Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

“Yes—where only an entity with the naval resources of a major government could sever them.”

“Oh, shit!”

“This is the new balance of power, Randy.”

“You can't seriously be telling me that governments are threatening to—”

“The Chinese have already done it. They cut an older cable—first-generation optical fiber—joining Korea to Nippon. The cable wasn't that important—they only did it as a warning shot. And what's the rule of thumb about governments cutting submarine cables?”

“That it's like nuclear war,” Randy says. “Easy to start. Devastating in its results. So no one does it.”

“But if the Chinese have cut a cable, then other governments with a vested interest in throttling information flow can say, 'Hey, the Chinese did it, we need to show that we can retaliate in kind.' ”

“Is that actually happening?”

“No, no, no!” Avi says. They've stopped in front of the largest display of needlenose pliers Randy has ever seen. “It's all posturing. It's not aimed at other governments so much as at the entrepreneurs who own and operate the new cables.”

Light dawns in Randy's mind. “Such as the Dentist.”

“The Dentist has put more money into privately financed submarine cables than just about anyone. He has a minority stake in that cable that the Chinese cut between Korea and Nippon. So he's trapped like a rat. He has no choice—no choice at all—other than to do as he's told.”

“And who's giving the orders?”

“I'm sure that the Chinese are very big in this—they don't have any internal checks and balances in their government, so they are more prone to do something that is grossly irregular like this.”

“And they obviously have the most to lose from unfettered information flow.”

“Yeah. But I'm just cynical enough to suspect that a whole lot of other governments are right behind them.”

“If that's true,” Randy says, “then everything is completely fucked. Sooner or later a cable-cutting war is going to break out. All the cables will get chopped through. End of story.”

“The world doesn't work that way anymore, Randy. Governments get together and negotiate. Like they did in Brussels just after Christmas. They come up with agreements. War does not break out. Usually.”

“So—there's an agreement in place?”

Avi shrugs. “As best as I can make out. A balance of power has been struck between the people who own navies—i.e., the people who have the ability to cut cables with impunity—and the people who own and operate cables. Each side is afraid of what the other can do to it. So they have come to a genteel understanding. The bureaucratic incarnation of it is IDTRO.”

“And the Dentist is in on it.”

“Precisely.”

“So maybe the Ordo siege really was ultimately directed by the government.”

“I very much doubt that Comstock ordered it,” Avi says. “I think it was the Dentist demonstrating his loyalty.”

“How about the Crypt? Is the sultan party to this understanding?”

Avi shrugs. “Pragasu isn't saying much. I told him what I have just told you. I laid out my theory of what is going on. He looked tolerantly amused. He did not confirm or deny. But he did give me cause to believe that the Crypt is still going to be up and running on schedule.”

“See, I find that hard to believe,” Randy says. “It seems like the Crypt is their worst nightmare.”

“Whose worst nightmare?”

“Any government that needs to collect taxes.”

“Randy, governments will always find ways to collect taxes. If worse comes to worst, the IRS can just base everything on property taxes—you can't hide real estate in cyberspace. But keep in mind that the U.S. government is only a part of this thing—the Chinese are very big in it, too.”

“Wing!” Randy blurts. He and Avi cringe and look around them. The pasocon otaku don't care. A man selling rainbow-colored wire ribbons eyes them with polite curiosity, then looks away. They move out of the bazaar and onto the sidewalk. It has started to rain. A dozen nearly identical young women in miniskirts and high heels march in wedge formation down the center of the street sporting huge umbrellas blazoned with the face of a video game character.

“Wing's digging for gold in Bundok,” Randy says. “He thinks he knows where Golgotha is. If he finds it, he'll need a really special kind of bank.”

“He's not the only guy in the world who needs a special bank,” Avi says. “Over the years, Switzerland has done a hell of a lot of business with governments, or people connected with governments. Why didn't Hitler invade Switzerland? Because the Nazis couldn't have done without it. So the Crypt definitely fills a niche.”

“Okay,” Randy says, “so the Crypt will be allowed to remain in existence.”

“It has to. The world needs it,” Avi says. “And we'll need it, when we dig up Golgotha.”

Suddenly Avi's got an impish look on his face; he looks to have shed about ten years of age. This gets a belly-laugh out of Randy, the first time he's really laughed in a couple of months. His mood has gone through some seismic shift all of a sudden, the whole world looks different to him. “It's not enough to know where it is. Enoch Root says that these hoards were buried deep in mines, down in the hard rock. So we're not going to get that gold out without launching a pretty major engineering project.”

“Why do you think I'm in Tokyo?” Avi says. “C'mon, let's get back to the hotel.”

While Avi's checking in, Randy collects his messages from the front desk, and finds a FedEx envelope waiting for him. If it was tampered with en route, the tamperers did a good job of covering their traces. It contains a hand-enciphered message from Enoch Root, who evidently has figured out some way to get himself sprung from the clink with his scruples intact. It is several lines of seemingly random block letters, in groups of five. Randy has been carrying around a deck of cards ever since he got sprung from jail: the prearranged key that will decipher this message. The prospect of several hours of solitaire seems a lot less inviting in Tokyo than it did in prison—and he knows it will take that long to decipher a message as long as this one. But he's already programmed his laptop to play Solitaire according to Enoch's rules, and he's already punched in the key that is embodied in the deck that Enoch gave him and stored it on a floppy disk that he keeps rubber-banded to the deck in his pocket. So he and Avi go up to Avi's room, pausing along the way to collect Randy's laptop, and while Avi sorts through his messages, Randy types in the ciphertext and gets it deciphered. “Enoch's message says that the land above Golgotha is owned by the Church,” Randy mutters, “but in order to reach it we have to travel across land owned by Wing, and by some Filipinos.”

Avi doesn't appear to hear him. He's fixated on a message slip.

“What's up?” Randy asks.

“A little change of plans for tonight. I hope you have a really good suit with you.”

“I didn't know we had plans for tonight.”

“We were going to meet with Goto Furudenendu,” Avi says. “I sort of figured that they were the right guys to approach about digging a big hole in the ground.”

“I'm with you,” Randy says. “What's the change in plan?”

“The old man is coming down from his retreat in Hokkaido. He wants to buy us dinner.”

“What old man?”

“The founder of the company, Goto Furudenendu's father,” Avi says. “Protegé of Douglas MacArthur. Multi-multi-multi-millionaire. Golf partner and confidant of prime ministers. An old guy by the name of Goto Dengo.”