‘Are you in a hurry to join her?’ he said. ‘Because I’ll put a bullet in your fucking head and all your troubles will be over. Is that what you want?’

Frend didn’t reply. He was as close to weeping as he had ever come in his adult life. Ilić and the Vuksans had their documents. They could vanish, but he could not. Kauffmann’s death would be investigated, and not only by the authorities. The trail would lead back to him. He was sure of it. He would become a marked man.

Frend managed to get to his feet, cradling his injured arm with his right hand. As he did so, the rage on Ilić’s face disappeared, to be replaced by what Frend initially mistook for pity, until he realized that whatever the Serb was feeling was directed not at Frend but himself.

‘You’re not the only one who is damned,’ said Ilić. ‘We were all cursed from the moment we stood with the Vuksans. You think these are going to save any of us?’ He showed Frend the envelope containing the passports. ‘They won’t. They’re only going to postpone the inevitable. You know what you should do? You should go back to that graveyard, dig a hole for yourself with your bare hands, and pull the dirt down on top of you. Words won’t save you. Documents won’t save you. Money won’t save you. You’re cursed, just as I am. The only difference is that I’m resigned to it and you’re not.’

‘Then why don’t you just give up?’ said Frend.

Ilić took a moment to reply.

‘Because I’m a fool,’ he said, at last, ‘and the dirt is in no hurry to accept another fool.’

He got in his car and drove away without giving Anton Frend another glance. Miserably, Frend walked toward his own vehicle and minutes later was leaving behind the quiet ranks of the nameless.

For the present.

On the silos overlooking the graves, flocks of small birds settled for a time before rising, forming patterns in the sky like dreams drawn from the mind of God. Only one did not join them. It was squatter and heavier than the rest, and stood on four legs, not two. The drone’s propellers activated and it ascended slowly, its camera following the departure first of Zivco Ilić, then Anton Frend. It stayed in the air for a while longer before its battery gave out and it dropped back to the roof of the silo, there to join the corpses of two pigeons in their own little cemetery of the lost.

Chapter LXXXII

Radovan killed the call.

‘Zivco has the passports,’ he told his brother.