The Ascendant: A Thriller (8 page)

“You want me to be your early warning system?”

“In a way, yes.”

Garrett thought about this. “What about my old job?”

“You’ll be put on leave from that job. It will still be there when you get back. Alexis has already cleared this with your boss, Mr. Bernstein.”

Garrett cracked a smile—he’d been right about Avery as well. The old man was in on the secret. At least part of it. “And I get paid for this?”

“You’ll have a base salary. It won’t be huge, but it will be something. Your responsibilities will far outweigh your pay grade.”

General Wilkerson cut in: “Money is not the point here, Garrett. This is part of a larger civic responsibility. You will be protecting our nation. So what do you say?”

The room fell silent. Again, Garrett felt all eyes on him. He waited a moment, as if considering, but he had known what his answer would be for a while. He shook his head.

“I’ll pass,” he said.

There were muted whispers among the gathering. Secretary of Defense Frye stepped up, a look of anger and concern on his face. “What we’re asking you to do is a great honor, Garrett. Don’t you love your country?”

“I do, absolutely,” Garrett said, with a smile. “I love my country. I just hate the fucking morons who run it.”

•  •  •

Captain Alexis Truffant shot a look over to her boss, General Kline, and grimaced. Kline just shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, What can I do? The quiet tension that had built in the room was gone, replaced by a low chatter of angry conversation. Garrett stood in the middle of the room, smiling pleasantly.

“Hey, someone want to tell me where the bathroom is?” he said. “I gotta go pee.”

Mackenzie Fox, the assistant to the secretary of defense, led Garrett angrily—and silently—out of the room, while Alexis and General Kline huddled in a corner.

“You called it, Captain,” General Kline said with a hint of resignation in his voice. “He has a deep-seated antipathy toward the armed services.”

“It’s more than that, sir,” Alexis said. “He hates everybody. It’s part of what made him a good candidate.”

“So what now, General Kline?” the secretary asked, as he and General Wilkerson joined them. “Because that was a bit of a disaster, and we’ve still got a problem on our hands. And, quite honestly, your program’s not helping much.”

Alexis could see General Kline stiffen. She knew the secretary and her boss were not good friends—on the contrary, Frye worked consistently to marginalize any new DIA initiatives. Alexis guessed he was a man who hoarded power.

“We could push harder with Reilly,” Kline said. “But I’m not sure it’s worth our time or effort. There are other candidates out there. We’ll keep looking. We’ll find someone.”

“Sir,” Alexis cut in, “I hope I’m not being too forward, but I believe we can still recruit Mr. Reilly. Bring him onto the team.”

“That seems awfully optimistic,” General Wilkerson said.

“Sir, I agree. It is,” Alexis continued. “But I think there is something in him that wants to help. We just need to connect with that.”

“You gonna connect with it, Captain? With that hidden part of him?” the secretary asked with a sly, almost lewd smile on his face.

Alexis started to answer but was cut off by Mackenzie Fox’s urgent bark. “He’s climbed out the bathroom window.”

“Shit!” General Kline said. “Don’t we have Secret Service around the house?”

“They’re out front. They didn’t see him,” Fox said. “They think he jumped a neighbor’s fence and left via O Street. They’re radioing D.C. police right now.”

The secretary of defense laughed. “He’s free to go, Mackenzie. He’s not under house arrest. He’s not a prisoner.”

“We could charge him,” Alexis said.

“With what?” Frye said. “Pissing us off?” The secretary snorted as he walked away. “Didn’t like him anyway. Thought he was an ass.”

•  •  •

After Garrett climbed over a wrought iron fence and then tiptoed across a carefully tended backyard garden, he jogged east on O Street, then turned south and walked until he found a cab. He didn’t know D.C., but told the driver—a Sikh with a beige turban—to take him to the nearest Greyhound station. The Sikh, Indian dance music blasting from his radio, got him there in ten minutes. At the station, Garrett bought a ticket for the next bus leaving D.C., which happened to be a 10:35 p.m. express to Greensboro, North Carolina. He made the bus two minutes before it left, found a pair of seats in the back all to himself, pulled the battery and memory card out of his cell phone, and then curled up to sleep until they reached the tobacco state. The last thought he had before he drifted off was a lingering image in his brain of Secretary of Defense Frye’s face as he told those military half-wits to go fuck themselves. God, he loved sticking it to people.

Especially people who deserved it.

H
u Mei stepped out of the deserted alley, past the slatted wooden gate and into the small, circular garden that lay tucked behind a cinder-block shack. She closed the gate to the alley and locked it from the inside with a sliding length of wood, finally pausing to catch her breath and let the late winter sun warm her face for a moment or two. She had been on the move for the past fourteen hours, walking through the night with just a pocketful of stale
mantou
buns and a plastic bottle of water to keep her going. It had been bitterly cold out—the temperature near freezing—but now the sun was up and its faint rays warmed her hands and face.

Hu Mei rolled her stiff shoulders to get the blood flowing in her body. Around her, lining the hillside, were row upon row of concrete and cinder-block homes, each of them one room, the better ones with wood smoke curling up from their rudimentary chimneys, the less good with layers of plastic sheeting tacked inside their windows. It was a tough life here, in Luoxiatou, in central China. So many people had already left for better jobs in the coastal cities: the young people had cleared out; the able-bodied who were middle-aged worked in the mines; the old folks simply scratched out a living doing whatever they could.

Hu Mei checked the scrap of paper the old man had given her in the last town. On it were directions, and a name, Bao. Bao was an old woman—so Mei had been told—but she was a sympathizer, and had promised to give Hu Mei a
meal and a bed for a few hours. That’s all Mei needed. A few hours’ rest, some food, and the chance to meet another person who believed in her cause.

Was this the place? Mei asked herself silently as she looked around the yard. If she made a mistake, she would be caught. And if she were caught, she would be jailed, beaten, and executed. Probably all within a few days.

So a mistake was out of the question.

But where was the old woman whose house this was? Why hadn’t she come out to meet her? Hu Mei’s heart raced. She forced herself to remain calm, but a prudent amount of anxiety would keep her alert. And alert meant free. Alert meant alive.

Hu Mei could feel the authorities, like the Chinese winter, forcing themselves down upon her since the rebellion in Huaxi Township four months ago. Rebellion. That was what she was calling it. The government called it a criminal provocation. But that is what they called anything they did not like. And they did not like what had happened: the humiliation of two hundred of their officers; disarmed, forced to flee, eighty of them beaten, twenty-five badly enough to be sent to the district hospital. Word had spread through the valley like a brush fire, leaping from village to village. Word of mouth was still Hu Mei’s best ally. There had been postings on the Internet, but those were scrubbed by government censors almost as fast as they appeared. But the government could not monitor chitchat between villagers, men riding on buses, women at the market, or schoolchildren walking home at the end of lessons. These people were spreading the word, and the word was potent: Hu Mei was the tip of a very sharp sword, and that sword was swinging at the neck of the government.

She laughed mirthlessly at her own far-fetched metaphor. Swords? Necks? How ridiculous. The Communist Party was massive and vastly powerful. Her minuscule rebellion was a mere irritant, not a potential death blow. And yet, the reaction she felt all around her—the squadrons of police officers searching for her and her followers day and night, the wanted posters with her name on them, the preposterous stories of her numerous lovers and vast wealth—all were signs of a government that feared her. Or at least feared what she represented. And that, along with the weak March sun, warmed her.

An old woman shuffled into the garden from her home. Hu Mei sighed deeply—this would be Bao. She had not made a mistake. She would be safe, at least for another twelve hours. The old woman’s face was deeply wrinkled, her
white hair pulled back under a scarf. Her gray eyes were mere slits in the morning sun. She bowed immediately before Mei, as if approaching a dignitary. Mei hated that. Groveling. It was unbecoming in anyone, but especially a wise old woman.

“
Shīfu
,” the old woman said.
Master.

“Do not call me that,” Mei said quickly. “Please, do not.”

The old woman straightened herself with barely a nod. Her eyes darted around the garden, and immediately Hu Mei’s anxiety shot back to the surface. What was the old woman looking for?

“What is it?” Mei asked.

The old woman hesitated. She clenched her gnarled hands briefly. “I tried to send him away . . .”

“Send who away?”

“I said I had never heard of Hu Mei. But he did not believe me.”

Mei scanned the garden. She tried to see back into the alley behind her, but the wooden fence was too high. “Who did not believe you? Who!” she hissed.

“The man,” the old woman said. “From the party.” Bao looked back down at the hard-packed dirt. “He has been waiting in my house all morning.”

Hu Mei’s blood froze. How could this have happened? She had followers in every local township. She had a network of sympathizers and spies. They tracked policemen and bureaucrats everywhere she went, keeping Hu Mei safe, keeping the movement alive, and now this old woman was saying that it had somehow all gone wrong? Here in this tiny out-of-the-way village?

She took a deep breath and managed to gasp: “Is he alone?” Her chest was tight.

“I am, comrade.” A potbellied man in a worn suit stepped out of the shack and into the frosty garden. His feet splayed apart like a duck’s, and his large bald forehead was shiny in the weak sun. He pushed importantly past Bao, elbowing the old woman to one side. “I am alone, but I am not alone. A party member is never alone in China. I have policemen—fifty of them—all over this town. So no, I am not exactly alone.”

Hu Mei spun around, reaching behind her, into the folds of her winter jacket. She had a short shiv of a knife tucked into her belt, just above her hip. Now would be the moment, she thought, to stab this man and run from this place. She could overpower him before he understood what she was doing—just run the knife quickly into his chest, then flee the village. Hu Mei was sure
this fat, soft, party flunky would not be quick or strong enough to stop her. He spent all his time behind a desk, eating candy and signing meaningless proclamation papers. She should end his pitiful life, here and now.

And yet, she didn’t. She hesitated. Perhaps he was not here to arrest her. Perhaps he did not even know who she was. He did not seem ready to grab her, no matter the self-importance that wafted off him like the smell of rotting meat. And if she did stab him, it would be Bao, the old woman, who would take the blame. Hu Mei could not do that to her. That was not her nature.

“You are,” the party official said, “who I believe you to be, are you not?”

“Who are you?” she answered, trying to give herself a few more moments to think this through, to consider her options.

“I am Party Township Director Chen Fei. A humble and obscure provincial official with little real power. Around me and above me are the powerful and the wealthy. But what do I have?”

Hu Mei frowned. This was the usual bureaucratic prelude: after professions of powerlessness and poverty came the subtle—or not so subtle—requests for a bribe. Perhaps he was simply out for himself, looking for a handout? That would be a relief, Mei thought. She had a few yuan. She could pay off this man. And then move on.

She released her grip on the knife in her belt and mentally started to count the money in her pocket. Mei was about to claim poverty herself—the customary retort—but she waited. There was something about this Chen Fei. His approach did not make sense. He could make far more money turning Hu Mei in than extorting a few yuan from her.

“I can see by the look on your face,” he continued, “that you are confused. Allow me to sit, will you?” Without waiting for a reply he squatted on a piece of wood covering a patch of frozen mud in the garden. “Yes, I know you are the bandit Hu Mei. I know you have stolen money from poor shopkeepers, have personally slit the throats of many policemen, and have many husbands, from whom you demand constant sexual satisfaction.”

Hu Mei started to respond, but the party man cut her off. “And I know all these things to be untrue as well.” He smiled up at her, as she was now standing above him, and he was drumming on the frozen ground with his fingers. “But still, they are amusing to repeat.”

Hu Mei pushed a weak smile to her lips. “Party Township Director Chen, if you know these things to be lies, then why are you here?”

Chen Fei looked up at Hu Mei. His wispy black hair lay motionless on his half-bald scalp. His eyes were flat and dull; Hu Mei had seen many men like him before. They were dead inside, from years of kowtowing to other soul-dead men just above them, and now they took simple pleasure in extracting pain from those below them. But then, as she stared at him, the most unexpected thing happened. Tears welled up in the party township director’s eyes and trickled down his cheeks, tiny drops of water that steamed in the winter air. His once stolid, lifeless face suddenly broke into a shattered picture of pain.