The Ascendant: A Thriller (49 page)

He cleared his throat and shot a quick, superior glance at the chairman of the Central Military Commission. “The original plan is still a valid one. And it will succeed.”

The main door to the Politburo meeting room opened and a thin young man in a dark suit hurried in. He walked to where the general secretary sat, bowed, and handed him a sheet of paper. The general secretary read the message, then handed the paper back to the young man, who quickly left the room.

A shot of anxiety raced through Director Xu Jin’s blood.

“I have been informed,” the general secretary said, looking directly at Director Xu, “that we have lost all communications with the Autonomous Province of Tibet. All cellular phone service and Internet traffic has been disrupted. We can no longer communicate with our garrison there. We must expect that rioting will develop next.”

He turned his withering gaze to the chairman of the Military Commission. “Chairman, proceed with your preparations for a first strike.”

Director Xu’s heart sank. Well, that was it, then—war and his disgrace. He only hoped Mongolia had decent restaurants.

E
nsign Hallowell stared wearily at his radar screen. The green glow pulsed in the darkness of the radar room, deep in the bowels of the USS
Decatur
. The soft murmur of the other radar operators and fire-control officers whispering into their microphones was a presence in the air. He clenched and unclenched his fists to keep the blood flowing, to keep his eyelids from drooping. He was eleven hours into a twelve-hour shift, and he’d spent every second of those eleven hours tracking the Chinese frigates that were running parallel to the American 11th Carrier Strike Group.

They had been consistent, the Chinese, dodging within range of the Americans’ fastest ship-to-ship missiles, then quickly steaming out of range again. It was a game of long-distance chicken, a game both sides knew how to play, and they were pulling it off to perfection. The game had a monotonous rhythm, and the repeated in-out, in-out sequence was putting Ensign Hallowell to sleep.

Forty minutes ago the four Chinese warships had tacked hard to starboard, coming right at the Americans. It was their fifteenth approach in the last two days. Hallowell knew the drill by heart. They would cross the 124-kilometer missile exclusion zone, steam in a straight line for the American fleet, then, ten kilometers inside the zone, they’d tack to port and cruise out of range once again. Like clockwork.

Hallowell watched the Chinese ships reach the 114-kilometer point. He waited for them to turn off and start the process all over again.

“Three, two, one, okay. Go to it, boys,” Hallowell muttered to himself. He
watched the screen patiently. But the Chinese ships didn’t turn. Hallowell checked the plotting computer. Was there a mistake? Were they farther off than he had thought? No, the computer checked out.

The Chinese were within range and still coming.

Hallowell held his breath. He would give them another sixty seconds. He watched as the four green dots on his screen continued to come straight at the Americans. At the
Decatur
.
At him.

And then another radar officer cried out from his monitor: “Bogies lifting off from Guangzhou Shadi Air Base. Fighters, heading 220 degrees, our vector!”

Hallowell’s stomach lurched. He pressed the red comm button at his elbow, and the executive officer on watch answered immediately.

“Sir,” Hallowell said, “we have a situation.”

A
lexis Truffant had only been back at work for six hours—after reappearing from her stint at Murray’s Meats and Cuts—when they came for her. Two Secret Service agents, large and unsmiling, pulled her out of her DIA office, patting her down and confiscating her cell phone, then drove her to an old redbrick building on the Nebraska Avenue Homeland Security complex, where they put her in a holding room in the basement. It was very clear from the moment that they showed up that she had no choice but to come with them. She didn’t bother asking any questions of the Secret Service agents—she knew they wouldn’t answer. After what she guessed was about four hours—she had no watch or cell phone—a different pair of agents took her out of the basement room to a waiting SUV, and drove her directly to the White House.

Night had fallen. The city was empty and dark. Alexis felt a deep, despairing sense of loneliness. No one said a word the entire ride, but Alexis did manage to glimpse a digital clock on a bank building. It was almost one in the morning.

At the White House she was led to a windowless room below the West Wing and body-searched by a female Secret Service agent. She waited another twenty minutes in the windowless room, then was escorted upstairs, by the same two male agents, to the Oval Office.

There were three other people in the room: The president stood behind his desk, hands under his chin, staring out the window into the blackness; National Security Advisor Jane Rhys sat on the sofa, sipping a coffee, while Secretary of Defense Frye stood in a corner, arms folded. He was the only one in the room
looking at Alexis, and she thought he might start screaming at her at any moment. All three looked tense and exhausted.

“Where is Garrett Reilly?” the secretary asked.

Alexis started to answer, then held off, turning instead to the president. “Mr. President, sir, I do know where Garrett Reilly is, and I will absolutely tell you, but—”

The secretary cut her off. “You are an officer in the United States Army, Captain Truffant, and you are standing in front of your commander in chief. I asked you a direct question and you are instructed to answer it immediately.”

The president turned away from the window to face Alexis. He nodded at her, as if to give her permission. “Where is the boy?”

Alexis hesitated. This was the moment she knew would come, and it was the moment she most dreaded. She gathered up her entire reserve of courage. “Mr. President, sir. Don’t fire at the Chinese first.”

“The president did not summon you here to give advice, Captain,” Secretary Frye said. “He brought you here to discover the whereabouts of a man who is disrupting vital American operations in Asia, and putting millions of lives at risk. He is a threat to national security, and if you are refusing to reveal his whereabouts, then you are one as well.”

Alexis grimaced and forged ahead. “Sir, it is my considered opinion that you need to hold off on military action against the Chinese. Reilly has put them under considerable stress. We believe that stress will force them to pull back their military from an attack.”

“What Reilly is doing is cashing in on the turmoil he’s created,” Secretary Frye said. “He’s probably shorting the market as we speak, making millions. Captain Truffant, do you or don’t you know where Reilly is? Because if you do, and you do not reveal his whereabouts, I will have you detained and then court-martialed.”

“He’s thinking about war and the Chinese in a different way. In a way that nobody can predict. Not us. Not them. Isn’t that what we hired him to do?”

Frye’s face turned blank with an icy cold fury. “You are crossing a line, Captain. One from which you cannot cross back.” He opened the door to the Oval Office and barked at the president’s secretary. “Natalie, have agents Norris and Silliker come in here, please. Right away.”

He held the door open and looked at Alexis. “Last chance, Captain. Where is Reilly?”

Before she could get a word out of her mouth, the two black-suited Secret Service agents rushed into the room. Frye pointed to Alexis. “Arrest her.”

Alexis put her hands out, offering no resistance, but took one last look at the president. “Sir,” she said. “Trust in the Ascendant program. It will work. Trust in Reilly. The Chinese will be forced to back down.”

One agent put his hand on Alexis’s shoulder, while the other grabbed her wrist and twisted. They had started to lead her away, when Jane Rhys got up off the couch. She had said nothing for the entire time Alexis had been in the room.

“Why, Captain? Why do you believe the Chinese will pull back?” she asked.

The Secret Service agents halted their march toward the door. Alexis craned her neck around to look at the national security advisor, even as one agent dug his fingers hard into her shoulder blade.

“I believe events are going to explode in China. They are at a tipping point. I believe this is what Garrett—Mr. Reilly—is aiming for.” She turned her head a few inches more so she could see the president. “That’s the point of his war, isn’t it? An underground war. Just like you ordered, Mr. President. To blow up their system from the inside.”

The Secret Service agents tugged her toward the door. This time Alexis dug her heels in slightly, to give her one last moment in the room. She grimaced in pain, then said, “Isn’t that better than killing people?”

G
arrett picked up a new cell phone and slotted in a battery. It had been sitting, idly, on his desk, next to his bank of monitors, for twenty-four hours. Unused. Untouched. But now it was time.

Jimmy Lefebvre watched him. “What do you think?”

Garrett nodded, a barely perceptible movement of his head.

“They’ll know,” Lefebvre added, a tension in his voice. “Cell call to China. They’ll track it to right here.”

“Surprised they haven’t already,” Garrett said, barely above a whisper. The monitors in front of him were alive with activity, in stark contrast to the stillness of the darkened room. Garrett took a last look at the far wall. The television sets crackled with voices and video. News. Opinions. Fear. Greed. A panoply of human emotions, all on display, naked to the world. Humanity at its most vulnerable. About to reach a tipping point.

It made him slightly queasy, that sense of manipulation, of bad faith pushed out onto the unknowing, innocent world. Well, some of them were innocent, Garrett thought. Many of them were not. He was one of the less innocent, that was for sure, and perhaps now he was joining the truly damned. It didn’t matter. He was going to do it anyway.

He dialed the number. Heads turned from around the room. On the fourth ring, Celeste Chen answered.

“Garrett?”

“It’s your turn,” he said. And hung up. He popped the battery out of the
phone again, exhaled, then listened. There was a noise. Something indistinct. Something that was growing louder, coming at him, and then . . .

The plywood boards covering Murray’s front windows exploded. Slats of wood flew everywhere, shattering, as flashlight beams poured into the darkness, followed by canisters of tear gas. There were screams as across the room a door was battered into debris.

Mitty ran, as did Bingo. Garrett couldn’t see anybody else in the sudden flash of light. It didn’t matter. He knew what was coming. They were finally here, and there was nothing he could do about it. There was nowhere to run, and he was too exhausted and too sick to fight any longer.

He raised his hands in surrender.

A
ny form of entrepreneurial endeavor can be found in Shanghai, at any hour of the day, at any level of cost or quality. It is the newest of the new world, fueled by a hunger for wealth unmatched in any country, the United States included. No one works harder than the Chinese, and no one works longer or more persistently than the Chinese of Shanghai. From the grand colonial promenade of the Bund to the astonishing comic-book-themed towers of Pudong, from the packed-in streets of the old Chenghuangmiao Market to the throngs on commercial Nanjing Road, Shanghai bustles. It is a nonstop city, modern, competitive, proud, relentless, cutthroat.

So much like an American city, thought Celeste Chen as she rode the Number One Line bus from the Shanghai West Railway Station into downtown. Only more crowded. More thriving. We have so much to learn from the Chinese, she thought. They are a far older civilization and yet, somehow, newer as well. An odd contradiction.

Celeste felt part of the contradiction that was both Shanghai and China; half Western, half Eastern, new and old simultaneously, ambitious and yet settled. Not entirely of one place or of the other, but of both. Her loyalties—and even her nationality—had been turned upside down.

Hu Mei prodded Celeste gently in the arm with her elbow. “This is our stop,” she whispered with a smile.

“Sorry,” Celeste answered, the butterflies rising in her stomach. “I was daydreaming.”

“Daydreaming. Some of my favorite moments of the day. Did your daydreams make you ready?”

“I think I’m ready.”

“Good. If you think you are, then you are.” Hu Mei rose from her seat, then shoved and snaked her way to the front of the crowded bus. Celeste followed close behind, wondering how many of the people standing beside her were followers of the Tiger. She didn’t know. But she would soon. Soon, the unregulated flow of people in and out of the city would become a living thing, organized according to a new principle. Soon, the chaos would become structured. Soon was about to become now.

Celeste stepped out of the bus and into the warm Shanghai afternoon. Around her were thousands of other travelers, commuters, workers, and tourists. Hu Mei plucked her own cell phone from her pocket and punched out a text message. She winked at Celeste—a charming, playful, exceedingly confident wink—and hit send.

And then an amazing thing happened: Celeste watched as nearly half the people in her view reached for their phones simultaneously and checked their text messages. Good Lord, Celeste thought—the Tiger has hundreds of followers right here on this street. Probably thousands within the sound of her voice. Maybe millions in greater Shanghai. More? Ten million? Twenty?

Then she remembered what Garrett had said to her, back in the Pentagon, as he tried to convince her to go to China: she, Celeste, he said, was going to help change the world.