The Ascendant: A Thriller Page 32

  The hunger in her belly mixed with the low-level anxiety in her blood as she parked her bicycle and scanned the plate-glass window in the front of Ming’s. A family sat eating lunch at the counter. An older couple sipped tea by the window, a bowl of steaming soup between them. They were not what Hu Mei was looking for. Besides a waiter and a cook peeking out from behind a glass-bead curtain, the restaurant was empty. Disappointment washed over Mei. Was this the wrong restaurant? Did she have the time wrong? No, it was ten minutes after noon. Or had she been tricked? Were the police about to swoop down on this tiny street and arrest her?

  A young soldier stepped out of a jewelry store down the block, and Hu Mei had a moment of gut-wrenching panic, but he only picked at his gums with a toothpick, spit loudly on the sidewalk, and strolled off in the opposite direction, unconcerned with Mei or anyone else on the street. Mei exhaled loudly, then peered back into Ming’s.

  And that was when she saw her: a young woman stepping out of the bathroom in the back of the restaurant. She was pretty, Hu Mei’s age, nicely dressed in a white blouse. Mei watched her for a moment, sizing up her face, her posture, her attitude, even the shoes on her feet. All these things Mei considered keys to understanding the intentions of another human being: a hunched-over person was slothful; a timeworn face could betray bitterness; flashy shoes might tell Mei that the person she was dealing with was a narcissist, more concerned with image than with substantive issues.

  But this woman showed none of these things. She stood straight, she smiled, and her shoes were pale-blue running sneakers. Nikes, Hu Mei guessed.

  Okay, Mei thought as she reached for the restaurant door, time to take another chance. Maybe the last one I’ll ever take.

  70

  BAODING, CHINA, APRIL 18, 12:10 PM

  Celeste Chen had to admit that the donkey cakes were not as bad as all that. Yes, they smelled odd, and the bread around the meat had been flecked with green, but the meat itself had been smothered in spices—she tasted fennel, cinnamon, pepper, and ginger—giving it a pungent kick that hid the fact she was eating a relative of the horse. And, anyway, it wasn’t the taste that had sent her running to the bathroom.

  It was her nerves.

  Ever since she’d made contact with the journalist in Hebei who had promised to connect her with Hu Mei, her stomach had been tied in knots. She found it incredible that she would be taken into anybody’s confidence, much less that of a Chinese journalist and follower of the now infamous Tiger, but she quickly realized that Hu’s followers were everywhere. What had seemed like a random encounter with a member of the insurgency’s inner circle had soon revealed itself to only be scratching the surface. After two days in Shanxi Province, it seemed to Celeste that half the people she met, no matter how random the encounter, knew who Hu Mei was, and most of them supported her. To Celeste, it quickly became clear why the government was so terrified of the Tiger.

  They had every reason to be. This was more than a grassroots movement. This was a tsunami.

  The journalist had told Celeste she would need to be vetted, and so she had spent a day waiting in a cinder-block shack in the coal mountains of Shanxi, being interviewed by a series of young men and women, each asking variations on the same questions: Where was she born? Was she really American? How come she spoke such flawless Mandarin? Why did she want to meet the Tiger? Had she ever worked for the Communist Party?

  Celeste’s answers had been consistent. She had nothing to hide, and so she hid nothing. She told them up front that she worked for a man who worked for the American military. To her questioners this was startling news—most Chinese had been led to believe that Americans who worked for the military were gruff, aggressive, and innately hostile to anything Chinese. And yet here was a young woman who blended in seamlessly in China, who was open, honest, friendly, and seemed ready to help the cause.

  But there was one problem: she wanted to meet Hu Mei herself.

  So it had been more waiting, in multiple locations: a factory warehouse, a hotel room, the back of a darkened movie theater. More questions. More answers. More probing about her motives. Another move, this time to a family home in the country where Celeste slept in a barn on a mattress next to a pair of dogs and a chicken that clucked all night.

  And then this morning. Word of a planned meeting. An address, a restaurant, a time. A ride in the back of a rattling Toyota pickup truck, dust flying everywhere as they careened across half-paved roads. And the subsequent butterflies in Celeste’s stomach. Three times on the drive she thought she would throw up; as they passed army barracks and trucks full of green-uniformed soldiers, she told herself that she had been crazy to volunteer. She was no spy, no adventurer. She was an academic, a bookworm, a shut-in. Why in God’s name had she gone along with Garrett’s plan?

  Perhaps it had been a wave of patriotism. But that couldn’t be right, because in her more reflective moments she felt just as loyal to China as she did to the United States. Perhaps that was it, then—her loyalty to China meant working for change, and Hu Mei seemed an opening to that. But even that seemed far-fetched. Except for a week-and-a-half stint asking for signatures for a gay-marriage ballot initiative in California, Celeste had not once been politically motivated. She hated politics and nationalism. They seemed to miss the point of life. Life was learning and love and relationships.

  She guessed that she’d been volunteered because she’d grown close to Alexis, Garrett, and the Ascendant team, had come to see their cause as her cause, and had, psychologically at least, made their goals hers. So when Garrett proposed the mission to China to find the Tiger, Celeste had eventually said yes. Not because she wanted to, or thought it was a good idea. She had said yes because she wanted to make Garrett happy.

  God, she thought, my psyche is frail. That I voluntarily agreed to put my life on the line for something I just barely agree with, for a man who I often find completely obnoxious . . .

  But there she was, standing in Ming’s Family Style restaurant, having just gagged in the bathroom—not from the donkey meat, she reminded herself—waiting for possibly the most wanted person in all of China to come have tea with her. So that she herself might then become wanted, hunted, jailed. Maybe for the rest of her life.

  If she were smart, had any shred of self-preservation left, she would run from the restaurant right now, grab a cab to the train station, a train to Beijing, and an economy seat in a 777 back to the safety of Westwood.

  Then the door opened. Celeste’s eyes snapped forward. A young woman, not more than a few years older than Celeste herself, walked into the restaurant. She was pretty, with a high forehead and brown eyes, her hair tucked up under a baseball cap with an Adidas logo on it. She wore a windbreaker over a plain white T-shirt.

  Celeste dismissed her at first: that couldn’t be her. She was too young, had no bodyguards, no minders. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

  The young woman looked once around the restaurant, as if taking in all the customers and staff, and then, satisfied, fixed her eyes on Celeste. She walked up to her, bowed quickly, then squinted as she studied Celeste’s face.

  “You are from America?” she asked in Mandarin.

  Celeste stammered, surprised by the directness of her question. “American. Yes.” And then added, “I grew up in California.”

  The young woman nodded, considering this information. Then she did a remarkable thing. At least it was remarkable to Celeste. The young woman smiled. It was a wide, white smile, open and vulnerable. It made her seem even younger than her age, which wasn’t very old to begin with. But more than young, her smile made her seem warm. It made her seem inviting. Celeste was captivated.

  “This is embarrassing for me,” the young woman said, looking down at the ground as she said it. “And please don’t think ill of me for it.” She looked back up at Celeste. “But I’ve never met anyone from America before.”

  Celeste started to say something, but then changed her mind. She had no idea how
to respond. The young woman grinned again. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from any other country but China. I suppose that makes me a xiāng bā lăo,” she said. “A real country bumpkin.”

  The woman laughed. Her laugh was just as open and disarming as her smile, and just as infectious. Celeste, despite herself, laughed with her, and all of a sudden, in that one moment, all her anxiety drained away. Maybe it was that Celeste was far from home, scared and lonely, and looking for a place to hide her fears, but in that instant she understood exactly why this woman, the Tiger, could lead a rebellion. She was magnetic. Vibrant. Real. Celeste felt—and she suspected that everyone must feel the same way when they met her—that this woman would never betray anyone.

  It was so obvious—she didn’t have it in her.

  71

  SOUTHEAST WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 18, 6:11 AM

  Garrett smiled as he read the encrypted e-mail from Celeste one more time: I met her this morning. She is on board.

  She? Garrett said to himself. The Tiger was a woman?

  Fascinating. Garrett liked that. It was unexpected. The Communist Party probably found it unexpected as well. Maybe that was why the Tiger’s movement had been so hard to snuff out. Perhaps being a woman in China meant something that Garrett had yet to understand. He made a mental note to research that theory, then got up to find Alexis. She was sitting at a computer monitor at the far end of the main room.

  “Celeste made contact. I just got the e-mail,” he said, the words tumbling out. “The Tiger is in. On board with us.”

  Alexis lit up with the news: “Really? That’s fantastic.”

  “Yeah. And you know what else? The Tiger”—Garrett grinned, eyes sparkling with mischief—“is a woman.”

  Alexis blinked. “No shit?” She let out a short laugh. “I guess we didn’t see that coming. But I mean—why not a woman, right? The next Mao is female. Wow.”

  Garrett watched her as she thought through the implications of this information, head cocked sideways slightly. The idea seemed to please her as much as it did him. Then he thought he detected a trace of sadness flashing in her eyes.

  “That means we move to the next phase,” she said. “Time for me to go see Kline.”

  “Yeah, that’s what it means.” Garrett nodded. They had discussed this at length: she would have to convince Kline to give Garrett what he wanted, and she would need to do it in person. Once Alexis showed her face at the Defense Intelligence Agency building she would not be able to return to Murray’s Meats and Cuts. Homeland Security would be all over the DIA. There would be surveillance teams, military police, the works.

  So this was goodbye.

  Garrett and Alexis stepped into the alley behind the store. The sun had risen. The temperature was climbing. A few blocks away a siren wailed and then faded out. They said very little. She asked if he was ready, and he said he was.

  He asked if she knew what he needed.

  “I do,” she said. “And Kline is going to flip out.”

  “This whole thing—this whole project—is his stupid idea.”

  “Let’s hope he remembers that when I ask him.”

  She took his hand, and just held it. They hadn’t made actual physical contact in the eighteen hours they’d spent at the storefront. Her skin felt warm and soft. He clutched her hand tightly.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m going.”

  She smiled. He stared into her eyes, then let go of her hand. “Stay safe.”

  “You too,” she said, and walked down the alley and disappeared around a corner. Garrett watched her go, and waited for that hole to open up in his chest.

  But it didn’t. And that was another pattern.

  72

  USS DECATUR, SOUTH CHINA SEA, APRIL 18, 6:42 PM

  Ensign James Hallowell stood at the rail of the USS Decatur and watched the sun set brilliantly, streaming tendrils of red, orange, and purple over the South China Sea. The Decatur was cutting swiftly through ten-foot swells, parting the water effortlessly. The big ship—an Arleigh Burke–class destroyer—was steaming due west, aimed ten degrees north of the sunset. Behind her, spread out in a line over ten kilometers, was the rest of the 11th Carrier Strike Group: an aircraft carrier, a cruiser, and four more destroyers. Somewhere around them, unseen, a Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine zigzagged one hundred feet below the ocean’s surface. Together, they were as potent a military machine as could be found on the planet, with enough munitions and firepower to destroy almost any foe. Even so, they were not invulnerable.

  The air was warm and humid; a tropical storm had just passed over the ship, dumping rain onto its steel decks. A few sailors had been allowed above deck to feel the rain on their skin. The Decatur had been steaming hard and fast for the last four days, and everyone on board had been glued to stations 24/7. A ten-minute break, standing in real weather, instead of the digital glow of radar and firing systems, was a welcome diversion.

  Ensign Hallowell watched the sun slip below the horizon. He figured it was still shining in China, 700 kilometers west of their position. Probably even still shining on the Chinese destroyers they knew were shadowing them, just past visual sighting distance, just over the curvature of the earth: four Jiangwei II–class frigates, packed with antiship missiles, helicopters, torpedoes. Enough firepower to give the Decatur a run for its money.

  Thirty years ago, Hallowell thought, the Chinese navy had been a bunch of rowboats, junks with sails and coolies. But, man, that country has been kicking ass since then. Kicking ass and building a naval force that was top-notch, second only to the U.S. Navy. The Chinese were smart, and they had money to burn. And that scared the crap out of him.

  Those Chinese frigates had been keeping a parallel course with the Americans for the last thirty-six hours, just out of sight, but well within missile range, and Hallowell knew that those missiles flew fast and low: Mach .9, twenty meters above the ocean. From just over the horizon, it would take one hundred and twenty seconds for a Chinese missile to reach the Decatur. If hostilities broke out, Hallowell would have two minutes to say his prayers and launch a return salvo. Two minutes of breathing space, and then it was in God’s hands who lived and who went up in flames.

  The thought sent shivers down his spine. He had phoned his wife—back in Dallas—four days earlier, when they’d been a hell of a lot closer to Hawaii, and told her this was just another cruise—a sun tour, he called it—but he’d been lying. Rumors had been flying all week: the Chinese were mobilizing, troops gathering on the coast opposite Taiwan, air force flying sorties off Japan; the Americans were sailing extra ships to the South China Sea, and the U.S. 8th Army in South Korea was on high alert. A shooting war was a real possibility.

  Not everybody believed that. But Hallowell did. He did because he had been on deck when Commander Martinez got the word from PACOM, and while Hallowell hadn’t heard the Washington side of the conversation, the look on Commander Martinez’s face told him everything he needed to know. This was the real shit.

  Hallowell chomped hard on his Dentyne. He hated chewing gum, but smoking was banned shipboard, and what the hell else was he going to do? He wished he could send a last e-mail to Britt, just tell her that he loved her, take care of the kids, make sure to remember to clean the filter in the air conditioner every couple of weeks, but the ship was on full lockdown now. No communication with anyone, anywhere. It was radio silence.

  Damn it, he thought, spitting his wad of gum into the writhing ocean fifty feet below, he did not want to die, not out here, in the middle of the ocean, five thousand miles from everything he knew and loved. Burnt to a crisp, then sunk to the bottom of the sea. But he would if he had to. He would make the ultimate sacrifice for his country, and his fellow crewmen. And he would pray to God as he died that whatever started out here didn’t spread back across the Pacific to the U.S. of A., because that really would be the end of the world.

  The ship’s klaxon rang three bells—everyone back to battl
e stations. High alert once again. That meant another twelve hours of staring at his fire radar. Which was okay with Hallowell. He had a job to do, and this was it.

  If the Chinese wanted to get busy with the U.S. Navy, so be it. They could accomplish a lot in two minutes.

  73

  DIA HEADQUARTERS, BOLLING AFB, APRIL 18, 12:02 PM

  “He wants what?” General Kline said, shutting the door to his DIA office. “Is he completely out of his mind?”

  Alexis smiled, relaxing her body into the black leather chair. She was ready for this, had prepared for her boss’s outrage; she knew what to say, the right tone to take. “Sir, you have as accurate a take on his sanity as I do.”

  “Don’t play coy with me, Captain. A plane? Full of people? And he wants them in the air in a few hours? That is an enormous ask. The riskiest thing we’ve ever done.”

  “I know, sir.”

  “Have you brought it up with the CIA?”

  Alexis looked around her boss’s office. She knew it was soundproof and debugged—all senior DIA offices were—and that she could say whatever she wanted here, but still . . . you could never be too safe.

  “We have a liaison from the agency with us. She’s been informed.”

  Kline sunk into his chair. The worry was written all over his face. “They’ll tell State, I guess. They’ll have to.”

  “They might,” Alexis said. “Depends.”

  “Frye has the president in his pocket. Homeland Security as well. They’ll go nuts when this hits the news. State can’t go up against the president. No way. This will be intelligence agencies against everybody else.”