Cryptonomicon

There is a screeching of tires, and the sound of a low-speed collision, out on the street. About a dozen cars have rolled quietly to a stop, and some have been rear-ended by others that are still functioning. The McDonald's has gone dark. Television technicians are cursing inside their mobile units. Police officers and lawyers are pounding their walkie-talkies and cellphones against their hands.

"Pardon me," Randy says to the Dwarves, "but would you gentlemen like to share anything with me?"

"We just took out the whole building," says one of the Dwarves.

"Took it out, in what sense?"

"Nailed it with a big electromagnetic pulse. Fried every chip within range.

"So it's a scorched-earth kind of deal? Go ahead and confiscate that gear, you damn Feds, it's all worthless junk now?"

"Yeah."

"Well, it certainly worked on those cars," Randy says, "and it definitely worked on this piece of junk that used to be my computer."

"Don't worry--it has no effect on hard drives," the Dwarf says, "so all of your files are intact."

"I know you are expecting me to take that as good news," Randy says.

Chapter 77 BUDDHA

A car is coming. The engine noise is expensively muffled, but it sounds like a diesel. Goto Dengo is awake, waiting for it, and so is the rest of the camp. No one stirs at Bundok during the day anymore, except for the radio men and those manning the anti aircraft guns. They have not been told that MacArthur is on Luzon, but they all sense The General's presence. The American planes rip across the sky all day long, glittering and proud, like starships from a distant future that none of them will ever see, and the earth rings like a bell from the impacts of distant naval guns. The shipments have become smaller but more frequent: one or two broken-down lorries every night, their rear bumpers practically scraping the road under crippling burdens of gold.

Lieutenant Mori has placed anther machine gun at the front gate, concealed in the foliage, just in case some Americans happen to blunder up this road in a jeep. Somewhere out there in the dark, the barrel of that weapon is tracking this car as it jounces up the road. The men know every dip and rise in that road, and can tell where the vehicles are by listening for the scrape of their undercarriages against the hardpan, a signature pattern of metallic dots and dashes.

The car's headlamps are off, of course, and the guards at the gate dare not shine bright lights around. One of them risks opening up a kerosene lantern, and aims its beam at the visitor. A silver Mercedes-Benz hood ornament springs forth from the blackness, supported by a chrome-plated radiator grille. The beam of the lantern fondles the car's black fenders, its sweeping silver exhaust pipes, its running boards, clotted with the meat of young coconuts--it must have sideswiped a pile on its way up here. In the driver's side window is the face of a Nipponese man in his forties, so haggard and tired he looks as though he is about to burst into tears. But he is just a driver. Next to him is a sergeant with a sawed-off shotgun, Nipponese rifles being generally too long to wield in the front seat of a luxury car. Behind them, a drawn curtain conceals whatever, or whoever, is in the backseat.

"Open!" demands the guard, and the driver reaches up behind his head and parts the curtain. The lantern beam falls through the opening and bounces back sharply from a pale face in the back seat. Several of the soldiers shout. Goto Dengo steps back, rattled, then moves in for a better look.

The man in the backseat has a very large head. But the strange thing about him is that his skin is a rich yellow color--not the normal Asian yellow--and it glitters. He is wearing a peculiar, pointed hat, and he has a calm smile on his face--an expression the likes of which Goto Dengo has not seen since the war began.

More lantern beams come on, the ring of soldiers and officers closes in on the Mercedes. Someone pulls the rear door open and then jumps back as if he has burned his hand on it.

The passenger is sitting crosslegged on the backseat, which has been crushed into a broad V beneath his weight.

It is a solid gold Buddha, looted from somewhere else in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, coming to meditate in serene darkness atop the hoard of Golgotha.

It turns out to be small enough to fit through the entrance, but too big to go in one of the little railway cars, and so the strongest Filipino men must spend the next hours shoving it down the tunnel one inch at a tame.