Page 2 of The Nameless Ones

‘I don’t think it counts where we’re concerned,’ said Louis.

‘No,’ said Angel, ‘I guess not.’

Mrs Bondarchuk had also noticed the crow. She crossed herself before offering up a brief prayer of protection. She remained constantly heedful of auguries – the appearance of owls, ravens, and crows, the births of twins and triplets – and kept note of her dreams, waking up in the night to add the details of them to the little writing pad by her bedside, leery always of visions of bread and bees, of teeth falling from gums, of church processions. She had yet to give a watch as a gift, eat from a knife, or mark a fortieth anniversary. She sat down before going on a journey, even if only to the store, in order to confuse any evil spirits that might be lurking, and never put out the garbage after sunset. On the wall by her front door hung a cross of aspen, the cursed wood, which possessed a talismanic power against evil, just as the potency of a vaccine relies upon the element it contains of its target disease.

But perhaps more than any of this, Mrs Bondarchuk believed that death, rather than marking an end, represented only an alteration, if a fundamental one, in the nature of existence. The dead and the living coexisted, each world feeding into the other, and the next realm was a mirror of this one. The dead remained in contact with the living, and spoke to them through dreams and portents.

One had to learn to listen.

And one had to be prepared.

Angel fumbled for his keys. Louis appeared distracted, even weary.

‘You look tired,’ said Angel.

‘You say.’

‘I have an excuse. Cancer beats all hands.’

‘I didn’t sleep so well last night,’ said Louis. ‘Comes with getting old.’

‘You’re sure that’s all it is?’

‘Yes,’ Louis lied.

He had been dreaming again, the same dream. It had been coming to him more often in recent months. In his dream he stood by a lake and watched the dead immerse themselves in its waters, wading deeper and deeper, farther and farther, until finally they were lost to the great sea. Beside him stood a little girl: Jennifer, the dead child of the detective Charlie Parker, whom Louis had watched being buried. She held his hand. Her touch was warm against the coldness of his skin. In life, he had known her only from a distance. Now death had made intimates of them.

why are we here?

His voice seemed no longer his own. He heard it as a faded whisper. Only the girl spoke without distortion, for this was her dominion.

‘We’re waiting,’ she said.

for what?

‘For the others to join us.’

and then?

She laughed.

‘We shall set black flags in the firmament.’

And he would wake to the memory of her touch.

None of this he chose to share with Angel. They had few secrets from each other, but those they had, they kept close. Had Louis spoken of his dream to Mrs Bondarchuk, she might have advised him to be very wary, and gifted him a cross of aspen. But he had no intention of discussing his recurring dream with her, just as he had elected not to mention it to Angel.

Which was unfortunate, because Angel had been having a very similar dream.

Chapter II

The old man walking the quiet, dark stretch of the Herengracht in Amsterdam no longer dreamed; or perhaps, given his knowledge of the peculiarities of the human consciousness, both waking and sleeping, it would have been more correct to say that he did not recall his dreams. Maybe, he thought, he simply preferred not to do so, and had managed to communicate this to his psyche during the accumulated decades of his time on earth. By this stage of his life, he was happy just to enjoy some semblance of a night’s sleep, even one destined to be disturbed by the call of his poor, failing bladder.

His name was De Jaager. He had a first name, although it was rarely used even by close friends, of which he had few. De Jaager was his actual patronym, and translated as ‘The Hunter’. It was only partly accurate as a descriptor. For the most part, De Jaager was a regelaar, a fixer, but that lacked a certain dignity and authority; and he had, when necessary, assumed the role of hunter, although he typically left the final bloodletting to others, and resorted to such extremes only as a last resort. He was also, it had to be admitted, a criminal – by action, nature, inclination, and association – but he had always behaved with honor in his dealings with his own kind, because there was nothing worse than a felon who could not be trusted, and even malefactors required a code of conduct.

But that was all in the past. He was currently in the final stages of leaving behind this condition of malfeasance, just as he would soon surely retire from life itself. He had shed his business interests, both legitimate and otherwise. He had rid himself of warehouses and manufactories, and paid off those who had remained loyal to him over the years, so that most would never have to work hard again. He was a man preparing for the end, discarding the base matter of this world until all that remained were flesh and memories, and death would ultimately take care of those, too. When he was done with his unburdening, he intended to retire to his small cottage in Amersfoort, where he would live in solitude and anonymity, surrounded by books and the remembrance of those he had lost.

Only one extraneous property remained to be sold: the safe house on the Herengracht, which had been used by only a handful of individuals over the years because it was the most secret and secure of his outposts. Most recently it had been occupied by three men who had come to Amsterdam seeking a book. They had left bodies in their wake, along with a legal mess that had required De Jaager to expend considerable effort and funds to clean up. He had also lost one of his own people, a young woman named Eva Meertens, of whom he had been most fond. Her death, in turn, had necessitated arranging the killing of her murderer, an employee of the US government named Armitage. It had all been very complicated and unsatisfactory, not to mention risky, and confirmed De Jaager in his belief that retirement was now the only reasonable option for a man of his advanced years.

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