Fang listened and nodded. He could hear Iris rolling her sticks on the glass table behind him. She laughed, a light titter, as if she were privy to a joke he could not perceive.
“Very well,” he said into the phone. “Lewis will call you to make the arrangements. Well done, Mr. Lung, you will be rewarded.”
He hung up the phone and turned to Iris.
“That was the brother-in-law of the lawyer, the one who escaped the black jail with Sean Tyler. He says Tyler and the American man are coming here, to Shanghai.”
“Shall I alert the Red Poles?” Lewis asked.
Iris brushed her long, lacquered nails over the groves and dots of her sticks. She closed her eyes.
“Joyous Lake over Still Mountain,” she intoned in her husky voice. “A man who searches for game where there is none, shall soon starve. Persistence is not enough. If one does not look in the right way, one will not find what they seek.”
Fang nodded. “This Sean Tyler … he was working with Huang Ju, the Jade Enclave hacker who broke into my offices. He must be seeking what we also seek. Why else would he come here? Let them enter the city. Follow them, but do not interfere. With any luck, he will lead us straight to the key.”
Lewis nodded. “Shi pei le.”
“Iris, watch over Mother,” David said as he and Lewis left the room.
“Of course, darling.” Iris shot a sideways glance at the elderly woman, and her nose wrinkled with distaste.
She rolled the bamboo sticks again. A new pattern emerged.
Fang’s mother moaned and rolled over on her bed. “What is that noise?” she croaked. “Who is there?”
“Do not fear,” Iris called out. “Soon your son will bring honor to your family, old woman. It has been foretold.”
She looked down at the sticks and frowned. The hexagram was different than earlier. She had seen this pattern before, last night, after Fang had his way with her.
She had assumed it was a mistake then. Perhaps her mind was unfocused, her energy weak. She had rolled the sticks again, and read Fang a different fortune.
But here was the same pattern as before, repeated.
She collected the sticks and dropped them into her clutch.
Her heart skipped a beat.
She could hear the faint call of destiny. The pattern of the sticks… Joyous Lake above Arousing Thunder. A new destiny. A darker destiny.
An ill omen.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rebecca eyed the carnage inside the farmhouse and shook her head. She wheeled over to one of the bodies, a heavyset man wearing jeans and a camouflage t-shirt. “This one … you looked up his record?” she asked.
Josh looked up from the bank of monitors in the corner. “Yeah, Adrian Royce. Same background as Ganda. Former military. Spotty record, discharge. Did a few tours with the usual security contractors, then dropped off the grid. Lapinski’s assembled himself a nice little private army here. Keyes even found a Force Protection Cougar out in the barn. It’s a stripped-down civilian model, but still pretty heavy-duty."
The air inside the farmhouse was tinged with a thick, heavy scent. The odor was a mix of gunpowder, smoke, and blood. Lapinski, Ganda, and a young man named Matheson had been taken alive. They awaited interrogation, secured in various rooms of the house. The rest of Ted's group were killed in the initial raid. Their bodies were still sprawled across the floor. DuBose snapped pictures and fingerprinted each corpse, as he prepared their action report.
Rebecca looked at the staircase that led to the second floor of the farmhouse. “Josh, the girl you found … I have to see to her. And we sure as hell can’t bring her down here.”
Josh eyed the bodies spread out on the floor and nodded. “Yeah. I hear you. Keyes is up there with her now. She seems to have taken a liking to him.”
He walked over to her and smiled. “Josh Galloway, reporting for escalator duty.” He slid his arms under her, lifted her up, and began to carry her up the stairs.
“Clayton,” he called over his shoulder. “Little help please?”
Clayton snapped another picture, then set the camera down. “Sorry, sir … just trying to get the exposure right.”
“It’s an action report, not a coffee table book. Wheelchair, now.”
Dubose set down the camera, folded up Rebecca’s chair, and began to haul it up the stairs after them.
Once again, her body tingled as she felt his muscular arms coil around her. She found herself remembering the other night. Those arms, his hands, touching her, moving across her body … she shook her head and blinked.
Not the time, she thought. You’ve got three dead bodies downstairs, and you still have to interrogate Lapinski. Get your head in the game!
She resisted the urge to nuzzle his neck.
They reached the upstairs landing. DuBose hurried in front of them and set up her chair. Josh set her down in it, and she wheeled down the narrow hall to an old, warped wood door.
She knocked.
“One sec …” It was Keyes’s voice. A moment later the door creaked open. Keyes stood in the doorway, his short, muscular frame blocking her view of the room.
“She’s pretty scared, Director. She heard the gunfire and explosions when we came in. I don’t know how long she’s been here, but there’s a bunch of food wrappers and empty water bottles in the trash.”
Rebecca nodded. “I understand, but I need to talk to her.”
He stood aside, and Rebecca rolled into the small, dark bedroom. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw a small, single bed pushed against the far wall. The sheets were white, and a dusty, crocheted pink blanket lay rumpled in the corner.
Sitting in the center of the bed was a small Chinese girl.
She looked about six years old. Her knees were drawn up to her chin, and her tiny hands were clasped tight in front of her shins. She peered up at Rebecca with wide, frightened eyes as she rocked back and forth. Her cheeks were bright red, and her eyes glistened with tears. A few plastic toy horses were scattered on the bed in front of her.
“We were playing horses, Director," Keyes said. "I was telling her my family has some horses just like her toys, back in Pennsylvania.”
Rebecca smiled at the girl. She stopped rocking, but did not smile back.
“What’s your name, honey?”
The girl was silent. Rebecca rolled closer.
“My name is Rebecca. These men are my friends. Who brought you here?”
“Huai nanren,” the child said in a soft, quiet voice.
“Do you speak any English?” Rebecca asked. “Ah, yinghu ma?”
The little girl nodded. “A little,” she said. “Mama sent me to special school.”
“You speak so well!” Rebecca said, trying to sound comforting and encouraging. “Where is your mama? Is she here?”
The girl shook her head. “No. I don’t know where she is.”
“Is she in China?”
“I don’t know. The bad men don’t let me see her. Only sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Only when she does what they want.”
“What’s your name, sweetie? Can you tell me your name?”
She looked at Rebecca for a moment, then nodded. “Lian.”
Rebecca fished her phone from her purse and held it up. “Lian, I’d like to take your picture, okay?”
The girl looked worried. “Is Mama in trouble?”
Rebecca reached out and let her hand glide through the girl’s shoulder-length dark hair. “I don’t know, honey. But I’m going to try to find out, okay? I’m going to make the bad men tell me.”
Lian bit her lip, thought for a second, then nodded. “Okay. Xie Xie. Thank you, ma’am.”
Rebecca snapped the picture on her phone. “Call me Rebecca.” She showed the girl the picture. "See? Look how pretty you are." She rested her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Very pretty, and very brave."
She texted Caine the picture and typed the word “LEVERAGE?” undern
eath. Then she dropped the phone back in her purse. “Lian, I’m going to go for a little bit, but I’ll be back soon, okay?”
The girl nodded. “I want to go home. I want to see Mama. Qing!”
“I know, honey. I’m going to try to help. I promise.”
She pulled her fiery hair into a pony tail and turned to Josh. Her eyes flashed with anger. “I want to speak to Ted. Now.”
Ted stared across the table at Rebecca and shifted in his chair. His eyes flickered around the room, darting left and right.
“Focus, Ted,” Rebecca snapped. “I’m right here. And I’m going to ask you nicely one more time. Who is the girl?”
“Rebecca, you don’t know what you’re dealing with here.” Ted leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Trust me, I am on your side, and you’re in over your head!”
“My side? That’s your angle? You sent your hired thugs to take me out!”
Ted shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really? So Wallace Ganda isn’t on your payroll? We're holding him in another room. I have a feeling his story is going to be a little different. You know, once we start throwing around words like ‘treason’ and ‘enemy combatant.’”
“Enemy combatant?” Ted laughed. “That’s a reach. He’s an American citizen on U.S. soil.”
“He tried to drug me and stuff me in a van, Ted. I’m the Director of the National Clandestine Service. If I say he’s an enemy combatant, then he is. That’s the way this works.”
A look of doubt flashed across Ted’s face. He licked his lips and looked down at the table.
It’s starting to sink in, she thought. He’s screwed, and he knows it.
“Ted, you are going to go down for this. You have one, and only one, shot at seeing the light of day. Work with me. Who is that little girl upstairs? Who is your asset in China? Who is Red Phoenix?”
Ted looked away from her.
“You don’t want to talk to me? Fine. I’ve already alerted the DNI. You’re fucking with the President’s Global Environmental Accords. If China pulls out over what you’ve done, John Blayne will throw you in a hole for the rest of your life.”
Ted’s head shot up, and he looked her in the eye. “Wait, Blayne? You talked to Blayne?”
Rebecca leaned forward. “Of course, he’s the President’s intelligence advisor. Why?”
Ted appeared lost in thought. “Blayne has connections to every intelligence service. He could be talking to anyone. There’s no way to contain things anymore.”
“Talk to me, Ted. Is Blayne pulling your strings? Is he behind this?”
Ted refocused on her. His eyes were wide with panic. “No … I mean, I don’t think so. Blayne is in the loop, he knew about Red Phoenix. Not the particulars, but he knew I had an asset in China. But he’s not the one giving me orders. I … I don’t know who it is, but they’re high up. Higher than you and me.”
“Who is it Ted? Why do they want Sean dead? What information are they so afraid of this hacker releasing?”
“You have to protect me. We can’t stay here. Whoever it is, they know about this place. They set this all up, do you understand?”
Rebecca glared at him. “The sooner you talk, the sooner we leave, Ted. What files did this hacker access?”
“It’s not the files. I mean, they’re bad, but nothing that hasn’t been leaked before. The files were just a smokescreen, to get Blayne on board, for deniability purposes.”
“So what is this really about?”
Ted took a deep breath. “TANGENT. It’s about TANGENT.”
“And what the hell is TANGENT?”
Ted eyed Josh, then turned his attention back to Rebecca. “TANGENT is an NSA cyber-weapon. Something we developed based on the FBI’s Cyber Crimes Research Unit. The hacker we have in custody, Sun Wai Tong … he did hack sensitive files, but more importantly, he downloaded TANGENT from our servers. We’ve been trying to figure out who he gave it to, but so far he’s been … uncooperative. We can’t release him until we know who has it.”
“I'll ask again. What the hell is TANGENT? Why is it so important?”
Ted shook his head. “You really don’t get it, do you? Your whole world? Field ops, HUMINT, ‘Boots on the ground’ … you’re the past. TANGENT is the future. The next battleground isn’t going to be Iraq, or Syria, or China. The weapons of the next war aren't guns or bombs. It’s all going to be ones and zeroes, in cyberspace. TANGENT is a weapon for the digital battlefield."
Josh rested his hand on the pistol at his hip. “Director, this guy is just running his mouth.”
“Ted,” Rebecca said, slowing her words, as one would speak to a child. “You’ve got about ten seconds of my patience left. Start making sense.”
“We have to get out of here, there’s no time—”
“Then talk faster,” Rebecca snapped.
“Okay, look … the NSA spent billions of dollars and years of research weakening internet security. BULLRUN, QUANTUM, PRISM … those programs and systems are like our nukes. Using them, we can hack into just about any system on the planet, anywhere, anytime.”
“Your data is our data,” Rebecca said.
“Exactly. But every hacker, no matter how skilled, no matter what tools they use, leaves traces behind. Things like favored malware, keyboard language settings, server location. The FBI assembled a database that analyzes these traces. Their goal was to profile and identify specific hackers and groups based on these digital fingerprints. And you can bet our enemies do the same.
“TANGENT is the next step. We built on that database and improved it. Perfected it. We built a series of algorithms that can plant those traces after we hack a network. We can decide who the enemy will profile for the hack, with a ninety-five-percent success rate.”
Josh shrugged. “Hey, I know I’m just a jarhead, but you lost me.”
Rebecca bit her lip. “In other words, you could hack a Chinese military contractor and make them think the Russians did it?”
Ted nodded. “Exactly.”
“And you’re telling me no other country has anything like this? That killing an innocent man, and derailing a Presidential initiative, is necessary to prevent this program from leaking?”
Ted sagged his shoulders. “No. TANGENT is advanced, but other countries will soon have similar capabilities. Within three to five years, we estimate.”
“So why is your Chinese double agent hunting down Sean Tyler?”
“We can't release Sun Wai Tong, not until we get TANGENT back. It’s not just the program … it’s the log.”
“Come again?”
“Within the TANGENT program is a log … a database of every time it’s been used. TANGENT has never been activated against a foreign power. We felt that even at ninety-five-percent effectiveness, the risks were too great if it was detected.”
“So where was it used?”
“Domestically.”
Rebecca blinked. “Wait, what?”
“Programs like PRISM and QUANTUM depend on cooperation from corporations. Telecom giants, internet providers, equipment manufacturers. You think Google or Apple couldn’t figure out a way to block us from their networks if they wanted to? We offer them enhanced security, special privileges, and billions of dollars. That’s the carrot. TANGENT is the stick. Remember that movie studio hack a couple years ago?”
Rebecca nodded. “The FBI Cybercrimes unit blamed the North Koreans.”
Ted smiled proudly. “TANGENT in action. That studio was owned by a cellular communications conglomerate. They were going to implement end-to-end encryption on their entire network. They refused to give the NSA the key. After we hit them with TANGENT, they were willing to play ball. They gave us access in exchange for our help securing their servers.”
Rebecca stared at him and shook her head. “Jesus, Ted. This is insane. You’ve committed cyber-terrorism against American interests.”
Ted stared back at her and laughed. “American inter
ests? Are you fucking kidding me? These are multi-national corporations we’re talking about. They don’t give a shit about America. They move their factories to China, they set up corporate tax shelters in Ireland. They make billions in profits, and they pay less taxes than the average middle-class family. They only act in ‘America’s interests’ when people like me force them to. And we need programs like TANGENT to make that happen.”
“So what does David Fang have to do with all of this? Why is he after Sean?”
Ted’s features twisted into a confused glare. “What are you talking about? Who the hell is David Fang?”
“He’s been linked to high-level Triad gang activity. You're not the only one with an asset in China, Ted. And according to my sources, Fang wants Sean dead as well.”
“I swear, I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
Rebecca pulled out her phone and flipped to one of the pictures Caine had sent her. She held it up for Ted to see. “This man. Fang owned the building that Sean and the Human Rights Now group infiltrated. What did Sean find there? Why does Fang want Sean dead? Are you working with him?”
Ted squinted as he stared at the picture. “I don’t know, I … wait. I recognize him. He’s older but, I recognize him.”
He looked at Rebecca. “But his name’s not David Fang.”
Suddenly the door to the room burst open. DuBose stood in the doorway, panting. “Sir, we have a chopper inbound, three o’clock, about two clicks out.”
Josh glared at Ted and drew his pistol. “Is this your mysterious boss? Are they coming for you, Lapinski?”
Ted’s face went white. He shook his head. “I told you, you’re in over your head. They're not just coming for me. Now, they’re coming for us all.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Shanghai … after endless hours of travel, the city was like a shimmering starburst of concrete and metal rising up in the distance.
Thomas Caine series Boxset Page 53