Reamde

by Neal Stephenson

  He had the taxi driver take them back to where they’d started, and he slipped the concierge a C-note wad. Then they walked home along the waterfront, giving Sokolov a chance to see how the ferry lines operated and Csongor a chance to wardrive some of the Wi-Fi hotspots in the terminals’ various waiting rooms and snack bars. When Colonel Sanders hove into view, Sokolov called ahead to warn his squad that they were coming, and when they reached the office building, the steel door was already open for them.

  “Home sweet home,” Zula said.

  HOME SWEET HOME looked a bit different. Some chairs—injection molded, bright pink—had been brought up. Peter was ensconced behind a brand-new computer, still reeking with the ammoniacal smell of new electronics. To all appearances, this was connected to the Internet.

  “I worked out a deal with Ivanov,” he explained, after Zula had taken another stand-up sponge bath and grabbed a slice of pizza (for there was a Pizza Hut somewhere within delivery range). “He’s got a sysadmin back in Moscow that he trusts. This machine is connected over a VPN to that guy’s system in Moscow, so he can monitor my use of the Internet and make sure I’m not sending out any distress calls.”

  Zula was divided between thinking that this was a clever solution and finding it weird that Peter would put up with it. And indeed the look on his face was not proud. But he had an explanation ready. “We are totally handcuffed if we don’t have access to Internet,” he pointed out. “We can’t even use Google Maps. I’ve been able to make a lot of progress this way.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, for one thing, I downloaded a copy of the REAMDE executable that someone posted on a security blog,” he said. “And I decompiled it.”

  “How’d that work for you?” she asked. Peter was proud, almost desperately so, of what he’d done, and she felt obligated to let him speak of it.

  “Well, I was afraid that they might have used obfuscated code,” he said, “but they didn’t.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Some compilers will mess with the object code to make it harder to decompile. Whoever created REAMDE didn’t do that. So I was able to get some pretty clean source code files. Then I looked for unusual character sequences in those files and googled them.”

  “You wanted to see if anyone else had gone down the same path before you,” Zula said, “and posted their results.”

  “Exactly. And what I found was a little unexpected. I found a security discussion group where someone had indeed posted some decompiled code that matched what I got. But it wasn’t from REAMDE. It was another, older virus called CALKULATOR that made a little bit of a splash about three years ago.”

  “Okay,” Zula said, “so you’re thinking that the creators of REAMDE recycled some of the source code from CALKULATOR.”

  “They must have. There’s no way this could have happened by accident. And the interesting thing is that the CALKULATOR source code was never found—it’s never been posted.”

  “So it’s not the case,” Zula said, “that the Troll just downloaded the CALKULATOR source files from a server somewhere and then incorporated them into REAMDE.”

  Peter was nodding, and a smile was on his lips. Zula continued: “REAMDE and CALKULATOR were made by the same people.”

  “Or at least people who know each other, who privately exchange files with each other.”

  “So the obvious question then becomes—”

  “What do we know about the creators of CALKULATOR?” Peter said. “Well, it was a far more devastating virus than REAMDE because it infected anyone who used Outlook—whereas REAMDE is endemic to hard-core T’Rain users. For about a week, it was the virus du jour, it made quite a sensation, and there was a big law enforcement effort devoted to tracking down its creators. They weren’t nearly as clever about hiding their tracks as the Troll has been, and so it was eventually traced to a group in Manila.”

  “Hmm. That’s a twist.”

  “Yeah, we’re focusing on Xiamen and suddenly we get this clue in Manila. But here’s the thing. A couple members of the Manila group were caught and prosecuted. But everyone knows that most of those involved were never identified, never caught. And then the other thing is that a lot of Filipinos are ethnic Chinese and still have family ties to China.”

  “So maybe the Troll is a Chinese hacker living in Xiamen,” Zula said, “but he’s got family ties in Manila…”

  “… and that’s how the source code ended up here and got recycled into REAMDE.”

  Zula had been keeping an eye on the safe house as this conversation had proceeded. Csongor was closeted in an office with today’s notes, doing some data entry work on his laptop. Sokolov was in the conference room being debriefed by Ivanov. Two of the security consultants were sleeping, two were playing Xbox, and two were on duty. But all the Russians who were awake were casting occasional glances in their direction. Keeping an eye on the hackers, wondering what they were talking about. Perhaps guessing from their body language and the expressions on their faces that they were focused on the problem at hand and making some progress.

  And that, as she kept having to remind herself, was the only thing that mattered. Not catching the Troll. But making Ivanov believe that they were making progress toward catching the Troll, stringing him along, long enough for them to think their way out of this.

  Long enough for Zula to do so, anyway. Because she didn’t get any vibe at all from Peter that he was interested in leaving. He had become too fascinated by the Troll hunt.

  He believed that if they caught the Troll, Ivanov would be nice to them.

  And maybe he was right. Maybe this was how Ivanov recruited.

  Or maybe making them think so was how he kept people docile until it was time to kill them.

  “What’s next?” she asked. “What do we do with this information?”

  “One of my thoughts was, we have a jet at our disposal, we could shoot down to Manila and try to find some of the CALKULATOR crew, ask them questions.”

  When Zula considered the meanings of those verbs “find” and “ask,” all she could think of was Wallace and the 6 mil polyethylene sheeting. Was that what Peter had in mind? Or did he really think that the hackers in Manila would voluntarily rat out their blood relatives in Xiamen? Zula didn’t want to ask that hard question of Peter because she was afraid of what she might learn about the man she’d been sleeping with. “To Ivanov that’s going to feel like a wild-goose chase,” she pointed out. “He prefers the direct approach.”

  This was meant as kind of a joke, but Peter nodded soberly. “We might also look for a Filipino expat community in Xiamen. In Seattle they have their own grocery stores and hair salons. Maybe it’s the same here.”

  Zula, who unlike Peter had actually seen Xiamen, was pretty sure that this was hopeless. But she stifled the urge to say as much. “Have you reported this to Ivanov?”

  “I’ve been feeding him little updates.”

  Zula tried to ignore the way he’d phrased this. “He knows about the possible Manila connection?”

  “Not yet.”

  “If we can turn it into an excuse for more pavement pounding,” Zula suggested, “it might help us.”

  “Help you how?”

  “Help us,” she repeated.

  She realized that she kind of wanted to kill him. She was sure that the feeling would pass. But she was also sure that it would come back. “Do whatever you want with the information,” she said, and walked away.

  “ARE YOU INSANE?” Ivanov asked him.

  Sokolov was flummoxed. Ivanov accusing him, Sokolov, of being insane. So unexpected. He could not think of anything to say.

  He had been telling the story of the day. At first he had merely summarized, which was generally what superiors wanted their subordinates to do for them, but Ivanov had insisted on hearing everything in great detail. And so, after suffering quite a few interruptions, Sokolov had settled into a much more detailed storytelling style, and Ivanov had listened carefully all the
way through the account of the “shopping” expedition, tipping the concierge, and walking home along the waterfront.

  It would not be the first time Sokolov had been tongue lashed by the boss, so he just stood there at attention and waited for it.

  Ivanov laughed. “I do not care,” he said, “what the fucking buildings are made of. Whether the walls can, or cannot, be penetrated by number 4 buckshot. About the options for escaping the building in the event of a tactical retreat. What the fuck are you thinking, Sokolov? Are you thinking that this is the Siege of Grozny? This is not the Siege of Grozny! It is very simple. Find the Troll. Go to where he lives. Enter his apartment. Take him out of there and bring him to me.”

  Sokolov had nothing to say.

  “Did I hire the wrong guy?”

  “That is possible, sir,” Sokolov said. “Those guys you found in Seattle—the ones who did Wallace—they are more the type for this kind of job.”

  “Well, those guys in Seattle ARE NOT HERE!” Ivanov said, crescendoing, during that sentence, from a mild conversational tone to a shout that could detonate stored ammunition. “Instead, I have YOU! And your extremely expensive guys out there!”

  Sokolov might have pointed out that he and his expensive guys were security consultants and that Ivanov had lately been asking them to do some pretty weird things. But he didn’t see how it would improve Ivanov’s mood.

  “Another thing,” Ivanov continued, “what the fuck was the point of coming back along the waterfront? Are you under the impression that the Troll lives in a ferry terminal?”

  “Reconnoitering the ground,” Sokolov said. “Getting to know the field of operations.”

  Ivanov was nonplussed. “The ground—the field of operations—is where the Troll lives. And he doesn’t live in a ferry terminal.”

  Sokolov said nothing.

  “I don’t get it, Sokolov. Explain your thinking to me.”

  “Tactical maneuver in this city is going to be nearly impossible,” Sokolov said. He nodded at a window. “Just look at it. All the space is taken up. But the water is a different story. It’s crowded, yes. But it’s the only option we’ve got if we need to—”

  “To what, Sokolov?”

  “To fall back. Improvise. Move creatively.”

  There was now a silence of perhaps thirty seconds as Ivanov marshaled every resource of energy and strength at his disposal to control his rage.

  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.”

  THEY HAD ALL—FOUNDERS, executives, engineers, Creatives, toilers in Weird Stuff—been trying to think about big long-term issues raised by the Wor: the War of Realignment. Without a doubt T’Rain was making money from the Wor in the short term, but the question that was bothering the hell out of all of them was: Will it last? Because they had making money before, when the story of the world had actually made sense. Now it had mutated into something that seemed to lack exactly the kind of coherent overarching narrative that they had hired the likes of Skeletor and D-squared to supply.

  All their meetings since the beginning of the Wor had been circular and pointless, even more so than
meetings generally. Much of it came down to idle speculation about the internal mental states and processes of Devin Skraelin. Could the Wor really be laid at his feet? Suppose they could prove that he had orchestrated the whole thing, should they charge him with breach of contract? Or should they just lean on him to write his way out of the problem? In which case, Skeletor had only succeeded in drumming up more business for himself. Or was Devin helpless in the toss of cultural-historical forces beyond his ken? In which case, should they fire him and hire one of the thousands of ambitious, eager, and perfectly qualified young writers all hoping for an opportunity to take his place?

  These meetings tended to start out with confident PowerPoint presentations and gradually trail off into quasi-philosophical management-speak aphorisms, more and more eyes turning to Richard as if to say, Please O please help us. Because Corporation 9592, at bottom, didn’t make anything in the way that a steel mill did. And it didn’t even really sell anything in the sense that, say, Amazon.com did. It just extracted cash flow from the players’ desire to own virtual goods that would confer status on their fictional characters as they ran around T’Rain acting out greater or lesser parts in a story. And they all suspected, though they couldn’t really prove, that a good story was as foundational to that business as, say, a blast furnace was to a steel mill. But you could slap a white hard hat onto an investor and take him into the plant and let him verify that the blast furnace was still there. Whereas a fantasy world was—well—a fantasy world. This had not prevented a lot of investors from entrusting many steel mills’ worth of capital to the board of directors of Corporation 9592 and the CEO they had hired to look after the business. And in normal times, it made money and everyone was happy, probably because they weren’t thinking about this potentially troublesome fantasy-world-based aspect of the business. But now they were thinking about it quite hard, and the more they thought about it, the more troubled they became. Corporation 9592 seemed to be undergoing an ontogenical retroversion to something like a start-up company. Richard was the only link back to that phase of the company’s development, the only one who could think and function in that environment. The rabid dog they kept locked in the basement. Most of the time.