Reamde

Sokolov wasn’t the least bit worried about what would happen when Ivanov lost that struggle and blew his stack. He was much more worried about what was going on in the boss’s circulatory system in the meantime. For during all their comings and goings today, he had managed to spend a few minutes on some hotel lobby Internet terminals, and he had confirmed that Ivanov was on two varieties of blood pressure medication.

Assuming, of course, that he was still actually taking his pills.

So what really worried Sokolov was that this visible struggle to hold in his fury was driving Ivanov’s blood pressure up to levels normally seen only in deep-sea oil wells. Flaking off more bits of stuff that were going straight to his brain.

If Ivanov dropped dead, how the hell would they get out of this country?

So lost did Sokolov get in these ruminations that he forgot that Ivanov was still alive, still in the room, and still in the middle of a conversation with him.

“Your job,” Ivanov finally said, extremely quietly, “is not to move creatively. There will be no falling back. No improvising.”

“I understand, sir,” Sokolov said, “but it is simply a normal practice to be familiar with the area and to have some kind of backup plan.”

It felt like a reasonable thing to say, but it seemed to disturb Ivanov more deeply than anything Sokolov had done during the entire interview. It was not merely that Ivanov thought a backup plan was unnecessary. He actually thought Sokolov was up to something fishy. Sokolov’s interest in a backup plan made him actively suspicious.

But Sokolov was not above doing some tactical maneuvering, some falling back, even here. He shrugged, as if the backup plan remark had been mere whimsy. “Anyway,” he said, “I got an idea.”

“Yes? What kind of idea?”

Sokolov took a few steps over to the window and looked down toward the waterfront. It was only about seven in the evening and so people were still flooding and surging by the thousands in and out of the ferry terminals’ gates. Ivanov turned to the window as well, tried to see whatever it was that Sokolov was looking at.

“Yes?” Ivanov prompted him, after a few moments.

“I can’t see any just now,” Sokolov said. “They are not that numerous compared to the commuters, the students, and so on.”

“Who are these people you can’t see any of?”

“Fishermen.”

“They would use a different terminal,” Ivanov growled.

“No, I’m not speaking of commercial fishermen. I mean hobbyists. Anglers. I saw a few of them earlier. Just regular Chinese guys. Retirees. They were coming home from a day out fishing, I suppose on one of those little islands out there.” He turned to Ivanov and caught his eye. “They wear funny hats.”

“I have seen them. Coolie hats,” Ivanov said.

“No, not those. The guys I’m talking about wear huge hats made out of light-colored cloth. Big bills sticking out the front to keep the sun off their faces. With skirts hanging down the sides and the back, all the way to the shoulders. Like what an Arab would wear in a sandstorm. The head and face are almost totally hidden. More so if they wear big sunglasses.”

“They sit out in the sun all day,” Ivanov said, getting it. “You can’t hold a parasol while you are fishing.”

“Yes. The other thing about them is that they have these fancy cases to hold their rods.” Sokolov held his hands about a meter apart, indicating the length. “With a bulge at one end to make room for the reel.”

Ivanov’s face relaxed and he began to nod.

“Better yet,” Sokolov said, “each one of them is carrying a little cooler.”

“Perfect,” Ivanov said.

“Everyone ignores these guys.”

“Of course,” Ivanov said, “just like you or I would ignore an old fisherman on a bridge in Moscow.”

“Sometimes you see one all alone,” Sokolov said, “but it’s not unusual for them to travel in a group—they’ll hire one of those boats to take them to their favorite fishing hole.”

“I see.”

“Now. We can’t walk around all day in such costumes without someone figuring out that we’re not Chinese,” Sokolov said. “But we don’t need to. We just need to get from a vehicle into a building, or to walk down a street for half a block, without every fucking Chinese person in a kilometer radius taking phone pictures of us and calling home to Mama.”

“Very good,” Ivanov said. “Very good.”

Sokolov decided not to mention his other observation, which was that the only other category of person who went completely ignored were the beggars who lay down flat on the ground in crowded pedestrian districts.

“We will make a plan,” Ivanov said. “One plan. And it will work.”

There’ll be no more talk of backup plans.

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring in the others,” Ivanov said. “We will discuss, and make preparations for tomorrow.”