Page 81 of The Nameless Ones

Which was when the head of a bear hit the driver full in the side of the skull, followed shortly after by Tony’s considerable weight impacting on his chest from the front, and seconds later by Paulie Fulci’s own bulk connecting with him from the right. The revolver went off, but it was pointed at the sky, and by then the driver had hit the ground with the best part of a six hundred pounds of prime Italian-American beef on top of him. His ribs snapped like dry sticks, and his left arm and left leg immediately shattered. A number of his vital organs either burst or collapsed, and that was before the blows began to land, rendering him mercifully unconscious.

Figures appeared, but Tony saw them only through a red mist. Paulie, by contrast, didn’t see them at all, so absorbed was he in pummeling what was left of the life from the man with the temerity to have pointed a gun at his brother.

‘Motherfucker!’ yelled Paulie, as another bone broke beneath his punches. ‘Motherfucker!’

When a combination of Dave Evans, Charlie Parker, and a handful of off-duty Portland PD officers finally managed to drag the brothers away, it came as a surprise to them to find that the driver was not dead, although it was not for want of trying. Neither was his companion, who remained unconscious where he had fallen. Attached by a magnet to the wheel well of Parker’s car was a device composed of five pounds of plastic explosive, two pounds of nails and shotgun pellets, and a mercury tilt switch so delicate that it would have been activated as soon as the car began to pull out of its parking space.

The two seriously injured men were carrying New York State driver’s licenses in the names of Borko Zoric and Miroslav Tomic. Both were naturalized US citizens, originally from Serbia but now living in Queens. They’d been in and out of prison, if only for misdemeanors and minor felonies, but the gun used by the driver, Tomic, would later be linked to fifteen murders, including those of three women and two children. It was, Tomic would subsequently tell prosecutors through wired jaws, his lucky gun, and he hadn’t wanted to throw it away. As for Borko Zoric, he would not utter a word during his interrogation or subsequent trial, not even to confirm his own name, and appeared totally indifferent to his fate.

But all that was to come. For now, there was a bar to be evacuated while the police dealt with the car bomb, and later a bear head to be reattached to a wall. Local and national news media would interview the Fulcis. The front page of the following day’s Portland Press Herald, featuring Tony and Paulie flanking their proud mother, would be added to the memorabilia collection of the Great Lost Bear. The Fulci brothers had saved the Bear, but in doing so had become part of its structure and history, forever inseparable from both.

It was, Dave Evans would later reflect, one of the worst days of his life.

IV

‘I incline to Cain’s heresy … I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.’

Robert Louis Stevenson,

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Chapter LXVIII

Spiridon Vuksan had not survived for as long as he had through good fortune alone. He accepted that luck played a part in every man’s life, but so also did preparation, decisiveness, and ultimately, ruthlessness. Neither was Spiridon blind to his own flaws, not least of which was pride, although he balked at categorizing it as a sin, particularly when it came to his relationship with the country of his birth. It pained him that men like Matija Kiš and Simo Stajic were preventing him from returning to his homeland, a country that he and his brother had fought to build from the wreckage of Tito’s former dictatorship. Spiridon was a patriot. He had the scars to prove it. Kiš and Stajic were scavengers, filling their bellies from the battlefield sacrifices of braver men.

Now others were striking at Spiridon from the shadows: a peškir killer, a negro, a crnac, seeking revenge for De Jaager’s death when he bore some of the responsibility for having fulfilled the original contract on Andrej Buha; an American, too, which meant it was his people who had bombed Serbian troops from the sky in 1999 because they were afraid to fight them face-to-face.

As well as this Louis there were the muslimani, the Turks, no better than the balijas Spiridon had euthanized in the woods of Srebrenica and Žepa, descendants of the Ottomans who had beheaded and impaled patriots for rebelling against their rule. If Spiridon ran from men such as these, how could he ever hold his head high again? Better to let his beard and hair grow long like a monk’s than look upon his reflection in a mirror and see only a kukavica, a coward.

But his brother was counseling caution: a ‘strategic retreat’, Radovan termed it, while they consolidated their forces and waited to see what might emerge from the Kiš-Stajic axis, because Radovan, like Spiridon, was convinced that the union would not hold. Kiš was too politically ambitious and Stajic too unpredictable. Soon one of them would turn on the other, and Radovan’s opinion was that Stajic would end up with a bullet in the back of his head. Every killing left a vacuum, Radovan told his brother, and the Vuksans, with planning, could be in a position to fill it. They just had to bide their time.

But Spiridon knew that Radovan was lying. Once Radovan was in possession of a new passport and a new identity, with a house in the Caribbean and a small boat from which to fish, he would not want to return to Europe. Radovan was not a fighter, not like Spiridon, and had no concept of ignominy. He would live out his days in the sun, feeling no shame. Spiridon, by contrast, was a guerrilla at heart. He would do what his ancestors had done. He would gather his people and head into the mountains. He would make ghost villages and abandoned houses his own. Others would join him, because men like Matija Kiš and Simo Stajic did not inspire loyalty. They looked like the future only to those with no comprehension of the past, but Spiridon Vuksan knew different. Serbia’s past was its future. It had been an empire once, and could be an imperial force again. The wars in Croatia and Bosnia had been fought on the basis of that conviction.

Spiridon wondered where Zorya was. He had not seen her since the day before. She would have to be told of his plan, because he would need her by his side. He knew that she, too, wanted to return home, not spend years hiding on an alien island, waiting for enemies to die at the hands of other men. She was a creature of the cold and dark. Zorya had winter blood.

The door opened behind Spiridon. He looked back, expecting to see her, but it was Radovan who entered. Spiridon did not mind. A conversation with Radovan was required, but not about the choice they faced. There was another, more pressing matter to be discussed.

He rose to hug his brother, and they exchanged three kisses.

‘Sit,’ said Spiridon. ‘I have a question for you.’

Radovan took the nearest chair. It left him seated slightly lower than his brother. Spiridon would have avoided placing himself in a similar position of inferiority, even among family, but Radovan had never concerned himself with such details. He was content to let others believe he was weaker than he was because he felt it gave him room to maneuver. Sometimes, though, the perceptions of others concretized into fact. Let people believe you were weak and they might well decide to move against you. No one feared a weak man, or not beyond the potential damage his weakness might cause. Unbeknownst to his brother, recent events were causing Radovan to examine the implications of this.

‘What is it?’ said Radovan.

Spiridon took his brother’s hands in his own.

‘How close are you and Anton Frend?’ he said.

‘You know the answer,’ said Radovan. ‘We have been colleagues, and more, for a long time. He has never given us cause to mistrust him. Why do you ask?’

‘Because they will come for him, after we are gone: the Turks, the American killer. It is a wonder they have not done so already.’

‘What about Hendricksen?’

‘Hendricksen was just the advance guard,’ said Spiridon. ‘The ones that will follow are the real threat. They can’t get to us, not yet, but they can get to Frend.’

‘We need him. He is organizing the passports, and our route out of here.’

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