Given the method by which military powers had come to engage in war, Deng’s War Rooms offered the ultimate control seat. He had spared no cost, not in construction budgets or, more important, the spy operations that fed the engineering effort behind the construction. PLA technology, represented best by that which was fed into these War Rooms, had nearly matched that of the American military-industrial complex, mainly due to the fact that Chinese army intelligence had stolen most of the significant technological innovations developed by American military contractors.

From his War Rooms, Deng could watch everything imaginable related to any armed conflict conducted by his troops. Any image that could possibly be generated in the field was projected on massive plasma screens; he could control every aspect of war with the flip of a switch, from ordering blood work on a soldier taken ill in Kazakhstan to the launch of biological warheads in the European theater. All he had to do was whisper a command to the technicians manning the main keyboard.

The land-based War Rooms were built deep underground, shielded behind twenty-foot-thick walls of titanium, concrete, and lead, designed to deflect the electromagnetic pulse of an adjacent fifty-megaton nuclear explosion. The power supply was quadruple-redundant. Any military action China was capable of undertaking, Deng could activate it from his War Room throne, and virtually no one could stop him from doing whatever he chose to do while he was planted there.

Admiral Li led the general out of an elevator and down a bright hallway. At the end of the hall, the admiral ushered him through an immense vault door, where a fresh duo of military police snapped off salutes and the two MPs who had escorted them thus far turned and left.

Inside, it was dark, though not pitch-black. The room possessed a luminescent glow-similar, Deng liked to think, to the glow of a beach under the light of the moon. Deng could hear the familiar orchestral cacophony: the clatter of keyboards, the whirring of computer fans, murmured conversations of a hundred hushed voices. Li led him up a stairwell to a room resembling a film projection booth: the Control Box-Deng’s throne, from which he beheld the glory of his creation.

Spread in a crescent before him, built precisely two meters below the level of the Control Box, lay the heart of the War Room-a deep amphitheater sprawling under vaulted ceilings, the room about the size of a polo field. A staff of more than a hundred men scurried back and forth in the air-conditioned darkness; endless rows of workstations, radar and sonar monitors, electronic map displays, telecommunications and video conferencing systems, and the halogen reading lamps positioned throughout the room combined to form the glow Deng had observed upon entering. A pair of technicians manned the Control Box, a room resembling the cockpit of a commercial airliner; an opening at the front of the cockpit, six meters wide by two tall, offered the view to the main floor and could be sealed, Deng knew, by a soundproof, one-way-mirrored glass shield at the touch of a button.

Deng and Li were shown to their seats by one of the technicians and handed a pair of wireless headsets. Deng pulled his over his ears.

Li bowed. “You’ll be presented with a time-lapsed but otherwise complete presentation of the invasion simulation exercise.” He waved to one of the technicians. “Begin!”

Commencing an instant later, and for the next fifty-one minutes, Deng’s senses were assaulted by war. He watched a campaign waged from sea to land, primarily through the images on the multiple high-def plasma screens-views from spy planes; angles from tanks, personnel carriers, helicopters, aircraft, soldiers’ helmets; enlarged images of radar screens depicting opposing troops; reports from embedded foreign correspondents assessing the strategy and carnage. Incoming status reports blasted across a loudspeaker system; in addition to the full media coverage, the simulation included the meticulous replication of calculated diplomatic responses from world leaders. Strategic decision making was displayed via security-camera angles eavesdropping on senior staff meetings held at the command bunker.

If he didn’t know that the exercise depicted had already taken place, Deng would not have been able to tell the difference; for all intents and purposes, the simulation was nothing short of real war.

At the conclusion of the presentation, Li tugged off his headset.

“You’ll find we surpassed your objectives in every aspect of the exercise.” He reached across the desk and handed Deng a thick report.

Deng’s eyes found the report on the desk, and Li beside him. He stared at Li for longer than he wanted, knowing his eyes were lit with a sort of euphoric lunacy-something he didn’t particularly want Li observing. No matter: he had seen a slice of tomorrow, and he liked the way it looked. He broke eye contact and stood.

“It is upon us,” he said.

Li rose to proffer a salute, but Deng had already reached the exit hall, so the gesture encountered only empty air.

The general had seen what he’d come to see.

Laramie had chosen a black suit, looking the part on a Monday morning she had not been looking forward to. The call came at nine-fifteen; it was Peter M. Gates’s secretary, known as Miss Anders, who asked whether she had a moment to come and visit with Mr. Gates.

Gates.

She hadn’t expected that.

Gates was something of a legend, a three-term deputy director of central intelligence. He was easily one of the ten most powerful men in Washington-probably top five, as few understood how much influence one possessed as the chief operating officer of the world’s largest cloak-and-dagger outfit.

The summons from Gates meant one of two possibilities: either Laramie was being pulled in to join a task force investigating the discovery she had presented in her report; or, as Eddie Rothgeb might have put it, Gates was about to burn her ass.

Coming out of the elevator on the seventh floor, Laramie passed a pair of desks in a yellow hallway with brown carpeting, the waiting room for both the DCI and DDCI. Behind one of the desks sat Miss Anders, an older woman wearing a tall head of dark hair and a candy-apple-red suit jacket. She looked up from her desk, asked Laramie to state her name, and when she did, told Laramie she could go right in.

She came in between the two men who were already in the office with Gates. Laramie knew them and had expected they might be here-Malcolm Rader, her direct boss and China section head; and Stephen Rosen, DDI, head of the directorate of intelligence. It was evident from Rader’s and Rosen’s expressionless faces that they’d held a full premeeting before she’d arrived. It appears Rothgeb’s predictions, she thought, are about to play out like a scene in a movie Eddie is secretly directing.

She approached Gates’s massive desk and shook the DDCI’s hand as he offered it. Gates was tall, gray, and coiffed, Laramie thinking he should have chosen to work in private industry, since she was sure he’d have made CEO at any company he joined based on appearance alone. Miss Anders stepped in from her cubicle, pulled the door closed, and left.

Gates motioned for them all to take their seats. “Is Rader here taking care of business?” he asked. “Go ahead and tell me if he’s causing you any undue stress.”

The men in the room chuckled. Laramie offered a tight-lipped smile and a glance at Rader. “No, sir,” she said, “Malcolm is great.”

Laramie’s chair was uncomfortable, an antique with little more than a flat, rubbery pad as a cushion. Sitting there, she got the full impact of the view: Gates behind his burly desk, an American flag on the wall above one shoulder, an acrylic portrait of the president behind the other. There were picture frames on the desk, facing his guests rather than him. Most showed a solemn Gates shaking hands with various important people.