Chapter 45
“What was the Nüshu word you put in, to stop the attack?” Vivien asked.
They were strapped into the army helicopter, heading back to Beijing.
The dome of the gigantic burial mound, made to look like a small mountain, was in the distance now.
Alice looked back at it and imagined the terracotta village, and palace, and temple, and all the crazed men and women trapped in the dark, trying to find a way out.
Her mother was looking at the photograph of the girl holding the embroidery.
Alice brought out her phone. The battery was in the red, but she thought she just had time enough to show her mother one photo.
“The li bien ball?” asked Vivien.
“Look.” Alice enlarged the photo, to the marks marring the image. But on closer examination, it was the same symbol over and over. “The woman in the seat next to me on the plane saw it. Said it. ‘Nüshu.’”
“What’s that?”
Alice explained, then said, “This symbol is also on the embroidery. In the middle of the circle. You can barely see it, but it’s there.”
Vivien leaned closer. Alice was right.
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. But I hit it, and the countdown stopped.”
“Wait a minute. We thought Wang and probably McAllister are running Pangu. But if the code is in Nüshu…”
“It must be a woman. Or women,” said Alice. She hadn’t got that far in her thinking. They’d stopped the attack. Found Pangu’s lair. Wasn’t that enough?
Across the way, Kai-wen and Ming-na were holding hands. Like new lovers.
Everything seemed new now. Shiny. Beautiful. Hopeful. The remnants of Pangu would soon be scooped up from the tomb. And they themselves were on their way home.
Home.
Then the niggling began. Alice picked up the photograph and studied it again. It wasn’t the child’s face that was bothering her. Nor was it the embroidery. In fact, it was nothing to do with the picture.
She shifted her eyes, from the embroidery to her mother and her damned Shanghai Tang.
Why should it strike fear into her? Loathing, always, but fear?
Alice’s brows drew together. Trying to dig up the memory. Of another piece of clothing. A Shanghai Tang? No. But …
She grasped at that thread and pulled. It was when they were in that first meeting, at the White House, thousands of years ago.
Someone had admired Vivien’s jacket and asked her about it.
Alice had returned the compliment. Admiring the woman’s jacket. No, not jacket. Scarf.
Embroidered.
“Oh, shit…”
“Oh, shit.”
“What?” demanded Pardington. He stopped pacing and turned to look at Kathleen.
What now? was what he meant.
They were still holed up in the Situation Room. Kathleen gestured toward the screen, unable, or unwilling, to say it out loud.
With his permission, and the help of White House IT, his Chief of Staff had accessed the private messages of his Secretary of Defense. Now she got out of the chair as he slipped in.
While he read, she stared at the TV screen showing that the parade in Beijing was proceeding as normal, with Chen still saluting. And smiling.
Finally, Pardington took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“It’s her.” He sounded exhausted. Spent. “Joanne Clavelle. The documents prove it. I recruited her, you know. Brought her into the party. Mentored her. I knew her parents. Both were—”
“Yessir.” Kathleen didn’t want him falling into the sinkhole of self-pity. She needed him to focus. “I’m sorry. But we need to figure out what to do next.”
There was more pounding on the door.
“We don’t know who else she’s recruited,” said Kathleen. “But you can be sure she’s not alone. If she gets through that door…”
Kathleen glanced at the lone weapon. The gun on the table.
Pardington pulled himself together and looked again at the computer screen.
The messages Kathleen had found were not just alarming, damning, they were surprisingly clear. One of the encrypted texts had the codes for the missile systems. They’d been sent to Salt Typhoon, an organ of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
“What’s this?” He was pointing to the signature on some of the messages. It was just a symbol. Three intertwined lines.
Kathleen leaned in. “I don’t know.”
“Send this to—” He was about to say the Director of National Intelligence. But remembered that he was dead. McAllister. A dead traitor.
Who? Who could he trust if the enemy had infiltrated the highest levels of his administration?
Kathleen was saying something, but he was barely listening anymore. He was nodding, but his eyes seemed unfocused.
“Does that symbol look at all familiar, sir?”
He pulled himself together and studied it. “No. Why?”
“I’ve seen it before. I’m pretty sure. I just can’t think where. May I?”
He got up, and while she worked at the computer, her fingers pounding the keys, he resumed his pacing. After a couple of minutes, she called him back to the laptop.
“I knew it. This was among Secretary Clavelle’s photographs. It was so strange, I remembered it.”
There on the screen was a picture of a little Asian girl holding a piece of embroidery. Kathleen zoomed in.
“It’s the same as that coded message,” said Pardington. “But this photograph is old. How can that be?”
“There’s more.”
President Pardington had come to loathe those two words, always followed by his own two words. “What now?”
Kathleen scrolled through the secretary’s photos and brought up a recent one of Joanne Clavelle with Grant McAllister.
“What am I supposed to see?” asked Pardington.
“This.” Once again, Kathleen zoomed in. “I’d admired it. It was so unusual.”
“Oh, shit,” the President sighed.
Hanging loosely round his Secretary of Defense’s neck was a scarf embroidered with three lines, intertwined.