Sokolov was now confronted, therefore, with a partially dismantled machine, whose hard drive—a steel brick about the size of a sandwich—had been unplugged but not yet physically removed from the case. Reconnecting it was idiotically simple, since the plugs only fitted into the sockets one way. He rebooted the machine and it came up as normal. The Internet seemed to work, but he did not do any surfing, since almost anything he looked at might tip off the PSB. Olivia had written out the URL of a popular Chinese chat site that featured occasional English language conversations. He typed it into the browser’s address bar and went there, then navigated to the room she had specified. It seemed very quiet, and he didn’t see any of the coded phrases that she had told him to look for. This was hardly surprising since she probably had not even made it to the wangba yet.