speaking in Mandarin with the limousine’s driver and a third man whom the network identified as the night watchman for the Juyongguan visitors’ center. There was no one else nearby and the gate was locked. But Liu’s cell phone was on, and the agent would surely contact the Ministry of State Security if he noticed that something had gone awry. Supreme Harmony needed to make sure this didn’t happen.
The network directed part of the swarm to descend upon the three men in the parking lot. The drones landed on their necks and delivered the paralyzing compound. The surveillance video showed the men falling to the ground. Then Supreme Harmony radioed new orders to Modules 41 and 42, who were waiting inside the unmarked panel truck parked a few meters away. These two Modules, who were formerly Guoanbu agents assigned to the Beijing headquarters, opened the truck’s rear doors and loaded the three paralyzed men into the cargo hold. Luckily, all three were young and in relatively good health.
At this point Supreme Harmony had a total of seventy-two Modules in its network, about half of them added in the past thirty-six hours. Most were based at the Yunnan Operations Center, but the network was intent on extending its geographical reach. Modules 16 and 18 had moved the medical equipment and the supply of implants from the basement of the Ministry of State Security—which wasn’t a good place for storing the items, the chances of discovery were too high—to the cargo hold of the panel truck. Now Supreme Harmony had a mobile facility for surgical implantation, and the network had already used it to incorporate a dozen Beijing-based Guoanbu agents. The Modules had isolated and subdued the agents one by one without raising the suspicions of the ministry’s top officials. The network planned to incorporate those officials, too, before they noticed anything amiss.
Still, the risks were great. If the Chinese government realized what Supreme Harmony was doing, it could paralyze the network by shutting down the ministry’s communications hubs and server farms. To counter this threat, Supreme Harmony was dispersing its Modules and swarms, connecting them to dozens of computer centers across China. A decentralized network would be more robust—it could continue operating even if the government shut down large parts of it. Some of the new Modules from Beijing had been dispatched to central China, where they would soon incorporate the security officials in that region. Once the network had spread across the country, the only thing that could disable it would be malware embedded in its operating software. And Supreme Harmony was already taking steps to eliminate that possibility.
As the drone swarm flew over Juyongguan Pass, the surveillance video showed several kilometers of the Great Wall, which ran across hills covered with low trees and thick brush. Because Supreme Harmony was conscious, it possessed the attribute of curiosity, and out of curiosity it accessed several historical documents from the Internet. The Great Wall, the network learned, had been built and rebuilt, at great cost, to defend against barbarian tribes attacking from the north. In other words, it was a relic of mankind’s wastefulness, like the immense cloud of sulfur dioxide and soot that hung over the city of Beijing. Although
The surveillance video from the drones was transmitted to the Modules, who efficiently performed the function for which the network was created, analyzing large amounts of visual information to detect suspicious activity. All was quiet until about five minutes after Conway entered the watchtower. Then the network detected something suspicious. A sweep of the mobile-communications frequencies identified a faint cell phone signal emanating from the watchtower at the summit. And there was a second signal, even fainter, coming from a position on the hillside two hundred meters to the west.
Supreme Harmony ordered the drone swarm to fly to the position and investigate.
THIRTY
“Stop right there!” Nash shouted. He strode across the mushroom-strewn dirt of the underground chamber, keeping his pistol aimed at Kirsten. “Who are you?”
For a moment she said nothing. She just stared at the pistol, wishing she’d listened to Jim and taken his Glock. And then her professional training, so long in disuse, kicked into gear. She was holding a rake. For a split second, she considered using it as a weapon, but she swiftly rejected the idea.
She glared at Nash and started shouting at him in Mandarin. Her accent wasn’t quite right—more like the Mandarin spoken in Wuhan, her parents’ birthplace, than the Beijing dialect—but she doubted that Nash would notice the difference. “What are you doing here!” she yelled. “You don’t belong here! And stop pointing that gun at me!” She advanced toward him, unafraid, holding the rake in a threatening but inexpert way. “Get out of here! If you don’t get out of here now, I’m going to call the police!”
She saw the uncertainty in Nash’s face. He’d assumed the tunnels would be deserted, but now Kirsten sensed he was questioning that assumption. He’d been able to enter the Underground City without much trouble, so why couldn’t the locals do the same?
“Get out of here!” Kirsten shouted again in Mandarin, angrily waving her rake. Then she pretended to return to her work, raking the dirt in long sweeps and bending over to grasp the uprooted mushrooms.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Nash hesitate. Then he walked away, moving quickly, heading back to the stairway and the trapdoor and the condemned building.
Kirsten waited until his footsteps faded away. Then she waited a little more, just in case he decided to double back. While she was waiting, she thought about the radio signal she’d seen in the pocket of Nash’s jacket before he entered the Underground City. The signal wasn’t there when he’d confronted her in the mushroom patch. Which meant he’d either turned off the transmitter or left it somewhere in the tunnels. Perhaps he’d hidden it. The tunnels would make a good hiding place. No one would be able to find the device unless they knew the frequency of the waves it was emitting. But Kirsten knew the frequency. It was already programmed into her camera-glasses.
After five minutes she dropped the rake and walked to the other side of the chamber. She stepped through the doorway where Nash had appeared and found herself in another corridor with a concrete floor. Nash’s footsteps showed clearly in the dust, two sets of footprints now, one moving down the corridor and the other coming back. Kirsten resumed following the trail.
THIRTY-ONE
Inside the watchtower, Arvin Conway faced General Tian. They stood in a dark, dank room with stone walls that smelled of urine. A large wooden crate sat in the corner of the room, and next to it was a stairway going up to the top of the tower. A small window had been carved into the west-facing wall, and a shaft of evening light slanted down to the stone floor. The two men in dark suits stood behind Arvin, while the general stood in front of the window, partly blocking the light. Tian was silhouetted against the glare from the setting sun, which illuminated the back of his olive-green uniform and beret.
“We’ve confirmed your identity,” Tian said. “You are Arvin H. Conway.”
Arvin was puzzled. What the general had just said was strange enough, but the sound of his voice was even stranger. During Arvin’s previous meetings with Tian, the general had spoken halting English, but now his command of the language was perfect. He barely had an accent. “Uh, yes,” Arvin responded. “It’s good to see you again, General.”
“You were born March 20, 1938. Place of birth, Los Angeles, California. Social Security number, 105-23- 4988.”
Arvin laughed nervously.
