Reamde

Oh dear.

She was not a fainter, and she doubted that the wounds were going to cost her an important amount of blood. The voice of a first aid instructor came back to her: If I were to take a shot glass full of tomato juice and throw it into your face… But there was no way that these guys were going to let a bleeding, barefoot woman simply wander off alone into the streets. Two of them were already running toward her with hands reaching out in a manner that, in normal circumstances, would have seemed just plain ungentlemanly. What would have been designated, in a Western office, as a hostile environment was soon in full swing as numerous rough strong hands were all over her, easing her to a comfortable perch on a chair that was produced as if by magic, feeling through her hair to find bumps and lacerations. Three different first aid kits were broken open at her feet; older and wiser men began to lodge objections at the profligate use of supplies, darkly suggesting that it was all because she was a pretty girl. A particularly dashing young man skidded up to her on his knees (he was wearing hard-shell knee pads) and, in an attitude recalling the prince on the final page of Cinderella, fit a pair of used flip- flops onto her feet.

Getting an ambulance during this particular half-hour window of time was completely out of the question, so they shoved a couple of bamboo poles through the legs of her chair, lashed them in place, and turned it into a makeshift palanquin on which Olivia was borne, like a Jewish bride, around the edge of the crater to a place where it was possible to hail a taxi. The chair ride was fun if only because Olivia could not stop thinking about the Brits who had trained her at MI6 and their insistence that she avoid any situation that might draw undue attention to herself. Fortunately she had so many first aid supplies wrapped around her head at this point that no one would be able to pick her out from a random lineup of mummies and burn victims.

THE TAXI BOLTED forward and disappeared off the end of the pier. The ensuing sound effect—a crash, rather than a splash—told Zula that it had nose-dived into the deck of the boat.

The van’s velocity dropped to almost zero, which gave Zula a clear look through the windshield—or as clear as was possible, given that it was coated with dust and had just been spiderwebbed by the impact. Behind the wheel, she saw nothing but a white balloon: the airbag. But she was certain that in the moment just before impact, she had got a subliminal glimpse of Yuxia’s face.

The van kept rolling forward, passing no more than arm’s length from Zula, and as it went by she got a direct view, through the driver’s-side window, of Yuxia in profile. The airbag was deflating and peeling away from her face, but she was staring dully ahead, stunned by its impact, and the weight of her foot must still be on the gas pedal. “Yuxia!” Zula cried, and she thought that Yuxia stirred; but the van accelerated and followed the taxi off the end of the pier.

It did not, however, completely disappear. For crashed vehicles were beginning to accumulate on the deck of the boat, and so the van only nosed over and ended up with its rear wheels projecting into the air above the pier’s deck.

This was not something that one saw every day, and so it held the attention of everyone: Zula, Abdallah Jones, his two surviving accomplices (for the gunman by the driver’s-side door had been leaning into the taxi at the moment of impact, had fared quite poorly, and was lying motionless on the pier), and the taxi driver. And so a peculiarly long span of time elapsed before they all came fully aware that they had been joined by a new participant. Before she had even turned to look at his face, Zula recognized him, in her peripheral vision, simply by the shape of his body, as Csongor. He was staggering toward her and Jones. He was considerably the worse for wear and making a visible effort to snap himself out of a kind of stunned and woozy condition. He must have tumbled out the van’s side door just after the impact. Zula began raising her arms to hug him, then stifled the impulse as she felt the handcuff’s chain go tense. Csongor was reaching into his trouser pocket.

Zula felt a painful jerk on her left wrist as Jones’s hand reached up and across her body. He snaked the back of his hand across her right breast and shoved rough fingernails into the gap between her armpit and her upper right arm, the steel of the cuff digging into her flesh. Since her left arm had no choice but to follow his right, it ended up pulled sideways across her belly.

His grip closed around her bicep. His elbow jammed into her chest as he flexed his arm, spinning her about so that he was face-to-face with her and her back was to Csongor. He was using her as a shield.

Jones’s left hand came up bearing the pistol and he put its barrel against her neck, torquing it awkwardly in his hand, aiming through her. She heard the safety come off. And at the same time, Csongor reached around the side of her head with his right arm, and she was surprised to see a pistol in his hand. Except for that, she could not see Csongor, but she could feel him. The pressure of Jones’s gun’s muzzle against her throat made her want to get away from it, so she leaned back and soon found her head resting comfortably against the heaving, thumping, sweaty barrel of Csongor’s chest. The two men were of roughly equal height, and Zula now found herself tightly sandwiched between them.

“Is that the true Makarov or the Hungarian variant?” Jones asked, in a light, conversational tone. “Difficult for me to make out the markings at this distance.” He was alluding to the fact that Csongor was holding the weapon’s muzzle directly against his brow, just above one eye.

“I got it from a Russian.”

“Probably the real thing then,” Jones remarked. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you had the presence of mind to chamber a round.” He was gazing (Zula guessed) into Csongor’s eyes, hoping to read a clue there.

Which he apparently did. “I see less than perfect certainty on your face,” Jones said in a tone of drawling amusement. “Still, it would be imprudent for me to assume that there’s no round in the chamber. I happen to be quite familiar with the Makarov, since they are all over Afghanistan. I sense that you are a newcomer to it. I’m curious: Did you put the safety on?”

“The safety is most certainly not on at this time,” Csongor said.

“Oh, but that’s not what I asked. I asked whether you had put it on, at any point, after you chambered a round and cocked it. You seem like the sort who would. The way Ivanov spoke of you. Your protectiveness of Zula. You are thoughtful, careful, deliberate.”

Csongor said nothing.

“I only ask,” Jones continued, “because the Makarov has an interesting quirk: when you put the safety on, it decocks the hammer. Taking the safety off doesn’t re-cock it. No. You’re left with a weapon that’s loaded but not yet in a condition to fire. Quite unlike Ivanov’s fine 1911 here, which is both loaded and fully cocked. If I apply even the slightest amount of pressure to the trigger, I’ll put a rather large piece of metal all the way through Zula’s neck and from there into your heart, killing you both so rapidly you’ll never even know it happened.”

Sirens were approaching: more than one cop car, making its way around the inlet, headed their way. Jones glanced in their direction for a moment, then centered his gaze on Csongor’s face again and continued: “You’re not even going to get the romantic experience of lying there bleeding to death with her decapitated corpse on top of you, because a hydrostatic shock wave is going to travel straight up your aorta into your brain and render you unconscious and maybe even pop out your eyeballs. You, on the other hand—should you decide to take any action —have a very long trigger pull ahead of you. It’s that first round out of the Makarov’s magazine that is the bitch. Because the hammer isn’t cocked, you’re going to have to pull hard on that trigger for what seems like forever in order to get it drawn back for the first shot. And since your finger is about two inches in front of my left eyeball, it’s going to be bloody difficult for you to do this in a way that’s going to surprise me, isn’t it?”

Csongor said nothing. But Zula could sense in his breathing that Jones’s words were hitting home. Between that, and the approaching cop cars, the fight was draining out of him.

“What are the odds that you can make it to the end of that trigger pull while you and Zula are still alive, Csongor?”

Jones was staring straight into Csongor’s eyes, unblinking, awaiting his submission. “Did I mention, by the way, that being handcuffed to this bitch is a serious pain in the arse? I should like nothing more than to be rid of her.”

“Csongor,” Zula said. “Listen. Can you hear me? Say something.”

“Yes,” Csongor said.

“I’d like you to have a look at the pistol that Mr. Jones is holding up to my neck. Do you see it?”