Neal Stephenson - Reamde

The small bundle consisted of nine 100-RMB notes with a tenth wrapped around it.

“So that is the local equivalent of a C-note,” Ivanov said.

Sokolov replaced it, reached deeper into the bag, and pulled out a stack of bills having the approximate proportions of a brick. He looked questioningly at Ivanov.

Ivanov shrugged. “Ten thousand dollars or something.” Then he shook his finger at Sokolov. “But remember: money goes a long way in China!”

“How do they carry it around?” Sokolov asked wonderingly.

“Purses,” said Ivanov.

Sokolov replaced the brick.

“What are your orders?” he asked.

“Get the hackers in here and make a plan for finding the Troll.”

“They have been talking about it,” Sokolov said. “They want to go out on the streets. Pound the pavement.” He gave the expression in English.

“Will they make trouble? Try to run off?”

“Peter might.”

“Always keep one here as insurance.”

“That one can’t be Csongor,” Sokolov, “since they don’t really know him.”

“Then either Peter or Zula always stays here. Unless—?”

“Zula will not create trouble if she knows Peter is hostage,” Sokolov began. “However, if the situation is reversed—”

“I knew it!” Ivanov slammed the table, and his face turned red. To him, Sokolov’s vague suspicion that Peter might be the kind of guy who would betray Zula was ontologically the same as a You-Tube video of him actually doing it. He seemed ready to kill Peter on the spot. Sokolov, for his part, was gratified that Ivanov trusted his intuitions in this way, but he could not help wondering if he’d judged Peter unfairly.

“This is just my guess,” Sokolov said.

“No, you are right! Peter stays here then. Zula goes out with Csongor. And you send two of your men with them at all times.”

“Sir, I request permission to go out with them alone,” Sokolov said.

“Why?”

“Because I have seen nothing of the city other than what I can see from this window.”

“Fine. Good idea. Go out and learn more of the place. You’ll see more than you want to see, I can tell you that.”

Sokolov turned toward the window. The hackers, as Ivanov called them, were standing outside, awaiting orders. He indicated with a movement of his head that they should enter.

Csongor, Zula, and Peter filed into the room and stood across the conference table from Ivanov, pretending they had not noticed the sack full of currency. Ivanov switched to English. “Much time has gone by sleepink, flyink, sleepink. Easy to forget nature of mission. Do you recall mission?”

“Figure out who the Troll is,” Peter said.

Ivanov stared at Peter as if he had said something deeply offensive. And in truth, there was nothing Peter could have said that would have helped him.

“Find motherfucker who fucked me!” Ivanov shouted, so loudly that he could have been heard in Vladivostok.

He let that one ring in their ears for a few moments. The hackers were physically shriveling, like raisins.

“You need to pound pavement!” Ivanov asserted.

Peter’s eyes flicked toward Sokolov.

“You look at me!” Ivanov shouted.

“Yes, sir,” Peter said. “Yes. We need to move around the city, get on the Internet in different places, check the IP addresses—”

“And send distress call home to mama!?” Ivanov inquired.

Peter’s face had been red from the beginning, but now it got redder.

“You, stay here,” Ivanov said. “Help make map or somethink.” He looked at Zula. “Lovely Zula, you pound pavement in company of Csongor.” He turned his attention to Csongor. “Csongor, you are only person who touches computer.” He shook his finger. “No email, no Facebook, no Twitter. And if there is some other such thing I have not heard of yet—none of that either!”

In English, Ivanov said, “Only exception to rule: Zula can play T’Rain if necessary. Csongor, Sokolov will watch carefully, make sure nothink funny happens.”

Zula and Csongor nodded.

Ivanov half turned and extended a hand toward Sokolov. “Sokolov will be present at all times to protect you from harm and ensure rules are followed. If rules are broken in serious way, if Zula goes to powder room and never comes back, any other such problem, then I must have extremely serious conversation with Root of All Evil here.” He extended his hands toward Peter in a gesture whose natural conclusion would have been out-and-out strangulation.

“Everyone understand rules?” Ivanov said.

Everyone nodded.

“Go pound pavement.” He reached into the bag, pulled out as many stacks of bills as he could grab in a single hand, and slid them down the table to Sokolov. “Except for Peter. You.” He gestured toward Peter as if the room contained more than one person of that name. “Stay for brief discussion.”

Sokolov picked up the money, then backed to the door and held it open as Zula and Csongor exited the room. No one could look at Peter, who had become a nearly unbearable sight on grounds of posture alone: shoulders drawn together, body trembling, back of neck brilliant red. Sokolov was favorably impressed by the fact that he had not yet shit his pants. Men always made crude jokes about people pissing their pants with fear, but in Sokolov’s experience, shitting the pants was more common if it was a straightforward matter of extreme emotional stress. Pants pissing was completely unproductive and suggested a total breakdown of elemental control. Pants shitting, on the other hand, voided the bowels and thereby made blood available to the brain and the large muscle groups that otherwise would have gone to the lower-priority activity of digestion. Sokolov could have forgiven Peter for shitting his pants, but if he had pissed his pants, then it really would have been necessary to get rid of him. In any case, Peter had done neither of these things yet.

A minute or two later, though, after they had gathered near the reception area with their water bottles and day packs, Sokolov noted Zula—who had kept a stony face through most of this—looking with concern through the glass wall of the conference room at Peter, who was still being arraigned, or something, by Ivanov.

Something had changed, though. Ivanov was still gesturing, but instead of punching and strangling, his hands were making neat little chopping gestures on the tabletop, sketching concentric circles, reaching out toward the city beyond the window and gathering in imaginary stuff and pouring it out on the table. Peter was nodding his head and even moving his jaw from time to time.

Peter was interested .

“Is okay,” Sokolov said. “He works for Ivanov now.”

IVANOV HAD OFFERED to rent them a car and driver, but Sokolov guessed they would learn more by using taxis. They took the elevator down to the parking garage, found a fire exit, climbed up a windowless concrete stairway, and emerged into a strip of landscaping. This led along the side of the building out to the edge of the waterfront avenue. Sokolov pivoted and took a phone picture of the building from which they had just emerged. Later, when he wanted to go back to the safe house, he could show it to a taxi driver. They were already perspiring freely, or perhaps that was just the humidity condensing on their artificially chilled skin. Sokolov had acquired a blazer from an airport shop in Vladivostok, which he now removed, folded, and placed in his shoulder bag on top of the magenta bundles.

The drivers of the taxis that flocked and schooled in the plaza before the KFC-topped hotel were confounded by, and almost indignant at, the manner in which the three Westerners had seemingly teleported into existence in this normally unfrequented corner. It was clearly their habit to keep an eye on every place from which a possible customer could sortie. Westerners on foot, unnoticed and unpestered, were as much an affront to civic order as gushing fire hydrants and warbling car alarms. Sokolov had the feeling that the next time they came out of that fire exit, there would be at least one taxi waiting for them. It was not a good feeling.