Reamde: A Novel

by Neal Stephenson

  She worked her way in close enough to see the banners across the bottoms of the screens:

  EXPLOSION IN OKANAGAN.

  B.C. BLAST.

  TERROR AT AMERICA’S DOORSTEP?

  A ground-level camera angle showed Canadian and American flags streaming in the breeze right next to each other. This seemed to be the favored backdrop for on-the-scene reporters, who, Olivia inferred, must be all standing right next to one another talking into their microphones. With several of them going at once, she found it difficult to tell one sound bite from another. She was hearing a lot of the coded phrases uttered by “Breaking news” reporters to admit that they didn’t really know what was going on. But from time to time, one of them would launch into a recap “for viewers just joining us.” Olivia inferred from a couple of these that the explosion had taken place in Canada, just a few meters short of the U.S. border, and that the thing she’d mistaken for a tollbooth was actually the border crossing. A vehicle stopped there, waiting for inspection, had exploded with what was obviously terrific violence. The death toll was already pushing a hundred, not counting bodies that had been completely vaporized, and rescue workers were still prying open smashed cars with the Jaws of Life and searching the collapsed wreckage of both Canadian and American buildings.

  The studio-bound anchorpersons, interviewing the correspondents on the scene, asked the obvious questions: Do we have a description of the vehicle carrying the bomb? Of its passenger or passengers? But it was pretty clearly hopeless. The vehicle and its occupants would have been invisible, anonymous to all except those who were stuck in traffic near it; and anyone who’d been near it would be dead.

  “I’VE NEVER BEEN so sad to be right,” Olivia said to Sokolov, when she found him pushing a cart down an aisle in the camping and outdoors section. She fell in step next to him and cast an eye over the contents of his cart, wondering whether this was totally random stuff that he had thrown in there to perfect his Walmart shopper disguise or things he actually intended to buy: 5.56-millimeter cartridges, a water purification device, jerky, bug repellent, a camouflage hat, heavy mittens. Freeze-dried meals. A roll of black plastic sheeting. Parachute cord. Batteries. A folding bucksaw. Camouflage binoculars.

  “You refer to explosion?” Sokolov said.

  “Yes. I refer to explosion. Did you have any trouble getting here?”

  In response, Sokolov just looked at her warily, uncertain whether she was asking the question tongue-in-cheek.

  “Never mind,” she said, and walked with him for a few more paces. “I’m just trying to work out whether I’m to be the hero or the goat, when I get back to London.”

  “Goat?”

  “The one who gets blamed for screwing it up.”

  Sokolov merely shrugged, which she did not find comforting. There are always fuckups, and there is always a goat. Sometimes the goat is you.

  “Is diversion,” he announced.

  “Ooh, that’s an interesting thought. Why do you think it’s a diversion?”

  “Extreme size of explosion. Ridiculous. Purpose is to turn bodies into vapor, destroy evidence.”

  “You think Jones sent some guys to blow themselves up in a conspicuous place, drawing all of the attention—”

  “Jones is crossing the border right now,” Sokolov said, “in Manitoba.” He shrugged again. “We are wasting time.”

  It turned out that Sokolov really did want to buy all that stuff. Not because he envisioned any particular use for it. He just believed in stocking up on such things, on general principles, whenever an opportunity presented itself.

  He would fit in well here.

  What he really wanted to buy was mountain bikes. He’d already cruised the bicycle aisle—evidently he had gotten here hours ago—and made his selections. She couldn’t argue with his logic. They needed to get to Jake Forthrast’s compound on Prohibition Creek—or “Crick” as the Iowans insisted on pronouncing it. It was thirty miles as the crow flew, longer on the roads they’d be taking. There were no buses. But on bicycles, they could make it before nightfall if they set a decent pace.

  Olivia now understood what Sokolov meant by We are wasting time. He was saying, I could do this ride in two hours. With you, pumping away on your little girl-bike, it will take four.

  Anyway, buying the stuff was no problem—if there was anything spies were good at, it was carrying lot of cash—and so it all led to a kind of festive scene out back of the Walmart in which they removed the new mountain bikes from their big flat boxes, put them together, and heaved the corrugated cardboard into a Dumpster. Sokolov, spurning the very idea of purchasing bottled water, filled several of his new containers with water from a hose bib, and put parachute cord and bungee cords to work strapping the other gear to the bikes’ cargo racks. She would have found it fun had she not seen what she’d seen on all those televisions.

  Then they were on their way, pedaling north. Heading for the proverbial hills.

  THE CLOUDS PARTED just long enough to show them incontrovertible evidence that it was cold down there.

  Seamus had forgotten about cold.

  He was going to have to buy four jackets. One of them an XXXL. Four hats, four pairs of gloves.

  When was the last time he had paid his credit card bill?

  Never mind, Marlon would spring for it. How much of a dent could four jackets make in his net worth, compared to chartering this jet? Not only would Marlon buy the jackets, but he would make sure that they were stylish. Cutting-edge ski parkas, or something. Maybe all in the same style and color, so that they could look like the Fantastic Four.

  Dumbfounded with fascination, Seamus began to explore that analogy as they made their final approach. The stewardess—each bizjet came with one, apparently—made a final pass through the cabin, picking up half-eaten plates of sushi and empty cocktail glasses.

  Quite obviously, Csongor was the Thing. Seamus was Reed Richards, the gawky father figure, weirdly flexible, always scurrying around arranging stuff. Marlon was a Human Torch if ever there was one. Yuxia was—

  Invisible Girl? If only.

  The jet touched down and came to a brisk stop. Seamus sensed a little wave of depression sweeping through the Four. Chartering this jet, climbing onto it illegally at the air base outside of Manila, and blasting into the sky—for these jets really hauled ass, once they got going—had been the most exhilarating thing ever. Even Seamus, who went into combat against terrorists for a living, had been thrilled. Actually landing in the sodden gray landscape of Joint Base Lewis-McChord was a corresponding letdown.

  Long experience flying around the world on airplanes had conditioned him to relax, for it would be another half hour before they actually made it off the plane. But of course, this was not true in the case of a bizjet. He smelled damp, piney air coming in through the open door and realized that nothing was preventing him from climbing off.

  “Thanks for the ride, Marlon,” he said, standing up and bashing his head on the ceiling again.

  “Thanks for getting me out of there,” Marlon returned, grinning, and climbing up into a prudent stoop.

  Seamus held up his index finger. “Don’t thank me until we get through the next fifteen minutes.”

  “LET ME GET this straight,” Freddie’s boss had said, over the hyperencrypted voice conferencing link from Langley. Never a great thing to hear from the lips of someone considerably above you in chain of command.

  “We’re not asking for any money,” Seamus had broken in, before Freddie could say anything.

  “Noted,” the boss had said. “Always a plus.”

  “Not asking you to print passports or diddle any paperwork.”

  “The whole point,” Freddie had put in, perhaps a bit nervously, “is to leave no paper trail at all.”

  “Two Chinese and a Hungarian, just basically parachuted into CONUS with no paperwork whatsoever.”

  “The Hungarian is legit, he has a visa.”

  “Two Chinese then.”


  “Yeah.”

  “Given that Chinese illegals are being shipped into the Port of Seattle by the containerload, it seems like it would hardly make a dent.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Seamus had said. “And these are not your baseline economic migrants. They’re going to be running major corporations inside of a fortnight.”

  “Not without green cards.”

  “I think I’m going to marry the girl. That would take care of her status.”

  Freddie had turned to look at him incredulously. “Does she know this?”

  “She has no idea. Just a feeling.”

  “A feeling on your part.”

  “Halfway there. Pretty respectable progress.”

  “What I’m really getting at,” the boss had said, “is whether you have any kind of long-term plan for these people—other than matrimony—that would lead to complications down the road.”

  “Let’s not focus on hypothetical complications,” Seamus had said. “Let’s focus on the fact that these people have been in physical contact with Abdallah Jones, rammed his vehicle, shot him in the head, been tortured by him, in the very, very recent past. Seems worthy of a free ticket to Langley, don’t you think? Can’t we buy these kids a cup of coffee at least?”

  “We can buy them a cup of coffee in Manila,” the boss had pointed out.

  “Only at the risk of them getting arrested,” Seamus had returned. “At which point information is going to start gushing out like Jolly Ranchers from a ruptured piñata.”

  “It would be easy at this end,” the boss had said, “provided they land at a military base. Getting them on a plane at your end, without passing through formalities, is outside of my scope.”

  “Disavow all knowledge of our actions,” Seamus had said, “and we’re home free.” He glanced for confirmation at Freddie, who turned the corners of his mouth down—he was very good at this—and nodded.

  “Easiest decision I ever made. Consider yourself disavowed.”

  NONE OF WHICH really gave Seamus any idea of what to expect, twenty hours later, descending the wee, steep staircase to the hangar floor. Joint Base Lewis-McChord, was a combined army/air force facility, actually rather important to the global war on terror in that it was the home of the Stryker Brigades so heavily used in Afghanistan, as well as being an important special forces base. Seamus knew it well. It was about an hour’s drive south of Seattle, on a huge tract of forest whose soil and climate made Seattle’s seem arid by comparison.

  What he was seeing now was like something from a David Lynch film in its surreal starkness. The jet, apparently on orders from the tower, had taxied directly into a small hangar that was otherwise completely empty. Powerful lights were on, as if trying to drive away the misty gray dimness flooding in through the hangar doors, which were rumbling shut, apparently driven by electric motors.

  Nothing else was in here except for a maroon minivan with a BABY ON BOARD sticker in the window and an assortment of SUPPORT OUR TROOPS ribbons scattered around its liftgate. Standing next to the minivan was a man in civilian clothes. His bearing and haircut would have marked him as a military man even if Seamus hadn’t already known who he was: Marcus Shadwell. A major in a locally based special forces unit. Seamus had been in some funny places and situations with Marcus.

  None funnier than this, apparently. “Where are they?” was how Marcus greeted him.

  “They’re on the fucking plane, Marcus. What did you think, we bungeed them onto the roof rack?”

  “Let’s get a move on,” Marcus said. “My orders are to get you off this base and into the civilian world.” He held up his hands, palms out, and pantomimed backing away. Then he whisked his hands together as if washing them.

  THEY ENDED UP at a regional airport a few miles away, outside of Olympia, only because it was big enough to support a couple of car rental agencies. Seamus went in and grabbed an SUV. His credit card was good for that much, anyway. Marcus helped them transfer their absolutely minimal baggage from his minivan into their new ride as Marlon and Yuxia huddled in the backseat, chafing their arms and shivering. Csongor, by contrast, seemed very much in his element and looked around at everything curiously to a degree that Seamus found slightly irksome. There was a U.S. customs office at the airport, and Seamus was troubled by a paranoid fear that some armed and uniformed agents would swarm out of it and demand to see papers.

  But no such thing happened.

  “I’m out of here,” Marcus said.

  “Appreciate it. Maybe we can catch up later,” Seamus said. But Marcus already had his back turned and was hustling toward the open driver’s-side door of his family van as if he expected gunfire to break out at any moment.

  Driving at exactly the speed limit—difficult for him—Seamus got them out onto the interstate and backtracked a few miles to a strip mall complex out in the middle of nowhere, which he had noticed, and taken the measure of, as Marcus had driven them out into the civilian world. It was anchored by a Cabela’s outdoor superstore, where he reckoned they could get warm stuff. But this, like every other Cabela’s, was surrounded by restaurants and other small businesses that fed off the stream of Cabela’s traffic without actually competing with the mother ship.

  They ended up in a teriyaki joint, confronted by live news coverage of the car bomb explosion on the Canada/U.S. border, showing on a flat-panel above the cash register with the sound turned down.

  This, then, became the topic of the conversation Seamus had with the boss at Langley. He spent most of it outside, strolling up and down before the windows of the teriyaki place, watching the Thing, the Human Torch, and Not-so-Invisible Girl snarfing their teriyaki. Above them, pictures of the crater and the body bags on the TV. Out here, the rain was spitting into his face, which seemed fitting somehow.

  “I’d say this operation is all over,” said the boss, “except for writing reports.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Seamus said. “This thing with the car bomb is obviously…”

  “… a diversion that Jones used to draw attention from his real plans.” the boss said, finishing his sentence.

  This left Seamus speechless, an unusual state of affairs for him. “You got that too?” he finally asked.

  “Yes,” said the boss. “You are not the only person in the world who knows what a diversion is.”

  “But in that case…”

  “It is of no practical relevance, at least for the next ninety-six hours—probably more like a week—because it worked, Seamus. Like it or not—whether it’s a diversion or not—the fact is that when a terrorist blows himself up at a border crossing and takes a hundred and fifteen U.S. and Canadian citizens with him, then that is what the FBI and the Mounties and everyone else in the chain of command are going to be focusing all their energies and personnel on for a while.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “You’ve got a car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ve got money? Credit cards? Everyone’s healthy?”

  “Everyone’s fucking great.”

  “Then start driving east,” the Boss said. “Show the kids Mount Rushmore along the way, and by the time you make it here, maybe I’ll be able to devote some resources to debriefing your friends. And Little Bighorn, while you’re at it. Foreigners eat that shit up.”

  “What about Olivia? What’s she up to?”

  “Olivia!” the boss exclaimed. “She’s lucky that guy blew himself up.”

  “Why does that make her lucky?”

  “Because, (a) it proves she was right, and (b) it gives the FBI and the local cops something to focus their energies on besides complaining about what she did in Tukwila.”

  “What is Tukwila, and what did she do there?”

  “I’ll explain when you get here.”

  “What’s she doing now?”

  “I have no idea,” said the boss. “And believe me, that’s a good thing.”

  THE CABELA’S SHOPPING spree went down pretty mu
ch as Seamus had envisioned it, except that they all ended up in camouflage. Because camouflage was what they sold at Cabela’s. If you wanted ski parkas in sleek designs and eye-catching colors, you had to go somewhere else.

  Seamus inferred that hunting culture in China was not well developed. “Is this where the soldiers go to buy their uniforms?” Yuxia inquired, gazing at rack after rack, acre after acre of floor space devoted to all manner of clothing in several distinct state-of-the-art camo patterns. Her confusion was understandable; she’d just entered the country through a huge military base, and Seamus had not been very diligent about explaining where the boundary lay between it and the civilian world. He had to spend a few minutes explaining to her and Marlon that lots of people hunted here, and even more liked to cop a certain stance or attitude about it, using camouflage as a cultural signifier, and this was where those people came to buy clothes. Marlon, Csongor, and Yuxia could, in other words, buy anything they wanted in this store without laying themselves open to the accusation that they were improperly wearing the uniforms and insignia of the armed forces of the United States. Once she had pushed through an initial barrier of culture shock, Yuxia found this amusing.

  The Fantastic Foreigners were also dumbfounded by the size and variety of the gun section, and in this way they lost another forty-five minutes to culture shock, pure and simple. Seamus could tell that Csongor was lusting after a 1911, but fortunately the paperwork would have made purchasing such a thing impossible, and so the relationship had to remain platonic for now. Because of the unusual way in which they had entered the country, Seamus had been able to carry his own sidearm—a Sig Sauer—the whole way, but he had ended up with only one clip, and so while the others were distracted with running in and out of dressing rooms, he purchased two additional empty clips and four boxes of rounds, as well as a holster that he could use to carry all of that crap around under his jacket. He did not really expect that he would have to use, or even draw, his weapon while driving these people across the country and showing them Mount Rushmore. But the fact was that he had the gun, and he needed a way to carry it around safely and securely and not too obviously. It wouldn’t do to have it rattling around loose in his backpack.