The Ascendant: A Thriller (46 page)

She stepped across the tiny, darkened bedroom, and pulled back the yellowing cloth curtain on the window. From the safe-house apartment on the eleventh floor, she gazed out into the night at the Shanghai suburbs below her. Row after row of towering buildings disappeared into the darkness. A few cars raced down the mostly empty streets. It was three minutes before midnight.

Celeste guessed that she was west of downtown Shanghai. Beyond that, she was lost. Hu Mei’s compatriots had driven her here from Baoding, stashed in the back of a windowless van, and told her almost nothing. The drive had been long, and boring, and now she wished that she had slept.

So much had happened since she had met Hu Mei twenty-four hours ago. The two of them had hit it off together, like long-lost sisters. That amazed Celeste. They had so little in common, a peasant from northern China and a suburban girl from Palo Alto, but they had clicked. They had sat and talked in that tiny restaurant in Baoding for two hours, asking questions about each other’s backgrounds—growing up in China, going to school in America. What did she eat for breakfast, what did they watch on TV, what had happened to Hu Mei’s husband, why wasn’t Celeste married.

Celeste had told her of Garrett’s desire to help the cause, and Hu Mei had
said she would take it into consideration. Before she could commit, Celeste would have to prove that the Americans were for real, and that she, Celeste, could be trusted. Hu Mei needed to know she wasn’t an agent of the party, out to betray them. Celeste understood completely. There would be a test, and it was coming soon. Probably in the next few hours. It was perfectly reasonable, but it terrified her nonetheless.

Celeste felt that events had overtaken her. She was marching, inexorably, toward a destination that she had not planned for, had never even imagined. Every minute took her farther down the road, plunged her into potential chaos and true, life-threatening danger. And yet . . .

And yet she continued marching. Something about Hu Mei, the rebellion—or maybe it was China itself, the energy and vastness of the place—was drawing her deeper and deeper into the game.

She let the curtains drop, shrouding the room in darkness, and thought back on her life in the States. It had been a good life, steady and middle-class and peaceful, but it had also been lacking. What it lacked was a point. A reason.
A cause.
In the last few days, Celeste had realized that she had been looking for that cause all her life—the absence of it explained her cynicism and her mask of detachment—and perhaps now she had found it. Reform. China. Hu Mei. The rebellion. Could they give Celeste’s existence meaning?

Again, she wasn’t sure, but it seemed possible. The thought burst into her consciousness that if that were the case—if the rebellion were to become a defining principle of her life—then she might suddenly consider herself, well . . . happy.

With that last idea, she lay back down on the cot in the corner of the room, pulled a blanket up to her shoulders, and waited for the sunrise—and the test that would inevitably follow.

ASSOCIATED PRESS TRANSCRIPT OF WHITE HOUSE PRESS BRIEFING, APPROVED FOR GENERAL RELEASE.

LINDSAY TATE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY:
Thank you all for coming, I know this is last minute, but the White House doesn’t control the timing of events, and events have been unfolding quickly, so we wanted to jump out ahead of this. First off, let me just say that the situation in North Korea is still fluid. What we know right now is that the United 777 has landed safely at Sunan International Airport, and the latest word—and this is not from the North Korean government, mind you, they have said nothing publicly—is that all the crew and passengers are safe and resting in a government building in downtown Pyongyang. We got this information from a Red Cross worker on the ground in the capital. We do not believe they are being held as prisoners, but we also at this time do not know if they are being allowed to leave the building. The White House and State Department have made repeated attempts to contact the North Korean government, but those attempts have so far been met with silence. Obviously, you all know that the United States and North Korea do not have formal diplomatic ties, so we have turned to our contacts in the Chinese government to facilitate talks between ourselves and Pyongyang. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said that they would work on
this, but that there were a number of issues that made immediate contact with North Korea difficult.

ALFRED BONNER, NEW YORK TIMES:
Lindsay, did the Chinese Foreign Ministry say what those issues were? That were making it hard to contact the North Koreans?

LINDSAY TATE:
No, Alfred, they did not.

BONNER:
Do you have information that might shed light on that? We’ve heard reports that there have been disturbances in northern Chinese cities. Riots and protests.

LINDSAY TATE:
I’ve seen the YouTube videos, as I’m sure you have. We can’t, as of yet, verify that those videos are real. However, we are taking those reports seriously.

BONNER:
If they are real, what does that say about the stability of the current Chinese government?

LINDSAY TATE:
That’s outside my area of expertise, Alfred.

ANGELA HIRSHBAUM, LOS ANGELES TIMES:
Have you heard anything about the Chinese censorship wall? The Golden Shield? My sources are saying that it’s down. That anyone in China can view those YouTube videos or any other previously blocked website.

LINDSAY TATE:
Don’t have any specific information on that, Angela. That’s obviously a highly technical matter. You’ll have to get comment elsewhere.

HIRSHBAUM:
What about the
(
UNINTELLIGIBLE
)
protests at the Chinese embassy this morning? A flash mob that got out of control. Early reports are that two people were wounded. By Chinese guards.

LINDSAY TATE:
What I know is what you know on that one. The Metro PD are on the scene and handling the investigation. We don’t know the severity of the injuries those protestors sustained, or why the protests were called. All the president can say about this incident is that he is praying for the good health of those injured, and that he supports the right of all free people to peaceably assemble in public, which is what we believe those protestors were doing. If anyone was seriously hurt, we will hold the Chinese government responsible.

HIRSHBAUM:
We’ve heard reports that ambulances were called to the embassy
before the shooting even started. That’s a little odd, isn’t it? Makes you think someone planned the whole thing. Like they didn’t want anyone seriously hurt?

LINDSAY TATE:
You’ll have to draw your own conclusions on that one, Angela. The White House isn’t going to speculate.

MIKE HAN, KOREA TIMES:
Lindsay! Lindsay! My paper is getting information that American warships are on high alert in the South China Sea. And that they are being followed by Chinese vessels. Are we on the verge of a war with China?

LINDSAY TATE:
There’s obviously a lot of rumors swirling around. First of all, let me say, unconditionally, that the president of the United States does not seek a hostile relationship with China. The Chinese are our allies and number-one trading partner. We have very open communications with the Chinese leadership. Secondly, the president is a firm believer in the power of diplomacy to solve any and all problems that arise between nations.

HELEN JOHNSON, FOX NEWS:
But you haven’t answered the question. Are we at war with China?

LINDSAY TATE:
I think we’d all know it if there was a war between two nations, don’t you?

JOHNSON:
We wouldn’t be asking if we knew, would we?

LINDSAY TATE:
It’s a little early in the day for this, isn’t it, Helen?

BONNER:
Lindsay! We’re hearing rumors that a certain amount of what’s been happening can be traced back to a group of people who had been employed at the Pentagon but then went underground. A lot of press calls have originated from anonymous sources in the District. There’s rumors of ties to hacking groups. Something called Project Ascending?

LINDSAY TATE:
That’s ridiculous, Al. Why would the Pentagon have anything to do with nonmilitary-related events?

BONNER:
Cyber war? Psychological war? We’ve even heard that there’s a single source for all of this. One person at the center of events.

LINDSAY TATE:
You have this person’s name?

BONNER:
I don’t.

LINDSAY TATE:
Come to me with a name and I’ll look into it. Otherwise it’s
all speculative nonsense, Al. Don’t believe it. No single, unnamed person has the power to change the course of world events like this. Nobody. Just not possible.

BONNER:
Lindsay . . .

LINDSAY TATE:
Thank you all for coming. I’ll be back in a few hours if I have any updates. Thank you.

END OF PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT.

A
gent Paul Stoddard stared at the oscillating, concentric lime-green circles on the tracking program on his laptop computer. They pulsed, emanating outward from spots on a grid map of Southeast Washington, D.C. Each circle—and there were nearly a hundred of them—was a node of Internet traffic, IP addresses scattered around the neighborhood. Each new pulse of green was a percentage increase in the data flow to that node. Only the biggest users of information would register on the program. And one of those nodes, he was quite sure, was Garrett Reilly.

But which one?

Agent Stoddard felt at the raw gash that was stitched up along his left ear. The pain was still there, throbbing in time with the circles on his computer program, as was the ringing in his ears. Ever since Reilly had brought that chair down on the side of his head, Stoddard had heard a shrill, piercing screech in his ears. The ER doctor said it was a form of post-traumatic stress—a wound to the brain as much as a wound to the body. Whatever it was, it bugged the crap out of Stoddard, and he had vowed to make Reilly pay for it.

The Dodge Econoline van eased slowly down the side streets of Southeast D.C. Agent Cannel drove, pulling over every hundred feet or so to get a new Internet usage reading. Stoddard checked the laptop, let the program do its magic, then waited to see if they got a noticeable spike. So far the best they’d been able to do was narrow it down to about a twenty-block radius. But even that comprised nearly a thousand residences, far too many to raid all in the next few
hours, even with the dozen other Homeland Security teams that were scouring the district alongside Stoddard and Cannel.

No, they would have to get a big hit, a pulse that made it very clear there was hacking work going on. Then they would kick in doors. Then they would deal with Reilly . . . and Stoddard could get his seriously endangered career back.

“Try the cell monitor,” Cannel yelled from the front of the van.

Stoddard booted up a second computer—they had five in the back of the van, along with listening devices, microphones, telescopes, binoculars, not to mention a host of firearms, battering rams, flash-bang grenades, and a sniper rifle—and started the cell phone triangulator. It wasn’t nearly as accurate or powerful as the ones they had at Homeland Security headquarters, but it would let them know when a mass of wireless traffic was being handled by a specific cell tower, and it used overlapping signals from neighboring towers to narrow the search. It also had a setting to flag calls that came in from other countries. So far this had proved only partially useful; it seemed like everyone in Southeast D.C. was talking to someone in El Salvador, Mexico, or Ethiopia. Stoddard wanted someplace very different.

The NSA knew Reilly had sent an analyst to China. And they hoped the analyst would be checking in with him. Soon. When she did—and they knew it was a woman—well, that would be very helpful.

In fact, it might be all they needed.

S
omeone knocked at the bathroom door.

“Yeah?” Garrett said, trying not to sound as weak as he felt.

“Yo. Garrett. It’s Mitty. You okay in there? You, like, passing a bowling ball or something?”

Garrett slid his feet more or less underneath himself and sat upright. His head was spinning; he’d been lying there, head down, for fifteen minutes. He’d stumbled in when the black amoebas had taken over his vision entirely, rendering him effectively blind.

“Yeah,” he said, grabbing the edge of the sink and pulling himself off the floor. “I’m fine.”

He blinked into the mirror: his vision had begun to come back in bits and pieces. From what he could see, he was white as a sheet, his cheeks sunken, hair matted down on his forehead, flecks of vomit caked around his lips. His whole world smelled of barf—his fingers, his shirt, his chin, his lips. It was acrid and horrible, lingering in the air every time he took in a lungful of breath. And it wasn’t like the bathroom at Murray’s Meats and Cuts smelled so wonderful to begin with—no one on his team had been overly concerned with hygiene lately. Garrett wished they had at least wiped the place down.

The pain in his head had become so sharp, like an ice pick jammed under his skull and rooting around in his brain, that his body seemed to be trying to expel it by way of throwing up. But vomiting had had little effect. Now his throat burned, his nostrils were filled with stink, and his head still felt like it was
going to explode. He splashed cold water on his face, then tried to wipe away the exhaustion with an old towel, but it was no go. His body was collapsing in on itself. He was falling apart.