The Nameless Ones by John Connolly
Chapter XXVI
On their previous visit to Amsterdam, Angel and Louis, with Parker, had done their best to avoid letting Ross know their location and movements. They had stayed in De Jaager’s safe house, an option that obviously no longer presented itself. But making it difficult for Ross to contact him now seemed counterproductive to Louis, so he and Angel were booked into the Conservatorium in Oud-Zuid, and a secure email had advised Ross accordingly. Once they had freshened up and changed their clothes, they joined Hendricksen in the hotel lounge, where they ordered food.
‘You really must have money if you’re staying in this place,’ said Hendricksen. ‘I feel as though I’m bringing the tone down just by being here.’
‘Me, too,’ said Angel.
‘You’d bring down the tone of a Super Eight,’ said Louis to Angel. ‘Anyway, it’s not our money, it’s De Jaager’s.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Hendricksen.
‘He wired me a million euros before he died.’
‘To what end?’
‘Possibly because it amused him.’
‘And now you’ll use it to avenge him.’
‘That’s right.’
A waiter arrived with coffee, a pot of tea, and the neatest sandwiches Louis had ever encountered. The coffee smelled strong and bitter, and the bread tasted freshly baked.
‘And you?’ said Louis to Hendricksen. ‘Where do you stand? I brought you into this, but you have no obligations to me or De Jaager, not unless you’ve been hiding something from us.’
Hendricksen finished a bite of sandwich before responding.
‘You know what my background is?’
‘Military.’
‘That’s right. Did De Jaager tell you?’
‘No, because I never asked,’ said Louis. ‘I picked up on it the first time we met.’
‘I served eight years in the Dutch army,’ said Hendricksen. ‘I joined when I was eighteen: Airmobile Brigade. I was twenty-two when we were told we were to form part of an infanteriebataljon – in our case, Dutchbat Three – to be sent to the Balkans as part of the UN peacekeeping mission, except nobody had figured out how to keep peace in a place where everyone around you was committed to war.
‘Our mission was to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 819, which was supposed to make the town of Srebrenica and its surrounding areas a safe haven for civilians under attack from Bosnian Serb paramilitary units. But the mission was flawed: keep the peace, but don’t shoot anyone; guard the civilian population, but don’t get too involved, just in case someone takes offense. The UN didn’t want to be drawn into another bloody war in Europe, but we were already there. We were involved; it was just that the UN wasn’t prepared to acknowledge the implications. Eventually, we were going to have to pick a side, and it wasn’t going to be the Serbs, but no one wanted to make that admission, not then.
‘By July 1995 we were marooned in the town, surrounded by Ratko Mladić and his cutthroats. There was a constant flow of refugees – men, women, children, mostly Muslim – all looking to us for protection, but we couldn’t even protect ourselves. We numbered fewer than five hundred men with each rotation, armed with a few heavy machine guns and a pair of RPGs. They had tanks and artillery, we had armored personnel carriers. They cut our supply lines, and when we made incursions into their territory, we took fire. We called in air support, but the Serbs were holding fifty of our men hostage and threatened to kill them if the planes attacked, so the bombing run was called off. And all the time, the number of civilians inside the town kept growing and growing: fifteen thousand, twenty thousand, twenty-five thousand. They were terrified, and we were terrified, too.’
Hendricksen was no longer looking at Angel and Louis. He was staring at the floor, as though in its devices he might be able to discern some version of the patterns in his own life, the paths that had led him at last to this place, and this admission of guilt.
‘The Serbs entered Srebrenica on July eleventh and we handed the town over to Mladić. We watched the Muslim women and children being taken away in buses. I don’t know what happened to the children, but most of the women were probably being raped within hours. The men and boys stayed. Mladić told us they’d be transferred to camps later, but we knew better, even before the executions started. The Serbs killed eight thousand at Srebrenica: old men, young men, teenagers. We stood by and let them do it, and when it all became too much we drove away. I’ve heard it said that we had no choice, but we did, because there is always a choice.’
‘And what should you have done?’ said Louis.
‘We should have stood our ground,’ said Hendricksen. ‘We were soldiers. We should have fought.’
‘You’d have died.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Hendricksen, ‘but sometimes that’s not only a soldier’s duty but also his destiny. Had we died in the service of those people then the UN, and the Americans in particular, might have been forced to act sooner. And even if we had been killed, we would have died heroes. Instead, we were blamed for what happened. We returned home in disgrace. It’s a stain upon our personal honor, and our nation’s, that can never be erased, not unless some opportunity to make reparation comes around.’
‘So you see the Vuksans as a chance to do the right thing?’ said Angel. ‘If you’ll forgive me for saying so, I’m not sure that equates.’
Hendricksen tore his gaze from the floor.
‘Spiridon Vuksan was there, at Srebrenica,’ he said. ‘He was one of Mladić’s advisors, sent by Belgrade to judge the length of his leash. I saw Spiridon with my own eyes. I heard a lieutenant ask him if the male prisoners should be separated according to age, which might make them easier to handle, and Spiridon told him that the Turks – that was what he called the Muslims, “Turks” – wouldn’t be a problem for long.
‘And then he noticed me listening, and he looked at me and smiled. I wanted to shoot him then. I wanted to shoot them all. He saw it in my face. He spread his arms wide, and spoke to me in English. “Do it,” he said. “Be a man.” But I did nothing.’
Hendricksen still held a half-eaten sandwich, but whatever appetite he once had was gone. He placed the sandwich on a plate and wiped the crumbs from his hands.
‘We’re not on a crusade,’ said Louis.
‘Aren’t you?’ said Hendricksen. ‘I think the circumstances of your previous visit to this country might suggest otherwise. But regardless, you need my help. You don’t have any friends in the Netherlands, present company excepted, and you don’t have any contacts. I have both, and that extends to almost every country in Europe. I’ve been in this business a long time. I’m owed some goodwill.’
‘Even in Serbia?’ said Angel.
‘Even in Serbia.’
‘You have a job,’ said Louis. ‘You work as an investigator for Dutch lawyers. You can’t just drop everything to help us.’
‘I operate on a contract basis, so I work as I choose. At the moment, I have no obligations so urgent that they cannot be set aside.’
‘What we’re here to do could take a while,’ said Louis.
‘I repeat, I have no obligations.’
Louis poured himself a fresh cup of tea. Back in the United States, he stuck to coffee, and couldn’t understand why anyone drank tea, even in those fancy Manhattan tearooms. But he’d developed a taste for tea in England. Europeans did this kind of stuff well, he thought.
‘If you work with us, we pay you,’ said Louis.
‘I don’t want payment.’
‘I don’t care what you want. This isn’t about acts of kindness, or making up for past failings. I don’t know you well enough to work on trust alone, and that kind of help is too subject to second thoughts. It’s not our money, it’s De Jaager’s. Accept it, or walk away.’
‘Then I accept,’ said Hendricksen. ‘But I’ll take payment when we’re done. You can decide then how much my assistance was worth.’
‘Agreed.’
‘Now that’s settled,’ said Hendricksen, ‘I have good news for you, and bad.’
‘I’m a bad-news-first kind of guy,’ said Louis.
‘I guessed. I made some more calls while you were checking in. The Vuksans have vanished. That van was found burned out on waste ground about an hour after the picture was taken. I’ve commenced trawling for witnesses, but so far no one saw anything.’
‘Do you believe them?’ said Louis.
‘I don’t think these people have any reason to lie. For them, it was just a van fire.’
‘What about your other contacts, the ones who might have a reason to lie?’ said Angel.
‘I’m working on them, but I’ve come up with nothing yet. I can go back with an offer of money, but I suspect the answer will remain the same in most cases. De Jaager was well-liked, and even those with reason to feel aggrieved at him still retained a degree of tolerance for his activities. If they knew anything, they would have shared it, for the sake of the murdered women as much as De Jaager. But I haven’t exhausted every avenue, so who knows what may emerge?’
‘And the good news?’ said Angel, who was, by contrast, a good-news kind of guy, having heard enough bad news to last a lifetime.
Hendricksen smiled.
‘The Vuksans can’t go back to Serbia,’ he said, ‘not yet.’
‘Why?’ said Louis.
‘Because someone has started blowing up their relatives.’