Neal Stephenson - Reamde

“You were seen at house of Igor?”

“No. But my presence in the States is a bit of an open secret. I’ve been collaborating with local FBI on the search for Zula and for Jones. They know the name I’m using—the name on my passport. This morning, after I heard that you had showed up at Igor’s house, I walked right across the concourse and got on the next plane for Seattle. It is a fifty-minute flight. I was there in no time. Walked out, grabbed a rental car, drove to Igor’s.”

“How did you know address of Igor?”

“I accessed a PDF of the court order using that.” She nodded at the wreckage of the phone, which Sokolov was now primly scooping into a litter bag. “As you know, Igor’s house is less than a kilometer from the airport. Elapsed time, from me getting the news in Vancouver to me showing up on the front stoop of Igor’s house, less than two hours.”

“Why?”

She gave him a look. “What do you mean, why?”

“Is crazy thing to do. Blowing the operation of the FBI.”

“They would have gotten everything . All the stuff that went down in that apartment—kidnapping, murder—it all would have come to light and you’d have spent the rest of your life in prison.”

“Maybe it will happen anyway,” Sokolov said, thinking of Vlad, cringing on the floor.

“You and I had a deal,” Olivia said, “back in China. Which was that, in exchange for your assistance in helping track down Abdallah Jones, my employer would get you out of trouble. Something went wrong. I don’t know what.”

Sokolov shrugged dismissively. “Network of so-called George Chow was penetrated by PSB.”

“I am still trying to honor the general spirit of that agreement,” Olivia said. “And it’s to our advantage—MI6’s advantage—to keep you from getting hauled into an American court for a sensational trial. Because then a lot of other stuff would come out too.”

“China stuff.”

“China stuff. With repercussions for international relations among China, the U.S., the U.K. So you had to be gotten out of that house.”

“You acted well,” Sokolov agreed. “I was afraid—” Then he shut up.

A little too late. “You were afraid I was being a crazy, love-sick stalker chick.”

“Yes.”

Olivia sighed. “If only I had the time for such recreations.”

“Now you are in deep shit?” Sokolov inquired, shaking the bag of phone debris.

“I left enough circumstantial evidence—flying to Seattle, renting the car—that sooner or later the FBI is going to figure out that I went to Igor’s house and blew the operation. They have already begun asking difficult questions of my higher-ups at MI6.”

“What is best course for you then?”

“It’s going to be an awkward pain in the arse no matter what,” Olivia said, “but everything would be a hell of a lot better if I were in Canada. This would put me out of the FBI’s jurisdiction, and in a country with Commonwealth ties to the U.K.—easier to grease the skids from there, get me home discreetly.”

“To Canada then!” Sokolov said. “Canada is better for me too; I have work visa there. Byiznyess connections.”

“We’ll have to cross the border illegally.”

“You know place?”

“I don’t know a place, exactly. But I know a family that can get us across.”

“Smugglers?”

“It’s not so much that they are smugglers,” Olivia said, “as that they deny the validity of borders altogether.”

BLOWN AND GOING DARK .

Seamus had to hand it to the girl. He was getting to the point where he could not get his day started without a dramatic early-morning text message or phone call from Olivia. If he continued working with this person, he was going to have to get into the habit of going to bed early and perhaps even sober.

They had arrived in Manila at midnight and crashed in a chain hotel just up the street from the U.S. embassy, which was where Seamus intended to be the next morning, just as soon as the visa section opened its doors. So this cryptic message served as a convenient wake-up call.

He had laid his credit card down and secured a suite, employing fake credentials that had been issued to him for use when he needed to travel without throwing his real name around. He had given the bed, which was in its own separate room, to Yuxia. Seamus was sleeping on the floor near the suite’s entrance with a pistol under his pillow. Marlon and Csongor had flipped a coin for the sofa, and Marlon had won, so Csongor had staked out a patch of floor in the corner.

Seamus had no idea what level of precautions was appropriate here. Apparently these three had left half of the surviving population of China seriously pissed off at them, as well as making mortal enemies with a rogue, defrocked Russian organized crime figure. In their spare time they had stolen money from millions of T’Rain players, created huge problems for a large multinational corporation that owned the game, and, finally—warming to the task—mounted a frontal assault on al-Qaeda. Had their coordinates been generally known, no amount of security would have been adequate. Seamus’s sidearm was a nice gun and everything, but it would not be much use should China invade the Philippines, or should one of Abdallah Jones’s minions decide to Stuka a fuel-laden 767 into the roof of the Best Western. He had decided to proceed on the assumption that no one knew where the hell they were, and to hustle them into the embassy first thing in the morning. Perhaps something could be sorted out there.

He’d had a talk with Csongor before going to bed: a little private man-to-man in the hallway, while Marlon and Yuxia had been taking turns using the bathroom. The subject of the talk had been guns. Seamus’s instincts had told him to confiscate Csongor’s pistol, since more bad than good things could come of his having it. But the Hungarian had been carrying it around now for a couple of weeks and had already used it in anger on two occasions, and so it seemed like not the best idea, from an interpersonal relations standpoint, to demand that it be handed over. And, just as a matter of principle, Seamus could not relieve a man of a gun he had used to shoot Abdallah Jones in the head. Seamus had spent enough time with Csongor by this point to get a sense of who he was, and he felt confident that Csongor would behave sanely and discreetly. His only concern was that some bump in the night would wake them all up and that Csongor, disoriented, would freak out, draw the weapon, and do something fucked up.

So that was what they had talked about. The corridor had been empty, so Seamus had stood well back, keeping his hands in plain sight, and had asked Csongor to take the gun out and demonstrate that he knew how to check the action for live rounds, how to make it safe, how to load and unload it. Csongor had done all those things without fuss or hesitation. Seamus had complimented him on his skill, being careful not to make it gushy or patronizing, since Csongor was not some coddled American kid who needed positive feedback all the time.

“I’m going to keep a light on. Dimly. So we can see each other if we wake up in the middle of the night. No mistakes. No shooting at vague forms. Got it?”

“Of course.”

“Glad we settled that,” Seamus had said.

Then: “What are your plans?” Since the bathroom had still been unavailable.

Csongor had looked extremely tired.

“You know Don Quixote?” Csongor had finally asked, after thinking about it for so long that Seamus had nearly fallen asleep on his feet.

“Not personally, but—”

“Of course, but you know the idea.”

“Yeah. Tilting at windmills. Dulcinea.” Seamus hadn’t read the book, but he’d seen the musical and he remembered the song.