The Nameless Ones by John Connolly
Chapter LXV
In the privacy of his hotel room, Anton Frend replayed the video over and over. His daughter looked frightened and desperate. How could she be otherwise if it was to him she was appealing, the father she had disowned, the man whose very name she had sloughed?
‘Papa, they say they’ll hurt me if you don’t help them.’
Papa: How long had it been since she called him that? Not since childhood.
‘They say they’ll kill me.’
His wife had cautioned against continuing to work with the Vuksans once they joined forces with the Zemuns to carve out a grubby empire in the Netherlands. She might have turned a blind eye to her husband’s activities, but that required an awareness of them to begin with, and even she occasionally felt compelled to raise her concerns. Yet somehow she had managed to hold her nose while spending dirty money on trips to Venice and Milan, on expensive bags and fine clothes, on the nips and tucks that kept her looking youthful even as their marriage bed grew cold. He did not know why she bothered with the surgery, apart from indulging her own vanity. He might have respected her more had she taken a lover. It would at least have justified the expense.
‘You have to reply to the email to confirm that you’ve received this message. Once you do, they’ll be in touch.’
Were his wife here now, she would have told him to go to the police. Had he refused, she would have contacted them herself, and probably condemned their daughter to death in the process. It was as well that she was elsewhere. Decades of working with the Vuksans had given Frend an insight into how men of their stripe operated. They did not make idle threats. The questions, of course, were: a) Who had his daughter? and b) What did they want from him in return for her? The first step was to find out the answers, which would determine his next move. Already he had some inkling, but best to be sure.
‘Papa, they showed me films. They’ve done this before. They showed me what would happen if you contacted the police. Papa, don’t let them do that to me.’
The video ended. He replied to the email. A single word: Received. Two minutes later, his cell phone rang. The caller’s number was withheld. He answered immediately.
‘Yes?’
‘Anton Frend?’ The voice was disguised by software. It sounded almost female, but he could tell it was a man speaking.
‘That’s correct.’
‘You saw the film?’
‘Yes,’ said Frend. ‘What do you want?’
And it was as he had feared.
‘We want the Vuksans.’
Bob Johnston took the call at the cottage in Cornwall. In the kitchen, Pia Lackner was playing cards with Rosanna Bellingham. The two women were getting along well enough, but the peculiar combination of boredom and tension had already begun to get to Pia. She was growing more short-tempered, which was hardly surprising. There were only so many games to be played, books to be read, and shows to be watched. Eventually, Johnston knew, her patience would run out. If she wanted to leave, he and Rosanna couldn’t stop her. Well, they could, but it would be counterproductive, and would turn the operation from a simulacrum of a kidnapping into the thing itself.
The game stopped as soon as the phone rang. Pia and Rosanna watched Johnston answer it. He listened, said ‘I’ll let her know,’ and hung up.
‘Your father has made contact,’ he told Pia. ‘It’ll move fast now.’
And Pia Lackner burst into tears.