Cryptonomicon

"I have the coordinates of Golgotha here in my briefcase," Rudy says. "But I know for certain that they are not written down anywhere else in V-Million."

"You know that because you're the one who decrypted that message."

"Yes. Maybe I should burn the message now."

"It would kill us," Bischoff says, "but at least we would die with some warmth and some light."

"You are going to be on a sandy beach, sunning yourself, in a few hours, Günter," Rudy says.

"Stop it!"

"I made a promise which I intend to keep," Rudy says. There is a movement in the water, the strangled splash of a kicking foot being drawn under the surface.

"Rudy? Rudy?" Bischoff says. But he is alone in a black dome of silence.

A minute later a hand grips his ankle.

Rudy climbs up his body like a ladder and thrusts his head above the surface and howls for air. But this air is the good stuff, sixteen times as much oxygen in a single lungful. He feels better quickly. Bischoff holds him while he calms down.

"The hatch is open," Rudy says. "I saw light through it. The sun is up, Günter!"

"Let's go, then!"

"You go. I'll stay and burn the message." Rudy's opening his briefcase again, feeling through papers with his hands, taking something out, closing the briefcase again.

Bischoff cannot move.

"I strike the match in thirty seconds," Rudy says.

Bischoff launches himself towards Rudy's voice and wraps his arms around him in the dark.

"I'll find the others," Bischoff says. "I'll tell them that some fucking American spy is onto us. And we'll get that gold first, and we'll keep it out of their hands."

"Go!" Rudy cries. "I want everything to happen fast now."

Bischoff kisses him once on each cheek and then dives.

Ahead of him is faint blue-green light, coming from no particular direction.

Rudy swam to the hatch, opened it, and swam back, and was almost dead when he returned. Bischoff has to find that hatch and then swim all the way to the surface. He knows that it will be impossible.

But then much brighter, warmer light floods the interior of the V Million.Bischoff looks back and up, and sees the forward end of the pressure hull turned into a dome of orange fire, the silhouette of a man centered in it, lines of welds and rivets spreading away from that center like the meridians of a globe. It's bright as day. He turns around and swims easily away down the gangway, into the control room, and finds the hatch: a disk of cyan light.

A life-ring is pressed up against what is now the ceiling of this room. He grabs it and wrestles it down into the middle of the cabin, then shoves it before him through the hatch, and kicks his way through.

There's coral all around him, and it's beautiful. He'd love to stay and sightsee, but he's got responsibilities above. He keeps a grip on the life preserver, and although he doesn't feel himself moving, he sees the coral dropping away below. There's a big grey thing lying on it, bubbling and bleeding, and this gets smaller and smaller, like a rocket flying away into the sky.

He looks up into the water that is streaming over his face. Both of Bischoff's arms are above his head, gripping the rim of the life-ring, and he sees a disk of sunlight through it, getting brighter and redder as he ascends.

His knees begin to hurt.

Chapter 102 LIQUIDITY

The rest of it all seems like history to Randall Lawrence Waterhouse. He knows that technically speaking it is the present, and all of the really important stuff is future. But what's important to him is finished and settled. He would like to get on with his life, now that he's got one.