‘Well, they have no leads yet, so we weren’t seen,’ said Most. ‘Bilbija’s definitely dead, but it’ll take them a while to gather all the bits of him. Two members of the casino’s staff were injured in the blast, one seriously, but he’ll pull through. The police know it was a drone attack because the guard at the gate caught a glimpse as it passed over. They’ll be looking for fragments in the hope of finding a serial number, but that’s long gone. The explosive was tagged, but it was the only C4 I held from that particular batch, and they won’t be able to trace it back to me. I was saving it for a special occasion.’

C4 usually contained a chemical marker to give it an odor and enable its source to be established. By a strange coincidence, the C4 used to kill Luca Bilbija would subsequently be identified as part of the same batch used to assassinate Nikola Musulin in Belgrade. Such were the vagaries of fortune.

‘What about your contact at the casino?’ said Louis.

‘She’s a smart girl. She destroyed the SIM card and the phone I supplied. She still has her own phone, and she used it to send a couple of emojis to her boyfriend while she was texting me, just in case the police or the Novákovi start asking why she was seen using it. The kids in there all have phones stuck to their hands anyway, so she won’t have been the only one. She’ll be okay.’

‘And you?’

Most grinned.

‘I’m good,’ he said. ‘But you won’t be when you see my bill.’

After some reflection, Louis decided not to fly to Vienna but take another train instead. The high-speed Railjet would get him and his baggage, both legal and illegal, from Prague to Vienna in just over four hours, enabling him to continue holding on to the unused Rohrbaugh pistol along with a Glock sourced for him by Most. While he could have picked up replacement weapons in Vienna, it would have involved reaching out to second-tier contacts, ones with whom he was not personally acquainted. Every such transaction involved a degree of unmasking, and it was unwise to expose himself more than was necessary. Louis booked a first-class ticket for the 8:44 a.m. departure, and Most escorted him into the station at 8:30, but not before first checking the concourse for any signs of unusual security activity, the Czech having an eye for such matters. They parted with a handshake and Louis took his seat on the train, his bags now heavier by the weight of the Glock and fifty additional rounds of ammunition.

Three to go, he thought.

Chapter LVIII