Reamde полностью

You couldn’t look at everything at once, and so Sokolov ended up looking at one noteworthy thing in particular. He was in a relatively large room, cut almost in half by a long table consisting of planks set up on oil drums. His mind had first pegged the table as a kitchen counter, since it looked as though things were being mixed up there in bowls, but on second thought, the stuff they were mixing up was not food. It was a concoction he had seen and smelled before. Hell, he’d even made it before. It was fuel oil and ammonium nitrate. Everyone’s favorite cheap simple high explosive. Standing on the opposite side of the table was a rather tall man, a Negro with a beard, wearing the T-shirt and jeans he had apparently just been sleeping in. But now he was up on his feet and looking around brightly. Behind him, an inconveniently placed window had been sealed off by covering it with a cheaply printed poster of Osama bin Laden.

There was a silence throughout the apartment as all the Russians’ loops started running again and as the occupants, who had mostly been sleeping, came awake to discover the Russians among them.

Sokolov must have had an astonished look on his face because the tall Negro was looking at him with a certain degree of amusement. The Negro’s hands and arms were largely concealed by the clutter of explosives-making stuff on the table, but they went into motion now, and Sokolov heard the very familiar snick-chunk of a Kalashnikov being charged; this being the last thing that one generally did preparatory to pulling the trigger.

Two very loud booms sounded from another room: Kautsky opening up with his semiautomatic shotgun.

Swinging the rifle upward, the Negro spoke in a calm, quiet, and matter-of-fact tone: “Allahu akbar.”

“I JUST CAN’T fucking believe it,” Peter muttered, as he worked the bobby pin in the manacle. “I can’t believe what you did.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, really.”

“Well, I can’t believe what everyone else is doing,” Zula said. “As far as I’m concerned I’m the only one here being reasonable.”

“You think it’s reasonable to fuck with a guy like Ivanov?”

“What kind of a guy is Ivanov anyway?” Zula asked. “What do we really know about him?”

“He’s a pretty tough guy,” Csongor put in. Zula glared at him, and he looked somewhat apologetic for having taken Peter’s side.

“Do you know that of your own knowledge, or just by reputation?” Zula asked.

Csongor didn’t answer.

“Did you not see what happened to Wallace in my building?” Peter demanded.

“That’s a good way of putting it. I did not see what happened to Wallace. I saw Wallace go into a room. I saw a long bundle being carried out. Obviously we were meant to think it was Wallace’s dead body. I’ll bet it was fake.”

“Fake!?”

“Yeah. They took him in there and said, ‘Listen, Wallace, we need to scare the crap out of these two Americans, so play along. Shut up and go limp for a minute and we’ll roll you up in a piece of plastic and carry you out and make it look like we just killed you.’ He’s probably sitting in his flat in Vancouver right now playing T’Rain.”

“I doubt it,” Csongor said.

“I suppose that is theoretically possible,” Peter said, “but I think it is insane and irresponsible of you to bet our lives on it.”

“None of this is real,” Zula said. “It is all gangster theater.”

A couple of loud booms echoed down the stairway.

After a brief silence, they heard several different fully automatic weapons firing at the same time.

Peter swiveled his head around and fixed Zula with a look.

“Either that, or I’m wrong,” Zula said.

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” THE locksmith exclaimed, barely audible above the sound of gunfire and of stray pieces of broken glass and debris rattling down onto the roof of the van. “I’ve had it!” He was half lying, half sitting on the floor of the van, legs folded up in front of the passenger seat, body wedged in under the radio, reaching up to work on the ignition lock. His brain was telling him to hurl himself out of the vehicle and run as fast as he could, but it was going to take a little while to extricate his body.

Yuxia looked out the windshield. The PSB cop was backing away from the building, looking up just like everyone else on the street.

Something really bad was happening, and Qian Yuxia was an accomplice to it.

She reached down and slipped her hand into the locksmith’s as if she were going to help pull him up. Instead of which she pinned it against the steering wheel. She used her other hand to grab the dangling manacle and snap it over his wrist.

“You can try to pick that handcuff while I’ve got my fingernails in your eyes,” she said, “or you can start the engine while I sit here quietly. Your choice.”