Reamde: A Novel

by Neal Stephenson

  Yuxia reached over, pulled the door shut, then settled herself in the driver’s seat again and put the vehicle into gear.

  Then she took one last look back at the apartment building. What about Zula and her two hacker boys? The one who was bad for her, and the one who was good for her?

  CSONGOR WAS A bit slower than Peter when it came to picking his handcuff. Zula noticed that he was sticking his tongue out as he worked. Somehow, from that, she concluded it was best to remain absolutely still and not distract him.

  She, however, was growingly distracted by a sound that was echoing down the stairwell and getting louder every second. It was a human voice, repeating the same utterance, again and again, as if the speaker were an actor trying to memorize an elusive snatch of dialog. At the beginning she could only make out a few of the more percussive consonants, but as the speaker got closer, one flight at a time, she was able to piece the sounds together into words.

  He was saying: “You FUCKINK bitch! You FUCKINK bitch! You FUCKINK bitch!…”

  It was Ivanov and he was saying this in a tone, more of astonishment than of anger, as if the degree of fucking-bitchness exhibited today by Zula went far beyond all known historic precedents, to the point where Ivanov himself almost could not credit the testimony of his own senses. As he proceeded, his astonishment only mounted, and when he said “FUCKINK” his voice would flutter, for a moment, up into a falsetto before collapsing back into “bitch.”

  In spite of all her efforts not to, she glanced at Csongor to see how he was doing. He reacted immediately, which told her that he could hear it too and that he understood its significance.

  Then the chant was interrupted with a sudden “YOU!”

  Ivanov was only two, perhaps three flights above them. His footfalls had stopped.

  He had to be talking to Peter; but Peter made no response that Zula could hear.

  “All by yourself?” Ivanov asked. He had to repeat the question and insist that Peter supply an answer. Finally Zula was able to make out some sort of faint response, kind of a yelping sound, from Peter.

  “And where is your lovely girlfriend then?”

  The conversation, if that was the right word for it, was nothing more than a series of utterances from Ivanov:

  “Ah, brave Peter goes ahead to scout for danger? Zula waits behind, ready to follow? Shall we go and have conversation with Zula? No? Vwy not? Perhaps story is lie? Yes? Is lie? Zula is in cellar for other reason? Maybe because she is CHAINED TO PIPE!? Because BRAVE BOYFRIEND left her behind? TO DIE? While BRAVE BOYFRIEND ran away LIKE FUCKINK RAT?”

  A hand came down gently on Zula’s shoulder, and she jumped away so violently that she practically split the skin on her wrist when the manacle pulled her up short. But it was only Csongor. He had gotten free. He put a finger to his lips, then dropped to one knee, in the attitude of a man proposing marriage, and went to work on her handcuff with the bobby pin. At first he tried to get access to the keyhole on the manacle that encircled her wrist, but this was pointed downward and it was difficult for him to get the right angle on it, so he gave up on that and began working on the one that was locked around the pipe, which was tilted toward him conveniently.

  “How does BRAVE GIRL like Zula get such piece of shit boyfriend!?” Ivanov was hollering. “What would your parents think of you, Peter!? Who raised you anyway? Wolves? Gypsies? Answer question! Not just sob like little girl. Ah, you FUCKINK … PIECE … of SHIT!”

  Each of the three words was punctuated by a boom. Csongor jumped at the first one and dropped the bobby pin. Soon enough he had snatched it up and resumed work on the manacle.

  At the sound of Ivanov’s gun, Zula had instinctively turned away from the door at the base of the stairs and now she stayed in that position, focusing all her attention on Csongor’s hands, like a little kid who thinks that the monster will go away if she pretends it isn’t there. This was some really stupid shit, but nothing that had happened in the last few days had really prepared her for anything like what had apparently just happened to Peter.

  “Csongor!” called a soft voice.

  Zula and Csongor both startled and turned around to discover Ivanov in the room with them, a semiautomatic pistol in one hand, pointed at the floor.

  “This is good,” Ivanov said. “Finally, someone is real man.”

  Csongor gave up on picking the manacle and rose to his feet, standing at Zula’s side, facing Ivanov from perhaps eight feet away. Ivanov was gazing on Zula’s face in a way that made Csongor want to intercept the eye line; he took half a step forward and got between Zula and Ivanov.

  “Yes,” Ivanov said. “This is proper. I always knew you were proper gentleman, Csongor. Now, move aside so that I can put bullet in head of lying bitch.”

  “No,” Csongor said.

  Ivanov rolled his eyes. “I understand you must continue gentleman behavior. Is all quite proper. But situation is as follows. I told Zula she must tell truth about apartment or I would kill her. Zula lied. Now I must carry out end of deal as promised. Surely you understand.”

  Ivanov now raised the weapon so that he could sight along its barrel and sidestepped a little bit so that he could draw a bead on Zula. But Csongor moved to get in the way.

  “Is not game of hockey. Is not puck. Is fuckink bullet, Csongor. You cannot stop it.”

  “Yes, I can,” Csongor pointed out.

  “Csongor! You are only man in whole building who deserves to be alive,” Ivanov pointed out. “Please stop being fuckink asshole. Don’t you want to get old and grow the mustache? Drive the bus?”

  Zula could only interpret those questions as further proof of Ivanov’s derangement, but they seemed to mean something to Csongor, who shrugged.

  “Zula wants you to live. Don’t you, Zula?”

  It was an odd question. Csongor turned around to look at her.

  As he did, Zula saw Ivanov lunge forward with unexpected speed.

  The look on Zula’s face told Csongor that something was wrong and Csongor began to swivel his head back—just in time to receive a crushing blow on the jaw from the butt of Ivanov’s gun. Csongor spiraled toward the floor. Zula was able to get half underneath him and cushion the impact. She got her free hand under his head and cradled it until it reached the floor.

  Then she was stuck, sitting on the floor with Csongor’s full weight on her lap. He must have weighed well over 250 pounds.

  Zula wet her lips and opened her mouth to make the last speech of her life, in which she would try to explain to Ivanov why it didn’t make sense to kill Peter for not treating Zula chivalrously and then shoot Zula in the head while she was handcuffed to a pipe.

  There was a series of deafening bangs. The side of Ivanov’s head was ripped off by an invisible shovel and flung across the room. He dove sideways as if trying to catch his brains before they hit the floor.

  Zula now noticed that there was another person in the room: a tall black man. He was carrying a long weapon that Zula recognized from the re-u as an AK-47.

  His eyes met hers.

  “English?” he asked.

  “American,” she said.

  “Your confusion is understandable, but I was inquiring, not as to nationality, but as to language,” said the man with the assault rifle. “I’ll endeavor to make my questions less ambiguous in future.” He was speaking with some sort of British accent. He squatted down next to Ivanov’s corpse and began slapping it all over. “This the dude who cuffed you?” he asked, switching seamlessly to Ebonics.

  A faint jingle sounded from one of Ivanov’s pockets. The man reached in and drew out a handful of change, sorted through it, and pulled out one item that was not a coin: a handcuff key. “Bingo,” he said. Slinging the assault rifle over his shoulder, he stood, strode over to Zula’s side, and unlocked the end of her handcuff that was locked around the pipe. “Freedom!” he proclaimed brightly.

  “Thank you!” Zula exclaimed.

  “Is an illusion,” he continued, and sna
pped the manacle shut around his right wrist, chaining his right arm to Zula’s left. Then he pocketed the key.

  “Who are you?” she asked, squirming out from beneath Csongor.

  “You can call me Mr. Jones, Zula,” he answered. He now let the assault rifle slip down off his shoulder, grabbed it by the barrel, and looked at it wistfully. “Difficult to fire with one hand,” he pointed out. He turned to look at her. His face was intelligent and not unattractive. “What’s the only thing more attention getting, on the streets of Xiamen, than two niggers handcuffed together?”

  “I give up.”

  “Two niggers handcuffed together with a Kalashnikov.” He laid the weapon on the floor. Then his eye fell on Ivanov’s semiautomatic. He picked it up with his unencumbered left hand. “Nice piece,” he said. “A 1911, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Even in the midst of so many distractions, some part of Zula’s mind found it curious that Mr. Jones could be anything less than totally certain that Ivanov’s gun was a 1911. Obviously it was a 1911. He transferred it to his right hand, then put his thumb on its hammer, which was drawn back in ready-to-fire position. He pulled the trigger and carefully let the hammer down so that it wouldn’t fire. Then he reached across with his left and racked the slide once, ejecting a live round, chambering a fresh one, and automatically recocking the hammer. “Cocked,” he muttered. With a bit of fumbling, he taught himself how to apply the safety. “And locked.” Then, clearly wishing that his right hand were not encumbered, he transferred the weapon back into his left and stuck it in his pants. “Come on,” he said, “some kind of fascinating destiny is waiting for us out there. Inshallah.”

  He grabbed her hand and started walking toward the exit. She tried to peel away and drop to Csongor’s side, but Mr. Jones simply let go of her hand and allowed the handcuff chain to go taut, so that the metal bit into her already-raw wrist and jerked her along in his path. She sprawled and staggered in his wake and bounced off a wall, where a filthy window, set in a well below street level, grudgingly allowed dim, confused gray light to seep in through several layers of bars and mesh, and thick lashings of rain-driven dirt.

  Framed in that window was the face of a man, a young Chinese man, staring into her eyes. No more than arm’s length away. How long had he been watching events in the cellar?

  But he might as well have been a talking head on a television screen for all that he could help her now. Jones gave another yank, pulling her closer, then reestablished his grip on her hand and began pulling her up the stairs.

  AS HE WAS shinnying along the cable bundle, Sokolov had more time than was really good for him to develop that theme of the high explosives and the detonators in the burning apartment just a few meters away. Old instincts began to take over, and he noticed that his mouth was frozen in a yawn; this was so that his eardrums would not burst in the event of an explosion. Every time he advanced his hands to a new position, he took care to sink his fingers deeply into the wire bundle so that he could not be jarred loose by a shock wave. He kept his chin tucked against his chest, though every so often he would let it hang back so that he could get an upside-down view of the office building. For an agonizingly long time, this did not seem to be getting any closer, and so he forced himself not to check for a while. Then he looked again and saw that it was no more than two meters away. He reached forward as far as he dared, got a good solid grip into the guts of the wire bundle, and let go with his legs. He was now hanging a little more than arm’s length from the point where the wire bundle penetrated a gap between two hanging tarps.

  The tarps flashed as if someone were taking a photograph from across the street. Sokolov began to open his mouth and to tighten his grip on the wires during the fraction of a second that elapsed between then and the arrival of the shock wave. This struck him like a wrecking ball and hurled him bodily into the tarps.

  AFTER THE BURST of fire that had broken out the windows of Xinyou Quality Control Ltd. and sent Olivia sprawling to the floor, the gun battle across the street had died down rapidly. Olivia remained on hands and knees for a while, staying below the level of the windowsill. The office contained eight separate devices with kill switches. She was able to take care of three of them before she got to a place where the floor was covered with shattered glass: not the modern tempered stuff that crumbled into nice cubes, but jagged shards of the old school. Crawling on hands and knees through it didn’t seem like a good idea. She had not received a lot of combat training but she had received a little, and one of the more vivid lessons had demonstrated that the stuff civilians tended to hide behind—car doors, brick walls—was almost completely useless when it came to stopping high-velocity rounds. The walls of this building were brick. So it was pointless to hide behind them in any case. Olivia stood up and began crunching over the glass to reach the other five devices that needed to be killed. Footing was treacherous since her Chinese career-girl costume involved high heels, and the glass shards liked to slip over each other when she put her weight on them. At any rate she made it to all the devices and hit their kill switches. She was making a conscious effort not to be distracted by what was going on across the street. Abdallah Jones’s apartment had gone up in flames with preposterous speed, as if it were made out of flash paper. Either he was dead or had been flushed from cover into the streets of Xiamen, where he could not possibly last for more than a few minutes.

  The initial shock of the gun battle had begun to clear from her mind, and she now realized that the situation was not as dire as she had believed at first. Of course she still had no idea who had invaded Jones’s apartment or why. Certainly there were many who wanted him dead. Speculating about it now would get her nowhere. No one was bashing down the doors of Xinyou Quality Control Ltd. So the correct thing for her to do was to gather up all the spy gear and destroy it. She thought she could manage this rather easily by collecting all of it into a garbage bag and then, during the ride home, throwing the bag into the strait between Xiamen and Gulangyu. It would look a little bit odd, but there was nothing radically unusual about Chinese people throwing garbage into the ocean, so it would probably go unnoticed. Even if someone did decide to make a fuss about it, such a crime hardly merited bringing out scuba divers to comb the murky bottom of the strait.

  So she yanked the liner out of her wastebasket and made the rounds of the office, pulling the electronics loose from their cords and cables and dropping them into the sack one by one. Somewhat reluctantly she threw her laptop in there too.

  She knotted the bag shut. It had become so heavy that she had to carry it slung over her shoulder, Santa Claus style. She turned her back to the vacant windows and began walking across the office to fetch her purse from the desk. She would walk calmly down the stairs and make her way on foot to the waterfront, where she would splurge by hiring a water taxi to take her across to Gulangyu. Halfway there, she would drop the sack overboard. Once she got to her apartment she would pack her bag, make a coded phone call announcing that she was blowing town, then proceed to the airport and grab the next flight capable of getting her out of the country.

  As she rehearsed this plan in her mind, she was bewildered by the sudden awareness that she was crumpled against the wall of the office with the breath knocked out of her. Her view of the windows was sideways—no, it was upside down. Then the view disappeared altogether as a roiling cloud of gray dust hurled itself in through the shredded tarps and expanded to fill every corner of the room, including her open mouth.

  She tried to spit, but her mouth was dry. The dust had penetrated all the way down her throat, and this made her esophagus go into spasms that only ended when she retched. An instinct to get away from the pool of sick forced her up onto hands and knees. This small movement sent electric knitting needles down all her limbs and made her so dizzy that she became sick again.

  She had to get out.

  She tottered back against the wall of the office, knees still bent under her.

  Her eye fell on the garbage ba
g, which had come to rest next to her. She grabbed the knot she’d tied in it. Then she gathered her feet under her and pushed herself up, leaning against the wall. With her free hand she groped to the side until she had found the door. Or rather the doorway, since the door had been blown open.

  Where was her purse? She looked back into the office, but it was just a gray murk with indistinct shapes in it. Everything had been rearranged. Much of the ceiling had collapsed.

  The vacant windows, denuded of their tarps, formed four large hazy gray rectangles across the opposite wall.

  A shadow appeared in one of them: the silhouette of a man. He vaulted in over the windowsill, performed a shoulder roll, and alighted on the office floor in a low crouch. In the same movements he unslung a Kalashnikov from his shoulder and brought it up ready to fire.

  Ready to fire at her. For he had taken dead aim at her face. She knew this because her eyes locked with his through the weapon’s iron sights. His were blue.

  He had shouted something. Through her confusion and fear and the ringing in her ears it took her a few moments to place it: “Ne dvigaites’!” which in Russia was a rudely familiar way of saying “Don’t move!” Realizing his mistake, he then added, in English: “Freeze!”

  “Ne streliaite!” she said, a bit more formally: “Don’t shoot!”

  The two of them remained frozen thus for a count of three. Then the Russian exhaled and lowered the weapon’s barrel until it was pointed at the floor.

  Olivia spun through the vacant doorway and ran.

  THE STREET OUTSIDE Yuxia’s van got very bright and then just as quickly got very dark and then it was clobbered by what sounded and felt like the entire contents of the apartment building.

  As soon as Yuxia could see more than arm’s length beyond the windshield—which took a few seconds—she floored the gas pedal. The van jumped forward less than a meter and stopped hard.