Reamde

By that time they had completed a couple of circuits of the ring road that lined the island’s shore. Contrary to the first instruction given, they had not gone to the airport. Zula had been confused by this until she had understood that her companion—if that was the right word—didn’t speak a word of Chinese, and that he assumed (correctly as it turned out) that the taxi driver spoke no English; so he had just shouted the one English word that every taxi driver in the world had to know. This had been just to get him moving. Once that driver had nudged and honked his way clear of the chaos surrounding the exploded building, Mr. Jones had produced a phone, dialed a number, and spoken in Arabic. Zula had known that it was Arabic because she had heard a fair bit of that language while living in a refugee camp in the Sudan. After a brief exchange of news, which Zula could tell had been extremely surprising to the person on the other end of the line—for Mr. Jones had soon grown weary of insisting that every word was true—he had handed the phone up to the taxi driver, who had listened to some instructions, nodded vigorously, and said something that must have meant “yes” or “I will do it.”

Mr. Jones had then exchanged a few more terse Arabic sentences with his interlocutor and hung up. And the taxi driver had begun to drive laps around the ring road.

Zula had been resting her free elbow on the frame of the taxi’s window, turning her hand out, from time to time, to press her fingertips against the tinted glass. There was something about the manufactured environment of a car that engendered a completely bogus feeling of safety.

When Mr. Jones said those three words: “I give up,” Zula opened her eyes and startled a little. Could it really be that she had gone to sleep? Seemed a strange time for a nap. But the body reacted in odd ways to stress. And once they had gotten out onto the ring road, there had been nothing in the way of shootings or explosions to demand her attention. Exhaustion had stolen up on her.

“He was Russian, yes? The big man?”

“The man you … killed?” She couldn’t believe that sentences like this one were coming out of her mouth.

Surprise, then a trace of a smile came over the gunman’s face. “Yes.”

“Yeah. Russian.”

“The others too. Upstairs. Spetsnaz.”

Zula had never heard the word “Spetznaz” until a couple of days ago, but she knew what it meant now. She nodded.

“But there were three others … different.” He raised his cuffed hand, dragging hers with it, and stuck his thumb up in the air. “You.” His index finger. “The one that the big Russian killed in the stairwell. I think he was American.” His long finger. “And the one in the cellar who tried to protect you…”

“He did more than try.”

“He was maybe Russian too—but somehow different from the others?”

“Hungarian.”

“The big man—organized crime?”

“More like disorganized,” Zula said. “We think he was on the run from his own organization. He screwed something up, big-time. He was trying to cover it up. Make amends.”

“You say ‘we.’ What do you mean by ‘we’?”

She twisted her cuffed hand up and around and mimicked his counting-on-the-fingers gesture.

“The three of you,” he said.

Mr. Jones thought about it for a while. His mood seemed to be improving, but he was cautious all the same. “If I take what you say at face value,” he said, “then this is not what I assumed at first.”

“You assumed what?”

“Covert special ops raid, of course.” The phrase was familiar enough, being the fodder of countless newspaper articles and summer movie plots, but he spoke it with an emphasis, an inflection she had never heard before, as one who actually knew of such things firsthand, had seen his friends die in them. “But if this is really what you say—” He blinked and shook his head, like a man trying to fight off the effects of a hypnotizing drug. “Impossible. Stupid. It was absolutely a special ops job. In fancy dress.”

“Fancy dress?”

“What you would call a costume party,” he shot back, slipping into a parody of a flat midwestern accent. “To make it deniable.” Back to the usual British accent now, the one she couldn’t quite place. “Because it would make a hell of a diplomatic mess to send a military team into China. This way, though, they can shrug their shoulders: ‘It’s those crazy Russian mafia guys, we have no control over them, there was nothing we could do.’ ”

It sounded so convincing that Zula was starting to believe it herself.

“What was your role?” he asked.

Zula laughed.

His eyes widened slightly. Then he laughed too. “The three,” he said, making the hand gesture again. “Why does a deep cover Russian hit squad need to be dragging around the Three We? Handcuffing them to pipes and shooting them in the head?”

At the reminder that Peter was dead, Zula’s face collapsed and she felt a momentary sick shock that she’d been laughing only a moment earlier. They were silent for a while, just driving.

“So you guys are in the virus-writing business?” she tried.