The Nameless Ones by John Connolly

Chapter XXXIX

Anton Frend, the subject of this discussion, was currently at Vienna International Airport, sitting in the Austrian Airlines business lounge while he waited to board his delayed flight to Belgrade. He had left home without saying goodbye to Mina, his wife, who had already departed for her regular yoga class, to be followed by an abominably healthy late breakfast with some of her abominably healthy friends. She was now absent from the house so often that Frend might almost have suspected her of conducting an affair had she not lacked the appetite or imagination for infidelity.

Frend knew that his wife was aware of his mistress even if, in typical Viennese fashion, she chose to ignore the fact of her existence. Mina, though, was probably grateful to be spared his advances. She had always found sex distasteful – the mess, the noise, the smells, the fluids. It was why they only had one child: after she had successfully given birth to Pia, Mina had seen no further reason to engage unnecessarily in the mechanics of intercourse. Pia was enough for her, or perhaps regular sexual activity with her husband was too high a price to pay for expanding the family.

They could have divorced, of course, but the process and aftermath would have been socially awkward for both of them. In addition, Mina did not trust Frend to behave generously in any settlement, or not to use his contacts in the legal community to make life as difficult as possible for her, which suggested a degree of acuity on her part. But Mina was also Frend’s only remaining point of contact with their daughter, and fed him tidbits of information about her life, as much to taunt him as anything else. Were they to separate, even this modest line of communication would be severed, and Pia would be rendered a complete stranger to him.

As for Radka, his Bulgarian mistress, Frend was under no illusions about her reasons for being with him. He had bankrolled her boutique in Neubau, and he paid for their expensive weekly dinners in restaurants where the minimalism of the décor reflected the paucity of food on the plates. In return, he received from her the sexual favors denied him by his wife, and, equally importantly, enjoyed conversations with an element of human warmth to them. A private investigator hired by Frend had assured him that Radka appeared to be faithful to him, although whether out of genuine affection or a reluctance to endanger her financial position was unclear.

The display screens indicated that the Belgrade flight was now boarding. With what might have seemed like a degree of resignation, Frend unfolded himself from the chair and placed his newspaper in his overnight bag. In the past he had enjoyed his intermittent visits to the Serbian capital, the food being some of the best in Eastern Europe thanks to the enduring culinary influence of the Turks. This trip, though, was more problematic, and carried with it certain risks. He was representing the Vuksans, and the Vuksans were currently personae non gratae in Serbia. Despite this, a formal channel of communication had to be opened following the death of Nikola Musulin. The Vuksans wanted – needed – to return home. It was Frend’s task to discover the price of this repatriation.

Hendricksen watched Frend leave the lounge, but took his time before following. Thanks to Hendricksen’s efforts, and the expenditure of an eye-watering amount of Louis’s money, all transactions on Frend’s personal and business credit cards were now being monitored. Minutes after Frend’s secretary had booked the return trip to Belgrade for her employer, Hendricksen had obtained seats on the same flights. It might have been better to have reserved a seat in economy, if only to lessen any possibility of Frend becoming familiar with Hendricksen’s face. On the other hand, the investigator wanted to be within earshot if Frend used his cell phone on the plane.

They boarded, and Hendricksen took the aisle seat that had been reserved for him directly behind Frend, who stood aside to allow a young woman to occupy the window seat beside him. Hendricksen saw Frend take in the woman’s figure and wondered if the lawyer might be considering trading in his Bulgarian girlfriend for a newer model. Details about Radka had been included in the dossier on Frend. The possibility of using her to get to her lover had been raised by Louis, only to be dismissed after Hendricksen had succeeded in chasing up a series of payments to one of her bank accounts. They originated from a holding company in Amsterdam, the same company responsible for running two nightclubs in the city operated by associates of the Vuksans. Evidently the brothers were not the trusting kind, not even when it came to their own legal advisor, which explained why they’d survived for so long. Either the Vuksans had deliberately introduced Radka to Frend, or they had recruited her after the relationship began in order to have another set of eyes on the lawyer. Whatever the sequence of events, she was a tripwire: had Louis and Hendricksen tried to exert pressure on Frend through her, the Vuksans would have been alerted immediately.

Frend used his phone only to send texts and emails while boarding continued. It would have been useful to be able to monitor his cell phone and email communications, but that kind of surveillance was beyond the capabilities of the hunters, and when Louis had suggested it to Harris, the spook just laughed. It seemed that Harris’s interest in the Vuksans – and, by extension, that of the American authorities – began and ended with nailing Aleksej Marković and intercepting the delivery of his cargo. Now that Marković and the two Syrian undesirables were dead, Louis and the others could expect little help from that quarter.

Frend stuck to coffee when refreshments were served. Hendricksen did likewise. He spent the duration of the flight refamiliarizing himself with the geography of Belgrade even though he had a driver, Dušan, waiting for him at the airport. Dušan was a former interpreter for the UN, and now ran his own limousine company. He, like Hendricksen, had been at Srebrenica.

Hendricksen had not expected to return to the Balkans; the region held only bad memories for him. Perhaps the outcome of the Frend pursuit would alter that situation, but he doubted it. The best he could hope for would be to make up for past deficiencies – his own, and those of others.