Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

“How interesting that you should bring that up. What's your feeling about it?”

“I'm against it,” Randy says. “But to beat Andrew Loeb, I would do anything.”

“The most cigarettes,” Avi points out.

“First, we have to establish that it's necessary,” Randy says. “If Andrew already knows where the wreck is, why bother?”

“Agreed. But if he has only a vague idea,” Avi says, “then Tombstone becomes perhaps very important—if the information is stored on Tombstone.”

“It almost certainly is,” Randy says. “Because of my GPS signature. I know I sent at least one e-mail message from Glory while we were anchored directly over the wreck. The latitude and longitude will be right there.”

“Well, if that's the case, then this could actually be kind of significant,” Avi says. “Because if Andrew gets the exact coordinates of the wreck, he can send divers down and do an inventory and come up with some actual figures to use in the lawsuit. He can do this all very quickly. And if those figures exceed about half the value of Epiphyte, which frankly wouldn't be very difficult, then we become indentured servants of the Dentist.”

“Avi, it's full of fucking gold bars,” Randy says.

“It is?”

“Yes. Amy told me.”

It is Avi's turn to come to a stop for a while and make swallowing noises.

“Sorry, I would have mentioned it earlier,” Randy says, “but I didn't know it was relevant until now.”

“How did Amy become aware of this?”

“Night before last, before she climbed on the plane at SeaTac, I helped her check her e-mail. Her father sent her a message saying that a certain number of intact Kriegsmarine dinner plates had been found on the submarine. This was a prearranged code for gold bars.”

“You said 'full of fucking gold bars.' Could you translate that into an actual number, like in terms of dollars?”

“Avi, who gives a shit? I think we can agree that if the same thing is discovered by Andrew Loeb, we're finished.”

“Wow!” Avi says. “So, in this, a hypothetical person who was not above tampering with evidence would certainly have a strong motive.”

“It is make-or-break,” Randy agrees.

They stop conversing for a while because they now have to dodge cars across the Pacific Coast Highway, and there is this unspoken agreement between them that not getting hit by speeding vehicles merits one's full attention. They end up running across the last couple of lanes in order to exploit a fortuitous break in the northbound traffic. Then neither of them especially feels like dropping back to a walk, so they run all the way across the parking lot of the neighborhood grocery store and into the wooded creek-valley where Avi has his house. They are back at the house directly, and then Avi points significantly at the ceiling, which is his way of saying that they had better assume the house is bugged now. Avi walks over to his answering machine, which is blinking, and ejects the incoming-message tape. He shoves it in his pocket and strides across the house's living room, ignoring frosty glares from one of his Israeli nannies, who doesn't like him to wear shoes inside the house. Avi scoops a brightly colored plastic box off the floor. It has a handle, and rounded corners, and big bright buttons, and a microphone trailing behind it on a coiled yellow cord. Avi continues through the patio doors without breaking stride, the microphone bouncing up and down behind him on its helical cord. Randy follows him outside, across a strip of dead grass, and into a grove of cypress trees. They keep walking until they have dropped into a little dell that shields them from view of the street. Then Avi squats down and ejects a Raffi tape from the little-kid tape recorder and shoves in his incoming-message tape, rewinds it, and plays it.

“Hi, Avi? This is Dave? Calling from Novus Ordo Seclorum Systems? I'm the, uh, president here, you might remember? You have this computer in our wiring closet? Well, we just, like, got some visitors here? Like, guys in suits? And they said that they wanted to see that computer? And, like, if we handed it over to them right away they would be totally cool about it? But if we didn't, they'd come back with a subpoena and with cops and turn the place inside-out and just take it? So, now we're playing stupid? Please call me.”

“The machine said there were two messages,” Avi says.

“Hi, Avi? This is Dave again? Playing stupid didn't work, and so now we told them to fuck off. The head suit is very mad at us. He called me out. We had a really tense discussion in the McDonald's across the street. He says that I am being stupid. That when they come and turn the place upside-down looking for Tombstone, that it will totally fuck up Ordo's corporate operations and inflict major losses on our shareholders. He said that this would probably be grounds for a minority-shareholder lawsuit against me and that he'd be happy to file that lawsuit. I haven't told him yet that Ordo has only five shareholders and that all of us work here. The manager of the McDonald's asked us to leave because we were disrupting some children's Happy Meals. I acted scared and told him that I would go in and look at Tombstone and see what would be involved in removing it. Instead, I am calling you. Hal and Rick and Carrie are uploading the entire contents of our own system to a remote location so that when these cops come and rip everything out nothing will be lost. Please call me. Good-bye.”

“Gosh,” Randy says, “I feel like shit for having inflicted all of this on Dave and his crew.”

“It'll be great publicity for them,” Avi says. “I'm sure Dave has half a dozen television crews poised in the McDonald's at this moment, stoking themselves to the rim of insanity on thirty-two-ounce coffees.”

“Well… what do you think we should do?”

“It is only fitting and proper that I should go there,” Avi says.

“You know, we could just 'fess up. Tell the Dentist about the ten-percent handshake deal.”

“Randy, get this through your head. The Dentist doesn't give a shit about the submarine. The Dentist doesn't give a shit about the submarine.”

“The Dentist doesn't give a shit about the submarine,” Randy says.

“So, I am going to replace this cassette,” Avi says, popping the tape out of the machine, “and start driving really really fast.”

“Well, I'm going to do what my conscience tells me to do,” Randy says.

“The most cigarettes,” Avi says.

“I'm not going to do it from here,” Randy says, “I'm going to do it from the Sultanate of Kinakuta.”

Goto Dengo has pointed Wing out to Lieutenant Mori, and Mori's guard troops, and made it clear that they are not to run their bayonets through Wing's torso and wiggle the blades around in his vitals unless there is some exceptionally good reason, such as suppressing all-out rebellion. The same qualities that make Wing valuable to Goto Dengo make him the most likely leader of any organized breakout attempt.

As soon as the general and his aide have departed from Bundok, Goto Dengo goes and finds Wing, who is supervising the boring of the diagonal shaft towards Lake Yamamoto. He is one of those lead-by-example types and so he is way up at the rock face, working a drill, at the end of a few hundred meters of tunnel so narrow that it has to be negotiated on hands and knees. Goto Dengo has to present himself at the Golgotha end of the tunnel and send a messenger crawling up into it, wearing a rusty helmet to protect himself from the shattered stone that drizzles down from the rock face.

Wing appears fifteen minutes later, black from the rock dust that has condensed onto his sweaty skin, red where the skin has been abraded or slashed by stone. He devotes a few minutes to methodically hawking dust up out of his lungs. Every so often he rolls his tongue like a peashooter and fires a jet of phlegm against the wall and clinically observes it run down the stone. Goto Dengo stands by politely. These Chinese have an entire medical belief system centering on phlegm, and working in the mines gives them a lot to talk about.