Reamde

CSONGOR DIDN’T HAVE the faintest idea how to go about making contact with a T’Rain money-laundering specialist, but he supposed that the direct approach couldn’t hurt. He began generating some appropriate Google queries and soon enough began to get a sense for the correct buzzwords and search terms.

The problem turned out to be that none of these people had websites per se. They were post-web and post-email. You got in touch with them by catching up with their toons in T’Rain.

So Csongor began downloading the Linux version of T’Rain to this computer; and while that was going on, he began reading up on the game, trying to learn some of the basics so that he would not be utterly helpless when he entered the world.

The download process was a very slick one that had its own theme music, which blasted out of the machine’s speakers for a few moments before Csongor figured out how to turn down the volume. Marlon noticed it. “Are you going in?” he asked. He sounded a bit uneasy.

“To find moneychangers.”

“But you don’t have a toon.”

“That is true, Marlon.”

“You’ll have to start a new one. That’s not going to work. He’ll just get killed over and over again.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“My homeboys and I used to make our living selling toons to guys like you.”

“They weren’t like me.”

“Anyway, I’ll lend you one for free.”

“WE HAVE VERY probably identified Csongor,” came the voice of Uncle Meng through Olivia’s phone, with no preliminary helloing or chitchat about the weather. “Your email was helpful.” For Olivia, following their earlier conversation, had sent Uncle Meng an email describing the contents of Zula’s paper towel codex.

Nothing then for a few moments. An aid truck, lights flashing, was trying to force its way through the traffic jam, laying on its horn and obliging drivers to creep aside.

“Everything all right?” Uncle Meng asked.

“Fine. I’m on a freeway traveling much more slowly than walking pace.” She had been on the road for half an hour and had not even passed out of the city limits of Seattle. “What did you find?”

“Csongor Takács, twenty-five years old, freelance Internet security consultant and sysadmin, based out of Budapest. Known connections to organized crime figures. Has not logged on to any of his usual servers, Facebook, et cetera, in three weeks.”

Olivia probably should have been thinking about something else, but she was wondering whether she should call Richard. For the one detail she couldn’t get out of her head was that this Csongor had been doing Google searches on Zula’s name. He knew who she was. But he didn’t know where she was. Was it reading too much into a Google search to say that he was worried about her?

That he was, in other words, a good guy?

“Where does this get us?” she asked.

“Like all the other intelligence concerning the Russians, it gets us nowhere,” Uncle Meng said. Not harshly. Sounding a bit regretful. “It is interesting background material, helping explain the events leading up to Jones’s flight from Xiamen. But the nature of Csongor’s Google searches tells us that—”

“He’s as in the dark as we are,” Olivia said. “Please do let me know if that changes.”

“Oh, I most certainly shall,” said Uncle Meng, and rang off as abruptly as he had started the conversation.

Olivia chewed on her thumbnail for perhaps thirty seconds, wondering if she ought to just pull over and run this investigation from the shoulder of the road for a while. But there was nothing she could do about the traffic. She picked up her phone, navigated to the “Recent Calls” list, and punched in Richard Forthrast’s number.

It rang a few times. But then finally his voice came on the line. “British spy chick,” he said.

“Is that how you think of me?”

“Can you give me a better description?”

“You didn’t like my fake name?”

“Already forgot it. You’re in my phone directory as British Spy Chick.”

“I was thinking of you,” she said, “and thought I should check in. How are you and your brothers doing?”

He laughed. “We were about to kill each other, so I put them on a plane to Bourne’s Ford this morning.”

“Ah. It sounds charming.” Olivia heard herself dribbling out meaningless words, trying to make a decision as to what she should or shouldn’t tell Richard.

“The Troll is logged on,” he announced.

“He is!?”

“And he’s on the move. And I’m tracking him. Which means I’m busy. I want you to call this number”—he rattled off a number with a 206 area code—“and talk to Corvallis and get the details.”

“Which details are those?” she asked distractedly, trying to impress the number into her memory.

“The Troll’s IP address,” Richard said. “So you can track him. He’s in the Philippines. With your resources you can probably get his exact coordinates and hit him with a drone attack, or something.”

“No comment on that.”

“But don’t,” Richard urged her, “because I want to get some information out of him first. After that, you can hit him with all the Hellfire missiles you want.”

She didn’t know what to say. Was having trouble with Richard’s sense of humor.