Only their lawyer, Frend, was immediately locatable, but it wasn’t as though Louis could pull up in front of Frend’s Viennese office, Sachertorte in hand, knock on the door, and ask after a bunch of Serbs. For the first time, Louis felt the futility of what he was attempting. He was already out of his depth. With the exception of a Dutch private investigator, everyone he knew in the Netherlands was now dead. He had a vague promise of assistance from Ross, a federal agent whom he did not trust, and an unknown intermediary in the Netherlands, courtesy of that same agent. From what Ross had said at the St. Regis, Louis guessed that the intermediary was, if not a serving spook, then a former one, and nobody could trust a spy.

Louis took the documents and photographs to his office, where he scanned them before emailing them to a secure dropbox. He then placed the paperwork in the fireplace and set it alight. From his armchair, he watched the faces of the five Serbs curl up and burn.

He would try, for the sake of De Jaager and the rest. It was all he could do.

Five criminals. Five Serb killers.

Unfortunately, government agencies are systemically unreliable.

Because unbeknownst to them, there was a sixth.

Chapter XXII

The Vuksans and their people headed first to Germany, avoiding the larger urban centers and keeping electronic communication to a minimum. The Serbs were deeply embedded in the German criminal underworld, mostly through prostitution and narcotics, and many were ex-military. While some might have sympathized with the Vuksans’ plight, they would be unwilling to endanger their own lives by offering help, even if – as was likely – Belgrade had not cautioned against it. If the Vuksans turned to them, they risked being betrayed.

But there were some on whom they could still rely, men whose loyalties extended back to the days of Tito, and so the Vuksans traveled to the farm of Gavrilo Dražeta near Kassel in Central Germany.

None of his neighbors knew Dražeta by his old name. Here he was István Adami, a Hungarian of German ancestry, although one with only the most distant of Teutonic relatives remaining alive, and they resided far to the east, or so he told anyone who asked. Thanks to his late mother, Dražeta spoke fluent Hungarian, which helped maintain his cover and hide him from his enemies.