Cryptonomicon

Randy and Avi look into their cups. A weirdly glittering layer of scum is floating atop their coffee.

"It is gold," Furudenendu explains. Both of the Gotos laugh. "During the eighties, when Nippon had so much money, this was the fashion: coffee with gold dust. Now it is out of fashion. Too ostentatious. But you go ahead and drink."

Randy and Avi do--a bit nervously. The gold dust coats their tongues, then washes away down their throats.

"Tell me what you think," Goto Dengo demands.

"It's stupid," Randy says.

"Yes." Goto Dengo nods solemnly. "It is stupid. So tell me, then: why do you want to dig up more of it?"

"We're businessmen," Avi says. "We make money. Gold is worth money."

"Gold is the corpse of value," says Goto Dengo.

"I don't understand."

"If you want to understand, look out the window!" says the patriarch, and sweeps his cane around in an arc that encompasses half of Tokyo. "Fifty years ago, it was flames. Now it is lights! Do you understand? The leaders of Nippon were stupid. They took all of the gold out of Tokyo and buried it in holes in the ground in the Philippines! Because they thought that The General would march into Tokyo and steal it. But The General didn't care about the gold. He understood that the real gold is here--" he points to his head "--in the intelligence of the people, and here--" he holds out his hands "--in the work that they do. Getting rid of our gold was the best thing that ever happened to Nippon. It made us rich. Receiving that gold was the worst thing that happened to the Philippines. It made them poor."

"Then let's get it out of the Philippines," Avi says, "so that they too can have the opportunity to become rich."

"Ah! Now you are making sense," says Goto Dengo. "You are going to take the gold out and dump it into the ocean, then?"

"No," Avi says, with a nervous chuckle.

Goto Dengo raises his eyebrows. "Oh. So, you wish to become rich as part of the bargain?"

At this point Avi does something that Randy's never seen him do, or even come close to doing, before: he gets pissed off. He doesn't flip the table over, or raise his voice. But his face turns red, the muscles of his head bulge as he clenches his teeth together, and he breathes heavily through his nose for a while. The Gotos both seem to be rather impressed by this, and so no one says anything for a long time, giving Avi a chance to regain his cool. It seems as though Avi can't bring words forth, and so finally he takes his wallet out of his pocket and flips through it until he's found a black-and-white photograph, which he pulls from its transparent sleeve and hands across to Goto Dengo. It's a family portrait: father, mother, four kids, all with a mid-twentieth century, Middle-European look about them. "My great-uncle," Avi says, "and his family. Warsaw, 1937. His teeth are down in that hole. You buried my uncle's teeth!"

Goto Dengo looks up into Avi's eyes, neither angry nor defensive. Just sad. And this seems to have an effect on Avi, who softens, exhales finally, breaks eye contact.

"I know you probably had no choice," Avi says. "But that's what you did. I never knew him, or any of my other relatives who died in the Shoah. But I would gladly dump every ounce of that gold into the ocean, just to give them a decent burial. That's what I'll do if you make it a condition. But what I was really planning on doing was using it to make sure that nothing of the kind ever happens again."

Goto Dengo ponders this for a while, looking stonefaced out over the lights of Tokyo. Then he unhooks his cane from the edge of the table, jams it into the floor, and shoves himself to his feet. He turns towards Avi, straightens his posture, and then bows. It's the deepest bow Randy's ever seen. Eventually he straightens up and retakes his seat.

The tension has been broken. Everyone's relaxed, not to say exhausted.

"General Wing is very close to finding Golgotha," Randy says, after a decent interval has ticked by. "It's him or us."

"It's us, then," says Goto Dengo.

Chapter 96 R.I.P.