Tag: book excerpt

Zhao Jin cast an appraising glance at Mohammad, who moved his food around on his plate and said, “He won’t be a senator for much longer.”

“No,” Zhao Jin answered. “He won’t.”

“He’ll be in the White House soon.”

“It would seem so.”

“He won’t take Lily Bao with him,” added Mohammad.

“Would Kennedy have become president if instead of Jackie he’d married a German? The daughter of Rommel or Guderian? The wounds of America’s last war remain open, and Shriver is too much of a coward to risk his political career for her. Also, there’s something else.”

“What’s that?” the elder James Mohammad asked impatiently.

Zhao Jin volleyed his gaze between them, as if he were weighing whether to share this last bit of information. “The sequence of code on Common Sense. In your reports, you mention concerns that it was stolen from an Okinawa-based researcher you’ve funded, a Dr. Yamamoto.”

“Yes,” said Mohammad. “That’s my concern.”

“Before Lily Bao set off on her own, she worked for the Tandava Group. I assume you’re familiar with them.”

Again, Mohammad nodded.

“Although they’ve divested themselves of the asset, they once had a significant investment in Neutronics, a biotech company. Lily Bao managed that account for the Tandava Group’s founder, Dr. Sandeep Chowdhury. At that time, Neutronics was doing cutting-edge work in nanorobotics, quantum computing, and bioengineering, including early-phase research of remote gene editing under the guidance of Dr. Ray Kurzweil. You’ve heard of him, of course.”

Both nephew and uncle nodded.

“He vanished some years ago after leaving Neutronics,” added Zhao Jin. “It seems the company wanted to turn a profit off his research, while he wanted to go further with it.”

“What does this have to do with my nephew and Lily Bao?” grumbled the elder James Mohammad.

“Truthers in America are agitating for a commission to investigate President Castro’s death,” said Zhao Jin. “Belief is spreading that there was foul play—an assassination. The sequence of code that allegedly killed Castro, the one released on Common Sense, what if that sequence of code wasn’t stolen from Dr. Yamamoto’s lab? What if it came from Neutronics?”

“Can you prove that?” asked Mohammad.

“Do I need to? If Shriver climbs a little higher, to the vice presidency or even higher still, his ties to Lily Bao and Neutronics are leverage we’ll have over him, a way to exercise control. That will give us an invaluable edge over the Americans.”

“So you want to blackmail Shriver?” asked Mohammad.

Zhao Jin scoffed. “That’s such an ugly term, and it won’t be necessary.” He asked if he might share a parable from his country. “Once there was a boy who was trying to figure out how to earn the money for a special toy that he wanted but couldn’t afford. On hearing his predicament, a friend of his at school explained that most adults had at least one deep, dark secret and that this made it very easy to get what you wanted from them by simply stating, ‘I know the whole truth,’ even if you don’t know anything. The boy thought this sounded like it might be a way to get the money he needed out of his parents. That day, when he came home from school, he decided to try out his scheme. He found his mother as she was preparing dinner in the kitchen and gave her a grave look, saying, ‘I know the whole truth!’ His mother quickly reached into her apron and handed him a 1,000-yuan note, saying, ‘Don’t tell your father.’ Pleased that his scheme seemed to work, he waited for his father to get home that evening. Greeting him at the door, the boy said, ‘I know the whole truth!’ His father, glancing from side to side, took out his wallet and pressed 2,000 yuan into the boy’s hand, saying, ‘Not a word to your mother!’ Even more pleased and closer to affording his new toy, the boy thought he would try this trick on a stranger. The next morning, on his way to school, he saw the mailman walking up his front path. He looked the mailman squarely in the eye and said, ‘I know the whole truth!’ The mailman quickly dropped his mailbag, fell to his knees, opened his arms, and exclaimed, ‘Son! Finally! Come give your daddy a hug!’”

Wisecarver stepped across the threshold. “Good morning, Mr. President.” He gave a little nod. Beneath his arm he carried a single binder. “Good morning, Trent.” Smith gestured for Wisecarver to sit with him on the sofa while Hunt and Hendrickson sat opposite. As they settled in, Julia caught Wisecarver glancing at the half dozen other binders spread across the coffee table, as if gauging the competition. The president cleared his throat. “As you all know, Speaker Wisecarver believes a unity government, in which I’d select a vice president from his party, would be in the best interests of our country …”

Julia felt her godfather shift in his seat, as if he couldn’t quite stomach the idea that Wisecarver’s interest in the matter had anything to do with the country as opposed to his own naked ambition. While the president spoke, Wisecarver looked around the room, his eyes running the walls. As Speaker, he’d been in the Oval Office plenty of times before as a guest of President Castro, but he seemed to be taking it all in for the first time, as if he were rearranging the furniture in his imagination and, quite literally, measuring the drapes.

Smith finished. It was Wisecarver’s turn to speak: “With the loss of President Castro, our country has gone through a significant trauma. Now it’s time for us to heal. The formation of a unity government is an important first step in that healing process. The people are in the streets telling us this. We can’t afford to ignore them any longer. Really, we have little choice in the matter. Either we heal together, or we tear ourselves apart.”

“Is that a suggestion?” Hendrickson asked. “Or an ultimatum?”

“It’s a reality, Bunt.” Wisecarver glanced down at the binders on the table. “If you pick one of those candidates, you’re tying my hands.”

“Tying your hands how?” Hendrickson leaned forward so that he was perched on the edge of the sofa.

“Well, for starters, they won’t go home anytime soon,” and Wisecarver gestured to the encampment out the window. “There’s also the commission investigating President Castro’s death to consider, a process that could drag on, depending on who we in the Congress appoint to lead it. If you need more reasons than those two, I could continue.”

“That won’t be necessary,” the president said to Wisecarver. He turned to Hendrickson with a look like a child pleading with an overly protective parent. He couldn’t sustain this level of conflict, the protests around the country, the machinations of his political rivals. Like any performer, Smith cared deeply what other people thought of him and couldn’t tolerate being hated, or at least being hated to this degree. He had all of a politician’s neediness without any of the cunning. He was doomed.

Julia Hunt could see her godfather reconsidering what Wisecarver offered. A unity government would de-escalate the current crisis, at least in the near term. In the long term, elevating a Truther could prove an astute move. It would diffuse Wisecarver’s power within the party. Also, depending on who that person was, having steady leadership—at least steadier than Smith—could help stabilize the country, or at least keep it from tearing itself apart, to use Wisecarver’s words. But it all depended on who he was proposing.

Hendrickson asked for the name.

Wisecarver reached across the coffee table and handed him the binder he’d brought, with its pages of due diligence. Julia Hunt leaned over her godfather’s shoulder as he opened it. Of course, she thought. On the first page she glimpsed the official portrait of Senator Nat Shriver.

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COMING SOON

2054, Part V: From Tokyo With Love
“Had this all been contrived? Had his life become a game in which everyone knew the rules but him?”

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From 2054: A Novel, by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, USN, to be published on March 12th, 2024, by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis.

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Lily didn’t want to approach B.T. She thought that might seem too aggressive; instead, she wanted him to notice her. At the roulette table, he had placed his chips on black, so she’d placed hers on red, and that had been enough. “Lily Bao,” he said, a smile barging its way onto his lips as he saw her from down the table. “Why am I not surprised it’s you who found me first?”

Lily was still collecting the last of her winnings. “Can I buy you a drink?”

B.T. leaned over, grabbed a pair of her chips, and tossed them as a gratuity to the dealer, who nodded in appreciation. B.T. then turned toward her, his one eyebrow raised, and said, “The drinks here are free, kiddo.”

They crossed the casino to the restaurant, walking arm in arm beneath its ceiling painted with kitschy Italianate frescoes and studded with security cameras, dozens of black, watchful orbs. At B.T.’s request, the maître d’ agreed to open up a closed section in order to grant them a little extra privacy. “Come here often?” Lily asked, impressed.

B.T. shrugged and replied, “Depends on your definition of often.” He ordered the two of them a prewar bottle of Bordeaux, a Château Lafite Rothschild. “The 2031,” he said authoritatively, which elicited a little bow from the maître d’, who answered, “Right away, Dr. Yamamoto,” before returning to the front of the restaurant.

Lily suppressed a laugh. “Look at you.”

“Look at me what?”

“The 2031 … Right away, Dr. Yamamoto …” B.T.’s gaze dipped self-consciously toward his place setting. Lily reached across the white linen tablecloth and took his hands in hers. “It’s really good to see you.”

“How’d you find me?” B.T. asked. As Lily opened her mouth to speak, he modified the question: “Wait, why’d you find me?” This was more complicated. The long answer began more than a decade before, when, awkward and alone, they’d met freshman year in Cambridge. Back then, they’d clung to each other as if drowning while they navigated the twin challenges of life away from home and MIT’s relentless academic load. B.T. had been Lily’s first boyfriend, a relationship that’d lasted a total of three months. In a season of firsts, he had, on a futon in her dorm room, become her first lover. Lily suspected she was his first lover, too, though he improbably alluded to other affairs. When he forgot Valentine’s Day and then her birthday within a three-week span, and had then taken her to dinner to make up for both but forgot his wallet so she’d wound up paying, she had had enough. Mindful of his feelings, she’d suggested that they would make better friends than lovers. His relief at this suggestion was palpable, the only mutual breakup Lily had ever experienced.

After breaking up, they spent even more time together. For Lily—who’d lost her father, her country, and eventually her mother, all before the age of 20—B.T. began to feel like the only family she had. When the academic load at MIT proved too much for her and it seemed she might flunk out, B.T. intervened. He became her tutor, and they spent hours on those subjects she could barely pass; the ones that came so easily to him. For her part, Lily had taken on the role of older sister and confidant, over the years helping B.T. clean up his messes with other people (a heated disagreement with a professor over a grade, the poorly chosen phrase when critiquing a colleague’s work, the concerns of future employers who’d heard of B.T.’s “tricky” reputation). Which was, ultimately, the why of his question to her. “Because I know you’ve made a mess, B.T.”

A bloody Sunday followed. In Tucson, a Border Patrol officer fired a rubber bullet that struck a Truther protester in the eye, killing her. When the news broke, the Homeland Security secretary resigned. But a single resignation wasn’t enough. Truther activists, organized into self-styled Truther brigades, ransacked a half-dozen federal buildings from Los Angeles to Boston in one frenzied afternoon. By Monday evening a crop of resignations, from the secretary of defense to the director of Health and Human Services, had arrived on Hendrickson’s desk.

As chief of staff, Hendrickson had quietly requested these resignations. He delivered them to the new president. By the end of that week, it seemed the Truthers had achieved their goal of mass resignations within the administration and their protests subsided, but a sense of crisis remained. “Sir,” Hendrickson told the newly appointed president, “we’ve stopped the bleeding, but the patient is still on the table with a weak set of vitals.”

18:22 March 19, 2054 (GMT+1)

Lagos Island, Lagos

This investment could blow up in his face. James Mohammad had hired three separate security firms to breach Yamamoto’s personal servers, and all three had reached the same conclusion: His servers were clean, containing no indication that the proprietary research on remote gene editing that Mohammad had bought exclusive rights to at great expense had been transferred. A fragment of code from that research had surfaced on Common Sense only a few days before. The code was incomplete, meaningless out of context, but its origin was unmistakable.

The search algorithms Mohammad had in place to recognize even a portion of the code, anywhere, had picked it up immediately. But B.T.’s servers were clean … If he wasn’t the leak, then who was? Ultimately, this breach represented a human failure as opposed to a technological one. Yes, B.T.’s talents were undeniable, but so, too, were his weaknesses. A gambler through and through, B.T.’s impulses often got in the way of his genius. Mohammad should’ve known not to trust him.

James Mohammad was a gambler, too, but he went about it in a different way. If asked, he would describe himself as a private investor. His investment vehicles rotated—Dark Stone Enterprises, Clear Wood Equity, Broad Water Capital—their names, like so many similar firms, fitting a common pattern: the interplay of an element and an adjective, striving at permanence. Like B.T., Mohammad had had a transient youth, moving every few years with his father, Benjamin Mohammad, a Nigerian diplomat of great promise. Like many globe-trotting elites from former Commonwealth countries, Mohammad’s father dropped him off at Eton at age 13. Shortly thereafter, in 2036, his parents succumbed to the pandemic forever associated with that dismal year. The old Etonians, never known for embracing outsiders, had, after Mohammad’s personal tragedy, allowed him to finish out the term but couldn’t find the wherewithal to underwrite the rest of his education. Then, unexpectedly, an uncle intervened.

Much later, after a series of failed investments had taken the grown-up James Mohammad to the brink of bankruptcy, his uncle again intervened, offering to underwrite his losses and future investments so long as he—on occasion—shared with the Nigerian government discreet, nonpublic information related to those investments. Mohammad didn’t quite know how to think about the benefits of his arrangement until, one evening over a drink, an American tech investor 10 years his junior confessed to working in intelligence and described a similar relationship with his own government. He had a specific term for it: He was working as a NOC, non-official cover.

Whatever his title, Mohammad knew that researchers like B.T. were on the cusp of implementing remote gene editing, a profound scientific breakthrough. If molecules really were the new microchips, the promise of remote gene editing was that the body could be manipulated to upgrade itself. Few could comprehend the implications: Governments would no longer need to roll out logistically complex and onerous vaccination campaigns to combat ever-quickening pandemic cycles and viral variants; advanced genetic therapies could be administered remotely, with far greater ease, by triggering the gene-altering properties of mRNA through wireless communication, the equivalent of sending a molecular-level software upgrade; and this was to say nothing of potential enhancements in human physiology and intelligence. The seamless integration of technology and biology was hardly a new idea. Decades before, in the opening years of the century, visionaries like the technologist Ray Kurzweil had predicted the coming of the so-called Singularity. Now, with the prospect of remote gene editing, Mohammad believed that moment had finally arrived.

It was clear to Mohammad that a new Great Game was afoot. Whatever global order currently existed could only be characterized as no order at all. China and the United States had forfeited their dominance with a near-world-ending conflict; Russia’s decline had continued post-Putin, and the eastern part of Siberia was in effect a Chinese colony; and his native Nigeria had developed with intent and impact internationally, often cooperating with Brazil. And, of course, Japan—long written off, given its declining demographics—had leveraged artificial intelligence, robotics, and quantum computing to compensate for a diminished workforce, often trading with India, which offered a vast market for its technologies.

“But do you understand what you did wrong?”

She struggled to look him directly in the eye. Her gaze instead fell over his shoulder, where the news was streaming live on his computer screen. Hendrickson was familiar with this posture of avoidance. Since Julia’s adoption at 9 by his old friend Sarah Hunt, Hendrickson had been a mainstay, the person Sarah called when Julia broke curfew, mouthed off to a teacher, or, on one occasion, accused her adoptive mother of being the one responsible for her parents’ deaths two decades before, in San Diego, where they—along with thousands of other migrant workers—had vanished in a flash of nuclear light, leaving no trace.

Hendrickson repeated his question. He wanted an assurance that Julia understood what she had done wrong. Except that Julia knew she’d done nothing wrong. Senator Nat Shriver was vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, or SSCI, which everyone in DC pronounced “sissy.” Shriver had a right to read the report.

12:16 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)

The Ritz‑Carlton, Tysons Corner

Lily Bao sat on the edge of the mattress, buttoning her white silk blouse. One at a time, she picked the scattered pillows off the floor. She made the bed, retucking the swirl of mussed sheets into neat hospital corners, flattening out the duvet. She’d learned to do this as a girl in Newport, helping her mother, who’d worked as a maid in dingy hotels when they’d first immigrated to the US. No matter how wealthy Lily became, she always made the bed herself.

He had just left—she so rarely said his name; it was as if he existed in her life only as a pronoun. They’d gotten less than an hour together, a working lunch, as he’d referred to it in his text the night before. It had been, admittedly, one of many such “lunches,” always in a hotel room that she booked. She didn’t mind. She understood his constraints, even though he was single. Like a sailor married to the sea, he was married to his profession, which was politics, and just as a sailor both loves and fears the sea, he loved and feared the people he served, and so kept his relationships out of view. Because who knew how his enemies could use her against him?

Nat Shriver had plenty of enemies. She’d known this about him before she’d known anything else. A great-grandnephew of Maria Shriver, he was equal parts Shriver, Schwarzenegger, and Kennedy … also equal parts California and Massachusetts. He was everything to everyone, a best friend, a worst enemy. The only thing he wasn’t was boring, neutral; it didn’t matter who you were, you had an opinion about Nat Shriver. This senator who a growing number of Americans believed might eliminate the tyranny of one-party rule.

He was also, to Lily Bao’s great surprise, her lover.

12:17 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)

São Paulo to JFK

As Chowdhury gazed vacantly out the window, the flight attendant, a middle-aged, heavily lipsticked brunette who appeared to be from another era of air travel, placed her hand on his arm, startling him, so that he felt a slight tremor in his chest. “My apologies,” she said. “Is there anything I can get you before we land?” He asked for some water. Beads of sweat had begun to gather on his forehead, and before he could calm himself with a sip, he felt a minor and not entirely unpleasant vibration in his left wrist, the work of a cardiologist in New Delhi who had installed a serotonin dispenser near his radial artery. Chowdhury took a couple of deep breaths, sipped his water, and turned on the news.

The US president, Ángel Castro, appeared onscreen before a crowd. Square-jawed, with a pompadour of thick black hair, which had hardly grayed in his 10 years in office, Castro stood at a dais with a flotilla of gray-hulled warships behind him at anchor. The chyron read: Twentieth Anniversary of Wén Rui Incident Commemorated in San Diego. It was no coincidence that Chowdhury had chosen today to return to the United States. What surprised him was that the president had decided to mark the anniversary as well. Castro had never before, in the three terms of his administration, wrapped himself in the events of that disastrous war.