The Ascendant: A Thriller (35 page)

“I honestly don’t know who the man on the subway was. He said his name was Hans Metternich, and he said you were lying to me. Using me. That the government had set the bomb at Jenkins & Altshuler. And that I should think twice about helping you.”

“How did you get in contact with him?”

Garrett breathed deep. “I can’t tell you that. But it wasn’t some spy or enemy agent. It was harmless.”

“Nothing is harmless anymore, Garrett. Everything has consequences. How’d you get this Metternich’s e-mail address?”

Garrett swallowed hard, then shook his head. “Can’t tell you.” There was no way he was going to give up Avery Bernstein. If they killed him for it, so be it—at least he had taken a stand in his life.

Kline pushed his chair back and stood. “Then I can’t help you, Garrett. I’m going to have to leave you with Homeland Security.” He turned and headed for the door.

“Good luck with the Chinese.”

General Kline stopped, turned, and sat back down across from Garrett. The anger rose in his voice. “Not sure if you’ve noticed this, but I could get more info on the Chinese Communist Party from a waiter at Hunan Balcony. You haven’t exactly been knocking it out of the park lately. Time is up on Ascendant—the president is shutting us down. Hell, I’ve been trying to stop Secretary Frye from putting your head on a stake all week, and you’ve made me look like an idiot. You’ve been a complete bust, so the Chinese-intel card is not going to get you much right now.”

Garrett let out a breath, trying to calm himself, trying to appear in control. He said, “I know why they’re attacking us.”

“Bullshit,” Kline said. “You’re trying to save your skin.”

“Yes. I am,” Garrett said. “But I also understand what’s happening in China, and now it all makes sense. All the attacks. All the chaos. It fits into a pattern perfectly. It’s the answer we’ve been seeking this whole time. And if you don’t know the pattern, then you can’t fight back.”

Kline studied Garrett’s face, the lines of vomit caked around his chin. “And if this information is true, withholding it from me gives you leverage? Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Make them let me go.”

“I don’t control Homeland Security. Anyway, why should I believe you?”

“How many times have I been wrong so far?”

Kline seemed to consider this. Then he spoke, calmly, methodically. “I can’t promise you anything, Garrett. You’ve been digging your own grave, and doing a damn good job of it. Just tell me what you know about the Chinese and I’ll do my best. That’s the only offer I’m going to make you. You have ten seconds.”

Garrett didn’t hesitate. “An insurgent is rising in central China. A new Mao. His name is Hu. The Tiger. He’s starting a rebellion. It’s gaining in popularity. And the Chinese government is terrified. They’re afraid that they’re going to get overrun.”

Kline sat motionless for thirty seconds, staring at Garrett as he took in this piece of information. Then he wiped his glasses clean and said, “Tell me everything.”

And Garrett did.

•  •  •

After that, they let him sleep. They didn’t unlock his handcuffs, but they switched the manacles so his wrists were in front of his torso instead of behind his back. They kept cuffs on his right ankle, but even so, Garrett could lay his head on the small table in front of him, hands under his forehead, and close his eyes. The first time he did, he expected a blast of white noise to wake him, but it didn’t, and he fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

Stoddard woke him later—Garrett wasn’t sure how much later—with a glass of water and a chicken-salad sandwich. Garrett drank the water in one gulp, then lingered over the sandwich. The bread was stale and the chicken salad tasted like vinegar, but Garrett didn’t care. It was some of the best food he’d ever eaten.

Agent Stoddard watched him eat, then took the plate and glass away. Before he left the room he said, “You’re never seeing daylight again, you know that, right, Reilly?”

“They have daylight up your ass?” Garrett said. “ ’Cause that’s where I’m gonna stick my foot.” It didn’t even make any sense, but it was the first thing that came into Garrett’s head, and he liked saying it. Agent Stoddard just stared at him, then left.

Garrett slept some more. He was awakened by a familiar voice.

“Garrett?”

Garrett sat up and blinked. Alexis Truffant was sitting across from him. She was studying his face. “Are you okay? General Kline said they water-boarded you.”

Garrett was too stunned to answer. He swallowed, then tried, instinctively, to pat his hair down and wipe the sleep from his eyes. His wrists strained against the handcuffs.

He stared at her. “Why did you leave?”

“Now is not the time.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

Alexis shot a glance over her shoulder. Garrett saw that the video camera and tripod were back, and aimed at him.

“I needed to sort out my feelings. I needed to see if things were going to work out with my husband.”

“You could have left me a note. Or called. Anything. A post on my fucking Facebook page would have worked.”

“I was confused. And upset . . .”

“And working for the government,” he said. “Did Kline tell you to leave?”

Alexis hesitated, then nodded her head yes. “He suggested I clear my head. Get away from you for a while. We were never supposed to have a relationship.”

Garrett grimaced as he stared at her. She was as beautiful as ever, regal cheekbones slanting down her olive-colored face, black hair pushed back behind her ears.

“Never?” he said, pain welling up in his chest.

Alexis looked away for a moment, composed herself, then turned back to Garrett. “Look, we have some questions about the information you gave to General Kline. If you could answer them . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“I know, I know. You and Kline will try to get me out of here.”

Alexis lowered her voice and leaned forward slightly. “You don’t begin to understand the politics of the current situation. There are agencies that believe you, fully, and have faith in what you are telling them. And there are others that would like to see you sent to Guantánamo as an enemy combatant. And those agencies are not playing well together right now. You are this close to a lifetime in prison. Given what’s been done to you over the past twenty-four hours, you know that I’m not being overly dramatic.”

“Ask away,” Garrett said.

Alexis laid a yellow legal pad on the table and began to write on it. “What you told General Kline has been disseminated to the group. About a new Mao-like figure leading a rebellion in China. But how could we not know anything about it?”

“China is a repressive government. They keep strict controls on the media. On all forms of information.”

“Sure,” Alexis said, scribbling notes as she spoke. “We know that. We also have spies all over that country. And none of them are telling us what you’re telling us.”

Garrett took a deep breath, trying to regain strength and order his thoughts. “Because the Chinese government is clamping down, full strength. This is the one thing they fear more than anything else. They don’t care about foreign invaders anymore. Who’d occupy China? They’ve weathered economic disintegration before as well. But a popular, grassroots insurgency? That has traction with regular people? That’s a nightmare. A nightmare with plenty of historical precedence—it’s what Mao did to China’s previous leadership. They are doing absolutely everything in their power to keep this under wraps.”

Alexis wrote down his answer. “How does your theory explain why the Chinese have launched attacks against us these last few weeks?”

“It provides motive.”

“Which is?”

“War as diversion. Wars promote nationalism. During times of conflict people rally around the flag, even in China—especially in China. They listen to their government. More important, they are inclined to believe their government. The Communist Party is trying to inject a dose of nationalism into the population, hoping it will cool the revolutionary fever burning in the center of the country. At the very least, war will distract people from the issues in front of their faces: corruption, land dispossession, income inequality, environmental catastrophe. Those are burning issues in China right now. And they are at the heart of the Tiger’s rebellion.”

Alexis countered right away: “But why
covert
attacks? Nobody in the Chinese population knows anything about this. If we’re at war, it’s a secret war. That doesn’t promote anything.”

Garrett smiled. He was reminded of the hours they had spent in the shack at Camp Pendleton, arguing points of politics and logic. It was funny how
quickly they fell back into old routines, even with his hands bound by the wrist and his lungs raw from torture. Those moments were probably what he missed most about Alexis.

He smiled. “You’re right. That’s why what we’re experiencing, in my opinion, aren’t the first shots of a war. They’re provocations. The attacks have been masked, but just barely. The Treasury sell-off came in coded numerical intervals. Numbers with high significance in Chinese culture. The Vegas real estate sell-off was initiated through an offshore firm called the May Fourth Movement. And they didn’t really bother to hide who bought and then destroyed a molybdenum mine in Colorado. Everyone knew it was a Chinese company. They want us to know who’s behind this. They want us pissed off.”

“So that . . .” Alexis waved a finger in the air as the truth began to set in.

“So that we’ll hit them,” Garrett confirmed. “Because if we turn around and strike openly, if we are the aggressors, then they can portray themselves as the victims. Which is guaranteed to garner domestic support. And they’re figuring that will siphon off support for the insurgency. My guess is that the Chinese government figures they can handle anything we can throw at them, short of a nuclear attack. And we’re not crazy enough to do that. Not yet, at least. But they are scared shitless of their own people. More than a billion pissed-off Chinese citizens could wash away the ruling elite in a matter of days. And the party knows this. It’s what happened when Mao took power, and they will not risk a repeat performance.”

He smiled at her, but a deep exhaustion was running through him. He had barely said that many words—in total—to anyone in days. He let out a breath.

“What the Chinese government wants,” Garrett said, “is for
us
to start a shooting war with
them
.”

It took a few moments for Alexis to finish writing down what he had said. She paused briefly, scratched out a line, rewrote it, then finished writing. She picked up the legal pad, turned, and presented it to the camera behind them, as if for inspection and approval, then put it back down on the table and pushed it forward to Garrett.

“Is this an accurate summation of your ideas?”

Garrett scanned her notes briefly, then nodded yes. She lifted the legal pad and paused, holding it above the table. There was a small key sitting on the desk, underneath the pad, blocked from the camera’s view by Alexis’s body. Garrett
saw it, surprised, and was about to tell her that she had forgotten it was there when she cut him off: “Thank you, Garrett,” she said slowly, carefully. “This has been very helpful. I think we’ll be able to help you get out of here.”

Garrett glanced again at the key, momentarily bewildered, then he snapped his head up, smiled at Alexis, and covered the key with his cuffed hands. She slipped the legal pad back into her bag.

“That would be great,” Garrett said, his heart suddenly pounding. “That would be awesome.”

Alexis stood, nodded once, and left the room. Garrett put his hands, with the key clutched tightly in his right fist, into his lap, and started thinking about what he would do next.

J
immy Lefebvre knew something was up. Garrett had been gone for nearly forty-eight hours and no one had heard a word from him. Not a sighting, an e-mail, a phone call—nothing. This was a
very
bad sign.

In the war room, only Lefebvre seemed concerned about this. The rest of the Ascendant team continued to play their online games, trade in futures contracts, and keep an eye on world events. Lefebvre knew they were military creatures of habit; they would do what they were told until they were told to do something different, and if they were told nothing, then they would sit around and wait. That’s what it was to be a soldier. If you left them without orders for too long they would probably just get drunk.

Lefebvre was a soldier as well, but the fact that he’d never seen combat—and there wasn’t a day in his life that he didn’t regret that—meant he wasn’t war-weary. He’d never grown accustomed to waiting for orders. Left to his own devices, Lefebvre figured out what he should do, and then he did it. And every bone in his body was telling him that it was time to get the hell out of the war room. Fast.

Lefebvre knew that Garrett Reilly was constantly pushing the envelope, and now he suspected that Garrett had pushed that envelope too far. Perhaps it had to do with what Garrett and Celeste had discovered about China; maybe it was about his decision to send Celeste to hunt down the Tiger. Or maybe it had to do with the fact that he hadn’t told
any of this
to his superiors. Lefebvre hadn’t said anything either, and that made him complicit. Whatever had happened, Lefebvre guessed that the shit was about to hit the fan.

He found Bingo at a game console and told him that he was going back to the hotel. “Storm’s coming. Keep your plans to yourself,” Lefebvre said. “I don’t want to know what you know or what you’re going to do. Your secrets are your own.”

“I’ve never said anything bad about this country. Or the president,” Bingo said, his voice rising anxiously. “You’ll vouch for me, right?”

“They can’t put you in jail for criticizing America,” Lefebvre said.

“They can’t put
you
in jail for that. They can put
me
in jail for anything.”

Lefebvre sighed. He and Bingo came from radically different universes, and there wasn’t time to argue that particular point of politics and fairness. He called a cab to take him back to the hotel, and was just slipping out the door of the war room when a hulking military policeman stepped into his path and told him that he was being detained for questioning. A second MP had Bingo in a corner and was rifling through his bike messenger bag.