Cryptonomicon

"It looks like a turbine," says Bischoff, "but for air, rather than water." Otto straightens up, squeezes his lower back theatrically, and hands Shaftoe the hacksaw. Then he hands him a bottle of benzedrine tablets for good measure. Shaftoe eats a few tablets, strips off his shirt to reveal splendid musculature, does a couple of USMC-approved stretching exercises, grabs the hacksaw, and sets to work. After a couple of minutes he looks up nonchalantly at Julieta, who is standing there holding the machine pistol and watching him with a look that is simultaneously frosty and smoldering, like baked Alaska. Bischoff stands off to the side, reveling in this.

Dawn is slapping her chapped and reddened fingers against a frostbitten sky, attempting to restore some circulation, when the remains of the turbine finally fall away from the wing. Pumped on benzedrine, Shaftoe has been operating the hacksaw for six hours; Otto has stepped in to change blades several times, a major capital investment on his part. Next, they devote half of the morning to dragging the engine through the woods and down a creek bed to the sea, where Otto's boat is waiting, and Otto and Julieta take their prize away. Bobby Shaftoe and Günter Bischoff trudge back up to the site of the wreck. They have not discussed this openly yet--it would be unnecessary--but they intend to find the part of the airplane that contains the body of the pilot, and see to it that he gets a proper burial.

"What is in Manila, Bobby?" Bischoff asks.

"Something that morphine made me forget," Shaftoe answers, "and that Enoch Root, that fucking bastard, made me remember."

Not fifteen minutes later they come to the gash in the woods that was carved by the plunging airplane, and hear a man's voice wailing and sobbing, completely out of his mind with grief. "Angelo! Angelo! Angelo! Mein liebchen!"

They cannot see the man who is crying out in this way, but they do see Enoch Root, standing there and brooding. He looks up alertly as they approach, and produces a semiautomatic from his leather jacket. Then he recognizes them, and relaxes.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Shaftoe says--never one to beat around in the bush. "Is that a fucking German you're with?"

"Yes, I am with a German," Root says, "as are you."

"Well, why is your German making such a fucking spectacle of himself?"

"Rudy is crying over the body of his lover," Root says, "who died in an attempt to reunite with him."

"A woman was flying that plane?" says the flabbergasted Shaftoe.

Root rolls his eyes and heaves a sigh. "You have forgotten to allow for the possibility that Rudy might be a homosexual."

It takes Shaftoe a long time to stretch his mind around this large, inconveniently shaped concept. Bischoff, in typical European fashion, seems completely unruffled. But he still has questions to ask. "Enoch, why are you . . . here?"

"Why has my spirit been incarnated into a physical body in this world generally?Or specifically,why am I here in a Swedish forest, standing on the wreck of a mysterious German rocket plane while a homosexual German sobs over the cremated remains of his Italian lover?

"Last rites," Root answers his own question. "Angelo was Catholic." Then, after a while, he notices that Bischoff is staring at him, looking completely unsatisfied. "Oh. I am here, in a larger sense, because Mrs. Tenney, the vicar's wife, has become sloppy, and forgotten to close her eyes when she takes the balls out of the bingo machine."

Chapter 56 CRUNCH

The condemned man showers, shaves, puts on most of a suit, and realizes that he is ahead of schedule. He turns on the television, gets a San Miguel out of the fridge to steady his nerves, and then goes to the closet to get the stuff of his last meal. The apartment only has one closet and when its door is open it appears to have been bricked shut, Cask of Amontillado-style, with very large flat red oblongs, each imprinted with the image of a venerable and yet oddly cheerful and yet somehow kind of hauntingly sad naval officer. The whole pallet load was shipped here several weeks ago by Avi, in an attempt to lift Randy's spirits. For all Randy knows more are still sitting on a Manila dockside ringed with armed guards and dictionary-sized rat traps straining against their triggers, each baited with a single golden nugget.