The Nameless Ones by John Connolly
Chapter LXX
From where he sat, Radovan Vuksan could see no stars, only darkness. The drapes were closed, and the bedroom was dim. The chair was an antique, akin to a throne. It gave him the aspect of a judge, one forced to pass a sentence with which he did not entirely agree, but to whom the option of clemency had been denied.
He had not slept well that night. He had not slept well in a long time. Radovan was worn out by bloodshed, even at one remove. It seemed that he had known little else since before Tito passed away in a Ljubljana hospital in 1980, the room fetid with the stink of gangrene. Tito’s Croat wife, Jovanka Broz, had been permitted to remain at liberty only for long enough to wave his coffin into the House of Flowers before she was incarcerated in a rotting Belgrade villa. There she had remained hidden for decades without a passport or identity card, lest any reminder of her late husband’s existence should interfere with the process of dismantling his precious Yugoslav republic.
Because even then Radovan and his brother had been aware of what was coming. Their father, Sergej, had warned of it for years. The country was an artificial construct, six republics bound together by the iron will of Tito, like six thorny stems held in awkward proximity by barbed wire. As soon as Tito died, they would fall apart, and the resulting frictions would lead to a conflagration.
Sergej Vuksan had been a senior official in UDBA, the Yugoslav secret service, with special responsibility for monitoring the activities of dissidents abroad, particularly Croatians. Sergej’s own sympathies, carefully concealed, lay with the Serbian nationalists. Like many Serbs, he had no love for Tito, an ethnic Croat raised as a Catholic, even as he helped to secure the dictator’s rule. He had raised his sons in the expectation that, when the inevitable conflict commenced, they would do their duty to further the cause of Serbian independence. Each, in his way, had obliged, Spiridon by shedding the blood of Turks and Croats, and Radovan by ensuring that the resources were available for him to do so. Whether Sergej, had he lived, would have approved of his sons’ subsequent transition to mundane, self-interested criminality was another matter, but dementia and mortality had negated the necessity of such an awkward conversation.
Now Serbia was an independent nation once again, if still something of a pariah in Europe, but the Udbasi had not gone away. Instead they had integrated themselves into the structures of the new republics according to their political or national loyalties, principally in order to feather their own nests. Within Serbia, powerful elements had recognized the usefulness of employing UDBA tactics against their enemies, which now included the Vuksans. This, Radovan knew, was what Spiridon failed to recognize: The Vuksans were engaged in a battle not only with ambitious men like Matija Kiš and Simo Stajić but also with the entire apparatus of the Serbian state. It was a fight that the brothers were destined to lose.
So Radovan sat in his chair, watching the dawn come too slowly.
Shortly after 10 a.m., he made the call.
Radovan was taking a chance, of course, one of which his brother would not approve, but perhaps the Vuksans were still owed a favor or two, if only out of respect for their late father. The Serbian consulate in Vienna was situated on Ölzeltgasse. Radovan dialed the number and asked to be put through to the liaison officer for the head of mission to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. When he was informed that Ms Ćirić was not available, he asked that she be contacted as a matter of urgency, and left a number and the contact name Vrana. Five minutes later, the phone rang.
‘Tell me you’re not actually in Vienna,’ said Teodora Ćirić.
‘I have never lied to you,’ Radovan answered. ‘I don’t intend to start now.’
‘What do you want?’
‘To meet, to talk.’
‘You have a price on your head.’
‘I’m aware of that. I wish to find a way to avoid the shedding of more blood, including my own.’
‘You should have thought of that before you and your brother opened a butcher’s shop on the Herengracht.’
‘Teo, for old times’ sake—’
There was silence, then: ‘Burggasse Twenty-Four. It’s a clothing store, but there is a café on the ground floor. It’s not the kind of place where we are likely to attract attention. I can be there in an hour.’
‘Thank you,’ said Radovan, before adding, ‘I’m trusting you.’
‘That you should mention it indicates doubt. Given your situation, though, I’m inclined to forgive it. But Radovan?’
‘Yes?’
‘If we are seen together, and questions are asked, I will have to act. You understand?’
‘I do.’
‘One hour. Don’t be late.’
In the event, Radovan arrived early at the meeting place. Burggasse 24 was a two-story vintage emporium in the 7th District, with a casual café at the back that extended across two rooms. The clientele was young and chic, and made Radovan feel like the interloper that he was. He took a seat in the main section, from which he could see the street and the open area to the left around Sankt-Ulrichs-Platz. Somewhere out there, he knew, Teodora Ćirić would be watching. He might have been early, but she would have been earlier still.
Radovan ordered a slice of tart with his coffee, and tried to keep his breathing calm as he stirred in the sugar. One call: that was all it would take for Ćirić to summon a pair of vehicles, probably a van and an escort car, and pull him from the street. An interrogation would follow, and, in all probability, a handover to the Austrian police prior to his extradition to the Netherlands, a sacrificial offering on the altar of prospective EU membership. Then again, his compatriots might decide to deal with him themselves. It depended on how much influence Matija Kiš had already accrued and how badly Simo Stajić wanted to make an example of the Vuksans. It was only six hours by road from Vienna to Belgrade, plenty of time for Stajić to prepare a basement and gather his tools. Radovan’s only consolation was that he had managed to enter Burggasse 24 unimpeded. It would have been easiest for Ćirić to seize him before he got to the meeting place.
And now here was the woman herself, a few more lines to her face, her hair entirely gray, although the color suggested that she had decided to finish for herself what nature had started. It would be typical of the Teodora he remembered, a woman disinclined to do things by half measures. Were she to have received a terminal diagnosis from a physician, she would have poured herself a glass of Prokupac before eating her gun.
Radovan stood to greet her, and they hugged awkwardly while exchanging a single, fleeting kiss on the cheek. Her perfume smelled expensive and her coat looked like it might have come from one of the more exclusive racks in Burggasse 24 itself, or be destined for them once it had ceased to delight her. She ordered mint tea and sat with her back to the wall.
‘You’ve grown old,’ she said, although she was older than he by almost a decade.
‘It has a certain inevitability.’
‘Isn’t it supposed to be accompanied by wisdom?’
‘Only in the most fortunate,’ said Radovan. ‘I find that resignation is often mistaken for it.’
‘Yet you appear to be neither wise – because you’re still laboring in the shadow of your brother – nor resigned, or else you would not be here.’
‘I’m hoping to find a third path.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘To survive, and let others survive also.’
Her tea arrived. He pushed the plate of tart in her direction, inviting her to share it. She declined.
‘Diabetes,’ she said. ‘I seem to be the first in my family to have developed it. I blame my exposure to the excesses of the new Europe.’
‘Such invisible ailments aside,’ said Radovan, ‘the new Europe appears to be agreeing with you. You look well.’
And she did, even as he remembered a younger Teo, and an on-off love affair that had spanned nearly fifteen years behind her first husband’s back before she traded him in for a richer, more handsome replacement, and before the Vuksan name became a byword for criminal excess. Her vrana, Teo had called Radovan, her crow, because he was so dark and clever. She had trained under Radovan’s father, who regarded her as his most gifted protegée. Now she was one of the hidden Udbasi, with a title and position that gave her access to secrets and license to roam.
She permitted him a smile, like the flash of an old camera briefly capturing a moment from the past.
‘It’s kind of you to say.’
‘How is your husband?’
‘Thriving. He likes Vienna, although he complains about the prices.’
‘Give him my regards.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Ćirić. ‘What is it you want me to do for you, Radovan?’
‘I need to know if there is a way out of this.’
‘For you, or for Spiridon?’
‘For both of us.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘You haven’t asked me what might be regarded as an acceptable compromise.’
‘Because there is none,’ said Ćirić, ‘or none that involves a return to his homeland for your brother. He is an unstable element, an agent of chaos. Even if he were somehow to be controlled, I don’t believe it would be possible to hide from Interpol the fact of his presence in Serbia. If we were discovered giving him sanctuary after what happened in Amsterdam, it would be used against us in the ongoing accession negotiations. But I was led to believe that you had convinced Spiridon to leave Europe.’
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Your lawyer has been making certain approaches.’
Radovan sipped coffee to hide his unhappiness. Somehow, Ćirićhad already learned that Frend was trying to buy new passports for the Vuksans. That information could only have come from Kauffmann or one of the embassies with which she was dealing: Radovan suspected the former. Kauffmann was testing the ground, covering herself, trying to balance her greed against the Vuksans’ current and future toxicity. God preserve us, Radovan prayed, from the amorality of lawyers.
‘Distancing ourselves from Europe remains the preferred option,’ he said.
‘Do I detect a hint of ambivalence?’
‘Only regret that exile should have been forced upon us.’
‘By personal misjudgment,’ said Ćirić.
‘And the ambitions of others,’ Radovan added. ‘We were not responsible for separating Nikola Musulin’s head from his body.’
‘Your expression suggests that I might have been.’
‘Not at all, but his murder was sanctioned by Belgrade, and you, Teo, also take your orders from Belgrade. Collective responsibility did not end with the death of Josip Broz. Kiš and Stajić would not have engaged in such a public act of violence had it not been cleared from above, and if it did not serve the ambitions of the state.’
‘And how,’ said Ćirić, ‘would such an assassination aid us in our pursuit of accession? The last time I checked, the EU continued to display an aversion to bombings in tourist areas, regardless of the identity of the target.’
‘If a section of a rockface is likely to give way,’ said Radovan, ‘one tackles it with a controlled explosion rather than waiting for it to tumble of its own accord, or allow a fear of the threat represented by it to spread; a small sacrifice in return for a larger benefit. Nikola Musulin was soft. Had Spiridon been permitted to return to Serbia, you were concerned he might try to exert influence over Nikola, perhaps even usurp him, regardless of any assurances to the contrary – and that was before Spiridon’s revenge on De Jaager and his people. Were I an advisor to Belgrade, I might have sent word to our European neighbors, perhaps through our most influential representative to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe – which would be you, Teo, in all but title – advising them that it would be better if odd rumors about Nikola Musulin’s death were ignored, and it was accepted that a gas leak had caused his demise.’
‘Bravo, vrana,’ said Ćirić. ‘You know, your father was also a good storyteller. He even managed to convince Josip Broz that he was a loyalist, right to the end.’
‘I notice you’re not denying the truth of anything I’ve said.’
‘Because whether it is true or false makes no difference.’
‘It does to me,’ said Radovan. ‘Call off Kiš and Stajić. Giving them free rein will not serve you well.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because Stajić is an animal, and Kiš is secretly frightened of him. Were you aware that they presented our lawyer with Nikola Musulin’s head in a Belgrade restaurant?’
Ćirić blanched, less at the image of the handover than the temerity of the gesture.
‘I was not,’ she said.
‘They are reckless,’ said Radovan. ‘Even if they were to succeed in killing us, they would leave a trail of evidence that a child could follow. If they were to fail – and if I were you, I would not underestimate our capacities – Spiridon would retaliate, and he would do so without any concern for the optics of EU membership.’
Ćirić finished her tea in silence, and Radovan did not interrupt her thoughts. Finally, she spoke.
‘You have to guarantee that Spiridon will never again inconvenience us,’ she said.
‘You have my word, but I require something more in return.’
‘You’re already asking a great deal.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Radovan.
‘Well?’
‘Some of our accounts have been frozen, probably as a prelude to a larger sequestration of physical assets back home: businesses, property. We can’t leave without the resources required to pay our way, and we cannot subsist on fresh air once we reach our final destination. We need that money.’
‘You’re not seriously trying to tell me that you don’t have funds hidden away,’ said Ćirić. ‘That would be unlike you.’
‘I have some, but not enough to satisfy Spiridon.’
Ćirić considered the request.
‘You’ve caused a lot of bother,’ she said. ‘Some form of restitution is to be expected.’
‘How much?’
‘Fifty percent.’
‘That’s unacceptable.’
‘You’re not in a position to negotiate.’
In truth, it was a less savage cut than Radovan had feared, but he still pantomimed unhappiness before agreeing.
‘As you say,’ he conceded, ‘I am not in a position to negotiate.’
‘Good,’ said Ćirić. ‘So now you can both vanish, and I hope this will be the last time we ever meet.’
‘What else would we have to say to each other?’
‘Nothing.’ Ćirić began rebuttoning her coat, which she had not removed. ‘But this solves only one of your problems. From what I hear, Kiš and Stajić are not the only ones baying for your blood.’
‘All hunters tire in the end,’ said Radovan, ‘which means they either give up or become vulnerable to their prey.’
‘I admire your optimism. I give you a year, maybe less.’
‘Then in a year I shall send you a postcard, just to prove you wrong.’
‘I look forward to receiving it,’ said Ćirić, ‘should it ever materialize.’
‘And how long do you give Simo Stajić?’ Radovan asked.
Ćirić shrugged. ‘As you say, he’s reckless. Men like him drive too fast, drink too much, sleep with the wrong women, take the wrong drugs. Their days are always numbered. Perhaps even you may live long enough to read his obituary. Goodbye, vrana.’
They hugged and kissed once more, this time with more feeling. Radovan watched her depart, his face wistful. He left cash to cover the check, and walked through the main store to the front window. He saw Ćirić get into the passenger seat of a large black Audi with two men in the back before the driver pulled out and drove down Burggasse toward the MuseumsQuartier. No van, then. Perhaps, had the meeting with Ćirić gone badly, he would have been consigned to the trunk of the car. Still, he waited for a while before leaving, just to be sure he was safe. He browsed the men’s section of the boutique, and bought himself a vintage scarf in celebration. The scarf was black and gold, but more the former than the latter, which Radovan thought was appropriate.
For the bloodshed, he knew, was not yet over.