The Cobweb

by Neal Stephenson; J. Frederick George

  “Merry Christmas, Clyde,” said Marie, the cashier, who, like Clyde, always seemed to pull the worst shifts.

  “Merry Christmas, Marie,” Clyde said. He pulled out his credit card and slapped it down on the counter.

  “What can I get for you?”

  “Cigarettes.”

  Marie frowned. “I didn’t think you smoked.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Well, how many cigarettes you want?”

  “All of ’em,” Clyde said.

  He followed the section-line roads down to the airport. Visibility was poor, but when they got to within half a mile of the airport, they could dimly make out Perestroika’s fuselage, which created a hump in the skyline like a distant bluff, its tail thrusting to a height that exceeded most of the buildings in the twin cities.

  “What are you thinking?” Clyde said.

  “With all due respect to you and your fine country,” Fazoul said, “your government’s performance in this affair has not been such as to command my respect. There are many things that could prevent Hennessey’s plan from working. What if the Iraqis claim they have hidden a container of the toxin somewhere in a major city and threaten to blow it up, or dump it into the water supply? The President will let them have all the fuel they want in Iceland. He will give them an escort to Baghdad.”

  Clyde said nothing. He was not entirely sure that Bush was as lily-livered as Fazoul made him out to be. But he had to agree that healthy skepticism was probably a good policy.

  Rather than zeroing in directly on the airport, Clyde orbited halfway around it and came at it from the south, passing directly in front of the bankrupt dairy farm that Buck had mentioned. The detour was not made strictly out of curiosity; it would also enable them to approach the Antonov from an unexpected direction and reduce the chance that they would be noticed.

  The farm was separated from airport property by a tall chain-link fence, and even from the road Clyde could see that a section of it had been cut down and flopped onto the ground, and a pair of fat tire tracks, rapidly filling up with snow, ran through the gap, leading from the barn directly to the apron of one of the shorter runways.

  From there they could look directly across the airport and get a view of Perestroika. The blowing snow made it into a dark-gray silhouette in the midst of a universe of white. They could see that its nose had been tilted back to expose its cargo bay, making it look like a giant aluminum crocodile that had opened its mouth wide to swallow something: a big red capsule that sat on the apron, ready to be towed on board by a small tractor.

  He kept on driving a quarter of a mile past the farm, in case any Iraqis were there acting as lookouts, and finally eased the unit down into a ditch. It could not be seen there, and even if it was noticed, it would simply appear to have slid off the road. As a sheriff’s deputy on duty, he could easily have come up with a plausible excuse to drive right onto the tarmac and start poking around, but it had occurred to him that the Iraqis must be in an extremely nervous frame of mind about now, and a sheriff’s car, or even a sheriff’s uniform, might get them dangerously excited.

  The unit was well stocked with cold-weather gear; sheriffs were supposed to help people during blizzards, not get frostbite and end up needing help themselves. Clyde and Fazoul helped themselves to hats and mittens and even ski masks, which, in this part of the country at this time of year, were actually worn by people who were not bank robbers or terrorists. Clyde checked himself carefully to make sure he wasn’t wearing anything that would identify him as law enforcement.

  They got out of the car and unloaded four cases of cigarettes from the trunk and backseat. These were awkward to carry, so Clyde unrolled a sleeping bag that was stashed in the trunk. They loaded the boxes into the sleeping bag and then began making their way down the ditch in the direction of the airport, climbing up onto the shoulder from time to time to survey the scene. They traded off dragging the sleeping bag behind them like Santa Claus’s giant sack of goodies. The snow was coming down heavier now, and it seemed as if the sun had set half an hour ago, even though it was really high noon.

  Two cars were parked near the Antonov, illuminated from within by their dome lights. It was too cold for anyone to stand outside. Clyde immediately recognized one of the cars as part of the Iraqis’ fleet of tinted-window specials. The other was a big navy-blue Caprice sedan.

  “That blue car is government-issue if I ever saw one,” Clyde said. “Probably the INS guy, or Commerce.”

  Headlights flashed in the distance as a new vehicle appeared on the driveway that connected the airport’s main parking lot with the highway. The parking lot was empty and trackless except for some forlorn rental cars that would have to be chiseled loose from their sarcophagi of ice tomorrow morning. The front doors of the terminal building were locked, the building itself completely dark. The new arrival was a four-wheel-drive Blazer moving along crisply on its big, fat tires, chains making a distant ticking noise as they whacked against the insides of its fenders.

  “Mark Lutsky,” Clyde said, “the airport manager. Bet he’s happy to be called in on Christmas.”

  Lutsky swung around into his private parking space and clambered out of the Blazer, all bundled up and hunched against the driving snow. He scrambled to a side entrance, windmilling his arms to keep his balance on the ice, and keyed his way into the terminal building. Lights began to come on inside. A minute later doors popped open on the cars sitting on the apron, and men began to scramble and skate into the building, as did some figures from the Antonov. Even the Iraqis, and the continent-hopping crew of Perestroika, had to bow to the supreme power of the world: filling out forms, presenting documents, getting papers stamped.

  Visibility kept dropping. Clyde and Fazoul made their way down the shoulder at a jog, no longer particularly worried about being seen. Clyde couldn’t take his eyes off the red container. It was a cylindrical tank with some plumbing and valves underneath it, the whole thing contained within a rectangular-space frame the exact size and shape of a normal shipping container, so that it could be moved and stacked like any other cargo.

  Despite Hennessey’s observations about the desirability of getting the toxin out of the country, Clyde kind of hated to see it go. He couldn’t help but share Fazoul’s concerns about where it would end up if they let it leave Nishnabotna. So he was disappointed to see that the runways were still dark and mostly snow free, skeins and whorls of snow skimming across the pavement in the wind, but none of it sticking. A few low dunes of snow had begun to march across the long runway, but they looked insignificant compared to the bulk of the Antonov.

  Fazoul wasn’t talking any more than Clyde was. But he had other things on his mind. “What is wrong with this picture, Khalid?” he said, pointing to the Antonov.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Clyde said after examining it for a minute. “I don’t know much about planes.”

  “But you do know that they need fuel.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And as Hennessey pointed out, fuel is critical to the Iraqis’ mission—if their mission is to get the toxin all the way to Baghdad.”

  “Yeah.” Clyde finally figured it out. “But they aren’t refueling the Antonov.” He pondered it. “Maybe it’s because the airport is shut down for Christmas.”

  “This operation must have been planned for months in advance,” Fazoul said. “They could not have been so stupid as to forget about getting the plane fueled.”

  “So what do you think is going on?”

  “I fear that the Iraqis intend to crash the plane into Chicago.”

  They slogged on for another minute. Clyde tried to get his heartbeat under control.

  “I don’t think so,” Clyde said. “First of all, if they wanted to nail Chicago, they would have just towed the container into the city, which takes all of an hour and a half, and blown it up.”

  “True,” Fazoul said.

  “Secondly, I know the crew of this plane, and they may not be what you c
all upstanding citizens, but they are not kamikazes for Saddam Hussein either.”

  “Then explain to me the mystery,” Fazoul said. And he did sound genuinely mystified, which was something new. Clyde had got used to Fazoul knowing everything he didn’t.

  “How do you know the crew?” Fazoul asked.

  Clyde told him the story about how they had driven off the road in May. “So they owe me a favor,” he said in conclusion.

  Fazoul shook his head and laughed.

  They walked straight across the tarmac as if they belonged there. They walked past the red container, trying not to stare at it; but Clyde could see work had been done on it recently, the torch burning away its red paint to expose dull steel underneath, laying down new silver welds where rectangular containers about the size of cigar boxes had been attached to the outside of the tank. There were at least a dozen of these. They were wired together with armored cable of exactly the same type Clyde had seen Tab Templeton buying at Hardware Hank back in September. Clyde could not see inside these boxes, but he assumed they were packed with explosives.

  It was incredible that the tank was just sitting there unguarded. But the Iraqis’ car was idling not far away. Clyde assumed that the defogger was running full blast, and that on the other side of the tinted windshield someone was watching him and Fazoul as they approached, and that this person was ready to detonate the explosives on the toxin container by remote control.

  Fazoul was dragging the cigarettes. As they approached the Antonov, Clyde began waving his arms over his head and hollering, “Tovarisch! Tovarisch! Vitaly! Vitaly!”

  One of the Russians came cautiously down the cargo ramp, wearing a fur hat that looked like a yearling bear cub curled up on his head. Clyde recognized him; it was the guy who had suffered a broken arm back in May, the beneficiary of the Big Boss’s inflatable splint. Clyde saw no Iraqis inside the Antonov, so he turned his back on the car, hooked a thumb under the bottom of his ski mask, and peeled it back to expose his face for a moment. Then he pulled it back down; but the Russian had recognized him and looked delighted. “Sheriff!” he said.

  Clyde winced and glanced in the direction of the car. This could not have been very obvious to the Russian, given that Clyde was standing twenty feet away and wearing a ski mask; but something about growing up in a totalitarian state had made him exquisitely sensitive to this kind of body language. “Moi drug,” he corrected himself. He held up his formerly broken arm and slapped it heartily, demonstrating its soundness. Then he looked at Fazoul quizzically.

  Fazoul stopped at the base of the ramp, unzipped the sleeping bag, hauled out one of the cases, and ripped the lid open to expose the familiar Marlboro logo—making sure that all of this was clearly visible to whatever Iraqis might be watching from the car.

  “Oy,” said the Russian, and glanced nervously toward the terminal building. “In, in.” He beckoned them up the cargo ramp with movements of his big furry head.

  The interior of the Antonov was like the vault of a cathedral. But most of it was full this time. It was stacked three high and five wide with shipping containers. Like the one resting out on the apron, they were tank containers for carrying bulk liquids. The resemblance ended there; these did not appear to be wired with gobs of plastic explosive, and Clyde did not imagine that they were full of biological-warfare agents. They were plumbed together with a jury-rigged network of wrist-thick hoses. The plane was redolent of kerosene.

  “It is jet fuel,” Fazoul muttered, “the whole plane is full of jet fuel.”

  fifty-three

  CLYDE AND Fazoul and the Russian had an awkward several minutes sitting around in the back of the plane’s cargo hold, in a narrow space aft of the enormous jungle gym of fuel tanks. From time to time they would make a foray into sign language, which never led anywhere. Fazoul seemed to know one or two words of Russian but was in a reticent mood.

  Clyde’s head was spinning, trying to figure the angles.

  The government was going to let the Antonov leave the country and wait for it to land in Iceland. But it would just keep going. By the time NATO, or whoever, figured out that it was carrying an extra fuel supply, it would be over Europe. Was NATO going to shoot down a Soviet plane full of botulin toxin over Europe? Clyde didn’t think so.

  Fazoul pulled a walkie-talkie out of his pocket, turned it on, and spoke into it a few times, until he got a response from some other Vakhan Turk–speaking scholar in the area. Then he spoke rapidly for half a minute or so.

  In the middle of this Vitaly the pilot showed up, fresh from having his passport stamped. He was startled to see Clyde sitting in his airplane with a disfigured Turk and a large cache of cigarettes. Then he warmed to the occasion and gave Clyde a hearty greeting dripping with fake sentiment. Fazoul turned off his walkie-talkie and put it back in his pocket.

  “I guess you won’t be able to take off in this weather,” Clyde said hopefully.

  “Oh, no. This is nothing. You forget, we are from Russia.”

  “But don’t they have rules?”

  “If we were at one of your big airports, they wouldn’t let us out, but Mr. Lutsky is our droog, he likes us, he likes Black Sea caviar, he likes Stoli. He will let us do this trip, no problem.”

  “But there’s no deicing equipment here.”

  “Do you think there’s deicing equipment at Magadan?” The thought of modern equipment at Magadan made him laugh so hard, he almost had to sit down. “No, Sheriff. This is nothing. This plane is a Russian plane. A Siberia plane. Nothing can stop it.”

  “What are the Iraqis doing in there?” Clyde said, nodding toward the airport.

  Vitaly did not miss a beat. “The Jordanians are turning in their visas. They have special visas for students. Much paperwork.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Who’s paying you?” Clyde said.

  Vitaly blinked in surprise, then held his mittens out, palms up, and shrugged, as if this were the first time payment had occurred to him. “Clyde, moi drug. If we have legal problems here, we can certainly make some arrangement. You want me to buy your cigarettes? I am delighted to buy them. Cash on the barrelhead.”

  “You can have the cigarettes,” Clyde said. “Here is what I want. My friend and I want to exchange our coats and hats with two members of your crew. They will go out of the plane carrying this sleeping bag, empty, wearing the ski masks over their faces, and they will go in that direction.” Clyde pointed toward Nishnabotna. “And they will keep walking until they find a church or a convenience store or something and then they will wait.”

  “Khalid—” Fazoul began, but Clyde held out one hand to silence him.

  “Wait for what?” Vitaly said.

  “For the plane to take off.”

  Vitaly was stunned. “Clyde. You want to travel to Azerbaijan with us?”

  Clyde was tempted to tell Vitaly that they probably weren’t going to stop at Azerbaijan. But it would do for now. “Yes,” Clyde said, “I have always wanted to see Azerbaijan.”

  “But my crew. I need my crew.”

  “You need the money that the Jordanians are paying you for this very special trip,” Clyde said. “And if you do not do this thing for me, I will arrest all of you now. I have more sheriffs waiting outside the airport to back me up.”

  Vitaly pondered it for a very few moments. “Clyde,” he said brightly, “you will love Azerbaijan. I am sorry to say that it is much more beautiful than Iowa.”

  Vitaly summoned the least important two members of his crew and explained matters to them. Their faces betrayed only the merest traces of surprise; clearly, flying Antonovs around the globe was not a job for the faint of heart or rigid of mind. The exchange of clothing went quickly, the Russians remarking about how much better the American stuff was. One of them jokingly offered to give Clyde a fistful of rubles. Vitaly was unnerved by Fazoul, his Turkic DNA and ghastly war injuries so clearly evident, but he averted his gaze from the Vakhan with a conscious effort and smiled charmingly at Clyde.
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  Basically, Clyde realized, Vitaly was in the middle of the biggest deal of his life and had dollar signs in his eyeballs even as he was shitting his pants with anxiety. Clyde’s presence on the plane was a problem; if he could make the problem go away by jettisoning two of his crew members, so be it.

  The stack of fuel tanks made a sort of jungle gym within which it was possible for Clyde and Fazoul to move around to whatever vantage point they wanted and get a clear view down the fuselage toward the open nose of the aircraft. They climbed up to near the top of the stack and watched the conclusion of the regulatory ballet down on the tarmac.

  The federal official who had shown up in the big government sedan came out of the terminal building with a sheaf of papers and did a slow walk around the red tank, then waved his clipboard at it dismissively and began to scrawl on some forms.

  “You must get out of the plane now, Khalid,” Fazoul said. “After this there is no other chance.”

  “And leave you here all by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do then?”

  Fazoul didn’t answer.

  The Commerce official finished writing on his clipboard, handed the yellow copy to Vitaly and the pink copy to one of the Iraqis, and then got back into his car and drove away, hoping he could return to what was left of his Christmas before the roads got totally snowed in. While this was happening, the two crew members wearing Clyde’s and Fazoul’s clothes went down the ramp with the empty sleeping bag and vanished into the blizzard.

  “What did you say on the walkie-talkie, Fazoul?”

  “In order to reach Baghdad, this plane will have to fly over the Caucasus, and then over some parts of Turkey and northern Iraq where my people are. My people have ways of making airplanes crash.”

  “You’re going to make the plane crash on your own territory? How’s that any better than letting Saddam drop the stuff on you later?”