Reamde

Peter snorted. “We weren’t under any illusions that this was anything other than unbelievably bad for us.”

“Yes, but perhaps I was,” Csongor said. And now that he said this, Zula saw that he was quite sincerely taken aback.

As he might well be. He had just been made aware that he was complicit in a murder.

“That is too bad,” Peter said, “because I was kind of hoping that maybe you could tell us what the fuck is going on. Who are these people? We know nothing.”

Csongor’s face reconfigured itself in a way that suggested his wheels were turning now, he was thinking instead of merely reacting. “Nothing? Really?”

Peter drew breath as if to answer, then checked himself.

“You know nothing about playing certain types of games with other people’s credit card numbers?” Csongor asked. “Or is that rather the specialty of Zula?”

Peter sighed. “Zula has nothing to do with it. I did sell Wallace a database of credit card numbers.”

“The one that Ivanov is so angry about.”

“Yes.”

“Well then,” Csongor said. “Now we have basis for conversation. These kinds of guys—how much do you know about them?”

“You mean, Russian, er…” Having spit out the adjective, Peter couldn’t bring himself to utter the noun.

“Mafia or organized criminals or whatever you want to call them,” Csongor said, turning hands momentarily palms up to say it didn’t matter. “They are not like how you see them on TV and movies…”

“Really? Because showing up in the private jet, killing Wallace in my apartment, it all seems pretty much straight from the script.”

“Ah, but this is extremely unusual,” Csongor said. “I am amazed, frankly.”

“Comforting.”

“Almost all of what they do is very boring. They are trying to make a living in the context of this unbelievably fucked-up system. This is their only motive. Not excitement, not violence. How they got most of their revenue in Russia was not crazy shit like drug deals or arms trafficking. It was overcharging for cotton from Uzbekistan. And when they moved into the States and Canada, it was health insurance fraud, avoiding gasoline taxes, and credit cards. Lots of credit cards.”

“What’s your involvement with all this?” Zula asked. “If you don’t mind my asking?”

“No, I don’t mind your asking,” Csongor said. “But I do mind answering, since it is somewhat embarrassing. Not a thing to be proud of.”

“Okay, don’t answer, then.”

Csongor considered it. Zula had pegged his age in the early thirties at first, but now that she was getting a better look at him—the elasticity of his face, the openness of his feelings—she understood that he was more like a big-boned twenty-five. “I will answer a little bit now, maybe more later. How much do you know of the history of Hungary?”

“Nada.”

“Zip.”

Apparently Csongor was unfamiliar with these slang terms, so Zula just shrugged hugely. He nodded and looked a little dismayed, unsure where he should begin. “But you at least know it was a Warsaw Pact country. Until about 1999 or so. Controlled by Russians in a very severe way.” Peter and Zula had begun nodding as if they did know all these things, which encouraged him. “Today, it is fine. It is totally modern, with a high standard of living. But in the nineties, when I was a teenager, the economy was terrible—the Communist system had been dynamited, like an old statue of Stalin, but it took some years for a new system to be created. Bad unemployment during those years, inflation, poverty, and so on. My father was a schoolteacher. Overqualified for it. But that is another story. Anyway, in our family, we had very little money, and the only way we knew to make a living was using our brains. As it happens, I was not the smart one. My older brother is the smart one.”

“What does he do for a living?” Zula asked.

“Bartos is pursuing a postdoc in topology at UCLA.”

“Oh.” Zula looked at Peter and told him, “That’s a kind of math.”

“Thank you,” Peter snapped.

Csongor continued, “But I could tell that I was not like Bartos, so I looked for other ways to make a living using my brain. The teachers in my academy only wanted me to play hockey for the school team. I ignored my classes and taught myself to program computers. Then suddenly I was making money this way. When the economy got better, programmers were needed all over the place. Especially doing localization.”

“What is localization?” Zula asked. Peter sighed, letting her know it was a stupid question.