Neal Stephenson - Reamde

The results caused her to do a double-take. It was 750 kilometers and it was going to take her eleven hours, not counting eating and peeing breaks. The numbers were so enormous that she suffered a spell of disorientation, thinking that Google must have mistakenly routed her on some ridiculously convoluted route. But no, the map showed a reasonably straight course. It really was that far: the equivalent of driving from London to John o’ Groats. She was going to spend the entire day driving, and she was not going to get there until after dark. Tomorrow was Sunday.

She checked the flight schedules, hoping that there would be hourly shuttles. The result: there were a few flights during the day, including one that she might be able to make if she canceled her breakfast with Inspector Fournier and then made a dash to the airport. Politically, this was not the best move, and so she booked a seat on a late-morning flight instead.

Then down to the lobby to have coffee and a scone with Fournier. For some reason she had been expecting a middle-aged, rumpled Quebecois version of Columbo, but Fournier was trim, probably in his early thirties, and wore a stylish set of eyeglasses that made him seem younger still. What she’d mistaken for hostility had, she suspected, been a Continental formality that contrasted with the American frat boy ambience she had been immersed in during the previous days. She immediately suspected, and Fournier soon confirmed, that he’d spent a few years living in France, which was where he had picked up his professional manners and his taste in eyewear. Olivia’s status as MI6 agent, operating on foreign soil, had probably done nothing to loosen him up. But in person he could not have been more charming and attentive.

Under the circumstances, Olivia couldn’t not tell Fournier about her plan to go to Prince George and look for strategically located security cameras. He sat back, stroked his fashionably stubbled chin, and gave it serious consideration. “In a perfect world,” he said, “you would not have to go there in person and look for such things.” Then he gave a hugely expressive shrug and cocked his head to one side. “Matters being what they are, I fear you are correct. Having such a thing done through the usual channels, when we have no evidence that Jones ever came within thousands of miles of Canada, and no particular reason to suspect foul play in the case of the missing hunters, would be… how shall I say this politely?… time-consuming.”

It seemed clear that Fournier had come here expecting to find a sort of madwoman, but that meeting Olivia in the flesh and hearing her side of the story had begun to tell on him. His confidence that the hunters were merely lost, or innocently frozen to death, had been shaken a bit. He was now finding a few minutes’ diversion in entertaining Olivia’s theory. If nothing else, he seemed to think, it would enliven an otherwise dull investigation.

Olivia, for her part, was finding it exasperatingly difficult to maintain her focus. She should never have checked her email. All she could think about was the torrent of messages even now coming into her inbox. Her adversaries were framing counterarguments that were going unanswered, her collaborators were requesting help and clarification that she was failing to supply. She ought to have been grateful, and gracious, to Fournier, and so have savored every minute of their discussion. Instead of which she was relieved when he glanced into his empty cup and began the end of the conversation with “Well…”

She promised to check in from Prince George, shook his hand, and headed for the airport. She made a willful effort not to take out her phone until she had checked in her rental car and was on the shuttle bus to the terminal.

Then she was confronted by a queue of unread messages whose length exceeded even her worst expectations. Subject headers had become completely deranged by this point, making it difficult to guess what these people were even talking about. But one of them, at the top of the stack—only received a few minutes ago—had the succinct heading “Got him.” It had come from one of the FBI agents in Seattle.

She called him directly on the phone. Agent Vandenberg. A redhead from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“I’m declaring email bankruptcy,” she said.

“Happens to all of us, Liv,” said Agent Vandenberg, who was decidedly not of the Continental, Inspector Fournier style.

“Just tell me how it all comes out.”

“Don’t know yet,” he said puckishly.

“But I’m seeing ‘Got him’ in the subject line. Whom did you get?”

“I guess that should have been ‘recognized him,’” said Agent Vandenberg after a slight, embarrassed pause. “One of our guys immediately recognized the subject who stole the rifle. We know all about this guy. Igor.” He snickered at the name. “Igor has been the subject of many investigations. He’s a legal immigrant. But that’s the only thing about him that’s legal. This is the first time we have got him so dead to rights, though.”

“So are you going to pick him up?”

“We don’t see him as a flight risk. We don’t think he’s about to go do something bad. It’s been a week and a half since he stole that gun, and he’s been pretty inactive that whole time. So we blasted a judge out of bed, got ourselves a court order, and instituted surveillance on his domicile. It’s a crappy little house in Tukwila.”

“Where’s Tukwila?”

“Exactly. He shares it with another Russian, who has been his roommate there for, like, four years.”

“Gotten anything good yet?”

“It’s taking us a little while to rustle up an interpreter, so we don’t know what the three of them are saying.”

“Three?”

“Yeah. There’s three Russians in the house.”

“I thought you said two. Igor and his roommate.”

“They have a visitor. Just arrived. Surprised the hell out of them, apparently. We don’t exactly know what’s going on. Igor and his roommate were lounging around in couch potato mode, watching a hockey game on the satellite, and suddenly there was a knock on the door. Then they’re all like, ‘Who the hell could that be?’ I’m just guessing from their tone of voice. Then one of them goes and looks out the window and says something like, ‘Holy shit, it’s Sokolov!’ and then they sound kind of scared for a while. But eventually they let him in.”

It was fortunate that Agent Vandenberg was such a loquacious soul, since he then went on talking long enough to give Olivia a chance to get her composure back.

“I think I get the general picture,” she said, when Vandenberg paused to draw breath, and she felt she could keep her voice steady. “Did you say that the name of the surprise visitor was Sokolov?”

“Yes, we’re pretty sure of that. Why? Mean anything to you?”

“It is a very common Russian name,” she observed. “But you said that they were surprised to see him?”

“Surprised, and pretty seriously freaked out. Sokolov had to ring the doorbell three times. They left him cooling his heels on their front porch for, like, five minutes while they discussed how to handle the situation. I don’t know who this guy is—but he ain’t no Avon lady.”

“Thanks,” Olivia said. “That is interesting.”

ZULA ENDED UP retreating into her tiny tent and pulling her sleeping bag over her head. A natural reaction to shame. All she wanted was to have a bit of privacy while she finished her blubbering. This had the unintended, but useful, consequence that the others forgot she was there.

Not literally, of course. The friggin’ chain trailed across the ground and went right into her tent. Everyone knew exactly where she was. But some kind of irrational psychological effect caused them to act as if she weren’t right there, just a few yards away from them.