switching the video cameras to the infrared range. This allowed her to see everything by its heat signature—the warm wooden walls, the cold steel shelves, the floor mottled with dust. And in the dust she saw footprints leading to a rectangle etched in the floor. It was a trapdoor, equipped with a cold metal handle. Crouching, she pulled the door open. Below, a stairway descended into the darkness.
She tiptoed down the steps. At the bottom was a tunnel with concrete walls and an arched ceiling. It was six feet wide and ten feet high and extended as far as she could see in both directions. Startled, Kirsten recognized the place—the tunnel was part of Beijing’s Underground City. She’d read about it after she joined the NSA, when she was training to become a China analyst. In 1969 Chairman Mao, worried about a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, ordered the people of Beijing to dig tunnels under the city. Over the next five years they built an elaborate network of fallout shelters, big enough to hold 300,000 people. It included underground apartments and enough supplies to feed the subterranean population for four months.
After Mao’s death, the Underground City was abandoned, but Kirsten had heard stories of long-forgotten entrances in the basements of Beijing’s buildings. Now she was delighted to see one for herself. With her glasses tuned to infrared, she could view the rusted pipes designed to provide clean water for the masses. She could even read the Mandarin characters of Revolutionary slogans chiseled into the walls. Beneath the slogans, she saw the characters
But Kirsten didn’t need the map to follow Frank Nash’s trail. She could see his footprints on the dusty floor. They ran a hundred feet down the tunnel before turning right at an intersecting corridor. She couldn’t imagine why Arvin Conway’s bodyguard had come to this place, but she suspected it had something to do with the device in the left pocket of his jacket. Although she saw no trace of the device’s radio signal in the tunnel, she knew it wouldn’t propagate very far underground. She kept her radio tracker turned on just in case it reappeared.
As she followed Nash’s trail, she passed dozens of small bare rooms. Those were the apartments where Beijing’s residents were supposed to hole up for four months while radioactive fallout swirled above the city. The tunnel went on for a hundred yards or so, then widened into a spacious chamber, about fifty feet wide. There was no concrete floor in this section; the ground was cold bare dirt speckled with warmer bits of debris. On closer inspection, these bits turned out to be the stalks and caps of mushrooms. Kirsten remembered something else from the NSA files on the Underground City: It included subterranean farms for growing mushrooms, which were the perfect food for surviving a nuclear winter because they didn’t require sunlight. An old rake, its tines flaked with rust, lay half-buried in the dirt at Kirsten’s feet. She picked up the tool, marveling that it was still there after all these years. Maybe some thrifty resident of the hutong was still harvesting the mushrooms.
Then, without any warning, a flashlight beam shone from a doorway at the other end of the chamber. On her infrared display Kirsten saw a small bright disk—the hot circle of plastic at the end of the flashlight—and the warm head of Frank Nash glowing above it. She saw no radio signal now, no red dot in the left pocket of his jacket. But one of his warmly glowing hands held a cold dark pistol.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The traffic out of Beijing was murderous as usual, so Arvin had to cool his heels in the backseat of the government limo. Guoanbu agent Liu Xiaofang tried to distract him by commenting on the sights visible from the highway—“There’s the Olympic stadium!”—but Arvin didn’t pay attention. He focused instead on what he was going to say to General Tian. Arvin would’ve much preferred dealing with Dr. Zhang, a forward-thinking scientist who in all likelihood would’ve been intrigued by the idea of downloading memories into one of Supreme Harmony’s Modules. Tian, in contrast, was a typical bureaucrat. Arvin had met the general during his earlier trips to China, and the man seemed concerned only with how the success of Supreme Harmony could boost his chances of promotion. So Arvin decided to appeal to Tian’s Machiavellian instincts. In addition to contributing $100 million to Supreme Harmony’s budget, Arvin would intimate that his proposed experiment might greatly interest the elders of the Communist Party, many of whom were in their seventies and eighties. China’s paramount leaders, always so nervous about maintaining their power, might wish to know if immortality was truly within reach. Arvin would gladly serve as their guinea pig.
And if the carrot didn’t work, Arvin thought, he’d brandish the stick. He could shut down their whole operation if they didn’t give him what he needed.
The limo finally broke free of the traffic and reached the highway that branched off to the northwest. They left behind the polluted haze that hung over China’s capital and climbed into the Yanshan Hills, which were turning golden in the twilight. The limo exited the highway at Juyongguan Pass, and Arvin caught a glimpse of the Great Wall, which curled across the terrain like a gray ribbon. This section of the wall, he knew, was a modern reconstruction; the Chinese government had patched together the crumbling remnants of the ancient fortifications, restoring them to Ming Dynasty perfection for the benefit of the tourists who flocked to Juyongguan every day. But the tourist facilities had closed more than an hour ago, and all the taxis and charter buses had departed.
The stillness of the place was forbidding. There was no one else around for miles. The limo entered the parking lot, which was empty except for an unmarked panel truck. Bewildered, Arvin turned to Agent Liu. “We’re meeting here? At the wall?”
Liu chuckled. “Yes, and you have it all to yourself. It’s much nicer when there’s no crowd, eh?”
Arvin didn’t like this at all. Were the Guoanbu agents planning to kill him here? Shoot him in the head beside the Great Wall? He imagined his corpse slumped in the wall’s shadow, his hair matted with blood and speckled with flies. But Arvin suppressed his fear and followed Agent Liu out of the limo.
Two men in dark suits emerged from the shuttered visitors’ center. They cornered Agent Liu and spoke with him in Mandarin. Arvin assumed that the men also worked for the Guoanbu, although they didn’t look like typical, muscle-bound security agents. They were pale and gaunt, and there was something oddly familiar about them. Arvin couldn’t put his finger on it.
After a minute Liu turned back to him. “Okay, it’s all arranged. Go with these two gentlemen, please. They’ll take you to General Tian.”
Again, Arvin had no choice. The men in dark suits led him to the walkway that ran along the top of the Great Wall. Beyond the visitors’ center, the wall climbed a tall green hill overlooking Juyongguan Pass. Steps had been cut into the steepest sections of the walkway, and every thousand feet or so the wall connected to a stone watchtower that had served as an observation post during the Ming Dynasty. Arvin counted four watchtowers in all, including the one at the hill’s summit.
As he climbed the steps, with the Guoanbu men close beside him, he felt the deep pain in his abdomen again. He grimaced, but in a way the pain was welcome. It reminded him why he was here.
TWENTY-NINE
Supreme Harmony observed the Juyongguan section of the Great Wall. The network had taken control of the tourist facility’s surveillance cameras and deployed a swarm of drones to scan the area. Modules 16 and 18 escorted Arvin Conway up the walkway on top of the wall, ascending toward the highest watchtower. Some of the drones scanned in the infrared range, and their sensors showed that Conway’s body temperature was abnormally elevated. The exertion of the climb was straining his circulatory system. The man was obviously in poor health and therefore not a good choice for incorporation into the network. But Supreme Harmony knew other ways to extract the needed information from him.
After Conway reached the watchtower, the swarm focused its surveillance on the Guoanbu limousine, which remained in the deserted parking lot. Agent Liu Xiaofang stood next to the car, smoking a cigarette and
