Page 58 of The Nameless Ones

‘And the casino?’

‘No guns are permitted on the premises, or not for guests. There are metal detectors and hand scanners. The cars are parked securely underground, so it would be hard to get at Bilbija’s Audi. As with the house, killing him at the casino would be difficult, but not impossible. Getting away with it is the challenging part. I suppose it is a question of how badly you want him dead.’

‘Very badly.’

‘Ultimately, he will make a mistake. It’s just a matter of time and patience.’

‘I don’t have much of either.’

‘You could contract it out.’

Louis stared at Most.

‘Or maybe not,’ said Most.

‘Show me the route from the house to the casino,’ said Louis, and was pleased to see Most unfold a map of the area instead of using Google Earth on his phone. Most, like Louis, did not like leaving an electronic trail.

‘Here is the property,’ said Most, once again using the straw as a pointer, ‘and this is the casino. The distance between them is three point two kilometers, all of it on private roads through Novákovi land.’

‘So that’s where he’s most vulnerable.’

‘No,’ Most corrected Louis, ‘he is not vulnerable there. We would have to get onto the land unnoticed, which means evading cameras and sensors, then find an ambush point and an escape route after. We are also talking about four armed men, including at least two police, as well as Bilbija himself. Once again, I remind you that we are not in the business of engaging the police in gun battles.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of a firefight.’

‘Maybe an RPG? I can get you a grenade launcher, no problem. It will open the Audi like a tin can and blow Bilbija to pieces. But we’ll still be on foot, pursued by armed men, with more rushing to join them. We won’t get out alive.’

‘I wasn’t considering RPGs either,’ said Louis.

‘What, then?’ said Most. ‘You will ask God to help you obliterate Bilbija from above?’

Louis returned the photographs to Most for disposal.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

Chapter XLVIII

Frend contacted the Vuksans using a fresh SIM card. He kept a stock of them in his safe for emergencies, and it had already been decided with Radovan Vuksan that neither of them would use the same number to remain in contact for more than a couple of days. Frend had made sure to send, by encrypted email, a list of the numbers at his disposal so that his calls would be identifiable, and Radovan had done the same.

Frend had packed a bag in preparation for the move to the apartment above his office. He kept some changes of clothing there – shirts and underwear, for the most part, along with a spare suit and basic toiletries – but not sufficient for his current needs. He would not be happy to return home until the problem of the Vuksans was resolved, but it seemed increasingly unlikely that the solution on offer would satisfy either of the brothers.

‘Well?’ said Radovan, when he answered Frend’s call.

‘You can’t go home,’ said Frend. ‘And they have given us an ultimatum: You have one week to leave Europe, or face the consequences.’

Radovan was silent for a time.

‘Spiridon will not go,’ he replied at last.

‘Then, with respect,’ said Frend, ‘Spiridon will die.’

One hour later, Zivco Ilic was waiting for Frend at Café-Restaurant Corbaci in the Museumplatz. Corbaci’s modest exterior belied what lay within, including a beautiful vaulted ceiling of oriental tiles. Ilic looked out of place among the mix of tourists and Viennese, but it was hard to think of anywhere Ilic would not have looked out of place, apart from under a rock. Frend had never warmed to the man, but thankfully his exposure to him had always been limited.

Curiously, Ilic did not appear to be alone. A teenage girl was sitting opposite him drinking a hot chocolate, her face mostly hidden by a black hooded sweatshirt bearing the name of some band of which Frend had never heard but that he knew he would have hated from the first note. No young girl had any business being around a man like Zivco Ilic, thought Frend, not unless her business was being around men like him. She did not look up as Frend approached the table and took the chair to Ilic’s right.

‘I wasn’t expecting us to have company,’ said Frend. ‘Who is the young lady?’

Only now did the girl peer out at him from under her hood, and Frend felt a great urge to get up and walk away, to abandon the Vuksans and his own existence in order to hide away from creatures such as this. Here was no teenager, only a mockery of one. Her eyes were rheumy and old, the teeth discolored, and her skin was covered in very fine lines, like a piece of fruit in the process of decay. Her fingernails were unpainted and tapered to points, reminding him uncomfortably of Simo Stajic’s. Frend experienced a profound sense of absence: a dearth of feeling, of morality, even of good or evil, as though her antiquity and her otherness made a mockery of those concepts. One might as well have expected to encounter such higher functions in a spider or a scorpion, entities barely altered since prehistory.

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