The Ascendant: A Thriller Read online

  She flew nonstop, coach, to Beijing’s Capital International Airport. She slept for maybe an hour on the plane. Mostly she pondered how she would tackle the task ahead, all the while fending off the sagging form of a snoring Chinese businessman. Walking off the plane onto Chinese soil was like being buffeted by hurricane-force winds, even though she’d been to China half a dozen times before; the language, the signs, the noise—the chaos of it all. Eighteen hours earlier she’d been in Washington, D.C., safely ensconced in the Pentagon basement, developing abstract hypotheses about geopolitical upheavals. Now she was half a world away, on her own, trying to find signs of a nascent political rebellion.

  And, most important—now she was a spy.

  That took her breath away. She sat in a stall in the airport women’s restroom for ten minutes just trying to calm down.

  She took a bus into the city, marveling at the myriad new buildings—huge blocks of apartments and offices—that seemed to have sprouted up everywhere in the Beijing suburbs. It had been two years since she’d last been to China, and yet in those two years absolutely everything had changed. The pace of destruction and construction was mind-blowing. She got off the bus in the touristy Dong Cheng district, figuring she could blend in with the other foreigners there (even though a native Chinese would be hard-pressed to figure out that she was American), and immediately pounded the pavement, looking for a cheap, out-of-the-way place to stay. She considered herself a seasoned traveler, but the frenetic pace and lack of personal space on the sidewalks of Beijing startled her nonetheless. Men and women slammed into her, knocking her sideways, cutting her off without so much as a sidelong glance. When she’d been a student here she’d enjoyed it, making a game of it. Bump and move on, bump and move on. Now, frazzled and exhausted, she just tried not to get hurt.

  She found a hotel—drab but modern, and relatively clean—and slept for two hours. That was just enough to keep her from collapsing. With jet lag running side by side with excitement, she packed up her bag and took a cab to Beijing’s gaudy, Buddhist-temple-inspired West Train Station, where she boarded a T-class train to Yangquan, the city in central China that was the heart of the country’s coal-mining district. She didn’t want to attract undue attention, so she bought a ticket for a hard seat, in the back of the train, where the poorer travelers rode, and ended up standing for almost the entire four-hour trip, pinched between a fat, middle-aged farmer and his chatty, pockmarked wife. The contradictory smells of modern China wafted over her: machine oil, cooked pork, the sweat of tired factory workers, the pungent tang of a freshly peeled orange. It was exhilarating. And overwhelming.

  Celeste knew when they had entered Shanxi Province because the air, instead of being gray with car and truck exhaust particulate, as it was in Beijing, took on a darker, blacker hue, to match the coal that was pulled from the ground in the mines that dotted the hills. Yangquan was, like so many smaller Chinese cities, both astonishingly modern and remarkably Third World, at least to Celeste’s Western eye. This was a part of China she had never experienced before. Bleary from lack of sleep, she staggered from the train and asked around for a hotel. She found a rundown one in the center of town, where a pair of Australian students were practicing their Mandarin—loudly and badly—in the next room. It didn’t matter to her in her exhausted state: she jammed wads of toilet paper in her ears and slept for another two hours before venturing out for dinner, and information.

  The spring night in Yangquan was warm and muggy, filled with bugs and the honking of horns. Celeste wandered downtown, hungrily, before stopping in a small restaurant that served beef noodle soup. In her jeans and no-brand track jacket, Celeste looked like any other resident of Yangquan, and when she spoke she passed for Chinese, though not a local. The waitress wondered if she was from Shanghai. Her teeth were too white and straight for a miner’s daughter. Modern dentistry—at least for the affluent—had finally come to the Middle Kingdom.

  Celeste did her best to chat up the waitress and the other patrons in the restaurant, but socializing with strangers was not her strength, and she got little in the way of helpful responses. Her brain was half-fried from the travel anyway, so it was just as well. She walked the streets of Yangquan later that night, but the shops and bars were closing down, and she felt like this line of inquiry wasn’t going to be particularly fruitful. The truth was, Celeste was an academic researcher, not a spy, so figuring out how to extract covert information once you were already inside of a country was not something she was particularly suited for. Still, she was game and wanted to do her best.

  That night she slept a deep sleep, interrupted only by dreams of countless Asian faces rushing past her in a blur, as if she were traveling through a tunnel of Chinese humanity. In the morning, after tea and sending a brief, encrypted e-mail to Garrett, Celeste stood on the street just outside her hotel and tried to orient herself. The air was hot and still. The incessant drone of construction machinery wafted through the city, rattling her bones. All of China, she marveled, was in motion, every hour of the day.

  She felt just as at home here as she did in the States, maybe even more so. Perhaps it was her looks—she had never fit in with the other girls at her white, suburban Palo Alto high school. Or perhaps it was the language. Speaking Mandarin gave her a not-so-secret joy; she loved the rising and falling intonations, the subtle variations in sound.

  But in the end, she suspected that it was simply that here, in China, she could shed her old skin and become someone new. It was the age-old thrill of solo travel—reinvention was always just around the corner, and that was a powerful counterpoint to her life in the States. For Celeste, ironically, China was freedom.

  Back at the Pentagon she and Garrett had made a list of ways she could seek out stories of Hu, the rebel leader. Garrett had suggested she hook up with a local boy, maybe at a bar or a restaurant. She wasn’t crazy about that method—it was so Garrett Reilly—and figured she would hip-pocket it as a last resort. She had offered up meeting halls and open-air markets as potential nexuses of information. Garrett had not been helpful on this score, though he had made one very good suggestion: behave as if you already knew all there is to know about Hu and the insurgency. Take an attitude of resigned annoyance—you were too cool for other people’s political grievances.

  Celeste thought that made sense. She decided to try it.

  She walked a quarter mile from the hotel and found a street lined with a series of small food stalls. In each one she searched out items that were missing from the displays—vegetables that looked rotten, bread that was stale, or a shelf that was simply empty. She waited until other shoppers passed by, then clucked loudly while staring at the missing item and said, “Yí rén dăo luàn, dà jiā shòu kŭ.” (One person makes trouble, everybody suffers.)

  At the first two stalls she wasn’t sure the other shoppers heard her. At the third, an old lady gave her a nasty look and shuffled past, jarring Celeste with her shoulder as she did. But at the fourth stall, she got the response she was looking for: a young man, no more than twenty-five, clutching an armful of snap peas and onions, heard what she said as she stood over a bin of wilting vegetables, and made as if to spit at her. But he didn’t. He simply said, “You are spoiled. Just like that eggplant. She fights for you.” Then he hurried out of the market.

  She? Celeste said to herself in amazement. She fights for you?

  The Tiger is a woman?

  63

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND, APRIL 16, 9:42 PM

  Hadley Kline kissed his daughter, Samantha, good night, then turned off the light in her second-floor bedroom. He headed down the hallway, then stopped, mid-step, as the sound of the TV wafted upward from the main floor.

  “Martin.” Kline hissed the name of his twelve-year-old son in mild disappointment. The kid never remembered to turn off the TV. Or to make his bed. Or clean his room. Or do anything that didn’t have to do with video games or practicing for Pop Warner football. There had been a moment when Kline had
thought himself brilliant for having kids so late in life. That moment had long ago passed.

  Kline padded downstairs in his socks, resigned to cleaning up after his son again, figuring he would swing by the kitchen and pour himself one last bourbon before retiring. Might as well, he thought, being on the first floor and all. He stepped into the living room and froze.

  CNN was on. Martin never watched the news. Or anything other than Cartoon Network. The back door was open, a soft breeze fluttering in from the backyard.

  Kline started to step backward, to put his back against a wall and prevent anyone from getting behind him, when a thin strand of wire snapped down over his head and around his neck. The wire tightened in a flash, taut and painful, before he could bring his hands to his throat.

  A voice whispered, “Don’t move. If you do I’ll twist it one more time, tie it off, and you will choke to death.”

  Kline took a shallow breath. The wire was already digging into his throat, constricting his breathing. He could not turn around without the wire ripping his neck to pieces.

  “Reilly?”

  “Did you tell them to torture me?”

  “Can we sit down?” Kline rasped. “I won’t hurt you.”

  The wire tightened around his throat.

  “Did you tell them to torture me?”

  “I told Alexis to give you the handcuff key,” Kline managed to hiss. “I helped you.”

  “Did you think I’d escape or that they would kill me?”

  “I wasn’t sure. But I was hoping you would escape. The wire is hurting my throat, Garrett. I can’t breathe.”

  In response the wire was pulled even tighter, forcing Kline’s head back slightly. The general shuffled his feet to keep from falling.

  “Why? Why did you want me to escape?”

  “Because I need you. We need you.”

  “We? The people who water-boarded me?”

  “They’re trained monkeys, doing what they’re told. They think you passed secrets to a foreign government. I’m going to fall over if you keep tugging on the wire, Garrett. You’ll kill me.”

  “I didn’t pass any secrets.”

  “I know that.”

  “All you know is that I have a wire around your neck, ready to choke the life out of you. That’s all you know.”

  “Okay,” Kline said, trying to suck in as much air as he could get into his lungs and stay calm at the same time. “You’re right. Okay? You’re absolutely right.”

  Kline could feel Garrett’s chin next to his ear. “I want to make your death as painful as fucking possible. I want you shitting your pants as you choke. That’s what I want.”

  Kline closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. “Garrett. The Pacific Fleet is on its way to China. The Fifth Fleet is going to join them in a day. We’re moving troops into Korea and Kyrgyzstan.” Kline could feel the tension on the wire around his neck tighten. “The president is falling into their trap,” Kline continued, pleading now. “Preparing to strike first. Just like you said.”

  “What the fuck do I care?”

  “You can stop it.”

  “No I can’t. Nobody can stop the U.S. military. And even if I could, why should I?” Garrett leaned close to Kline. “Look at me. Look what they did to me.”

  Kline tried to crane his head to the left slightly. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Garrett’s face. He had deep circles under his eyes, and a gash on his forehead just below his hairline; a trail of dried blood was visible just above his eye.

  Garrett hissed: “They poured water down my throat. For hours.”

  “You went off the reservation. You met with a potential spy from an unknown entity or nation.”

  “There is a fucking Constitution in this country. I’ll meet with whoever I want to meet with.”

  “No. Not anymore. That’s your old life talking. You have a security clearance. A very high one. Access to classified data. In your new life, you don’t get to do those things.”

  “My new life? Is this my new life? Because I didn’t ask for this. Not any part of it.”

  “I understand.”

  “Understand? Bullshit! You lied to me, seduced me, trained me to be your attack dog, then lied some more. You never told me the whole truth, not once.”

  “That’s the nature of the game.” Kline hated saying it, but it was true. Secrecy, lies, seduction. It was what he did for a living. What all of them did. Kline felt the wire around his neck loosen slightly. He could force a little more air into his lungs.

  “A game,” Garrett said. “All a game. Always has been.” Kline heard a sadness in Garrett’s voice. A weariness.

  “A game with incredibly high stakes. People’s lives. The fate of nations.”

  Kline could see Garrett shaking his head slightly. “You people . . . you never stop. You crazy fucking people.”

  “Garrett. This is your moment. We need you free so you can do what you’re best at. That’s why I had Alexis pass you that key. We need you to do what none of the rest of us can. Take control of Ascendant again. Stop the war.”

  Garrett snorted in disbelief. “Why? Give me one reason why I should do anything for you assholes ever again in my life? One reason why I shouldn’t leave here and never come anywhere near this place. Ever.”

  “Because walking away while millions of people’s lives are at stake—men, women, children, all over the world—would be wrong,” Kline said. “And as of this moment—and this is just my opinion—I think you need to start doing some right in your life.”

  64

  SCOTT’S RUN NATURE PRESERVE, MCLEAN, VIRGINIA, APRIL 17, 5:58 AM

  Garrett slept in the park. It wasn’t comfortable, but after sleeping with his head on a desk and his ankle chained to a chair, a bed of leaves and grass was just fine. Still, he tossed and turned all night, his skull throbbing with pain. He woke up early, before the sun had come up, to the sound of birds and a car honking in the distance. It took him a while to remember where he was, and why he was there, and when he did an anger washed over him that he thought he might never be able to expel from his body. It was an anger so all-encompassing that it blotted out everything else he felt, including hunger and thirst.

  He needed to do right?

  Garrett still couldn’t believe General Kline had said that. Since this whole thing had started, when had it ever, even for a moment, been about doing right in the world? He was dealing with the military after all, an organization that trained people to kill. And if this was about doing right, then were the Chinese wrong? Was the United States on the side of moral good? Were we so innocent? Garrett didn’t buy that for a second—moral good was for suckers.

  And what about what Metternich had told him on the train, about doing somebody else’s bidding? What if Metternich was telling him some form of the truth? If so, who was the bad guy then? The U.S.? Then how was working for the government doing right in the world?

  Contradiction layered upon contradiction, lie upon lie.

  Garrett’s hands shook with rage. He had, for a moment in General Kline’s living room the night before, actually considered tying off the length of wire around his neck and watching the old bastard choke to death. He had wanted to, really wanted to do it, but at the last second backed off. And, again, not for moral reasons; not because it would be wrong to kill the general, but because he would eventually get caught, and then sent to jail. Garrett did not want to go to jail.

  He told himself it had been more of a cost-benefit analysis than a moral judgment. But maybe even that was a lie—a lie he told himself to keep a distance from how he really felt. But how did he feel? Did he see himself as a patriot? Or a traitor? Or both?

  He opened a carton of Wheat Chex and poured the cereal directly from the box into his mouth. He had grabbed the cereal from Kline’s kitchen as he left, as well as a half gallon of orange juice. He washed the Wheat Chex down with the juice, and wished he had something else to eat. He was still starving, but at least he could function
now without his hands trembling. The fire in his brain, however, seemed constant, a steady ache that Garrett worried might never subside.

  He had something else he’d taken from Kline’s home the night before: a cell phone. It was a cheap model, one the phone companies gave away when you opened an account, and Garrett suspected it belonged to one of Kline’s children. He’d snapped the battery out of the phone the first chance he’d gotten, but he was hoping Kline hadn’t deactivated the account. He would hold on to the phone in case he needed it. Just for one call.

  The Homeland Security agent’s car was parked about a half mile away, on a quiet McLean street, keys tucked on top of the right rear wheel, but Garrett didn’t dare drive it anymore. Alerts would have been issued by now. Homeland Security would have gotten its story straight: Garrett was probably listed as an international terrorist, a threat to the nation, or who knows what else. They’d probably charge him with rape and murder if they could. He was undoubtedly a wanted man.

  So it was decision time. Stay? Or go?

  If he fled, he would need to find a route out of D.C., and then a place to hole up until he could figure out a way to clear himself, or untangle the web of people and organizations that wanted to either use him or kill him. Or both. Without his wallet, or even a single dollar in his pocket, that would be hard at best. They had confiscated everything when they pulled him off the Metro train.

  He supposed he could get a message to Mitty Rodriguez, and have her wire him some cash, but Homeland Security would undoubtedly be expecting that, and they’d be waiting for him when he went to pick it up. No matter where he went.