She had vanished off the face of the earth.
That was upsetting, to the point of making her nose run a little, but she didn’t cry. She had cried at Peter’s place when things had gotten bad. Then she had stupidly believed that the problem was solved. As if you could really get out of such a bad situation so cheaply. Now she was back to square one, the place she’d been when she’d stopped crying at Peter’s and had started thinking about what to do.
She cleaned up and did a little bit of maintenance on the mascara. Didn’t want anyone to notice that she had been putting energy into makeup but didn’t want to visibly degenerate either, wanted to make the point, even if she made it subliminally, that she still had some pride, wasn’t falling apart. She performed a comb-out on her hair and then ponytailed it back. Changed into the cleanest clothes she could glean from the bag and went back to her bed, which she made back into a seat. Sat down and looked at more mountains.
“You know the time?”
Peter shook his head. “They took my phone.”
She sat there for a while.
“We’re going to Xiamen,” she announced.
“That’s on the other side of the Pacific!” he hissed.
“So?”
“So we’ve been flying over mountains the whole time!”
“A great circle route from Seattle doesn’t go across the Pacific. It goes north. Vancouver Island. Southeast Alaska. The Aleutians. Kamchatka.” She nodded out the window. “All mountains like those. Young. Steep. Subduction zone stuff.”
Sokolov, without looking up, spoke one word: “Vladivostok.”
“See?” Zula said.
“What’s that?”
“A city. Extreme eastern Siberia.”
“Siberia. Fantastic.”
“We’re going to Xiamen,” she insisted. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Maybe they’ll just take us into Russia and—”
“What?” Zula asked. “Kill us? They could have done that in Seattle.”
“I don’t know,” Peter said, “sell us into white slavery or something.”
“I’m not white.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You saw the way Ivanov was. There’s only one thing he cares about. Find the Troll. And”—she hesitated on the threshold of the word, but there was no point in being prissy—” kill him.”
“It would make sense,” Peter said, finally getting into the spirit. “Stop in Vladivostok. Take on supplies or whatever. Then on to Xiamen.”
For Zula the thread of the conversation had snapped when she had said “kill.” She was now party to a murder plot. The memory of the events in Peter’s apartment was seeping back. When she had made the phone call to Corvallis, she had felt certain that it was the only thing she could do, but now she was replaying it in her mind, questioning her decision.
The aft door opened and Ivanov burst out, wrapped in a bathrobe. Ignoring everyone else, he went to the toilet.
Peter pulled his feet up onto his seat so that his knees were in front of his face, wrapped his arms around them, and put his head down.
Zula had been irked by his overall attitude at first. But he had a head start; he’d awakened earlier, been thinking about their situation longer. As minutes went by and the novelty of being on a private jet wore off, Zula began to understand the same thing that Peter did, which was that they were not meant to get out of this alive.
Ivanov emerged from the bathroom groomed and walked down the aisle, sliding his eyes over Zula’s face but making no connection. All his courtesy in Peter’s apartment had been to serve a purpose that no longer existed.
Peter had turned his head to the side and was watching Zula watch Ivanov. After Ivanov had gone back into his compartment, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“No one could have foreseen it.”
“Still.”
“No. The thing with REAMDE was totally random. Bad luck is all.”
After a couple of minutes, she said, “Maybe it’s not what you think it is.”
“Huh?”
“You’re thinking, once they’ve got what they want—” And she made a subtle flicking motion of her thumb across her throat.
“That’s pretty much what I’m thinking, yes.”
“But that assumes that this thing is sort of … normal. Kind of an orderly procedure. I don’t think it’s that.”
Peter flicked his eyes back toward Sokolov, warning her to shut up.
The plane began to descend over more snowy mountains.
THEY LANDED ON a long and well-paved runway in a place that was otherwise forested, with lozenges of snow splattered among the trees. It seemed to be a serious commercial airport serving passenger jets both regional and intercontinental, with some cargo traffic as well. Various hangars and utility structures were visible from the runway, but they didn’t get a good view of the terminal building per se. The plane taxied to an apron where a few other smaller planes were parked, and the pilot chose a place as far as possible from the others. Sokolov walked up and down the aisle pulling down the shades on all the windows. The pilots, who spoke Russian, emerged from the cockpit and opened the door, letting in fresh but chilly air. Ivanov and Sokolov exited the plane, leaving Zula and Peter there alone.
“So those other guys in Seattle—” Peter began.
“Were just local yokels,” Zula said.
“Temps.”
“Yeah.”
They heard a vehicle pull up next to the plane. Some men got out, and Sokolov talked to them. The vehicle drove away. After that, they didn’t hear Ivanov’s voice, but the voices and the cigarette smoke of the new guys continued to infiltrate the cabin.
Zula said, “Ivanov said he was a dead man. Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember that.”
“So all I’m saying is that this might not be a normal example of what he does for a living.”
“You think it’s what, then?”
“A suicide run.”
“Makes me feel a lot better.”
“No, seriously, Peter. It should.”