Chapter 4
“Mr. President,” they said in unison, as everyone in the room leaped to their feet.
Alice was the last to rise, not out of disrespect but disbelief.
The President? Of the United States? She’d definitely fallen through the looking glass now. Really, what the fuck is happening?
“Vivien.” President Pardington took both her hands in both of his. “Thank you for coming. And you must be Alice.”
His smile was friendly, but his face haggard.
He’d addressed the nation a couple of hours earlier, trying to reassure them that they were safe.
That every effort was being made to figure out what had happened.
And that while none of the alarms had signaled an actual emergency, he told the nation, it was certainly an alarming event. There was no denying that.
“We will find out who’s behind it. And we will stop it from happening again,” he’d said, his address watched by hundreds of millions of Americans, and billions worldwide. “I promise you that.”
He’d stared into their eyes as he spoke. Each person convinced he was, indeed, speaking directly to them. Such was Pardington’s ability to communicate.
Looking at the man now, Alice realized he didn’t know if it was a promise he could keep. But he, like everyone else in the room, had his suspicions.
“Mr. President.” Alice took the hand he offered. It was cold. She felt like rubbing it, to get the circulation back.
He then introduced the woman who’d come in with him. Kathleen Wells, his Chief of Staff.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” said President Pardington. “And I’m also sorry if these actions seem extreme. I’m afraid for now it’s necessary, until we get a handle on what has happened.”
Pardington took the chair at the head of the table. The one that had been, Alice now realized, left empty for a reason. For the President. He waved them to sit down.
“Ask,” he said, holding Alice’s eyes.
“Is Liam’s death somehow connected to what happened this morning?”
President Pardington turned to Vivien. “Her mother’s daughter. Straight to the point.” Then he returned to Alice. “We think so.”
“Why? How?”
“We’ll answer that,” said the President, “but first you need some context. This goes no further.”
Alice nodded.
“We need you to say it out loud,” said McAllister.
“I agree,” said Alice. She was leaning forward, completely engaged and focused.
President Pardington nodded to his Director of National Intelligence.
“We’ve traced the signal that set off the alarms to malware created in China,” said McAllister. “Much like what the Israelis did when they exploded the cell phones in Lebanon. That was, of course, incredibly audacious, but limited. Unlike what happened this morning.”
“But unlike the Israeli attack, it wasn’t, thankfully, explosions,” said Secretary Bourque.
“Is it true that every alarm, globally, went off? At the same time?” Alice asked.
“It is,” said Bourque.
“Except in China, I’m guessing,” said Alice.
“You’d guess wrong,” said the Secretary of Defense. “Even there. The Chinese are far too smart to exclude their own. That would be an admission of guilt.”
Vivien shifted slightly in her chair but said nothing.
“If you’ve already traced it back there,” said Alice, “doesn’t that show whoever did this didn’t try to hide where it came from? That the Chinese want you to know?”
“True,” said Zhou. “But as we know, there are layers within layers within the regime.”
“I have a call in to President Chen,” said Pardington. “And I believe you’re in contact with your counterpart.”
That was addressed to McAllister. “I do. Wang Lai. So far, he hasn’t replied.”
“What does that mean?” asked Kathleen Wells. “Are they taking credit or not?”
“Silence is an effective weapon,” said McAllister. “One the Chinese leadership employs often, to keep people guessing. Why would they answer? There’s no advantage, and perhaps no need.”
“The alarms speak for themselves,” said Zhou.
“But what did they say?” demanded Pardington. He looked around the table. “What was the meaning of it? We’re lucky no planes actually crashed. No nuclear power stations went into meltdown as engineers reacted to a fictional emergency. It was close. Too close.”
“It was calculated,” said Zhou. “To the second. Whoever in China created this event knew not only how the technology would work, but how humans react. The alarms sounded for exactly the amount of time they needed to.”
“Like holding someone underwater, then bringing them up just before they drown,” said the SecState.
It was disconcerting to Alice that he’d use torture as an analogy. Bourque also did not seem to realize, or care, how that analogy would hurt Alice, given what had happened to Liam.
“Still,” said Secretary Clavelle, “there have been some fatalities. Mostly car accidents.”
“But why do it at all?” demanded the President. “What’s China up to?”
Once again, all eyes turned to Vivien Li. But she sat in silence. Finally, McAllister spoke.
“As you know, Mr. President, at your directive, we’ve shifted much of our security focus from terrorist organizations to so-called rogue states.
Russia, North Korea, Iran.” He nodded to the screen.
“China. They’ve become very real threats to our security.
My counterpart in the UK, the head of MI6, put it succinctly.
We have, for the most part, had a twenty-to-thirty-year holiday from that danger, but now it’s come rushing back, and we are, quite frankly, on the back foot. Things are moving quickly.”
“Things?” asked Alice. “You mean technology. Cyberattacks.”
“Yes,” said McAllister. “The weapons of the new world war are invisible and almost impossible to detect until it’s too late.
We’re now going on the assumption that malware, planted in hardware made in China and sold internationally, triggered the alarms. It’s not just cars and social media sites they export.
It’s fiber optics and tiny energy cells and—”
“Yes, yes, we get the picture,” said Pardington. “Something every system uses that can be triggered.”
“Sabotage like that would take years,” said Secretary Bourque. “And millions, billions of dollars. Who’s financing it?”
“It must be the Chinese government,” said one of the analysts. “Who else has those kinds of resources? We’ve seen absolutely no movement of money of that size from anywhere else, and it would be next to impossible to hide.”
At a nod from the President, Alan Zhou stood up, looked at the screen, then back at Alice. “Is that the message Palmer sent you from Hong Kong?”
“Yes.”
“Does anything strike you as odd?”
Alice shook her head. “No. Not really. Except—”
“Yes?”
“Well, he’d normally send a picture of some dish he’d enjoyed. That”—she waved at the photo of him on the ferry—“is fun, but not the kind of thing he normally shared.”
“Here, look.” Alice brought up Liam’s last food blog on her phone. In it, he described some hole-in-the-wall noodle joint, and with it posted a photo. “This is what he normally puts in his blog, but sends me first. Food stuff.”
“But today’s text doesn’t describe food,” Zhou pointed out.
Proceeding along the edge of the stream, I forget the distance of the road I have walked. I suddenly come across a forest of blossoming peach trees that extend uninterrupted for several hundred paces on either bank. Fragrant grasses are delicate and petals fall in riotous profusion.
“It’s probably describing how to get there.”
“Not very useful,” said Zhou. “We don’t even know where he is in Hong Kong.”
“True, but that’s part of the fun for food bloggers. Making it a game, a challenge. A food treasure hunt.”
McAllister was shaking his head. “Fun. Let’s go back to his message to you. Not the photograph, but what he wrote. There’s something in Chinese.”
Alice drew her brows together and pretended to read. But her mind was wandering. Pilgrim thoughts that went in only one direction.
Liam. Liam. Gone? How could that—
“Ms. Li, please,” said Grant McAllister, bringing her back to the room. “Focus.”
“Look, if you’ve been monitoring our emails—”
“Not yours,” said McAllister. “It wasn’t your phone we were tapping into—”
“Hacking. Why were you hacking his phone? What does Liam being in Hong Kong have to do with the alarms?” she demanded. And as before, she didn’t get an answer.
“Please, just answer the question. What does this mean?” asked the Secretary of Defense.
魚蛋
Alice squinted at the words. Her knowledge of written characters was limited to menu items. “Yu daan,” she said.
“Is it code?” asked the Secretary of State.
“It’s Chinese.”
“For?” asked the Chief of Staff.
“Fish balls.” She noticed her mother’s lips thinning. It was either a suppressed smile or a frown. That was always the problem, the tension growing up. Being unable to tell the difference.
“And?” Secretary Clavelle, undaunted, pointed to the next line in Liam’s message.
Chueng Chau. Written in English.
“It’s an island off Hong Kong.” Again, if they were such experts on China, shouldn’t they know that? “Famous for their fish balls.”
Alice did not point out that Liam had misspelled the name of the island. It should read Cheung Chau.
Once again, Alice slid a look across the shiny table to Alan Zhou. He’d see it too, no? And yet he remained silent. Watching her, as she watched him.
It was just a typo, Alice assured herself. Liam had clearly written in haste. But why the rush? The text to a food post was not urgent. And yet …
Now she was herself wondering what message might be hidden in the slightly banal text about fish balls and wonton soup.
Her mother had placed her hand on Alice’s knee and was squeezing, tight. Shut up.
But Alice did not. “Look, you clearly think what happened to Liam is related to the alarms going off this morning. How?”
She heard the clicking of her mother’s tongue. Exasperation. Disapproval. Disappointment. The trinity that slowly crushed the spirit of Chinese children.
Once again, she got no answer, and now Alice was beginning to suspect it was because they themselves didn’t know. Not clearly, anyway. Which was why they needed to speak to her. But she was no help at all.
President Pardington leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “The best minds in cybersecurity are right now trying to figure out how the Chinese did this. What I need from you all, and especially you, Mr. McAllister, is why.”
“It’s a warning, sir.”
“A warning is generally followed by a demand. An ‘or else,’ no?” said the President. “Has there been one?”
“Not yet.”
The President absorbed this; then, to Alice’s amazement, he turned to Vivien. “What do you think, Madame Li?”