Reamde

“All I know is, I’ve been sitting on my ass for close to twenty-four hours,” said Richard, now sounding as bad as Csongor felt. “Thinking, hoping, you guys would know where Zula is. Now it’s something like four, five in the morning, I’m at the end of my tether, we have come up with nothing very useful. And some asshole tourist is knocking on my door, probably wanting to empty his holding tank or get directions to the geocaching site. So I’m going to break off for a little.”

And indeed Csongor now noticed that the clouds were rushing up past them and the city of Carthinias growing larger and larger as they plummeted toward it. Presently they came to a soft landing exactly where they had started, and Egdod shrank to human size.

“The money?” Marlon asked. “Not for me—for my friends in China.”

“Clover will see about making the da G shou whole,” Richard said, “at competitive rates. Good luck getting the money into China.” As he spoke, it was possible to hear a doorbell ringing in the background. The sound radiated incongruously over downtown Carthinias.

RICHARD STRIPPED OFF his headset and threw the keyboard off his lap, leaving Egdod mute and motionless for the time being. He reached down between his knees and found the pee bucket with his hand, then moved it well out of the way so he wouldn’t kick it over. He stood up slowly, partly because his body had stiffened up and partly because he didn’t want all the blood to rush out of his brain at once. He checked the time: 4:42 A.M. Who the hell was ringing his doorbell? In addition to which they had been pounding the hell out of every door and window they could find for the last couple of minutes. All the signs pointed to some sort of minor emergency: drunken teenaged mountain bikers who had flipped over their handlebars, or campers chased out of their tents by bears, or an RV gone off the road. It happened a few times a year, though rarely so early in the season.

He shambled out of the tavern and into the lobby, moving awkwardly, trying to make out if all of that had been worth it. From Zula’s paper towel note he had already known the first part of the story, and from British Spy Chick he’d learned some of the last bit. So all that he’d gained from nearly twenty-four hours’ solid game playing was a picture of some asshole stealing Peter’s rifle, more detail about what had happened in that apartment building in Xiamen, and a very large quantity of Indigold.

Overall, he decided that it had been worth it. He knew a great deal more now of how Zula had comported herself during the apartment building showdown and in the hours afterward, and all of it made him proud and would make the rest of the family proud when it went up on the Facebook page and when, in future years, they retold the story at the re-u. And that was all true whether Zula was alive or, as seemed likely, dead.

“All right already,” he shouted. He approached the main entrance and hit a switch that turned on the lights in the driveway.

Two men were standing there, sort of wrapped around each other. They looked like backpackers. One of them, a burly middle-aged man, was supporting a taller fellow who was all bundled up in warm clothes with a hood pulled up over his head. The latter’s leg was encased, from the knee down, in a splint that had been improvised from tree branches, duct tape, and climbing rope. His head was bowed as if he were only semiconscious or perhaps doubled over in pain.

Nothing Richard hadn’t seen before. He unlocked the front door and pulled it open.

“Thank God you’re here, Mr. Forthrast!” the man exclaimed, very loudly, as if he wished to be heard by someone else—someone who was not standing directly in front of him.

The lights went out.

The injured man, who until this moment had been draped over his comrade’s shoulders, stood up straight and took his full weight evenly on both feet.

Richard by now knew that something funny was going on but was too fuzzy-headed from sleep deprivation and T’Rain playing to do anything other than watch it play out before him like a cut scene in a video game. The tall man reached up and stripped the hood away from his face. But Richard could not see much of him because of the darkness.

“Good morning, Richard,” he said. His voice sounded like that of a black man, but his accent told that he was not from around here. His companion had unzipped his jacket and pulled something out. Richard heard the sound of a round being chambered into a semiautomatic pistol. This man backed up a pace and aimed it at Richard’s face. Richard flinched. In all the time he had spent messing around with guns, he’d never had one aimed at him before.

“You’d be Jones?” Richard said.

“That I would. May we come inside? I’ve been tracking your website—the one that keeps asking whether anyone has seen Zula—and I’ve come to give you news and claim the reward.”

“Is she alive?”

“Not only is she alive, Richard, but you have the power to keep her that way.”