Page 3 of The Nameless Ones

The safe house had been stripped of all but the most inexpensive of furnishings, and De Jaager’s lawyer alerted to his client’s desire for a quick sale. Already the lawyer had interested parties eager to view the property, even though its precise location had not yet been shared with them. The starting price was five million euros, but De Jaager expected the final offer to exceed that by ten or twenty percent. It would assure him of a great deal of comfort in the winter of his years. He might even travel a little, if the mood took him, although he found airports wearying and people more wearying still. There were many countries he had not yet seen, but the effort of reaching them would almost certainly be greater than the rewards they promised. Possibly he would remain in Amersfoort, and walk each day to Café Onder de Linde for soup and coffee, and a glass of genever to keep out the cold. Eva used to say that he would be lost without her, and she also would therefore be required to relocate from Amsterdam to Amersfoort in order to keep an eye on him. She made it sound like a joke, but De Jaager knew it was more than that. He had become a father to her following the death of her parents, steering her through grief and her rebellious late teens. She had not wanted to be without him, nor he without her. But he had failed to protect her, and her life had come to an end in the waters of an Amsterdam canal. Now, in the time that was left to him, he would mourn her, and have discourse with her ghost in Amersfoort.

He arrived at the safe house. A light burned behind the shutters in the kitchen. Anouk would be there with her son, Paulus; and Liesl, who had survived while her friend Eva had not, and would always feel guilty for it. In his right hand De Jaager held a bottle of champagne: a 1959 Dom Pérignon, one of only 306 ever produced, none of which was ever officially offered for sale. It was probably worth fourteen or fifteen thousand euros, and De Jaager could think of no better company with whom to share it.

For the last time, he placed his key in the lock of the door, entered the hallway of the late seventeenth-century dwelling, and waited for the living and the dead to greet him, each in their own way.

‘Ik ben hier, Ik ben hier,’ he announced, and noticed how different his voice sounded now that the building had been emptied of much of its contents. ‘Et Ik bring rijkdom!’

He walked to the kitchen and glanced inside. A man was seated against the wall beside the fireplace, his hands lying by his sides, palms up. He stared straight ahead, but saw nothing. On the wall behind him was a smear of blood, bone, and gray matter.

‘Paulus,’ said De Jaager softly, as though he might yet summon him back from the place to which his soul had fled, but the voice that answered was not that of his driver, his aide, his nephew. Instead it spoke with a pronounced Eastern European accent, even after all those years away from Serbia.

‘You’ll soon speak with him again,’ it said. ‘In the meantime, rest assured that he’ll be able to hear you screaming.’

Chapter III

In New York, SAC Edgar Ross of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was seated before his immediate superior, Conrad Holt, in the bar of the White Horse Tavern on Bridge Street. They were at an isolated table, not a booth, because that way they could be sure they would not be overheard. Holt was drinking a beer, Ross a coffee. The two men often met in private conclave at the White Horse, because it was unwise to discuss subjects of importance or delicacy in a building full of snoops. Ross never even read a newspaper at 26 Federal Plaza, for fear someone might take note of a headline and decide to pass judgment accordingly.

Ross and Holt were going over the recent death of the federal legat, Armitage, in the Netherlands. Officially, her death was being described as a suicide. In the days before her body was discovered, Armitage had been absent from her desk at the US Embassy in The Hague due to some unspecified illness, and her colleagues had become concerned for her health, psychological as well as physical. Her remains were subsequently discovered in the shower of her apartment, her arms slit from elbow to wrist. These were incontestable facts.

More problematical, in terms of this narrative, were the absence of a blade and the presence in the shower of an Arabic word, written in red on the tiles – or more precisely, hacked into the ceramic, the implement used first having been dipped in Armitage’s vital essence in the manner of a nib being plunged into an inkwell. Clearly, therefore, Armitage had not met her end by her own hand but by that of another: an Islamic terrorist, quite possibly, given the origin of the word on the tiles: or djinni.

Yet no group had come forward to claim credit for the killing, which was unusual. In addition, the CIA had struggled to find any terrorist operating under the nom de guerre of Djinni or Genie, or any reason, beyond her nationality, for Islamists to have targeted Armitage in particular. Another complicating factor was that Ross now believed Armitage had been involved in a criminal conspiracy, thanks to evidence gleaned from a burner phone discovered in her apartment after her death. It appeared that the legat had been dirty in ways her superiors did not yet understand, which was the worst kind of dirt because it was so hard to expunge.

It had been decided, therefore, that it would be better for all concerned if Armitage’s death were ascribed to suicide, thus obviating the necessity of a formal investigation. Two of the numbers on Armitage’s burner had proved untraceable, but others had since been identified, one of them as recently as the day before, when it had been used to send and receive text messages in the Netherlands. This was why Holt and Ross were currently meeting in the White Horse Tavern, away from any listening ears at Federal Plaza, because the Armitage situation was about as toxic as a situation could get without calling in FEMA.

‘A Serb?’ said Holt. ‘Why the fuck was Armitage calling a Serbian gangster?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ross.

‘Is there any chance at all that this was part of some unsanctioned operation?’

‘None whatsoever.’

‘What do we know about this Zippo, Zeppo, whatever?’

‘Zivco Ilic,’ said Ross.

‘Yeah, him.’

‘He works for the Vuksan crime syndicate.’

‘And who are the Vuksans?’

‘Very bad people.’

‘How bad is “very bad”?’

‘On a scale of one to ten,’ said Ross, ‘about a twelve.’

De Jaager stood in the kitchen of the canal house. Before him was Zivco Ilic, who had uncorked the bottle of Dom Pérignon and was drinking it straight from the neck. Ilic was of average height, average build, and was averagely good looking. The only aspects of him that were not average were his native intelligence and his capacity for violence. The Vuksans did not employ dullards, and displayed a marked preference for sadists.

‘This tastes like shit,’ said Ilic, waving the bottle in the air.

‘That’s because you have no class,’ said De Jaager.

Ilic spat a stream of champagne directly at De Jaager. It struck him in the face.

‘May I reach for a handkerchief?’ De Jaager asked, but the question was directed not at Ilic but at a second, older man leaning against the doorframe.

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