Baba Diop spent the final thirty-six hours of his life at Fleury-Mérogis. At 11 a.m. on the second day, he was stabbed in the throat with a sharpened comb while being led under escort to the governor’s office. His murderer was a young French-Algerian named Ahmed Beghal, who declared that he had taken Diop’s life as revenge for his part in the deaths of the ‘martyrs’ at Gare de Lyon. Beghal, with no previous history of violence, and not yet on the watch list of firebrand inmates, declined to say whether he might have been ordered by another party to kill Diop. He also refused to share with police or prison staff the source of his information about Diop, whose identity had been kept secret in order to protect him against just such an act of retaliation.

And in Vienna, the Vuksans felt the noose tighten another inch.

Chapter LXII

The official term is ‘identity management’; the unofficial one is ‘passports for sale’. It’s a lucrative trade, worth about $3 billion annually, and shows no signs of abating in this age of isolationism, Brexit, tax evasion, and terrorism. Basically, if you’re wealthy enough, any number of countries may be willing to provide you with a passport. The most valuable of these documents offer visa-free access to most of the world, including those European territories in the Schengen Area. For this reason, poorer Caribbean island nations are particularly popular, aided by their status as offshore tax havens and their desire to attract outside investment. The price, generally speaking, is quite reasonable: $100–$200,000 for an Antiguan passport; $100,000 for a Dominican; $150,000 for St. Kitts and Nevis, or Grenada. European passports are more expensive: an Austrian passport will cost the buyer upwards of $3 million, a Cypriot passport $2 million, a Maltese $1 million. In addition, fees may have to be paid to a broker, which can add as little as $20,000 or as much as $500,000 to the final cost.

The attraction of such passports is plain for respectable businesspeople from countries with restrictions on access to leading economic markets, but even more obvious for disreputable individuals seeking to avoid the attention of the authorities. On paper, the nations involved in these sales are committed to due diligence, investigating – or claiming to investigate – all applicants thoroughly, and refusing to sell to anyone suspected of altering their identity or those who might be the subject of a criminal investigation.

But the reality?

Well, that’s more nebulous.