Performance Anomalies (29 page)

15

Cono redialed the number Bulat had entered and saw that it was not the same one Katerina had given him at the swimming pool. It rang, but there was no answer. He kept his eyes on Bulat as he dialed six more times, with the same result. He also again tried the number Katerina had given him at the pool, relieved that he could still retrieve it from his own memory. Three times, no answer.

“So, Teacher, where would Oksana take two women so she could hand them over as hostages?” Cono felt out of breath, and sucked in air. “Does she have other safe houses, places that are only hers, not the Americans’?”

“I am not aware of any except the place I took you.” Bulat rubbed his chin. “I am sorry to say this, but you look very weary. Perhaps you should sit down and rest.”

“It’ll have to wait.” Cono tried to think through the fog that was drifting into his head. “The note. The one you said you didn’t leave under my friend Dimira’s door. Who was the stringer who left it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know about the note or who might have left it. Miss Oksana says it’s better if we don’t have contact with each other. It’s the way it’s done in this business.”

“But you must have a telephone number for at least one of them.” Cono scrolled through the memory of Bulat’s mobile. There were no numbers listed. He went to Calls
Received: None. Unanswered Incoming Calls: None. Calls Made: Only the multiple attempts to call Katerina. “You have it memorized.” Cono searched Bulat’s face. “Give me another number.”

“I assure you, I have no number for the others. I don’t even have names for them. And I don’t want to know them.” Bulat’s voice was steady.

“Help me think. Where, how, to find Oksana and Zheng and the women.” Cono walked over to the backpack lying next to the pit and took out the Geiger counter. Beneath it, wrapped in a wad of cloth diapers, were three Russian RGD-5 grenades. There was a ring of keys, and nothing else. Cono carried the bag to the base of the control-room stairs and put the harvest of four pistols and Tamaris’s grenade into it.

“Think!”

“Yes, I am trying to think,” said Bulat, now standing over Azmat. “What about this young man, whose arm you tied?”

“You should take him to a hospital. But I won’t let you. I need your help.”

“To do what?”

“Help me think, goddamn it! I can’t think straight!”

Bulat looked at Cono’s face and then at the AK. He was concerned that the hysterical behavior he’d seen just before entering the building was now returning, but this time Cono had a rifle in his hands, not a canister. Cono took a few steps and stood outside the doorway, in the brightness of a cloudless morning.
The damn machines are still on
. He went up to the control room and turned off all the switches. As he came down the stairs he felt a vibration against his thigh. It was Bulat’s cell phone.

Cono yanked it out of his pocket. He pushed the Receive button and listened to a faint buzz. When he reached the bottom of the stairs and stood in the sunshine at the doorway, the signal cleared up. “Yes?”

“My dear Cono. I have another joke for you. The Dalai Lama wants a hooker. He’s a man, after all. He rings up the Chinese consulate, because he’s heard they can find the best. The operator gives him a name and a number. He asks how he can be sure she’s the best. The operator says, because her lovers are all willing to die to get more of her. The Lama says, she’s the one for me, no problem—I get reincarnated anyway!”

Zheng’s laughter was so loud that Cono had to move the phone away.

Cono brought it back to his ear. “I’m not laughing this time.”

“You are so honest, always so sincere, my friend.
The small boats are floating on the lake, the red ties are shining, tell me my comrades
, all that Communist Youth Brigade rubbish. Pity that your sincerity had such a nostalgic effect on my two bank assistants. They are now trying to row themselves out of the bottom of a lake.”

“Yes, a pity.”

“My dear Cono, you were such a raconteur on our first two meetings. Loosen up. We should have another conversation, for old times’ sake. It looks to be a pretty day. The sun’s rays are already warming the cuts made by the hand of man in the always-forgiving earth …”

Hearing those words Cono dove into the building as the sheet metal above the door ripped open. The cracking peal from a high-powered rifle followed less than a second later.

Cono kept the phone to his head as he dug his heels into the floor, thrusting himself backward from the doorway.

“Are you still there, my poorly dressed friend? You see that my new assistants are not so sentimental. That was just an invitation. To our next conversation. I hear you gasping for air. There is lots of air up here on the mountainside. We’re all wondering why you chose this vacant place to enjoy the sunrise; but indeed the view is sublime.”

“And?”

“And, if you want your two, shall we say, attractive friends back, you should visit me on this gorgeous lookout above the quarry.”

“You can have them.”

“Your lovely friend Katerina doesn’t think you are so nonchalant about them. I respect the ploy. But after all, you came such a long distance on your white horse to help them.”

“And my horse is ready to trot back to the stables.” Cono got to his feet and edged toward the doorway where he’d been seen by the sniper.

“But really,” Zheng said, “you wouldn’t want to leave your girlfriends hanging like that. After all your trouble, a hero like you.”

Cono looked out beyond the edge of the doorframe, still holding the phone to his ear. More than a hundred yards away, on the upper rim of the quarry that was cut into the slope leading to the mountains, were three figures—Xiao Li, Dimira, and between them, Zheng, in a silver suit, his right arm around Xiao Li’s shoulders and his other hand holding a cell phone. The women had gags in their mouths and their wrists were tied in front of them. Their necks seemed thick. Cono realized why when he saw two ropes extending from the women to the rear bumper of a black SUV thirty yards up the slope—their necks were thickened by nooses. The three were standing atop a giant, rounded block of granite that had resisted the blasting that cut the highest tier of the quarry. The garnet-colored stone was the size of a four-story house; the plateau, on which the three were perched, sloped slightly downward and then to a near-vertical drop until it merged with the first ledge of the quarry. It looked like the forehead of an enormous cranium.

The neat white stripe protruding from Zheng’s breast pocket blushed with the color of morning, as did his smile. Dimira was in jeans and a tight green sweater; Xiao Li, on the far side of Zheng, had on the same running pants from the previous day, but her top was different—she was wearing a bulky red pullover. She was trying to shrug off Zheng’s arm, but he held her firmly.

“I’m sure you can see the situation,” Zheng said. “We’ll throw down another rope for you, to make it easy for you to have the conversation I desire.” Zheng turned and nodded. A man with a rifle strapped on his shoulder tossed a rope over the near face of the granite block. As the rope fell and tensed, Cono saw that it also was connected to the SUV.

“Come out, my friend,” Zheng said. “Take a stroll on this beautiful morning, over to the rope, and let us renew our acquaintance.”

“It looks like a long walk.”

“Don’t worry, my assistant with the keen aim knows I am
most
eager to see you up close and alive.”

“It’s true, I did enjoy our last meeting. I’m coming.” Cono clicked off the phone and retreated from the doorway.

Bulat was hidden on his hands and knees behind the drilling machine, peering up through the doorway at the three distant figures. “That fancy Kitai is risking a lot to chase you like this, in a foreign country,” he said. “I think the word for it is vendetta. Have you killed a member of his family?”

“He just wants to finish the job you saved me from at the bank.”

“Then perhaps you need help again. If what you say about Miss Oksana going over to Beijing is true …”

“It’s true,” Cono said. “And she must have had someone trailing me after I left her safe house; no one knew I was coming up to the quarry.”

“The women are special to you?”

“Yes. He wants to hang them both, and eliminate me at the same time, close up.”

“He is ambitious. I guess one needs to be that way to take over a country.”

“Bulat, here’s your chance to take care of your country. And to help me take care of my friends.”

“And your friend Miss Oksana?” Bulat asked.

“You can put her in her grave.”

“But she is, or was, your friend as well. You said friends were worth fighting for, more than principles.”

“We can talk friendship and its seasons another time.” Cono ripped open the backpack and handed Bulat two grenades and two of the pistols. “Do you know how to use these?”

“I had my military service. But we only practiced with dummies. Calm down,” Bulat added. “We have an advantage. Even if they know that I’m here, they wouldn’t think I am helping you. They might even think I’m already dead, thanks to you. I’ll go out the front gate. They can’t see that side.”

“Unless Zheng has someone guarding it.”

“That is a risk. I’ll go out the gate, then circle around and get above their position. There’s enough brush up there to conceal me. Do you have another mobile phone?”

Cono plucked the last two from his vest, thinking that they must have been crushed already. The first one was cracked along its entire face. The second one was partly broken. Cono switched it on; it was working.

“Put my cell phone’s number into your phone,” Bulat said.

Cono tried to enter the numbers Bulat recited, but he was having trouble focusing on the display.

“Give it to me.” Bulat took the phone in his fleshy hand and entered the digits. “My phone’s number is under C, for Cono. Now we test it.” Bulat pushed the Memory button and pressed Call. The phone in Cono’s pants pocket vibrated.

“Okay, it works,” said Cono, reaching into his pocket. “Here’s your phone. Thanks.” Cono held out his hand to make the exchange.

“That won’t do,” Bulat said as he looked at Cono’s unfocused eyes. “You must keep
my
phone because that is the one the Kitai called you on. No doubt he got the number from Miss Oksana. And now I will put your number into my phone, the phone you will keep.” Bulat called up the number of Cono’s phone from its memory and entered the number on the other mobile.

“I put the number under T, for Teacher. You see?” Bulat held the phone up to Cono’s wandering pupils. “You see, I
am
thinking for you.”

Cono began to sway, and Bulat, frightened, slapped him on the face. Cono regained some focus.

“Bulat, hit me again. I’m fading. Hit me. Hard. In the face.”

Bulat put a hand on Cono’s shoulder to steady him, confused by Cono’s request.

“Hit me …”

Bulat rammed his fist into the swelling above Cono’s nose. Cono’s head snapped back; the split in his skin was reopened and bleeding. The blood seeped into Cono’s eyes and stung. He rubbed it away. “Not bad, for a math teacher.”

Bulat saw that Cono’s eyes were no longer wandering.

A sudden twang of ripping steel was followed by another reverberating clap from the high-powered rifle.

“Have to hurry,” Cono said. “I’ll call you from below when I need you to make a move.” Cono picked up the AK that he had dropped, and nodded in the direction of the pit with the tunnel entrance. “Bulat, down the hole over there, you will find money for your fight. But take care about the explosives.”

Bulat was looking nervously at his watch. “From where the Kitai and the women are standing, if you get directly below, he won’t be able to see you,” he said. “We have a three-dimensional puzzle—very satisfying.”

Cono stepped sideways toward the door, holding the AK in his hands; the two pistols and two grenades were wedged into his pants.

“Wait,” said Bulat, reaching delicately for the AK. “If he sees you with this …”

Cono moved the pistols and grenades to the back of his waistband and handed the rifle to Bulat.