Reamde

She emerged from the bathroom to find Wallace sitting rigidly in his chair, quite pale, mostly just listening, almost as if the phone had been shoved up his arse. Peter was pounding away furiously on his laptop. The T’Rain game had vanished from the screen of the computer that Wallace had been using and from Zula’s as well. In its place was a message letting them know that their Internet connection had been lost.

She smelled cigarette smoke.

No one was smoking.

“Tigmaster’s down too,” Peter said, “and all the other Wi-Fi networks that I can reach from here are password protected.”

“Who’s smoking?” she asked.

“Yes, sir,” Wallace finally said into his phone. “I’m doing it now. I’m doing it now. No. No, sir. Only three of us.”

He had gotten to his feet and was lurching toward Peter and Zula. He came very close, as if he couldn’t see them and was about to walk right through them. Then he stopped himself awkwardly. He took the phone away from his head long enough for them to hear shouting coming from its earpiece. Then he put it briefly to his head again. “I’m doing it now. I’m putting you on speakerphone now, sir.”

He pressed a button on the telephone and then laid it on his outstretched palm.

“Good morning!” said a voice. “Ivanov speaking.” He was somewhere noisy: behind his voice was a whining roar. The pitch changed. He was calling from an airplane. A jet. “Ah, I see you now!”

“You … see us, sir?” Wallace asked.

“Your buildink. The buildink of Peter. Out window. Just like in Google Maps.”

Silence.

“I am flyink over you now!” Ivanov shouted, amused, rather than annoyed, at their slowness.

A plane flew low over the building. Planes flew low over the building all the time. They were on the landing path for Boeing Field.

“Soon I will be there for discussion of problem,” Ivanov continued. “Until then, you stay on line. Do not break connection. I have associates on street around your place.”

Ivanov said this as if the associates were there as a favor, to be at their service. Peter edged toward a window, looked down, focused on something, and got a stricken look.

Meanwhile another voice was speaking in Russian to Ivanov. Someone on the plane.

“Fuck!” Wallace mouthed, and turned his head away as if the phone were burning his eyes with arc light.

“What?” Zula asked.

“I have correction,” said Ivanov. “Associates are inside buildink. Not just in streets around. Very hard workers—enterprising. Wi-Fi is cut. Phone is cut. Stay calm. We are landink now. Be there in a few minutes.”

“Who the fuck is this person on the phone!?” Peter finally shouted.

“Mr. Ivanov and, if I’m not mistaken, Mr. Sokolov,” said Wallace.

“Yes, Sokolov is with me!” said Ivanov. “You have good hearink.”

“Flying over the building—from where?” Peter demanded.

“Toronto,” Wallace said.

“How—what—?—!”

“I gather,” Wallace said, “that while we were playing T’Rain, Mr. Ivanov chartered a flight from Toronto to Boeing Field.”

Peter stared out the window, watched a corporate jet—Ivanov’s?—landing.

“Google Maps? He knows my name?”

“Yes, Peter!” said Ivanov on the speakerphone.

“You might recall,” said Wallace, “that when I arrived, the first thing I did was to send an email message using the Tigmaster access point.”

“You lied to me, Wallace!” said Ivanov.

“I lied to Mr. Ivanov,” Wallace confirmed. “I told him that I was delayed in south-central British Columbia by car trouble and that I would email him the file of credit card numbers in a few hours.”

“Csongor was too smart for you!” Ivanov said.

“What the fuck is CHONGOR?” Peter asked.

“Who. Not what. A hacker who handles our affairs. My email message to Mr. Ivanov passed through Csongor’s servers. He noticed that the originating IP address was not, in fact, in British Columbia.”

“Csongor traced the message to this building by looking up the IP address,” Peter said in a dull voice.

Thunking noises from the phone. “We are in car,” said Ivanov, as if this would be a comfort to them.

“How can they already be in a fucking car?!” Peter asked.

“That’s how it is when you travel by private jet.”

“Don’t they have to go through customs?”

“They would have done that in Toronto.”

Peter made up his mind about something, strode across the loft, and pulled a hanging cloth aside to reveal a gun safe standing against the wall. He began to punch a number into its keypad.

“Oh holy shit,” Zula said.

Wallace hit the mute button on his phone. “What is Peter doing?”

“Getting his new toy,” Zula said.

“His snowboard?”

“Assault rifle.”

“I have lost connection to Wallace!” Ivanov said. “Wallace? WALLACE!”

“Peter? PETER!” Wallace shouted.

“Who is there?” Ivanov wanted to know. “I hear female voice sayink holy shit.” Then he switched to Russian.

Peter had got the safe open, revealing the assault rifle in question: the only thing he owned on which he had spent more time shopping than the snowboard. It had every kind of cool dingus hanging off it that money could buy: laser sight, folding bipod, and stuff of which Zula did not know the name.