“Another one of your internal acronyms?”
“A whole department. When you go into the world—which you never do—but when you go, for example, to the hut of Galdoromin the Hermit, at the End of the Fell Path, and get past his two-headed wolf and go inside and look around, all that shit hanging on the walls was produced by COBS.” Richard decided not to share the fact that the decor of Galdoromin’s hut had been inspired by a T.G.I. Friday’s in Issaquah. “Top-level design happens in Seattle, but the detailed modeling of the actual stuff all happened in China. They did a great job of it too.”
Don Donald appeared to be thinking about it. Richard tried shutting up for a change. He drained his tankard and stepped out to the garderobe. Then, back with an idea: “I was sleeping on the plane and a line came into my head: ‘We’ve all been made fools of!’ Kind of reflected the whole way I felt about the Wor. But later I was thinking, Why not turn it around and put it into the mouths of those people we find most annoying?”
D-squared, sitting in profile to Richard, one elbow on the table cradling his pipe, turned to meet his eye. The pipe, supported by the hand, remained motionless, making it look as though cartoon character physics was in effect. “Make them out to be the dupes?”
“Yes, erect some kind of backstory where they had been seduced into this massive act of betrayal by fast talkers of some stripe who later turned out to be not what they seemed.”
“What about the blue hair?”
“We might have to finesse that a little, but the gist of it is that the people who signed up for this rebellion were told to wear gaudy clothes and adornments as a badge, so that they would know who was in on the conspiracy.”
“ ‘We’ve all been made fools of!’ ” the Don repeated. “Seems almost like sour grapes, doesn’t it, when you put it into the mouths of people you’re not especially fond of.”
“Again. Finesse.”
“What sorts of emergency powers might you be willing to put in the hands of the—it pains me, Richard, to hear these words coming from my own lips—Earthtone Coalition?”
“A full answer could get obnoxiously technical. The game stats are very complicated. So, if we wanted to be sneaky about it, there are all sorts of ways we could put our thumb on the scale, as you said earlier. Or we could just be obvious about it and invoke some new deity or previously unknown deep feature of the world’s history.”
“Which would need to be written.”
“Which would need to be written.”
Day 4
A side effect of being chained in the powder room was being out of the loop. Zula had no idea what was going on. She ate her military rations and slept surprisingly well and woke up in good spirits. Not that her situation had improved. But at least she had tried something. She could hear people coming and going via the elevators. Since she had no windows, no phone, and no watch, she couldn’t tell what time it was.
She had managed to sneak a ballpoint pen into her pocket yesterday, so she wrote a letter to her family on paper towels, rolled it up, and stuffed it into the drainpipe she had disconnected yesterday. Maybe some plumber would see it when he came to fix the drain, and bring it to the attention of a supervisor, and eventually it would make its way to someone who could read English. She hoped so. She was proud of that letter. It was not devoid of humor.
Sokolov knocked once, then entered the ladies’ room and bid her good morning. He removed the handcuff from her ankle and escorted her out. “Leaving forever,” he said, “bring your stuff.”
They took the elevator to the ground floor and walked out the main entrance of the office building onto the front drive, a sweeping horseshoe partially covered by an awning, where a van was waiting for them with its engine idling and its rear doors splayed open. Standing behind it were four of the security consultants, wearing stupid hats, variously smoking or fussing with a stack of plastic coolers and rod-and-reel cases that had been packed in the back. As was invariably the case, they were being observed by a thousand Chinese people and an unknowable number of security cameras. But all the people doing tai chi in the shade of the trees, the uniformed schoolgirls streaming out of the ferry terminals, the taxi drivers killing time in the adjoining square, the paired PSB officers, the carters, the construction workers showing up to work on the skyscraper, all these people just looked at the scene around the van for a few seconds and reckoned that it was a bunch of crazy foreign visitors going fishing.
Peter and Csongor were in the backseat. Qian Yuxia was behind the wheel. Next to her, riding shotgun, was Ivanov, talking to Yuxia in the charming style of which he had exhibited flashes during the interview in Peter’s loft in Seattle. They were talking about gaoshan cha, high mountain tea, and Ivanov’s plan to distribute it in Russia, where he was certain it would be enormously successful.
Zula was strongly encouraged to enter the van by its side door and sit in the back between Peter and Csongor. As she climbed in Yuxia greeted her with, “Good morning, girlfriend, you ready to catch some lunkers?” and Zula nodded back at her, wondering if there was anything she could say at this moment that would persuade Yuxia to put the van in gear and shove the gas pedal all the way to the floor. That would lead to a situation where they were far away from the security consultants but Ivanov would still be in the van with them. It seemed almost inconceivable that he wasn’t carrying a weapon of some kind. So what would it boot them unless Yuxia had the presence of mind to drive straight to a Public Security Bureau station and crash its front gates?
“Lots to talk about,” Peter remarked, fixing her with a dirty look.