Zhang was enthusiastic about the idea and set the plan in motion. Arvin arranged for the transfer of the implant technology, getting approval for its export by convincing the Chinese to share the drone-swarm technology with the CIA. When Zhang reported that the improved surveillance system—now dubbed Supreme Harmony— wouldn’t work unless the subjects of the experiment were lobotomized, Arvin felt a pang of conscience at first. But he told himself that the subjects were condemned prisoners who were going to be executed anyway. More important, Arvin saw another opportunity: After the subject was lobotomized, he would no longer be capable of consciousness. The Module’s brain would retain the subject’s long-term memories and still be able to process sensory data, but it couldn’t integrate all this information into an identity, a personality, a conscious presence. In a sense, the lobotomized brain was an empty vessel. And if one could pour enough new information into this vessel, it might be possible to give the Module a new personality—or inject someone else’s personality into the Module. If the memories of a dying man could be transferred to the Module’s brain and its consciousness restored somehow, the dying man could be reborn in a new body. It was a fantastically daring plan, but Arvin decided to pursue it. He had no alternative.
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
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 attache 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
Jim was certain that the girl was Layla. Although she was twenty-two years old, she’d always looked
