The Ascendant: A Thriller (52 page)
Read The Ascendant: A Thriller Online
Authors: Drew Chapman
Tags: #Fiction, #Retail, #Suspense, #Thriller
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I do believe it.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“They arrested me as well,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I wouldn’t lead them to you.”
Garrett thought about that. “I owe you thanks, then.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You don’t.”
“They let you go.”
“After they dropped the charges against you it didn’t make much sense to keep me in confinement.”
He gazed at her stripes. “And then they made you a colonel for it?”
She nodded. “Lieutenant colonel. It’s all hands on deck at the DIA now. People are predicting a civil war in China. So all is forgiven.” She seemed to think about this for a moment, then added, “Or maybe they did it to keep me quiet.”
“About me?”
“About everything.”
Garrett pushed away his plate of eggs, then stared at her eyes, her hair, her
lips; he remembered how they felt against his. “What are you doing here, Alexis?”
She pulled an envelope from her jacket and slid it across the table. “Your salary. For one month’s work. Plus a first set of disability payments. For the skull fracture. It got reclassified as a work-related injury.”
Garrett opened the envelope. There were two checks inside, both made out to him. One was for $4,840.35. It already had taxes taken out of it. The other was for $370. It was from the Social Security Administration.
Garrett smiled. “Finally, I can retire.”
“No one ever said serving your country was lucrative.”
“Is that what I did? Serve my country?”
Alexis drew herself up, sitting ever so slightly more erect in her chair. She gave the faintest nod of her head. “Yes. That’s exactly what you did. And you did it honorably. With distinction. You should be proud.”
Garrett didn’t know what to say. He certainly wasn’t proud. He folded up the checks and slipped them into his pocket. “That’s it? You came to give me my money?”
“Do you like being back at work, Garrett?”
“I’m easing into it.”
“But you’re awake at one in the morning, drinking coffee in a diner.”
Garrett shrugged. “I’ve had trouble sleeping.”
She leaned forward, elbows resting on the tabletop. “People know what you did. People who matter. They were impressed. Blown away, actually. And they are going to want you to do it again.”
This time Garrett let out a loud laugh. “They can go fuck themselves.”
“The standard Garrett Reilly response.”
“Yeah, well, some things never change,” he said.
“I think you changed. A lot. And I’m guessing you don’t fit back into your old life anymore. Shuffling money around. Buy and sell orders. Doesn’t it all kind of pale in comparison? To saving the world?”
Garrett said nothing. He toyed with his fork, moving it back and forth on the paper table liner.
“Ascendant still exists. Dormant, but waiting for you.”
Garrett tensed. He could feel the old anger welling up inside of him, the rage that so often consumed him.
“They arrested me twice. They tortured me, put me in isolation. They shot
and killed one of our team.
Our team
, Lieutenant Colonel Truffant. And who knows what they did to Avery.”
Alexis lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s war, Garrett. In war people die.”
“You’re not supposed to kill the people on your own side.”
“The guilty will be punished.”
Garrett frowned. He shook his head from side to side. “Not the guilty at the very top. Not them. They’re never punished.”
“You’re right,” she said. “Life’s not fair.”
Alexis turned her palms upward, as if to say, What can any of us do about it? Garrett felt his rage subside. He realized he had needed to tell Alexis those things; they had been festering in him, and she was the only person with whom he could find relief.
“I know you may not want to hear this, but you saw the war before anyone else did. You studied it, then you fought it. And you brought it to a close. Against all odds. You saved lives. Many, many lives. What you did was astonishing.” She fixed her eyes on his. “The president wants you back. He asked for you himself.”
Garrett looked away, taking in her words. Then he pulled out his wallet and dropped a twenty on the table. “I think about you all the time,” he said, fingering the worn leather of his wallet. “I think about us.”
“And?” she asked.
Garrett smiled at her. It made him feel open and vulnerable, that smile, accepting of his true nature, as if the very act of it had expanded his heart and allowed him to say what he’d meant to say for a while now.
“
And?
” he said, grinning stupidly at her. “And I still love you.”
Silence enveloped the table. Garrett thought he saw Alexis’s cheeks color slightly. She opened her mouth to respond, but no words came. After a few more moments, Garrett pushed back from the table and stood up. “It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything.”
He pulled a zip-up sweatshirt around his shoulders. “It was nice seeing you, Alexis. Really nice.” He started toward the door.
He was halfway to the exit when Alexis called after him. “They will ask for you. In the night, when the next crisis hits. And that crisis is right around the corner. Think about your answer, Garrett. I hope you make the right choice.”
Garrett cocked his head slightly to one side, nodded wearily, and walked out into the warm New York night.
I
could not have written this book without the expert advice of the following people. My thanks to: Danny Goodwin, for his knowledge of stocks, flash crashes, and black pools of money; Nathan Wright, for helping with military jargon and attitudes; Carrie Pederson, for her brilliance on all things China; Stanley Florek, for explaining message encryption; E. J. Gong, for laying out LLCs and real estate speculation; Peter Loop, for demystifying data centers; John Krause, for updates on Internet security and the power grid; Ting Wang and Matthew Van Osdol, for making sure the Mandarin was up to snuff; Marsi Doran, for unraveling the intricacies of bond trading; and Jack Timmons, for his computer programming genius and rabid enthusiasm.
Also invaluable in the process were Markus Hoffmann at Regal Literary in New York, and my team in LA—Matt Leipzig and Jordan Bayer at Original Artists, Dan Brecher at Rothman Brecher, and my manager, Ragna Nervik.
On the publishing side, a special thanks to Emily Graff and to the insightful Rowland White at Penguin UK. And finally, my heartfelt gratitude to my editor at Simon & Schuster, the incomparable Marysue Rucci.
D
rew Chapman has written on numerous studio movies. He also directed the indie film
Standoff
. Currently, he creates and writes TV shows for network television, most recently having written and executive-produced an ABC miniseries about the hunt for CIA mole Aldrich Ames. Married with two children, Chapman divides his time between Los Angeles and Seattle.
The Ascendant
is his first book.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Andrew Chapman
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition January 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chapman, Drew.
The ascendant : a novel / Drew Chapman. — First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
pages cm
Summary: “From a riveting new voice in suspense fiction, THE ASCENDANT is an action-packed thriller following a unlikely hero—a number savant named Garrett Reilly—as he races around the globe to avert total war”—Provided by publisher.
1. Savants (Savant syndrome)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.H3635A84 2014
813'.6—dc23 2013032632
ISBN 978-1-4767-2588-8
ISBN 978-1-4767-2590-1 (ebook)
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