The passage is marked off by the beginning of a chapter at one end and by a shift in scene at the other. I have chosen not to break the text up physically, one, because the medium allows it, and two, Barthes himself acknowledges that splitting it is “arbitrary in the extreme.” In any given segment, he does not analyze every word, but only a few phrases. So, I’ve left the pieces which have less to offer alone and marked only the important parts.
After a year of coffins, the room on the twenty-first floor of the Chiba Hilton seemed enormous. It was ten meters by eight, half of a suite. A white Braun coffeemaker steamed on a low table by the sliding glass panels that opened onto a narrow balcony.
“Get some coffee in you. Look like you need it.” She took off her black jacket; the fletcher hung beneath her arm in a black nylon shoulder rig. She wore a sleeveless gray pullover with plain steel zips across each shoulder. Bulletproof, Case decided, slopping coffee into a bright red mug. His arms and legs felt like they were made of wood.
“Case.” He looked up, seeing the man for the first time. “My name is Armitage.” The dark robe was open to the waist, the broad chest hairless and muscular, the stomach flat and hard. Blue eyes so pale they made Case think of bleach. “Sun’s up, Case. This is your lucky day, boy.”
Case whipped his arm sideways and the man easily ducked the scalding coffee. Brown stain running down the imitation ricepaper wall. He saw the angular gold ring through the left lobe. Special Forces. The man smiled.
“Get your coffee, Case,” Molly said. “You’re okay, but you’re not going anywhere ’til Armitage has his say.” She sat crosslegged on a silk futon and began to fieldstrip the fletcher without bothering to look at it. Twin mirrors tracking as he crossed to the table and refilled his cup.
“Too young to remember the war, aren’t you, Case?” Armitage ran a large hand back through his cropped brown hair. A heavy gold bracelet flashed on his wrist. “Leningrad, Kiev, Siberia. We invented you in Siberia, Case.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Screaming Fist, Case. You’ve heard the name.”
“Some kind of run, wasn’t it? Tried to burn this Russian nexus with virus programs. Yeah, I heard about it. And nobody got out.”
He sensed abrupt tension. Armitage walked to the window and looked out over Tokyo Bay. “That isn’t true. One unit made it back to Helsinki, Case.”
Case shrugged, sipped coffee.
“You’re a console cowboy. The prototypes of the programs you use to crack industrial banks were developed for Screaming Fist. For the assault on the Kirensk computer nexus. Basic module was a Nightwing microlight, a pilot, a matrix deck, a jockey. We were running a virus called Mole. The Mole series was the first generation of real intrusion programs.”
“Icebreakers,” Case said, over the rim of the red mug.
“Ice from ICE, intrusion countermeasures electronics.”
“Problem is, mister, I’m no jockey now, so I think I’ll just be going. . . .”
“I was there, Case; I was there when they invented your kind.”
“You got zip to do with me and my kind, buddy. You’re rich enough to hire expensive razorgirls to haul my ass up here, is all. I’m never gonna punch any deck again, not for you or anybody else.” He crossed to the window and looked down. “That’s where I live now.”