Emil climbs out. “Stay here and keep your gun ready,” he says. “When I wave my arm like so, bring out the knapsack with the money.”
Two guys step down from the truck. Their dark hair is meticulously coiffed, and they’re wearing bad suits. One carries a stubby Kalashnikov.
Emil approaches, and there’s a brief conversation that ends with a broad-shouldered man wearing an orange necktie giving a toothy smile. Emil turns and waves to me, and I walk toward them, knapsack in hand.
Wherever these two are from, they don’t share a language other than English with Emil.
“This your girlfriend?” the guy with the orange tie asks.
Emil takes the knapsack from me and tosses it to him. “She’s my associate, Nikko.”
“Maybe I want her as my associate,” he says as he sets the knapsack on the driver’s seat of the truck and gives me a leer.
I tense up, wrap my fingers around the gun in my pocket.
“Let’s just get this done,” Emil says.
Nikko opens the backpack and thumbs through the bricks of cash while the guy with the Kalashnikov stands guard.
“All is good,” Nikko says after a moment. “Come, friends, see your purchase.”
Emil and I follow him around to the back of the truck while the guy with the Kalashnikov lingers a few paces behind us. He rolls up the door and reveals green crates stenciled with Chinese writing that fill about half the cargo area.
“Twenty crates, PF-89 rocket-propelled grenades, standard eighty-millimeter,” he says, running his hand over one of the crates as if it were the hood of a rare car.
“Open them,” Emil says.
Nikko takes a crowbar from inside the truck and pries open the lid. Inside, five RPGs are held in place by wooden brackets. They’re spindly, cheap-looking things, made of stamped metal parts and plastic, but deadly nonetheless.
While Emil inspects the merchandise, I wade through the math in my head. Five RPGs to a crate times twenty crates equals one hundred RPGs in all. If each one takes out an average of—let’s keep the number round—ten victims, then that’s a theoretical one thousand dead.
Nice work today, Gwendolyn. Be proud.
“Clean Slovak registration on the truck,” Nikko says as he hands Emil the keys. “Should be no problem.”
*
The truck they gave us is slower and shittier than the car we traded them, but by 4:00 p.m., we’re just an hour from the tábor. Because of our cargo, Emil is taking mainly back roads. “We don’t want to be pulled over with shit like this,” he explains.
“Who were those guys?”
“Nikko. He gets the RPGs from the Bulgarian defense ministry. The other guy I don’t know.”
“And who does Pan Kladivo sell them to?”
“Too serious for anyone in Europe.” He shrugs. “But as long as it’s not aimed at me, who gives a fuck, right?”
I turn back to the paper map spread out on my lap and navigate while Emil tells me he’s going to use the money he’s making on this deal on a leather couch and hip surgery for his mom.
“Is this truck hard to drive?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It’s not, you know, hard like a big truck is. If you can drive a car, you can drive this.”
Since moving to New York, I haven’t driven at all. But I took a driver’s ed program set up for diplomats’ kids at the school I attended in Moscow. Every weekend, my dad and I would drive out to the suburbs and practice in his little Volvo hatchback.
“Can I try?”
“Driving the truck?” Emil says. “Fuck no.”
But I talk him into it, and when we finally switch a few kilometers later, Emil grimaces each time I work the clutch wrong and grind the gears. Only after a while does he release his death grip on the handle over the passenger window and calm down. He was right; it’s just like driving a car, only bigger and less agile.
“You going to the auction tonight?” he says as the truck trundles down an empty dirt road.
“I don’t have a price tag. So, no.”
“I’m not going, either,” he says bitterly. “Street guys not welcome. Pan Kladivo, he’s afraid we’ll belch or say the wrong thing in front of his billionaire friends. Fucking racist.”
“If the women are already at the casino, who’s at the tábor?”
“Usual six guards, we still have the—you know.”
“No, I don’t know.”
“That old fag. In the cell. Never mind.” He shakes his head. “You do something for me?”
I grip the wheel tightly. “What?”
“Find out from Roman how much the redhead sells for. The one from Petersburg, you know.” Emil drums his fingers on the window sill. “Someday I will have a million euros and buy her. Or, you know, not her. One like her. But with bigger tits.”
And with that, I decide it’s time.
I pull the truck over to the side of the road and open my door. “Something’s wrong with the tire,” I say as I climb out.
I cross over to the passenger side, stand by the rear wheel, and call Emil’s name. He climbs out of the truck. “Look,” I say, pointing at the tire.
He squints at it. “It’s fine.”
“Look closer.”
Emil crouches, bangs at the tire with his fist. “Perfect.”
But when he turns around, I have the pistol he gave me out of my pocket and trained on the center of his forehead. His mouth flutters, and I shoot him just above the right eye.
A flurry of birds takes flight from the trees around us, and for a moment, they dash through the air like angry angels. Then they disappear, and it’s only me and Emil’s body.
*
The guard at the entrance of the tábor doesn’t hesitate to open the gate. He recognizes me, and with the speed I’m going and the frantic honking of the horn, it’s clear there’s an emergency.
I pull the truck into the center of the yard, slam the brake into place, and leap to the ground. “Emil’s been shot,” I scream at the guard at the gate. “Don’t just stand there like an idiot, get help!”
The guard bellows at the door, and four more guards from the main building come running toward me. It’s the usual crew, the same ones on duty the last time I was here. I roll open the door on the rear of the truck. “He’s heavy,” I say. “He’ll need all of you to carry him.”
All five of them climb in and gather around the body, mystified by what to do. Then they crouch down and begin prodding Emil, as if all they needed to do was wake him up. I seize the strap of the door and yank down hard. It crashes into place, and I throw the lever, locking them in.
Their shouts are muffled by the truck’s walls, but their meaning is clear enough. Confusion at first, giving way to commands, giving way to rage. Within a few seconds they’re hammering on the door to get out, attempting to lift it, the latch rattling loudly.
On the way back from the pickup of the RPGs, locking them inside had been my only plan. But it occurred to me when I was loading Emil’s body into the back, why not take the opportunity to make the world a slightly better place?