He drew a bead on a KFC sign and began swimming.
THE APLOMB WITH which the boatman had helped Sokolov throw the dead men off the deck of his vessel, in those misty waters off Kinmen two weeks ago, had convinced Sokolov that here was a fellow with whom he could really do business. He had wondered where “George Chow” had found this man and had begun to develop a hypothesis that this was not just any random boatman who had been, as it were, hailed off the street, but was actually some kind of a local fixer who ran various errands for the local espionage community. Either that, or he was a clinical psychopath, of whom Sokolov was more afraid than anyone else he had dealt with on that day.
It happened sometimes that in the early part of one of these projects, it felt as if you were going up hill into a headwind. Everything was against you; luck was always bad; nothing fell together, nothing worked out right. But beyond a certain point it changed and it was all easy, everything went your way. Thus here. He had rid himself of Olivia, who was an alluring and yet highly inconvenient person to have in his life. He was no longer in the PRC, no longer in the crowded city center of Xiamen, and, to boot, shrouded in dense fog and being assisted by a peppy boatman who, if he had been impressed or scared by the three gun-toting agents who’d commandeered his boat, must have been even more so by the way Sokolov had vaulted aboard and machine-gunned them. Since he seemed to have passed over that watershed, it had not really surprised him when he had found himself, only a little while later, ascending a rope ladder toward an open hatch near the stern of a big containership bound for the open Pacific. He had easily come to terms with its Filipino crew and bought passage, and even a bunk of his own, using the remaining cash in his pockets. The next two weeks had been a sort of vacation on a steel beach, and a welcome opportunity to rest up and heal from various minor injuries suffered during the events in Xiamen. Only during the last couple of days had he really stirred himself from his bunk and begun to exercise again, practicing his falls and rolls on the ship’s deckplates to the great amusement of the crew.
A TIDAL CURRENT seemed to drag him alongshore. A beach came into view, and he made for it as best he could in the suit. He did not need it for its flotation properties, but dared not shed it lest he die of hypothermia within sight of land. The sun was far from being up yet and would be hidden by dense clouds when it got around to rising above the horizon; but the sky was definitely growing lighter, enabling him to pick out a few details on the beach: strewn logs, and fire rings, and a public toilet.
Wrestling and kicking his way through a forest of brown kelp, he got to a place where he could feel a rocky bottom under his feet and trudged carefully toward a beached log, taking his time, not wanting to turn an ankle in a moment of thoughtless haste. When the water became knee-deep, he crouched in the lee of the log, in case he was being watched from one of the dwellings on the slope above, and stripped off the suit. Stuffed inside of it he had been carrying a set of clothes wrapped up in a garbage bag. He changed into these, all except for socks and shoes, which he carried a-dangle around his neck for the time being. The survival suit might garner attention if he left it here, so he stuffed it into the black garbage bag and slung that over his shoulder. Then he climbed a little higher on the strand and began to make his way south. He had no idea where he was, but the freighter had been headed south and so it seemed reasonable to assume that port facilities and a larger city were to be found in that general direction.
Half a dozen teenagers, boys and girls, were huddled together around the remains of a campfire. The empty beer bottles and fast-food wrappers all around them gave a fair account of how they had spent the preceding evening. They’d had enough foresight to bring blankets and sleeping bags and make a night of it. As Sokolov approached, one of them rose and staggered down the beach until he felt he had gone far enough to fish out his penis and urinate without giving offense to any female members of his party who might be awake. In this he seemed to be erring on the side of caution, glancing back frequently over his shoulder. Sokolov approved of this.
He was still pissing, with the enviable vigor of the young, as Sokolov approached within hailing distance. His eyes traveled up and down Sokolov’s body. His face bespoke alert curiosity but not fear; he had not identified Sokolov as a derelict or criminal.
“What is this place?” Sokolov asked him.
“This is Golden Gardens Park,” the young man answered, in the touchingly naive belief that this would mean something to Sokolov.
“What is name of city, please?”
“Seattle.”
“Thank you.” Then, as Sokolov went past him, he asked: “You just jump off a train or something?” For, as Sokolov had noticed, this beach was separated from the city by a railway siding.
“Or something,” Sokolov affirmed. Then he pointed with his chin down the beach. “Is bus?”
“Yeah. Just keep going to the marina.”
“Thanks. Have nice day.”
“You too. Take it easy, man.”
“Is not my objective. Nice thing to say though. Enjoy piss.”
Olivia’s plan to bolt out of the hotel and get a hot start on the day turned out to be embarrassingly, stupidly optimistic in more than one way. The night before she had fallen asleep in her clothes and left several things undone, such as taking a shower, checking her email, and touching base with Inspector Fournier, who’d been so kind as to send her those police reports. After Seamus woke her up, she set about doing those things. The shower went quickly and according to plan; nothing else did. What she’d envisioned as a quick check of her work email turned into a slough of despond. The next time she looked at the clock, an hour and a half had disappeared, and she was only getting in deeper; emails she had sent at the beginning of this session had spawned entire threads of responses in which she was now profoundly entangled, and people were threatening to set up conference calls. Her hasty departure from the FBI offices in Seattle had left her colleagues there variously confused and irritated, and these had to be brought up to speed or calmed down. At the same time, these same people were being made aware of the decrypted video images from the security cameras in Peter’s apartment, and so she got to watch as awareness propagated across their networks of email lists and they began to discuss what they should do next. It was Saturday morning and FBI agents were thumbing emails from the sidelines of their kids’ soccer games. “Out of office” responses were bouncing around the system like pachinko balls. The channel through which these images had reached them was extremely confusing (decryption key pulled out of a dead man’s wallet by a Hungarian in the Philippines communicating with an American in Canada, the conversation taking place on an imaginary planet), and Olivia had to intervene and explain matters.
And that was just the Seattle FBI part of it. She had made the mistake of mentioning the idea of the Prince George security cam gambit to some of her colleagues in London, and this had spawned volumes of useless debate and counterproductive efforts to help her.
The only thing that kept her from being stuck in email all day long was a telephone call from Fournier, who had suddenly become hospitable and now wished to have coffee with her. She agreed to meet him in the lobby of her hotel in half an hour, then packed her bags—not much of a chore, since she hadn’t unpacked, and half of her crap was still down in the rental car anyway—and, almost as an afterthought, used Google Maps to check out the route to Prince George.
The results caused her to do a double-take. It was 750 kilometers and it was going to take her eleven hours, not counting eating and peeing breaks. The numbers were so enormous that she suffered a spell of disorientation, thinking that Google must have mistakenly routed her on some ridiculously convoluted route. But no, the map showed a reasonably straight course. It really was that far: the equivalent of driving from London to John o’ Groats. She was going to spend the entire day driving, and she was not going to get there until after dark. Tomorrow was Sunday.
She checked the flight schedules, hoping that there would be hourly shuttles. The result: there were a few flights during the day, including one that she might be able to make if she canceled her breakfast with Inspector Fournier and then made a dash to the airport. Politically, this was not the best move, and so she booked a seat on a
