“How do you figure?”
“If he expected to survive this, he’d need to get rid of us to cover his tracks. But if he’s expecting to end up dead, then he’s not thinking that far ahead.”
“Maybe we can jump clear before the blast?”
“Why not? We don’t matter except insofar as we can help him find the Troll.”
“Correction. He believes we can help him find the Troll.”
“Well,” Zula said, “that is your department.”
“Yeah. And I’m telling you that it is pretty much hopeless unless we can somehow get inside that big ISP and look at their logs. Which would be difficult even in Seattle. For a bunch of Westerners to attempt that in China? Are you kidding me?” A trace of a smile came onto his face. “This is why I never wanted to work in a technology company.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is a classic Dilbert situation where the technical objectives are being set by management who are technically clueless and driven by these, I don’t know, inscrutable motives.”
“Then we just need to scrutinize them harder. Do what those guys in the high-tech companies do.”
“Which is what? Because that’s your department.”
“Set expectations. Look busy. File progress reports.”
“And when they lose patience?”
“How should I know?” Zula said. “I’m not claiming I know the answer.”
ANOTHER PLANE TAXIED alongside them and cut its engines. A few people came out of it, and there was more talking and smoking. Their plane began to flinch as heavy objects were loaded into its cargo space.
The whole aircraft shifted on its suspension as someone put his weight on the front stairway, and they could feel it bobbing slightly as he mounted each step.
He entered the plane. Zula’s instantaneous judgment was that the guy was another of Ivanov’s goons, like the ones who had showed up at Peter’s place in Seattle. This was based entirely on appearance: his size, build, and extremely close-cropped copper-blond hair, his coat—dark green canvas, hanging to midthigh, with a vaguely military cut about it, looking like it could conceal just about anything short of a bazooka—and his scuffed black steel-toed boots. As he reached the top of the steps he swung a large shoulder bag down to the deck. It was a somewhat hip bike messenger bag with a broad padded strap meant to go diagonally across the body.
The first thing he wanted to look at was the cockpit, and so all they could see for a few moments was the back of his head, supported by an unusually thick neck.
After he’d gotten his fill of looking at the plane’s control panel, which took a while, he turned to inspect the door of the lavatory. He pushed at it curiously, causing it to accordion open, and then gave it a curious up-and-down look. He had been standing in a somewhat hunched posture, as if afraid he would bang his head on something, and now tilted his head back, opening his mouth to reveal a set of stained, gapped, but structurally rock-solid teeth, and felt above him with one hand, checking the height of the ceiling, verifying that if he straightened his posture the top of his bristly, bullet-shaped head would slam into it. Then he noticed Zula and Peter and turned toward them. His eyes were pale blue and broad set in a wide, bony skull. But his complexion was florid and just a bit toasty. He was surprised, interested, but not at all troubled, to see Zula and Peter looking back at him.
“Hello,” he tried, and Zula understood that English was not his native tongue; but he was trying to find out whether Peter and Zula could communicate that way.
“Hello,” they responded.
“I am Csongor.”
“Csongor the hacker?” Peter inquired.
“Yes,” Csongor answered, amused, or at least bemused, that Peter had been able to identify him in this way. He stepped into the passenger cabin. He and his luggage were too wide to move abreast down the seat-row, so he held the messenger bag out at arm’s length and allowed it to precede him.
“I’m Peter. You’ve apparently heard of me,” said Peter in a tone that was sour, verging on openly hostile.
Csongor, seeming to take the matter very seriously, stepped forward and extended his hand. Peter, incredulous, shook it. Csongor then turned toward Zula and waited for his cue.
“This is Zula,” Peter announced, in a tone of voice suggesting that Csongor really ought to drop dead.
Zula extended her hand. Csongor bent forward and kissed it, not in an arch way, but as if hand kissing were a wholly routine procedure for him. He set his bag down on one of the leather-upholstered seats, carefully, suggesting that it contained something valuable and delicate, such as a laptop. Then he sat down next to it, facing Peter and Zula.
Peter shifted in his seat in a manner just short of writhing that spoke of discomfort with the new seating arrangement. He ended up squarely facing Csongor. Zula could almost smell his tension. He did not like facing people, he was an introvert, it wasn’t his way.
There was a long, awkward moment.
“Who wants to begin?” Zula asked.
Csongor looked at Peter, who apparently didn’t want to begin. So, with a small by your leave sort of gesture, he began to speak in distinctly accented but essentially perfect English. “Yesterday … this thing happened with Wallace’s email. A couple of hours later, I was asked to go to Moscow for a meeting. I went. There was no meeting. Instead I was recommended to get on this plane.” He nodded in the direction of the plane that had parked next to them. “I followed the recommendation. It was full of certain types of people. Now I am here. I know nothing.”
Neither Peter nor Zula said anything in response.
Csongor found this somewhere between funny and irksome. “You said who wants to begin,” he reminded Zula, “not end.”
Still nothing.
Csongor tried, “You guys have a similar story, I guess?”