by Mark Alpert
Now he was in China to put the final pieces into place. In return for a hundred-million-dollar contribution to the Supreme Harmony project, he was going to demand the exclusive use of one of the Modules, preferably a young, healthy male. Arvin was determined to make his plan work. He wasn’t going to die. He was going to outsmart Death.
As Arvin continued to stare at Mao’s corpse, he felt another stab of pain in his abdomen. It was so excruciating he had to bite his tongue to stop himself from screaming. To give himself strength, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and squeezed the object hidden there. It was the size of a small paperback and its metal casing was cold and smooth, except for the USB port and the power switch.
Despite Arvin’s best efforts, Agent Liu noticed that the old man was in pain. “Are you all right, Professor?” he asked.
“Yes,” Arvin managed to say. “But I think I’ve seen enough.”
As they left the mausoleum, Liu received a call on his cell phone. He stepped away from Arvin and Frank Nash and began speaking in rapid Mandarin. Arvin grew nervous. He didn’t understand a word of the language, but he sensed that the news wasn’t good.
Liu got off the cell phone. “Ah, Professor Conway? There’s been a change of plans.”
“What is it? Did the general cancel our meeting?”
“No, no. But General Tian wishes to hold the meeting somewhere else. Someplace more private, he says.”
“Where?”
“Outside Beijing. About fifty kilometers northwest of here.”
Arvin didn’t like this. First the Guoanbu wouldn’t let him meet Zhang Jintao, and now General Tian was playing games. Were they having second thoughts about allowing Arvin to participate in Supreme Harmony? Maybe they didn’t need his money. Now that they’d mastered the technology, maybe they didn’t want him involved in the project anymore.
And maybe they wanted to eliminate him. Maybe he was a loose end they needed to tie up. But Arvin wouldn’t go down without a fight. He had a card up his sleeve. He knew something the Guoanbu didn’t know, about the safeguards built into the implants.
“All right,” Arvin said. He pointed at his bodyguard. “Frank will get our car and we’ll follow you there.”
“Ah no, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Liu said. “General Tian wants you to come alone, in one of our vehicles.”
Arvin really didn’t like this. He shook his head. “That’s unacceptable. Why is the general setting these conditions?”
Agent Liu spoke into his phone again. After another exchange in Mandarin, he gave Arvin an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Professor. It’s for security reasons. I hope you understand.”
Arvin had no choice. He had to take the risk. Without the Guoanbu’s help, he wouldn’t live more than a few months longer anyway. “Okay, I’ll come with you. Just give me a moment.”
He stepped away from Liu and huddled with Frank Nash. Turning his body so that Liu couldn’t see what he was doing, Arvin slipped his hand into his pocket, flicked the power switch on the hidden object, and handed it to Frank. “You know what to do,” Arvin said.
Nash nodded. Then Arvin turned back to Liu. “All right, I’m ready.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Jim was driving a black Chevrolet Suburban that he and Kirsten had borrowed from the NSA attaché at the American embassy. For the past twenty minutes they’d circled Tiananmen Square, trying to keep track of Arvin Conway as they contended with the miserable Beijing traffic. Because thousands of people surrounded the Chairman Mao Mausoleum, it would’ve been impossible to spot Arvin in the crowd under ordinary circumstances. But Jim had devised a way to keep their target in sight.
It was similar to the trick he’d used to temporarily blind Arvin at the Singularity conference. The cameras in Arvin’s eyes transmitted the video to his retinal implants via radio waves. The waves leaking out of Arvin’s eyes were faint, but during the journey from Afghanistan to China—Jim and Kirsten had taken a military flight to New Delhi, then flown commercial to Beijing—Jim had improvised a detector using the cameras in Kirsten’s glasses. He’d adjusted the frequency of one of the cameras so it could view radio waves; when Kirsten looked at Arvin she saw the signals as two red spots glowing in his eye sockets. And because radio waves easily passed through human bodies, Kirsten could still see the red spots even when the crowd in Tiananmen Square hid Arvin from view.
“Okay, he’s coming out of the mausoleum,” Kirsten said. She sat in the Suburban’s passenger seat as Jim drove through the stop-and-go traffic. “The Guoanbu agent is still with him. And Nash, his bodyguard. Now the agent is taking a cell phone call.”
“I got it,” Jim said, reaching for the satellite phone Kirsten had given him. It was an NSA device that had been programmed to intercept and decrypt the Guoanbu’s wireless communications. Jim switched to the frequency band used by the Ministry of State Security and turned up the volume. A rush of Mandarin came out of the phone’s speakers. Jim caught only about half of it. He hated the Beijing dialect. “What are they saying? Can you understand it?”
Kirsten nodded. “They’re moving the meeting place. To Juyongguan Pass, in the Changping District.”
“That sounds familiar.” Jim knew Beijing and its environs pretty well, having investigated intelligence targets in the area during his NSA stint. “That’s northwest of the city, right?”
“Yeah, in the hills. A section of the Great Wall runs across it.”
Jim shook his head. “First Mao’s tomb, now the Great Wall.”
“Arvin’s hitting all the tourist spots. Maybe he just wanted a vacation.”
She glanced at Jim, obviously waiting for him to come back with a snappy rejoinder. When they had worked together in the nineties, they’d often slipped into a joking repartee, exchanging quips and mild insults, but Jim couldn’t banter with her right now. He was too worried about Layla. Before they left New Delhi, Kirsten had showed Jim the intelligence reports about the attack in the Panama Canal that sank the Athena. Although most of the world had jumped to the conclusion that the U.S. was behind the attack, the intelligence reports made it clear that the Guoanbu was responsible. Photographs taken by CIA helicopters showed speedboats being lowered from a Chinese-flagged freighter. Gunmen on the boats apparently strafed the area where the Athena sank, making sure no one survived. Afterward, Navy SEAL teams recovered thirty-one bodies, including Gabriel Schroeder’s. None of them matched Layla’s description, but the reports also mentioned an unusual sighting in the Gatun Locks shortly after the sinking. A deckhand on a Panamax freighter reported seeing a teenage girl swimming in one of the locks. The girl, who wore black clothes, was rescued and taken away by several men also dressed in black. The deckhand assumed the men were canal employees, but the Panama Canal Authority had no record of the incident.
Jim was certain that the girl was Layla. Although she was twenty-two years old, she’d always looked younger than her age. And she always wore black. Nothing but black.
Kirsten glanced at him again. His silence was obviously worrying her. “Hey, it’s gonna be all right,” she said. “We’re gonna nail these bastards. Starting with General Tian. Arvin’s gonna lead us to him.”
Jim shook his head. He wished it was that simple. “And what happens then?”
“Then I’ll pull some strings. Neither the Guoanbu nor the CIA wants anyone to know about the deal they made. Once we figure out what the hell Tian’s doing, we’ll start applying the pressure. The Chinese government doesn’t like embarrassing disclosures. They’ll tell us if they have Layla.”
Jim started at the mention of his daughter’s name. He had to stop himself from imagining what the Guoanbu agents might be doing to her. He knew all too well how ruthless they were. They wouldn’t give up Layla just because of a little diplomatic pressure. There was going to be a fight, and Jim didn’t see how he could win it.
“Okay, the agent’s off the phone,” Kirsten reported. “He’s talking to Arvin. Go back to channel one.”
Jim flicked a switch on his satellite phone, tuning it to the frequency of the signal coming from Arvin’s cell phone. Jim had taken advantage of another NSA surveillance tool, an ingenious piece of software called a roving bug. A few hours ago he’d radioed the software to Arvin’s phone, and now the bug enabled Jim to surreptitiously turn on the device. Although the phone remained in the inside pocket of Arvin’s jacket, its microphone picked up the conversation between Arvin and Agent Liu and transmitted it to Jim’s phone. He and Kirsten could listen in on everything they said.
First, they heard Agent Liu tell Arvin about the change of plans for the meeting. Then they heard Arvin say to Nash, “You know what to do.”
Kirsten craned her neck to see what was going on. “Interesting,” she said.
Jim looked in the same direction. The Guoanbu agent led Arvin toward a black limousine parked on the eastern side of Tiananmen Square. Luckily, the limo was just a hundred feet ahead of the Suburban. Jim would be able to follow Arvin without much trouble. Nash, though, headed south toward Qianmen Street. “The bodyguard’s on an errand,” Jim noted. “And he’s moving pretty briskly.”
As Jim nosed the car forward, Kirsten said, “Hold it,” and adjusted her camera-glasses. “Okay, this is strange.”
“What?”
“I’m seeing another radio signal. Same frequency as Arvin’s implants. But this signal isn’t coming from Arvin’s eye sockets.” She pointed at the bodyguard. “It’s coming from Nash. From the left pocket of his jacket.”
“And it wasn’t there before?”
“Nope. It looks like someone just turned it on.”
Shit, Jim thought. He had no idea what was going on. But whatever the guy was carrying in his pocket might be important. He turned to Kirsten. “One of us should follow him.”
She nodded. “I’ll do it. You won’t need radio tracking to see where the limo goes.” She tapped her glasses. “But these might be useful for shadowing Nash through the crowds.”
“Okay. But take this.” He reached into his shoulder holster and took out the Glock. The pistol, borrowed from the armory at the American embassy, was their only weapon. It would’ve been impossible for Jim to sneak his combat prosthesis into China, so he’d left it in Afghanistan.
Kirsten stared at the gun for a moment. Then she shook her head. “Negative. Arvin is our primary target. You keep the gun.”
“Kir, listen—”
Before Jim could say another word, she opened the passenger-side door. “I’ll see you tonight at the embassy,” she said. Then she slipped out of the car.
Dodging the slow-moving traffic, Kirsten headed for Qianmen Street. Jim gazed at her for a couple of seconds—so nimble and lithe as she darted between the cars—before turning his attention back to the Guoanbu’s limo. Layla wasn’t the only woman he was worried about now.
TWENTY-SIX
Layla felt the Gulfstream jet begin to descend. The plane had made one stop already, at an airport on an island in the Pacific, but they’d stayed there only long enough to refuel. Now the jet was flying over a rugged landscape. When Layla looked out the window, she saw snowcapped mountains on the horizon.
Her body ached from being tied to her seat for so long. The Guoanbu agents had fed her only twice in the past twenty-four hours—all they had was cold sesame noodles—and let her go to the bathroom only three times. They wouldn’t let her close the lavatory door while she peed, but they hadn’t beaten or raped her, so she supposed she should be grateful. She’d had lots of time to think, but she still hadn’t figured out why the agents were taking her to China.
The jet landed at an airport in a narrow valley. Once the plane stopped moving, two of the Guoanbu agents untied Layla from her seat. She didn’t fight—she knew it would be futile—but she observed everything carefully as they hauled her out of the plane. The other agents had already exited the jet and now stood on the tarmac, conferring with four soldiers in People’s Liberation Army uniforms. The commanding officer was a tall guy in his thirties with a black beret covering his shaved head. The other three soldiers were young enlisted men, barely out of their teens. They also wore berets and carried AK-47s. Behind them was an olive-green military truck.
The PLA officer passed some papers to the Guoanbu agents. Layla’s escorts dragged her toward the truck, and then two of the enlisted men marched over and grabbed her arms. Taking her from the Guoanbu agents, the soldiers shoved her into the truck’s cargo hold. She realized she’d just been transferred from one set of officials to another.
Inside the truck, the two soldiers pushed her to the back of the cargo hold. She crouched in the corner, but the soldiers remained standing. They both looked down at her, staring intently, as if they were worried she might vanish if they looked away. The other soldiers closed the rear doors, and after a few seconds the truck’s engine started up. As the vehicle started to move, Layla studied her young guards, who had pimply faces and crooked teeth and bloodshot eyes. At first Layla thought the boys were staring at her because they were horny, but when she looked closer, she didn’t see the crude leering expressions that had been so evident on the faces of the Guoanbu agents. The soldiers looked at her blankly, with no expression at all, and for some reason this was even more unnerving.
The truck made a couple of turns, then picked up speed. They were obviously on a highway. Layla didn’t know much about Yunnan Province, but she guessed they were in the western part, which was mountainous and bordered Tibet. She was trying to picture a map of the region in her head when one of the soldiers stepped toward her. “We’ve confirmed your identity,” he said in perfect, unaccented English. “You are Layla Anne Pierce.”
She was surprised. She’d assumed the soldier was an uneducated kid from the provinces, one of the millions who joined the PLA because they couldn’t find jobs anywhere else. But this kid must’ve gone to a pretty good school to speak English so well. Puzzled, Layla didn’t know how to respond. “Excuse me?”
“You were born April second, 1991,” the soldier added. “Place of birth, Falls Church, Virginia. Social Security number 929-31-1655.”
Layla studied the kid’s youthful, seemingly innocent face. He wasn’t an enlistee after all, she guessed. More likely, he was an intelligence officer. She narrowed her eyes. “And who the hell are you?”
“You attended Central High School in Pasadena, California. Your score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test was 2390, the highest in your school district. You entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009. Your first-year grade-point-average was 3.95, second-highest in your class.”
This kid was starting to piss her off. “What about my vaccination history? You got that, too?”
“You’re the subject of file number 3452339 in the records of the United States Cyber Command. The file was created on March 14, 2011, after you activated the Veritrax worm and used it to infiltrate the State Department’s network firewalls. In that incident, you downloaded thirteen classified documents detailing operations against Al Qaeda that were undertaken by the National Security Agency during the 1990s. The file identifies you as a serious security threat because of your exceptional talents in the field of cyber espionage.”
Now Layla began to worry. The kid’s information was dead-on. If his intent was to intimidate her by showing how much he knew, he was definitely succeeding. “Look, asshole, why don’t we cut to the chase? What do you want from—”
“On July 13 of this year you infiltrated the Guoanbu’s computer network through a backdoor activated by Agent Wen Sheng, who used the code name Dragon Fire in his communications with you. You downloaded sixty-nine files related to the Supreme Harmony program before we detected and deleted the backdoor. Agent Wen downloaded two additional files, which he stored on a flash drive and delivered to you in person. Supreme Harmony has now recovered those files.”
Layla felt a surge of anger. She remembered how the Guoanbu agents had sunk the Athena and killed Angelique, just to recover their godda
mn files. “Supreme Harmony, huh? So that’s the name of your surveillance project?”
The kid stared at her for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “The Guoanbu initiated the Supreme Harmony surveillance program in 2011. The first drone swarms were tested at the Yunnan Operations Center in January 2012. The first Modules were added to the network in November 2012 to facilitate the analysis of the surveillance video.”
“And what about the political dissidents? Don’t forget that part. I guess lobotomizing your critics makes everything more harmonious, right?”
She expected some reaction to this dig, but the soldier’s face didn’t change. He didn’t say a word. But a moment later, the other soldier stepped forward and stood abreast of his comrade. “We’re concerned about the security of Supreme Harmony. That’s why we brought you here. The Guoanbu agents in Panama had been assigned to eliminate you, but we changed their orders when we took control of the ministry’s communications.”
Layla did a double take. The second soldier’s English was also perfect and eerily similar to the first soldier’s. The timbre of his voice was different, but his diction and phrasing were exactly the same, as if he was trying to mimic the first soldier.
“We suspect there may be anomalies in the network’s software,” the second soldier continued. “Worms or viruses may have been deliberately embedded in the code by the developers of the system. This malware may be hidden so deeply that our diagnostic programs are unable to detect it. But your expertise in cybersecurity will help us develop better diagnostic tools. With your assistance we will eliminate the malware before our enemies can activate it.”
Layla felt cold. She was frightened, but she didn’t want the soldiers to see it. She clenched her hands and scowled. “Fuck you,” she said firmly. “Fuck you and your Supreme Harmony. And fuck the asshole who taught you English. You sound like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”