Reamde

BUT AS IT turned out, when they reached Richard’s condo, they went in opposite directions to start the coffeemaker, use the toilet, check email, make phone calls. By the time Richard was ready to talk again, John was asleep on the sofa, and by the time John had awakened from his nap, Richard had conked out on his bed. Later, both awake at the same time, they made sandwiches and looked out the window at the sun setting over the Olympics; the clouds were still heavy, but the red light was streaming in beneath them as if China itself were lurking just a few miles offshore, glowing red like a vast forge. Richard could not get out of his mind that they would soon be chasing that red light westward, and John did not seem talkative either. It was morning there now. Nolan, ensconced in his place in Vancouver, was sending emails, making phone calls, pulling strings, making arrangements for translators and fixers to meet the Forthrasts at the Xiamen airport, trying to get some idea of what the PSB there had been doing. The situation was impossibly hard to read. Was the PSB even aware of the existence of Zula’s note? Perhaps it had been leaked to Richard by some random plumber who wanted to do a good deed and not be identified. Or perhaps the PSB had known about it all along and had dangled it in front of Richard as a lure to bring him to Xiamen for interrogation. Or perhaps they had meant to keep it secret, but some leaker within the PSB had taken it upon himself to shoot Richard a copy. Nolan vacillated between urging Richard not to set foot in China at all and helping him get there as quickly as possible. Richard felt no qualms whatsoever; a member of his family was in trouble there and he had to go.

Corvallis had been tracking the assistant’s flight up from SFO. He showed up at the condo and helped carry John’s bag down to his Prius, which was waiting in the pickup/drop-off lane in front of the building. Richard and John ended up cramming themselves into the backseat together so that they could talk on the way down to Boeing Field.

He really didn’t want to talk about this, but he owed it to John to give him the information before they got on a plane to China.

“There were two separate incidents that we know about,” Richard said. “They seem to have happened a couple of hours apart. Incident number 2 is better documented: a suicide bomber blew himself up at a security checkpoint outside an international conference. A couple of Chinese cops got killed; there were injuries from shrapnel and flying glass.”

“How is this connected to Zula?” John asked.

“We have no idea. But incident number 1 is murkier and maybe more relevant. An apartment building blew up not far from downtown. It was put down to a gas explosion. That’s the official story. But Nolan has got some sources in Xiamen, sources we may be meeting tomorrow, who have been asking around, and word on the street is that the explosion happened in the middle of a gun battle that took place on the building’s upper floors.”

Silence for a while. Richard, who had been through all of this before, knew what John was thinking: he was in denial, trying to think of reasons why this had nothing to do with Zula.

“Now,” Richard continued, speaking as gently as he could, “we have learned from Zula’s note that she was with these Russians who had come into the country illegally and who were armed. We know that they were looking for the Troll.”

“The hackers who created the virus,” John translated.

“Yeah. If they succeeded in tracking down those hackers, then this Ivanov character might have been crazy enough to go in shooting. Who knows, maybe they even used grenades or satchel charges.”

“Why the hell would you use satchel charges?” John demanded. He had long gotten over the fact that Richard was a draft dodger. But he hated it when Richard strayed into topics of which Richard knew nothing and John had personal experience.

“I don’t know, John; I’m just trying to think of a reason why the building blew up. Because the building is gone. It is destroyed.”

“A satchel charge wouldn’t be powerful enough to bring down a multistory building.”

“Okay, well, maybe it was a gas explosion then, but it was set off as a result of the gun battle.”

“Maybe it had nothing to do with Zula at all!” John protested.

“But John, the thing is—as Corvallis here can explain much better than I—at the same time that this gun battle and explosion took place, the Troll dropped off the Internet. And hasn’t come back since.”

The back of Corvallis’s neck turned red. They drove past Peter’s loft. Everyone observed silence for a while. According to Zula’s note, a man—Wallace—had died in there.

Only a couple of minutes later, they turned off Airport Way into the frontage road that led to the FBO.