Reamde: A Novel

by Neal Stephenson

  It was up in this country where the baron had finally given up on his railway project. He had only run the line this far south as a feint, threatening to extend it into Idaho to spur the Canadians to more decisive action around Elphinstone. But here he had reached a point where he could go no farther unless he bored a mile-long tunnel southward through the ridge. To sell the bluff, he had made some progress, widening an existing mine tunnel for some distance, but had abandoned the project once he had gotten what he’d really wanted: a better connection to the Canadian national system at Elphinstone.

  The first day of the journey, then, consisted of walking up to the place where the trail terminated at the head of this aborted tunnel project. Jones could have done this much without Richard’s help. Zula had apparently explained that to him already. Richard’s special knowledge of the terrain would come into play tomorrow.

  And so it was an easy enough hike that day, and a sort of vacation: a chance to let his mind, unshackled by the Internet, roam wherever it willed. Mostly he thought about the reactions he had been having to the discovery that Zula was still alive. For during the last several days he had, as it were, been trying the idea that she was dead on for size, and trying to get his head around what that meant. Certainly he was no stranger to people he knew dying. He had reached the age where he had to attend a couple of contemporaries’ funerals a year, and even had a special suit and pair of shoes that he kept handy for such events. But all deaths were as different as the persons who had died. Each death meant that a particular set of ideas and perceptions and reactions was gone from the world, apparently forever, and served as a reminder to Richard that one day his ideas and perceptions and reactions would be gone too. It was never good. But it seemed particularly unfair in the case of Zula. If he was now trading his death for hers, well, that was much better overall, and a trade that—as Jones knew perfectly well—he would gladly accept.

  But the notion that it might be coming soon brought to the front of his mind a thing that of late he had been pondering, typically while staring out the windows of private jets at the landscape passing beneath him. His religious beliefs were completely undefined. But whether it was the case that his spirit would live on after his body or die with it, he had the nagging sense that, at his age (and especially in his current circumstances), he really ought to be growing more spiritual. For he was certainly closer to being dead than to having been born. Instead of which he was only becoming more connected to the world. He could not even imagine what it would mean to be a whole and conscious being without the smell of cedar in his nostrils. Seeing the color red. Tasting the first swallow of a pint of bitter. Feeling an old pair of jeans as he drew them up over his thighs. Staring out the window of an airplane at forests and fields and mountains. With all of that gone, how could one be alive, conscious, sentient, in any way that was worth a crap?

  It was the sort of rumination that on any other day would soon have been cut short by the arrival of an email or a text message, but as he hiked up the valley of the Blue Fork at the head of a column of sweating and muttering jihadists, none of whom especially wanted to talk to him, he had plenty of leisure to consider it. Which seemed to be getting him absolutely nowhere. But he did try to enjoy the smell of the cedars and the blue of the sky while he still had the equipment to do it with.

  OLIVIA PROCEEDED WITHOUT incident to a freeway on-ramp. They drove north through a sparse industrial zone that led into the southern outskirts of downtown Seattle. There they joined with I-5, the main north-south freeway, which they took all the way through the city. Half an hour later, after they had passed through another belt of suburbs and entered another, smaller city, she flicked on her turn signal and exited onto an east-going highway of lesser importance that proceeded across an endless series of tidal sloughs on long straight causeways. A range of mountains erupted from the flatlands directly ahead of them. Once it had gotten up onto slightly higher and drier land, the highway diverted south and began to wind to and fro, as if unnerved by the colossal barrier stretched across its path, but after a while it got funneled into a broad valley, clotted with small communities. The valley became narrower, the air colder, the towns smaller, the trees taller, and then it was clear that they were ascending into a mountain pass.

  Both of them relaxed. There was no particular reason for this. No reason why, in today’s world, they were safer, more anonymous on a winding highway in the mountains than they were on a freeway in the heart of a major city. But some atavistic part of their brains told them that they had effected some kind of escape. Gotten away with something.

  “I don’t fancy your friends,” Olivia said. It was the first thing either one of them had said since Sokolov had climbed into the SUV in front of Igor’s house.

  Sokolov ignored it. “How did you know where I was?”

  “As long as we’re asking nervous questions, I’ve got one: Did you, or anyone else in that house, happen to say anything out loud when I showed up? Like, ‘Holy shit, that looks like the MI6 agent Olivia?’”

  “Of course I did not say such things.”

  “Of course not. But the others? Anything such as ‘Who is that Chinese chick in the black SUV?’”

  “Nothing; I made this gesture,” Sokolov assured her, showing her the finger-across lips move and the upward glance.

  “Well, that might help. A little.”

  “Again. How did you know where I was?”

  “This morning I was in the Vancouver airport, on my way to Prince George to go looking for Abdallah Jones, when I was made aware that your friend’s house had been placed under surveillance.”

  “Because stupid idiot went to apartment of Peter and was seen on video camera.”

  “Exactly. And then I was made aware that someone named Sokolov had just made a surprise visit.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. I felt a bit responsible.”

  He turned his head to look at her; she kept her eyes dutifully on the road. “How responsible?” he asked.

  “The video files were encrypted, you see. No one could open them. Then, because of some things I did this morning, the encryption key was found.”

  “Found where?”

  “In Peter’s wallet.”

  “Peter is dead though?”

  “Yes, Peter is dead. Turns out Ivanov shot him in Xiamen. Then Jones shot Ivanov and ran off with Zula.”

  “So where is wallet of Peter?”

  “Csongor took it to Manila.”

  “Csongor is in Manila!?”

  “As of a few hours ago, yes, he should be. Along with Yuxia and Marlon.”

  “Who is Marlon?”

  “The hacker who created the virus.”

  A bit of silent driving, now, as Sokolov took all of this in.

  “Anyway,” Olivia continued, when Sokolov’s body language suggested he was ready to hear more, “I sort of got everyone talking to one another. Dodge supplied the video file—”

  “Dodge?”

  “Richard Forthrast.”

  “Rich uncle of Zula.”

  “I hadn’t pegged you for a T’Rain fan.”

  “I read about her in newspapers, magazines, this morning at bookstore. I am not surprised that a man of this type would have obtained video file. So. He supplied file, Csongor supplied key…”

  “And then lots of cops and spies were looking at video of Igor stealing that.” Olivia gave her head a little toss, indicating the rifle case in the backseat. “Why did you bring it, by the way?”

  “I shoot moose. We have barbecue.”

  “I would love to have a moose barbecue with you. But we should probably be figuring out our next move.”

  “Our? We are together? Partners?” Sokolov’s tone was rough and skeptical.

  “That’s what we need to figure out.”

  Her phone went off. She answered it and spent the next couple of minutes getting an earful from someone on the other end of the line. “All right,” she finally said, “I’ll check in
with you when I’m north of the border.” She hung up and handed the device to Sokolov. “Could you destroy that for me?”

  “With pleasure.” Sokolov began by figuring out how to eject the battery. In case it had some residual power source, he then laid it out on the dashboard, drew out his Makarov, verified that it was in a safe condition, and raised its butt like a hammer.

  “Belay that,” Olivia said. “I need to send one last message.”

  Sokolov set the Makarov down on the floor between his feet and slid the battery back into its socket.

  Olivia was navigating an especially curvy part of the mountain pass, so she talked Sokolov through the process of getting the phone turned on and navigating its menus. “In ‘Recent Calls,’ you should see one, early this morning, to someone named Seamus.”

  “Yes, I have it,” he said after a few moments.

  “If you would be so good as to send a text to that number. ‘Blown and going dark.’ Something like that.”

  Sokolov looked at her incredulously.

  “Exactly like that,” she corrected herself.

  Sokolov spent a few moments thumbing it out and sending it. Then he removed the battery again, placed the device on the dashboard, and picked up the Makarov. He looked at her.

  “Go for it.”

  The butt of the Makarov came down on the black plastic puck, producing a nice splintering noise. Sokolov hit it a few more times and then began to sift through the resultant debris, looking for anything that might possibly be still alive. “Someone mad at you?”

  “My boss in London,” Olivia said, sounding a little tense. “People are talking.”

  “You were seen at house of Igor?”

  “No. But my presence in the States is a bit of an open secret. I’ve been collaborating with local FBI on the search for Zula and for Jones. They know the name I’m using—the name on my passport. This morning, after I heard that you had showed up at Igor’s house, I walked right across the concourse and got on the next plane for Seattle. It is a fifty-minute flight. I was there in no time. Walked out, grabbed a rental car, drove to Igor’s.”

  “How did you know address of Igor?”

  “I accessed a PDF of the court order using that.” She nodded at the wreckage of the phone, which Sokolov was now primly scooping into a litter bag. “As you know, Igor’s house is less than a kilometer from the airport. Elapsed time, from me getting the news in Vancouver to me showing up on the front stoop of Igor’s house, less than two hours.”

  “Why?”

  She gave him a look. “What do you mean, why?”

  “Is crazy thing to do. Blowing the operation of the FBI.”

  “They would have gotten everything. All the stuff that went down in that apartment—kidnapping, murder—it all would have come to light and you’d have spent the rest of your life in prison.”

  “Maybe it will happen anyway,” Sokolov said, thinking of Vlad, cringing on the floor.

  “You and I had a deal,” Olivia said, “back in China. Which was that, in exchange for your assistance in helping track down Abdallah Jones, my employer would get you out of trouble. Something went wrong. I don’t know what.”

  Sokolov shrugged dismissively. “Network of so-called George Chow was penetrated by PSB.”

  “I am still trying to honor the general spirit of that agreement,” Olivia said. “And it’s to our advantage—MI6’s advantage—to keep you from getting hauled into an American court for a sensational trial. Because then a lot of other stuff would come out too.”

  “China stuff.”

  “China stuff. With repercussions for international relations among China, the U.S., the U.K. So you had to be gotten out of that house.”

  “You acted well,” Sokolov agreed. “I was afraid—” Then he shut up.

  A little too late. “You were afraid I was being a crazy, love-sick stalker chick.”

  “Yes.”

  Olivia sighed. “If only I had the time for such recreations.”

  “Now you are in deep shit?” Sokolov inquired, shaking the bag of phone debris.

  “I left enough circumstantial evidence—flying to Seattle, renting the car—that sooner or later the FBI is going to figure out that I went to Igor’s house and blew the operation. They have already begun asking difficult questions of my higher-ups at MI6.”

  “What is best course for you then?”

  “It’s going to be an awkward pain in the arse no matter what,” Olivia said, “but everything would be a hell of a lot better if I were in Canada. This would put me out of the FBI’s jurisdiction, and in a country with Commonwealth ties to the U.K.—easier to grease the skids from there, get me home discreetly.”

  “To Canada then!” Sokolov said. “Canada is better for me too; I have work visa there. Byiznyess connections.”

  “We’ll have to cross the border illegally.”

  “You know place?”

  “I don’t know a place, exactly. But I know a family that can get us across.”

  “Smugglers?”

  “It’s not so much that they are smugglers,” Olivia said, “as that they deny the validity of borders altogether.”

  BLOWN AND GOING DARK.

  Seamus had to hand it to the girl. He was getting to the point where he could not get his day started without a dramatic early-morning text message or phone call from Olivia. If he continued working with this person, he was going to have to get into the habit of going to bed early and perhaps even sober.

  They had arrived in Manila at midnight and crashed in a chain hotel just up the street from the U.S. embassy, which was where Seamus intended to be the next morning, just as soon as the visa section opened its doors. So this cryptic message served as a convenient wake-up call.

  He had laid his credit card down and secured a suite, employing fake credentials that had been issued to him for use when he needed to travel without throwing his real name around. He had given the bed, which was in its own separate room, to Yuxia. Seamus was sleeping on the floor near the suite’s entrance with a pistol under his pillow. Marlon and Csongor had flipped a coin for the sofa, and Marlon had won, so Csongor had staked out a patch of floor in the corner.

  Seamus had no idea what level of precautions was appropriate here. Apparently these three had left half of the surviving population of China seriously pissed off at them, as well as making mortal enemies with a rogue, defrocked Russian organized crime figure. In their spare time they had stolen money from millions of T’Rain players, created huge problems for a large multinational corporation that owned the game, and, finally—warming to the task—mounted a frontal assault on al-Qaeda. Had their coordinates been generally known, no amount of security would have been adequate. Seamus’s sidearm was a nice gun and everything, but it would not be much use should China invade the Philippines, or should one of Abdallah Jones’s minions decide to Stuka a fuel-laden 767 into the roof of the Best Western. He had decided to proceed on the assumption that no one knew where the hell they were, and to hustle them into the embassy first thing in the morning. Perhaps something could be sorted out there.

  He’d had a talk with Csongor before going to bed: a little private man-to-man in the hallway, while Marlon and Yuxia had been taking turns using the bathroom. The subject of the talk had been guns. Seamus’s instincts had told him to confiscate Csongor’s pistol, since more bad than good things could come of his having it. But the Hungarian had been carrying it around now for a couple of weeks and had already used it in anger on two occasions, and so it seemed like not the best idea, from an interpersonal relations standpoint, to demand that it be handed over. And, just as a matter of principle, Seamus could not relieve a man of a gun he had used to shoot Abdallah Jones in the head. Seamus had spent enough time with Csongor by this point to get a sense of who he was, and he felt confident that Csongor would behave sanely and discreetly. His only concern was that some bump in the night would wake them all up and that Csongor, disoriented, would freak out, draw the weapon, and d
o something fucked up.

  So that was what they had talked about. The corridor had been empty, so Seamus had stood well back, keeping his hands in plain sight, and had asked Csongor to take the gun out and demonstrate that he knew how to check the action for live rounds, how to make it safe, how to load and unload it. Csongor had done all those things without fuss or hesitation. Seamus had complimented him on his skill, being careful not to make it gushy or patronizing, since Csongor was not some coddled American kid who needed positive feedback all the time.

  “I’m going to keep a light on. Dimly. So we can see each other if we wake up in the middle of the night. No mistakes. No shooting at vague forms. Got it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Glad we settled that,” Seamus had said.

  Then: “What are your plans?” Since the bathroom had still been unavailable.

  Csongor had looked extremely tired.

  “You know Don Quixote?” Csongor had finally asked, after thinking about it for so long that Seamus had nearly fallen asleep on his feet.

  “Not personally, but—”

  “Of course, but you know the idea.”

  “Yeah. Tilting at windmills. Dulcinea.” Seamus hadn’t read the book, but he’d seen the musical and he remembered the song.