“In Islamabad,” Pavel continued, perfectly unruffled by the threat, “you have protection from officials that you can bribe, and you have connection to your friends who live in Waziristan, Afghanistan, Yemen. Surely you can find one or two comrades who know how to fly a plane. You intend to kill us there and then use your own pilots afterward.”
Jones looked as if he were about to deny this, but Pavel held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t,” he said. “Is ridiculous. You have got something very bad that you want to pick up in Islamabad. It’s totally obvious. You have a nuclear bomb, or some germs, or something. And your plan is to place this on the jet and then deliver this to some American city. You will crash the plane into a building or something and blow up the city, or poison it, or spread some plague. And everyone on that plane will die, one way or the other. It is ridiculous. You must think that Sergei and I are stupid. We are not. We understand. Obviously we are dead men no matter what. And so we have agreed that you should kill us now. Go ahead. Kill us now, and then figure out some way to get your asses out of China.”
Jones actually considered it for a while. Either that, or he was simply waiting until his temper was under control.
Finally he said, “Surely you have some counterproposal? Other than immediate, summary execution?”
“We can fly you out of here,” Pavel said, “as soon as we can make a plan that guarantees to keep us alive.” He exchanged a look with Sergei and then nodded at Zula. “Us, and the girl.”
It was the first time that Zula’s presence had been acknowledged at all, and she was strangely grateful for it. Jones’s reaction was a little bit odd: ashamed and defensive. Similar to the way he had looked at the conclusion of that phone conversation in the door of the airplane.
Why would he be reacting that way?
Probably, she realized, because he had intended to kill her. Or at least had not really been caring whether she lived or died. Which was apparently just fine with Jones as long as it was a private matter. But when people drew it to his attention, he didn’t like it.
“All right,” Jones said, “since this is all about you lot now, and what you want, have you considered what is going to happen to you if you get arrested in China? Because you are responsible for having flown some rather bad chaps into the country, aren’t you?”
“Obviously we would like to get out of China,” Pavel allowed.
“And soon, I should think, since before long they’ll be pulling Ivanov’s corpse out of that basement and figuring out who he is, and then they’ll connect him to this plane, which is just sitting here, with us in it.”
“Agreed.”
“We can’t get out on an international flight plan because the immigration officials will want to come on board and check our documents,” Jones said.
“Yes.”
“So we have no choice but to file a domestic flight plan, wait for six hours, and then, for lack of a better word, cheat,” Jones said. “In the sense that we can’t actually land the plane at another airport in China or we’re dead. So we have to divert from that plan, don’t we, and get to some place where we have some chance of surviving.”
“Something like that, yes,” Pavel said.
Jones spread his hands out wide. “Enlighten me, then,” he said. “How can we do that?”
Pavel considered it and discussed it in Russian with Sergei. Zula realized, after a point, that the discussion would go on for a little while, so she got up and used the toilet. Once she’d sat down, she realized that she had sort of ducked past the mirror without looking at it, as if her own reflection were a deeply estranged frenemy with whom she could not possibly make eye contact. So she forced herself to turn her head to the side — for in this high-luxe bathroom, the entire bulkhead was a mirror — and look herself in the eye. She was startled to discover none other than Zula Forthrast looking right back at her. Same old girl. A little bit the worse for wear, of course. Older. Not in the sense of old-old, but rather of having seen more during her life. She wondered what others saw in her; why Csongor, of all people, would go to such lengths to protect her. Why Jones was keeping her around. Why Pavel and Sergei had decided — spontaneously, she thought — to include her in the deal they were striking with Jones. But most of all, why Yuxia would do what she had done. Not nose-diving the van into the boat, for that had been an accident, but ramming the taxi on the pier and taking the airbag right in her face.
Because in a sense the only worthy thing Zula had done all day had been to try to help the hackers upstairs. And Yuxia had not seen that. Neither had “Manu” and the other hackers — the beneficiaries. Only Csongor. But maybe he had told the story to the others?
Or maybe none of it had been that rational. Maybe Yuxia didn’t know about the SOS with the fuse. Maybe this was all down to some supernatural effect, such as grace, that flowed through people’s lives even if they didn’t understand why.
Which led her to a moment, there on the toilet, looking sideways into the mirror, of something akin to prayer. Her earlier thoughts on this topic still stood and so it was not a hands-together, now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep sort of prayer. More of an act of will. Because if there were some power like grace, like the Force, or Providence, or what-have-you, that had been at work in the world today, then it needed to find its way now to the boat where Qian Yuxia was being held captive and it needed to go one step further in whatever mysterious chain of transactions was playing out here. And if it were possible for a conscious effort of will on Zula’s part to make that happen, then she was willing it to happen.
She pulled herself together, splashed water on her face, and came back out into the jet’s cabin. Pavel and Sergei were still talking in Russian, panning and zooming around digital maps of the world on the big screen. Jones was on his feet, phone clamped to his head, finger in his ear, looking dumbfounded. He talked in Arabic for a while, his voice and his eyes dull. Not defeated, she thought, so much as completely exhausted. Then he hung up.
“You’re free to go,” he said, looking Zula in the eye.
“What are you talking about?” she said. Because he could show a kind of mean sarcasm, and this seemed like one of those times.
“The boat,” he said, “with your girlfriend on it…”
“Yes?”
“Has disappeared.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dis. Appeared. Without a trace. Not responding on the wireless. Not answering phone calls. No sign of wreckage. No distress call.”
“You know this how?”
“Those lads who dropped us off at the dock,” Jones said. “They went back to the island, and there is simply nothing there.”
Zula badly wanted to show how happy she felt, but certain matters had to be settled first. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” Jones said. “You’re going to stay on the plane anyway.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. Because you’re in China illegally. You’re associated with people who have committed more murders in a few days than Xiamen normally sees in a year. And there is only one way for you to get out of this country, and it’s to stay on this plane” — Jones extended a hand, in a sarcastic flourish, toward Pavel and Sergei — “with your white knights.”
The racial gibe was not lost on Zula. “I’d take knights of any color,” she said. Substituting wordplay for action. Because she knew Jones was right. This plane was her only way out.
“Okay,” Pavel announced, “we have plan for getting out.”
“How’s it going to work?”