Page 101 of The Nameless Ones

‘I don’t know the alias,’ said Louis, ‘just the hotel. I imagine it’s the kind of place that prides itself on its discretion. Frend used to take his mistress there to fuck her, because a fifty-euro note was enough to ensure that the desk didn’t ask for ID.’

‘We can’t search every room,’ said Rafi, not unreasonably.

‘You won’t have to. Frend will be leaving the hotel at five a.m. tomorrow for a business meeting.’ Louis had decided it was better if Mr Rafi didn’t know that the meeting would involve the exchange of a million euros, and had been arranged for the ultimate benefit of the Vuksans. ‘You can take him when he leaves. After that, it’s up to you how you persuade him to tell you where the Vuksans are holed up.’

‘And how do you know about this meeting?’

‘Frend told us.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Because,’ said Louis, ‘my colleagues are holding his daughter hostage.’

When the call was ended, Louis put away his cell phone and rejoined Angel in the restaurant. A text message, from a Virginia number, arrived as he was settling the check. It read: Found him.

Chapter LXXVIII

The original call made by Louis was traced to a recipient device in a rented apartment located above an electronic repair store on Jurekgasse in Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus. The return call from Mr Rafi also came from Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus, this time from a Turkish restaurant on Preysinggasse, on the other side of the maze of railway tracks leading to and from the adjacent Westbahnhof station. Within the hour both locations were under surveillance, and efforts were being made to obtain and access footage from nearby security cameras. Three men and one woman, all believed to be from the same Turkish family, were found to be renting the apartment on Jurekgasse. As anticipated, none of them matched the description of Mr Rafi or his aide. The Turkish restaurant did not have a security system on the premises, and was not overlooked by any cameras nearby, which was almost certainly the reason Mr Rafi had chosen to contact Louis from there.

But the hook had been baited, and now they would just have to wait. There was no question of alerting Frend to the danger he might be facing because the lawyer would be nervous enough already. If the operation went according to plan, he would never even know he had been in peril. Just in case Mr Rafi attempted to access the hotel that night, two teams were placed outside, and a third team checked in as a married couple and requested one of two rooms on the third floor ‘for old times’ sake’, which left them with a view of Frend’s door. As an added precaution, a mini motion sensor barely an inch in height and half an inch in width was placed next to a power outlet between Frend’s room and the hallway leading to the stairs and elevator. If it was activated, an alert would be sent to the team in the room. Before he went to bed, Louis obtained a cast-iron guarantee from Harris: once the targets were in custody or neutralized, Harris’s people would not attempt to interfere with Louis’s plans for the Vuksans, and Frend would be allowed to proceed unimpeded to the meeting place. That night, Angel stayed with Louis, and a wake-up call was set for 3:30 a.m.

They barely slept, but lay awake and watched the dark settle.

Chapter LXXIX

Under more favorable conditions – in a more familiar city, and without his own head being on the block – Mr Rafi might have been less vulnerable to surveillance, but he needed the lawyer and, as Louis had already surmised, was banking on fear outweighing any temptation to engage in a double-cross. In this, of course, Mr Rafi was guilty of a profound error of judgment.

The American team had flown into Vienna on a Gulfstream jet from a regional airport in eastern Poland, where the CIA had maintained a base for rendition purposes since the start of the War on Terror. It was not, therefore, the unit’s first day at the office. They were already watching when, at 3 a.m., two cars took up positions within sight of the main and rear doors of the hotel, the first of the vehicles having initially circled the block three times. They counted four men, two in each car, although none was Mr Rafi.

The operatives in the hotel had taken turns to rest, but only a trio of drunks returning to their rooms in the early hours had disturbed the calm of the hallway, triggering the motion sensor. When Frend emerged from his room at 4:50 a.m., he shared the elevator with the female half of the team, who smiled at him but did not receive a smile in return, and was watched by the male half of the team, who was prowling the lobby with a coffee as Frend walked to the separate garage elevator.

A third man, unknown to Harris’s people, and wearing the livery of a limousine driver, was looking at his phone in an easy chair, just as he had been since arriving at the hotel shortly before 4 a.m. He looked up when Frend appeared, put his phone in his pocket, and got to his feet. As he prepared to follow the lawyer, the man with the coffee moved in, narrowly avoiding spilling his hot drink on the driver. The man apologized in German, by which point the woman was directly behind the driver, who felt a gun in his back at the same moment that the operative in front of him produced another pistol.

Meanwhile, the oblivious Frend descended to the basement parking lot. It took him just under five minutes to get to his rental, arrange his bag and coat, and exit the facility. By then the four men waiting outside had already been disabled, one of them fatally, having made the mistake of instinctively reaching for the gun by his side as the vehicle was being surrounded. He was killed with a bullet from a suppressed Beretta carrying a seventeen-round sand-resistant magazine, a throwback to its owner’s military service in the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq.

This unfortunate incident took place at the front of the hotel, while Frend left from the rear, so he remained unaware of the details of what had occurred. On the other hand, he did see two figures on the ground beside a nondescript Nissan parked near the garage door as he drove off, six armed and masked men surrounding them, and two cars blocking one lane of the street. He thought he spotted the Austrian flag on the sleeve of a nearby figure dressed in full operational gear, with a combat shotgun held at port arms. Frend briefly slowed down, taken by surprise, before resuming his progress and doing his best to ignore whatever was happening. It might have been something to do with him, but then again, it might not. These were, after all, troubled times. Yet he was not entirely surprised when his phone rang moments later, and the by now familiar distorted voice said, ‘You see? I told you we’d take care of you.’

Frend checked his rearview mirror. There were cars behind him, but he could not tell if they had followed him from his lodgings. He heard sirens in the distance.

‘Who were they?’ said Frend.

‘The men on the ground? We’ll have to wait and see, but I’m guessing they could point you toward Mecca without a compass.’

Even as he listened, Frend was recalibrating. What he had witnessed was probably at least partly the work of the Einsatzkommando Cobra, the Austrian police’s tactical unit, given the presence of an Austrian flag at the scene. The Austrian authorities did not give unrestricted access to foreign operatives on the streets of their capital, which meant they had either conducted the operation or cooperated with it. More than ever, Frend was convinced that his daughter was not in any real danger, but how could he square the involvement of Austrian law enforcement, however peripherally, with the targeting of the Vuksans’ people by the hunter named Louis? Whatever the answer, it was now more important than ever that the Vuksans were apprehended – or better still, killed. If they were caught, they might implicate Frend, but his cooperation would buy him some goodwill. If they died, they could say nothing, and Frend was convinced that, if he had to, he could bluff his way through any awkward questions that might follow.

But if he could not, there was Kauffmann. He had messaged her from his room the previous night to inform her that he had reconsidered his position, and a new start might be in order. He wanted a passport, to be supplied within twenty-four hours. She had messaged back €150K and he had agreed. Really, he had expected nothing less of her, not after he had informed her about the extra €250,000 that would be in the bag that she was to receive from Zivco Ilic. He supposed that she might have charged him more, given what the Vuksans were paying, but she was probably giving him the colleagues’ discount.

Here was how it would unfold. At the cemetery, Ilic would hand over the money to Kauffmann in return for the passports. Ilic would leave, leading Louis and his people to the Vuksans. Frend had no doubt Louis would kill them, and Ilic, too, securing his daughter’s release. Finally, Frend would soon be in possession of a new passport under a new name, and on his way to a new life in a new country. With a little luck, he might never have to speak to another Serb for as long as he lived. They could all go to hell: the Vuksans, Ilic, the freakish child Zorya, Kiš, Stajic.

And that bitch Ciric. Yes, she could go to hell too.

Kauffmann was already at the Friedhof der Namenlosen when Frend arrived. As usual, she was smoking a cigarette. The woman really was incorrigible. It was a wonder she had lived so long, Frend thought. Her lungs must have been little more than sacks of tar.

Kauffmann frowned as he descended the steps from the chapel to the graveyard.

‘You’re traveling light for a man who is supposed to be holding a million euros in cash,’ she said.

‘A subordinate is bringing it,’ said Frend. ‘My clients felt that a lawyer shouldn’t be carrying so much hard currency. They were fretful that someone might try to steal it.’

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