Reamde

Zula felt a painful jerk on her left wrist as Jones’s hand reached up and across her body. He snaked the back of his hand across her right breast and shoved rough fingernails into the gap between her armpit and her upper right arm, the steel of the cuff digging into her flesh. Since her left arm had no choice but to follow his right, it ended up pulled sideways across her belly.

His grip closed around her bicep. His elbow jammed into her chest as he flexed his arm, spinning her about so that he was face-to-face with her and her back was to Csongor. He was using her as a shield.

Jones’s left hand came up bearing the pistol and he put its barrel against her neck, torquing it awkwardly in his hand, aiming through her. She heard the safety come off. And at the same time, Csongor reached around the side of her head with his right arm, and she was surprised to see a pistol in his hand. Except for that, she could not see Csongor, but she could feel him. The pressure of Jones’s gun’s muzzle against her throat made her want to get away from it, so she leaned back and soon found her head resting comfortably against the heaving, thumping, sweaty barrel of Csongor’s chest. The two men were of roughly equal height, and Zula now found herself tightly sandwiched between them.

“Is that the true Makarov or the Hungarian variant?” Jones asked, in a light, conversational tone. “Difficult for me to make out the markings at this distance.” He was alluding to the fact that Csongor was holding the weapon’s muzzle directly against his brow, just above one eye.

“I got it from a Russian.”

“Probably the real thing then,” Jones remarked. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you had the presence of mind to chamber a round.” He was gazing (Zula guessed) into Csongor’s eyes, hoping to read a clue there.

Which he apparently did. “I see less than perfect certainty on your face,” Jones said in a tone of drawling amusement. “Still, it would be imprudent for me to assume that there’s no round in the chamber. I happen to be quite familiar with the Makarov, since they are all over Afghanistan. I sense that you are a newcomer to it. I’m curious: Did you put the safety on?”

“The safety is most certainly not on at this time,” Csongor said.

“Oh, but that’s not what I asked. I asked whether you had put it on, at any point, after you chambered a round and cocked it. You seem like the sort who would. The way Ivanov spoke of you. Your protectiveness of Zula. You are thoughtful, careful, deliberate.”

Csongor said nothing.

“I only ask,” Jones continued, “because the Makarov has an interesting quirk: when you put the safety on, it decocks the hammer. Taking the safety off doesn’t re-cock it. No. You’re left with a weapon that’s loaded but not yet in a condition to fire. Quite unlike Ivanov’s fine 1911 here, which is both loaded and fully cocked. If I apply even the slightest amount of pressure to the trigger, I’ll put a rather large piece of metal all the way through Zula’s neck and from there into your heart, killing you both so rapidly you’ll never even know it happened.”

Sirens were approaching: more than one cop car, making its way around the inlet, headed their way. Jones glanced in their direction for a moment, then centered his gaze on Csongor’s face again and continued: “You’re not even going to get the romantic experience of lying there bleeding to death with her decapitated corpse on top of you, because a hydrostatic shock wave is going to travel straight up your aorta into your brain and render you unconscious and maybe even pop out your eyeballs. You, on the other hand—should you decide to take any action—have a very long trigger pull ahead of you. It’s that first round out of the Makarov’s magazine that is the bitch. Because the hammer isn’t cocked, you’re going to have to pull hard on that trigger for what seems like forever in order to get it drawn back for the first shot. And since your finger is about two inches in front of my left eyeball, it’s going to be bloody difficult for you to do this in a way that’s going to surprise me, isn’t it?”

Csongor said nothing. But Zula could sense in his breathing that Jones’s words were hitting home. Between that, and the approaching cop cars, the fight was draining out of him.

“What are the odds that you can make it to the end of that trigger pull while you and Zula are still alive, Csongor?”

Jones was staring straight into Csongor’s eyes, unblinking, awaiting his submission. “Did I mention, by the way, that being handcuffed to this bitch is a serious pain in the arse? I should like nothing more than to be rid of her.”

“Csongor,” Zula said. “Listen. Can you hear me? Say something.”

“Yes,” Csongor said.

“I’d like you to have a look at the pistol that Mr. Jones is holding up to my neck. Do you see it?”

A pause, then, “Yes, I am looking at it.”

“Do you note anything remarkable about the condition of its hammer?” Zula asked him.