Neal Stephenson - Reamde

“I did it on your server,” Clover answered. “The files were already there. All I had to do was send the command.”

He rattled off the name of a directory.

Csongor and Marlon now resumed the narrative, a bit uncertainly as they sensed that they no longer had Richard’s full attention. This suspicion was borne out a few minutes later when Richard broke in: “I can see him.” His voice was husky and he spoke slowly, as if mildly stunned. “This guy finds a way to break in. I can’t hear anything—it’s all just body language—but let me tell you that I have hired a lot of guys in my time, and this guy is a schlub. A palooka. An epsilon minus.”

Csongor did not know the meaning of any of these terms, but Richard’s tone of voice was easy enough to read.

“I was half hoping it might have been Sokolov,” Richard explained. “But I guess that’s impossible—you guys were all in Xiamen by this point. A day later he goes missing off Kinmen.”

Csongor looked at Marlon and Yuxia, who both threw up their hands. “You think Sokolov survived the explosion?” he asked.

“We know he did,” Seamus announced.

“That is hard to believe,” Yuxia said. “If you had been there—”

“We have the most direct and convincing possible testimony that he lived through it,” Seamus assured her, with a little wiggle of the eyebrows that made Yuxia blush.

“Sokolov is still alive,” Csongor repeated, trying to make himself believe it.

“I didn’t say that,” Richard put in. “He was involved in a gunfight off Kinmen the next day.”

“Let me tell you something,” Csongor said. “If he was in a gunfight, I am more worried about the people he was fighting against.” This drew an approving look and a nod from Seamus.

Richard continued, “The palooka comes in the front door carrying a piece of equipment that, based on other research I’ve been doing, matches the description of a plasma torch. He takes it upstairs and sets it up next to Peter’s gun safe and runs a huge extension cord down the stairs to Peter’s shop where he plugs it into a big-ass industrial outlet.”

“Gun safe?” Csongor asked wonderingly.

“Not from around here, are you?” Richard asked. “Believe it or not, they are as common in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave as, let’s say, bidets are in France. Anyway, the picture now gets completely fucked up as this guy turns on the torch and slices the safe open. Just takes the top right off. Fast-forwarding here—I think he’s waiting for the metal to cool down. Then he reaches into the top and pulls out—oh, for goodness’ sake. Who knew that our Peter was a gun nut?”

“What are you seeing?” Seamus asked.

“A nice metal case. Inside of it, a really tricked-out AR-15,” Richard said, and then he rattled off a lot of verbiage that seemed significant to him and to Seamus but meant nothing to Csongor: “Picatinny rails on all four sides, mounted with Swarovski optics and what might be a laser sight. Tac light. Tactical bipod. Yes, whatever other shortcomings he might have had, Peter was very good at adding items to his shopping cart.”

“So this goon must have noticed the gun safe during the snatch and made up his mind to come back later and see what was inside.”

“If so, he hit the jackpot. I’m looking at probably four thousand bucks’ worth of rifle. Want to see a picture?”

“Sure.”

There was a brief interlude for clicking and typing, and then Seamus said, “Got it,” and began paying attention to something on his screen. Csongor, having nothing else to do at the moment, got up and walked around behind him to see what it was. Evidently T’Rain contained some sort of facility for mailing image files back and forth, and Egdod had used it to send this JPEG to Thorakks. It was a surprisingly well-resolved picture of a bulky man with a shaved head, holding an assault rifle, sans clip, and examining his action. “Not my cup of tea,” Seamus said after inspecting it for a little while, “but I concur that Peter was a gun nut and that Mr. Potatohead is feeling very pleased with himself at the time this picture is taken.”

“Do you recognize him?” Richard asked.

Csongor was obliged to return to his post and put his headset back on. “No,” he said. “In none of my dealings with Ivanov, in Xiamen or otherwise, did I ever see this man.”

“He’s a local freelancer, Richard,” Seamus pronounced. “A temp.”

“Maybe I’ll send the picture to the Seattle cops, then,” Richard said. “Help them clear up some loose ends.”

“Save yourself the trouble,” said Seamus. “I can get it to the cops, and then some. But it’s not going to help finding Zula now.”

“I know that,” Richard said.

And then there was silence for a few moments. Csongor was unwilling to admit this to himself, but, although the last couple of hours’ machinations in T’Rain had been diverting, and the opportunity to exchange information with Richard had felt, for a few minutes, like an enormous breakthrough, it was all turning out to be a dead end. The most it might lead to was that Mr. Potatohead would be arrested, and the story of Zula and Peter’s abduction, and Wallace’s murder, would be explained to the satisfaction of the Seattle Police Department. But none of this would be of any help in finding Zula now or in stopping Jones.

Richard seemed to be reaching the same conclusion. “Interesting,” he finally said, “but all kind of useless.”

Seamus was ready for it. “You don’t know that,” he said. “The way it works is, you follow these leads and you work them until something breaks. Everything we have done here is extremely constructive whether or not you can see a way through to the end.”

“All I know is, I’ve been sitting on my ass for close to twenty-four hours,” said Richard, now sounding as bad as Csongor felt. “Thinking, hoping, you guys would know where Zula is. Now it’s something like four, five in the morning, I’m at the end of my tether, we have come up with nothing very useful. And some asshole tourist is knocking on my door, probably wanting to empty his holding tank or get directions to the geocaching site. So I’m going to break off for a little.”

And indeed Csongor now noticed that the clouds were rushing up past them and the city of Carthinias growing larger and larger as they plummeted toward it. Presently they came to a soft landing exactly where they had started, and Egdod shrank to human size.

“The money?” Marlon asked. “Not for me—for my friends in China.”

“Clover will see about making the da G shou whole,” Richard said, “at competitive rates. Good luck getting the money into China.” As he spoke, it was possible to hear a doorbell ringing in the background. The sound radiated incongruously over downtown Carthinias.

RICHARD STRIPPED OFF his headset and threw the keyboard off his lap, leaving Egdod mute and motionless for the time being. He reached down between his knees and found the pee bucket with his hand, then moved it well out of the way so he wouldn’t kick it over. He stood up slowly, partly because his body had stiffened up and partly because he didn’t want all the blood to rush out of his brain at once. He checked the time: 4:42 A.M. Who the hell was ringing his doorbell? In addition to which they had been pounding the hell out of every door and window they could find for the last couple of minutes. All the signs pointed to some sort of minor emergency: drunken teenaged mountain bikers who had flipped over their handlebars, or campers chased out of their tents by bears, or an RV gone off the road. It happened a few times a year, though rarely so early in the season.

He shambled out of the tavern and into the lobby, moving awkwardly, trying to make out if all of that had been worth it. From Zula’s paper towel note he had already known the first part of the story, and from British Spy Chick he’d learned some of the last bit. So all that he’d gained from nearly twenty-four hours’ solid game playing was a picture of some asshole stealing Peter’s rifle, more detail about what had happened in that apartment building in Xiamen, and a very large quantity of Indigold.