Reamde

a car that engendered a completely bogus feeling of safety.

When Mr. Jones said those three words: “I give up,” Zula opened her eyes and startled a little. Could it really be that she had gone to sleep? Seemed a strange time for a nap. But the body reacted in odd ways to stress. And once they had gotten out onto the ring road, there had been nothing in the way of shootings or explosions to demand her attention. Exhaustion had stolen up on her.

“He was Russian, yes? The big man?”

“The man you… killed?” She couldn’t believe that sentences like this one were coming out of her mouth.

Surprise, then a trace of a smile came over the gunman’s face. “Yes.”

“Yeah. Russian.”

“The others too. Upstairs. Spetsnaz.”

Zula had never heard the word “Spetznaz” until a couple of days ago, but she knew what it meant now. She nodded.

“But there were three others… different.” He raised his cuffed hand, dragging hers with it, and stuck his thumb up in the air. “You.” His index finger. “The one that the big Russian killed in the stairwell. I think he was American.” His long finger. “And the one in the cellar who tried to protect you…”

“He did more than try.”

“He was maybe Russian too—but somehow different from the others?”

“Hungarian.”

“The big man—organized crime?”

“More like disorganized,” Zula said. “We think he was on the run from his own organization. He screwed something up, big-time. He was trying to cover it up. Make amends.”

“You say ‘we.’ What do you mean by ‘we’?”

She twisted her cuffed hand up and around and mimicked his counting-on-the-fingers gesture.

“The three of you,” he said.

Mr. Jones thought about it for a while. His mood seemed to be improving, but he was cautious all the same. “If I take what you say at face value,” he said, “then this is not what I assumed at first.”

“You assumed what?”

“Covert special ops raid, of course.” The phrase was familiar enough, being the fodder of countless newspaper articles and summer movie plots, but he spoke it with an emphasis, an inflection she had never heard before, as one who actually knew of such things firsthand, had seen his friends die in them. “But if this is really what you say—” He blinked and shook his head, like a man trying to fight off the effects of a hypnotizing drug. “Impossible. Stupid. It was absolutely a special ops job. In fancy dress.”

“Fancy dress?”

“What you would call a costume party,” he shot back, slipping into a parody of a flat midwestern accent. “To make it deniable.” Back to the usual British accent now, the one she couldn’t quite place. “Because it would make a hell of a diplomatic mess to send a military team into China. This way, though, they can shrug their shoulders: ‘It’s those crazy Russian mafia guys, we have no control over them, there was nothing we could do.’ ”

It sounded so convincing that Zula was starting to believe it herself.

“What was your role?” he asked.

Zula laughed.

His eyes widened slightly. Then he laughed too. “The three,” he said, making the hand gesture again. “Why does a deep cover Russian hit squad need to be dragging around the Three We? Handcuffing them to pipes and shooting them in the head?”

At the reminder that Peter was dead, Zula’s face collapsed and she felt a momentary sick shock that she’d been laughing only a moment earlier. They were silent for a while, just driving.

“So you guys are in the virus-writing business?” she tried.

She now learned what Jones looked like when he was utterly dumbfounded. This would have been satisfying had Zula not been every bit as confused.

“The Russians,” she explained. “That’s why they—we—went to that apartment building. To find someone who had written a virus.”

“A computer virus,” Jones said, stating the question as a fact.

Zula nodded and was left with the unsettling notion that Jones’s group might be working with other kinds of viruses.

“We have nothing to do with writing computer viruses,” Jones announced. “Come to think of it though, might be a good line to get into.” Then his mind snapped into focus. “Oh,” he said. “That lot downstairs. Boys with computers. Always wondered what they were doing.”

Zula swallowed hard and went silent. She had just remembered a fleeting image from just before the start of the gunfire: a coin shoved into the fuse socket, a crescent moon and a star. Someone—perhaps Jones himself—had put that coin in there when they had invaded the vacant flat and set up a squat.

This was all her doing. What would Jones do to her when he understood that?

“So the big Russian—” Jones began.

“Ivanov.”

“He was royally pissed off at those lads.”

“You might say that.”

“How did you get involved?”

“It is a long story.”

Jones let his head hang down and laughed. “Look at me,” he said. “Your man Ivanov has forced me to cancel certain arrangements. To make other plans. I’ve nothing but time. And unless I am quite mistaken, you have even more time on your hands than I do. So why on earth should I object to a long story at this juncture?”

Zula gazed out through the taxi’s window.

“It is your only possible way out,” Jones said.

Zula’s nose started to run, a precursor of crying. Not because her situation sucked. It had sucked for a long time. And it couldn’t suck worse than it had with Ivanov. It was because she couldn’t tell the story without mentioning Peter.

She took a few slow, steadying breaths. If she could just get his name out without cracking, the rest would be fine.

“Peter,” she said, and her voice bucked like a car going over a speed bump, and her eyes watered a little. “The man in the stairwell.” She looked at Jones until he understood.

“Your beau?”

“Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Jones said. Not the least bit sorry. Just observing the proper formalities.

“No, I mean—not because he’s dead.” There. She’d gotten it out. “Not because Peter’s dead.” Trying the words, like easing out onto thin ice covering a farm pond, wondering how far she cold go before she felt it cracking beneath her. “We had broken up previously. On the day that everything went crazy.”

“Then perhaps it would be more informative if you could rewind to the day that everything went crazy, since that sounds like an interesting day,” Jones suggested.

“We had been snowboarding.”

“You live in a mountainous area?”

“Seattle. Actually we were several hours outside of Seattle, in B.C.”

“How does a Horn of Africa girl pick up snowboarding?” For the fact that Zula was from East Africa was written on her face plainly enough for a man like Jones to read.

“I never did. I just hung around.”

“Your lad drags you off into the mountains so that he can snowboard while you do nothing?”

“No, I would never put up with it.”

“I believe you just told me that you did.”

“There was plenty for me to do.”

“What? Shopping?”

She shook her head. “I’m not that way.” The question was still unanswered. “My uncle lives up there, so it