“Why the hell would you use satchel charges?” John demanded. He had long gotten over the fact that Richard was a draft dodger. But he hated it when Richard strayed into topics of which Richard knew nothing and John had personal experience.
“I don’t know, John; I’m just trying to think of a reason why the building blew up. Because the building is gone. It is destroyed.”
“A satchel charge wouldn’t be powerful enough to bring down a multistory building.”
“Okay, well, maybe it was a gas explosion then, but it was set off as a result of the gun battle.”
“Maybe it had nothing to do with Zula at all!” John protested.
“But John, the thing is—as Corvallis here can explain much better than I—at the same time that this gun battle and explosion took place, the Troll dropped off the Internet. And hasn’t come back since.”
The back of Corvallis’s neck turned red. They drove past Peter’s loft. Everyone observed silence for a while. According to Zula’s note, a man—Wallace—had died in there.
Only a couple of minutes later, they turned off Airport Way into the frontage road that led to the FBO.
Considering the net worth of its clientele, one might have expected a glitzier place. But it was just a boxy two-story office building that faced the frontage road—a public thoroughfare—on one end and the restricted zone of the airport tarmac on the other. The airfield’s tall cyclone fence ran right up to one wall and then continued on the other side. As they pulled off the road, they entered a parking lot with only a few cars scattered about; at its opposite end this was terminated by the fence, or rather by a large rolling gate set into it. Corvallis pulled up to it and stopped. Richard clambered out of the car. As soon as the personnel inside recognized his face, they hit the button that caused the gate to trundle open. Richard waved Corvallis forward, and he drove onto the tarmac and directly to a bizjet that was parked no more than fifty feet away. Richard followed on foot and greeted the pilot by name as he emerged from the cockpit and descended the stairway. Corvallis parked at a respectful distance from the plane’s landing gear and then popped the Prius’s hatchback, and the men formed a bucket brigade to move the luggage up into the plane’s cargo hold. Richard was more than normally aware of these details since he knew that two weeks earlier Zula had passed through the same gate with the Russians.
The pilot, as usual, was ready to go, but they were still waiting for the assistant with the visas. He invited them to come aboard and make themselves comfortable; the flight attendant had brought in some sushi. John, for whom this sort of travel was still novel, took him up on the invitation. Richard strolled back toward the FBO, thinking he might get a cup of decaf and grab a newspaper. The airport-facing end of the building was a lounge, clean and reasonably well appointed but not flagrantly luxurious. At any time of the day or night, one might see a few people, individuals or small groups, sitting there checking their email and waiting for planes. At this particular moment there was only one other person there, an Asian woman in her twenties, short hair, dressed in jeans and sort of a nice jackety getup that made the jeans look slightly more serious. She had been reading a novel and drinking tea. Richard went over to the self-serve latte machine and began pressing buttons. He was keeping one eye out the window, watching for the taxi carrying the assistant fresh in from San Francisco with the visas.
“Mr. Forthrast?”
The words had been spoken with an English accent. Richard turned around, surprised, to see that it was the Asian woman. She was standing about ten feet away in a somewhat prim attitude, wrists crossed in front of her to hold the novel as a shield in front of her pelvis: Sorry, I know this is a bit awkward.
“The same.” Richard could read the signs well enough: this was either a hard-core T’Rain player who wanted to rap with him about the game, or someone who wanted a job at Corporation 9592. He dealt with both types all the time, pleasantly.
“Don’t go to China.”
He had been watching the foam dribble from the latte machine, but now his head spun around to fix on her. She looked apologetic. But quite firm.
“How the hell do you know where I’m going?”
“Zula isn’t there,” the woman said. “It’s a dead end.”
“How would you know any of this?”
“I was there,” the woman said.
IN RETROSPECT OLIVIA had never done more or traveled farther to achieve so little as in the past ten days.