The Cobweb

by Neal Stephenson

  But here al-Turki’s tremendous strength and Clyde’s slight weight disadvantage led to an outcome neither man expected: Clyde was lifted completely off his feet. This reminded him of a trick maneuver that Dhonts liked to execute when they were showing off: kicking against al-Turki’s legs and midsection for traction, he did a somersault and straightened out his arm. Al-Turki still held the left, but Clyde’s right was free, and so he returned the favor, reaching out to grab al-Turki’s balls. Al-Turki let go. Clyde got away from him.

  Al-Turki was still shaking his head in annoyance and, Clyde thought, genuine fear. You should have anticipated this, you son of a bitch, Clyde felt like saying. Of all the hick towns in the world, you picked the wrestling capital of the universe. . . . You made your bed, you have to lie in it.

  Clyde kept his eyes fixed on his opponent’s—rule number one. As the two men circled each other, al-Turki was looking around for a weapon, or something. Clyde didn’t dare take his eyes off the Iraqi to see what he was looking at.

  Almost too late Clyde figured it out. Al-Turki had maneuvered around to the point where he had a clear path to the door in the bulkhead. Clyde saw him gather his feet beneath him and make a run for it. Clyde ran him down just short of the door and tackled him around the legs, sending al-Turki face first into the steel deckplates. They skidded for a couple of feet and thumped into the bulkhead; Clyde prayed the impact hadn’t been loud enough to alert the other Iraqis.

  Clyde jumped on al-Turki’s back and established control, but not before the Iraqi had struggled to his hands and knees. Al-Turki paused for a moment to gather his strength, then exploded off the floor in another well-executed escape maneuver. If they had been of equal size and strength, Clyde might have dragged him back down, but al-Turki was simply too strong; Clyde ended up on his knees behind the standing Iraqi, his arms wrapped tightly around the other’s waist.

  Al-Turki lunged for the door handle. Clyde managed to drag him back half a step, just out of reach. Al-Turki reached down, grabbed one of Clyde’s pinkies, and wrenched it back.

  Clyde knew he couldn’t hold on to the Iraqi for more than another three seconds.

  He remembered a bridging maneuver that Dick Dhont had used to pin him once.

  He got his feet underneath him and thrust upward, lifting the Iraqi straight up in the air with Clyde’s face buried between his shoulder blades. At the same time, Clyde arched his spine as far backward as it would go, bending his body back into a horseshoe. This sent al-Turki’s head plunging down toward the deck like a spiked football, even as his legs flew up into the air.

  The imbalance sent them both falling backward, adding the weight of both men to the force with which al-Turki’s head smashed into the deckplates.

  For a moment they formed an arch: Clyde’s feet firmly planted at one end, al-Turki’s head at the other. Every muscle in al-Turki’s body suddenly went limp, and the arch collapsed. Clyde ended up lying on his back with al-Turki’s body on top of him.

  Clyde rolled him onto his stomach and zipped al-Turki’s wrists together behind his back with some plastic handcuffs he had stuffed into his pocket when he’d abandoned his unit. Then he did the ankles. He dragged al-Turki back among the fuel tanks where he could not be seen from the door in the bulkhead, zipped the wrists and ankles together, and then, just for good measure, zipped the whole mess to a heavy iron loop recessed into the floor. He didn’t really expect al-Turki to wake up, but there was no point in taking half measures. He went through the Iraqi’s pockets and found a number of passports and other miscellanea, but no knives he might use to cut himself loose.

  His balls hurt so badly he felt he might throw up, and at least two fingers were broken. Clyde thought of the time Dan Dhont had jogged six miles to the emergency room after an especially perverse chain-saw accident and found the strength to ignore it. He was half-numb from cold anyway.

  The wire running from the passenger compartment to the explosives on the tank container was a simple two-strand lamp cord. Clyde wrapped it around his hand a couple of times and then ripped it off.

  There were five Russians and three Iraqis left on the plane. The Russians were bad guys, but Clyde knew they weren’t willing to die. On the other hand, some of the Iraqis might be willing to give their lives for this project. The only thing he knew was that he couldn’t walk into the passenger compartment and assault all of them at one time.

  Sooner or later someone else was going to come out of that door. Just in case it was a Russian, Clyde dug a Forks County traffic-citation form out of his pocket, stole a pen from al-Turki’s breast pocket, and drew a cartoon of a bomb—a bundle of dynamite sticks hooked up to an alarm clock. And just in case it was an Iraqi, Clyde did some rooting around in the crates and lockers where the crew stored their spare parts and eventually dug up a chunk of iron pipe about two feet long. It wasn’t Excalibur, but it would probably obviate any more wrestling matches.

  As it happened, the first person to emerge from the door, some twenty minutes later, was a Russian. Clyde kicked the door shut behind the man and blocked his retreat, then hefted the pipe as a warning. The Russian was suitably shocked to see Clyde alive, then deeply impressed.

  Clyde held up the bomb cartoon. The man raised his eyebrows.

  Then, realizing a carrot-and-stick approach might be even better, Clyde took out the pen and added something new: a large dollar sign. He handed it to the Russian and said, “Vitaly.”

  By way of response, the man pushed up his sleeve a few inches to expose his wrist. It had a red welt around it, obviously from a handcuff that had been recently removed.

  So all the Russians were handcuffed up there, except when they were sent back on errands.

  “Clyde,” Clyde shouted, pointing to himself.

  “Boris,” the crewman shouted.

  Clyde beckoned Boris back to the locker where he had found the pipe, and dug out another. He tossed it to Boris, who was so surprised he nearly dropped it. He looked quizzically at Clyde.

  “Tovarisch?” Clyde shouted.

  “Da,” Boris said.

  “Let’s boogie,” Clyde said, and pointed Boris forward, still not trusting him enough to go in front.

  Boris flagged him down and pointed at the pen. Clyde handed it to him, and Boris proceeded to draw a little floor plan of the passenger compartment, with little boxes representing the inhabitants. “Rooski, rooski, rooski, Iraqi, rooski, Iraqi, Iraqi,” he said. Then he pointed to the last of these Iraqis and made his hand into a pistol.

  “Okay, he’s mine,” Clyde said, pointing to himself. “You get these other two.”

  The door in the bulkhead led to a steep metal staircase. The brilliant light of the sun filtered down from the windows of the passenger compartment above. Boris went first, creeping to the bottom of the stairway with his pipe hidden in his sleeve, and looked up. Then he beckoned Clyde forward; none of the Iraqis had heard them coming through the door.

  Clyde couldn’t stand waiting anymore, so he jumped through the doorway, ran up the stairs three at a time, and burst into the passenger compartment. The leader of the Iraqis was seated farthest forward, closest to the cockpit door, so that he could keep tabs on Vitaly. He was about four strides away from Clyde, and Clyde had covered half of that distance before he had even looked up.

  Clyde had spent enough time in the Barge On Inn, hitting dangerous people with nightsticks, to know that if he wound up and swung the pipe like a baseball bat, the man would see it coming and dodge it or block it. So he lunged forward, thrusting the end of the pipe at the Iraqi’s face like the point of a sword, and caught him in the temple hard enough to snap his head back against the bulkhead. That didn’t knock him out, but it did leave him stunned long enough for Clyde to go upside his head with the pipe one more time.

  He turned around to see one of the Iraqi Ph.D.’s laid out in the aisle, and the other one curled up in a fetal position in his seat as Boris rained blows on him. It appeared that Boris was in a rather vindictiv
e mood; or maybe he had decided it would be useful to demonstrate his commitment to Clyde’s side of the dispute.

  Clyde confiscated the Iraqi leader’s gun and handcuffed him, then cuffed the mauled Ph.D.’s as well and let Boris worry about freeing his comrades. He opened the cockpit door and was almost knocked flat by the intensity of the sunlight coming in over Vitaly’s shoulders.

  “Clyde, my good droog!” Vitaly said. “I am so happy to see you well. And I am sorry that my crew members did not keep your secret very well. But the Iraqis were suspicious about these two mysterious cigarette smugglers who came out of the blizzard, and they were very persuasive.”

  Clyde knew all about people like Vitaly; he arrested them all the time, and he knew that there was no point in trying to pin him down and prove his guilt. Vitaly would have plausible excuses stacked up like jumbo jets above O’Hare Airport on a foggy Thanksgiving. “Speaking of persuasive,” Clyde said, “you can either keep flying this crate and get blown to bits pretty soon, or land it and get lots of money from my government. It’s up to you.”

  Vitaly throttled the engines down and banked the Antonov into a turn. “There is a Canadian Air Force base not far away, with a beautiful runway,” he said. “Did you get all four of the Iraqis?”

  “All four.”

  “Good,” Vitaly said. “Let’s crank some tunes.” He reached over his head and punched a button on a car stereo that had been jury-rigged into the Antonov. It was a Jane’s Addiction CD—“Been Caught Stealing.” It came through magnificently, even over the engine noise—the Russians had converted the Antonov into the world’s largest ghetto blaster. “Have you ever tried Crimean brandy?” Vitaly shouted.

  It was late afternoon now, and the sun plummeted below the horizon in the space of a few seconds as the Antonov lost altitude. Ghostly blue lights appeared in the sky around them; Vitaly identified them as the exhausts of fighter jets, which had been sent up to escort them in.

  Fifteen minutes later the big runway at the Canadian base could be seen, like a string of diamonds against black velvet, and Vitaly brought the Antonov down onto it, occasionally glancing away from the landing lights to fire up another cigarette or to reach for his QuikTrip plastic insulated go-cup of Crimean brandy. The Antonov landed much more gently than it had taken off. But when Vitaly put the brakes on, the sloshing in the fuel containers was much worse and jerked the plane violently backward and forward a dozen times before it gradually died down; tremendous wrenching and popping noises could be heard even through the two bulkheads between the cockpit and the hold.

  They were directed onto an apron. Powerful lights were pointed at them, and they were told to remain in the plane. They did, for about three minutes; then one of the crew members came forward and announced that some of the plumbing in the hold had ruptured, and that the plane was rapidly filling up with jet fuel. So they took the party out onto the runway.

  Clyde checked his watch. Several hours were left before Fazoul’s time bomb exploded. When all of the Russians, with their lighted cigarettes, had cleared away from the plane, he climbed up into the twisted and partially collapsed jungle gym, avoiding the rivers of jet fuel that were coursing down all around, and had a look at the bomb. He saw the wires that Fazoul had told him to cut. He put the jaws of the wire cutter around them, then stopped himself. Sometimes wires sparked when they were cut, and a spark would be a bad thing in these circumstances.

  So he pulled the wad of plastique out of the cranny where Fazoul had wedged it, and stripped off the electrician’s tape holding the timer in place, then simply took the entire bomb with him, being careful not to bump the red switch. He climbed down carefully through the jungle gym, not wanting to lose his footing on the fuel-slickened bars, and walked out of the plane.

  It was unbelievably cold out there. The Russians were nowhere to be seen; Canadians had apparently come around and picked them up, and Clyde was strangely alone.

  A small jet plane landed on the adjacent runway, bearing the insignia of the United States government. Looking up into the clear night sky, Clyde could see the landing lights of more planes, coming down behind it in the same pattern.

  The Gulfstream taxied onto the apron, keeping a respectful distance from the Antonov. Clyde ran toward it; it must be warm in there. By the time he reached it, its door had been opened and its stairway deployed, and a familiar figure was standing on the ground, trying to get a cigarette lit, cursing the cold.

  “Deputy,” Hennessey said, “you’re out of your jurisdiction. But I promise not to tell on you.”

  “Got any bomb experts?” Clyde said, holding out the plastique.

  Hennessey looked at it and raised his eyebrows. “We got every kind of expert known to the United States and Canadian governments,” he said, pointing to the train of jets stacked up into the stars. An Air Force C-130 touched down, and they watched it roar to a near halt and taxi onto the apron. “See, Clyde, it is amazing what feats of organization our government can accomplish—if you don’t mind waiting until it’s too late.”

  fifty-four

  JAMES GABOR Millikan was not entirely unhappy on the morning of Boxing Day, 1990. He still had his job at the National Security Council. Moreover, he had managed to position himself in such a way that the pivotal role he had played in turning Iraq into a major military power would end up as a scholarly footnote, while his strenuous exertions on behalf of peace and freedom and democracy would appear in headlines and newscasts the world over.

  Despite all that, it had been a terrible year. While he had been pursuing the pure science of diplomacy, he had been deceived by his diplomatic colleague of decades, Tariq Aziz, one of the few people with the wit to appreciate what he was doing. As a result, he had had to scramble to maintain his position. He had been forced to do some undignified and injudicious things. He still didn’t know exactly what costs and damages he had racked up in the process; the accounting would take a decade to sort out. He had inflicted some grievous blows on his rival, Hennessey, but Hennessey had shown more than his usual resourcefulness and had managed to emerge from the thing as a hero. Millikan could only thank God that Hennessey’s exploits would remain unknown outside a small circle of high government and military officials.

  Millikan stood outside a discreet side entrance to the Hotel Crillon with his assistant, Richard Dellinger, waiting for the Iraqi limousine to pull up for a final meeting with Aziz—one last attempt to avoid war.

  Iraq was going to be ground to pieces by the twenty-three-nation coalition that Bush and Baker had assembled. Millikan and Aziz, great respecters of each other’s skills, were no longer allies working to bridge the gulf between the massive and unfocused power of the United States and the quixotic vision of Saddam Hussein. Events had passed them by, and they now had to wait for events to conclude so that they could come back on the stage and try to keep the world together.

  The Iraqi stretch Mercedes pulled up to the door, preceded and pursued by a motorcycle guard from the French Foreign Ministry. Once again Aziz was accompanied by Gérard Touvain, the French Foreign Ministry liaison. Millikan strode forward to be presented by Touvain to Aziz. After a perfunctory handshake with the Frenchman, Millikan gave his best warm, two-handed grasp to his old colleague.

  “Mne ochen’ zhal’,” Millikan said to Aziz. I’m terribly sorry.

  “We did our best, mon vieux,” Aziz responded, and the two entered the Crillon arm in arm. Touvain tagged behind, pointing out for whoever would listen the “belle lumière” of the hotel. They soon came to the same small, exquisite dining room where they had lunched in March. Millikan introduced Richard Dellinger. Aziz introduced his chief assistant—a new man, coarser and meaner looking than the one Millikan had seen in March. Touvain was politely told to buzz off.

  On the small table was a tray with a bottle of iced Stoli, beluga caviar, and plates of black bread, butter, onions, chopped hard-boiled eggs. “It looks as though it will be some time before we will meet this way again,” Millika
n said with honest regret in his voice.

  “Unfortunately, you couldn’t be more correct, Jim,” Aziz responded.

  “A toast,” Millikan said when the shot glasses were filled with the now syrupy Stoli. “To diplomacy, when you and I will work to bring Iraq back into the community of nations after Saddam’s inevitable defeat.”

  “I’m afraid that I will not be able to drink to that,” Aziz responded, setting his glass on the table untouched. “I do not share your opinion of the military situation in Kuwait, mon vieux. Before your leader launches a foolhardy assault on the new Iraqi province of Kuwait, he should understand that we have developed a new weapon. If we are forced to use this weapon by the aggressive behavior of other nations, it will cause such terrible casualties in the heart of the illegal Zionist entity that the Jews will have no choice but to enter the war—which will destroy your coalition and bring the Arabs into a unified front led by my nation. And it will cause such terrible casualties among your forces that Americans, who do not have the stomach for brave enterprises, will demand an end to this stupid and thoughtless aggression.”

  Millikan, holding his shot glass full of icy, syrupy Stoli, listened calmly to his peroration, thought for a moment, and then downed it anyway—a breach of etiquette that startled Aziz. “Mr. Dellinger?”

  Dellinger stepped forward and pulled a piece of fax paper from his pocket. It was a brief typewritten document written on the stationery of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

  “Would you care to share the latest intelligence with His Excellency?” Millikan continued.

  Richard Dellinger read the document, refolded the paper, and put it back in his pocket. Aziz slumped against the back of his Louis XV chair. He looked first at Dellinger and then at Millikan.