“There is something you have to see.”
“I don’t have to do shit,” Chadwick snapped. She wanted to get up and leave, but something about the way he looked at her kept her rooted in place. The look in his eyes said he would feel really, really bad if he had to kill her.
“I’ll concede to that,” he said. “You do not have to see it, but you should.” He nudged the phone a little closer. “Please. Take a look for me.”
Chadwick groaned. She unwound the cord and tilted her head, pushing back her hair so she could insert one of the earbuds.
Huang reached across and punched a code into the phone, quickly, so she couldn’t follow what it was. “Now watch until the very end.”
Chadwick slumped in horror as a video of the two of them in her bedroom began to play. She yanked out the earbud and shoved the phone at him. “Seriously?” she said. “Revenge porn? I don’t have to watch this. I was there. Remember? How did you get a camera in there, anyway?”
She slid sideways to get out of the booth. Huang kicked her hard under the table, the edge of his shoe sliding down the front of her shin. It was the kind of injury that brought nausea instead of screaming. Tears filled her eyes. Five minutes earlier she would have probably married the guy if he’d asked. Now he was kicking the shit out of her. It took her a moment to compose herself after something like that.
“What… What do you want?”
He slid the phone toward her again, his handsome face passive, as if he’d not just driven his shoe into her leg. His words were quiet but viperlike, potent with implied threat. “I want you to watch until the end.”
And she did, every sickening moment of it.
Thankfully, there was only three minutes of video — cut from several hours, no doubt.
Trembling badly by the time it was over, she sniffed, trying in vain to keep her chin from quivering as she spoke. “Go ahead and put it on YouTube,” she said, attempting — and failing — to feign an air of defiance. “Voters have sex. Hell, I heard there are like fourteen thousand people doing it at any given moment. I’m a single woman in Washington. No one will care what I do in my own bedroom. I may even sponsor a revenge-porn bill and get the sympathy vote.”
Huang gave a slight nod toward the phone. “Keep watching.”
A man appeared on the phone’s screen, backlit so Chadwick could make out only the dark silhouette. The blood drained from her face when she realized it was not a prerecorded video but a live call.
“Hello, Senator Chadwick,” the man said, a slight accent in his voice. “You may be interested to know that you have been sleeping with, and, in actuality, conspiring with, an agent for the government of the People’s Republic of China. Evidence suggests that you and he are conspiring to oust the sitting President of the United States.”
“I have done no such—”
Huang wagged his finger, motioning for her to stay quiet and listen.
She found it impossible to breathe. Her normally icy demeanor turned to slush. “What… What could you possibly want?”
“We want you to continue doing what you have been doing,” the silhouette on the phone said. “Help us with the work that is necessary.”
Chadwick cupped a hand over her earpiece. Her rational brain said no one in the restaurant could hear the conversation, but she couldn’t help but feel like this treason was being broadcast over a PA.
She looked up at David through tears of anger and betrayal. “How could you do this?”
The man on the phone spoke again, firmer now. “Stop being maudlin. We are not asking you to assassinate Jack Ryan. You need only to get close to him. We want someone in his inner circle, to learn what he plans—”
Chadwick laughed, drawing side-eyes from the diners seated at a nearby table. “That’s rich.” She scoffed. “He doesn’t like me any more than I like him. He’s not about to let me hang out in the Oval Office and see what he’s up to.”
“On the contrary,” the man on the phone said. “I believe you will find that President Ryan is a dreamer. You need only appeal to his sense of hope. If you tell him that you wish to work together, he will find himself quite unable to resist. There are few friends closer than a former enemy.”
The man directed her to get the rest of her instructions from Huang.
“And what if I don’t play along?” Chadwick asked. “You’ll kill me?”
The man on the phone chuckled softly. “We are not monsters,” he said. “There would be no need. Your own country will charge you with treason and put you in a very dark hole for the rest of your life. I hear the maximum-security prison in Colorado is… What do they call it? A clean version of hell? In truth, I would prefer a quick death. But that is just me.”
The dark man ended the video call with a smug farewell — as if they were friends.
Completely undone, Chadwick pulled the earpiece out of her ear and glared across the table at David Huang.
“How do I know you won’t just release this tape after I’ve done what you want me to do?”
“Oh, Michelle,” he said, looking slightly hangdog. “You have my word. We only—”
“Your word means shit to me,” Chadwick hissed.
“I know,” David said. “But you have to think about this logically. Why would we bring down someone who wants the same thing we do?”
“But,” Chadwick stammered, “I don’t want to spy on my own government.”
“And we’re not directing you to,” Huang said. “Your job is to help us destroy Jack Ryan.”
11
Major Chang replaced the handset in the cradle of his secure telephone and swiveled his chair sideways behind his desk.
Sliding his butt down in the mesh cushion, he stretched his legs all the way out in front of him. The cuffs of his green uniform slacks hiked up to reveal a band of pale skin above each sagging black sock. With his hands clasped together, index fingers extending, he toyed with his top teeth as he thought.
He’d had more time to study her now.
Calliope was more advanced than anything Chang had ever seen. Her code was infectious, but not indiscriminate. WannaCry — malware with which Chang was intimately familiar — had infected hundreds of thousands of Windows operating systems around the world. It was an extremely successful outbreak, but largely uncontrollable by the instigators once it began. The worm used a leaked NSA-installed back door called Eternal Blue to move laterally and quickly, replicating itself and encrypting systems, burning through networks over the course of four days.
Effective but broad. A kill switch had been discovered, out-of-date systems were patched, and normal life resumed.
Major Chang imagined a more focused attack. Widespread carnage was well and good, but he was certain Calliope could be used differently. Her task would be simple, easy for something as smart as she was. Little could be more simple than “take that hill.” Chang saw her much the way her developers saw her, as an NPC, a non-player character in a game. This game was real, he was the player, and Calliope was his AI agent, working through her missions independently in the Cloud toward the goals he’d assigned.
After almost two weeks of testing, he was not one hundred percent certain what she would do once she was uploaded onto a system, other than whatever she pleased. So far, the outcomes had all been in line with Chang’s original goals, but the routes Calliope took were impossible to plan for.
Chang continued to slouch at his desk for well over an hour, clicking his teeth and intermittently passing gas, while others in the lab came and went. He needed to learn her language. That was all. Perhaps he did not trust her enough. Maybe he was placing too many constraints on her, not giving her enough freedom.