Page 20 of The Nameless Ones
‘I’d like to believe we learn by our mistakes,’ said Ross.
‘I’d like to believe that too,’ said Louis. ‘Obviously I don’t, but I’d like to.’
‘The Bureau has limited jurisdiction overseas,’ Ross continued, ‘so given the delicacy of what is being proposed, I’ve supplied some reading material, and alerted an interested party about your travel plans.’
He stood to leave. A copy of the New York Times lay on the bar between them. Ross tapped it, and threw down cash to cover the tab.
‘You ought to take a look at today’s paper,’ he said. ‘You might find it informative. Travel safely.’
Louis watched Ross go, but did not immediately reach for the Times. Instead, he sat and thought. In the years since he had come to know Parker, Louis’s life had changed in ways he could never have imagined. Many of these developments were positive, or at least not actively negative, but coming into contact with SAC Edgar Ross of the FBI was not among the latter. Louis did not doubt that a record of his activities existed somewhere in Federal Plaza, although he suspected that much of it was for Ross’s personal amusement only – or that was his hope. Whatever the truth of the matter, Ross’s knowledge of Louis was a threat, and hung like a sword over his head. Eventually, something might have to be done about it.
There was also the problem of Armitage and her legacy. If she had been in contact with the Vuksans, and was responsible for setting them on De Jaager, then a trail existed, one the Bureau would prefer to see erased. Ross had just handed Louis a broom and told him to get sweeping.
But if Armitage was the source of the Vuksans’ information, what else had she told them? Ross was assuming that Armitage had, in the course of her duties, come across material confirming De Jaager’s instigation of the killing of Andrej Buha, but what if this was not all she had discovered? According to Ross, Armitage had made contact with the Vuksans shortly after Louis and Angel left Amsterdam. The possibility existed that it was not only De Jaager she had fed to them but also Louis.
So Louis drank, and mused. When he finally left the St. Regis, he did so with a copy of the New York Times under his arm.
Chapter XXI
By the time Louis returned, Angel had finished packing. They had discussed the possibility of Angel staying in New York, but the conversation ended almost as soon as it had begun. Angel was no longer receiving treatment for his cancer and the latest tests had shown him to be clear. True, he was not as physically strong as he once had been, but any diminution was balanced by a psychological change. Angel had faced physical suffering over and over, and each time he had come through. He did not consider himself to be immortal, or even blessed: he simply had little fear left.
‘What did Ross want?’ said Angel.
‘For us to clean up the Armitage mess. Oh, and to give me his copy of the New York Times.’
‘Did you tell him we have a subscription?’
Louis unfolded the newspaper. Concealed in the Arts & Leisure section was a manila envelope, and inside the envelope was a dossier on an Austrian lawyer named Anton Frend, along with an assortment of photographs of Frend with family, professional colleagues, and, last of all, seated at a dinner table between two men, one of them thin, bald, and vaguely patrician, the other a thug. Louis turned over the photograph. Attached to it was a date – April 9, 2016 – and three names: Radovan Vuksan, Anton Frend, and Spiridon Vuksan. Louis read the salient parts of the file aloud to Angel before passing him the picture of the diners.
‘Dead men,’ said Louis.
‘Even the lawyer?’
‘We’ll see. If he’s keeping that kind of company, his conscience is already reposing. It may be time for the rest of him to follow.’
In addition to the notes on Frend, the envelope contained single pages of data on five other men: Spiridon and Radovan Vuksan themselves; Armitage’s contact, Zivco Ilic; Aleksej Markovic; and Luca Bilbija. The material included family backgrounds; known aliases and recent addresses; passport details; prison records; sexual preferences; and, in the case of everyone except Radovan Vuksan, a history of military service. This service included allegations of involvement by Spiridon Vuksan, Zivco Ilic, and Aleksej Markovic in mass murder during the Balkan wars. Luca Bilbija, meanwhile, had been too young to fight in the conflicts, although he had done six months of mandatory military service in 2006. A photograph of each man was attached to the relevant page. As Louis read a document, he passed it on to Angel.
‘These aren’t just dangerous people,’ said Angel, ‘they’re dangerous animals.’
‘Smart, though,’ said Louis. ‘Ilic and Markovic have spent time behind bars, but not for long, and none of it for any crimes worth mentioning. Bilbija seems clean, and the Vuksans have never seen the inside of any prison, not unless they were visiting someone.’
‘Or killing them.’ Angel was reading about Ovcara, and the facility at Sremska Mitrovica, where Croat prisoners were tortured, raped, and murdered by Serb reservists. Both Spiridon Vuksan and Zivco Ilic had also been present on specified dates and had, according to witnesses, participated enthusiastically in the carnage.
‘It looks like Radovan just took care of the paperwork,’ said Louis, ‘and made sure that all of his brother’s victims were in one place when he and his men got around to butchering them.’
The figures were almost beyond belief: a hundred men here, two hundred there, gradually shading into the thousands; women and children, too. Louis had a vague memory of these wars, of news reports on TV and pictures in the better papers, but he had been a different man back then. Now he found it hard to believe that the civilized world had stood by and allowed this slaughter to continue for so long before finally being goaded into intervening. By that stage, less than half a century had gone by since the fall of Nazi Germany, yet no one appeared to have learned very much from it at all.
But who was he to point the finger? He, too, had blood on his hands.
And soon, he would have more.
Later that evening, Angel explained to Mrs Bondarchuk that he and Louis would be heading abroad for a period of time yet to be determined, and the usual routines would apply, which Mrs Bondarchcuk took to mean that she should maintain her vigil by the window, and sign for deliveries. In the event of a problem, or any matter of even the slightest vexation, she had a list of numbers to call, including those for Charlie Parker; his lawyer, Moxie Castin, to whom Louis and Angel had also begun to entrust some of their affairs; and, in the event that everyone else on Earth ceased answering their phones or vanished into another dimension, the Fulci brothers.
But the number that Angel and Louis always instructed her to call first, should she feel threatened, belonged to a woman named Amy, whom Mrs Bondarchuk had never met. Amy worked for Leroy Frank Properties, Inc., a company that might have been revealed – had anyone been inclined to dig deep enough – as the beneficial owner of the property in which Mrs Bondarchuk currently resided. When Angel and Louis were away, Amy took care of any problems that might arise: plumbing, heating, carpentry, and sometimes more specialized issues, too.
Earlier in the year, while Angel and Louis had been in Europe, Mrs Bondarchuk had become agitated. Three men – two young, one older, all of a disreputable mien – had followed her home from Zabar’s, and she became convinced, not without some justification, that they might be about to attempt a break-in, since they had passed the building either alone or in pairs four times in the next two hours, the city gradually growing darker around them.
Under similar circumstances, the Mrs Bondarchuks of this world tended to reach out to the cops, but this particular Mrs Bondarchuk was aware of the ambivalence with which the gentlemen on the upper floors viewed the police. Instead, although not without reservations at potentially being branded a worrywart, she had contacted the mysterious Amy, who – in what could only be described as a dulcet tone – thanked Mrs Bondarchuk for her vigilance, and assured her that her concerns would be addressed. The last Mrs Bondarchuk saw of the three undesirables together, they were being escorted into the back of a van by a group of four men who had embraced them in what, to the casual onlooker, might have been mistaken for friendly bear hugs, assuming bears carried guns. Two weeks later, she passed one of the undesirables while she was feeding bread to the ducks in Central Park. He caught her eye, and took a moment to recall her, before proceeding on his way, the speed of his departure hampered only by the new cast on his right leg and his lack of familiarity with crutches.