Reamde: A Novel

by Neal Stephenson

  One of the four men was dressed in a bulky, ill-fitting uniform.

  Sokolov squatted and peered through a bush.

  The one in the uniform ascended the steps and pushed his way through one in a row of four wooden doors, glass-windowed but guarded with ironwork. Beyond these was a broad entrance hall, probably a foyer back in the days when it had been some important businessman’s villa. In its new incarnation, this had been lined with mailboxes and provided with a few benches and low tables. A set of inner doors sealed it off from the stairs that gave access to the various units, but Sokolov knew from earlier reconnaissance that these were not locked. The building wasn’t secured at all; the only lock between these men and the inside of Olivia’s flat was the one on her door.

  The other three men took a last look around and went inside.

  Sokolov broke from cover and ran around to the side of the building that faced the water and the city lights of Xiamen. Olivia’s little terrace was two stories above his head. A tree sprouted from the ground near the building’s corner, too close to the building. It had probably been a volunteer seedling at the outbreak of the Second World War. It had grown up wild during the decades when no one was looking after the place, until the new owners, finding this mature, fifteen-meter tree on their property, had gone after it with pole saws, lopped off the lower limbs, and pruned it up into something that looked a little closer to proper landscaping. It was neither the easiest nor the hardest climbing tree that Sokolov had ever seen; the only reason he hadn’t gone up it earlier was that, in broad daylight, anyone could have seen him out the window of flats on lower levels.

  He climbed it now, not with a lot of grace or dignity, but he didn’t fall and he didn’t kill a lot of time. A surviving limb arched away from the trunk toward the building’s corner. He shinned out on it, finding himself a couple of meters above the building’s roof and a couple of meters away. The jump was not especially difficult, though Jeremy Jeong’s dress shoes betrayed him as he was shoving off and he ended up catching the eave in his belly rather than landing flat on the tiles as he had envisioned. He lashed out with his left hand and grabbed the bracket of a satellite dish antenna. With his right he gripped the coaxial cable that ran up to it. Getting both hands then on the cable, he let himself slide down until his flailing feet found what he was pretty sure was the concrete railing around Olivia’s terrace. Placing his weight on that, he leaned back to clear the building’s eave, then pivoted and dropped to a squat on her terrace. This was barely large enough to support one chair and a tiny table. From here, access to her flat was barred by a glass door with an iron grille. Through it, he could see all the way through her bedroom and into the little sitting room beyond it.

  The door was locked. Earlier today, he had gotten it open by jerking out the hinge pins. For he had noted on one of her phone pictures that the installers had committed the grievous error of situating these on the outside. Still, it had taken several minutes of screwing around.

  He could not see Olivia, but he could see her shadow moving on the wall and the floor. He was fairly certain that she was standing near the flat’s door.

  He pulled his little flashlight out of his bag, slid it between the bars, and rapped sharply on the glass. Then he turned it on and aimed it at his face.

  The shadow froze, then went into slow movement. Olivia peered around the corner for an instant, then drew her head back sharply. He could see her hand coming up to her mouth. Then she risked another look.

  What would she do when she recognized him? Calling the PSB would be a perfectly rational option.

  Instead she moved his way decisively and unlocked the terrace door, then stood aside to let him enter the bedroom.

  “Someone’s knocking at the door—says he’s a security guard,” she said.

  “Get dark, warm clothes,” Sokolov said. “Put them in a bag with water and food. Other than that, ignore everything.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Everything.”

  Sokolov shoved the Makarov through its rail, chambering a round. He then put it back into his waistband.

  He strode to Olivia’s door, undid the lock, and hauled it open.

  The man in the security guard uniform was standing there, hand raised to knock again. Two of his friends were lurking a couple of paces behind him. The third was farther away, keeping a lookout at the top of the stairs.

  Sokolov grabbed the “security guard” by the hair, hauled him inside the apartment, slammed the door, and locked it.

  The guard pulled a knife—Sokolov could discern this from the way he had chosen to move—and tried to hit him with a direct overhand stab. Sokolov blocked it to the outside with his left forearm, wrapped his arm around the other’s like a vine, getting him just above the elbow, then jerked up until he heard a crack. This left the security guard standing very close to Sokolov, a little bit sideways. Sokolov brought his right knee up into the other’s groin. When he doubled over, Sokolov jammed his thumb into the man’s throat to bring him upright again, then brought his forehead down on the bridge of the man’s nose, shattering it. Finally, Sokolov pulled his knife from his trouser pocket, gathered his arm above the opposite shoulder as if to deliver a backhanded chop to the neck, and swung the blade all the way through the security guard’s throat.

  Before the man could fall down, Sokolov opened the apartment door again and pushed him straight out the door, directly into the arms of one of his friends, fountaining blood from both carotids.

  The other friend was standing just off to the side. Sokolov grabbed the man’s jacket, pulled him forward, and rammed his knife straight up into the underside of the man’s chin until the handle stopped against the point of his jaw.

  The sound of a weapon being cocked: the man at the top of the stairs. Sokolov stepped back, slammed the apartment door closed, locked it, then fired half of a clip through the wood, aimed toward the man who was burdened with the security guard’s body.

  Seeing as how gunfire had started, Sokolov checked his watch, wondering how many minutes it would be before the authorities shut down the ferry terminal.

  A few rounds came through the door in his general direction, but this was the man at the top of the stairs firing down the hallway; the bullets were passing into the wall at a shallow angle and getting lost as they felt their way around its internal structure. The weapon was a submachine gun, firing pistol rounds with nothing like the kinetic energy of a rifle cartridge. But in a few moments this man would probably be standing squarely in front of the door firing straight through it, and Sokolov wanted to have himself and Olivia in a different place by then. He turned and strode into the bedroom, where Olivia was cramming things into a bag on her bed. He pulled the bag out of her grasp without breaking stride, stepped onto the terrace, and dropped it over the railing. With his other hand he had taken Olivia by the upper arm, and he now drew her onto the little balcony and got her to sidestep away from the open door and stand with her back to the exterior wall, which was made of brick; it would suffice to stop the type of ammunition that the surviving jihadist would soon be pumping through her front door. Sokolov then climbed up on the terrace railing and got his hands into some ivy that he had noticed climbing thickly up the wall. Jerking on this as hard as he could, he found that it would come away from the wall if he applied enough force but was well attached. So, lacking other options, he sat his butt on the railing, swung his legs over the edge, and jumped off. The ivy peeled away, showering him with mortar dust and vegetable debris, and he fell, jerkily, but only so fast, for a couple of meters, before it finally held fast and stopped him. From there he was able to get a grip on some window bars and clamber down to an altitude where it became possible to jump the rest of the way, striking the ground in a somersault. Rolling back up to his feet he ran around the side of the building to its front entrance, came into the entry hall, and ascended the stairs. People were shouting and screaming in their apartments. He tried not to think about what this por
tended, and he resisted the temptation to nervously check his watch. First things first. Looking up the stairwell he saw no one; the gunman had moved away from his earlier perch and probably gone to Olivia’s door. He heard another burst of fire from the submachine gun. So he took the remaining stairs three at a time and, after checking the Makarov, stepped out into the hallway on Olivia’s floor.

  The gunman was right in front of her door, which he had just finished kicking open. Seeing Sokolov in the corner of his eye, he performed a classic double-take. During the second half of this, Sokolov fired two rounds into his head. He could tell by the way that the man collapsed that the rounds had gone into his brain and that he was dead, but as he approached he fired two more just to be sure, then picked up the submachine gun, which the man had dropped on the floor. Its clip was probably very close to being empty. Scanning the man’s body he noticed an extra clip protruding from a pocket, so he grabbed that. He noticed a phone too, so he took that as well. And finally, best of all, he found his own phone, which this man had taken from the safe house and dropped into a pocket.

  He then walked through the apartment, announcing himself so that Olivia would know who he was.

  He was dismayed to find that she was no longer on the terrace, but looking down he saw that she had made her way to the ground, apparently without breaking any bones, and was gathering up the items that had spilled from the bag when Sokolov had tossed it. He whistled. She looked up. He pointed to the gate that led out to the street. She saw it and nodded. He spun on his heel and strode out of the apartment. He peeled off the bloody poncho and threw it on the floor, then sprinted down the stairs, burst out the front of the building, and ran down its front steps in time to see Olivia’s form silhouetted in the gate.

  “To the ferry terminal,” he said. “Avoid big streets.” His hearing was recovering to the point where he could hear sirens now.

  She led him uphill, which he hadn’t expected, since water was generally down—but only so that she could dart into the grounds of a school across the street. They ran across its playing field and out a back gate, then followed a series of alleys and staircases that took them eventually to one of the big parks that spread along the side of the island facing Xiamen.

  As they came in view of the ferry terminal, Sokolov checked his watch and found that four minutes had elapsed since the onset of gunfire. Most police departments could not respond that quickly; but if the local cops had been put on some kind of alert because of this morning’s disaster in Xiamen, they might have a heavier than normal presence in the ferry terminals. And indeed, through the glass doors of the terminal Sokolov could see PSB officers, at least half a dozen of them, paying close attention to their walkie-talkies.

  His pace faltered.

  Olivia turned toward him, seeing the same thing.

  “We need fast water taxi,” Sokolov said.

  Olivia pointed into the adjoining park. “Go that way,” she said, “wait at the foot of the big statue.”

  There was no mistaking what this meant, any more than a tourist in New York Harbor could fail to understand what “the big statue” was. She was talking about a huge stone rendering of Zheng Chenggong, which stood on a pedestal at the edge of the water and was lit up with spotlights so that it could be seen from miles away.

  “I’ll hire a water taxi and meet you there,” she explained.

  He thought he saw sincerity in her face. Trusting her was a risk, but walking anywhere near the ferry terminal at this moment was a risk too. He nodded, then turned away and walked into the park.

  It was a big park, and it took him a few minutes to get near the statue of Zheng Chenggong.

  The pedestal itself rose sharply out of the water and was not a good place to board a boat, but below it was a little stretch of sandy beach. He saw a white water taxi rounding a turn into the bay. So he ran down some tiers of stone steps that afforded access to the beach and waited for it to come in closer so that he could wade out to it. But the driver cut his engine and seemed disinclined to come in closer; Sokolov could hear an unpleasant conversation between him and Olivia.

  The problem, perhaps, was that normal people didn’t wade out into the ocean to board a water taxi, and the mere fact that this was being proposed had aroused his suspicion.

  He looked about. The pedestal of the statue was perhaps a hundred meters down the beach to his right. Running along its base was a walkway that developed into a short causeway, extending over shallow, rocky water to a house-sized boulder just a stone’s throw away from the shore. Some sort of little temple or gazebo had been constructed on top of that. From it, another little causeway stretched out to an even smaller rock that supported a navigation light. Sokolov flashed his flashlight at the water taxi to get their attention, then waved suggestively in that direction. He did not want to say anything since this would reveal that he was non-Chinese. Willing himself not to break into a dead sprint, he quick-walked up the beach, took a little stone stairway up to the level of the causeway, and then walked across it to the boulder. The causeway skirted this and then headed out to the navigation light. By the time Sokolov got out to that second stretch of causeway, he could see the water taxi approaching and hear the argument continuing.

  He had probably aroused the suspicions of the local watermen with his earlier behavior. Word had gotten around. Perhaps they’d even heard the gunfire from up the hill.

  The boat would come up just beneath him here. He turned his back on it as it drew closer.

  Olivia broke into English. “He refuses to take us,” she announced. “So I asked him, ‘What do you want me to do, jump overboard and swim to shore?’ And he at least agreed to come and let me off here. Can you give me a hand up?”

  “Of course,” Sokolov said, and turned to face the boat.

  The look on the driver’s face was everything Sokolov had hoped for. But he had already cut his engine and drifted in close. He reached down to shift his propeller into reverse gear, but Olivia hooked her arm into his and prevented it. The boat drifted closer. Sokolov vaulted over the causeway’s railing and slammed down onto its prow, then dove over its windscreen and came up onto his feet in time to intervene in a physical squabble between Olivia and the driver. He got the latter in a very simple armlock, just to focus his attention, and then let him see the submachine gun.

  At that point, the driver saw reason and sat down.

  “Tell driver to go north around Xiamen,” Sokolov suggested.

  Olivia said something. The driver backed the boat away from the causeway and then turned it out into the open channel. Once they were well clear of shallows, he made a new course with Gulangyu on the left and downtown Xiamen on the right, and throttled it up.

  Sokolov sat down in the back, pulled a life vest out of a storage bin, and set to work strapping it to Olivia’s bag.

  This did not take especially long, so when it was finished, he leaned back and enjoyed the view of the city, the colossal bridges thrown over the straits that separated it from the mainland, the container port, the big freighters riding at anchor. He would never see Xiamen again, that was for certain.

  Something trembled against his leg. He reached in and pulled out the phone he’d taken from the dead jihadist. It had a new text message, consisting of three question marks.

  Sokolov flipped through the “recent calls” menu and found seventeen consecutive phone calls to or from the same number, all during the last ten hours or so.

  He debated whether he should do this. It was not the safest, most conservative measure for him to take. But they were well clear of the most developed part of the city, rounding the northern curve of the island, the flat open land where they’d built the airport. In another few minutes, Taiwanese territory would come into view.

  He hit redial.

  “ARE YOU OKAY? Where is Zula?”

  “Are you okay? Where is Zula?”

  “Are you okay? Where is Zula?”

  Even through closed eyelids with her back
turned, the grenade’s flash had left huge purple patches floating around in the middle of Yuxia’s vision, obscuring her view of Csongor’s face. But she knew who it was.

  “They took her,” she said.

  He had been holding her by her upper arms. Now he let go. She realized that she was only standing up by virtue of the fact that Csongor had hauled her to her feet. So there were a few moments, now, when she half fell down and had to catch herself and get her legs working and her balance back again. She ended up half leaning against the corner post of a welded steel bunk bed. The cabin was full of smoke, and more smoke was rising from a thousand tiny little embers that had been strewn across the bedspreads and were burning or melting their way down into the blankets. She coughed and pressed her free hand against her mouth. Csongor, meanwhile, was on the move, stepping back and forth over the threshold. She saw him step into the cabin and pick up a man who was lying on the floor. He heaved the man over his shoulder like a sack of rice and stepped outside. There was a splash. Then he stepped back into the cabin and repeated the procedure.

  From outside she heard Marlon registering a mild objection. “Those men are stunned!”

  “This will wake them up,” Csongor said.

  As far as Yuxia was concerned, the only thing wrong with what Csongor was doing was that it might fail to result in these men’s deaths. She wanted to throw them off herself.

  She couldn’t hear the ship’s engines and supposed it was because the bang of the grenade had deafened her. But neither, she realized, could she feel their vibration. Some kind of hasty and anxious conversation took place between Marlon and Csongor. Yuxia stepped outside to get some fresh air. She saw the cook—the man who had given her tea earlier—cringing against the rail. He had been watching Csongor throw men overboard and assumed he was next. “This guy was nice to me,” Yuxia announced in English, and then she said to the man in Mandarin that it was going to be okay. But she wasn’t sure he understood Mandarin.