Page 103 of The Nameless Ones

Despite the circumstances, Frend managed a smile.

‘You have the documents?’ said Ilic as they reached him.

‘Yes,’ said Kauffmann.

‘What name have I been given?’

‘Thomas Rusin.’

Ilic repeated the name aloud. ‘I like it,’ he concluded.

‘That’s of no consequence,’ said Kauffmann, ‘not unless you intend to spend a lot of money changing it again.’

‘Show them to me.’

Kauffmann withdrew the envelope for the second time, tipped out the passports, and displayed for Ilic the relevant page on each, but did not hand them over. When she had finished, Ilic stepped back from the bag and invited her to examine its contents. Kauffmann knelt and unzipped it, revealing only a bundle of used copies of Der Standard. She looked up.

‘What is this?’ she said.

And Zivco Ilic shot her in the face.

Chapter LXXX

From the passenger seat of a van parked a block and a half from the hotel, Majid Ali al-Shihri, aka Mr Rafi, had watched his attempt to capture the lawyer Frend fall apart. Next to him sat the scarred man, Mohsin al-Adahi, the worst of his disfigurement hidden by a cap. More police cars passed, followed by an ambulance, although it was traveling without sirens or lights. Whoever it was coming for had either suffered only minor injuries or was already dead.

Mr Rafi tapped al-Adahi on the shoulder.

‘Time to go,’ he said.

Louis had betrayed them. There could be no other reason for what had occurred. The result had left Mr Rafi a walking corpse. He had lost two people in Paris and now more operatives here, in Vienna. In the eyes of his superiors, he would be adjudged desperately unlucky, fatally inefficient, or secretly working against jihad. None of these judgments was conducive to a long life. If he was fortunate, he might be permitted to reveal Louis’s perfidy before he died, and would go to Paradise knowing he had doomed the American.

Beside him, al-Adahi turned to him as though to ask a question. Mr Rafi felt a sudden coldness at his throat, followed by a burning pain. He raised his right hand as a spray of bright arterial blood obscured his view through the windshield. He was only vaguely aware of the driver’s door opening and closing as Mohsin al-Adahi walked away, the blade making a sound that was almost musical as it hit the road.

The darkness came for Mr Rafi. He fought against it as best he could, but in the end, as it always must, the darkness won.

Chapter LXXXI

Frend looked down at Kauffmann’s body. Her eyes were closed and her features contorted, as though she had survived just long enough to register the pain of the bullet’s passage. It had left a small hole in the bridge of her nose, but very little blood.

‘Help me get her into the chapel,’ said Zivco Ilic. He grabbed her left leg, but Frend did not move. He supposed he was in shock, but he was also thinking about his future, because as of that moment he no longer seemed to have one. He needed the passport, but the passport had died with Kauffmann.

‘Why did you do that?’ he said, once he’d found his voice. ‘Why didn’t you just pay her the money as agreed?’

But Ilic was too busy dragging Kauffmann into the dimness of the chapel to reply. Frend, realizing that the only thing worse than what had already happened might be someone coming across the body, awkwardly lifted Kauffmann by the arms. He lost his grip and her head banged against the chapel floor, but by then she was out of sight. Ilic finished the job unaided, dumping her against the wall. He picked up the fallen envelope and placed it in his jacket pocket before tossing the bag on top of the body. He then pulled the doors closed behind him, followed by the metal gates.

‘The money,’ said Frend. ‘Where is it?’

‘Don’t you understand?’ said Ilic. ‘There is no money! Radovan said that he’d found a way to get it, but the funds never came through. It’s of no consequence now. We have the passports, and by the time they find the body, we’ll be gone.’

‘You’ll be gone,’ said Frend. ‘What about me?’

‘You can talk your way out of trouble. That’s all you lawyers are good for, talking. Anyway, what have you done that’s so bad? You moved some cash around, nothing more. Your banking system launders millions for the Russians and your prosecutors don’t even blink, so what do you think they’ll do to you? You’ll barely feel the slap on the wrist.’

‘And Kauffmann?’

By now Frend was trailing Ilic as he walked quickly to the parking lot.

‘What of her?’ said Ilic. ‘She’s dead.’