Page 24 of The Nameless Ones

‘How lovely for you, but we’ve had a series of unanticipated deposits. Is there something you forgot to tell me?’

The best way to avoid alerting the authorities to the movement of money was not to move it at all, or certainly not electronically, but the requirements of modern finance made this difficult. The next best way was to move sums of less than $10,000, but not so often as to establish a pattern, while any international transfer over $100,000 was guaranteed to arouse curiosity. American banks in particular were supposed to file SAR – Suspicious Activity Reports – for any cash transfers over $10,000, although the sheer volume of transfers, combined with the natural greed and perfidy of the banking industry, mitigated against total compliance. Golden’s clients stayed under the radar by advising him of impending transactions and receiving in turn recommendations on how best to disperse them, expertise for which Golden received a not excessive, but still generous, commission.

‘How much?’ said Louis.

‘One million euros, transferred into seventeen different accounts in transactions of between five and nine thousand euros a time, but not from the same source – or seemingly not from the same source, but in reality, almost certainly so.’

‘Not possible.’

‘With money,’ said Golden, ‘anything is possible.’

‘And have you established the source?’

‘No, I haven’t begun running back the cat. I thought I’d contact you first, just in case a million euros had somehow slipped your mind. One of the deposits did come with a message, though. It reads: “From one Hunter to another, with thanks”, and a capital “H” for “Hunter”. Does that mean anything to you?’

Louis knew that De Jaager had been planning to dispose of most of his physical assets. The old man had spoken of his intention to keep only what he needed and distribute the rest of the proceeds. Louis could not have imagined that some of the money would find its way to him, yet now it seemed apt. It was almost as though De Jaager had somehow anticipated what was to come and prepared the ground for retaliation.

‘Yes, it does,’ said Louis.

‘Should I be worried about the source?’

‘The source is dead.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

‘No, he would have been careful. That money is clean.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Carelessness costs extra. Now, how much did you want to move, and where?’

From memory, Louis named figures and accounts, and requested the transfer of the euro equivalent of $500,000 to prepaid credit cards, the cards to be made available for collection from a courier in Amsterdam. Golden said that he’d take care of it and hung up.

‘A problem?’ said Angel.

‘De Jaager sent me a million euros before he died.’

‘I always liked him. What’s a million euros in real money?’

‘Maybe a million-ten, a million-fifteen.’

‘If I’d known how wealthy he was, I’d have been nicer to him.’

‘I don’t think he ever placed much value on money,’ said Louis. ‘But that’s a rich man’s luxury, I suppose.’

Alex’s limo pulled up outside. Angel touched Louis gently on the arm.

‘At least we’re putting it to good use,’ he said.

Louis thought about De Jaager. He thought about Paulus, and Anouk, and the girl named Liesl. He recalled the latter from the library at the Rijksmuseum, glancing up at Louis and De Jaager as she and another girl, Eva, trailed a book dealer named Cornelie Gruner from the library’s reading room. Dead now, every one. For just a moment, Louis looked back on the path of his life and saw it littered with bodies.

‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Chapter XXIV

They flew not into Amsterdam but into Brussels. Louis and Angel had been with Parker at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport when Armitage came to meet them, which meant that their images were on record and might well remain connected to the investigation into the legat’s death. Louis didn’t know how much cleaning up the FBI and its confederates had managed in the Netherlands, but he wasn’t about to bet his liberty on the assumption that it included erasing video images obtained from airport security footage, or advising Dutch law enforcement that the men photographed with Armitage in Amsterdam should no longer be regarded as persons of interest.

They passed through Belgian immigration without incident, helped by the fact that they were traveling on clean US passports under names only marginally different from their own. The passports had cost Louis a lot of money, and had deliberately been kept unused, and therefore untainted, in case of the necessity of sudden flight from the authorities. Now he and Angel were burning these identities not on their own behalf but that of friends. They had no regrets about this.

They collected their luggage and passed through the terminal building to the sidewalk. A light drizzle was falling on a world that bore only a superficial resemblance to their own, for even the air smelled different here. They caught an airport shuttle bus to the Van Der Valk Hotel on Culliganlaan, but did not check in. Instead they walked to the parking lot, where an eight-year-old midnight-blue BMW stood waiting. As they approached, the trunk popped open. They placed their bags inside, closed the trunk, and got in the car, Louis in the front passenger seat, Angel behind him. The driver greeted them.

---