The three goons started speaking in rapid-fire Russian. One asked, "How will we know if it's really him?"

Jack shrugged in his bindings. "Dude. It's Center. Ask him anything. Ask him about your organization. Ask him what ops you've done for him. Hell, ask him what your birthday is. He'll know."

That sank in with the Russians, Ryan could tell.

After another conversation between them, one of the three holstered his pistol and walked over to the desk. "Give me your password. I'll check with Center on your computer."

Ryan shook his head. "That won't work. He can see through the webcam. Shit, how long have you guys been on the job? He'll see it's not me and he won't authenticate the conversation. He'll lock out the machine and, knowing Center, he'll probably send another crew down to Miami to kill everybody down here working for him, starting with the idiot that logged on to my machine."

"You are exaggerating," the Russian at the desk said. Still, he took a step back from the laptop, away from its camera.

"Trust me," said Jack. "The Chinese take their security seriously."

"Chinese?"

Jack just looked back at the man.

"Center is Chinese?" one of the other Russians asked.

"Are you serious?" Jack said, then looked at Dom. Dom just shook his head like he was in the presence of idiots.

"Are you guys new?"

"No," said the smaller man in the crew.

With a barking order from the man by the desk, one of the other two pulled a butterfly knife from his jacket and whipped it open with a flourish. He cut the tape from Ryan's ankles and wrists, and Jack got up from the metal chair. As he moved the ten feet he looked back over his shoulder at Caruso. Dominic gave nothing away with his look. He just sat there watching.

Ryan looked to the head goon now. "Let me connect with him, explain the situation, and then bring you into the conversation."

The Russian nodded, and Jack could tell that he'd successfully tricked the three armed men who just a minute before had been about to kill him and his cousin.

He knelt in front of his laptop, painfully aware of three sets of eyes on him right now. The closest man was just two steps away on his right, another was still on the other side of the bed with his weapon low by his side, and the third, the man who had just cut Ryan free, stood next to Caruso with his butterfly knife in his hand.

Jack had a plan, but it was an incomplete plan. He knew he wasn't going to be talking to Center on Cryptogram, he did not even have the software on his machine, so he was seconds away from a full-on fight here in the room. And while he felt reasonably certain he could take care of one of these three thugs in a mano-a-mano brawl, there was no way he would make it across the room to the guy on the other side of the bed.

He needed a gun, and the closest gun was in the holster under the shirt of the man next to him.

Jack looked up at him from his kneeling position in front of the computer.

"Well?" said the Russian.

"Maybe I won't check with Center," Jack said, his tone a lot sharper than when he was taped to the chair.

"Why not?" asked the Russian.

"You guys aren't going to do anything to us. You're just bluffing."

"Bluffing?" The man was confused. The American in front of him just spent several minutes trying to talk him into letting him use his computer. Now he was saying he would not. "I am not bluffing."

"What, are you going to have your little buddies beat me up?"

The leader shook his head and smiled. "No, they will shoot you."

"Oh, I see. You have these guys with you to do the shit you are too scared to do yourself." Jack shook his head. "Typical Russian pussy."

Draw your gun! Jack's inner voice screamed it. It was the only chance he and Dom had to survive the next few seconds.

The man's face reddened with fury, and he reached under his red silk shirt to his appendix area.

Bingo, thought Jack, and he launched up from his knees, both of his hands going for the weapon that was just now coming out from under the silk.

The man tried to take a step back and away, but Ryan had spent many hours working on weapon takeaways, and he knew what he was doing. As he used his body to slam into the Russian, knocking him back, he pushed the pistol's muzzle down and to his left to get out of the line of fire in case the Russian got a shot off. With the same motion he both pulled on the Russian's gun and twisted it against his trigger finger, snapping the appendage. As the man screamed, Jack got his own finger in the trigger guard and twisted the gun back nearly a hundred eighty degrees, with the Russian's hand still holding it. Jack pressed the Russian's broken finger against the trigger.

Both rounds slammed into the armed Russian on the far side of the bed. The man spun on his heel and fell to the floor.

As the closest Russian fell back toward the bed, Jack pulled the gun all the way free, found a combat grip on it, and shot the man twice in the stomach at a distance of less than three feet. The Russian mob goon was dead before he hit the bed.

He spun toward the man standing near Dom on his right, but before he could line the gun up for a snap shot he knew he was in trouble. As he came out of his turn he saw the man's hand arcing over his head, and Jack realized the guy was throwing his knife right at him.

Jack dropped to the floor without firing; he did not want to risk shooting his bound cousin by squeezing off indiscriminate rounds while dodging a knife.

The spinning steel whirled over his head and buried itself into the wall.

The Russian drew his handgun from his pants as Jack looked up. The man was fast . . . a faster draw than Jack.

But Ryan already had his Glock in his hand. He fired two rounds into the man's chest, and the Russian slammed back against the wall, then fell onto the floor between Dom's chair and the bed.

Caruso fought his bindings while Ryan took a moment to make sure all the men were dead.

Dom said, "Good thinking, great shooting."

Jack cut Dom free quickly. "We need to be out the door in sixty seconds."

"Got it," Dom said, and he leapt across the bed, grabbing his carry-on and slinging personal items into it.

Ryan pulled mobile phones and wallets from the dead men, then grabbed his own bag, stuffed his laptop into it, and ran into the bathroom, where he grabbed a towel. He took ten seconds to wipe down any surfaces he may have touched, and then another ten seconds to check the room for anything left behind.

As they hustled through the dark parking lot, Jack said, "Security cam?"

"Yep, the box is behind the counter, I've got it."

"I've got the car."

Caruso entered the lobby. There was just one man on duty, and he looked up from the telephone as Dom approached the counter with purpose.

The man hung up the phone. Nervously he said, "I just called the cops. They are on the way."

"I am the cops," replied Caruso, then he vaulted over the counter, pushed by the clerk, and punched the eject button for the hotel's security camera recording equipment. "And I'm going to need to take this into evidence."

The clerk clearly did not believe him, but he made no move to stop him.

Jack pulled the Toyota up to the front door of the lobby, and Dom climbed in quickly. They headed out of the parking lot well in advance of the police.

"What now?" asked Ryan.

Caruso slammed his head back against the headrest in frustration. "We call Granger, tell him what happened, and then we go home and get yelled at."

Ryan groaned and squeezed the wheel, the adrenaline still coursing through him as he drove.

Yeah. That sounded exactly like the way it would go down.

FIFTY-FOUR.

The call between President of the United States Jack Ryan and President of the People's Republic of China Wei Zhen Lin had been Ryan's initiative originally; he wanted to attempt a dialogue with Wei, because, regardless of what Wei had been saying publicly, Ryan and most of his top advisers felt that Su was pushing the conflict in the strait and the SCS way past what Wei was comfortable with.

Ryan felt he could reach out to Wei and stress the perilous path his country was traveling down. It might not make a difference, but Ryan felt like he should at least try.

Wei's staff had contacted Ambassador Ken Li the day before, and arranged a time the following evening, China time, for the two presidents to talk.

Jack found himself in the Oval Office before the call, meeting with Mary Pat Foley and CIA Director Jay Canfield, trying to decide if he should bring up the Georgetown killings with the Chinese president.

Zha had been killed, both Foley and Canfield were certain, to silence him before he revealed China's involvement in the cyberattacks going on in the West, especially in America.

Little was known about Dr. K. K. Tong and his scheme, but the deeper the NSA dug into the operation, the more certain they were that this was Chinese-run, and not some Triad/cybercrime nexus run out of Hong Kong. Zha's involvement with the UAV hacking seemed clear, the Iranian misdirection in the code had been discounted by the geeks at NSA, and more and more attacks against critical U.S. government networks bore the hallmark of Zha's code.

Their evidence was circumstantial but persuasive. Ryan believed China was behind the network attacks and the UAV attacks, and he also felt the Georgetown killing was a government operation, meaning China.

On top of this, Canfield and Foley wanted blood for the death of the five intelligence officers, and this Jack understood very well, but now he found himself playing the role of devil's advocate. He told them he needed more concrete proof that the PLA and/or the MSS were directing the Center network before he could publicly accuse the Chinese of anything.

He decided he would not bring up the Georgetown killings in this morning's phone call. Instead he would keep the focus on actions China could not deny, which meant everything that had happened in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

Both Ryan and Wei would be using their own translators. Jack's Mandarin speaker was located in the Situation Room, and his voice was piped into one of Jack's ears via an earpiece while Jack could listen to Wei's own voice through the telephone. This would make for a slow conversation without much spark, Ryan thought, but that did not bother him at all.

He would be doing his best to choose his words carefully; a little extra time to think through what he would say next might just keep him from challenging President Wei to a fistfight.

The conversation started out as all high-level diplomatic conversations do. It was polite and stilted, made even more so by the others in the chain of communication. But soon enough Ryan treaded into the main topic of conversation.

"Mr. President, it is of great concern that I must discuss with you your nation's military actions in the South China Sea and the Strait of Taiwan. The past month of aggression by the PLA has left hundreds dead, thousands displaced, and it has hurt the flow of traffic through the region, degrading the economies of both of our countries."

"President Ryan, I too am concerned. Concerned about your actions off the coast of Taiwan, sovereign territory of China."

"I ordered the Ronald Reagan pulled back to three hundred miles, as you requested. I had hoped it would deescalate the situation, but so far I see no evidence your aggression has been halted."

Wei said, "You also, Mr. President, have brought your Nimitz close to the three-hundred-mile limit. This is thousands of miles from your territory-what reason would you do this if not to cause provocation?"

"American interests are in the area, and it is my job to protect those interests, President Wei." Before Wei's translator finished the sentence, Ryan added, "Your nation's military maneuvers, as bellicose as they have been in the past few weeks, can still be repaired with diplomacy." Ryan continued speaking while the translator spoke to Wei softly. "I want to encourage you to make certain nothing happens, that you allow nothing to happen, that diplomacy cannot fix."

Wei's voice rose. "Are you threatening China?"

Ryan, in contrast, was calm and measured in his tone. "I am not talking to China. That is your job, Mr. President. I am talking to you. And this is no threat.

"Much of statecraft, as you know, involves trying to determine what your adversaries will do. I will relieve you of that burden in this phone call. If your nation attacks our carrier groups in the East China Sea, jeopardizing some twenty thousand American lives, we will attack you with everything we have.

"If you fire ballistic missiles at Taiwan, we will have no choice but to declare war on China. You say you are open for business? I assure you that war with us will be bad for business."

Ryan continued: "I value the lives of my fellow countrymen, Mr. President. I cannot make you understand this, and I cannot make you respect this. But I can, and I must, make you acknowledge that this is the case. If this conflict turns into open war, then it will not make us run away, it will force us to respond with fury. I hope you realize Chairman Su is quickly taking China down the wrong path."

"Su and I are in total accord."

"No, President Wei, you are not. My intelligence services are very good, and they assure me that you want economic improvement and he wants war. Those two things are mutually exclusive, and I believe you are beginning to realize that.

"My assets tell me it is likely that Chairman Su is promising you we will not escalate past what he is doing and if he strikes out against us we will disengage and quit the region. If that is indeed what Su has told you, you have been given very bad information, and I worry you will act on that bad information."

"Your disrespect for China should not surprise me, Mr. President, but I admit that it does."

"I mean China no disrespect. You are the largest nation, with one of the largest territories, and you possess a brilliant and hardworking workforce with whom my country has done good business for the past forty years. But that is all in danger."

The conversation did not end there. Wei went on for a few minutes about how he would not be lectured, and Ryan expressed the wish that they keep this line of communication open, as it would become very important in case of emergency.

When it was over, Mary Pat Foley, who had been listening in, congratulated the President and then said, "You told him your intelligence services were giving you information on high-level military decisions. Do you have some other intelligence service that I am not aware of?" She said it with a sly smile.

Jack answered, "I've been doing this for a while, and I thought I detected some indecision in his words. I played a hunch about the discord between the two camps, and I tried to turn his worry into paranoia with the comment about our intelligence services."

Mary Pat said, "Sounds like armchair psychology, but I'm all for it if it makes life harder for the Chicoms. I have some funerals to go to this week for some great Americans, and I feel certain Wei, Su, and their minions are responsible for these men's deaths."

FIFTY-FIVE.

Jack Ryan and Dominic Caruso sat in Gerry Hendley's office and faced the ex-senator and the director of operations for The Campus, Sam Granger.

It was eight o'clock on Saturday morning, and while Jack imagined Sam and Gerry did not like getting dragged into the office so early on a Saturday, he was pretty sure that was not going to be their number-one complaint once they heard everything that had taken place the evening before in Miami.

Hendley leaned forward with his elbows on his desk and Granger sat with his legs crossed while Dom explained everything that happened the evening before. Jack chimed in here and there, but there was not much to add to the story. Both young men freely admitted that they knew their "vacation" down to Miami was in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of Granger's order not to conduct surveillance on BriteWeb, the Russian data-hosting company.

When Dom's story was finished, when it became clear to Gerry and Sam that three men were left dead in a motel room in Miami Beach a few hours earlier, and neither of their two operatives could either explain how Center knew they were down in Miami or promise that there was not a single fingerprint, camera-phone image, or CCTV recording that would tie Caruso and Ryan to the event, then Gerry Hendley just sat back in his chair.

He said, "I am glad you two are alive. That sounds like it was a pretty close thing there for a few moments." He looked to Sam. "Your thoughts?"