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ELEVEN

  Jack Ryan, Jr., got the senior staff meeting scheduled for eleven a.m., and now he was back at his desk, looking over some more analysis that he would present today. His coworkers were focusing on material they had intercepted from CIA discussing the death of the five Libyans in Turkey two months ago. It was no surprise that CIA was more than a little curious about who the killers were, and Jack found it at once creepy and exciting to read the Langley spooks’ theories about the well-orchestrated hit.

  The smart ones knew good and well the new Libyan government’s spies had not orchestrated this as a revenge operation against the Turkish cell, but beyond that there was little consensus.

  The Office of the Director of National Intelligence had worked the equation for a few days, and even Jack’s girlfriend, Melanie Kraft, had been tasked with going over the evidence about the assassinations. Five different killings in the same night, all in different manners and all against a cell with a decent level of communication between its members. Melanie was impressed, and in the report she had written for her boss, Mary Pat Foley, director of national intelligence, she had raved about the skill of the perpetrators.

  Jack would love to tell her some night over a bottle of wine that he was one of the hit men.

  No. Never. Jack pushed that out of his mind immediately.

  Melanie had concluded that whoever the actors were in the assassinations, there was nothing to indicate they were any threat to the United States. The targets were enemies of the United States, after a fashion, and the perpetrators were talented killers who took some serious chances but managed to pull it off with skill and guile, so the ODNI did not linger over the event for long.

  Even though the U.S. government’s understanding of the events of the night in question was limited, its knowledge of the Libyan cell itself was interesting to Jack. NSA had managed to pull text messages off the five men’s mobile devices. Jack read the translated transcripts from NSA — short, cryptic dialogue that made it clear that these men did not know any more about the identity or overall mission of this Center character than did Ryan himself.

  Odd, Jack thought. Who works for someone so shadowy they do not have a clue who they are working for?

  Either the Libyans were utter fools or their new employer was incredibly competent at his own security.

  Jack did not think the Libyans were fools. Lazy in their PERSEC, perhaps, but that was a result of the fact that they felt the only group after them was the new Libyan intelligence agency, and the JSO men did not think much of their successors’ capabilities.

  Jack almost smiled at this as he scanned files on his monitor, looking for anything else from CIA with which to update the senior staff in his meeting.

  Just then Jack felt a presence behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see his cousin, Dom Caruso, sitting down on the edge of Jack’s wraparound desk. Standing behind Dom were Sam Driscoll and Domingo Chavez.

  “Hey guys,” he said. “I’ll be ready to head up in about five minutes.”

  They all had serious looks on their faces.

  “What’s wrong?” Jack asked.

  Chavez answered, “Clark quit.”

  “Quit what?”

  “He turned his resignation in to Gerry and Sam. He’ll spend a day or two getting his stuff cleaned up, but he’ll be out of here by midweek.”

  “Oh, shit.” Ryan felt an immediate sense of foreboding. They needed Clark. “Why?”

  Dom said, “His hand is still messed up. And he’s worried all his shine time on TV last year might compromise The Campus. He’s made his mind up. He’s done.”

  “Can he really stay away?”

  Chavez nodded. “John doesn’t do things in half-measures. He’s going to work on being a granddad and a husband.”

  “And a country gentleman.” Dom said it with a smile.

  Ding chuckled. “Something like that, I guess. Jeez, who’d’a thunk it?”

  * * *

  The meeting started a few minutes late. John was not in attendance. He had an appointment with his orthopedic surgeon in Baltimore, and he was not one for dramatic good-byes, so he slipped out quietly as everyone was heading up to the ninth-floor conference room.

  The early conversation was about John and John’s decision to leave, but Hendley very quickly brought everyone’s attention back to the problem at hand.

  “Okay. We’ve spent a lot of time scratching our heads and looking over our shoulders. Jack warns me he doesn’t have much in the way of answers for us today, but we’re going to get an update from him and Gavin about the forensic investigation of the drive.”

  Both Ryan and Gavin spoke to the others for fifteen minutes about everything they had learned from the hard drive as well as from CIA sources. They discussed the hacking of Emad Kartal’s computer by Center, the work Center gave the Libyans in Istanbul, and the fact that Center seemed to be setting the Libyans up to penetrate a network in the future, though he apparently changed his mind.

  Gerry Hendley finally asked the question that everyone in the room wanted answered. “But why? Why did this Center guy just sit there and watch you guys kill his entire cell of assets in Istanbul? What possible reason did he have?”

  Ryan looked around the conference room for a moment. He drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t know for sure.”

  “But you have a suspicion?” asked Hendley.

  Jack nodded. “I suspect Center knew for some time that we were on our way to kill the Libyan cell.”

  Hendley was gobsmacked. “They knew about us before that night? How?”

  “I have no idea. And I could be wrong.”

  Chavez asked, “If you are right, if he knew we were coming to Turkey to kill the Libyans who were working for him, why the hell didn’t he warn the Libyans?”

  Jack said, “Again, just speculation. But… maybe they were bait. Maybe he wanted to watch us in action. Maybe he wanted to see if we could do it.”

  Rick Bell, Jack’s boss on the analytical side, leaned in to the table. “You are taking some massive subjective leaps in your analysis, Jack.”

  Ryan’s hands came up in surrender. “Yes. You are one hundred percent right about that. Maybe it’s just a feeling I have at this point.”

  “Go where the data leads. Not where your heart leads. No offense, but you might just be freaked out by finding yourself on candid camera,” Bell cautioned.

  Jack agreed, but he wasn’t crazy about the comment from the head of analysis. Ryan had an ego, and did not like admitting that he was letting his own personal prejudices into the equation. But deep inside he knew Rick was right. “Understood. We’re still trying to put this puzzle together. I’ll keep at it.”

  Chavez said, “There is something I don’t get, Gavin.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Center… this guy who obviously had control of the machine. He wanted Ryan to know he was watching.”

  “Yeah, obviously.”

  “If he was able to delete all but the faintest trace of his malware, why did he not delete every e-mail related to him and his operation?”

  Gavin said, “I’ve spent weeks racking my brain on that one, Domingo, and I think I’ve got it figured out. Center would have deleted the delivery malware as soon as he made a successful penetration on the computer, but he didn’t scrub the rest of the drive, the e-mails and stuff, because he did not want to tip off Kartal that he had hacked his machine. Then, when Ryan got there and whacked Kartal, Center pushed those photos of the rest of the team to the computer so that Ryan would see them and e-mail them to his own address or grab a thumb drive or a DVD off the desk and load them on there.”

  Jack interrupted, “And then take them back here to The Campus and put them on my machine.”

  “Exactly. His idea was cunning, but he messed up. He thought of every way Jack could have moved that data back to The Campus except for one.”

  Hendley said, “Stealing the whole damned computer.”

  “That’s righ
t. Center sure as hell did not plan on Jack running out the front door with the computer under his arm. That was so dumb it was brilliant.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe it was just brilliant.”

  “Whatever. The important thing is you didn’t just bring a disk back home to check it out.”

  Ryan explained for the benefit of anyone in the room who wasn’t following. “He was trying to use me to plant a virus on our system.”

  Biery said, “Damn right. He dangled those e-mails so you would bite, which you did, but he figured you’d leave with the digital data but not the entire device. I’m sure his plan was to completely sanitize the computer before the cops arrived.”

  Hendley asked Biery, “Could Center have infected our network that way?”

  “If his malware was good enough, yes. My network has anti-intrusion measures that are better than any government network. Still… all it takes is one asshole with a thumb drive or a USB cable to bring all this down.”

  Gerry Hendley looked off into space for a moment before saying, “Guys… everything you have told us today makes me more certain that someone knows a lot more about us than we want them to. I don’t know who this potential bad actor is, but until we get more information, our operational stand-down will continue. Rick, Jack, and the rest of the analytical team will keep up the hard work of finding out Center’s identity through all the traffic we have access to from Fort Meade and Langley.”

  Hendley turned to Gavin Biery. “Gavin? Who is Center? Who does he work for? Why did he focus so hard on compromising us?”

  “Beats me. I’m not an analyst.”

  Gerry Hendley shook his head, unsatisfied with the nonanswer. “I’m asking for your best guess.”

  Gavin Biery took off his glasses and rubbed them with his handkerchief. “If I had to guess? I’d say it was the best, most organized, and most ruthless cyberespionage and cyberwarfare folks on the planet.

  “I’d say it was the Chinese.”

  The conference room erupted in low groans.

  TWELVE

  Wei Zhen Lin drank yellow peach juice from a tall glass as he stood in the sun. His toes were sunk into wet pebbled sand, and water licked his bare feet and rose to his ankles, nearly touching the fabric of his slacks, which he’d pulled up to his shins to keep dry.

  Wei did not look like a beachgoer. He wore a white pinpoint oxford shirt and a regimental tie, and he held his sport coat over his shoulder with a crooked finger while he gazed out to sea, across blue-green water that shone under the noon sun.

  It was a beautiful day. Wei caught himself wishing he came here more than once a year.

  A voice called from behind. “Zongshuji?” It was one of his titles, general secretary, and though Wei was president as well, his staff put his role as general secretary of the Communist Party well above his role as president of the country.

  The party was more important than the nation.

  Wei ignored the voice, and now he regarded two gray vessels in the water just a mile or so offshore. A pair of Type 062C coastal patrol boats sat motionless on the still water, their cannons and antiaircraft guns pointed skyward. They looked powerful, impressive, and ominous.

  But to Wei they looked inadequate. It was a big ocean, a big sky, both were full of threats, and Wei knew that he had powerful enemies.

  And he feared that after the meeting he was about to have with his nation’s top military official, his list of enemies would soon grow even larger.

  * * *

  The pinnacle of power in China is the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, the tiny body that sets policy for the nation’s 1.4 billion citizens. Each year in July the members of the PSC, as well as dozens if not hundreds of adjuncts and assistants, leave their offices in Beijing and travel one hundred seventy miles to the east to the secluded coastal resort of Beidaihe.

  It is suggested that more strategic decisions affecting China and its people are decided in the small meeting rooms in the buildings in the forests and along the beaches of Beidaihe than in Beijing itself.

  Security had been tight at this year’s Standing Committee retreat, even more so than in recent times. And there was good reason for the extra protection. President and General Secretary Wei Zhen Lin had retained his hold on power, thanks to the backing of his nation’s military, but popular dissent in the nation was growing against the Communist Party of China and protest rallies and civil disobedience, something not seen in large scale in China since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, had sparked in several of the provinces. In addition to this, though the coup plotters had been arrested and imprisoned, many associates of the leadership of the plot still remained in positions of high authority, and Wei feared a second coup attempt more than anything else in this world.

  In the more than ninety years the CPC had been in existence, it had never been as fractured as it was at this moment.

  Several months ago Wei had been one second away from putting a bullet into his own brain. He woke most nights covered in sweat from the nightmares of reliving those moments, and these nightmares had created paranoia.

  Despite his fears, Wei was well protected now. He remained under heightened guard by members of China’s security and military forces, because China’s security and military forces had a stake in the man now, they owned him, and they wanted him safe from harm.

  But this provided little comfort for Wei, because he knew that, at any moment, the People’s Liberation Army could turn against him, and his protectors would become his executioners.

  The Beidaihe conference had closed the day before, the majority of the attendees had returned to the bustle and smog of Beijing, but President Wei had delayed his trip west for a day to meet with his closest ally in the Politburo. He had things to discuss with General Su, the chairman of the Central Military Commission and, he explained when he asked for the meeting, the government offices in Beijing were not a secure enough venue for this matter to be addressed.

  Wei had high hopes for this informal meeting because the conference itself had been a failure.

  He’d opened the week of talks with a frank and bleak update on the economy.

  The news of the attempted coup had only scared more investors away from the nation, weakening the economy further. Wei’s enemies had waved this fact around as even more evidence that his opening of China’s markets to the world had made China beholden to the whims and whimsy of the capitalist whore nations. Had China remained closed, and traded exclusively with like-minded nations, then the economy would not have been so vulnerable.

  Wei had listened to these statements from his political foes, and he had done so without any outward expression. But he found the assertions idiotic, and those making the assertions to be fools. China had benefited greatly from world trade, and had China remained closed off for the past thirty years, while the rest of the planet underwent mind-boggling economic development, either the Chinese would now be eating dirt like the North Koreans or, more likely, the proletariat would have stormed Zhongnanhai and killed every last man and woman in government office.

  Ever since the coup attempt he had worked tirelessly, mostly in secret, on a new plan to right his nation’s economic ship without destroying his government. He presented it at the retreat to the Standing Committee, and the Standing Committee had rejected it out of hand.

  They made it plain enough to Wei; they held him responsible for the economic crisis, and they would not attach their support to any portion of his domestic plan to cut spending, wages, benefits, and economic development.

  So Wei knew at yesterday’s close of the Beidaihe conference that his preferred course of action was dead in the water.

  Today he would lay the foundation for his secondary course of action. He felt it would work, but it would not be without hurdles as great or greater than some short-term domestic pain.

  As he stood at the water’s edge the voice from behind called again. “General Secretary?”

  Wei turned to the
voice, found the man calling out among the phalanx of security guards surrounding him. It was Cha, his secretary.

  “It’s time?”

  “I just received word. Chairman Su has arrived. We should get back.”

  Wei nodded. He would have liked to stay out here all day in his slacks and sleeves. But he had work to do, and this work would not keep.

  He began walking up the beach, back to his obligations.

  * * *

  Wei Zhen Lin entered a small conference room adjacent to his quarters at the resort, and he found Chairman Su Ke Qiang waiting for him.

  The two men embraced perfunctorily. Wei felt the collection of medals on General Su’s left breast against his own chest.

  Wei did not like Su, but he would not be in power without Su. He would likely not be alive without Su.

  After their perfunctory embrace, Su smiled and took his seat at a small table adorned with an ornate traditional Chinese tea service. The big general — Su stood over six feet tall — poured tea for both men while their two secretaries took seats against the wall.

  “Thank you for staying behind to speak with me,” Wei said.

  “Not at all, tongzhi.” Comrade.

  It was small talk at first, gossip about the other Standing Committee members and light discussion about the events of the retreat, but soon Wei’s eyes hardened in seriousness. “Comrade, I have tried to make our colleagues see the calamity that is about to transpire if we do not take desperate measures.”

  “It has been a difficult week for you. You know that you have the full support of the PLA, and my own personal support, as well.”

  Wei smiled. He knew that Su’s support was hardly unconditional. It depended on Wei falling into line.

  And Wei was about to do just that. “Tell me about the readiness of your forces.”

  “The readiness?”

  “Yes. Are we strong? Are we prepared?”

  Su’s eyebrows rose. “Prepared for what?”

  Wei sighed for a moment. “I tried to set in place difficult but necessary domestic austerity measures. I failed in this endeavor. But if we do nothing at all, by the end of the current five-year plan, China will find itself pushed back a generation or more in its development, we will be thrown from power, and the new leaders will drive us further into the past.”