The Ascendant: A Thriller Read online

  “Wow. You are good.” She scowled at Garrett and sat down.

  “Ms. Chen is a language analyst,” Alexis said. “She is fluent in Chinese, all three major dialects, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Wu, as well as Japanese and Tagalog. She also does contract work in cryptology, for the military and the State Department. She’s on loan from UCLA, and we’re lucky to have her. She’s also an experienced code breaker.”

  “Awesome,” Garrett said. “I don’t do any of that stuff.” He liked Celeste immediately: she had attitude to burn, and Garrett held a special place in his heart for women with attitude.

  Alexis turned to the last member of the trio. He was the oddest-looking of the three: young, no more than twenty-five, African-American, and huge—six foot three at least, with an extra fifty pounds around his midsection. He wore chinos and a blue button-down shirt that was a size too small, and which made him seem all the larger.

  “This is Bingo Clemens,” Alexis said. “He’s our advisor on all things military and military hardware.”

  Garrett blinked in surprise. Of all the people in the room, Bingo appeared the least likely to have been in the military—or to have had anything to do with the military. If he could do five push-ups without collapsing, Garrett would have been astonished. Garrett was surprised they let him on the base.

  “Nice to meet you, Bingo,” Garrett said, sticking out his hand.

  “Yep,” Bingo mumbled, quickly shaking Garrett’s hand. Bingo’s fingers engulfed Garrett’s. His hand was the size of a baseball glove.

  “He can be shy,” Alexis said, almost maternally. “But he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the armed services. Ours, the Russians’, the Chinese. Anyone’s. And he’s up-to-date on capabilities, deployments, and materiel.”

  “But he’s not part of the military, so he has no prejudices, and won’t engage in the dreaded groupthink,” Garrett said.

  “Exactly,” Alexis replied.

  “I’m not shy,” Bingo grunted, staring at the ground.

  “Okay. I apologize for saying that, Bingo,” Alexis said. “He does research for the Rand Corporation out of their Santa Monica offices. They specialize in national defense matters. Bingo actually has the highest security clearance of any of us.”

  Garrett gave Bingo another look. If he was who the military was entrusting high-level secrets to, then this country was doomed.

  “I’m really not shy,” Bingo muttered, clearly having trouble moving on.

  “Hey, I believe you,” Garrett said, smiling. He thought Bingo was amusing—if a little out there. “So,” Garrett said, dropping into a rolling desk chair. “Nice to meet you all. When do we start?”

  “Right now,” Alexis said, booting up a laptop and opening an Excel spreadsheet. “Because we figure we have about a week.”

  “A week until what?” Garrett asked.

  “Until a full-blown war.”

  21

  BEIJING, APRIL 2, 3:08 PM

  Xu Jin, director of the Ministry of State Security, walked quickly, purposefully, through the crowds that clogged the streets of Dashengzhuang Village, the sprawling suburban section of South Beijing. New immigrants to the Chinese capital—farmers and peasants just off the bus, mothers with babies wrapped in soiled clothes—elbowed the director as if he were just another citizen looking for a bargain in the stores and open-air stalls of this crowded, bustling community. They could not have known he was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party, the most powerful ruling body in the entire People’s Republic. But why should they know him, Xu Jin thought, as he sidestepped a hulking man carrying a sofa-sized load of cardboard on his back. Practically nobody in China knew the faces of their leaders. The premier, yes, and the president and vice president, of course. But below those esteemed men? Faceless technocrats. And that was just the way they liked it.

  And it wasn’t like Xu Jin was alone. There were two bodyguards—soldiers from the Beijing garrison, in plainclothes—following a few steps behind him. And behind them, four more soldiers, likewise dressed in slacks and black coats, but with pistols in their belts, on the lookout for subversives, anarchists, and Muslim extremists from the northwest. Or maybe followers of that insurrectionist bandit woman roaming the villages of central China. But he wouldn’t be thinking of her—there were any number of enemies of the state wandering the streets of Beijing’s immigrant villages; they blended in with the hordes looking for work, staying out of sight of the government’s vast security apparatus while recruiting miscreants and criminals for their acts of subversion and destruction. They were nihilists, misguided zealots who sowed chaos, thinking that it would get them what they wanted. At least that was the way Xu Jin saw it. But they were mistaken. All acts of resistance to the state security forces would be met with unhesitating force.

  They would be crushed.

  Xu Jin ducked down an alley, his bodyguards following at a discreet distance, then shoved open the glass door of an Internet café. Inside, he was met with the low hum of a hundred computers, and the incessant click-clack of a hundred sets of fingers tapping on a hundred keyboards. There was little or no conversation, except for the bored cackle of the pair of teenaged girls behind the counter. Nobody looked up when Xu Jin entered the long, narrow, smoke-filled café, nobody noticed as he strode past the crammed-in desks lined with monitors and desktop computers. Kids, Xu Jin thought dismissively, playing their idiotic video games, posting their opinions on sports teams or girls—or whatever those people did online. He despised them all.

  Xu Jin, fifty-six years old, trim and fastidious, from a sophisticated, urban family, had almost no experience using computers. He didn’t have to. He had people on the committee—secretaries and assistants and endless functionaries—who did that for him. But it bothered him, the way people threw all their time and attention to the Internet. Didn’t they realize that real life was out there, on the streets, waiting for them, not in here, in dingy, smelly Internet cafés? They let their hair grow long; they didn’t shave or bathe, simply played and played all day long. To what end? It didn’t matter. He knew what he wanted, and who would make it happen for him.

  Xu Jin navigated the computer stations as they bunched even closer together toward the back of the café. There, in the last booth, before a chain-locked exit door, sat the man he was looking for. Or, rather, the boy. He pulled up a chair beside the gangly, pimpled programmer hunched over his keyboard. God, he was horrible to look at, pale and strung-out, vacant eyes staring at some idiotic video game. Were those dragons on his computer monitor? Is that what he does? Play dragon games?

  “Gong Zhen,” the ministry director hissed quietly. “It is me, Xu Jin. Look at me. Gong Zhen!” He let his voice rise over the hum of hard drives and whirring fans.

  Gong Zhen, twenty-three years old, brushed his greasy black bangs from his forehead and turned slowly to look at the bureaucrat. He blinked twice, as if to reorient his thoughts, then frowned slightly. “What time is it?”

  “ ‘Director Xu, could you please tell me the time?’ That is how you address me, Gong Zhen. That is how you address your elders. Your superiors.”

  Gong Zhen said nothing. Instead, he scratched lazily at his nose.

  Xu Jin’s whole body tightened with the impudence of this man-child: he should have him dragged from this horrible place and shot. That is what he should do, Xu Jin thought, and he should do it now. He started to stand up, and then caught himself, and sat back down. He could not have this boy shot. That was a ridiculous notion. Such things were no longer done in modern China. And for what? Not addressing a minister of state with proper respect? He calmed himself and looked the boy in the eye.

  “We talked before. You remember?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “About some work you would do for me.”

  “I remember.”

  “How you would put a team together? Of computer people? Like yourself? Friends from the university? Loyal and trustworthy people? With some who had w
orked in the United States, maybe as interns for Microsoft or Apple, but had come home?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I gave you money for this. Enough to hire two dozen people. Maybe more.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you would write something, and then set that thing in motion? This thing I asked for. Like a train. A great runaway train?”

  “Uh-huh. Sure.”

  Xu Jin collected himself. All that grunting would put him over the edge again. He rubbed the tops of his fingers, a soothing motion that never failed to bring him a moment’s inner peace. “Have you done what I asked you for? You and your team?”

  This time, Gong Zhen didn’t answer, but instead turned to his keyboard and tapped out a series of rapid-fire commands. He pivoted the computer monitor so the director of state security could see the readout. Thousands of lines of computer code scrolled down the screen, black and red and blue fonts dancing over the white background. Xu Jin stared at it for a moment, but it was meaningless to him, a foreign language he neither understood nor had any interest in understanding.

  “Are you saying this is the work?”

  Gong Zhen nodded, then sipped at a can of energy drink.

  “And you are ready to send it out into the world?”

  Gong Zhen shrugged noncommittally. Xu Jin sighed; he was an infuriating, idiot child.

  “And no one will be able to trace it back to here? To China?”

  “Finland. And Ukraine,” the boy said. “Multiple anonymous proxy servers.”

  “Yes, of course,” Xu Jin said, baffled by the whole thing. “And in the writing of it. The writing of this code you did. There are the things I asked for?”

  Again Gong Zhen shrugged.

  Ahhrr! Xu Jin wanted to throttle the boy. Did he not realize that lives depended on this? More than that, the fate of nations was hanging in the balance? No, Xu Jin thought to himself, he does not realize this. No one does. Except for myself, a few members of the Standing Council, and some equally high-placed enemies in the United States of America. And that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Attack and defend so that no one ever knew what was going on.

  “So. How long would it take you to implement our plan? To get the process rolling? If we wanted to start soon, today, for instance? Can your people do it?”

  Gong Zhen swung back to his monitor, tapped out a few keystrokes. The screen blinked, and without another word, Gong Zhen went back to playing that damned dragon-slaying game again. Director Xu watched in astonishment. Had this boy no sense whatsoever? He grabbed Gong Zhen by his shoulder and shook him roughly. “I asked you a question!” His voice rose above the clack of keyboards and the hiss of lips sucking on dozens of individual cigarettes. “When can you do this?”

  Gong Zhen blinked rapidly again, as if he were already on another planet with his dragons and chain-mailed warriors.

  “When?” Xu Jin barked again. “When can you start it?”

  Gong Zhen frowned at the director. “I just did.”

  22

  CAMP PENDLETON, APRIL 3, 7:12 PM

  Garrett’s head was swimming.

  He was exhausted, hungry, his legs ached, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes focused. They had been at it for three days straight—not that he could really separate the days from the nights anymore. The streak of red sunlight that washed through the open barracks window and across his computer screen wasn’t helping. Was that the sunrise or the sunset? It was all a blur.

  The process had started the moment Alexis had booted up her laptop, three days ago. She had explained that Garrett would be working with each member of the team individually, for four hours at a time. After four hours, they would break for food, and then he would be passed on to the next member; another four hours, more food, then the next handoff. Alexis said they should work for as long as Garrett could endure. Then they would sleep—never more than a few hours—and get right back to it.

  Lieutenant Lefebvre was Garrett’s first instructor. Alexis sat them in a corner of the main barracks room, opened the windows to allow in a breeze, brought hot coffee, and let them have at it.

  It wasn’t at all what Garrett expected: Lefebvre didn’t lecture Garrett, so much as he engaged him in a fast-paced, carefully structured conversation. It was all politics, all the time—most of it concerning China.

  Lefebvre pulled up jpegs on a computer screen. These, he said, were the highest ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo. These were their names, and this was where they came from. This was each one’s philosophical point of view. Lefebvre urged Garrett to ask questions, and he did. Why were they all men? (The party hierarchy was overwhelmingly male and extremely sexist.) Why were they all old? (It was a slow-moving, conservative bureaucracy.) How come Chinese exchange students got so much acne when they came to the United States?

  At the last question, Lefebvre pressed his lips together in a tight, uncomfortable smile. He looked at Garrett like he could barely stand his company . . . and pushed on.

  These were the Spratly Islands, claimed by China, Japan, and Vietnam. Vast oil reserves lay within their territorial waters. It was a burgeoning hot spot. Fine, now, this was the difference between a princeling—the offspring of a high-ranking party member—and a Chinese bureaucrat who had worked his way up the ranks. This was China’s most recent GDP, its primary imports, exports, a brief history of its conflict with Korea, India, Russia. These were the world’s primary trade routes; these were the Strait of Malacca. The U.S. Navy patrolled here. And here. And here.

  Garrett doubted he’d remember any of it. When he stared out the window, watching the helicopters bank left over the beach and south toward San Diego, the lieutenant snapped at him: “Focus please, Mr. Reilly. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Garrett started to say fuck you, but caught himself. Lefebvre was goading him, for sure, but Garrett couldn’t figure out why. On the Garrett Reilly scale of How Big of an Asshole Had I Been, he’d barely even gotten started with Lefebvre. Still, Lefebvre clearly didn’t like him. When Garrett asked Alexis about this, she just shrugged.

  “Maybe you offended him. You seem good at that.”

  During a five-minute break, Garrett did an online background check on Lefebvre. He’d been right about the money—the lieutenant was the heir to an old, and dwindling, Georgia timber fortune. Huh, Garrett thought, that’s interesting, because now he was a low-level researcher at the Army War College. He liked that little bit of family rebellion. Garrett tried to see his Army records, but those were on a secure Human Resources server, and he didn’t have time to hack it. He’d get to that later.

  Lefebvre ended their session by giving Garrett a stack of books, three feet high, on Mao, the party, and the current state of the Chinese economy.

  “You really expect me to read all this?”

  “I don’t expect anything of you,” Lefebvre said with that same distasteful look.

  Next it was Celeste Chen’s turn. Much to Garrett’s relief, Celeste didn’t lecture him. Instead, they read Asian papers together. She called them up online and then translated the gist of any article he pointed out, steering him away from pieces that seemed completely off topic. They read the Gōngrén Rìbào (the Workers’ Daily), the Guanming Rìbào (the organ of the Communist Party), the Nongmin Rìbào (agricultural news), and the Jiefangjun Bao (the mouthpiece for the People’s Liberation Army). They sampled papers from Japan (Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun), from Malaysia (the Star), and from Hong Kong (Sing Tao Daily). They read economic news, cultural news, and political news, but mostly they looked for any mention of the United States, for any reason: diplomacy, trade, movies, conflict, criticism . . . war.

  At first, Garrett wasn’t entirely sure what she was trying to teach him, but reading through the papers had a calming effect on him. He closed his eyes and began to imagine that Celeste’s voice was actually the voices of Chinese citizens. They were talking to him. Telling him how they felt about the world. He let their opi
nions wash over him, drinking them in.

  That’s when he realized that they—Alexis and the DIA and whoever else was behind this—were treating him as if he were a computer. They were feeding him massive amounts of data and expecting him to sort it, filter it, process it, and then spit out answers—answers that would come in the form of pattern recognition. This revelation cheered him considerably: this he could do, and do well. Hell, he could mine patterns out of chaos in his sleep.

  Celeste stayed cool to Garrett, clearly not interested in him in any way sexual or romantic, which disappointed Garrett, given that he viewed pretty much any good-looking woman as a possible hookup. He asked her if she had a boyfriend.

  “Don’t even go there,” she said, barely pausing as she read through an article about hackers in the China Public Security Daily. “I’ll kick your fucking teeth in.”

  Garrett laughed. He thought she might be a lesbian, which was okay with him, especially given how hot she was. But Celeste knew her stuff, that much was evident, and Garrett marveled at her grasp of languages. She was able to slip from Mandarin (her immigrant parents spoke it at home) to Japanese (learned it at school) to Cantonese (picked it up in her spare time) in quick succession, and all with equal fluency. She even spoke passable Arabic. Her linguistic skills seemed to be on a par with his ability to sort data—she mastered languages on an unconscious level, and that, to Garrett at least, was way fucking cool.

  In the evening Alexis had food brought in. It was nasty cafeteria slop, obviously from the nearby Marine mess hall—beans and wilted salad and a mystery meat—but Garrett was starving, so he didn’t care. He drank three cups of coffee and a Diet Coke. The moment he finished eating he was moved on to the next session, which belonged to Bingo Clemens.

  Bingo talked in a steady, low whisper, barely audible, his face hunched over a computer keyboard. Garrett had to lean close to hear him, and also to see the screen past Bingo’s large, fleshy head. Images flashed past—missiles and warships and planes and more missiles and maps and soldiers—while Bingo’s voice rambled on without interruption: “. . . the tactical range of an AGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile is 278 kilometers . . . the Chinese have six Jianghu V–class frigates in service in the South China Sea . . . the Russian Federation has four armies headquartered in its Eastern Military Command, guarding its border with China . . .” Garrett interrupted him occasionally, asking him to slow down or explain an acronym, and Bingo would stop on a dime and go into even more excruciating detail.