pocket. “Franjo, Marco and Filip were responsible for quite a lot of those deaths, no doubt about it,” he said. “But it was only Filip who they caught and tried at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague and then sent to prison. The other two, Franjo and Marco, got away with it, as did very many others.”

  “They must have murdered dozens,” Petar continued. “When I first knew Franjo and Marco, they were quite happy to live alongside Muslims. Franjo was even married to one. But they changed massively—really seemed to hate them in the end.”

  Johnson stopped walking. The two of them were now on a high section of wall overlooking Lokrum Island, a mile or two out to sea, with the harbor to their left. He leaned back against a stone parapet and folded his arms.

  On a clear day, according to Johnson’s guidebook, it was possible to see Italy across the Adriatic from Dubrovnik, but there was far too much haze for that today.

  Johnson scratched the small nick at the top of his right ear. “So do you know what happened to these guys, Franjo and Marco? Where they are now?”

  “Franjo vanished not too long after that—gone,” Petar flicked his wrist away from him to emphasize the point. “He was a bit of an enigma. Some said he was killed when his truck ran over a land mine. Other people said he vanished somewhere and got a new identity. But nobody seems to know the truth.”

  Franjo and Filip had both trained as journalists together, Petar explained. That was how they knew each other. After studying at university in Zagreb, they had trained together for a while as subeditors and producers at Radio Televizija Zagreb, the Croatian state-owned broadcaster, working across both radio and television stations.

  But then the war had started and both men had joined the armed forces, as everyone did.

  “Franjo could well be dead for all I know,” Petar said. “But Marco’s still definitely around—nasty guy, made loads of money, I’m not sure how. There were whispers about illegal arms sales or something but obviously no proof. It was Marco who ratted on my brother to the authorities, the investigators. That’s why Filip ended up in jail while Marco and Franjo went free. The authorities never believed Filip when he said that the man who turned him in was part of it, too. And Marco paid off the ones that looked into it. But I know it can be proven.”

  Petar stopped talking as a group of tourists went slowly past with a guide. They all took photographs from both sides of the wall, looking down into the Old Town on one side and out over the Adriatic on the other.

  “So, this guy Franjo has disappeared,” Johnson said. “Has anybody checked out his files, I mean his VOB military records?”

  Johnson knew from his previous work in Croatia in 1999 that if Franjo had been in the HVO, then he would have a vojno-evidencioni obrazac, a master military service record, which would be held by the local office of the Ministry of Defence where he lived. It would include details of his conscripted military service, postings, the units he had served in, and other information, and would have been maintained, even during the chaos of war. It crossed Johnson’s mind that there might be references in there to where he was now, as the VOB was an important record for state pension purposes.

  But even as he spoke, Johnson suspected what the answer would be. The VOB files were not easily accessible without a good reason.

  “No,” Petar said, as if reading Johnson’s mind “You’d need someone on the inside to get them for you.”

  Johnson nodded. There would be ways around that if necessary, especially in countries like Bosnia and Croatia, where the wheels of bureaucracy could be oiled by dripping bank notes into the machinery.

  The last time, he had done exactly that and had found ferrets to dig out what he needed: two good intelligence service sources he had carefully cultivated. One had been in Croatia, at the Security and Intelligence Service of the Ministry of Defence, and the other in Bosnia, at the civilian intelligence service, the Agency for Investigation and Documentation. Both men were still in their jobs, although the names of their agencies had changed. Maybe he could call on them for help again.

  “But why have you taken so long to do anything about this?” Johnson asked. “Haven’t you talked to anyone before?”

  Petar shifted from one foot to the other. “I was never going to tell anyone,” he said, “partly because I didn’t want people targeting me or my brother when he finally comes out of jail. These are dangerous people. You start talking, and before you know it . . . ” He shrugged. “But I’ve changed my mind over the years. It’s been eating away at me, seeing my brother holed up in prison while these other guys go free. I approached a senior policeman I know, privately, but he said that without proof, it would be difficult to pin anything on Marco. Likewise with Franjo, although he had disappeared anyway.”

  “Okay,” Johnson said. “Do you have any old photographs of Franjo? At least that would help for ID purposes.”

  Petar shook his head. “No, nothing. But there is one thing that makes his disappearance even more peculiar. Franjo was, to my mind, quite easily identifiable, not because of his looks generally but because of his eye. He had a slightly odd iris. You know the circular pupil in the middle of a normal eye is black, then there’s a colored surrounding bit, the iris? Well, Franjo’s right eye had a very narrow black line that ran from the pupil down across the iris. It made his eye almost look like a keyhole.”

  Johnson nodded. “A coloboma, you mean?” He knew exactly what Petar meant because an old school friend had something similar. It was a very distinctive identifying feature, but when he was older, his friend used to wear a colored contact lens to cover it up.

  “Exactly,” Petar said. “A coloboma. That’s what it’s called. He also used to have a thick beard. He was a skinny guy but strong. Well muscled.”

  The more Petar talked, the more Johnson felt intrigued. But he was now also starting to fade a little. After the alcohol he’d drunk the previous night and waking up early, plus the absence of caffeine, his mind was now slightly fuzzy.

  “Shall we go for that coffee now and continue talking at the café?” Johnson asked.

  “Yes, I’ve said most of the sensitive information now. Let’s go.” Petar smiled for the first time that morning, his forehead less furrowed. He retraced their steps around the wall and down the steep stone staircase to ground level, then back to the café.

  They sat down at a white wooden outdoor table beneath a canvas awning. Petar signaled to a waiter and ordered two cappuccinos.

  Johnson watched him carefully. If all that Petar had sa
id was true, then it sounded potentially interesting, but he would definitely need to have the story verified before he could start to think about pursuing it further.

  Then Petar’s phone beeped loudly. He took it out of his pocket and read a message, completely focused on what was on the screen. He put the phone down on the table in front of him. His shoulders hunched, and he unconsciously stroked his chin, staring straight past Johnson, deep in thought.

  “Everything all right?” Johnson asked.

  Petar jumped a little. “Yes, yes. Just thinking.”

  As the waiter arrived with their coffees, Johnson took the opportunity to take out his own phone to make sure the recorder was working properly, and to check his emails. There was a note from his fourteen-year-old son, Peter, asking if he was enjoying the sunshine and saying it was raining hard in Portland; he said he was looking forward to the family getaway in Castine.

  Johnson smiled and tapped out a short reply.

  Petar seemed to partly recover his poise, then excused himself to go to the bathroom. Johnson watched as he walked into the café, then cut left between the tables and disappeared through an open doorway at the back.

  Johnson took another sip from his coffee, then put it down. Just then, a high-pitched shriek came from inside the café. Johnson saw a woman in a red dress emerge from the bathrooms. Clearly agitated, she yelled something in Croatian that Johnson didn’t understand, and a white-shirted waiter ran across to her. They both disappeared back through the door.

  Something was wrong. He slowly stood, a shard of anxiety digging into his stomach, then walked into the café and made his way to the door leading to the bathrooms, just as the woman in red came running out past him, babbling something unintelligible.

  Johnson found himself in a long, dark corridor. At the far end, right outside the entrance to the men’s bathroom, the waiter was crouched over someone lying on the white stone floor.

  The person on the floor was Petar.

  Johnson felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle involuntarily. “What the hell . . . ” he said out loud, before remembering to switch to Croatian. “What’s happened?”

  The waiter turned his head sharply and stood. He waved his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “He is shot in the head,” the waiter said.

  Johnson bent down. Petar was facedown, his legs splayed and right arm trapped under his body. There was a dark red pool of blood spreading across the floor. Now he could see where a bullet had entered the back of his head.

  “Go and call an ambulance, quickly,” Johnson ordered. He said the words almost instinctively, but he knew it was pointless.

  “The lady is calling,” the waiter said.

  “No, she was panicking. You do it—now, quickly,” Johnson said firmly, again in Croatian.

  The waiter nodded and ran back toward the exit.

  Johnson took a deep breath, then slowly turned over Petar’s body. There, to the right of his forehead, below the hairline, was a ragged exit wound, where the blood was coming from. Johnson gagged a little and swallowed hard to quell it.

  Then he noticed there was a phone in Petar’s right hand, under his body. Johnson picked it up and stood. He knew immediately what he was going to do. He gently put Petar’s body back as it had been, then slipped into the bathroom, where he removed the battery and the SIM card from the phone and pocketed everything. Opening the door a fraction, he made sure no one was in the hallway and then exited the bathroom. Then he walked back along the corridor and out into the main café area.

  He looked left. The waiter whom he had told to phone for an ambulance was standing, a receiver clamped to his right ear, speaking quickly and gesticulating, facing away from Johnson.

  The woman in red was standing near the waiter, now wailing loudly, waving her arms and telling other customers at a nearby table what had happened. A couple of them jumped to their feet. Some of the people queuing on the quayside for the ferries, attracted by the woman’s shrieks, were drifting over.

  It was obvious to Johnson how the scene was going to play out. Within minutes the café would be swarming with police and ambulance crews. Yet nothing could be done to help Petar.

  Johnson walked toward the waiter. As much as he disliked the idea of getting involved with the authorities, he knew he was going to have to give a statement of some kind.

  But he just might omit a few details.

  Chapter Three

  Thursday, July 5, 2012

  Dubrovnik

  An hour later, Johnson left the café. He had been questioned by two police officers and had told them that he’d met Petar for the first time at a conference the previous day. He said they had decided to meet for coffee that morning to discuss history and work and had taken a short walk around the walls before heading for the café.

  He omitted details about pocketing Petar’s phone and that they had discussed searching for war criminals. That would have opened a can of worms. The last thing Johnson wanted was for police to start inadvertently alerting the men Petar had mentioned, Marco Lukić and Franjo Vuković, assuming they were still alive.

  So, after his statement and ensuring that several patrons in the café had verified that he hadn’t left his table while Petar was in the bathroom, he was allowed to leave. The police took his contact information in case they had more questions.

  Once Johnson had escaped the confines of Dubrovnik Old Town and its claustrophobic maze of narrow streets, he looked around for somewhere private where he could check Petar’s phone.

  He saw a tourist office and walked inside, then made his way to a bathroom in the corner. There he locked himself in a stall, took out the phone, replaced the battery but not the SIM card, and scrolled up the list of text messages on the device, all of which were in Croatian.

  Johnson knew enough of the language to get a good sense of most of the messages. After checking the translations of a couple of words on his smartphone, he quickly pieced together the contents of the final message listed.

  I’ve been watching you with the American. You’re making a mistake. He’s not what he seems. Be careful.

  Johnson frowned. The number from which the message had been sent was visible, but there was no name attached to it. It worried Johnson that the person who had sent it had apparently been watching him and Petar—and therefore, logically, he had to assume it was probably the same person who had shot Petar.

  But why is he warning Petar about me?

  Johnson had taken no countersurveillance measures as there had seemed to be no need. But now he quickly cycled through his memory of the moments before Petar’s death. There had been so many people in the café, and Johnson had been taking in many of the faces and their clothing as he waited for Petar to return from the bathroom. It was an old CIA street habit that had stuck with him.

  Who had come from the bathrooms? There was the woman in the red dress, the waiter, two middle-aged women and then—there had been a man. Johnson concentrated. The man had been wearing sunglasses and a navy baseball cap over his dark hair.

  After the murder, he had seen all the people again, apart from the man in the baseball cap, who must have left. He had to be the most likely suspect.

  Johnson glanced down at the phone in his hand. It was an old, basic Nokia model, not a smartphone, so there were no emails on the device. Johnson put the phone back in his pocket, then went outside again. This time, he carefully checked around him for any sign of the man who he now believed had shot Petar. There was nobody in view.

  The departures board at the bus stop at Pile, outside the main gate to Dubrovnik’s walled Old Town, showed that the next number six bus to the Babin Kuk peninsula, where his hotel was located, was due in two minutes.

  An ambulance screamed past, its blue and red lights flashing, siren blaring, heading in the direction of the Old Town harbor.

  Johnson leaned against the bus stop post and turned his attention back to Petar’s previous text messages.

  There were a few sug
gestive messages from a woman called Olga, clearly not Petar’s wife, who signed off with “xxxx Olga” on all her messages. There were a whole series of exchanges with some friends that appeared to be about a soccer team, Hajduk Split, and a few to and from another number. These last messages said something about it being his mother’s birthday, had she still been alive, and about trying to arrange a visit. The sender was presumably Petar’s father.

  Then, going back six weeks, there was another threatening message from the same number as that morning’s missive, saying that the sender had heard that Petar had talked to someone about “our wartime activities” and that he should keep his mouth shut—otherwise there would be “serious consequences.”

  That was it—no signs of other contact from the same number. No incoming or outgoing calls listed on the calls register.

  Johnson removed the phone battery again. He didn’t want it to be traced while it was in his possession.

  A number six drew into the bus stop. He joined the short queue, paid the driver, and made his way to the back of the bus. The air conditioning was a welcome relief from the rising heat outside.

  He tried to think through the best course of action. He was away from the scene of the killing, not being followed, and was on the way back to his hotel. But now what?

  Was this thing worth his attention? Petar had said there was no proof, and the detail was vague. The issue lay in evaluating the importance of what Petar had said and the significance of what might be, in reality, just a few straightforward wartime killings.

  But someone clearly thought it was important—the person pulling the trigger on Petar at the café.

  Johnson also had to bear in mind the other work options he had. The discussions he had lined up in Istanbul, relating to arms deals for Syrian rebels, seemed quite promising.