sensation in her fingertip that she knew meant serious damage. His left arm, still holding the gun, flailed back as he rotated away from her. His right hand let go of her arm and trailed away until the handcuff chain brought it up short like a dog that had run to the end of its leash, and then she felt a few more layers of wrist skin being macerated by the steel bracelet, and she toppled forward. Jones was near the end of a full one-eighty, and was collapsing to the surface of the pier. He ended up spread-eagled on his back, his right hand pulling Zula down—she had no choice, now, but to fall down on top of him—and his left sprawled out on the pier, still maintaining a grip on that pistol.
Zula fell. But as she did she launched herself as best she could in the general direction of that gun arm. Her right shoulder happened to come down on Jones’s breastbone, forcing the air out of his lungs, and as she was bouncing off it she flung her right hand out and planted it on Jones’s forearm, pinning the gun hand to the surface of the pier.
Only after she had reinforced that with a knee against his elbow did she dare to look at the side of Jones’s head. She saw red there, but it was the red of burns and abrasions, not of pumping blood. The pistol had gone off right next to the side of his head, but the bullet had not penetrated his skull.
Csongor didn’t know this; he was still standing there watching Jones and Zula come to rest, unwilling to fire the pistol again lest he accidentally strike Zula, and probably under the impression that it wasn’t necessary. He’d already shot Jones in the head once, and, she sensed, he was a little stunned by his own behavior.
Loud banging noises began to sound from nearby, and Csongor looked up in alarm. Zula followed his gaze back over her shoulder and saw one of Jones’s comrades, perhaps ten meters away, firing a pistol wildly, holding it in one hand so that it bucked with each recoil, and not bothering to sight over the barrel.
The taxi driver chose this moment to make a break for it, and the shooter, following some kind of dumb reflex to attack whatever was moving, turned and fired a couple of rounds that knocked the man flat on his stomach.
Csongor’s eyes went to Zula; she had taken the highly imprudent step of removing her free hand from Jones’s gun arm and was using it to wave him away and down. He backed up a couple of steps, raising the pistol.
Noting violent movement in the corner of her eye, Zula turned her attention to the other surviving jihadist, who was making a dive for a loose gun that had fallen from the pocket of the man who had earlier run afoul of the taxi.
“Get out, the cops are coming anyway!” Zula shouted.
Csongor backed up two steps toward the edge of the pier, then, just as the other jihadist was opening fire, turned around and jumped off. Unlike the taxi, he did make a splash.
Zula heard a step behind her and then felt something hard pressing into the back of her neck. She removed her knee from Jones’s elbow.
“Thank you,” Jones said, a bit groggy, but coming around fast. He bent his arm, raising the gun, and then used it to gesture at the prone taxi driver, and then in the direction of where Csongor had jumped. He shouted a command in Arabic. This was acknowledged respectfully by the first gunman to have opened fire, who walked over to the taxi driver and shot him casually in the back of the head. Then he walked over to the edge of the pier and looked down into the water.
A series of booms sounded from below, and the man quietly toppled over the edge and disappeared.
“Polar bears and seals,” Jones remarked. He reached up with his cuffed hand, collapsing Zula’s arm, and grabbed her hair, which was frizzed out and eminently grabbable. He wrenched her head around with a violent sweeping movement of the arm and slammed her face into the pier, then rolled over on top of her, pinning her full- length to the deck with his body on top of hers. “I’m not shielding you, by the way,” he explained, “you’re shielding me. You know how polar bears hunt?”
“From below?”
“Very good. It’s
The other gunman seemed to have arrived at the same realization and was now moving around nervously, edging toward the end of the pier where the boat was waiting and the water was deeper.
The sirens were getting very close. Jones propped himself up on his elbows, taking some of his considerable weight off Zula, and gazed curiously down the pier, then, for some reason, checked his watch. Blood dribbled from the wound on the side of his head and spattered the side of her face. She turned away from it and let it drain down the side of her neck. Her pinky was starting to throb. She glanced at it and saw the nail ripped out at the base, hanging on by a few shreds of cuticle, and blood coursing out.
The pier jerked beneath them. A few moments later, a massive thud sounded from somewhere. It wasn’t especially loud, but one had the impression it had traveled from an event, far away, that had been very loud indeed.
Zula couldn’t see what the cop cars were doing, but she knew that they were close, no more than a couple of hundred feet away. There were two of them. One, then the other, turned off its siren.
Then nothing happened for half a minute. Jones just watched, fascinated, and checked his watch again.
Then the sirens came back on again, and the cars went into motion. Their frequency Dopplered down, and their volume began to diminish.
The cops were driving
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” said Jones, switching into a posh accent. He looked down at her, as if suddenly surprised to find her underneath him. “That bang was the sound of a very brave man martyring himself. Somewhere near the conference center. It seems to have drawn the cops’ attention. Which was the whole idea, of course. We have had to do rather a lot of improvising today. Speaking of which, you and I are now going to execute a very nonimprovised long walk off a short pier. If you work with me and come along nicely, I shall permit you to keep your teeth.”
JEREMY JEONG DOUBLE-BOLTED his door, which Sokolov approved of. One could not be too careful. Then he stripped off his gym togs and entered the bathroom and turned on the shower.
Sokolov rolled out from under the bed, stripped naked, and stuffed what was left of his clothes into a hotel laundry bag that he found clipped to a hanger. He dropped the CamelBak into the same and then rolled it up into a neat bundle. Having already marked the locations of the clothes he wanted, he was able to find and put on underwear, socks, shirt, and a business suit in less time than it would take Jeremy to shampoo his hair. He stuffed a necktie into his pocket and shoved his feet into a pair of shoes—a bit tight, but tolerable—and then slipped out the door, letting it close softly behind him. He took the elevator down to a mezzanine level, went into a men’s room, entered a stall, sat on a toilet, and put on the necktie, then tied his shoes. From the CamelBak he retrieved the little notebook where he had written the address of the spy woman. He exited the stall and checked his appearance in the mirror. The tie was a little askew, so he fixed it. Then he took the elevator to the lobby and approached the concierge, smiling helplessly.
“Sorry, English not so good.”
The concierge, a dazzling woman of about thirty, tried a few other Western languages on him, and they decided to stick with English.
“There is nice Chinese lady here. Extremely helpful to my company. I wish to say thanks. When I get back to Ukraine, I send her nice present, you understand?”
The concierge understood.
“Is to be surprise. Nice surprise.”
The concierge nodded.
“Here is address of woman. I try to write down correctly. Not good at writing Chinese as you can see. I think this is it.”
The woman’s eyes scanned the rudely fashioned characters, passing easily over some of them, snagging on others. Once or twice she allowed her flawless brow to wrinkle just a little. But in the end she nodded and beamed. “This is an address on Gulangyu Island,” she said.
“Yes. The little island just over there.” Sokolov waved toward the waterfront. “Problem is, when I get back to Ukraine, I cannot write woman’s address in Chinese on FedEx document. Need to have it in English. So my question for you is, can you please translate this address into English words for FedEx?”
