Neal Stephenson - Reamde

“I have a windmill. A Dulcinea.”

“No shit, really?”

“No shit.”

“Who is she, big guy? Not Yuxia.”

Csongor had shook his head. “Not Yuxia.”

“That’s good, because I kind of like Yuxia.”

“I noticed.”

“Who is she?” This had partly been about making friendly conversation with Csongor but also partly a matter of professional interest; before he spent much more time wandering around in strange places with this armed Hungarian man-tank, it seemed important for Seamus to understand what made him tick—what motivated him, for example, to run about China engaging major international terrorists in gunplay.

“Zula Forthrast.”

“Wow.” Seamus considered it. “You picked a tough one. Let me see. She lives in a country that’s hard for you to get to. She’s the niece of a superrich guy. She’s being held hostage, in a part of the world we can only guess at, by an incredibly dangerous terrorist who totally hates you for shooting him in the head.”

Csongor had spread out his hands, palms up, as if surrendering. “Like I said. Windmill.”

Seamus had stepped around beside him and given him a companionable thwack on the shoulder. “I like windmill tilters,” he had said.

“Do you have any ideas at all?” Csongor had asked.

“As to where Jones took her?”

“Yes.”

Seamus had then supplied Csongor with a brief explanation of the theories that had been investigated so far: the obvious southern Philippines route, which had been exploded; the North American Gambit, which was still under investigation; and Olivia’s new SNAG concept, which (as Seamus was quite confident) she was checking out, at this very moment, in Prince George, British Columbia. None of which had seemed entirely satisfactory to Csongor. But he had obviously been comforted to know that people were working on it and discussing it in places like London and Langley.

“How can I get there?” Csongor had asked.

“You mean, to the northwestern U.S.?”

“Yeah.”

Strangely, this was the first time they had discussed what they were actually going to do. It had been obvious enough that they needed to get to Manila, so they had done so without putting any thought into what would happen next. Seamus had a vague idea of getting the three wanderers into the United States, and he had taken them to this place near the embassy. But he hadn’t actually sat down and talked to them about it yet.

“Got your passport?” Seamus had asked.

“Unbelievable but yes.”

“Hungary is a visa waiver country, right?”

“Yes.”

“So you just need to fill out the web form, ditch the loaded gun, and you’re in. No problem. As for our Chinese friends… that’s going to be interesting.”

“Does it help,” Csongor asked, “that Marlon has two million dollars?”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

NOW IT WAS five in the fucking morning and he was wide awake, surrounded by people who were sleeping as soundly as it was possible for humans to sleep without being etherized. And Olivia—who was supposed to be pursuing her crazy SNAG theory in Canada—had made the announcement that she was blown and going dark.

How could your cover be blown in Canada ? Why even bother going dark there? How could you tell ?

Not that Seamus, in general, had any great problem with the Great White North. But to be an MI6 agent in that country seemed about as close to a milk run as you could get in the espionage world.

He fired up his laptop, found a wireless network, set up an encrypted connection, and got in touch with Stan, a colleague and former comrade-in-arms in the greater Washington, D.C., area. It was quitting time there, and Saturday to boot, but Stan was known to work odd hours. Seamus asked Stan whether it wouldn’t be too much of a challenge to his intellectual faculties to track down the provenance of a certain instant message, and wondered whether Stan was too much of a pussy to get it done discreetly, without setting the whole counterterrorism network alight.

Then he took a shower. When he came back, a message was waiting for him from Stan, asking what all this had to do with Seamus’s metier, viz., eating snakes and molesting ladyboys in the southern Philippines. The message went on to claim that, as a result of Stan’s making the inquiry, the Department of Homeland Security’s Terror Alert Status had been elevated to Red, and POTUS had been evacuated to a secure facility in Nebraska. Those preliminaries out of the way, Stan divulged that the message had been sent via a cell tower near the summit of Stevens Pass, northeast of Seattle, and squarely within the borders of the United States. Judging from cell-tower records, the phone in question had been eastbound at the time. Nothing more was known, since the device had not popped up on the network since the message had been sent. Was there anything else?

Why yes, Seamus responded, if it wouldn’t interrupt Stan’s busy schedule of watching gay bondage pornography videos on the taxpayer-provided high-speed Internet connection, he would very much like to know whether a certain young lady had bought any airplane tickets or rented any cars in Washington or British Columbia of late.

A few minutes later came an email assuring Seamus that the lap dancer in question had indeed left an electronic trail a mile wide and that Seamus might be able to make use of the following data in tracking her down and getting his stolen kidney back: she had flown from Vancouver to Seattle this morning and rented a navy blue Chevy Trailblazer.

Seamus sent a polite note back reminding Stan to zip his fly when finished and promising to buy him a drink during Stan’s next visit to Zamboanga, supposing that Stan had the testicular fortitude to come within a thousand miles of such a challenging locale.

Then he pulled up a Google map of Stevens Pass. It was on a minor highway, a two-laner that Google didn’t even bother to draw on the map once he had clicked the Zoom Out button a couple of times. Seattle, then Vancouver came into view on successive clicks, and then Spokane, farther to the east, near the Idaho border.

Why had she rented a large SUV? Was it the only thing left in the lot? Or was she expecting to do some off-road work?

Something Csongor had said earlier was eating at him. Had been tunneling into his brain during the scant four hours he had managed to sleep: Does it help that Marlon has two million dollars?

The flip answer—always the first thing that would come into Seamus’s head—was, Why yes, with that kind of money he could lease a bizjet and fly there directly .

Which got him thinking about flight paths and border formalities.

This was an asinine idea, worth thinking about only as a thought experiment, but: Supposing they did exactly that? Leased a bizjet and flew it to the Pacific Northwest?

Then they would still have the minor problem that Marlon and Yuxia lacked visas. Which would be a showstopper if they landed at Sea-Tac or Boeing Field or any other international airport with immigration barriers.

Why not just land out in the middle of nowhere? Avoid those barriers altogether?

Answer: they’d be noticed on radar. In theory. But what if they did something tricky to avoid that? What was to stop them, really? Other than the fact that their pilot would refuse to do it because he wouldn’t want to get caught and thrown into prison.

So it was just a crazy thought experiment. But it was a thought experiment with a side effect, which was that it forced him to think exactly the same thoughts that Abdallah Jones had been thinking two weeks ago. Jones must have looked at the same Google map, traced the mountain ranges, zoomed in and out on promising border-crossing sites.