The Nameless Ones by John Connolly

Chapter XXIV

They flew not into Amsterdam but into Brussels. Louis and Angel had been with Parker at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport when Armitage came to meet them, which meant that their images were on record and might well remain connected to the investigation into the legat’s death. Louis didn’t know how much cleaning up the FBI and its confederates had managed in the Netherlands, but he wasn’t about to bet his liberty on the assumption that it included erasing video images obtained from airport security footage, or advising Dutch law enforcement that the men photographed with Armitage in Amsterdam should no longer be regarded as persons of interest.

They passed through Belgian immigration without incident, helped by the fact that they were traveling on clean US passports under names only marginally different from their own. The passports had cost Louis a lot of money, and had deliberately been kept unused, and therefore untainted, in case of the necessity of sudden flight from the authorities. Now he and Angel were burning these identities not on their own behalf but that of friends. They had no regrets about this.

They collected their luggage and passed through the terminal building to the sidewalk. A light drizzle was falling on a world that bore only a superficial resemblance to their own, for even the air smelled different here. They caught an airport shuttle bus to the Van Der Valk Hotel on Culliganlaan, but did not check in. Instead they walked to the parking lot, where an eight-year-old midnight-blue BMW stood waiting. As they approached, the trunk popped open. They placed their bags inside, closed the trunk, and got in the car, Louis in the front passenger seat, Angel behind him. The driver greeted them.

‘I would say welcome back,’ said Hendricksen, ‘but it seems inappropriate under the circumstances.’

The three men drove to Amsterdam without stopping, Angel napping on and off in the back seat. His recent brush with cancer (no, more than a brush: a head-on collision) had left him with less bowel, more gray hairs, and pain lines on his forehead and beside his eyes. Louis watched him in the rearview mirror as he slept, and thought he looked as though he was suffering, even in repose.

This man, this beloved, infuriating man.

At Louis’s insistence, Hendricksen once again went through the circumstances of his discovery of the bodies, step-by-step. He’d had the foresight to use his cell phone to document the scene before the police arrived, and these pictures he’d printed out and placed in a plastic folder for Louis’s use.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in warning you about the contents?’ said Hendricksen.

‘None,’ said Louis, yet still he was shocked by what he saw. The flash on Hendricksen’s phone had created a chiaroscuro effect, accentuating the pallor of skin while deepening the surrounding shadows. The result was a vision of brutality that resembled the most anguished imaginings of medieval and Renaissance art. He felt the final agonies of these four people and allowed the rage to build inside him. But as the wave broke and the tide subsided, he raised barriers that he would not permit to be breached again. Emotion would only hamper his efforts, and he had long ago learned to compartmentalize his hatreds.

Yet his features displayed none of this, remaining impassive throughout.

‘They made De Jaager watch what was done to the women,’ said Louis. He had moved on to the photographs of the upstairs bedroom, with its two bloodstained beds, its reddened boards, and a single chair lying on its side, a pair of cable ties nearby. ‘These are foul men.’

‘Go to the last of the photos,’ said Hendricksen.

Louis did, and discovered a series of images of a van, obtained from what must have been a building’s external security camera. The date and time on the pictures indicated that they were taken on the morning after De Jaager’s final, long night. In the third image, the driver’s face was almost visible. The pictures that followed were enlarged and enhanced versions of the same face. Louis wouldn’t have been able to swear to it in court, but he was reasonably certain that the driver was Luca Bilbija. A second man sat beside him, but his face was turned to the right, and was therefore not visible.

‘Where were these taken?’ asked Louis.

‘About half a kilometer from the safe house,’ said Hendricksen.

‘Did you get them from the police?’

‘No, these emerged from my own inquiries.’

Louis was impressed. He could only imagine the kind of dedication this had required.

‘I have police contacts,’ Hendricksen continued, ‘good ones, but I decided it might be wiser not to use them unless absolutely necessary.’

‘And why would that be?’ said Louis, although he already guessed the answer.

‘Because I doubt you’re here to perform a citizen’s arrest on these men.’

‘No, I’m here to kill them.’

Better it was said aloud so that Hendricksen would not have to lie to himself, now or later.

‘As I thought.’

‘And how do you feel about that?’ said Louis.

‘I would have preferred it to be otherwise,’ said Hendricksen. ‘Perhaps I yet retain some hope that a legal solution might present itself. Incidentally, do you see where we are?’

They were passing a sign for the truck stop at Meer, close to the Belgian-Dutch border. It was here that Louis and Angel had first met Hendricksen, in the company of De Jaager and his only nephew, Paulus.

‘Yes,’ said Louis, ‘I remember this place.’

‘It’s as though the old man ordered it this way, that we should be speaking of him now. He had a talent for manipulating the direction of human affairs.’

Louis considered this a peculiar way of describing it, although he couldn’t entirely disagree. Minutes later, they crossed the invisible border with the Netherlands.

‘To return to your original question,’ said Hendricksen, ‘if there is a way that they can be taken alive and handed over for trial, will you allow it?’

‘I’ll consider it,’ he said, which he felt was a suitably gnomic reply, ‘but not if this is the only evidence of their guilt.’ He held up the picture of Bilbija at the wheel of the van.

‘The women were raped,’ said Hendricksen. ‘There was semen present, so the men who did it weren’t using protection. If they were negligent in that way, they may also have been negligent in others. There will be DNA evidence. With that will come leverage.’

Louis wasn’t so sure. These were hardened men, with military as well as criminal backgrounds. It would take a great deal of pressure to make them turn on one another.

‘You already sound like you’re trying to talk me out of what I came to do,’ he said.

‘I don’t believe I’m capable of doing that. I’m just suggesting that there may be alternatives.’

‘Not if they return to Serbia.’

Hendricksen conceded with a shrug. The Serbian justice ministry adjudicated extradition requests on a case by case basis, generally linked to political relations between Serbia and the country in question. Relations between the Netherlands and Serbia were good, the Dutch being supporters of Serbian efforts to join the European Union. But extradition proceedings could drag on for years, even with the political will to facilitate them, and that was before one took into account the possibility of corruption. The Vuksans had money, and a degree of influence. If they managed to embed themselves in Serbia, the brothers would be long dead before anyone got around to signing their extradition papers. There was little purpose in putting a corpse on trial, and cadaver synods were only for popes.

‘Still,’ said Louis, ‘the first step is to find them.’

‘Finding them will be time-consuming,’ said Hendricksen, ‘and expensive.’

‘We have money.’

‘Very expensive.’

‘Lots of money.’

‘Well, then,’ said Hendricksen, ‘perhaps it won’t be so time-consuming after all. Money, I find, hastens progress.’

Behind them, Angel woke, stretched, and stared out at the flat landscape.

‘If I was rich and lived here,’ he said, ‘I’d build a mountain and declare myself king.’

‘If you lived here, everyone else would leave,’ said Louis. ‘Anyway, you think that’s how royalty works?’

‘Pretty much,’ said Angel. ‘I’ve read books.’

‘You know, he has a point,’ said Hendricksen.

‘Don’t tell him that,’ said Louis. ‘He’ll start believing he has more of them.’

‘When I’m king,’ said Angel, ‘I’ll outlaw golf.’

‘Is that all?’ said Louis.

‘Golf, cell phone conversations taking place anywhere near me while I’m trying to read, and using “action” as a verb.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Louis.

‘No,’ said Angel, ‘he’ll be okay.’

‘You gonna be lonely in this kingdom of yours?’ said Louis. ‘Because I can’t see you being inundated with subjects.’

‘No,’ said Angel. ‘You’ll be there.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know it,’ said Angel, and went back to sleep.