Reamde

Marlon backed away from the wheel and let the pilot change the course back to one that was more southerly, but he was clearly in a suspicious and jumpy frame of mind and made a point of walking around the cabin and looking out all of the windows to verify that they weren’t headed toward land.

“GPS,” Csongor said, and nodded at one of the array of little screens and electronic devices mounted to the console.

Within a few moments they had gathered around the device that Csongor had noticed. Identifying it as a GPS unit had actually required some careful observation. It was crude and industrial-looking compared to the units with big color screens that some people had in their cars. This one’s screen was tiny and gray and showed only those details of interest to mariners: coastlines, shallows, and buoys. But the latitude and longitude were clearly displayed as long strings of digits across the bottom, and the crude outlines and symbols on the screen were creeping upward as the boat moved south.

“I cannot fucking believe this,” Csongor said. “Four days ago I am in Budapest drinking beer. Now I have hijacked a boat in China and I have fallen in love and I have killed ­people.”

No one had much to say about that. Marlon turned to Yuxia and said in Mandarin, “Is there anyone else?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered, “but we should look around.”

They agreed that Csongor should remain on the bridge holding the gun while Marlon and Yuxia familiarized themselves with their new boat.

The cook followed them out and down onto the main deck, then told Yuxia, “There is a gun up on the bridge, hidden under the control panel.”

So they went back up to the bridge and had the pilot stand well back while Marlon got down on hands and knees and groped around and found the gun: an ancient revolver, rusty around the edges, but loaded and ready to use. This he threw into the ocean. Then, just to be sure, they had both the pilot and the cook strip all the way down to their drawers and sifted through their clothes and found a phone and two knives. Marlon pulled the battery from the pilot’s phone, then did likewise to his phone and to Yuxia’s.

FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS FROM Khalid, the pilot Pavel climbed into the backseat of the stolen taxi, where Jones had been waiting behind tinted glass the entire time. Zula joined them. Khalid got into the passenger seat. A similar arrangement was made in a second taxi behind them, which they had simply hailed from the queue in the hotel drive; Sergei ended up in that one along with the other bomb vest wearer.

Once they had pulled out onto the highway, and the second taxi was squarely in their rearview mirror—for apparently its driver had been instructed simply to follow—Jones said to Pavel, “In normal circumstances I would plan what is about to happen very carefully. Maybe we would build a mockup of a jet out in the middle of Yemen and train on it. But because of the way things are today, we are just going to wing it and trust to Allah. Call it fatalism if you like; I believe that is the traditional spin put on it by Westerners.”

Pavel did a pretty good impression of not having understood a single word.

“So,” Jones continued, “tell me about what it is like at the private jet terminal in Xiamen. I have never enjoyed the luxury. Will someone be there to stamp my passport?”

Still nothing from Pavel.

“I am quite serious,” Jones said. “I need to know whether we have to pass through an immigration barrier. To show documents. Because”—and here he smiled in a way that Zula would have found charming had she known nothing else about him—“you see, I’m afraid that my British passport has been quite misplaced. As has her American one.” He nodded Zula’s way.

“If you want to know normal,” Pavel said, “then, normally, I would file a flight plan to the destination city. Also passenger manifest. If the destination is in same country, then obviously there is no need to deal with immigration. If destination is in other country, then you should get passport stamped on way out.”

“But the sort of bloke who flies about on a private jet is too busy to stand in line to get his passport stamped, isn’t he?” Jones said.

“Frequently, yes. Depends on country. Depends also on type of airport.”

“Say more.”

“Some places, there is no FBO—”

“Come again?”

“Fixed base operator. Special terminal for private jets.”

“Ah, thank you for the clarification.”

“If is no FBO, you stand in line with everyone else at emigration.”

“And if there is an FBO?”

“Then many times it is handled on plane. You go direct to FBO. Get on plane. Wait for official. Official comes on plane. Counts passengers. Checks against manifest. Stamps passports. Goes away. Plane takes off.”

“Is this one of those places that has an FBO?”

“Of course, our plane is parked at FBO since three days.”

“How did you get into the country in the first place? Did all of you have visas?”

“No,” Pavel said.

Zula provided a brief explanation of how they had done it.