YELENA FOLLOWED JOE AND Hamid on the highway back to Kandahar, Joe mostly deflecting Hamid’s eager questions about Yelena—yes, he knew her and they had worked together before, yes, she was the badass Russian chick Juno had told him about—though Joe didn’t answer when Hamid asked if Juno had really dusted her butt for handprints (he had, but he should have shut up about it)—and wondering about questions of his own, like how the hell did she get from Queens, where he last saw her, fleeing a room strewn with corpses, to a dope deal in deep Afghanistan?
Back at the hotel where Joe and Hamid were staying, all three went to the restaurant, found a quiet corner, ordered, and, while Hamid gorged, Yelena talked and Joe listened.
“I knew when I left New York that I couldn’t go anyplace where I am known for a while. First I tried France, the Riviera. The beach was nice. But I got bored. And I needed money.”
“Bored?” Joe asked. “It was only a few weeks. Why didn’t you just rob the fancy hotel safes? Take it easy for a while?”
Hamid snorted as he scooped humus into a pita. “Wow you think robbing hotel safes is easy?”
Joe smiled at Yelena. “For her it is.”
She shrugged. “Stealing old lady’s jewelry is more something for when I retire maybe.”
Hamid laughed. “That’s awesome. You’re like the pink panther.”
Yelena frowned. “Pink? Because I am a girl?”
Joe waved it off. “It’s a movie. Believe me she’s more of a black cat. So then what?”
“I got recognized. Some Russian oligarch’s mistress knew me so I had to go before word got to my enemies in Moscow. I heard about the bounty on Zahir. I decided, why not come here and kill him?”
Hamid laughed again, his mouth full, waving a shish kebab skewer. “Just like that? That’s cool as shit.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Shit?”
Joe explained. “It’s a compliment. He’s impressed. He’s okay; Juno knows him.”
She nodded at that. She liked Juno.
“You’re totally awesome,” Hamid told her. “Cat burglarizing. Killing overlords. Like a Marvel hero.”
Yelena looked doubtful. “Thank you,” she said politely.
Joe handed him a napkin. “Stop drooling and eat with your mouth closed.” Then to Yelena: “So what happened? No luck finding Zahir?”
Yelena laughed. “There is no Zahir. How do you say, the myth you use to scare children so they behave?”
“The boogeyman?”
“Yes. Zahir is the bourgeois man that scares smugglers, so they give up their loads.” She shrugged. “No one has seen him. No one even knows anyone who has seen him. Finally I decide, it’s easier to just be the shadow than to find him.”
Hamid laughed again. “Sorry,” he said, hands up. “I’ll be quiet. It’s just . . .” He leaned toward Yelena, “Hanging with this guy’s been pretty dull. Juno said he was a badass, but all he does is read poems and, like, silently brood, lurking in the dust. You know?”
Now Yelena laughed. “See?” she told Joe. “He thinks I am cooler than you. And a badder ass.”
Joe nodded. “I’m not arguing. You win. Especially in the ass department.”
“Yo, let’s a get a hookah,” Hamid suggested. “It’s called a chillum here I think.”
“Maybe later,” Joe said. “I want to check out this first.” He pulled a folded page from his pocket: the printout of a map and a photo of a nondescript five-story building. “Juno couldn’t get much off of Felix’s cellphone,” he told Yelena as he handed her the papers, “but some of his messages are from an IP address that connects back to here.”
“We already drove by yesterday,” Hamid complained. “It’s just a regular office building.”
“He’s right,” Joe admitted. “Nothing to do with politics or fundamentalists. Just shipping and receiving for a company called Wildwater. Some kind of contractors. But . . .” He grinned at Yelena. “As long as you’re in the neighborhood, I bet they have a safe.”
She laughed. “This is Joe’s idea of a date,” she told Hamid.
“Oh man, I’d love to see you work,” he gushed.
“Easy,” Joe said. “You need to stay in the room, get in touch with Juno, and be ready to relay whatever we find.”
“Don’t worry,” Yelena told him. “I know a good hookah place in Kabul. And also one back in Astoria.”
The Wildwater office in Kandahar was in a nondescript five-story office building close to what the local paper optimistically called “the famous” Shaheedan Square. Joe and Yelena took her motorbike, with her driving, still in black but minus the mask and turban, and Joe behind her, one arm snaked around her ribcage, his chest against her, a bag with their weapons and her tools on his back. It was late, and there was not much in the way of nightlife. A few cars and bikes rolled through the traffic circle in the center of the square. Taxis and motorized, open-backed carts cruised for passengers or loitered by the cafés. They parked in the alley behind the building, walked into the loading bay where, during the day, trucks came and went, and while Joe kept watch, Yelena got in the door in less time than most people took with keys.
The building was drab, concrete and steel, dusty and filled with import/export firms and companies supplying the military. Finding their way upstairs with flashlights they’d covered with tape, leaving just a small beam, they headed swiftly and silently to the top floor, where the lock on the office door was even less serious than downstairs.
And at first glance, there wasn’t much to protect. It was an office much like any other, a little less modern than the New York equivalent—desks, chairs, filing cabinets, old desktop computers, a watercooler. In a back room, with a bigger desk, a bigger chair, and a much-napped-on leather couch, Yelena spotted an old freestanding safe.
“You work on this,” Joe whispered, handing her the bag. “I’ll deal with the stuff in the office.”
Joe went to a desk with an old computer, just a step or two above floppy disks, and turned it on. While it slowly booted up he got out the iPhone Juno had given him—his own phone was a basic flip—and called the only number on it, Hamid’s.
“Hey,” Hamid said immediately.
“It’s me,” Joe said.
“I know.”
“Do you have Juno patched in?” Joe asked.
“Hey, bro,” Juno shouted into Joe’s ear. “I’m right here, back home in the studio. How’s Afghanistan? You hit the beaches yet? I hear you met an old friend too.”
“Afghanistan is landlocked, Juno. And let’s be cool on the phone, right?”
“Sorry. You’re right. You ready to transmit?”
“In a minute,” Joe said. He set the phone on the desk and pulled a cord from his pocket. The screen now asked for a password, but Joe ignored that and plugged his cord directly into a port on the rear of the machine. He plugged the other end into the phone. “Okay,” he told Juno and Hamid, “you’re hooked up.”
“I’m on it,” Juno said. “Hamid, just chill and monitor the signal.”
“Right,” Hamid said. “I’m chilling.”
The computer screen flickered with a stream of numbers as Juno hacked in remotely, and Joe began inspecting the papers on the desks, using his flashlight and, with a small camera, snapping photos of anything that seemed remotely interesting. There wasn’t much: purchase, shipping, and customs documents, packing lists and invoices for shoelaces, water bottles, sunglasses, tires, and blankets—all the mundane crap that it took to run a war, most of it harmless except as trash in a landfill, and as a waste of tax money. No extremist tracts or receipts for heroin. Hopefully, Yelena would have better luck. Meanwhile he snapped away without much enthusiasm, pausing only when he saw, from the documents flashing by on the screen, that Juno was in and downloading the contents of the hard drive. He picked up the phone, which was still connected to the computer.
“Hey guys. How’s it going?”
“It’s going,” Juno said. “But I don’t know where. Looks like a bunch of bookkeeping crap to me.”
“Yeah same here . . .” Joe began, but then dropped the phone, as Yelena came running out of the office, bag in her hand.
“Go!” she yelled as she slammed the office door behind her, but she didn’t need to say anything. Joe knew from the look on her face. They bolted across the room, throwing the hall door shut behind them, and were just turning a corner of the hallway when an explosion ripped through the building, obliterating the office they were just in and rattling the entire place. They dove to the floor, instinctively clutching each other. The sound was deafening. Plaster dust poured down. The whole structure groaned like an old ship, but it held. After breathing in the dark for a second, and registering that he was alive and, except for the ringing in his ears, unharmed, Joe found his flashlight and clicked it on.
“You okay?” he asked Yelena, still whispering, though it hardly mattered. The whole neighborhood was awake.
“Yes,” she said. “Just my pride is hurt.”
“We can bandage that later,” Joe said. “Let’s go.”
They began to make their way downstairs, a bit slower than before, stepping carefully over fallen signs and toppled trash cans, though for the most part, the rest of the building seemed intact.
“Booby trap?” Joe asked as they hurried down.
“A very good one too,” she told him. “Better than the shit safe.”
She explained that the old safe had been wired with a high-tech explosive device, set to destroy the contents of the safe if it was opened, along with anyone nearby.
“Guess working here isn’t as boring as it looks,” Joe said.
“But we won’t know why,” Yelena said as they reached the street level and went back out the alley door. “Sorry, Joe.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Joe told her. “At least we got out clean.”
But he spoke too soon, because shortly after they got back on the bike, and Yelena started to drive, a Humvee with floodlights and a machine gun mounted on the roof came straight down the alley at them.