Reamde

Freddie ignored this. “Seamus, you are a living example of the Peter Principle.”

Seamus looked down, mock shocked, toward his own genitalia.

“Not that one,” Freddie said. “Never mind. The point is that you have risen as high as you can get in the hierarchy without having to behave like a responsible manager.”

Seamus was half out of his chair, but Freddie calmed him by holding up one hand. “I will be the first to attest that you are as responsible as any man who ever lived when it comes to those in your command. If I had to go back to being a snake eater, I would want to be your subordinate. But above the level where you are now, you have to be able to justify your actions and your expenditures by supplying documentation, and you have to engage in all sorts of political maneuvers to make sure that the right people see your PowerPoint presentations at the right times. And you are a million miles away from being able to do this in the case of whatever theory you and Olivia have been cooking up. And consequently no one above you in the hierarchy is going to stick his or her neck out by supporting your theory.”

“Even if I were that kind of guy, Freddie, there isn’t time. We need to act now.”

“Give me something,” Freddie said.

“I got nothing to give, Freddie!”

“What you’re asking for right now is a nightmare from my point of view. Handing out fake passports to two random Chinese kids. What are you trying to achieve, Seamus? You want to make these two into American citizens? Put them in the Witness Protection Program?”

“Look,” Seamus said, “I just have to fucking get there. So I can check this out.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

“But these kids are with me, and I can’t just abandon them here.”

“I’m listening.”

“I could get in a taxi and go to the airport now. If they had an ounce of common sense, they would apply for asylum. Now, that would be a nightmare.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m just saying, they’re here, Freddie, and I ain’t sending them back to China. Either they go with me, now, or they camp out on your front yard and request asylum. They are very Internet-savvy.”

Freddie was frozen solid. Beginning to perspire a bit.

“If I wanted to threaten you,” Seamus continued, “I’d hit you where you live.”

“Where do I live?”

“Abdallah Jones killed a bunch of your guys.”

“They were your guys, Seamus.”

“I’m your subordinate. You gave the orders. Let’s call them our guys. Now I know where Jones is. I can get him. But I have this waif problem.”

“Wraith?”

“Waif. Waif. I’m being followed around by Chinese waifs. And one not-so-waiflike Hungarian. Prevents me from getting to Jones. Your personal fault.”

“You’re making this too hard,” Freddie said, after thinking about it for a while. “You just need some way to get them on a plane in Manila, and off the plane Stateside, without them being snatched by Immigration.”

“That would do, for now,” Seamus admitted. “We could work on the details later.”

“It’s too bad we can’t get them on a military flight,” Freddie said.

“How would that help us?”

“It would depart from an airbase here and land at a base in the States. Not that they don’t check papers. But we could finesse it much more easily.”

“Finesse it?”

“For me to get Immigration at a place like Sea-Tac to look the other way while you smuggled a couple of undocumented Chinese into the country, I would have to get a hundred fucking people involved, from several agencies,” Freddie said. “People would drag their feet, raise objections, screw it up.”

“I thought this was what you were good at. PowerPoint presentations. Consensus building.”

“Only when you give me something to work with. And lots of time. But if we could turn it into a military thing, that would be much easier.”

“What does it cost to charter a business jet?”

“How should I know? Do I look like the kind of person who charters business jets?”

“No, but Marlon does.”

“Who’s Marlon?”

Day 20

Once the main party had gone south, the camp was much reduced in number of tents (only two left, not counting Zula’s little one-person shelter) but hugely expanded in its solid waste footprint. Much of what they had brought up here had been carried straight from grocery stores or Walmarts, and during the morning’s last-minute packing frenzy, they had pulled everything out of its sacks and packaging material, which they had simply dropped on the ground. Now the wind was blowing it around, much of it tumbling away until it snagged in shrubs or tree branches. Zula wondered if it was stupid for her to be offended by this desecration of the natural environment, given the larger goal of the jihadists’ mission and the number of people they’d already killed.

Ershut and Jahandar spent much of the afternoon napping. Zula couldn’t tell whether this was in consequence of having awakened early or in the expectation of staying on watch tonight.