Reamde

Understanding this much helped break him out of the state of hopeless despair into which he had been plunged by his initial stumblings about. Lottery Discountz was, for a moment, alone and safe on a marble bench in the viewing gallery of a temple where gold was being swallowed, digested, and shat out as worthless manure by a giant mutant beetle. It was safe to be Away from Keyboard for a few minutes.

Csongor got up and paced around to stretch his legs. Yuxia was perched on a chair in a fetal position, sleeping. Marlon was engaged precisely as he had been for a great many hours. But when Csongor circled around behind him to look at his screen, he saw that the “orc chart” had become as ramified as a two-hundred-year-old maple tree. Marlon had mobilized an army. At a glance, Csongor guessed that it couldn’t be less than a thousand strong.

Noting a strange glare coming from one end of the café, Csongor turned to look and realized, after a few moments’ disorientation, that the sun was coming up.

INSPECTOR FOURNIER WAS startled, and perhaps slightly irritated, that Olivia had made the decision to go bombing up the road to Vancouver without even mentioning it to him. She sensed him wishing that Commonwealth immigration policies could be tightened up a bit, so as to make it more difficult for inquisitive Brit spies to jump back and forth between nations. The Friday aspect of this certainly wasn’t helping; presumably Fournier had plans for the evening, even for the whole weekend, and now he was learning that he would be at least nominally obligated to act as this woman’s host.

“Where are you now?” he asked.

“Waiting in line at the border crossing.” The electronic signs were claiming that she’d be through in another ten minutes, which seemed pessimistic. That would put her directly into Vancouver’s outer suburbs; she’d be downtown in an hour. This fact embarrassed her. It had taken maybe fifteen seconds after the end of her first conversation with Fournier to realize that she had to go to Canada now, and she had gone into action without explaining to anyone—not even her FBI hosts—what she was doing. It would take too long for her to explain matters to everyone. She would make phone calls from her car as she was driving, explain it then. But then she had ended up managing matters with Richard and Uncle Meng, Seamus and the mysterious Csongor, and had quite forgotten to call ahead. No wonder Fournier was irked. It was a couple of hours past the normal close of business, he was in the office late, delaying his dinner and thinking about getting into a glass of wine, giving her a courtesy call to let her know what was going on—only to learn that she trying to penetrate his borders at this very moment.

“Listen,” she said, “I just want to be positioned in Vancouver so that I can follow up on this lead at the next opportunity.”

“Truly, it’s not a lead,” he pointed out, “and the next opportunity will be on Monday; for voilà the weekend begins.”

She decided not to press on this for now. “Has anything new been learned?”

“This was a bear hunting party, two guides and three hunters and all the equipment you would expect, packed into an SUV. They departed eleven days ago. They were supposed to be gone for a week. So they are now late by four days and unheard from, disappeared with no trace.”

“The first time we spoke, I thought you said they had been missing for ten days.”

“Perhaps you heard such a thing, but I did not say it. The trouble might have started for them as early as eleven days ago, or as late as four.”

“Because you see the plane I’m looking for would have landed about thirteen days ago.”

“So the dates do not match,” he pointed out.

“But if they landed and holed up somewhere for a couple of days …”

“Where? Why is there no trace of this landing? Of the holing up somewhere?”

Silence. Olivia inched her car forward another length, stopped at the red light. She was next in the queue to cross the border.

What would Jones do? If he found himself stuck north of this imaginary line on the map?

If he had an SUV full of camping equipment?

He had lived in the wilds of Afghanistan for years at a time. Compared to that, a hike down the Cascades would be a piece of cake.

“He’s up there,” she insisted. “If he hasn’t crossed the border already, that is.”

Fournier sighed. “If you suppose he might have crossed the border, why do you not stay to the south of it?”

“Because all I can do is follow his trail,” she said, “and I’m going to pick that up in Canada.”

Silence. She imagined him pulling his glasses off, rubbing tired eyes, thinking of that glass of wine.

The light went green, the car ahead of her glided into another country.

“I must ring off,” she said. “I’m crossing the border.”

”Bienvenue à Canada, Ms. Halifax-Lin,” said Inspector Fournier, and disconnected.