“You’re lucky for my orders,” Yusuf said.
THEY HEADED SOUTH
toward Volgograd, the former Stalingrad, site of some of the fiercest fighting in all of World War II. The Nazis and Soviets had battled for eleven long months for the city that bore Stalin’s name, both sides ordered never to surrender. By the time the fighting was done, almost a million men on each side were dead and the city was ash. And yet the cargo in their trunk could do just as much damage as all those men, Grigory thought. Secret armies, these bombs were.
By late afternoon the land turned hilly, and to the southeast Grigory could see the mountains of the Caucasus, big gray slabs of rock that disappeared in the haze. It was night when they reached Novorossiysk, on the coast. A day and a half had passed since Grigory drove out of Mayak with the bombs in his trunk. Grigory hoped they would leave Russia tonight. They didn’t have much time left. In another day or two, someone would be assigned to make sure that the weapons were present. Of course no one would think that a bomb was really missing, but with him and Tajid gone, they’d check anyway, just to be sure. And what a surprise they’d have.
Novorossiysk was a gray industrial city, the biggest Russian port on the Black Sea. Apartment buildings crawled up the hills that rose from the coast. The air stank of oil from the storage tanks on the harbor, round white behemoths a hundred feet high. They passed along its edge and turned southeast along the narrow coast road. The hills jutted up to their east and the sea lay to their west. The road was dark and slick and Yusuf drove carefully, both hands on the wheel.
“You know, even if we get in an accident, they won’t go off,” Grigory said.
“Are you ever quiet? You’re worse than a woman.”
Half an hour later, outside Gelendzhik, Yusuf pulled onto the grounds of a deserted hotel closed for the winter. A rutted road rose up a hill toward the hotel, a concrete building with a few ugly frills. Behind the hotel, a dozen cottages sat among leafless trees. Beside the cottage farthest from the hotel, Yusuf cut the engine and they sat in the dark. The rain had stopped, but the air was cold and damp. They waited in silence, listening to the cars on the coast road, and to their breathing.
They passed an hour that way. The car grew cold, but Yusuf didn’t seem to mind. He closed his eyes and dozed lightly. Grigory tried to do the same, but he couldn’t. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw everything that had happened since Friday, the convoy arriving, the masterful way he’d played Major Akilev, the way Boris had checked the trunk . . . It was as if he’d been born two days ago, and everything before that hardly existed.
“Tajid,” he said. “When Boris checked the car, were you nervous? Was your heart pounding?”
“I suppose.”
“That’s all you can say? You suppose. These bombs in our trunk, our lives facing us, and what did you think? Wasn’t your heart pounding?”
“You know what,” Yusuf said abruptly. “I never knew before. But two days with you have shown me. There’re only two kinds of people in the world.”
Grigory waited for Yusuf to explain, but he said nothing. “Shall I guess? The fat and the thin?” Silence. “Men and women?” Silence. “The strong and the weak?” Silence. “The tall and the short.” Silence. “Come, Yusuf, give us your wisdom.”
“Those who can keep their thoughts to themselves,” Yusuf said. “And those who can’t. Sometimes I could cut your throat for a few minutes of peace.”
“Only sometimes?”
Grigory never got to hear Yusuf’s reply, because at that moment a car scraped up the hotel driveway. It was the same Toyota that had stopped beside them at the petrol station the day before. The Toyota parked next to them and a man stepped out, an Arab by the look of him, darker than Yusuf. He wore a cap and a heavy jacket. The man was in charge, Grigory saw immediately. Yusuf treated him with a deference he wouldn’t have given Grigory even if Grigory had put a gun to his head.
Yusuf and the man walked behind the Nissan, and Yusuf flipped up the trunk lid. A minute or so later, the trunk lid was lowered. The man sat in back beside Tajid and pulled off his cap, revealing a nearly bald head—unusual for an Arab. He was in his thirties, medium height, with a neatly trimmed goatee, wide dark eyes, a handsome round face. He looked gentle, though Grigory was certain he wasn’t.
They drove down the hill, leaving the Toyota behind. At the coast road, Yusuf swung left, to the southeast. “I won’t ask you how you did it, but it’s a great accomplishment,” the bald man said.
“At last,” Grigory said. “Someone understands.”
THEY MADE GOOD TIME
for a while, but then the road became a true coastal serpentine, rising and falling along the swooping contours of the hills. Yusuf drove slowly, and after two hours they’d traveled barely seventy kilometers—forty miles. But neither Yusuf nor the man in the back showed any impatience. Grigory figured they must have driven the route before and knew how long it would take.
Russians called this strip of the coast their Riviera, and during the summer, this road was jammed with vacationers. Now the houses and hotels scattered through the hills were mostly dark, closed for the winter.
Just past midnight, Yusuf swung off the road, to the right, down a narrow track that hugged a steep cliff down to the sea. When they reached the base of the cliff, they were in a campsite beside a narrow, heavily forested cove. The main road stretched high above them on a concrete bridge supported by a dozen pillars. With trees all around them and thick gray clouds blocking the moon, they were invisible from the road.
“I hope you’ve arranged a boat,” Grigory said. “Otherwise it’s a long way to swim.”
No one bothered to answer.
“Hard to believe the Olympics will be in Sochi in 2014, isn’t it? Though I don’t suppose any of us will be there.” Silence. Grigory sighed. “All right, then. Tell me this, Yusuf, since you’re such a philosopher, dividing the world into categories. What’s the harm in a bit of chatter?”
“Nothing.”
“At least he speaks! Go on, then.”
“As long as you’ve got something to say. Which you don’t.”
“And who made you emperor?”
“My knife.”
“Yes, because you have a weapon, you can do as you please, insult me or anyone you like. Some world this is.”
“Shh,” the bald man in the back said. “Listen.”
In the silence, Grigory heard the distant rumble of a boat engine.
The man in the back swung open his door and the others followed. Yusuf popped the trunk and they pulled up the toolboxes and their bags. By the time they were done, the boat had arrived, a black motorboat with an open deck. Grigory couldn’t imagine it would get them across the Black Sea. Nonetheless they transferred everything to the boat, and then Yusuf and the bald man hugged briefly and whispered in Arabic.
The motorboat’s captain clapped his hands together, obviously anxious to be gone. Yusuf and Grigory and Tajid stepped into the boat.
“Allah yisallimak,”
the bald man said to them all.
God keep you safe.
He waved at them as the boat turned and headed for the open sea. And then he disappeared.
THEY LOST SIGHT
of the coast within an hour, and Grigory began to get nervous. But the captain steered confidently, occasionally checking the GPS tacked to the dash of the boat.
The fishing trawler was running without lights and Grigory didn’t see it until they were almost on top of it. They drew up alongside and someone inside threw down a rope. The motorboat’s captain tied the two boats together. The men in the trawler hauled up the toolboxes in a reinforced net and then sent down a rope ladder. Grigory wasn’t sure he would make it up, but somehow he did, the ladder creaking under his bulk. Tajid and Yusuf followed. The motorboat turned back toward the coast and the trawler rumbled into the sea.
THE SUN ROSE
and set again and all the while they headed west. Grigory passed the time by amusing himself with his magnetized chessboard, even playing a couple of games with the ship’s captain. At midday the seas picked up, and by nightfall the waves batted the boat like a cat playing with a mouse. About then, Tajid threw up.
But Grigory, to his surprise, felt fine. Another unexpected talent. First he’d stolen the bombs. Now this. A new day for Grigory. He closed his eyes and imagined his future. He’d take the money they gave him, go on a diet, and—
He startled as someone tapped his shoulder. Yusuf. He was smiling, a thin smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth and frightened Grigory.
“Let’s play chess,” Yusuf said.
So Grigory set up the board and they played, twice. Yusuf played well, but Grigory beat him both times. Yusuf’s smile never faded.
“Let’s go,” Yusuf said when they were done, nodding at the door that led to the storage room behind the main cabin.
“What?”
“It’s time, Grigory.”
Grigory didn’t have to ask what he meant. “Please, Yusuf,” he whispered. His bowels came loose and he thought for a moment he would soil himself.
“Don’t beg,” Yusuf said. “I’m giving you the chance to do this properly, with dignity.”
“But you promised, and I’ve done everything you asked.”
It’s the
chess, Grigory thought madly.
He’s angry about the chess. If I hadn’t beaten him—
“You knew how this would end, Grigory. It’s the same for all of us.”
Yes, of course, all of us, but why now for me?
Whynowwhynowwhynow
. . . the words clung together in Grigory’s mind, all question and no answer.
“I should have turned you in.” So many chances, so many wrong choices.
“Come on.”
Yusuf carried a pistol to go with his knife. Grigory knew he couldn’t escape. The sea surrounded them. And he couldn’t swim. So he pushed himself up and took the two steps to the storage room. Yusuf closed the door behind them. A single bulb lit the space, which was empty aside from a rusty anchor and a few nets balled up in the corner, stinking faintly of the sea’s sulfurous brine. A fitting place to die.
“Lie down,” Yusuf said.
“Is this about the chess?” Grigory couldn’t stop himself. “We can play again. As much as you like. You’ll win, I promise.”
“Lie down. On your stomach with your hands above your head.”
“I will. But tell me. Was what you said about blackmail true, or do you plan to use them?”
“You think we’ve gone to this much trouble to give them back?”
“Then what about the video? Why did you make me do that?”
“Down, Grigory.” Yusuf’s voice was at once soothing and commanding, as if Grigory were an unruly dog who needed a firm master.
“But you don’t have the codes.”
“Lie down.”
And Grigory did. A plastic tarp covered the floor. For him. His coffin.
“Do you want to pray, Grigory? It’s never too late. Allah is always listening.”
“Fuck you and your crazy Allah.”
“I want to read you something. A poem that was written for Sheikh bin Laden.”
Grigory heard Yusuf unfold a piece of paper. Then:
How special they are who sold their souls to God,
Who smiled at Death when his sword gazed ominously at them,
Who willingly bared their chests as shields.
Grigory’s heart pounded wildly. He was dying for
this
? For a moment, he wanted to stand and fight. But he knew he wouldn’t even reach his knees before Yusuf finished him.
“Are you ready to bare your chest?”
Grigory turned his head and spat on the tarp. Not much of a protest and half the saliva rolled down his cheek, but at least he would die a man, not a beggar. “Fuck you, I said.”
“Your choice. Close your eyes.”
At the base of his skull, where his hair touched his neck, Grigory felt the tip of the pistol graze his skin. It pulled back, then touched him again, higher this time. Yusuf must have done this before; he was placing the pistol so Grigory’s skull wouldn’t deflect the bullet. To his surprise, the pistol was warm, not cold, and then Grigory remembered it had been lying in Yusuf’s armpit. Such a strange last thought—
THE PISTOL BARKED,
and Grigory Farzadov was dead. Tajid followed. To Yusuf’s annoyance, where Grigory had accepted his fate with a certain poise, Tajid blubbered like a child. He moaned about his family and promised that if Yusuf just let him be, he would never ever say anything to anyone. It was all the same, though, all the same in the end, because Yusuf had the gun.
When he was done, Yusuf and the fishermen wound up the two bodies in the tarp and wrapped thick steel chains around them and threw the whole package into an old anchovy net. They put the luggage that Grigory and Tajid had brought with them into another net and weighted that one down as well. Then they dumped both nets overboard. Yusuf could have prayed for the cousins, but he didn’t. Grigory didn’t deserve Allah’s blessing and Tajid’s whining had irritated him. The nets sank into the water and the waves kept coming, as if Grigory and Tajid had never existed at all. And the boat and its cargo turned south and made for the Turkish coast.
7
W
ells stalked the first-floor corridors of George Washington Hospital, long strides cutting through the clean white halls. He reached the double doors that marked the entrance to surgery, turned, paced back to the entrance.
The hospital was on 23rd and I, seven blocks from the shooting. The first ambulance had come in five minutes, the first cops two minutes later. Wells flashed his identification at them, shook off their questions, told them they could find him at GW if they needed him. Then he sprinted up 21st, wishing all the while that the hospital was farther away so he could keep running.