Toweling himself dry, Frend checked his in-box. Miloje, his bodyguard in Belgrade, had located the Mercedes that had followed them from the airport, the city’s community of limousine drivers being relatively small. Miloje had convinced the owner of the Mercedes to divulge the identity of the person who had hired him: a Dutchman named Hendricksen, who had spent the night at the Radisson before being driven back to the airport for an early-morning flight to Vienna.

Frend put on a robe and set to work finding out all he could about this Hendricksen. Like any good lawyer, especially one who operated in more legal and moral gray areas than the norm, Frend had contacts in credit card companies, banks, and the government, including the Austrian foreign ministry. Somewhere, there would be a record of Hendricksen’s movements. It took Frend thirty minutes, and the transfer of some of the Vuksans’ remaining funds, to secure a scan of Hendricksen’s passport. Within an hour he had also obtained Hendricksen’s residential address in the Netherlands, bank and credit card records, and home and cell phone numbers, as well as a partial client list, because Frend learned that Hendricksen was a former Dutch soldier now working as a private investigator. The majority of his income in recent years had come from three law firms, one of which specialized in cases relating to the art world. The credit card information, meanwhile, showed that Hendricksen was currently staying at a chain hotel in Vienna’s Innere Stadt, and had been for a number of days, apart from his brief sojourn in Belgrade.

Frend heard his wife moving about downstairs, and music playing on the radio. Mina was probably making herself a gin and tonic, because it was about that time. She called up, asking if he’d like a drink, and he told her he’d be right with her. They needed to talk. Frend might no longer have loved his wife, but he retained some residual affection for her and did not wish any harm to befall her, as much for the sake of their daughter as for her own. Frend might have managed to escape Belgrade unharmed, but that did not mean he was safe. He did not doubt that the reach of Kiš and Stajić extended beyond the Serbian border, and there was no shortage of Serbs in Austria. If Kiš and Stajić decided to move against the Vuksans, their lawyer still remained the most obvious means of applying pressure.