UN power broker who realizes the conspiracy reaches into her own government and plays the harmless old woman to survive.
Chrisjen Avasarala is the United Nations official who effectively runs Earth's foreign policy, the foul-mouthed grandmother who averted one war and exposed Mars's innocence at the cost of her oldest friend, the suicided Frank DeGraaf. In the finale the conspiracy turns out to reach inside her own house. Errinwright presents a tidy story: the stealth-ship fusion drives were built at the Bush Shipyards for private contracts and have all, over two years, flowed to Tycho and Fred Johnson — pinning everything on the OPA man, with Avasarala's own smuggler investigation cited as the breakthrough. At the Secretary-General's emergency security meeting she is reintroduced to none other than Jules-Pierre Mao, the very magnate behind the protomolecule slaughter, seated among Earth's "key contractors" — a chilling glimpse of how high the rot climbs.
Avasarala sees through it. She comes to believe Frank knew the drives were stolen and did not kill himself — that Errinwright had him murdered — which means she too is in danger. She quietly sends her husband Arjun and grandchildren to Luna for safety, and resolves to survive the only way she can: by playing "a familiar role, the stubborn old woman, eyes locked on yesterday's game, too blind to see the world has passed her by." Knowing now that her government is complicit with Jules-Pierre Mao in engineering war and a hundred-thousand-soul experiment, she goes underground in plain sight, biding her time.
Earth's foreign-policy chief who uncovers the conspiracy's reach into her own government, sends her family to safety, and feigns harmlessness to survive.