Red Cell (24 page)

“So where does this hit on the
Ma Kong
fit into this?” Stuart asked, waving the paper in the air.

“The Red Cell has a theory, but I’m not prepared to explain it in detail—” Cooke started.

“Then give me the short version,” Stuart ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Cooke said. She hated to share unproven theories, but an order was an order. “It was a weapons test.”

Stuart stared at the CIA director, surprised. “What kind of weapon?”

“We don’t know exactly, but something designed to kill an aircraft carrier.” She spent less than a minute on the history of the Assassin’s Mace project. “Basically, if this ‘assassin’s mace,’ whatever it is, can take out a
Kidd
-class destroyer, then it might be able to take out a carrier.”

Stuart rolled his eyes, dropped the paper on the table, and slumped back into his chair. “So the Chinese think they have a way to kill carriers. No wonder Tian was shoving it all in my face.”

“We don—,” Cooke started.

“‘We don’t know,’ yes, yes,” Stuart cut her off. He sucked in a deep breath in frustration. “Lance, could Taiwan defend the Pescadores without our help?” Stuart asked.

“No,” Showalter said. The man’s response was quick and final. Cooke raised an eyebrow. “But if you want, we can draw a line in the sand there. There’s fifty miles of South China Sea between Penghu and the mainland coast. With Taiwan’s support, we can make it feel like fifty thousand.
Lincoln
and
Washington
are both en route.
Lincoln
is sailing south, three days out of Yokosuka.
Washington
is one day east of Guam. We can back them up with the air wing at Kadena, and if you want to start hitting some ground targets, we can start flying the B-2s out of Kansas.” He considered knowing the position of all twelve US carriers a basic function of his job.

“But we could lose a carrier to this . . . thing, whatever this thing might be,” Stuart said. He sounded more tired than before.

“Harry, you could lose a carrier even if they don’t have this thing,” the SecDef said.

“Sir, if I may?” Cooke interrupted him.

“Yes?”

“In my job, I’m not supposed to recommend policy. I’m just supposed to give you the intelligence and the analysis. But I can tell you what the likely implications of any course of action might be. Sir, if you turn those carriers around, it will send a very loud message to every one of our allies on the Pacific Rim and a louder one to our enemies everywhere else. And I don’t believe I have to spell out to you what that message is. But it will be final and irreversible, and the United States will never recover the influence we will lose. You’ll change the world and not in a way you will like, sir.” Cooke sat back and realized that her heart was pounding harder than she could ever remember.

“That was bold,” Stuart said quietly.

“Yes, sir. I’ll understand if you want me to—”

Stuart cut her off once again, this time with a wave of his hand. “I like bold. And it helps that I agree with you.” He left the implied consequences of disagreeing with her unsaid. “Any ideas about what story I should feed the press about the carriers going in?”

“You could make a statement that the carriers are there to protect the right to free maritime passage through international waters during hostilities,” Showalter offered.

“You wouldn’t even be lying,” Cooke said in agreement. She pointed at the map and traced a line. “Taiwan sits in the Luzon Strait connecting the Pacific with the South China Sea north of the Philippines.
That is the major shipping lane linking Japan and the Koreas to Indonesia and the Indian Ocean. If Tian takes over and creates a Kinmen–Pescadores–Taiwan line under one flag, he could close off access to commercial shipping at will through both the Taiwan and Luzon Straits.”

“I like it.” The president of the United States smiled and nodded. “Lance, pull the plans off the shelf for defending the Pescadores. And send that Red Cell report to the carrier groups. If that’s the PLA’s playbook, I want them to know it back and front.”

CIA DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

Barron had a whole pot of coffee waiting in Cooke’s office this time when she came through the door. The CIA director downed two mugs of it to give herself some time to think and she drew a third before sitting down.

She opened the file and pulled out a research paper. “The Red Cell came up with this a few years ago. I just shared it with the president.”

Barron took the paper and scanned the abstract. “That’s not bad,” he said. “If they’re right, Penghu and the rest of the Pescadores are next on the menu.” He dropped the paper on the table.

“The president liked it,” Cooke said. “We need to get an idea of when the PLA could make a run on the Pescadores. What’s the holdup with Pioneer?”

Barron sucked in a deep breath and Cooke felt her intuition scream. She said nothing. The NCS director needed the chance to break the news in his own way. “Chief of station says that Pioneer’s been burned,” he said, sotto voce. It was the worst thing he could have said at that moment and he knew it.

Cooke closed her eyes, covered her face with her hands, and gritted her teeth so hard she was afraid she was going to break her jaw. “What happened?” she asked slowly, her voice controlled.

“We don’t know,” Barron admitted.

“Do we know how long he’s been under surveillance?” Cooke asked.

“No.” Barron had done nothing, but felt incompetent all the same.

“I assume Mitchell has an exfiltration plan?” asked Cooke.

Barron confirmed the assumption with a nod. “We’ve had one in place for twenty years.”

“Always risky,” Cooke said. Exfiltrations were rare. Most foreign assets retired in place or left their homeland on their own. “How long before Mitchell can get him out?”

“Hard to say, given the increased security over there,” Barron admitted. “I’d send a separate team to do the job if I could, but with Beijing in lockdown, it’ll be tough to get more than a few people in on short notice without raising red flags. So it might just be grab-and-go.”

“That’s a devil of a thing to do to a man,” Cooke said. It wasn’t a criticism. “Ask him to walk out of his whole life on a moment’s notice.”

“Better than getting shot by the MSS on a moment’s notice,” Barron said.

Cooke sat back in her chair. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” Barron said. “The Red Cell just put in a request to send a pair of analysts to China to debrief Pioneer.”

Cooke nodded. “Burke and Stryker think they’ve got something developing on their Assassin’s Mace theory.”

“Normally, I wouldn’t let a DI analyst within a hundred miles of an asset that sensitive, but if they’re on to something with this Assassin’s Mace idea, I might be inclined to give them some latitude. But even if we send them, there’s no guarantee we can get them and Pioneer in the same room. Sending a pair of analysts might just be feeding the surveillance monster. I’m fine with sending Stryker, but Burke sounds too high-risk to me.”

“He’s done time in the field, so he’s got some ops training,” Cooke replied. “Firearms, Crash-and-Bang, the usual stuff we run analysts through before we sent them to the sandbox”—Iraq. “I’ll get his file to you.”

“Crash-and-bang isn’t the same as training to operate in a hostile countersurveillance environment.”

Cooke nodded. “True, but risk is the business,” she said, finishing the argument. “Greenlight the Red Cell TDY to Beijing.”

“They don’t say two words to Pioneer without one of my people in the room,” Barron said.

“Agreed,” she assured him. “But I want Mitchell to give them full cooperation. None of those station chief king-of-the-hill games.”

“Mitchell will love that,” Barron said.

“He’d better learn,” Cooke said. “If the Chinese are going after the Pescadores, I want Stuart to have plenty of warning this time. If the
diplomats fail, the PLA won’t just be rolling tanks for the next part. They’ll be flying planes, and those move just a bit faster.”

CIA INFORMATION OPERATIONS CENTER
WEST OF MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

The Information Operations Center was one of five CIA divisions set up to attack problems not bounded neatly by national borders. Drug trafficking, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and counterintelligence each had earned their own units, but IOC had outgrown most of them in little more than a decade. The criminals engaged in the other offenses were not blind to technology’s march, and the Internet had come to underpin their activities as much as money. IOC pursued them all, fueled by a budget that would have placed it easily in the Fortune 1000.

Kyra was surprised to see that Jonathan knew his way through the Analysis Group spaces. It was a cubicle farm like the one she had expected to see in the Red Cell, but the sheer number of workspaces was enormous. There were dozens, easily more than a hundred, all flanking a single aisle that ran more than a hundred yards from end to end. The vault took up the entire side of the building on this floor alone.

Farm
is too small,
she decided.
A cubicle plantation?

“Twenty years ago, there was exactly one analyst working computer security issues,” Jonathan muttered quietly to her.

“I guess somebody figured out that the Internet was changing the world.”

“A rare case of the Agency staying on top of technology instead of playing catch-up,” he agreed. Jonathan steered her by the arm to a private office at the end of a wall opposite the analyst pens and pushed the door open without bothering to knock.

“Jonathan!” Kyra heard the voice, basso, but her position kept her from seeing the man in the office. “Get in here and close the door before someone sees me consorting with the Red Cell.”

“I apologize for what you’re about to endure,” Jonathan said quietly. He held out his arm in gentlemanly fashion to let Kyra pass.

Kyra stepped into an office large enough only for the desk, a file cabinet, and a shabby visitors’ couch that looked far older than the
room itself. The desk was overrun by no less than four computer monitors and Kyra counted at least five hardware towers on the floor, making the rat’s nest of wiring underfoot entirely predictable. What space was left on the desktop was overtaken by papers and DVD jewel cases with assorted classification markings scribbled on them in permanent blue ink. The room’s occupant was reasonably handsome, young, with two days’ growth of blond beard on his face, but his threadbare military sweater was hardly the height of fashion. He smiled innocently, and Kyra got the impression that the man was utterly ignorant that his clothes were totally without style.

“Kyra, meet Garr Weaver,” Jonathan said.

“One of the few here who will still speak to Jon. How did Mr. Burke here convince you to hook up with his outfit?” Weaver spoke with a light southern accent that seemed mixed with occasional New England inflections on the vowels. Weaver was either raised in the South and educated in the North, or the reverse. Kyra settled on the former, given that his southern accent was more prominent than the Boston cadence.

“He didn’t—,” Kyra started.

“A volunteer!” Weaver exclaimed, taking Kyra’s answer and logically extending it to the wrong extreme. Weaver stood and offered his hand, which she shook before sitting on the couch. Up close she saw it was covered with the hair of a hundred visitors. She was appalled that she would have to attack her shirt and pants with a lint brush when she got home but tried not to show it.

“A directed assignment,” Kyra said.

Weaver’s eyebrows went up in mock surprise. “The seventh floor has instituted the draft again?”

“Don’t mind the interrogation,” Jonathan advised. “Garr is one of the Red Cell’s emeritus members.”

“I did a rotation there a few years ago when I got swept up by one of Cooke’s press gangs. Jonathan and some heavy drinking made it tolerable,” Weaver said. Kyra figured that the last part was a lie. “So what can I do you for?”

“A favor, I hope.” Jonathan held out the CD. “This is a custom software program developed by a Chinese aerospace company, but we have no follow-up on it. I need you to take a look at it.”

“Excellent. I love tearing foreign software apart.” Weaver extracted the disk by the edges and placed it carefully in the tray sticking out of a
Macintosh tower under his desk. He pressed a button on a grubby keyboard and the tray slid shut. “Anything you can tell me about the asset who handed this over?”

“No,” Jonathan said.

“Ah. One of those,” Weaver said. “Does the company have a name?”

“Xian Aircraft Design and Research Institute,” Kyra said. “It might have also been filed under China Aviation Industry Corporation.”

“Ah, the Chinese. The source of all cyberevil in the world, or so the Pentagon thinks,” Weaver said. The disk finished loading and a single icon appeared on one of the monitors. Weaver called up a window displaying the file’s statistics. “Not a very big file, a Linux binary, almost a hundred megabytes.”

“The Chinese use Linux?” Jonathan asked.

“A variant called Red Flag Linux,” Kyra said.

“You know Linux?” Weaver asked, surprised.

“Computers are a hobby,” she admitted.

“A woman with some geek cred. Jonathan, you’ve been holding out on me,” Weaver said. Then he turned serious. “About, oh, fifteen years ago, the Chinese government got worried that Microsoft might have put backdoors into Windows that would give us or NSA covert access to their systems. The source code to Linux is free, so the Chinese decided that it would be safer to own their own operating system for critical functions. So they created their own variant called Red Flag Linux. The logo is a marching penguin carrying a Chinese flag. I’m not kidding.”

He double-clicked the icon. A Linux virtualization program launched, followed by the application. The program filled Weaver’s monitor with a blank window divided into quadrants, all black, and a small toolbar of icons across the top under a menu of Mandarin characters. “It looks like a pretty standard CAD program, I think,” Weaver observed. “Did you get any of their data files that we can load up?”

“No,” Jonathan admitted. “Or if we did, the NCS wouldn’t hand them over.”