The first day of the journey, then, consisted of walking up to the place where the trail terminated at the head of this aborted tunnel project. Jones could have done this much without Richard’s help. Zula had apparently explained that to him already. Richard’s special knowledge of the terrain would come into play tomorrow.
And so it was an easy enough hike that day, and a sort of vacation: a chance to let his mind, unshackled by the Internet, roam wherever it willed. Mostly he thought about the reactions he had been having to the discovery that Zula was still alive. For during the last several days he had, as it were, been trying the idea that she was dead on for size, and trying to get his head around what that meant. Certainly he was no stranger to people he knew dying. He had reached the age where he had to attend a couple of contemporaries’ funerals a year, and even had a special suit and pair of shoes that he kept handy for such events. But all deaths were as different as the persons who had died. Each death meant that a particular set of ideas and perceptions and reactions was gone from the world, apparently forever, and served as a reminder to Richard that one day his ideas and perceptions and reactions would be gone too. It was never good. But it seemed particularly unfair in the case of Zula. If he was now trading his death for hers, well, that was much better overall, and a trade that—as Jones knew perfectly well—he would gladly accept.
But the notion that it might be coming soon brought to the front of his mind a thing that of late he had been pondering, typically while staring out the windows of private jets at the landscape passing beneath him. His religious beliefs were completely undefined. But whether it was the case that his spirit would live on after his body or die with it, he had the nagging sense that, at his age (and especially in his current circumstances), he really ought to be growing more spiritual. For he was certainly closer to being dead than to having been born. Instead of which he was only becoming more connected to the world. He could not even imagine what it would mean to be a whole and conscious being without the smell of cedar in his nostrils. Seeing the color red. Tasting the first swallow of a pint of bitter. Feeling an old pair of jeans as he drew them up over his thighs. Staring out the window of an airplane at forests and fields and mountains. With all of that gone, how could one be alive, conscious, sentient, in any way that was worth a crap?
It was the sort of rumination that on any other day would soon have been cut short by the arrival of an email or a text message, but as he hiked up the valley of the Blue Fork at the head of a column of sweating and muttering jihadists, none of whom especially wanted to talk to him, he had plenty of leisure to consider it. Which seemed to be getting him absolutely nowhere. But he did try to enjoy the smell of the cedars and the blue of the sky while he still had the equipment to do it with.
OLIVIA PROCEEDED WITHOUT incident to a freeway on-ramp. They drove north through a sparse industrial zone that led into the southern outskirts of downtown Seattle. There they joined with I-5, the main north-south freeway, which they took all the way through the city. Half an hour later, after they had passed through another belt of suburbs and entered another, smaller city, she flicked on her turn signal and exited onto an east-going highway of lesser importance that proceeded across an endless series of tidal sloughs on long straight causeways. A range of mountains erupted from the flatlands directly ahead of them. Once it had gotten up onto slightly higher and drier land, the highway diverted south and began to wind to and fro, as if unnerved by the colossal barrier stretched across its path, but after a while it got funneled into a broad valley, clotted with small communities. The valley became narrower, the air colder, the towns smaller, the trees taller, and then it was clear that they were ascending into a mountain pass.
Both of them relaxed. There was no particular reason for this. No reason why, in today’s world, they were safer, more anonymous on a winding highway in the mountains than they were on a freeway in the heart of a major city. But some atavistic part of their brains told them that they had effected some kind of escape. Gotten away with something.
“I don’t fancy your friends,” Olivia said. It was the first thing either one of them had said since Sokolov had climbed into the SUV in front of Igor’s house.
Sokolov ignored it. “How did you know where I was?”
“As long as we’re asking nervous questions, I’ve got one: Did you, or anyone else in that house, happen to say anything out loud when I showed up? Like, ‘Holy shit, that looks like the MI6 agent Olivia?’”
“Of course I did not say such things.”
“Of course not. But the others? Anything such as ‘Who is that Chinese chick in the black SUV?’”
“Nothing; I made this gesture,” Sokolov assured her, showing her the finger-across lips move and the upward glance.
“Well, that might help. A little.”
“Again. How did you know where I was?”
“This morning I was in the Vancouver airport, on my way to Prince George to go looking for Abdallah Jones, when I was made aware that your friend’s house had been placed under surveillance.”
“Because stupid idiot went to apartment of Peter and was seen on video camera.”
“Exactly. And then I was made aware that someone named Sokolov had just made a surprise visit.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. I felt a bit responsible.”
He turned his head to look at her; she kept her eyes dutifully on the road. “How responsible?” he asked.
“The video files were encrypted, you see. No one could open them. Then, because of some things I did this morning, the encryption key was found.”
“Found where?”
“In Peter’s wallet.”
“Peter is dead though?”
“Yes, Peter is dead. Turns out Ivanov shot him in Xiamen. Then Jones shot Ivanov and ran off with Zula.”
“So where is wallet of Peter?”
“Csongor took it to Manila.”
“Csongor is in Manila!?”
“As of a few hours ago, yes, he should be. Along with Yuxia and Marlon.”
“Who is Marlon?”