Page 110 of The Nameless Ones

‘Okay, then,’ said Louis. He put away the gun and produced a wire garrote with wooden handles. ‘Let’s get this done.’

‘No, you promised—’

‘You ought to listen better.’

Louis was fast, so very fast. A kick left Radovan flat on the floor, and then the garrote was being looped around his neck. Radovan managed to get the fingertips of his left hand under the wire, but it sliced them off before tightening on his throat. Louis’s knee was in his back, and the wire was cutting, severing. Radovan felt his skin give way, and the flesh succumbed.

Blood flowed, blood fountained.

Life ceased.

Angel was waiting for Louis at a table in the Test Kitchen, almost within sight of Oscar Frey’s now redundant office. The Test Kitchen figured in every list of the world’s best restaurants, and Angel and Louis had decided to try the place while they were in town. They’d booked the table weeks in advance, just as soon as Oscar Frey’s true identity had been confirmed. Louis was wearing a fresh jacket and shirt. His earlier attire couldn’t be saved, and was now burning in a barrel on waste ground. Louis didn’t mind. The jacket was three seasons old and had never fitted quite as well as it should have.

A bottle of Charles Fox Cipher Brut sat in an ice bucket beside the table. A waiter materialized to pour Louis a glass.

‘Well?’ said Angel.

Louis sipped the wine.

‘I reunited him with his brother.’

‘Good,’ said Angel. ‘Nothing’s more important than family.’

Chapter LXXXVII

It was late spring when Angel and Louis finally flew into Belgrade. As the only black passenger on the flight, Louis had to endure a thorough baggage search, even though he was also the best-dressed person on board. Their driver was waiting for them in the arrival hall. His name was Željko, and he came highly recommended by Most’s Serbian contacts, which was as close to a guarantee of quality as one could get in an uncertain world. He spoke perfect English, and drove a black Lexus hybrid.

They had booked a suite for one night at the Townhouse 27 Hotel in the center of the city, and ate dinner that evening at Ambar, accompanied by Željko. There they consumed Balkan food, drank Serbian wine, and spoke of the Vlach.

Early the following morning, Željko drove them east to the Bor District, which bordered the Danube and Romania at its eastern extremes. At the Bukovo Monastery, they sheltered from icy fog as a monk fed them red wine from the monastery’s vineyards and said that, yes, he had heard stories of a creature that had taken the form of a young girl, but there were many such legends in these lands. Some said she was one of the rusalki, female entities that stayed eternally youthful, formed from the souls of young women who had drowned. The Romanians of his acquaintance claimed she was the restless spirit of a witch.

But what did he think, Louis asked, and waited for Željko to translate. The monk took his time before answering.

‘He thinks,’ said Željko, ‘that she’s the reason the monastery has a lock on its gate.’

The monk provided them with the name of Johain, a man in the village of Kobišnica, and offered to make a telephone call to let him know they were coming. Johain met them by the village’s two war memorials, where the local dogs emerged to sniff the newcomers curiously. Johain’s English was almost as good as Željko’s, and he admitted that only the intervention of the monk had caused him to agree to meet with them.

The village had just a few stores, and the streets were empty of cars and people. Like so many other such communities, it had been decimated by emigration. But Kobišnica, Johain explained, was also a Vlach settlement and had, for two centuries, been locked in a state of feud with the neighboring hamlet of Bukovce.

‘Because you’re Vlach?’ said Louis.

‘No,’ Johain replied, ‘because one day someone decided that he didn’t want to live in Bukovce anymore.’

Which sounded to Louis like as good a reason as any to leave a place.

‘The monk said you were looking for a certain girl,’ said Johain.

‘That’s right.’

‘Why?’

‘She killed a friend of ours.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

Louis did, leaving out only his own involvement in any subsequent deaths. ‘There was a rumor she might be Vlach,’ he finished.

‘She is not,’ said Johain.

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