Now he reached for his holster, but not nearly fast enough. Helena shoved her knee into his groin and chopped at his left arm with her own left, and as his iPhone dropped, she positioned her knife at his throat, grabbed his gun with her right hand, and started to pull it from its holster as he lunged at her with his shoulder. A good move, but too slow. She sidestepped and let him belly flop to the ground, his gun now in her hand. She landed on his back, pulled up his head — no easy task, the man had the neck of a bull — and repositioned her knife just under his chin. It would certainly kill him if he moved.
He didn’t.
“Charoshij malchik,” Good boy, she said.
“Yebat tebya,” Fuck you, he said.
‘No, it’s fuck you, really,” she continued in Russian. “You’re the one on the ground with no gun, and I am the one with your gun and a knife. Now, tell me who are you working for?”
“Nagy,” he whispered.
She pushed the knife in a millimetre, just so he would feel it and worry, but not enough to draw blood. Not yet.
“Why you ask?”
“You have a silencer on the gun,” she said. “A Soratnik, they are not easy to buy. FSB?”
“No,” he said.
“What do you want with Nagy?”
“Yebat tebya,” he repeated.
She now pushed the knife in another millimetre so it would draw blood, and he would be aware of it dripping into his collar. “Wrong answer,” she said.
A dog was walking with its owner along the far side of the street, maybe a couple of houses away. The owner was whistling something from La Traviata, and the dog was beginning to sense that there was something interesting across the street. She could hear his sniffing. The man stopped whistling to tell him to stop.
“You’re out of time,” Helena whispered.
“I was FSB,” he said. “Not now.”
“We can both get up slowly and stand by your car,” she whispered. “Do not grab for the gun, or I will shoot you. What do you say?” For the first time in years, she felt grateful to her father for insisting she learn Russian and, less unusually, to her mother for insisting she take mixed martial arts classes.
“Da,” the man said. “Okay.” She stood over him with his gun pointed at his belly as he began to stand, first his arms straightened, then both legs hopped into a crouch, and he was up, facing her knife now lowered to his abdomen, tip out, ready to plunge. He held his hands palms up. “I am working for someone who wants to know this man’s movements,” he said in Russian.
“Right,” Helena said. “And you sit in front of the man’s house, where he and everyone else can see you. Try again.”
The whistling man and his dog had passed. Remarkable lack of curiosity here about people behaving strangely.
“Complicated.”
“Try me.”
“I am working for Nagy and for someone else as well. That’s all I can tell you.”
“What do you know about this man?” Helena asked. She shoved the knife, handle first, into her sleeve and pulled her sketch of the archer from her back pocket and held it up to the light, without taking her eyes off the Russian.
“Nitchevo,” he said. Nothing.
She eased the knife out from her sleeve and nudged the blade under his breastbone. His breathing didn’t change. The man was a professional.
“Does he work for Nagy?”
“Ne znayu.” I don’t know.
“For Magyar?”
“Ne znayu,” he said, his breathing a little quicker. His upheld hands shivered.
“Don’t,” Helena commanded. “Don’t even think about it.” As she pushed the blade in deeper, its point hit something hard and glanced off the man’s chest. He took his chance and brought his hands down on her arm hard enough to have broken it had she resisted, but she let her arms drop and jumped back as he reached for her. She brought up his gun, pushed it into his face. No protective vest there. He hesitated for a moment too long before he reached for the gun with both hands. She hit down his hands with the knife, a fast chop that almost dislodged it, but not quite. It was pointed down, away from her chest. Suddenly, he was shouting loud enough that it almost drowned the sound of his gun going off into his own groin.
“Shit,” Helena said as the man dropped sideways onto the asphalt, his hands scrabbling for his groin, his mouth open, wheezing, his shoulders shaking, a keening sound from deep in his throat. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said. “I am sorry. There was no need for that.”
She took his iPhone from where it had fallen and placed it next to his writhing body. “So you can call for help.”
Chapter Sixteen
The girls were willing to spend the evening with Gustav, watching old American movies on Attila’s too small, too old TV. They enjoyed tucking into his and Helena’s grocery items. The only offering they disdained was the carrots. “We have enough of those at home,” Sofi said. “Carrots and cauliflower and celery. Very good for you,” she added in a perfect imitation of their mother’s instructional voice.
Anna made a disgusted face when Attila went to the balcony and lit one of his Helikons, but she refrained from repeating her mother’s comments about Attila’s smoking habits. During the first few months of their marriage, Bea had pretended to like the smell of his tobacco, but a couple of years later, she had started to cough every time he reached for a cigarette. Although he had not smoked in the apartment for some time, when she moved out, she listed the Helikons as one of Attila’s more objectionable traits.
The girls spent the night in his bed, while he shared the couch with the happily farting Gustav. Hungarian salami was not ideal for a dachshund’s digestive system.
Bea was still asleep when he delivered the girls to their apartment the next morning. He used their need to change out of
