Page 46 of The Nameless Ones

‘We think so. Your father has been helping the Vuksans since the Balkan wars. Without him, they might never have survived. Who else would they turn to in their time of trouble?’

‘Do you want me to ask him where the Vuksans might be?’ said Lackner.

‘Would he tell you if you did?’

‘I doubt it. I may be his daughter, but he’s still a lawyer.’

‘Well, then,’ said Angel, ‘I think we may have to find another way.’

Chapter XXXIX

Anton Frend, the subject of this discussion, was currently at Vienna International Airport, sitting in the Austrian Airlines business lounge while he waited to board his delayed flight to Belgrade. He had left home without saying goodbye to Mina, his wife, who had already departed for her regular yoga class, to be followed by an abominably healthy late breakfast with some of her abominably healthy friends. She was now absent from the house so often that Frend might almost have suspected her of conducting an affair had she not lacked the appetite or imagination for infidelity.

Frend knew that his wife was aware of his mistress even if, in typical Viennese fashion, she chose to ignore the fact of her existence. Mina, though, was probably grateful to be spared his advances. She had always found sex distasteful – the mess, the noise, the smells, the fluids. It was why they only had one child: after she had successfully given birth to Pia, Mina had seen no further reason to engage unnecessarily in the mechanics of intercourse. Pia was enough for her, or perhaps regular sexual activity with her husband was too high a price to pay for expanding the family.

They could have divorced, of course, but the process and aftermath would have been socially awkward for both of them. In addition, Mina did not trust Frend to behave generously in any settlement, or not to use his contacts in the legal community to make life as difficult as possible for her, which suggested a degree of acuity on her part. But Mina was also Frend’s only remaining point of contact with their daughter, and fed him tidbits of information about her life, as much to taunt him as anything else. Were they to separate, even this modest line of communication would be severed, and Pia would be rendered a complete stranger to him.

As for Radka, his Bulgarian mistress, Frend was under no illusions about her reasons for being with him. He had bankrolled her boutique in Neubau, and he paid for their expensive weekly dinners in restaurants where the minimalism of the décor reflected the paucity of food on the plates. In return, he received from her the sexual favors denied him by his wife, and, equally importantly, enjoyed conversations with an element of human warmth to them. A private investigator hired by Frend had assured him that Radka appeared to be faithful to him, although whether out of genuine affection or a reluctance to endanger her financial position was unclear.

The display screens indicated that the Belgrade flight was now boarding. With what might have seemed like a degree of resignation, Frend unfolded himself from the chair and placed his newspaper in his overnight bag. In the past he had enjoyed his intermittent visits to the Serbian capital, the food being some of the best in Eastern Europe thanks to the enduring culinary influence of the Turks. This trip, though, was more problematic, and carried with it certain risks. He was representing the Vuksans, and the Vuksans were currently personae non gratae in Serbia. Despite this, a formal channel of communication had to be opened following the death of Nikola Musulin. The Vuksans wanted – needed – to return home. It was Frend’s task to discover the price of this repatriation.

Hendricksen watched Frend leave the lounge, but took his time before following. Thanks to Hendricksen’s efforts, and the expenditure of an eye-watering amount of Louis’s money, all transactions on Frend’s personal and business credit cards were now being monitored. Minutes after Frend’s secretary had booked the return trip to Belgrade for her employer, Hendricksen had obtained seats on the same flights. It might have been better to have reserved a seat in economy, if only to lessen any possibility of Frend becoming familiar with Hendricksen’s face. On the other hand, the investigator wanted to be within earshot if Frend used his cell phone on the plane.

They boarded, and Hendricksen took the aisle seat that had been reserved for him directly behind Frend, who stood aside to allow a young woman to occupy the window seat beside him. Hendricksen saw Frend take in the woman’s figure and wondered if the lawyer might be considering trading in his Bulgarian girlfriend for a newer model. Details about Radka had been included in the dossier on Frend. The possibility of using her to get to her lover had been raised by Louis, only to be dismissed after Hendricksen had succeeded in chasing up a series of payments to one of her bank accounts. They originated from a holding company in Amsterdam, the same company responsible for running two nightclubs in the city operated by associates of the Vuksans. Evidently the brothers were not the trusting kind, not even when it came to their own legal advisor, which explained why they’d survived for so long. Either the Vuksans had deliberately introduced Radka to Frend, or they had recruited her after the relationship began in order to have another set of eyes on the lawyer. Whatever the sequence of events, she was a tripwire: had Louis and Hendricksen tried to exert pressure on Frend through her, the Vuksans would have been alerted immediately.

Frend used his phone only to send texts and emails while boarding continued. It would have been useful to be able to monitor his cell phone and email communications, but that kind of surveillance was beyond the capabilities of the hunters, and when Louis had suggested it to Harris, the spook just laughed. It seemed that Harris’s interest in the Vuksans – and, by extension, that of the American authorities – began and ended with nailing Aleksej Markovic and intercepting the delivery of his cargo. Now that Markovic and the two Syrian undesirables were dead, Louis and the others could expect little help from that quarter.

Frend stuck to coffee when refreshments were served. Hendricksen did likewise. He spent the duration of the flight refamiliarizing himself with the geography of Belgrade even though he had a driver, Dušan, waiting for him at the airport. Dušan was a former interpreter for the UN, and now ran his own limousine company. He, like Hendricksen, had been at Srebrenica.

Hendricksen had not expected to return to the Balkans; the region held only bad memories for him. Perhaps the outcome of the Frend pursuit would alter that situation, but he doubted it. The best he could hope for would be to make up for past deficiencies – his own, and those of others.

Chapter XL

Spiridon and Radovan Vuksan watched the ongoing coverage of the Paris shootings on the television in the living room while Zivco Ilic worked the phone and monitored online chatter.

Two things were clear. The first was that the Vuksans would not be receiving the final portion of their fee for the safe delivery of the Syrian cargo, which was unfortunate. The second was that those who had entrusted the Syrians to their safekeeping would want to know why two of their most senior people had been martyred at a Paris railway station. They would already be trying to establish if they had an informant in their ranks, but only as a formality.

If the traitor were at their end, he would have passed on details of the operation long before Saad and Mahdi ever boarded the boat to France, a drone strike in the North African desert being easier and less dangerous than a confrontation at a crowded Parisian transportation hub. Similarly, the two men could have been intercepted shortly after they landed at Port-Vendres, or while they were in the safe house outside the town. Instead, the French had waited until they arrived at Gare de Lyon before moving on them, with the associated risk of civilian casualties should the men have been in possession of explosive devices, or had they elected to fight it out.

To Radovan, this suggested necessity rather than choice on the part of the French. While they might have had some foreknowledge that valuable ISIS operatives were headed for their territory, they didn’t know how, or when, until the Syrians were actually on the train to Paris. Radovan knew that Markovic would have stuck to established procedure and isolated all stages of the operation, meaning that only he and the Vuksans were aware of all the arrangements, including false trails involving misinformation, unused cars and apartments, and associates placed on alert who would never be called upon to act. Markovic had also decided to split the long journey to Paris between road and rail in order to minimize the risk of interception, so that even Baba and Fouad were not aware of the final destination until they boarded the TGV to Gare de Lyon at Perpignan. No, the leak had occurred only once the final phase of the trip was confirmed, which meant that either Fouad or Baba had betrayed them.

The latter was currently in police custody: there was footage all over the internet of his apprehension by armed police. Of Fouad, there was as yet no trace. The fact that the French had seized Baba did not mean anything. If he was the informant, it would have been natural for the police to spirit him away as quickly as possible; if he was not, the same principle applied. But if Fouad was innocent, why had he not made contact? Yes, Markovic was dead, and Fouad had no direct line of communication to the Vuksans, but he had not even been in touch with some of his own people. Fouad, it seemed, had vanished. Perhaps the French had also picked him up and were keeping silent about it, but that was unlikely. Thus Radovan was leaning toward Fouad as the traitor.

But this suspicion, even if it were to be confirmed, would not avail them if, or when, it came time to explain to a bunch of aggrieved Arabs why Saad and Mahdi – accomplished ISIS strategists and moneymen, and therefore beloved of the Prophet – had come to a violent end while ostensibly under the Vuksans’ protection. Spiridon and Radovan would be held accountable. Financial compensation would be demanded, which the Vuksans were not in a position to pay. And if money was not forthcoming, the men in black would seek a more painful and permanent form of restitution.

Meanwhile, Markovic was dead, killed in what was being described as an undercover police operation linked to the events at Gare de Lyon. If Fouad had betrayed the operation to the French, it was probable that he had sold out Markovic as well. Yet according to the Vuksans’ source on the hotel staff, the police had arrived only after Markovic was shot – and, the source opined, they had appeared as puzzled as anyone else by his murder.

All of which made it more urgent than ever that Frend reach an accommodation with Belgrade, one that would permit the Vuksans to retreat to the safety of their rural fastnesses in Serbia. Radovan was working on other options, just in case, but he did not wish to spend the rest of his life running from his enemies, waiting for the inevitable moment when they found him. Like Spiridon, he wanted to be buried in Serbian soil, but unlike Spiridon, he was intent on postponing that interment for as long as possible.

Chapter XLI

Zorya stood amid a grove of trees on Danube Island, observing the young mothers pushing strollers or walking hand in hand with their toddlers on the gravel beach. She had no memory of her own parents. There was only darkness, then light; she had been birthed from the cave as though from a stone womb. She knew only that she was both very young and very, very old, and was filled with hate for those who were not like herself, which meant all of humanity.

She was still shaken from her trip across the Danube to the island. Zorya had not crossed water since her vision of the dead girl by the lake, although there was no logic to her reluctance. After all, not every journey over a river or stream involved a movement between worlds: that choice was one for Zorya to make, and previously she had always been the observer, never the observed. But the girl’s awareness of her presence had deeply unsettled her, as well as complicating her relationship with Spiridon Vuksan. Zorya could be of benefit to him only if she could see what he could not, and to do that she needed to be able to explore without impediment.

She had decided to visit the island in order to clear her head, because the city, in all its grandeur, was oppressing her. Back in the Netherlands, she had regularly ventured outside Amsterdam to find relief from concrete and crowds – sometimes alone, at other times with Spiridon or one of his men, if only to avoid attention from those who might be curious as to why one who appeared, at first glance, to be a child was traveling without adult supervision. In Vienna, she had found her movements more restricted because the Vuksans were supposed to be in hiding. After the incident with the Turk Hasanovic, the necessity for concealment was greater still, even for Zorya. Yet she could not remain indoors for long. It was too much like another death, too much like the cave.

So she had taken the U-Bahn from Leopoldstadt to Danube Island almost without thinking, keeping her head down while the train left the station, the hood on her sweatshirt raised and a magazine open but unread on her lap. As the train approached the Reichsbrücke for the short journey across the river to the island, she had experienced a tightening in her belly and a pressure on her skull. The lights in the carriage flickered as the train reached the bridge, and the commuters and tourists around her grew faint before melting away entirely. In their place was the dead girl from the lakeside. She was staring at the floor, her hair hanging loosely over her face. Dark fluid dripped from beneath the blond strands and pooled at her feet. It took Zorya a moment to realize it was blood. The dead girl raised her head, and Zorya glimpsed the empty sockets of her eyes, and the flesh and tendons of a face scoured of skin.

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