Kiš hung up, and Frend put down the phone. It was moist from the sweat of his palm. One week: it might be enough, if Spiridon could be talked around, but his agreement would resolve only one of their difficulties. There remained the fallout from the botched handover of the Syrians, but that issue might yet be settled with blood money. Frend was sure that the Vuksans had access to funds unknown to him, because Radovan was too clever not to have squirreled money away. A payment in cash would surely assuage the anger of the Islamists.

But if Kiš was right about friends of De Jaager seeking revenge for his death, then the killing of Aleksej Marković in Paris took on an even more troubling aspect. Whoever was responsible for Marković’s assassination would not stop there, which meant that the Vuksans and all those around them remained in danger. This was a problem that could not be solved by departing Europe, or paying compensation to anonymous men in tieless shirts. It would require more direct action.

Frend looked again at the photograph of Hendricksen. It was time, he thought, to establish who exactly was hunting the Vuksans.

Chapter XLVII

Louis had taken the train from Paris to Prague, the long journey made more tolerable by the comforts of first class and the knowledge that he could hold on to one of the Rohrbaugh pistols without fear of awkward security questions. Another Rohrbaugh, the one used to kill Aleksej Marković, was already at the bottom of the Seine, and his Japanese guests had presumably disposed of the remaining pair.

Louis made no calls from the train, and slept between Paris and Frankfurt. For the remainder of the journey, he alternated between newspapers and a copy of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, which Angel had given to him. Louis had a vague memory of encountering the comic book adaptation when he was younger, which probably hadn’t been the best response to give when Angel had asked if he’d ever read the novel. Now here he was, on a train to Prague, trying to make amends for his ignorance.

Ever since Angel’s illness, Louis had been working his way through a list of the one hundred greatest works of world literature. He was doing well, he felt, just as long as he didn’t go looking at too many rival lists. Surely, he thought, the finest critical minds could have reached a consensus by this stage, permitting a man reasonably to set himself the target of filling the gaps in his literary knowledge without fear that a whole new set of gaps was lurking in the bushes, waiting to be revealed. At this rate, he might never be done with reading.