The Wolf of Sarajevo (12 page)

“You mean me?”

“Yeah.”

Nikola turned to look at the bridge, and it seemed to Eric as though he were staring back into the past.

“Do you know the story of that bridge?” he asked Annika.

“Some of it. Maybe not all.”

“Suleiman the Magnificent commissioned it to replace a rickety old wooden thing that wasn't up to the job. Three times the architects built a stone bridge and three times it collapsed. The pasha, who did not want to look bad in the eyes of the sultan, was not especially forgiving of the failures. He had them impaled. Mimar Hayruddin, knowing that the penalty for failure was a horrible death, built a bridge of timeless beauty that stood for four hundred years. Maybe success must be built on the back of failure.”

Eric did not interrupt. It was a truism of diplomatic practice that when the guy on the other side of the table was negotiating with himself, you did not try to stop him. Nikola was bringing himself around to the right conclusion.

“So are you ready to join me?” Annika asked. “Are you ready to help build this bridge?”

Nikola turned his gaze away from the bridge and looked intensely first at Annika and then Eric.

“Let's do it,” he said.

Eric had not realized that he had been holding his breath, waiting for Nikola's decision. There was still a great deal of work to do, but there was now at least a path forward.

While the odds were long, they had a chance. Bosnia had a chance.

MOSTAR

JULY 1566

O
n the day before the bridge was opened, Mimar Hayruddin prepared for his own funeral. It seemed a reasonable precaution. This was the third attempt to span the mighty Neretva with stone. Suleiman the Magnificent himself had ordered it to be done, and what the sultan ordered had best be done. Even the impossible. Especially the impossible.

The architect of the first attempt had been a casual acquaintance of Hayruddin's. His bridge had collapsed before the keystone of the arch could be laid. The architect still guarded the approach to the bridge on the left bank of the river, or at least what was left of him did. His skeleton and the small bits of flesh and cloth that clung to the bones sat propped up by the sharpened stake that ran from the pelvis bone along the spine and out the mouth. The local bey's executioner had learned the trick from a descendant of Vlad
the Impaler of skewering a man from ass to mouth in such a way that no major organs were damaged. Those so punished could live for days, begging for death with their eyes.

The second architect had been a genuine friend, a fellow apprentice of Mimar Sinan's, the lion of Ottoman architecture. His friend had promised, rather foolishly, to deliver the bridge on an ambitious and optimistic schedule. He had run into problems when the riverbed had shifted under one of his pillars, causing cracks in the structure that had made the bridge unstable. He had been fortunate to catch the bey at a bad moment. In a fit of pique, the governor had simply killed him on the spot.

The third architect had been a rival of Hayruddin's, a man whose sole talent consisted of self-promotion. Arrogance did not span rivers, however, and his moldering corpse occupied a stake not far from his predecessors'. His death had been a blessing to the field of architecture.

Now the task of constructing the bridge over the Neretva had fallen to Mimar Hayruddin. He had not wanted the responsibility, but it was difficult to say no to the sultan. For six years he had labored on the project, and what had begun as duty had grown into a labor of love. The bridge was beautiful. His bridge. It arched over the green Neretva like the neck of a swan. Hayruddin had used local stone for the bridge, a kind of limestone with the luster of marble. The builders had joined the stones with metal pins, and Hayruddin had mixed a mortar of his own design that included horsehair and egg whites. The towers at either end of the bridge were slender and elegant rather than squat or utilitarian. They added to the bridge's grace and beauty.

Yes, the bridge was beautiful. But was it strong? Tomorrow the bey would watch as a team of oxen hauled a large sledge loaded with
bricks across the bridge. The slender swan's neck of the bridge seemed so delicate, so fragile, that many of the builders believed the span would simply snap under the weight. Builders. They did not know math. But they did know stone. Hayruddin would give them that.

If the bridge failed, Hayruddin would die, most likely with a spear skewering him from tail to tip.

“I am ready to die,” he murmured to himself.

“What did you say, Master?”

“Don't call me that,” Hayruddin said automatically.

“Yes, Master.”

Tahir was only eleven, but he was clever. Two years ago, Hayruddin had caught him stealing food. The bey would have taken his hand. Hayruddin put the boy to work. And he had fed him.
If you feed a stray,
Hayruddin thought ruefully,
he will never leave.
The boy had become his valet, somehow making himself indispensable. Hayruddin had been teaching Tahir draftsmanship and math. Not a merchant's math. The kind of math an architect would need. Tahir was a quick study. He had an eye and the potential to be a great architect one day.

“Tahir.”

“Yes, Master.”

“If I die tomorrow . . .”

“You will not die, Master. The bridge is strong.”

“If I die tomorrow, there is a bag of coins hidden in the back room. Silver and a little bit of gold.”

“Yes, Master. I know where it is.”

Hayruddin's eyes narrowed.

“Behind the loose brick in the corner near the desk,” Tahir added helpfully.

“And you were not tempted to steal it?”

“No, Master. I love you.”

Hayruddin actually had to blink away a few tears at that. The prospect of dying in the morning had made him soft.

“If the bey kills me tomorrow, take the coins. There is more than enough to get you to Istanbul. Find a man called Sinan. He is an architect, the finest in the empire. Give him this.”

He handed the boy a piece of paper folded into thirds and sealed with red wax.

“It's a letter,” Hayruddin explained. “Sinan will take you in and finish your education.”

“Yes, Master,” Tahir said obediently.

Hayruddin turned to the rest of his preparations. Tahir drew a bath and Hayruddin scrubbed himself with a harsh soap made of sheep fat and ashes until his skin was raw and red. The bey was unlikely to offer him the appropriate funeral rites. If his corpse could not be washed as custom proscribed, then he would at least go to his death clean.

Hayruddin laid out a fresh tunic. White. The color of death.

His papers were in order. He wrote a farewell letter to his wife in Istanbul. They had no children.

Tahir helped him lay out his clothes for the morning.

“You should eat, Master,” the boy said. “I can fix you something.”

“No, thank you, Tahir. I am not hungry.”

“Do not worry. You will not die tomorrow. The bridge is strong. It will stand forever.”

“Oh, Tahir, my son,” Hayruddin said. It was the first time he had called him that. “Nothing stands forever.”

GENEVA

OCTOBER 25

A
t one time, in his youth, Klingsor had briefly flirted with the idea of going to law school and following in his father's footsteps as a corporate attorney. Even as a young man, however, he had enough self-knowledge to know that the law was not for him. It was too staid. The work would be tedious, he thought, with little of the kind of psychological drama that engaged him. Instead, he had joined the army, quickly finding his home in intelligence and translating that experience into a career that had been many things, but never dull.

It was, therefore, somewhat ironic that Klingsor now found himself essentially heading up exactly the kind of multinational law firm that he had taken such care to avoid. Gisler's practice may not have been traditional, and his client base was certainly more colorful than that of a white-shoe firm in New York or London, but there
was no escape from the fundamental tedium of the profession. Contract negotiations, wills, and estate planning. Even Russian mobsters, it turned out, needed trust funds for their children's education and Caribbean tax shelters for their ill-gotten gains. One of Gisler's clients, a wealthy Arab who stood one hundred and seventy-sixth in the line of succession to the throne of Saudi Arabia, had retained Gisler to represent him in a zoning dispute with London authorities over plans to install a pool on the roof of his Kensington estate. It was hardly the kind of stuff to get one's pulse pounding.

Klingsor needed to keep all of the wheels and gears turning in the law firm while they searched for the package. It needed to look like the practice was functioning normally. If Marko Barcelona realized that Gisler was dead or even if he merely suspected that something was wrong, he would move quickly to set up another fail-safe. As long as he thought Gisler was still carrying his insurance policy, they had an open window.

Klingsor pushed aside the stack of folders on his desk that held the records for a senior Chinese general with an extraordinarily expensive Russian mistress. The general wanted Gisler to purchase an apartment for her, her third, it so happened. This one on Lake Como.

Klingsor stretched his back without bothering to stand up from the butter-soft executive-level chair. Gisler had been something of a hedonist. His office was beautiful, with a large mahogany desk and a wall of legal books with unbroken spines that Klingsor suspected had been purchased by the meter. There was a humidor stocked with Davidoffs and a decanter of Scotch that had no label but tasted like money.

The hum from the industrial-strength freezer in the far corner
of the office was a little distracting. Echoes Two and Four had manhandled the heavy stainless-steel box up the stairs to Gisler's office. Gisler himself was stuffed awkwardly inside. Echo Four had had to break both his legs to get him to fit. By now, the lawyer was no doubt frozen solid into a rough cube shape.

If Klingsor had learned anything about Gisler since taking over his office, it was that he was secretive by nature. He had no permanent employees, relying on a temp service to provide clerical support and never keeping the same person in the job for more than two weeks. Klingsor had broken the encryption on Gisler's computer without too much trouble. He had sent an e-mail to the temp agency announcing a last-minute vacation. The office would not be requiring the services of an administrative assistant for at least the next two weeks. Two weeks. That was about as long as Klingsor thought he could keep the charade going.

The door was open, but Echo Three knocked to alert Klingsor to his presence. He was a polite kid, but Kundry had seen his file and knew that the Andy Griffith looks and his aw-shucks demeanor were misleading. Echo Three was a stone-cold killer.

“Any luck?” Klingsor asked without much hope.

“Not a fucking thing,” Echo Three replied.

Klingsor motioned to the chair on the other side of the desk. Echo Three sat down and Klingsor poured him a fifty-euro slug of Gisler's Scotch.

“What are we looking at?”

“It's a mess. There are no real records. I think that Swiss son of a bitch kept most of it in his head. He didn't trust paper and he certainly didn't trust electrons. The computers are almost clean. Nothing but solitaire.”

“What about the safe-deposit boxes?”

“There are bills from various banks. They're all over town, just like fatso said before his coronary. But we don't know what's where. There doesn't seem to be a master key of any kind.”

“What about the ledger?”

The black leather book they had found in Gisler's desk was filled with coded entries, symbols of various kinds that did not mean anything to Klingsor or the Echoes. The code was too personal and idiosyncratic to give up its secrets easily.

“Can't figure it out. If it's coding for whatever insurance packages he's holding for his clients, there're no obvious indicators. Nothing that looks like a bank routing number or a safe-deposit box number. Any chance we could get the geeks to look at it?”

Klingsor hesitated. The nerd battalion with their pocket protectors and supercomputers could perhaps tease some meaning out of the ledger book, but there were complications with this operation, and they were not the kind that he wanted the Echoes to know about.

“Give me the book,” he said finally. “I'll see what I can do.”

Once Echo Three had left, Klingsor closed his eyes and massaged his forehead and temples with his fingertips. He could feel a tension headache coming on. This op had been a total cluster fuck from the beginning, and there was no clear path forward to success that he could see. The clock was ticking. The package was almost certainly somewhere in this city, but with Gisler dead, it might as well have been in Timbuktu.

The phone rang. Gisler's private line.

“Allo,”
Klingsor said in French. He could have gone with German, but he had the Swiss lawyer pegged as someone who preferred French
whenever possible. It was difficult to be elliptical and imprecise in German.

“Gisler?”

“No, this is his assistant. Monsieur Gisler is currently unavailable.”

“That is not acceptable.” The caller spoke German with an accent that Klingsor could not identify.

“I am sorry,” Klingsor said in his best High German. “I can get a message to Herr Gisler.”

“My name is Ibrahim Korkuti. Tell him that. He will wish to speak with me.”

Klingsor knew that name. Korkuti was Albanian mafia, head of the most powerful clan in the country and the kingpin of a criminal enterprise that encompassed not only the usual drugs and guns and extortion but also manufacturing and even mainstream politics. Korkuti had his own political party and a dozen seats in the Albanian parliament. His organization was also violent enough to make the Colombians and the Sicilians look like grade-schoolers. He was not a man used to hearing no.

“I really can't interrupt him at this moment.”

“I have something that I need to deliver to Gisler today for safekeeping. One of my associates will deliver it, but I want Gisler there personally to receive it. I won't trust anyone else. He will hold it for me as per the usual arrangement. For reasons that you do not need to know, the delivery must take place this afternoon. It is extremely important.”

“I will give Herr Gisler that message.”

“Tell me, assistant. Are your insurance premiums paid up?”

Klingsor hesitated. The last thing he needed was someone from
the Korkuti clan paying a late-night visit to Gisler's office and either burning it down or breaking in to smash the place up . . . maybe checking the freezer for a late-night snack.

“Give me a minute to find Herr Gisler, please.”

Klingsor held the phone with his hand over the receiver for almost two minutes as he thought through the problem set. He had an idea. It was not one that he was especially comfortable with, but at this point it was all improvisational. And improvisation, Klingsor knew, could be exceedingly dangerous.

“Herr Korkuti,” he said into the receiver. “Herr Gisler has agreed to receive your materials this afternoon at four thirty. But there are a few conditions.”

“What are they?” Korkuti did not bother to disguise the irritation in his voice.

Klingsor explained.

When he had finished, Klingsor called Echo Three into the office.

“What's going on?” Echo Three asked.

“We have a job to do,” Klingsor said, before outlining his conversation with Korkuti.

“Where do we start?” Echo Three asked.

“By thawing the son of a bitch out.”

—

The Albanian mob
was nothing if not punctual. At 4:32 the bell rang. Echo One opened the door and escorted the courier to the outer office. To Klingsor's mild surprise, the courier was a woman. He would have expected the Korkuti clan to be somewhat retrograde in its attitude toward gender equality.

Klingsor tracked her arrival on the computer with a feed from a series of closed-circuit cameras that the Echoes had installed for that purpose. He looked up from the screen in feigned surprise when Echo One and the courier arrived.

The courier was young and attractive, with raven-dark hair and features that were just on the edge of severe. There was a slight bulge at the beltline of her tailored suit, likely a firearm of some kind. In her right hand, she carried an attaché case. Black sharkskin. Very stylish. And no doubt outrageously expensive. Who said crime doesn't pay?

“Herr Korkuti sent you?” he asked in German.

“I am here for Herr Gisler,” she replied. Klingsor noted that she had not answered the question. It was a professional response.

“Herr Gisler is in his private study.”

“I was told that I would be able to see him.”

Klingsor nodded.

“But not disturb him. His time is exceedingly valuable. You may watch, however, as I deliver him the materials Herr Korkuti would like safeguarded. I assume that they are in the attaché.”

“It is the attaché. It should not be opened.”

“Very well.”

Klingsor extended his hand and waited while the courier's instincts struggled against her instructions. She handed the case over with visible reluctance.

“My employer is displeased with these special arrangements,” she said, seeking to salvage some kind of moral victory from the exchange.

“We do apologize for the inconvenience. This was very last-minute, is all.”

“It is not always possible to plan ahead in my employer's line of work.”

“I'm sure.”

Klingsor opened the double doors to the study. Inside, Gisler was sitting at his desk studying a folder that was open in front of him with an intensity that brooked no distraction.

“Wait here,” Klingsor whispered to the courier, trying to convey the importance of not disturbing the great man at work.

The blinds were not drawn, and this late in the afternoon the sun shone directly into the office. This would account for Gisler's decision to don tinted glasses at his desk. The large mirror on the far wall reflected the light back toward the outer office, leaving Gisler somewhat in silhouette. Echo Two had purchased and installed the mirror earlier in the day.

Klingsor saw the courier glance at her phone then up at Gisler. He knew what she was looking at. A photo of the lawyer. She seemed satisfied and slipped the phone back in her jacket pocket.

Klingsor walked the attaché case over to Gisler and placed it on the top of the desk where it would be clearly visible to the courier. Then he leaned over to whisper something in Gisler's ear, placing his hand on the lawyer's back as he did so.

From this close, the makeup job looked obvious and overdone, but Echo Four had assured Klingsor that from a distance it would look natural.

Gisler nodded his head, as though accepting something that Klingsor had told him. What the courier could not see was the handle of the screwdriver inserted into a small hole drilled into the back of Gisler's skull that Klingsor had used to manipulate his head. He would look stiff, Klingsor knew, but then he was a Swiss lawyer.

It would help that the courier seemed more interested in the briefcase than in Gisler. Whatever was inside it must be extremely important.

Klingsor did not linger. The longer he was in the office, the greater the chance of a screwup that would reveal to the courier that she was doing business with a week-old corpse. He exited the study and closed the doors behind him. They had been open for no more than forty-five seconds.

Echo One escorted the courier to the door.

When she was gone, Klingsor returned to the study and poured himself a stiff measure of Gisler's Scotch. In a slightly macabre gesture, he poured one for the lawyer as well, setting it on the desk in front of him.

“To your health,” Klingsor offered, raising the glass to his lips.

It had been a hell of a day. He did not know how long he could keep the charade going.

Maybe the code geeks could get something out of the ledger.

If not, Kundry had better deliver results.