Radovan had tried to talk his brother out of going after De Jaager. Andrej Buha was long dead, the memory of him lost to all but a handful of his contemporaries, and even they would hardly have recalled him with much fondness. Had De Jaager not hired someone to take care of him, the Zemuns would eventually have been forced to kill him themselves. They might even have entrusted the Vuksans with the task in order to avoid a blood feud. Buha had become unstable, which threatened to bring danger to them all. De Jaager, by Radovan’s reckoning, had done them a favor of sorts by solving the Buha problem, and the Vuksans had weathered the storms that followed until they, like De Jaager, were on the verge of retiring as wealthy men. They had lived as voluntary exiles for long enough, and home was calling. Concerns had been assuaged, bribes had been paid, and a place had been prepared for them in the new Serbia. In time, they would be laid to rest in its soil. This final act of vengeance for an unloved man was, in Radovan’s view, an unnecessary risk to take at such a delicate stage.

Radovan wondered, too, about the assassin De Jaager had employed to kill Buha. The gunman was an American, and his name – as they now knew, thanks to the legat Armitage – was Louis. According to Spiridon, this Louis was no cause for apprehension. He was a professional who had been hired to do a job, and whatever happened in the aftermath would be of no concern to him. Perhaps, if the mood struck, Spiridon might ask one of their friends in the United States to take care of him, but there would be little pleasure in it. Louis was undoubtedly lethal, and would therefore have to be dealt with quickly. He would die largely without suffering, possibly without even knowing the reason for his termination, and what would be the purpose of that? As Spiridon had indicated to De Jaager, only a dolt blamed a weapon for his agonies, cursing the blade that cut him or the gun that wounded him rather than the one who wielded the knife or pulled the trigger. If they did not trouble the assassin, said Spiridon, he would not trouble them. That was how such men worked.