Cryptonomicon

Root glances up and locks eyes with Shaftoe. He does not seem nervous or guilty. It is a strikingly calm and cool look.

Shaftoe holds his gaze for a long moment. If there were the slightest trace of guilt or nervousness there, he would turn the chaplain in as a German spy. But there isn't--Enoch Root ain't working for the Germans. He ain't working for the Allies either. He's working for a Higher Power. Shaftoe nods imperceptibly, and Root's gaze softens.

"They're all dead, Bobby," he shouts. "Those islanders. The ones you saw on the beach on Guadalcanal."

So thatexplains why Root is so touchy about corpse-looting jokes. "Sorry," Shaftoe says, moving aft so they don't have to scream at each other. "How'd it happen?"

"After we got you back to my cabin, I transmitted a message to my handlers in Brisbane," Root says. "Enciphered it using a special code. Told them I'd picked up one Marine Raider, who looked like he might actually live, and would someone please come round and collect him."

Shaftoe nods. He remembers that he'd heard lots of dots and dashes, but he had been out of whack with fevers and morphine and whatever home remedies Root had pulled out of his cigar box.

"Well, they responded," Root went on, "and said 'We can't go there, but would you please take him to such-and-such place and rendezvous with some other Marine Raiders.' Which, as you'll recall, is what we did."

"Yeah," Shaftoe says.

"So far so good. But when I got back to the cabin after handing you over, the Nipponese had been through. Killed every islander they could find. Burned the cabin. Burned everything. Set booby traps around the place that nearly killed me. I just barely got out of the damn place alive."

Shaftoe nods, as only a guy who's seen the Nips in action can nod.

"Well they evacuated me to Brisbane where I started making a stink about codes. That's the only way they could have found me--obviously our codes had been broken. And after I'd made enough of a stink, someone apparently said, 'You're British, you're a priest, you're a medical doctor, you can handle a rifle, you know Morse code, and most importantly of all, you're a fucking pain in the ass--so off you go!" And next thing I know, I'm in that meat locker in Algiers."

Shaftoe glances away and nods. Root seems to get the message, which is that Shaftoe doesn't know anything more than he does.

Eventually, Enoch Root wraps the bundle up again, just like it was before. But he doesn't put it back in the attache case. He stuffs it into Gerald Hott's wetsuit.

Later they emerge from the clouds again, close to a moonlit port, and dip down very close to the ocean, going so slow that even Shaftoe, who knows nothing about planes, senses they are about to stall. They open the side door of the Dakota and, one-two-three-NOW, throw the body of PFC Gerald Hott out into the ocean. He makes what would be a big splash in the Oconomowoc town pool, but in the ocean it doesn't come to much.

An hour or so later they land the same Gooney Bird on an airstrip in the midst of a stunning aerial bombardment. They abandon the Skytrain at the end of the airstrip, next to the other C-47, and run through darkness, following the lead of the British pilots. Then they go down a stairway and are underground--in a bomb shelter, to be precise. They can feel the bombs now but can't hear them.

"Welcome to Malta," someone says. Shaftoe looks around and sees that he is surrounded by men in British and American uniforms. The Americans are familiar--it's the Marine Raider squad from Algiers, flown in on that other Dakota. The Brits are unfamiliar, and Shaftoe pegs them as the SAS men that those fellows in Washington were telling him about. The only thing they all have in common is that each man, somewhere on his uniform, is wearing the number 2702.

Chapter 18 NON-DISCLOSURE

Avi shows up on time, idling his fairly good, but not disgustingly ostentatious, Nipponese sports car gingerly up the steep road, which has crazed into a loose mosaic of asphalt flagstones.

Randy watches from the second-floor deck, staring fifty feet almost straight down through the sunroof. Avi is clad in the trousers of a good tropical-weight business suit, a tailored white Sea Island cotton shirt, dark ski goggles, and a wide-brimmed canvas hat.

The house is a tall, isolated structure rising out of the middle of a California grassland that slopes up from the Pacific, a few kilometers away. Chilly air climbs up the slope, rising and falling in slow surges, like surf on a beach. When Avi gets out of his car the first thing he does is pull on his suit-jacket.