Page 73 of The Nameless Ones

Unbeknownst to Frend, Radka had then made a call of her own, this one to Zivco Ilic, informing him that forces unknown might be closing in on Anton Frend.

Now Frend was in Simmering in the cold, gray light of morning. A taxi had dropped him at the entrance to the complex of factories and silos. He had elected to walk the rest of the way to the cemetery, following the direction indicated by a sign on the road, because the fewer witnesses there were to his ultimate destination, the better. He asked the driver to wait for him, but the man refused because Frend could not confirm how long he would be. He could always call another taxi, the driver pointed out. If not, there was a bus stop by the entrance to the industrial area, so he had a couple of options. Frend wasn’t so sure about that – two buses an hour would be a generous estimate, and who knew how long a taxi might take to arrive? – but he had little choice in the matter. In better circumstances, he would have driven himself, but his car was parked in a private garage by his office; if he was right, and his business premises were under surveillance, then his vehicle also might be.

He passed no one as he walked. The buildings were deserted, this being Sunday. Flocks of small birds rose above the silos before settling again, the pattern repeating itself three times. He could see no cause for the birds to be alarmed, but perhaps they sensed the presence of predators; that, or the fear of predation was now so ingrained that they were reluctant to stay in one place for too long. In either case, the metaphor was not lost on Frend.

He descended a short flight of steps that brought him under a railway line and within sight of the cemetery. A woman was standing among the graves, smoking a cigarette. She was entirely alone, apart from the dead. She looked up as Frend approached the little chapel, but did not acknowledge him, even as Frend descended to join her and the namenlos.

The woman was taller than Frend and ascetically thin, as befitted one who subsisted on coffee and cigarettes. Her silver hair was cut too short for his liking, although his liking, Frend knew, was of no concern to her. The frames of her large spectacles were clear, lending them a protective aspect, so that Frend felt her regard as a laboratory specimen might, the sharpness of her attention like a scalpel ready to cut. She was wearing a beige coat that flared slightly from the waist and ended just below her knees, her legs concealed by high leather boots of a reddish brown, like blood and mud mixed. She was, she claimed, a distant descendant of the painter Angelica Kauffmann, although this might have been a lie, for Hannah Kauffmann was adept at creating falsehoods.

‘Hannah,’ said Frend. ‘You look well, as always.’

Kauffmann flicked at the flattery with a fingertip, the movement causing a pillar of ash to tumble from her cigarette to the plot by her feet.

‘If you came out here to exchange compliments,’ she said, ‘your journey will have been wasted, because you, Anton, do not look well. Are you sure you’re getting enough rest?’

‘Not lately, but you may be able to assist with a solution.’

‘I can offer you pills. I have no shortage of them.’

‘I was hoping for something more long-term.’

She waved at the graves with her right hand.

‘Then you’re in the right place,’ she said.

Frend smiled without humor. He had not chosen this venue for their meeting. He would have preferred somewhere closer to the city, and less depressing, but Hannah Kauffmann had always indulged a taste for the dramatic. It might have been a consequence of her love of opera. She was a benefactor of the Vienna State Opera, which meant that she donated at least €10,000 per season. Frend could think of many better ways Kauffmann could have spent €10,000, among them getting her teeth fixed. She was an otherwise attractive woman, but her mouth was a ruin, the enamel stained from decades of caffeine and nicotine, with gaps in the upper row where she had lost molars to decay. Her grin reminded him of the skulls in the crypt of the Stephansdom.

‘I was going to ask why we were here,’ said Frend, ‘and not in more convivial surroundings.’

‘You don’t like cemeteries?’

‘Not particularly, but this one seems more cheerless than most.’

‘Really?’ Kauffmann frowned. She appeared genuinely surprised. ‘I don’t think that at all. Most of these people may be nameless, but they have not been forgotten. Every year, for one day, they are remembered. The fishermen leave flowers for them, and set a boat of wreaths adrift on the Danube. That is more than is done for many who have families to recall them, or who lie beneath memorials more lavish than a simple cross. And someday, we will be as they are. When there is no one left alive to recall us, no one for whom our mention causes even a flicker of recognition, then we, too, will have become nameless, whatever the stone above our head may say to the contrary.’

She finished her cigarette and stamped it out on the ground, which detracted somewhat, in Frend’s view, from the impact of her testimony.

‘Or,’ she resumed, ‘one could look upon it as a lesson in the transitory nature of identity.’

Ah, thought Frend, that’s more like it. Now we break through the bone to get to the marrow.

Kauffmann was a lawyer, specializing in banking and capital markets law, but she also maintained a lucrative sideline as a broker of passports, because some of her clients occasionally had need of such a service. From Austrian Bar gossip, Frend was aware that Kauffmann’s contacts in the Caribbean were second to none, although she had been forced to sever her ties with Cyprus and Malta following their inclusion on an OECD blacklist of countries believed to be facilitating tax evasion through their passports-for-sale schemes. There was also the case of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had been killed by a car bomb outside Mosta in 2017 while investigating Maltese government corruption, including the trade in passports. Her death had brought unwelcome international attention on the Maltese and the conduct of their affairs.

‘One should always be open to change,’ said Frend. ‘I currently have clients who share this view. One might even say they’re quite passionate about it.’

Kauffmann lit another cigarette. The tips of the fingers on her right hand were as yellow as her teeth. Frend imagined her body as a veritable petri dish of cancers.

‘I know the circles in which you move,’ said Kauffmann. ‘That’s why we’re meeting out here and not at Café Landtmann. There are rumors, Anton.’

‘There are always rumors. It would not be Vienna otherwise.’

‘These rumors come from farther afield,’ said Kauffmann. ‘Podgorica, for example.’

Podgorica, capital of Montenegro. Four hundred thousand dollars for a passport, give or take. Independent from Serbia since 2006, but still with deep ties to the old union. During the wars in the 1990s, the Montenegrins had bombed Dubrovnik for the Serbs and handed over Bosnian refugees to be tortured and executed. The Vuksans might once have had friends there, but not any longer.

‘And what do you hear from Podgorica?’ said Frend.

‘That your clients have overstepped, and a price has been put on their heads, not to mention the Interpol Red Notice currently in their names.’

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