The Nameless Ones by John Connolly
Chapter XXII
The Vuksans and their people headed first to Germany, avoiding the larger urban centers and keeping electronic communication to a minimum. The Serbs were deeply embedded in the German criminal underworld, mostly through prostitution and narcotics, and many were ex-military. While some might have sympathized with the Vuksans’ plight, they would be unwilling to endanger their own lives by offering help, even if – as was likely – Belgrade had not cautioned against it. If the Vuksans turned to them, they risked being betrayed.
But there were some on whom they could still rely, men whose loyalties extended back to the days of Tito, and so the Vuksans traveled to the farm of Gavrilo Dražeta near Kassel in Central Germany.
None of his neighbors knew Dražeta by his old name. Here he was István Adami, a Hungarian of German ancestry, although one with only the most distant of Teutonic relatives remaining alive, and they resided far to the east, or so he told anyone who asked. Thanks to his late mother, Dražeta spoke fluent Hungarian, which helped maintain his cover and hide him from his enemies.
Dražeta was a former security officer with the JNA, the Yugoslav People’s Army, who had fought the Croats at Vukovar in 1991, where fewer than two thousand Croatian national guardsmen, supported by civilians, were besieged by more than thirty-five thousand heavily armed Serb paramilitaries and JNA soldiers. The Croats held out for nearly three months before the city finally fell. Dražeta was among those who had supervised the executions and ethnic cleansing that followed, including the massacre of two hundred prisoners at Ovčara farm. It was said that it was he who had come up with the concept of ‘running the gauntlet’, whereby the prisoners at Ovčara, civilians and wounded among them, were forced to clear two rows of Serbs armed with chains, bats, and blades before being dispatched. Among those who had aided him in this endeavor was the late and largely unlamented Andrej Buha, aka Timmerman.
Dražeta technically remained a person of interest to war crimes investigators, and had long been under indictment by the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, before it ceased operation in 2017. He had avoided apprehension because his German papers were flawless, thanks to the efforts of Radovan Vuksan. It was the least Radovan could have done for his old partner, for it was Dražeta who had arranged the safe transportation of looted art out of the ruins of Vukovar, and Radovan who had organized its sale. Now Dražeta lived a dull but comfortable pseudonymous existence among dull but comfortable Germans, in a dull but comfortable house with a dull but comfortable wife.
‘Are you sure he can be trusted?’ Spiridon asked his brother, as their convoy pulled up in Dražeta’s yard.
Spiridon had never been convinced of the wisdom of aiding Dražeta’s retirement to Germany, not with the indictment hanging over him. It would have been better had he remained in Serbia, where he was less at risk of extradition. Here in Germany Dražeta had undoubtedly grown lazy and soft, and soft, lazy men were vulnerable to pressure when the authorities came calling.
‘If he was going to betray us,’ said Radovan, ‘he could have done so a long time ago.’
‘The morals of men can change,’ said Spiridon.
‘Not those of men like him.’
Dražeta seemed pleased to see his old comrades again. There were hugs and kisses, and the hint of manly tears. He fed them venison washed down with Samtrot wine, and played them the songs of Lepi Mića on an ancient turntable. They kept the conversation neutral, avoiding all references to the Vuksans’ current troubles, although Aleksej Marković and Luca Bilbija said nothing at all. They were not sociable men, or not beyond the confines of campfires, bars, and gambling dens.
While the guests relaxed and waited for the strudel to cool, Dražeta’s wife took him to one side. Her name was Wilella, which she had always disliked. Her husband called her Willa, like the American writer Willa Cather. Dražeta’s wife had copies of some of her novels in translation, battered hardbacks of Frau im Zwielicht and Meine Antonia, but they had never been to her taste. It was enough for her to own the work of a famous namesake.
‘What about the other one?’ Willa asked.
‘What other one?’ said Dražeta.
‘I saw someone else in the first car. I think it was a child. Shouldn’t we take her something to eat?’
‘You’re mistaken,’ said Dražeta.
‘I’m not,’ said Willa, her voice growing louder. ‘There’s a child with them.’
Gavrilo Dražeta, a rapist and murderer, had never raised a hand to his wife in all their fifteen years of marriage, and rarely did they exchange harsh words. Even their disappointments, the absence of children being principal among them, had not soured their relationship in any appreciable way. But now, in their kitchen – her kitchen – Dražeta placed his right hand forcefully over his wife’s mouth and pushed her hard against the wall.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You saw nothing. There is no one else out there. Do you understand?’
Willa nodded. She thought her husband looked not only angry but also frightened. She didn’t know every detail of his past, but she was aware that he had fought in the Balkan wars, and all wars were dirty. The strangers in her house belonged to this past, and were therefore also dirty. Whatever trouble they had brought with them might well linger after they left, which could be part of the reason why her husband was so scared. Yet it was, she thought, the mention of the child that had really set him off.
Dražeta took his hand away from his wife’s mouth and kissed her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s nothing,’ she lied, but she was disappointed in him – not because of his fear, but because of how he had dealt with it, and her. The fractures in strong men ran deep.
The strudel was served. When they were done, she removed the plates and went to bed, leaving her husband and his friends to talk alone.
The Vuksans’ associates had moved to the lounge to smoke and watch TV, leaving the brothers alone with their host and a bottle of brandy. They spoke of what had happened in Amsterdam and Belgrade, including the death of Nikola Musulin.
‘If I may speak freely,’ said Dražeta, ‘Nikola was not as forceful as he might have been. They laughed at him behind his back.’
The brothers had heard these stories, and counseled their nephew to take action. The fact that he had not done so might have contributed to his death, although it was unlikely that any response from Nikola would have prevented it. Spiridon’s intended return had damned him.
‘He was a figurehead,’ said Spiridon, ‘a straw man. But he was ours.’
‘Such a public killing,’ said Dražeta, ‘must have been sanctioned at a very high level.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Radovan, ‘I doubt they expected the entire restaurant to be brought down on him. Someone will have received a rap on the knuckles.’
‘With a blade,’ said Dražeta, and they smiled.
‘Have you been approached by Belgrade?’ said Spiridon, and he asked the question so mildly that there could be no mistaking his meaning.
‘Not recently,’ said Dražeta.
‘But in the past?’
‘Yes. I have always refused to become involved in contemporary ventures.’
‘You’re involved now,’ said Radovan.
‘I would never refuse you – or your brother,’ he added, in deference to Spiridon.
‘We’re grateful,’ said Radovan, and they toasted one another again.
‘So where will you go?’ said Dražeta.
‘I don’t know,’ said Radovan. ‘We have to open a dialogue, but without exposing ourselves. We want to be close to home, but not so close that they can strike at us. It’s difficult.’
‘They’ll be watching for you,’ Dražeta agreed. ‘But Romania is a possibility.’
At points, the Danube narrowed to as little as 150 meters between Romania and Serbia. It was easy to move people between the two countries.
‘No,’ said Radovan, ‘relations between Bucharest and Belgrade are too good right now. If we’re found on Romanian soil, we’ll be handed over without a second thought.’
‘Hungary?’
‘Fucking Orbán has Belgrade in his pocket.’
Dražeta did not even bother suggesting Bulgaria. The Serbs had long moved narcotics through Sofia, but conflict with the Bulgarians over the lucrative Balkan route was ongoing. If the Vuksans were not immediately targeted by their own kind, the Bulgarians would be happy to do the job for them.
Dražeta noticed that Spiridon Vuksan was not contributing.
‘You’re quiet, ćale,’ he said, using the Serbian term of affection meaning ‘papa’. During his time in uniform, Spiridon had liked to believe that his men viewed him as a father figure. No one had ever worked up the courage to disabuse him of this notion.
It was Radovan who answered.
‘My brother does not like skulking,’ he said. ‘It is against his nature. He believes we should return with our flag raised, like Peter the Liberator.’
‘The longer we hide,’ said Spiridon, ‘the weaker we appear.’
‘The longer we hide,’ said Radovan, ‘the longer we live.’
Spiridon drained the brandy.
‘My brother is an old woman,’ he said to Dražeta, ‘and the only battles he fights are with his purse. I’m going to bed.’
Radovan and Dražeta waited until he was gone before resuming. For Radovan, Spiridon’s words stung less here than they might have done in other company. Dražeta had only ever killed unarmed men and women, and his greatest physical exertion had involved consigning to the Danube the naked bodies of the dead.
‘They may come looking for you,’ said Dražeta. ‘It would be better if I had an answer to give if they do.’
‘Tell them we were speaking of Romania, but were not specific. I’ll make some calls to see if bread can be scattered on those waters.’
Dražeta raised the bottle. Radovan shook his head.
‘Can this situation be salvaged?’ said Dražeta.
‘I don’t know. Spiridon is an obstinate man.’
‘And you are a clever one. You’ll find a way.’
‘Yes,’ said Radovan, and his gaze lay elsewhere. ‘I expect I shall.’
Willa pretended to be asleep when her husband at last came to bed. The Vuksans had been given the guest room, while their men were on couches and chairs in the lounge. She waited until her husband started snoring before she got out of bed and removed from beneath it a Tupperware box. It contained a little cold venison with some red onion marmalade, a hunk of bread, and, in a separate compartment, a piece of strudel. She put on her robe and went downstairs. Avoiding the lounge, she used the side door to leave the house and approached the cars in which the men had arrived. All were empty.
Willa paused. Perhaps, she thought, she had been mistaken, until she noticed a small figure moving by a hedgerow, watching. And although she could not have said why, she crossed herself and wished only to be back in the safety of her home.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘I brought you something to eat.’
She placed the box on the hood of the nearest car and went back inside. She locked the door behind her before checking the rest of the exterior doors. One of the men, the one called Marković, emerged from the lounge as she was finishing in the kitchen. He had a gun in his hand.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I thought it would be better if we locked the doors,’ said Willa. ‘Just in case.’
‘It’s three o’clock in the morning.’
‘All the more reason for it.’
Marković looked at her oddly before returning to the lounge. Willa went back to bed and eventually fell asleep. She was woken by the sound of the men leaving. It was still dark. Her husband was no longer beside her, but she had not heard him get up.
Willa went to the window, pulled aside the drape, and watched the three cars drive away. She counted six shapes: the five men who had slept in her home that night, and the other.
Later, outside the kitchen door, she found the Tupperware box. The food was gone, and the box had been washed, but it was not empty. Inside was a single small coin with a hole at one edge, as though it had been removed from an earring or a necklace. The coin was so old that it had been rubbed almost smooth, but she could just discern the outline of a face upon it. Willa placed the coin in a jar by the door and hoped it would bring good fortune to their home. But she washed her hands after touching it, and laid her fingers against the cross on the wall while praying that none of the six would ever return to Kassel.