Reamde

The tall black man stuck his handgun into his waistband, then reached into his pocket. “Since the two of you are on such affectionate terms,” he said, pulling out a silver key, “let’s make it official.” He unlocked the manacle from his right wrist, then peeled Yuxia’s left arm away from Zula’s waist and snapped it onto her. The two women were now joined at their left wrists, which, as they immediately discovered, meant that they couldn’t face in the same direction. If one of them walked forward, the other had to walk backward, or else they had to do something awkward with their arms, and move shoulder to shoulder. Their captor understood this very well. Seizing the manacle’s chain with one hand, he towed them aft, around the side of the pilothouse, to an open space on the stern that was shaded under a canvas awning. Rummaging around in a toolbox, he produced a hammer and a large nail. He drove the nail about halfway into a deck plank, then dragged them over, forced them down, pressed the chain to the deck right next to the nail, and pounded on the nail until it had been bent over the chain and its bowed head driven deeply into the wood.

Having thus secured them, he moved forward again and assisted the remainder of the crew—half a dozen men, all told—in shoving first the van and then the taxi off the side of the boat and into the water. The boat by now had crossed to the middle of the inlet and had laid in a direct course toward the great bridge that crossed over the channel by which it connected to the sea. Though most of the inlet was quite shallow, this part of it seemed to be a dredged ship channel. Both vehicles sank immediately and disappeared into murky water.

Above them, it seemed as though every police and emergency aid vehicle in the ­People’s Republic of China was screaming across the bridge, all headed in the same direction, and all ignoring them completely.

As the men busied themselves throwing the vehicles overboard, Yuxia felt a momentary buzzing sensation against her ankle. She reached into her boot, pulled out Marlon’s phone, and checked the screen. It was showing a text message: TURN OFF THE RINGER.

As she stared at it, a second message came in: RED BUTTON ON SIDE.

She flipped the phone over and found a tiny red button with a picture of a bell on it. She flicked it to the off position and then dropped the phone back into her boot.

CSONGOR OBSERVED THE departure of the boat from a squatting position in the shallow water beneath the pier. Only his head was above the water. He was peeking from behind an old piling. The rhythmic surge of the waves rocked his body to and fro. He had already learned that it was inadvisable to hug the piling for balance, since it was covered with barnacles that turned it into a sort of 3D saw blade, and the general effect of the waves was to rub him against it. Little wavelets fetched up against the gray-white carapaces of the barnacles and stained them pink, for blood was emerging in impressive volumes from the semifloating body of the man Csongor had shot a few moments ago.

His entire body was shaking uncontrollably, but not because he was immersed in water. Much had happened in the last few hours that went far beyond any of his past experiences, but the one that he couldn’t get out of his mind was that he had put a gun to a man’s head and pulled the trigger. Somehow this was far more upsetting than having been shot at. And actually having shot and killed this other fellow had made curiously little impression on him, though he reckoned it would come back to occupy his nightmares later.

His jittery reaction was not doing him any favors now. He was simply watching, from a few meters away, as a band of terrorists ran off with someone he cared about. And yet no amount of thinking could make the situation any better. He had already tried a frontal assault. Only Zula’s quick thinking—how did she know so much about guns!?—had saved him. The advantage of surprise had been pissed away. The only action he could take now was to wade in closer and start blasting away with the Makarov. But they would be waiting for that; and from this distance, with shaking hands, he was as likely to hit Zula or Yuxia as he was to hit one of the terrorists. He had heard the tall black man speaking about the suicide bomber, and he had watched with his own eyes as the cops in the two squad cars had listened to orders on their radios, turned around, and raced away to more important duties. So even if he had been willing to simply summon the police and hand himself over to the law, he would not have been able to get their attention.