Reamde

It had some kind of internal stiffeners that held it open in a box shape. Its main central cavity was filled with money: as many as a dozen rubber-banded bricks that, along with the ammunition clips and the electric stun gun, floated around in a stew of loose bills and ten-bill packets. Sewn to the inside walls of the bag were a number of little mesh pockets, filled with clutter. Csongor, recognizing the purplish-red hue of a Hungarian passport, opened one of these and pulled out a clear Ziploc bag containing his passport, his phone, and most of the contents of his wallet. He pulled the battery from the phone and put the other stuff on the seat next to him. Continuing to explore the other pockets, he found two other Ziploc bags, one containing Peter’s stuff and the other containing Zula’s. He made certain that their phones were deactivated.

Yet another phone, a Chinese model, had been thrown into one of the pockets. Csongor pulled it out and held it up. “Is this yours?” he asked, popping out the battery.

No answer came from Yuxia, and he looked up for the first time to discover her and Marlon gazing into the bag in silent astonishment. She, at least, had the presence of mind to glance up at the road from time to time.

“This is Ivanov’s bag,” Csongor said. “Do you guys understand that? It is not mine.”

“It is now,” Marlon said.

“Are those bullets?” Yuxia asked.

Csongor placed Yuxia’s phone and its battery in the cup holder next to her elbow, then reached into the bag and held up one of the ammunition clips. The top couple of cartridges were clearly visible at its top. “Yes.”

“You have a gun?” Her tone of voice was not: It would be really cool and useful if you had a gun. It was, rather, If you have a gun, we are in even worse trouble than I had thought.

“No. Only these. Maybe the other guy took Ivanov’s gun.”

“What is in the end part?” Marlon asked, eyeing a separate compartment on the end of the bag, big enough to hold a couple of paperback books. Something was definitely making it bulge. Csongor unzipped it, reached in, and, to his own shock, pulled out a pistol. This one was smaller than the one Ivanov had been carrying, with woodgrained grips. He recognized it: this was the basic sidearm that Soviet and Russian military had always carried. He simply could not believe that one of them was in his hand.

“OMG,” Marlon said.

In Hungary, Csongor had had very little access to guns. But on a trip to a hacker conference in Vegas two years ago, he had spent a couple of evenings at firing ranges that catered to foreign visitors, and he had learned a few basics. He figured out how to eject the clip from this weapon, then maneuvered it into a shaft of sun coming in through the crack in the roof and pulled back the slide just enough to verify that no rounds were in the chamber. Then he found the safety and flicked it back and forth a couple of times just to get a feel for when it was on and when it was off. When he was certain that the weapon contained no cartridges and that it was inert, he set it on the van’s seat next to him, then reached back into the bag pocket to see what other treasures might be contained in there. He came up with a spare clip for the pistol, fully stuffed with cartridges. Then he pulled out a pair of heavy black cylinders with steel rings affixed to their tops.

He looked up and locked eyes with Marlon. Neither of them had ever seen anything like this before, outside of a video game, but Csongor was pretty certain, and Marlon’s expression confirmed, that these were grenades.

“Make some noise if you are alive,” said Yuxia. Traffic had become complex, and she was doing a lot of lane changing.

“Now we have a pistol and a couple of hand grenades,” Csongor announced.

Marlon had taken one of the grenades and was examining it. The sides of the canister were perforated with large holes, revealing some internal structure. “These are not real grenades,” he announced. “Look. No shrapnel. Holes instead.”

“Stun grenades?” Csongor guessed.

“Or smoke or tear gas.” Marlon and Csongor could communicate very clearly as long as they hewed to vocabulary from video games.

Yuxia intervened. “Csongor’s supposed to be telling us who he is,” she reminded Marlon. “Grenade can be explained later.”

“I’ll tell you who I am,” Csongor promised. “But first please tell me what just happened. What do you know about that tall black guy?”

Marlon was glaring at him. Csongor realized that he had insulted Marlon, or more likely just spooked him, by implying that he, Marlon, might know something about who the guy was. He looked into Marlon’s eyes. “It might be important,” Csongor pleaded.

“He lived upstairs with dudes from the far west,” Marlon said. “We only saw him a couple of times.”

“Did you know that these dudes from the far west had AK-47s?”

“What do you take me for, man?”

“Okay, sorry.”