Li looked at her again, then checked his watch — like he’d been timing her. She shook her head to clear it. That was impossible. There was no way for him to know what she’d done.
Was there?
26
It would have almost been a mistake to call Calliope sentient. She was not aware of her surroundings in a physical sense — plastic cabinets, circuit boards, and hard drives. But an observer who understood code would be hard-pressed to believe that she was not somehow alive and on a specific mission within the Dexter & Reed computer system. The software was so much more than a virus, but beautiful in her viruslike simplicity.
Using a variation of the problem-solving method called a Monte Carlo tree search, Calliope ran the possible scenarios — all outcomes of the game — tens of thousands of times, looking for the one that presented the result nearest to what she’d been coded to do.
Shortly after returning to the building after the fire alarm evacuation, Peter Li pushed out the notice of a software patch. Calliope attached herself to the patch, hitched a ride, and then deleted herself from Dexter & Reed computers, so there was no sign that she’d ever been there. Within minutes, avionics technicians with Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadrons VAW 116 and VAW 117 out of Naval Base Ventura County and Point Mugu had downloaded the patch into the E2-C Hawkeye command and control aircraft in their squadron. With the mission of handling communication between other aircraft and surface vessels, the Hawkeye made the perfect vector from which to infect other machines.
Calliope was now in play.
Cecily felt like she might throw up when she saw Admiral Li enter the vault to begin pushing out software patches. She took her purse and made another trip to the women’s room. Phil was in there with him, acting as security second. She hung out at the door, watching, looking stupid, but too entranced to care. Phil was hunched over a separate screen beside Li. Li looked up, surprised by something he’d found. Phil gave an adamant shake of his head.
Cecily gave an audible gasp. There was no way. They couldn’t have figured it out already. The security entry logs would show Phil and Cecily had entered earlier that day — which they had. It would take closer inspection to note they’d gone in again during the fire drill, which would confuse the hell out of Phil. Then he’d remember he’d left his ID badge on the desk, and that Cecily had been late… He didn’t have to be much of a detective to figure out she’d been up to no good.
Cecily turned for the door without looking back, expecting to hear someone yell out behind her all the way down the stairs. Manny, the potbellied security guy at the front desk, waved when she walked by. He had no idea why she was leaving, though she felt certain there was a flashing neon sign above her head that said SPY!
She didn’t risk contacting her handler until she was driving south on 41 toward Chicago, a mile under the speed limit. She used Siri to make the call.
“The admiral suspects,” she said, when the other end picked up. She slammed her hand against the steering wheel. “What do you want me to do?”
“What do you mean suspects?” The voice spoke without any trace of an accent, androgynous, like a computer. “He suspects or he knows?”
“Suspects for now,” Cecily said. “But it won’t take much for him to put two and two together. Then he’ll know.”
“And FIRESHIP?” the voice asked.
“It’s in,” Cecily said, remembering only then that she was supposed to have sent a message confirming this. She gave it verbally instead, feeling more exhilarated than ever. “FIRESHIP IS IN PLAY.”
“Very well,” the voice said, like there was nothing else to discuss.
“Wait!” Cecily gasped, hitting the steering wheel again. “What am I supposed to do? I’m telling you, Li knows.”
“Suspects,” the voice corrected.
“This guy is wicked smart,” Cecily said, hyperventilating now. “He knows I was in the vault by myself. When he finds whatever it was I injected, he’ll know it was me.”
“There is nothing there for him to find.”
“The patches, then,” Cecily said. “He’ll start looking at the patches he sent out. I imagine you have the software cover its tracks, but if anyone can figure this out, it’s Peter Li.”
There was a long silence on the line. For a moment, Cecily thought it had gone dead. Then she heard a breath. A decision being made. “Li will not be a problem,” the voice said.
“I can’t go back to work,” Cecily said. “I need a way out tonight.”
Another silence, long enough Cecily looked at her phone. “Go pack a bag and then—”
“I keep a bag packed!” Cecily snapped. “Where should I go?”
“Go home and get your bag. Wait there. Someone will come for you.”
Cecily took 68 toward Prospect Heights — there was no way she could afford Lake Forest.
“What about the admiral? I’m telling you, he’s going to cause us problems.”
“And I told you not to worry about Li,” the voice said. “He will be taken care of.”
“You mean taken care of taken care of?”
“Go home, Miss Lung,” the voice said. “This is not your concern.”
What the hell did that mean? She’d committed espionage, treason against her own government. She was up to her neck in it now. Every bit of this was her concern. “I’m only thinking of the mission,” Cecily said. “I want to help. That’s all.”
“Miss Lung, you must—”
“Listen to me!” she snapped. “We are on the same side. You can’t just send me to wait. I can assure you, this will not blow over. Tell me what I can do to fix it.”
The frustrated sigh was audible over the line. “Go home,” the voice said. “Someone will be along shortly to take care of you.”
The words sent a chill up her spine.
The line went dead and Cecily Lung made it to the shoulder of the highway just in time to vomit.
27
I would strongly urge you to reconsider, Mr. President,” Special Agent in Charge Gary Montgomery said. Resembling a defensive lineman in a wool business suit, he sat across the Resolute desk from Ryan, perched on the forward edge of his chair like he might spring to his feet at any moment and shake some sense into his boss. Arnie van Damm sat to his right, looking like he would be all too happy to help him.
Ryan was back from his trip to New York, accustomed by now to the herky-jerky nature of presidential travel. He might find himself in three or four different time zones in a single day, then three or four more the next. Back-and-forth trips to Manhattan were like trips to the corner bodega.
He couldn’t blame the men for trying to change his mind. The chief of staff’s job was one of constant pestering and pushing back, forcing him to look at other sides of issues that he didn’t particularly want to see. As the United States Secret Service special agent in charge of the Presidential Protection Division, or PPD, Montgomery had a tremendous responsibility on his shoulders. Jack Ryan had, at various times, been described as an off-the-cuff or nontraditional strategist. Privately, in the confines of the Secret Service office beneath the Oval, dubbed W16, Ryan was certain he’d been called a number of things — maybe even a crazy son of a bitch — for his penchant to take his pointed responses personally to the far corners of the world.