He had learned that certain women were drawn to big men, and he had not been above taking advantage of this from time to time. He had had only one serious girlfriend, a year ago. Yesterday, he had decided that Zula was the woman for him.
He had not exactly lost consciousness when Ivanov had pistol-whipped him across the jaw, but become, as it were, extremely distracted and somewhat disconnected from control of his body during the moments that the other gunman had made his surprising intervention. He had felt, and profoundly appreciated, the feel of Zula’s hand on his cheek as she broke his fall, but he was a little fuzzy as to what else had happened, largely because his head had been aimed in the wrong direction and he’d been unable to move it.
Now he was not the least bit fuzzy. He knew that he was in the cellar of a building that was in the process of collapsing. That the immensely strong stairway core was holding up well and creating a pocket of relatively safe breathing space around it. And that he was trapped in that pocket with the semidecapitated corpse of Ivanov and a Kalashnikov assault rifle. And while on one level the situation was, obviously, ridiculously chaotic and dangerous, the Hungarian in him said, I was wondering when I was going to end up like this.
From time to time he had wondered how his grandfather had died, since no one had a clue where, or even in what year, it had happened. Maybe he had been in the cellar of some building in Stalingrad, just like this.
During moments when the building was not actively in a state of avalanche, he would call out “Hello! Hello!” as loud as he could manage.
It was almost totally dark. Groping around, Csongor felt buttery leather coated with filthy grit: Ivanov’s man-purse, which had fallen to the floor and was lying right next to him. Csongor pulled it to him and opened it up, in case it contained a flashlight or anything else that might be useful. His hands told him that it was almost completely full of Chinese money. There were two extraordinarily dense rectangles of cold metal: full ammunition clips, he realized, for a pistol that was no longer in evidence. Next to them a black box, shaped at one end like a pair of yawning jaws, with small metal pegs as fangs. Csongor picked it up and his finger fell naturally onto a button that was obviously a trigger. He pulled it and a purple lightning bolt leaped between the fangs and danced and twisted about crazily until he let go of the thing. Stupid! If there were a gas leak in this place, the spark would have set it off.
But there had been no explosion; there was no gas leak.
It was some kind of a nonlethal weapon: a stun gun. Maybe Ivanov had brought it for torturing the Troll. Csongor pulled its trigger again and used the dancing light of the arc for illumination. As he had expected, the bag was filled with Chinese money. But stuffed in around the edges were Ziploc bags containing important stuff: passports and phones.
He heard movement from not far away.
“Help!” he cried.
The movement stopped.
“Hello?” Csongor called.
“Hello,” said a voice in the dark. “Come this way, please.”
“I’m coming,” Csongor said. He dropped the stun gun into the bag and zipped it shut. Then he began crawling toward the voice, dragging the bag behind him.
“AIRPORT!” SHOUTED MR. Jones. Then a look of remorse came over his face, Zula guessed, because he had realized how out of control he was. “Airport,” he repeated, much more calmly and distinctly.
Because Mr. Jones’s right hand was cuffed to Zula’s left, they had perforce arranged themselves so that Zula was on the right side of the rear seat and Mr. Jones was on the left, directly behind the driver, who had torqued himself all the way around to stare in paralytic dismay at Mr. Jones.
“Air … port,” Jones said for a third time, in a tone of just-barely-contained fury, accompanied with a little tossing movement of the pistol in his left hand. The driver finally turned around and shifted into gear. The taxi moved about three inches and then stopped to avoid hitting a staggering, dust-covered refugee. But at least it was moving; the taxi driver had something to think about besides the strange pair in his backseat. A few moments later, he claimed a full arm’s length of pavement. And from there, it only got easier. As if the crowd, having conceded the taxi’s right to move one meter, could no longer begrudge it the next ten, or the next hundred.
SOKOLOV WATCHED THE slow dissolution of the taxi into the crowd with professional admiration. He was a highly trained and experienced warrior, operating completely on his own, free to hide in this building for a while or emerge at a time of his choosing. Even so, he had rated his chances of escaping from this situation at essentially zero. And yet this Muslim Negro, the victim of a surprise raid, handcuffed to an unwilling hostage, and squarely in Sokolov’s rifle sights, had apparently managed to make good his escape simply by taking advantage of an opportunity that had presented itself at random. Of course, the distraction posed by the explosion and collapse of the building had helped him enormously, but it was admirable nonetheless. From long experience in places like Afghanistan and Chechnya, Sokolov recognized, in the black jihadist’s movements, a sort of cultural or attitudinal advantage that such people always enjoyed in situations like this: they were complete fatalists who believed that God was on their side. Russians, on the other hand, were fatalists of a somewhat different kind, believing, or at least strongly suspecting, that they were fucked no matter what, and that they had better just make the best of it anyway, but not seeing in this the hand of God at work or the hope of some future glory in a martyr’s heaven.
And so what moved him onward and down the office building’s stairway was not any sort of foolish hope that he could actually be saved, but competitive fury at the fact that he had been outdone by the suicidal improvisations of this fanatic.
CSONGOR RECOGNIZED HIS savior as one of the hackers: Manu, as they had been referring to him. “Manu” showed Csongor how to make his way out of the cellar to the back door on the alley. Csongor then followed him down the alley to the side street and down that to its intersection with the bigger street that ran along the building’s front. This got them far enough away from obvious danger that “Manu” felt comfortable turning around to look curiously at Csongor.
“Thank you,” Csongor said.
“I am Marlon,” said the other.
“I am Csongor.” They shook hands in a curiously stiff, formal way.
“What happened?” Marlon wanted to know.
Csongor, not fully trusting their ability to communicate in English, shrugged to indicate he hadn’t the faintest idea.
Not far away, someone had been honking a car horn. First it had been a series of long blasts, and now it was a long string of random taps, culminating in “shave and a haircut, two bits.” The neighborhood afforded many distractions at this time, but finally Csongor turned to look and noticed the van sitting there about ten meters away. Projecting below the open driver’s-side door was a pair of blue boots. Yuxia’s head poked up in the vacant window frame, to see if she had gotten their attention yet.
“Would you like a ride?” Csongor asked, extending one hand toward the van, like a limo driver welcoming a movie star at the airport.
Marlon shrugged and grinned. “Okay.”
As they drew closer, Yuxia ran out from behind the door and got in front of the van, crouched, and grabbed a snarled length of rusty rebar that was torquing up into the air in front of the bumper. It was rooted in a sizable chunk of busted-up concrete that was preventing the van from moving forward and that was too heavy for her to move alone. Marlon and Csongor helped her drag this obstruction out of the way, then climbed into the back of the vehicle as Yuxia got into the driver’s seat. She put it in gear and started to rumble forward over smaller debris that, while it made for a bumpy ride, didn’t prevent the wheels from rolling. Marlon and Csongor busied themselves for a few moments pushing the concrete lintel out the side door. The door wouldn’t latch because the entire frame of the van had been distorted by impact, and so Csongor just held it shut. Marlon lay
on his back in the wreckage of the seat, got his feet braced against the punched-in roof, and pushed up with all his might, shoving the sheet metal up quite a distance, partly sealing the hole in the roof and greatly increasing the amount of space inside the van. Beyond that, his strength did not suffice to move the metal any farther, and so he and Csongor both ended up on their backs kicking at the ceiling, pounding the metal up like blacksmiths. It gave them something to do and it took their mind off the way Yuxia was driving, which, had they paid attention to it, might have been the most frightening thing they had seen all day.
“Where are we going?” Csongor finally thought to ask. For he could not make sense of Yuxia’s decisions.
“To the same place as that taxi,” she answered, nodding indistinctly at a mote in the sea of people and traffic ahead of them.
“Why?”
“Because my girlfriend is in it,” Yuxia answered. She turned to fix him with a look. “My girlfriend, and yours.”
“I wish!” Csongor remarked, before he could haul the remark back.
“Then don’t you want to know where she is going?”
SOKOLOV REACHED THE ground floor, ejected the clip from his rifle, cleared its chamber, and threw it down the stairwell. He stepped into the hall that led to the building’s main entrance and broke into a run. When he reached the lobby, he slowed to a brisk walk, pushed through a pair of inner doors, strode across the entryway, and shouldered his way through one of the outer doors.
Just in time to watch the van drive away. Like a horse dropping a turd, it disgorged a large piece of concrete as it accelerated.
There seemed little point now in wondering how the Chinese girl had managed to start the engine. Sokolov swiveled his head to left and right, checking the sidewalk, then withdrew into the lobby to consider his options. A number of people had taken cover beneath the shelter of the scaffolding, and all of them had been far too interested in events across the street to take any note of Sokolov. Even so, he preferred not to stand out in the open any longer than he had to.
He had seen something, though. Off to the right.
He pushed the left-hand door open with his foot. Its window was cracked but still hanging together in the frame. At first he could see his own reflection in it, but as he shoved it open, the angle changed and the reflection careered around. When he got it open about forty-five degrees, he was able to see down the sidewalk to his right and verify what he had noticed moments earlier: at the corner of the building, one of those cart-pulling guys had taken shelter under the very end of the scaffolding. Sokolov could practically read the man’s mind. He had been caught in the middle of the disaster and had run to a place where he could get some shelter. Now the worst was over, police vehicles and fire trucks were loudly and rapidly converging on the neighborhood, and he smelled an opportunity to make some money. Because a hell of a lot of shit was going to have to be carted out of here.
Sokolov ascended to the second floor, shouldered his way into a vacant office, strode to the front, and kicked broken glass out of a window, giving him a clear exit to the scaffold. He swung the garbage bag out onto the platform, then clambered out onto the planking. A blue tarp, much the worse for wear, was dangling there. He was richly supplied with knives and used one of those to cut a tarp loose with a few quick strokes. Rather than take the time to fold, or even wad, it up, he just threw it over his shoulders like a cape. He picked up the garbage bag and began striding toward the corner where he had seen the carter.
When he reached the end of the scaffolding, he set the garbage bag down, grabbed the bamboo rail, vaulted over it, and found purchase for his feet. Leaning out and looking down, he was just able to see the edge of the carter’s conical straw hat, a few feet below him. Sokolov grabbed the garbage bag, dragged it off the end of the platform, and let it drop into the side street, just a meter or so out of the carter’s reach.
The carter stepped into the street to investigate. Sokolov could only see the top of his hat.
When the carter looked up to see where the mystery bag had come from, Sokolov nailed him in the forehead with a stack of currency two inches thick. It tumbled down his nose, bounced off his chin, and ended up trapped between his hands and his gaunt belly.
It took the carter a few moments to believe his eyes. Sokolov had no idea how much money a carter made, and only a vague notion of the value of that brick of bills, but he assumed that the disparity between those two figures was noteworthy.
When the carter looked up again, he found himself staring into the barrel of Sokolov’s pistol.
Sokolov pointed to the cart, then made a gesture indicating that the carter should pull it into the side street.
The carter made a move somewhere between a nod and a bow, scurried back under the platform for a moment, then pulled his cart out so that it was directly beneath Sokolov. Sokolov dropped into it. In the same movement, he swept the blue tarp over him. He reached out for the garbage bag, but the carter, understanding his intent, had already picked this up. Sokolov pulled it in under the blue tarp. He and the carter were now staring at each other through a tunnel that Sokolov had made in the tarp, about the size of his hand. Sokolov jerked his head down the side street, indicating the direction he wanted the carter to travel.
The cart began to move. Sokolov unzipped another pocket, pulled out his phone, brought up the photo gallery app, and flipped through pictures until he had found an image of one of the big Western-style business hotels along the waterfront: one of those places where it was possible to be a white person without attracting one’s own personal Stonehenge of cataleptic, openmouthed gapers. He got the carter’s attention with a loud psst, then showed him the image. The carter took a moment to focus on it—his eyes weren’t so good, perhaps—but then he seemed to understand. He changed his course and pulled Sokolov onto a larger street that was even more hysterically crowded than usual. Police and aid vehicles were coming toward them in echelons. Sokolov pulled the edges of the tarp inward and got his weight on them so that his shelter could not be stripped off by a velleity of the wind or the hand of a curious boy. Blue light shone through the tarp. It was warm under there, but he would just have to survive that. His heart was pounding at something like 180 beats a minute, which meant that his body was generating an enormous amount of heat. He rested his head on his arm and closed his eyes and began making a conscious effort to slow his breathing. He had water in the CamelBak pouch strapped to his back. He rubbed some into his hair so that it would evaporate and cool off his head, then put the end of the tube in his mouth and began taking little sips every ten seconds or so. The cart started and stopped, pivoted and lunged through the throng. He was alive, and he was putting distance between himself and the epicenter.
“MY BAD,” YUXIA kept saying, as the van pulled up the ramp onto the ring road, in hot pursuit of the dust-covered taxi that contained Zula. “My bad, my bad, my bad.”
“There is no bad,” Csongor said. He had to shout to be heard, since, as they accelerated to freeway speed, the wind began howling through the crack in the van’s roof. “You did nothing bad.”
“But I saw her,” Yuxia keened. “She ran right past me! I honked but she did not look back. Aiyaa!”
They seemed to be passing a lot of traffic. Marlon, seated next to Csongor in the second row of seats, directly behind Yuxia, leaned forward and made a sharp remark. Yuxia glanced at the speedometer for the first time since the journey had begun, and the blue boot pulled back from the gas pedal.
And only just in time, since they had nearly shot past a dust-covered taxi in the right lane. Yuxia let it gain some distance on them, then cut back into the right lane, drawing stentorian protests from car and truck horns all around.
“So,” Csongor said. For he really had no idea what was going on. “Zula ran past you. You honked at her. She ignored you. She got into a taxi—?”
“Bottom line, got thrown into one.”
“Who threw her into a taxi? What are you talking abo
ut?”
She opened her mouth and shook her head hopelessly.
“The tall black man?” Marlon guessed.
“No, tall white man.”
Marlon and Csongor looked at each other.
“White like paper,” Yuxia went on. She licked a finger, wiped a streak of concrete dust off her cheek, then held it up for them both to see. “Basic color of this.”
Marlon said, “If you had tried to do something, that dude would have killed you.” But this just sent Yuxia into another paroxysm of steering wheel pounding.
“My head was confused,” Csongor said. “I saw nothing clearly. But after Ivanov struck me, someone else came into the cellar—the same man as you are talking about?”
“Yes, the same,” Marlon confirmed. “He shot at the man who hit you and—” Seeing what had happened in his mind’s eye, Marlon shook his head in a combination of disbelief and nausea. Csongor, who spoke no Chinese at all, was impressed, thus far, by Marlon’s fluency in the universal English of action movies and chat rooms.
They were threading a huge interchange where the ring road connected with a colossal, new-looking bridge thrown across a strait to what Csongor conjectured was the mainland: a zone of tidal flats supporting immense high-rise apartment complexes still under construction, and equally tall standards to support power lines hung across the water.
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