The Nameless Ones by John Connolly
Chapter IV
Angel was still removing his jacket when Mrs Bondarchuk opened the door of her apartment to peer at him. In her left arm she held one of the Pomeranians – Angel had no idea which one, since they all looked the same to him – while the head of a second manifested itself from somewhere around the level of her ankles.
‘How far did you walk today?’ said Mrs Bondarchuk.
‘To Fifty-sixth and back,’ said Angel.
‘That’s too far.’
‘I walked to Sixtieth yesterday and you told me it wasn’t far enough.’
‘It wasn’t, but Fifty-sixth is too far for today,’ said Mrs Bondarchuk. ‘You should have stopped at Fifty-eighth.’
The Pomeranian crouching in the crook of her arm yapped its agreement. Everyone, it seemed to Angel, was an expert on his health except him. The only consolation was that the chemo was over. He’d endured four cycles of it and now just had to accommodate himself to being monitored for the rest of his life, an endless pattern of worrying, testing, and relief – if he remained clear – before the worrying commenced again.
If, or when, they told him the cancer had returned, Angel thought he might kill himself. He’d asked Jennifer Parker about it, in one of his dreams. He’d been raised Catholic, and a fear of damnation persisted. Suicides, he recalled, received scant mercy in the next world. But in his dream, Jennifer had told him not to worry.
‘In whatever manner you find your way here,’ she said, ‘I’ll be waiting. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.’
Angel had wanted to point out that, since he would be dead, something bad would already have happened to him. He’d resisted the impulse, though, because a bad state of affairs could always be made worse. Also, it seemed imprudent to crack wise with a ghost, even in a dream.
Louis, who had proceeded upstairs ahead of him, called his name and instructed him to stop bothering Mrs Bondarchuk.
‘Go on up,’ said Mrs Bondarchuk. ‘Rest awhile.’
Angel did as he was told. He would never have admitted it aloud, but he felt that Mrs Bondarchuk might have been right about those two extra blocks each way. His insides hurt, and he felt the urge to lie down and close his eyes. He was already on the fourth step when Mrs Bondarchuk said, ‘You think maybe the Fulci boys will come visit again soon?’
Angel sighed. Yes, a bad state of affairs could always be made worse. Had the Fulci brothers been younger, and without a mother of their own, Mrs Bondarchuk might have adopted them, in which case even the rats would have moved out.
‘God, I hope not,’ he said softly, but Mrs Bondarchuk misheard, or decided to give the impression of it.
‘I hope so, too,’ she said.
And smiling, she closed the door.
Downtown, Conrad Holt ordered another drink, and SAC Ross consented to a refill of coffee. They had to tread carefully in their unraveling of Armitage’s activities in the Netherlands. The legat program was the responsibility of the International Operations Division at FBI headquarters in Washington, and only the application of significant amounts of pressure from the State Department and the Department of Justice, as well as from within the Bureau itself, had persuaded the IOD to shelve any official investigation into her death. Ross had become involved because Armitage, on his instructions, had been in contact with the unusual private investigator named Charlie Parker during his time in the Netherlands. There was no suggestion that Parker might have been involved in Armitage’s demise, as he had already left the country by then. Neither was he in the habit of hewing Arabic lettering into shower tiles or killing women by slitting their wrists. But Parker and his colleagues, the career criminals Angel and Louis, had received financial, informational, and legal assistance from Ross while they were in Europe. Naturally enough, the deputy director in charge of the IOD was curious to know why, just in case the Parker connection might have led, directly or indirectly, to Armitage’s death. Ross’s answers had been unsatisfactory in that regard, but Holt’s intervention had protected him from falling victim to the kind of intra-agency conflict that destroyed careers, while also ensuring that Ross continued to remain privy to the information gleaned from Armitage’s burner phone.
As if the situation were not already sufficiently complex and fraught with risk for Holt and Ross, both men were career feds. Ross was marginally older, with more years of service, but Holt had risen faster and higher through the ranks. The latter had so far avoided scandal, opprobrium, and anything more threatening than the most routine of inquiries. Holt spoke the language of congressional committees and had a memory that was both comprehensive and selective. He was a survivor in the big pond, and like all survivors, he had sharp teeth.
Ross, on the other hand, would always be tainted by association with the Traveling Man investigation, specifically the lengthy and painful revelation of the Bureau’s failings in the case. Because the Traveling Man had been responsible for the deaths of Susan and Jennifer Parker, respectively Charlie Parker’s wife and young daughter, Ross had developed a relationship with the PI that was, in Holt’s view, potentially compromising. That relationship, in turn, extended to Angel and Louis. For the present, the advantages of retaining links with Parker outweighed the disadvantages, which was why Holt had been willing to protect Ross from enemies both internal and external. Lately, though, Holt had begun seriously reconsidering the wisdom of that support.
‘You still haven’t told me why Armitage was in touch with the Vuksans,’ said Holt.
‘You’re assuming I know,’ said Ross, ‘which flatters my intelligence.’
‘It was entirely unintentional. Well, don’t you have an answer?’
‘No, but I have a theory. It won’t make you happy.’
‘I haven’t been happy since Reagan was president,’ said Holt, ‘and I wasn’t even very happy then.’
Ross pushed his coffee cup aside and laid his hands flat on the table, like a man steeling himself to speak, or perhaps to rise and depart, never to return.
‘It’s the timing of the contact that concerns me,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Armitage was in regular communication with the Vuksans, but my instinct is that she was not. It would have been too perilous, and I can’t see any significant benefit accruing to her. But Armitage’s disintegration – her absence from work, her illness, psychosomatic or otherwise – appears to have commenced with the arrival in the Netherlands of Parker and his colleagues.’
‘So?’
‘So,’ said Ross, ‘some years ago a Serb named Andrej Buha was murdered in Amsterdam. Buha was also known as Timmerman – the “Timber Man”, or Carpenter, in Dutch – because of his fondness for crucifying Muslims and Croats during the Balkan conflicts. After the war, Buha signed on as an enforcer for elements within the Zemun crime syndicate, which by then had set up a base of operations in the Netherlands. The Zemuns were most upset when Buha was shot – not out of any great fondness for him, but because it made them appear vulnerable, and marked the beginning of a decline in their fortunes in that part of Europe which not even a great deal of bloodshed ever fully arrested.
‘Out of that wreckage emerged the Vuksans: two brothers, Spiridon and Radovan, supported by a cadre of loyal disciples. The Zemun clan is dangerous, but the Vuksans are much worse. The rumor is that for years they’d been working from within to assume control of the Zemun syndicate’s Dutch wing, and its dissolution was less a spontaneous collapse than a controlled explosion planned by the Vuksans and their allies.
‘The three principal Zemun figures in the Netherlands have all since been neutralized in one manner or another. One died of a heart attack in 2010 while awaiting trial on money laundering charges, a second was shot dead in Rotterdam in 2013 by an unknown assassin, and the third vanished in Serbia shortly before the ascent of the Vuksans, and is now assumed to be getting in touch with nature from six feet below ground. Whatever the Vuksans’ degree of involvement in any or all of these misfortunes, it left the way clear for them to consolidate a base of operations in Amsterdam.
‘Meanwhile, the Zemun clan – it’s named after a district in Belgrade, not a family – continues to function, but the Dutch share and all European territory to the west of the Netherlands were effectively ceded to the Vuksans, probably on orders from politicians in Belgrade, on the grounds that the bloodshed was making them look bad in front of their fancy European friends. The Zemun name stuck, though, because you can choose to call a wolf whatever you like, but it remains a wolf. It might also be argued that the Zemun brand had a certain market value, even a cachet.’
In truth, Holt’s interest in Serbian gangsters was minimal and didn’t extend much farther than Glendale, Ridgewood, and Astoria, the Serb enclaves in Queens, New York. But back in the late eighties and early nineties, the Bureau had briefly been forced to reckon with Boško ‘The Yugo’ Radonjić, who, thanks to his connections with the mobster Jimmy Coonan, had managed to gain control of the Irish-American Westies crime gang after most of its leadership was imprisoned. But Radonjić was dead now, and Jimmy Coonan was serving seventy-five years for racketeering, without the possibility of parole. As far as Holt was concerned, the Serbs were someone else’s problem, and they could do what they liked as long as they did it outside the United States. Armitage’s involvement with them was an unwelcome complication.
‘Since their takeover of the Dutch operation,’ said Ross, ‘the Vuksans have renewed efforts to establish who might have killed Andrej Buha. He was their cousin, a Vuksan loyalist within the syndicate, and had served under Spiridon in the military, so his murder has always rankled. A Muslim group claimed responsibility for Buha’s assassination as revenge for his activities during the war, but the Vuksans were never entirely convinced. A clean kill – two shots to the chest, and a double tap to the head – wasn’t their style, and the Vuksans’ own inquiries, which mostly involved torturing Muslim captives, seemed to confirm their suspicions.’
‘Then who killed Buha?’ said Holt.
‘I think Louis did,’ said Ross, ‘as a favor to an old friend called De Jaager. Buha had murdered a man named Jos, the husband of De Jaager’s sister-in-law, Anouk. De Jaager felt, not unreasonably, that a reprisal was in order, and tasked Louis with carrying it out. My understanding is that Louis did it for free.’
‘And you believe Armitage discovered this?’
‘There had long been rumors of an outside contractor for the hit on Buha, and Armitage had good contacts in IPOL, the Dutch police intelligence service. When Louis returned to the Netherlands with Parker, and made contact with De Jaager’s people, Armitage might have started digging deeper and come up with gold.’
‘But why feed this information to the Vuksans?’ said Holt.
‘Money. Or because she was told to.’
‘Told by whom?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ross, ‘but Armitage killed two people before she died, both of them connected to Parker’s investigation, and also to some of our own interests. She didn’t do that on a whim.’
Holt thought about finishing his drink and ordering yet another, but decided not to. If he kept on drinking, he might not stop until oblivion took him. Every time he heard the names of Parker and his friends, it seemed to trigger an ulcer.
‘On the other hand,’ said Holt, ‘Armitage’s call to this Zivco Ilić might have had nothing to do with the death of Buha.’
‘No, it might not,’ Ross admitted, ‘but a warning to Louis may be in order nonetheless.’
‘We’re the FBI,’ said Holt. ‘We don’t notify assassins that past sins could have returned to haunt them. We’re supposed to put them behind bars.’
‘Even the ones we’ve used to further our own ends?’
Any residual good nature seeped from Holt’s face as he stared at Ross. Holt wondered when he would have to cast him adrift, and how he could ensure that Ross drowned immediately after.
‘Not for the first time,’ said Holt, ‘it strikes me that you may be developing an affection for individuals who are unworthy of it.’
‘Respect, not affection.’
‘That’s a distinction that might not be appreciated in a court of law.’
‘Let’s hope it never comes to that.’
‘From your mouth to God’s ear, although it would be preferable for all concerned if God wasn’t listening to any of this.’
‘Are you ordering me not to share our information with Louis?’ said Ross.
‘I’m not ordering you to do anything, because our conversation never happened.’ Holt dropped cash on the table to cover the tab. He wasn’t about to put this on his credit card. ‘For now,’ he added, ‘the Vuksans aren’t our concern, and it would be better for both of us if Armitage’s reasons for being in contact with them remained a mystery.’
‘I’ve seen an intelligence memorandum that says otherwise,’ said Ross.
Holt removed a couple of dollar bills from the tip. He was a government employee, and his pension would only stretch so far.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘The Vuksans are people smugglers, of both high- and low-value cargo, and they don’t perform background checks.’
‘Terrorists?’
‘That’s the supposition.’
‘Unless they’re on US soil, or targeting American citizens, it’s not an issue for the Bureau.’
‘Not yet.’
‘It’s still no reason for pursuing unnecessary and unwise contacts with a known killer.’
‘Suspected killer,’ Ross corrected. ‘And it may be a little late for us to begin keeping our distance.’
For you, perhaps, thought Holt, but I still have some deniability.
Yet the mention of a memorandum worried him. After 9/11, promising careers had been torpedoed by evidence of unwillingness to act on intelligence leads. His head would roll as easily as any other.
‘I don’t want to know about it,’ said Holt at last. ‘Officially, I’ve warned you against disseminating this information either within the Bureau or beyond it. Understood?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Ross, without resentment. He knew how the game was played, and had long ago resigned himself to the fact that the cards were almost irredeemably stacked against him. Under such circumstances, a man had three choices. He could fold; he could continue to play the hand that was dealt, relying on bluff and the hope of an improbable reversal of fortune; or he could cheat, and in Ross’s dictionary, cheating was just another word for pragmatism. Holt knew this, too, hence his use of the word ‘officially’, which implied that, unofficially, Ross had latitude.
‘But if what you believe is true,’ said Holt, ‘and Armitage sold Louis out to the Vuksans, wouldn’t they have made their move by now?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Ross, ‘but some men prefer to wait.’
‘For what?’ said Holt.
‘For the perfect moment.’