A bottle of Charles Fox Cipher Brut sat in an ice bucket beside the table. A waiter materialized to pour Louis a glass.

‘Well?’ said Angel.

Louis sipped the wine.

‘I reunited him with his brother.’

‘Good,’ said Angel. ‘Nothing’s more important than family.’

Chapter LXXXVII

It was late spring when Angel and Louis finally flew into Belgrade. As the only black passenger on the flight, Louis had to endure a thorough baggage search, even though he was also the best-dressed person on board. Their driver was waiting for them in the arrival hall. His name was Željko, and he came highly recommended by Most’s Serbian contacts, which was as close to a guarantee of quality as one could get in an uncertain world. He spoke perfect English, and drove a black Lexus hybrid.

They had booked a suite for one night at the Townhouse 27 Hotel in the center of the city, and ate dinner that evening at Ambar, accompanied by Željko. There they consumed Balkan food, drank Serbian wine, and spoke of the Vlach.

Early the following morning, Željko drove them east to the Bor District, which bordered the Danube and Romania at its eastern extremes. At the Bukovo Monastery, they sheltered from icy fog as a monk fed them red wine from the monastery’s vineyards and said that, yes, he had heard stories of a creature that had taken the form of a young girl, but there were many such legends in these lands. Some said she was one of the rusalki, female entities that stayed eternally youthful, formed from the souls of young women who had drowned. The Romanians of his acquaintance claimed she was the restless spirit of a witch.

But what did he think, Louis asked, and waited for Željko to translate. The monk took his time before answering.

‘He thinks,’ said Željko, ‘that she’s the reason the monastery has a lock on its gate.’

The monk provided them with the name of Johain, a man in the village of Kobišnica, and offered to make a telephone call to let him know they were coming. Johain met them by the village’s two war memorials, where the local dogs emerged to sniff the newcomers curiously. Johain’s English was almost as good as Željko’s, and he admitted that only the intervention of the monk had caused him to agree to meet with them.

The village had just a few stores, and the streets were empty of cars and people. Like so many other such communities, it had been decimated by emigration. But Kobišnica, Johain explained, was also a Vlach settlement and had, for two centuries, been locked in a state of feud with the neighboring hamlet of Bukovče.

‘Because you’re Vlach?’ said Louis.

‘No,’ Johain replied, ‘because one day someone decided that he didn’t want to live in Bukovče anymore.’