The Names of the Dead

by Wignall, Kevin

  “Grishko’s dead?”

  “A week or so after Rachel. She was on her way to meet him when she was killed. So when you come to your debrief, I want you to tell them what I’ve told you. I want you to tell them that Pine and his colleagues tried to kill me and I killed them in self-defense. Tell them I killed Scottie because of what he did to my wife. I didn’t kill Grace Burns or her boyfriend, and I didn’t kill you.”

  “You’re really not gonna kill me?”

  “It’s not my plan, but you have a choice here, Billy. If you trust me—and think about it, I really have no reason to lie at this stage—then turn off your cellphone, take some painkillers for that leg, and lie low for the night. If I see you again tonight, I’ll have no choice, because I’ll have to assume you trust Sam more than me, and that you’re my enemy. You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Who’s Brandon?”

  “He joined the team eighteen months ago when we moved here. He’s okay.”

  “Kyle, Brandon, Sam. Any more?”

  Billy didn’t answer, but Wes was sure that would be it—gray teams were meant to be tight-knit, even if Wes’s had unraveled anyway.

  Wes stood. “He plans to call me tonight at ten with a rendezvous point, so that’s all you have to do, lie low until ten, let us sort it out between ourselves.”

  “You know what’ll happen if you show up to any rendezvous?”

  “I know.” He pointed. “Sorry about the leg.”

  Billy shrugged, an admission that it had been a more or less fair fight, no apology needed, and maybe also an acknowledgment that a wounded leg was nowhere near as bad as this might have turned out for him.

  Thirty-Seven

  The sky overhead was blue, but he could see ominous clouds stacking up on the horizon and the heat was building to the kind of sticky intensity that suggested a storm was overdue.

  He found a dumpster at the back of a café and dropped the gun and the knife into it. He walked on for another five minutes, but with the humidity and the throbbing in his ribs and on his head where Billy had cracked him with the gun, he was in no mood to walk all the way back to the hotel. He picked up a cab to take him the rest of the way and when the driver tried to explain that it wasn’t far to walk, Wes simply told him he was in a hurry, which was true enough.

  Back at the Esplanade he walked up to the concierge’s desk and said, “One of the generals I met with Miss Pavić yesterday, I don’t remember his surname, but his first name is Slavko.”

  “Of course, General Novak.”

  “Great, so, I need to get hold of him.”

  “But he’s here now. He arrived twenty minutes ago. I thought you were expecting him.”

  “We were, kind of. I didn’t realize he’d get here so soon. Er, where is he?”

  “In the bar.”

  “Thanks.”

  Wes walked through and found the bar quieter now that most of the lunchtime crowd had gone. Slavko was sitting on his own, staring at his phone as if still trying to work out how to use it. Wes could see the familiar bottle and a glass on the table in front of him.

  The barman caught Wes’s eye and held up a small shot glass questioningly. Wes nodded, smiling—it seemed he was becoming “the pear brandy guy.”

  Slavko looked up as Wes approached. He looked a little surprised, probably to see Wes on his own. Wes noticed the brightly colored cartoon graphics on Slavko’s phone and Slavko looked down at it himself and laughed.

  “My grandson, he likes me to play this game. We compare scores. It’s a crazy game but I’m quite good at it now. He doesn’t always win.” He put the phone away and shook Wes’s hand as he sat. “Where is Mia?”

  It was just simple curiosity. The best-case scenario if Wes told him the truth was that he’d have a whole bunch of allies in his battle against Sam. The worst-case was that Slavko would be furious at Wes for putting Mia in danger in the first place, and he’d have been right to feel like that. Nor did Wes know how it would play out tonight, so for now it was better Slavko didn’t know.

  “I think she’s visiting her favorite haunts, places she remembers. She went to a service at the cathedral and I guess she’s doing some shopping, you know, that kind of thing.”

  That seemed to satisfy him. The waiter placed the glass on the table and poured a shot from the bottle, then topped up Slavko’s glass. They drank and then Slavko reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper which he placed on the table between them.

  “Your friend has an office not far from here. The company is called Holdfast Shipping, but my information is that this is just a front. Three of the people who work there have apartments in the city, two you named and another, Brandon Myers. The other man you named, Sam Garvey, he isn’t listed as a resident anywhere. But . . . the office of Holdfast Shipping is on the third floor of the building. Above it on the top floor is an apartment, also owned by the same company, but no resident listed. So I think you find him there.”

  “Thanks. Would you happen to know who occupies the neighboring buildings?”

  Slavko smiled.

  “I thought you would ask this. On the left is a financial company. On the right is a magazine publisher and, on the top floors, a TV production company.” Wes was about to speak but Slavko held up his finger, a gesture that was almost identical to the one Wes had used against Billy, but Slavko was still smiling, pleased with himself—and it seemed for good reason. “Also on the paper, you will find the entry code for the building on the right, and for the TV company offices. I imagine you want to get to the roof?”

  “I really appreciate this. If there’s ever anything I can do . . .”

  “You were in prison with Nikola.”

  Had Mia told them that yesterday? He wondered if she’d been back in touch with Slavko since, and what she might have told him.

  “I was, but I didn’t know him very well. I think that was my loss.”

  “He was a great man.” He frowned, the look of someone contemplating unresolved business of some sort. “And you and Mia, what is your connection?”

  “When I got released from the prison, Sam Garvey sent three people to kill me. I killed them, but I was hurt. I came out of the woods and Mia just happened to be driving past. She rescued me, and she’s stuck with me ever since. But I should stress, there’s no . . .”

  “Romance? You don’t need to tell me that. She’s not like other people.”

  “Yeah, I worked out that much. She’s told me a little bit about her past, how her mother killed herself, how she doesn’t really talk to her family anymore, but I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the way she is.”

  Slavko frowned again, but this time because he seemed to be struggling to understand what Wes was getting at. Then a light appeared to come on.

  “Ah, I see. No, she was born this way. The problems with the family are connected. They would always tell Nikola she has autism or some other disorder, that he should seek medical advice. They said other things too, not so nice things. So Nikola cut them off. It didn’t matter to him that she was different. He only wanted to make her happy, to help her live her own life.”

  Wes nodded his understanding, but wondered at the same time if seeking medical help might have prevented the period of self-harming and the eating disorder.

  “As for her mother—she was a beautiful woman, but she suffered so badly in the war. She was very close to her brother, but he was killed, also her best friend. After Mia was born she had a depression, and in truth, she never recovered from it, and then when she lost her brother and her friend, it was all too much. This is a happy country now, Mr. Wesley, but there are ghosts.”

  “I understand.”

  Slavko brightened. “But it’s good Mia has a friend. I worried when Nikola died, what she might do, but she found you. There’s a reason for all these accidents. You believe that?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” Wes picked up the piece of paper. “But I’m grateful
for this.”

  “It’s my pleasure.”

  He raised his glass and Wes followed suit and they drank. It had been Slavko’s pleasure, but he probably wouldn’t have felt that way if he’d known the truth, that Wes had been complacent or incompetent enough to put Mia in danger. And he guessed by the end of the day they’d all know just how valuable it was, and how dangerous, to have Wes as a friend.

  Thirty-Eight

  The Holdfast Shipping office was in a monumental-looking block probably only a five- to ten-minute walk from the Esplanade, in the direction he’d seen Sam heading after their meeting. The facade was an imposing fin-de-siècle cliff face, but the roofs were pitched, with skylights facing both front and back.

  Wes learned that much from the computer in the hotel’s business center. Armed with this knowledge, he had a taxi take him to a hardware store and bought duct tape, a glass cutter, a flashlight, and cable ties—a shopping list that seemed inherently suspicious to Wes but didn’t even earn a raised eyebrow from the young cashier.

  Then he went back to the hotel and waited, but not for a phone call. He wouldn’t be there when Sam called, and that was typical of how lacking Sam was in the cutting edge—it had never occurred to him what he’d do if Wes simply didn’t play along. The one thing even Sam wouldn’t want to do was kill Mia, not when she was their only leverage.

  Just after eight Wes set off on foot under a sky of towering clouds, taking a route that meant he could approach the offices he wanted without passing Holdfast Shipping first. The TV production company was spread over the two upper floors and he walked around them, looking at the layout, getting a sense of what the neighboring property looked like.

  He listened too, using a glass, and even though the walls were thick, he could hear occasional movements coming from the office next door and, just once, someone speaking on the phone. There was no noise coming through the wall from the apartment on the top floor.

  He found a stepladder, and with half an hour to go and darkness finally falling, he climbed out through the skylight onto the roof. One thing he hadn’t been able to see on Google Maps was quite how steeply pitched the roof was, and while the front had a decorative stone balustrade as part of the facade, the rear offered nothing more than a gutter to stop him falling if he slipped.

  He edged forward but immediately felt himself sliding, and retreated to the skylight frame. So instead of going across, he used the purchase of the frame to push himself up the roof, high enough to reach the apex. He could hardly shimmy along the very top like a cartoon cat burglar, but using it as a handhold he was able to crab-walk along the roof until he was above the neighboring skylight.

  The window frame stood proud of the roof so he was able to let go and slide down to it. A quick glance revealed a bathroom, in darkness, no light from beyond the closed door.

  Even here, with few places from which he might be spotted by neighbors, Wes didn’t want to hang around for long. He slipped his backpack off and got the duct tape and the glass cutter. He taped up the glass, folding a couple of lengths of the tape to make handles. Then he cut around the edges and used the handles to pull the sheet of glass free. He rested it flat on the roof, wedged against the top of the frame, put the tape and cutter back in the pack, then lowered himself through the gap and dropped lightly to the floor below.

  He pulled his gun and waited, listening. Now that he was inside he was acutely conscious of the noise of the city coming through the open skylight, the traffic of a perfectly ordinary early-summer evening. He couldn’t hear anything from within, not even when he stood against the bathroom door.

  He took out the flashlight, eased the door open and moved through the apartment, checking each room, sticking close to the edges to avoid telltale creaking boards. It was evidently occupied, and in the bedroom Wes found a framed photo next to the bed, of two young girls. Sam had married young and divorced not long after the youngest girl had been born.

  He studied the picture. He guessed the girls were about eight and ten now. It made him think in turn of Ethan, how Rachel had planned to ensure Wes would never have anything to do with him. If she hadn’t been murdered, Wes might never have even found out about him. He wanted to be angry with her about that, but his certainties had been undermined enough by what Billy Tavares had told him that he no longer knew what to think.

  He took a sharp knife from a block in the kitchen, slipped it into his pack, then left the apartment and made his way down the stairs. He’d feared there might be a coded door into the Holdfast office, but it followed the same layout as the TV production company, treating these two upper floors as one property, with a secure door offering access to both of them.

  The office door had a glass panel in it, and Wes could see an empty reception desk beyond it. The overhead lights weren’t on, but there was a subdued light coming from somewhere within. He pushed the door a touch, just to make sure it wasn’t locked, then waited, looking at his watch as the minutes crept by.

  On the hour, Wes pushed the door again and slid silently inside, easing it shut behind him. To the left of the reception area was a wall with three doors, all open onto darkened offices. To the right, beyond the reception desk, there was a lounge area with two low couches facing each other over a black glass coffee table.

  The light was coming from an open office door beyond that lounge area. And Wes could also hear Sam’s voice now, asking to be put through to Wes’s room.

  Wes moved closer as the call ended, then stood still and listened. His hearing was so acute in this silence that he could tell Sam had made another call because he could hear the ringtone coming from the receiver.

  “Hey. He’s not there. He didn’t answer.” Wes couldn’t hear any indication of a response, but there clearly was one. “I don’t know. I guess we move to Plan B. Any word from Billy?” This time Wes could hear the single-word reply from the other end and Sam seemed to pause before responding. “Okay, we have to assume the worst.”

  Wes was glad he’d judged Billy right on this one. Some people would have considered it desertion, abandoning his colleagues, but Wes saw it as nothing more than putting right a past wrong.

  He stepped into the office. Sam was facing him across the desk and immediately started to reach for the drawer, but Wes shook his head and waved the gun at him.

  Sam made a show of slowly lifting his hand clear and away from the drawer, and said into the phone, “I have to go, but move to Plan C. Plan C.” He moved the other hand then, the same theatrically slow movements as he hung up the phone. Wes smiled, stepped closer, put the phone properly into its cradle.

  “Same slow movements, open the drawer, take the gun out, put it on the desk.”

  He did as Wes told him, placing the holster on the desk. Wes leaned over, pulled the gun free of its holster and slipped it into his pocket.

  “This is why you were never cut out to lead, Sam. What a crazy plan. I mean, seriously, it might work in some stupid movie, but in real life? I could’ve just disappeared and you would’ve spent the next ten years of your life looking over your shoulder.”

  “But you didn’t,” said Sam, a hint of triumph, as if he still wanted to believe he’d found Wes’s weak spot by taking Mia. And he tried to hide his curiosity with an air of contempt as he added, “And how would you have done it better, if my plan was so bad?”

  Wes thought about it, seeing the obvious solution. “I’d have planted a bomb under the car. That way, she would have looked like the target.”

  “So you’re not so opposed to collateral damage after all.”

  He had a point, and if Rachel had been a target and not his wife, the suicide bombing in Granada might once have seemed to Wes a perfect solution. Maybe the only thing that had really changed was his employment status.

  “I’ll give you that. Now, let’s move into the lounge.”

  “You know they’ll kill her?”

  “Really? Is that Plan B or Plan C?” Wes gestured with the gun again, making clear
he didn’t want an answer this time. Sam pushed himself away from the desk and walked out of the office in front of Wes. “Sit on the couch there, back to the door.”

  Once Sam was sitting, Wes dipped his hand into the bag and took out two cable ties and threw them onto the glass coffee table in front of him.

  “One around your ankles, one around your wrists. And it’s crucial for you not to make any unforced errors at this stage.”

  Wes leaned down and switched on the lamp next to the other couch, and then watched closely as Sam put the cable ties around his ankles and wrists, using his mouth to pull the one around his wrists tight. But Wes had seen the way Sam had left himself a little space with both.

  “Lift your feet, put them on the table.” Sam did as he said and Wes pointed the gun at him as he put one knee on top of Sam’s legs to stop him kicking out, then yanked the cable tie tighter around his ankles. “Raise your hands above your head.” Sam pulled his feet back off the table and raised his hands. Wes walked behind the couch, grabbed Sam’s wrists, and clicked the handcuffs in place.

  Confident that Sam wasn’t going anywhere, he went back and sat on the opposite couch, throwing his backpack to one side, taking the gun from his pocket and placing it on the couch, too. He saw Sam eyeing the gun where it sat camouflaged on the black sofa cushion, maybe imagining he might be in with a chance if he could get to it.

  Seeing him trussed up, Wes wondered how he’d even got into a gray team, let alone become the leader of one.

  Then, as the thought occurred to him, he said, “Why would we even need a gray team in the Balkans? I’m sure there’s work to do out here, but not for a whole team. George Frater never saw the need, I know that much.”

  “Frater’s history. I made a case for it. Schalk saw my logic.”