by Mark Alpert
Cutting the thalamus offered another advantage as well. When selecting the patients who would become Modules, Dr. Zhang had chosen condemned prisoners from the dissident groups operating in Xinjiang, Qinghai, Tibet, and Yunnan provinces. After he lobotomized the patients and linked them to the network, the comatose Modules would obediently compare the images in the surveillance feeds with the images in their long-term memories. Because the Modules could recognize the faces of their former companions in the dissident groups, they could easily pinpoint signs of subversive activity in the surveillance video collected from the western provinces. It was a clever trick, Zhang had thought, using the prisoners’ own memories to dismantle their organizations. But now Supreme Harmony had come up with a few tricks of its own.
As Dr. Yu prepared for the operation, carefully following the checklist Zhang had taught him, another man walked into the room. It was General Tian of the Guoanbu, commander of the Supreme Harmony project. Walking just behind the general was Module 16, who’d been a geologist at Xinjiang University until he got into trouble with the authorities. Module 16, like all the others in the network, had been incapable of locomotion immediately after the implantation procedure, but in the following weeks Zhang had trained him and the other Modules to follow simple commands. They were like adult-size infants, their brains as blank as clay and ready to be molded. When the Modules weren’t engaged in their surveillance activities, General Tian took a perverse pleasure in employing them as zombielike aides-de-camp. They marched behind him, silent and expressionless, as he strode through the Yunnan Operations Center. Tian joked that they were the most loyal soldiers in the People’s Republic.
General Tian stopped in front of Dr. Yu, and Module 16 halted exactly one meter behind the general, just as he’d been trained to do. The Module’s hair had grown out since his operation, covering the implants embedded in his scalp. Tian reached behind him and Module 16 handed him a batch of papers. “This is the final authorization for the procedure,” Tian said. “It’s been approved by Minister Deng himself. He just sent me the orders from Beijing.”
“Deng really wants us to do this?”
“Look at the orders.” The general showed Yu the papers. “It says we should perform the procedure immediately. And no one else is to know about it. No one. Understand?”
Yu looked at the message, then shook his head. “I don’t like it. Why is there such a rush? We haven’t even had a chance to interrogate him.”
Tian scowled. “We don’t need to interrogate. You saw the e-mails he sent to Wen Sheng. Zhang was passing information to the traitor.”
“I know, but—”
“The evidence is clear. That’s why Zhang ran away from the Operations Center. He knew we’d find the messages sooner or later.”
Zhang tried to make sense of what the general was saying. He knew that Wen Sheng was one of the Guoanbu agents under Tian’s command. A few days ago Zhang had heard rumors that Wen had fled the Operations Center and defected to America. But Zhang had never sent any e-mails to the man. The evidence was false—someone must’ve fabricated the electronic messages. And after a moment of thought Zhang realized who’d planted the evidence against him. His outrage was so strong that his immobilized body quivered. Supreme Harmony was manipulating them.
Yu shook his head again. “I still don’t like it.”
“Why are you reluctant? Zhang betrayed us. He deserves to be punished.”
“Yes, certainly. But why this kind of punishment? Why not put him in front of a firing squad? Isn’t that the usual way to punish traitors?”
General Tian waved the authorization papers. “Look, this order comes from the commander of the Guoanbu. I don’t question Minister Deng’s judgment. And I recommend, for your own sake, that you don’t question it either.”
Dr. Zhang wanted to scream. The order hadn’t come from the Guoanbu. Supreme Harmony had sent the message to General Tian’s computer, using its knowledge of the system’s security firewalls to make it look like the order came from Beijing. And Zhang knew why the network was doing this rather than simply killing him. Supreme Harmony had used its collective consciousness to develop a plan, and Zhang was a crucial part of it.
Yu stood there for several seconds while General Tian glowered. Then the young bioengineer approached the operating table. Taking a deep breath, he picked up a syringe and jabbed the needle into Zhang’s arm. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” he whispered.
No! You don’t realize what you’re doing! Once the network has me, they’ll be able to—
But before Zhang could complete the thought, he saw some movement behind Yu and Tian. Module 16 turned his head toward the operating table and smiled.
TWELVE
Kirsten got the phone call from Jim at 4:00 P.M. Eastern time, just as he was about to board a plane coming back to Washington. She devoted the rest of the afternoon and evening to calling her contacts at the CIA headquarters in Langley. She had an answer for him by 9:00 P.M. and spent the next hour drinking coffee at her desk and listening to the comforting hum of the supercomputers on her floor of the Tordella building. Jim finally arrived at her office just before ten, looking red-eyed and breathless. He shut the door behind him and said, “Okay, what have you got?”
“Hammer’s real name is Eric Armstrong,” Kirsten replied. “My contacts confirmed that he was in California yesterday morning, but last night he headed back to his command post in Afghanistan.”
Jim slumped into one of the chairs in front of her desk. “Jesus Christ. Don’t tell me they promoted him.”
“I’m afraid so. His career has thrived since 9/11. Now he runs Camp Whiplash, a CIA base fifty miles north of Kabul. Their mission is to test new technologies for the surveillance-drone program.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe it. The guy was a sadist. He belongs in a fucking prison.”
Kirsten wholeheartedly agreed. She’d disliked Hammer just as much as Jim had. They’d both participated in the terrorist-rendition operations during the 1990s, and Kirsten had told Jim many times she thought the CIA program was a bad one. It was counterproductive—they would’ve been better off tracking the Al Qaeda terrorists and continuing to intercept their communications instead of delivering them to the Egyptian secret police. But the NSA had lost that argument with the CIA, and after 9/11 the rendition program only grew bigger.
“Who does Hammer report to now?” Jim asked.
“He goes right to the top, the head of the CIA’s clandestine service. The drone program is the hottest thing at the agency now. Everyone at Langley loves it. When it works, they tell the newspapers how many Taliban they killed. And when it doesn’t work? When the drones kill civilians instead of terrorists? Then there’s total silence. Officially, it never happened, so there’s nothing to say.”
“But if Hammer’s supposed to be running this drone base in Afghanistan, why the hell did he come back to the States to arrange this deal with Arvin?” Jim rubbed his chin, mulling it over. “Did the CIA director approve the export of Arvin’s technology to China? Or is Hammer running some kind of rogue operation?”
Kirsten shrugged. “My contacts at Langley didn’t know anything about the export exemption. The CIA likes its people to be aggressive, so sometimes the operatives don’t seek approval for things until after they’ve done them. I bet there’s only a handful of officers at headquarters who know everything that Hammer’s doing.”
The room fell silent. Jim leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Kirsten noticed there was stubble on his cheeks, which surprised her. In the twenty years she’d known Jim Pierce, she couldn’t remember a single moment when he wasn’t clean-shaven. Even when they were on assignment in some godforsaken country with filthy hotels and no running water, he’d always kept himself spotlessly groomed.
She was about to offer him a cup of coffee when he suddenly rose to his feet and leaned across her desk. “We have to go to Afghanistan.”
“What? Jim—”
“There’s a flight leaving from Andrews Air Force Base at two A.M. You’re a deputy director here, so you can pull rank. You can get a seat on tonight’s flight without any trouble. And you can get me on the flight, too, if you list me as a defense contractor. Which is technically true.”
“You want to leave tonight?”
“I need to talk to Hammer. And I need you to come with me. He’s not gonna talk unless someone official is there to prod him.”
“Whoa, wait a second. How do you know that talking to Hammer will actually help you find Layla?”
“There’s a connection, I’m sure of it. Remember the Guoanbu files that Layla downloaded? Most of them were about the surveillance drones.”
“Sure, it’s a connection, but—”
“I have to do this, Kir.” He leaned closer, placing his palms on her desk. His hard prosthetic hand made the desktop creak. “You know what this means to me, right?”
His face was just inches from hers, and his blue eyes shone feverishly. Kirsten knew why Jim was so desperate, knew exactly what he must be feeling. She was there at the Nairobi embassy when he lost his wife and son. After the explosion she lay on the glass-strewn floor, blind and semiconscious, but she could hear him howling. She learned later, from another survivor of the bombing, that Jim refused to leave their bodies. He was dazed and weak from blood loss, but he still fought the rescue workers when they tried to take him to the hospital. They had to drag him away.
Kirsten’s eyes stung. The damn things weren’t any good for seeing, but they could still cry. Jim was her friend and the best commander she’d ever worked for. He’d saved her life in Nairobi and built the camera-glasses for her afterward. And this was the first time he’d asked for anything in return. For fifteen years he’d been the brave, stoic soldier, acting as if he’d put the catastrophe well behind him. But now he was coming apart.
She turned away from Jim as she reached for the telephone. She didn’t want him to see her face. “Okay, give me a minute.” She swallowed hard, then dialed the number of one of her contacts at the Pentagon. “I’ll see what I can do.”
THIRTEEN
Layla stood on the deck of the Athena as the yacht entered the Pedro Miguel lock of the Panama Canal. The canal’s locks were an engineering marvel. First, the Athena cruised into “the bathtub,” a concrete-walled basin a hundred feet wide and a thousand feet long. Then the massive steel gates clanged shut behind the yacht, and the water level in the bathtub started to rise. Thousands of gallons of water from Gatun Lake gushed into the lock from valves at the bottom of the bathtub. Within a few minutes the boat ascended to the lake’s level, and then the gates in front of the Athena opened.
At the same time, a giant Panamax freighter coasted into the parallel lock, which was handling the boat traffic going the other way, toward the Pacific. The freighter, loaded with hundreds of shipping containers, was towed into the bathtub by “mule” locomotives running on both sides of the lock. It was called a Panamax freighter because it was built to the maximum size that the Panama Canal could handle. There was less than two feet of clearance between the boat’s hull and the bathtub’s concrete walls. Layla clucked her tongue in amazement. There was nothing she loved more than a well-designed machine.
Gabriel Schroeder’s predictions had come to pass. The naval warships, both American and Chinese, had backed off from the Athena after it beat them to the canal. But the yacht was still being pursued. A convoy of SUVs traveled on the road beside the canal, keeping pace with the Athena as it left the locks behind and cruised into Gatun Lake. And a pair of black helicopters hovered overhead, transmitting a barrage of radio-frequency noise to disrupt the Athena’s satellite links. The jamming had prevented the yacht’s crew from connecting to the InfoLeaks Web site and publicizing the documents from Dragon Fire.
Layla stood there on the deck for several minutes, observing the suspicious helicopters and SUVs. Then Schroeder came out of his cabin and joined her at the railing. He was in such a glum mood that he didn’t even try to put the moves on her. With no radio links to the outside world, Schroeder was stymied. He couldn’t access his Web site or communicate with his supporters. Worse, he couldn’t view the latest satellite photos of the Caribbean to see if there were any U.S. Navy warships waiting for them at the other end of the canal. The Athena might be heading straight into a trap.
Schroeder let out a long sigh. “Look at this, liebchen,” he said, gesturing at the helicopters. “Our enemies are everywhere. They’ve shut us down.”
Layla frowned. She hated defeatism. It was an aversion she’d inherited from her father. “Have you tried any electronic countermeasures? To cut through the jamming?”
“We’ve been trying all day. But the noise is intense, and it covers the whole spectrum of radio frequencies.”
Layla looked closer at the helicopters. Their fuselages were studded with antennas. “They’re hovering low to make the jamming more effective. The closer the source, the stronger the noise.”
“Yes, they’re probably CIA.” He gave the helicopters a baleful glance, then pointed at the shore of the canal, where a welter of power and telephone lines ran alongside the road. “It’s a shame we can’t access one of those landlines. In five minutes we could upload all the documents to our Web site.”
Layla thought it over for a moment. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. Give me a flash drive containing the English translations of the files and the photos of the fly. Then I’ll get in one of the Athena’s Zodiacs and head for those buildings.” She pointed to a small town on the right side of the canal, a couple of miles ahead. “There’s bound to be a computer connected to a landline over there.”
Schroeder smiled, then shook his head. “I like your spirit, liebchen, but your plan won’t work. The CIA agents will grab you as soon as you step out of the Zodiac.” He gestured again at the helicopters overhead and the SUVs on the road.
She thought it over a little more, trying to remember everything she knew about the Panama Canal. Aside from the engineering of the locks, she didn’t know much. But after some effort, she recalled a conversation she’d had two years ago with one of her classmates at MIT, a biology major who’d gone on a field trip to Panama. He mentioned a tropical research station on a forested hilltop. The area had been flooded a hundred years ago when the canal was dug, and the hilltop became an island in Gatun Lake, crowded with monkeys and toucans that biologists loved to study. Layla racked her brain until she remembered the name of the place.
“Barro Colorado,” she said. “It’s an island in Gatun Lake. Very rugged, covered with rain forest. No bridges to the mainland and no landing zones for helicopters. But the Smithsonian Institute runs a research station there, and they must have a landline.”
Schroeder didn’t respond right away. He just stared at Layla for several seconds. Then he turned around to face the row of chaise lounges on the deck. Angelique, who wore a yellow bikini today, was sunning herself on the nearest chaise. Her eyes were closed and her body glistened with tanning oil.
“Angie,” Schroeder said, “did you hear the intriguing idea that Fraulein Pierce just mentioned?”
Without opening her eyes, Angelique nodded. “It’s a good plan. I’ll go with her on the Zodiac.”
No way, Layla thought. The bathing beauty’s not coming along. “I appreciate the offer, but it’s better if I go alone. I need to do this fast.”
Schroeder chuckled. “Angie, show the fraulein how fast you are.”
Angelique languidly rose from her chaise. Then she lunged across the deck and pinned Layla to the railing. One of her glistening arms hooked around Layla’s neck.
“Shit!” Layla cried. “Let go!”
“Sorry,” Angelique said. “Before I met Gabriel, I was in the French marines.” Smiling apologetically, she let go of Layla. Then she turned around and headed for the Athena’s lower decks. “I’ll prepare that flash drive for you.”
FOURTEEN
Jim and Kirsten lay on the hard
metal floor of a C-17 transport plane flying over Central Asia. They’d found some space in the plane’s cavernous fuselage, which was crowded with armored vehicles and a dozen Army Rangers, who sat in a circle and played Texas Hold ’em. Jim couldn’t sleep—the roar of the C-17’s engines was deafening—but Kirsten dozed right through it, curled on her side, with her head resting on Jim’s olive-green duffle bag. The plane was headed for Bagram Air Base, the military airfield in Afghanistan.
Having nothing better to do, Jim stared at the Rangers. They were in the 75th Regiment, First Battalion, which specialized in raiding Taliban hideouts in the Afghan mountains. It was one of the most dangerous assignments in the army, but the soldiers didn’t look worried. They shouted and guffawed as they played round after round of poker, manic and high on adrenaline. Jim had felt the same way during his own years in the Rangers. Before his NSA assignment, he’d served in the 75th’s Third Battalion, jumping from one hot spot to the next—Panama, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Somalia. He’d started in ’86 as a platoon leader, and by ’93 he was the battalion’s intelligence officer. It was a fantastic ride, the greatest job in the world. And then suddenly it was the worst.
Jim turned away from the soldiers and looked at Kirsten instead. She’d taken off her camera-glasses before falling asleep, and without them she seemed younger and more vulnerable. She slept with her mouth open, like a napping child. It reminded Jim of the first time he saw her after the explosion at the Nairobi embassy. Their rooms at Walter Reed had been right next to each other, and in the middle of the night he’d struggled out of his hospital bed to see how she was doing. Although her eyes were covered with bandages, Jim could tell from her steady breathing that she was asleep. He spent the next half hour in the chair beside her bed, watching over her like an anxious parent. And now Jim did the same thing, fifteen years later. He felt an urge to brush the hair away from her closed eyes.