After the end of the Balkan conflict, Radovan and his brother had entered into an association with the Zemuns, who had become aware of some, although not all, of the Vuksans’ financial activities. The Zemuns had by then already established footholds in Amsterdam and Paris, and suggested that the Vuksans might wish to enter into an alliance as junior partners, with a considerable upfront investment on the Vuksans’ part as a gesture of good faith.

The Vuksans had agreed, the alternative being conflict with the Zemuns that would undoubtedly have resulted in the deaths of Spiridon, Radovan, their families, friends, and anyone who might once have sold them a loaf of bread or given them the time of day, as well as the exhumation of their ancestors’ remains, the scattering of said bones on distant, hostile seas, and the destruction of the stones that once bore their names, so that the very memory of them would be erased forever from this world. But the Vuksans were shrewd and ambitious, and eventually outmaneuvered the Zemuns’ representatives in the Netherlands to assume control of the operation, assisted throughout by the best legal and financial advice money could buy in the form of Anton Frend.

In the beginning, when the Balkan wars were still ongoing, Frend had taken care only of the paperwork, negotiating the potential legalities and illegalities arising from the transfer of funds. He sourced compliant accountants, and bankers who had learned not to ask too many questions about deposits. He had no difficulty in separating Radovan Vuksan from the reports of rape, murder, and attempted genocide appearing nightly on his television screen. Radovan was not stripping victims of their valuables before sending them to the gas chambers, or mining gold from the teeth of the dead. This was not some modern version of Nazi atrocities, no matter what the liberals might have alleged. Radovan was simply claiming a small percentage of war capital as a reward for his efforts, as any good businessman did. In fact, Frend might even have argued that by redirecting money from the Serbian government, money that would otherwise have been used to buy weapons and pay militias, Radovan was actually saving lives. Such rationalizations were endemic to Frend’s profession, and explained why so many lawyers were destined to burn in hell.