Friday afternoon. Beijing.
Sammi Shah, the BBC foreign correspondent, had grown to loathe Beijing. The initial enthusiasm that had persuaded him to accept the posting had quickly been swept aside by the noise, the cloying pollution, the multitude, the unremitting battering of the senses that was Beijing. It was like standing under a waterfall, waiting for the moment he would be swept away. But most of all he hated the obtuseness of the place, the fixed Oriental eyes, the scorn of a sustained smile, the scream contained within a prolonged silence. Nothing could be
taken at face value and he couldn’t crack the code, no matter how hard he tried. The Chinese were inscrutable, and unscrewable. He’d tried that a few times, too, without much to show for it. This was a land of endless subtleties, too many for an up-front guy like Sammi.
Yet that didn’t stop him realizing that something was going down. The pond had an unmistakable ripple. Soldiers who had spent the day secluded in side alleys were, by late afternoon, to be found standing on street corners, their Type 95 assault rifles replacing the pistols of the traffic cops. An official news conference about crop harvests was cancelled at short notice, as was a concert at the Olympic Stadium that was supposed to attract tens of thousands. No explanation was given for any of this, but nothing happened in China without a reason. Even the doves in the Forbidden City seemed unable to settle. And Sammi Shah had picked up enough of the subtleties of the place to know that a ripple on the pond might be caused by a raindrop, yet it could also be a sign that the earth was about to crack.
He tried his contacts at the British Embassy: the information officer, the defence attaché, the second secretary, who was responsible for the spooky stuff, even the ambassador. Sammi had all their numbers. He couldn’t get hold of any of them. It was at this point he began to suspect that something serious was amiss. Telephones rang inside the embassy, yet no one picked them up, and every one of the mobile-phone numbers he tried left him with nothing but a
recorded message telling him that the service was not available. Perplexed, intrigued, Sammi decided to see for himself.
That was when he found the answer. The embassy was located on Guang Hua Road, an area where many diplomatic buildings congregated, and outside every one of those embassies he passed he discovered that the normal complement of Chinese guards had been doubled. As he nosed around, he stumbled across a couple of parked buses with still more guards inside. The British embassy was a modest affair, a two-storey pink-stucco structure with the lion and unicorn emblem above the portico, built during the parsimonious times of the 1950s and rebuilt after it had been ransacked by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. When Sammi arrived he found visitors being pushed back behind the solid green railings, and when he tried to ask why he got nothing but the bark of command to join them. Whatever was going on had no clear shape and was all blurred edges, but something was up and it seemed enough to merit a short report and to cover his daily expenses. So he found his spot in the roadway directly outside the embassy and set up his equipment–by himself, he hadn’t been able to get hold of his producer, wayward bugger, but that made no difference. The gear was simple but immensely powerful–a battery-powered laptop with a flip-up lid that acted as its antenna, plugged into a small video camera and connected to the Inmarsat satellite network that would
link him direct to the BBC in London. All he had to do was stand in front of it and talk, and that’s exactly what Sammi did. As he found his spot, tugged at his shirt, and looked down the lens, he was still debating how he would finish his report. He didn’t realize the decision had already been taken for him. He never saw the officer, gun in hand, approaching him from behind.
Friday afternoon. Shanjing.
At first glance the Sunrise Toy Manufactory on the outskirts of Shanjing appeared an innocuous facility. It was a trading warehouse, so the large sign above the perimeter fence suggested, but no one was fooled. The security was too tight for a simple toy shop, and there was no sign of the usual trucks and entrepreneurial bustle. Casual visitors were discouraged. When the proprietor of a soup kitchen attempted to set up stall near the main entrance, he was rapidly persuaded to change his mind by the barrel of a QSZ-92 semiautomatic pistol that was pointed in the general direction of his half-digested breakfast. Any further seed of curiosity that might have been sown amongst the locals was smothered when they saw that many of the visitors to the warehouse arrived in long-wheelbase Hongqi limousines, the ones with darkened windows. That smelt of something official. So it was simpler and far safer for the neighbours to avert their eyes and get on with their own lives. It was the Chinese way.
When Fu Zhang arrived the director was waiting to greet him and immediately offered tea, which Fu declined. He found himself being treated with courtesy but also considerable caution; it wasn’t usual for State Security to dip their fingers into this pie and Fu had never been seen at the Sunrise Manufactory before. His arrival had been heralded by instructions from the highest quarters in Beijing and already dark rumours were swirling in every corner of the director’s office. Soon he found himself being ushered with an unmistakeable edge of reluctance into the heart of the complex–Mao’s so-called Room of Many Miracles. Not that those he found gathered there were a pious bunch. The room was about the size of a school gymnasium, high ceiling, no windows, lots of air conditioning, along with the constant low humming of computer drives. It was a little like a cinema with one wall covered in a huge screen made up of a series of smaller high-definition screens butted tight up against each other. Instead of rows of seats there were individual workstations with their own hi-def screens for around three dozen people, all of whom were young and mostly male.
Fu Zhang didn’t feel at home. He was a fastidious man used to order and a proper way of doing things, and while the room itself was remarkably clean and lacking in any sign of clutter, those who worked here were not. Many of them dressed bizarrely in styles so outlandish or unkempt that not so many years ago they’d have been thrown in jail for deviation. Some of
them weren’t even wearing socks. The director, Li Changchun, was deferential enough, indeed he seemed a little frightened, which gratified Fu, but most of the young staff seemed to ignore him, almost making a point of it. They drifted around, joking to their colleagues as they passed, indulging in horseplay or holding out their hands and ‘high-fiving’ in the Western manner. But perhaps it was only to be expected; most of them had been educated abroad, their sense of responsibility turned to mush by Coca-Cola. And to Fu, ageing and recently mocked, these people were guilty of the most heinous crime of all; they were young, scarcely old enough for a barber’s rash, even the director was no more than thirty. They reminded him of those wretched soldiers. They also reminded Fu that he had been young, once, a long time ago. Too long.
Yet Fu Zhang needed these people. This was a day when the world would spin a little faster and these were the people who would do the pushing. That didn’t mean he had to like them. In his view, miracles shouldn’t come dressed in jeans and unironed T-shirts, and as though to goad him, in a far corner two of the miracle-workers burst into raucous laughter.
‘Do they think this is a time for amusement?’ he snapped at Li.
‘They are young, Minister, and nervous. That’s why they laugh, to expel the devils of anxiety.’
‘This is a war room!’ he screamed, sending spittle flying. He realized that he was nervous, too.
His hostility seemed to shock the director and, like a silken sheet rippling in the breeze, the rest of the room gradually came to calm.
‘We are ready. We require only your instruction,’ the director said softly.
Fu pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and hawked into it, letting the soiled tissue fall to the ground. The director was still looking at him, impassive, youthful, insolent.
‘So what are you waiting for?’ Fu Zhang barked, on edge. ‘Begin!’
Friday afternoon. Castle Lorne.
Flora MacDougall stood at the counter in her kitchen casting her eye over the marbled cuts of venison she was preparing for the evening. She took things at her own pace, for she was no longer young, yet she was secretly delighted to be entertaining so many guests. She was never happier than when the old place was brought to life. The clans in this part of the world had lived on the edge of disaster for as long as memory could trace–they had been followers of William Wallace, the Bruce and the Bonnie Prince, and they had taken their share of the suffering that went with such loyalties, but the death of her husband Alan was a blow that the redoubtable Flora had found almost unbearable. The two of them had spent much of their young married life in the colonial service, travelling to some of the most impractical yet darkly exotic parts of the world, after which Alan had given a large chunk of his life to Westminster. But in the end, as they’d always intended,
they came back to the place where it had all started, in Lorne. Then, and all too soon, she was left alone.
Yet she was an intensely practical woman, never maudlin, and retained a passion for her heritage as boundless as the ocean that lay beyond the end of the firth. Nipper was part of that heritage, and he was a survivor, too. He’d been out walking with her husband the day they’d both fallen. No one knew exactly what had happened, but the boy had been found unconscious at the foot of a cliff, with her husband dead beneath him. Nipper could remember nothing of the accident, but in her mind Flora imagined the child slipping, clinging to the cliff edge, and Alan stretching to reach for him, swapping his life for the boy’s. But the accident had done damage to Nipper, shaken his brain so badly that it had left him epileptic. It wasn’t enough that he’d lost his granddad, he’d lost part of himself, too, and yet with his freckled face and rolling lilt of an accent he was still a MacDougall, and no time was more precious to Flora than the weeks in the summer when he came to stay.
He was with her now, in the kitchen, helping prepare the vegetables. She had switched on the small television that stood on the dresser in the corner, the volume turned down low and tuned to one of the news channels, for she still retained a fascination for those distant places she knew from her early married days with Alan. She wasn’t paying much heed, her attention was focused on the venison, so it was some time
before she became aware of what the newsreader was discussing. When she had finished watching she put aside her kitchen knife and wiped her hands with great care on an old cloth.
‘What is it, Granny?’ Nipper asked, as ever alert.
She turned to face him, a furrow on her old brow. ‘You know, laddie, I made a solemn promise that we’d no’ be disturbing them,’ she said, ‘but there are times in life when you have to be making up the rules for yourself. And I’ve a strong sense that maybe this is one of them.’
Early Friday evening. Shanjing.
In the Room of Many Miracles the tension was running high.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Fu Zhang demanded. ‘I instructed you–begin!’
Li Changchun fidgeted. ‘Of course, Minister. But may I ask–’ the young director stumbled as he reached for the appropriate phrase–‘whether this most awesome order should not be given in writing? It is historic. Our children and our children’s children should know what has been done here.’
Fu’s nostrils dilated in disgust. Posterity go hang, it was clear what the director wanted. His arse covering. The instructions had changed, the timing been brought forward, their carefully prepared system was being rattled, leaving the director ill at ease. ‘If you succeed they
will chant songs to your memory,’ Fu replied. ‘There is no need for paper.’ The whole point of this facility was that not a soul should know what was going on here, not even the cleaners who were specially chosen for their dulling age and stupidity, yet this half-wit wanted to write it all down.
‘I do not wish in any way to contradict you, Minister—’
‘Then don’t!’ Fu snapped, letting forth a snort of irritation.
Li Changchun paused, considering whether he should pursue the matter one more time. He lived in a world of logic where matters were always pursued to their limits, often to extremes, but he also enjoyed his elevated position and the material benefits that accompanied it. Those who sat in high seats sometimes had a long way to fall, and Fu was just the type that might give him a push. Anyway, if this failed he’d soon be scraping camel dung from the distant wastelands of Xinjiang, no matter how many pieces of paper he had to show for it. Reluctantly, he gave a nod. ‘As you wish, Minister.’ He turned to his workstation.
‘You know what to do,’ Fu muttered, impatient.
The director produced a computer fob that was dangling from a rope around his neck. He examined it with the reverence he might have reserved for an ancestral bone, inserting it carefully into a lock on his computer console. He twisted it gently. It told the computer who he was, and that he was authorized. Li composed
himself, made a fractional adjustment to the position of his keyboard, then tapped out a short code. Immediately the aspect of the room underwent a change. The long video wall flickered into life.
Friday afternoon. Castle Lorne.
Blythe Edwards popped a sweetener into her coffee. ‘Fair enough, Mark,’ she said, giving the muddy liquid a stir before casting aside her spoon, ‘I take your point about Russia, but why on earth should Mao try to give the United States a kicking?’
D’Arby held up his hand, spreading his fingers. ‘How many reasons do you want?’ he asked, beginning to count off the digits. ‘You’re right up there at the top of Mao’s list. Because of Taiwan, because of your old trade boycotts, because of all your whingeing about the Dalai Lama and Darfur and human rights. And he won’t have forgotten about the Korean War, either, although he was nothing but a baby at the time.’ He had now come to his thumb. ‘But, in truth, he only needs one reason.’
‘Which is?’
D’Arby’s expression suggested that the question was redundant, the answer all too obvious. ‘Because you are the United States. The superpower. The international hate figure. For an entire generation the malcontents around the globe have needed no other target but you. Whatever the problem, you are its
cause. And wherever crowds gather and flags are burnt, there you’ll find the Stars and Stripes in the ashes.’
‘There has to be more to it than that,’ she countered.
‘China has both motive and means.’
‘But you don’t have a body! Heavens, this isn’t some old episode of
Miss Marple
where we rely on instinct,’ she returned, paying him back for his earlier abrasiveness. ‘You’ve got nothing more than a theory. I’m not sure what it is you want, Mark, what you’re expecting out of me and Sergei, but whatever it is has to be based on something more solid than coincidence and ancient squabbles.’
As D’Arby considered her words, his head dropped in sorrow. ‘Sadly, I do have a body. An exceedingly brave young woman who was very close to Mao.’ He paused, battling with his feelings, wondering how much he should tell them. ‘Her family was from Hong Kong. British connections. We found those connections extraordinarily useful…when she found her way into Mao’s bed.’
‘You mean his mistress was your spy?’ Blythe exclaimed in astonishment. ‘Jesus, we had no one anywhere near as close as that.’
‘She told us so much of Mao’s thoughts and plans. Apparently he liked to talk. It was his form of foreplay, got him excited, telling her what he was going to do to the rest of the world. That’s why I know the Chinese were behind the boiling reactors and the mysterious blackouts, and all those tiny glitches in our systems
that screwed up our pensions and sent crates of toilet rolls instead of mortars to war zones. And
that
is why I know he intends to attack us all, very soon.’
‘You use the past tense when you talk about the girl,’ Shunin interjected. ‘What happened?’
‘Somehow Mao found out. I suppose it was inevitable that someday he would. Sadly, that day came a few weeks ago. What precisely happened to her?’ He shook his head and shrugged. ‘You know Mao, you know what we’re dealing with, you’ve all done your own psychological profiles on the man. He’s out of the same stable as Genghis Khan. I hate to think what has happened to her, but she disappeared. Completely. That’s why I can’t be more precise about when he plans to attack. Except that it will be before the summer is out.’
‘He may have changed his mind, even been forced to change his mind,’ Washington suggested.
‘Are we willing to take that chance?’
From his chair in the middle of the table, Shunin began to chuckle.
‘Something amuses you, Mr President?’ D’Arby enquired.
‘We scour the heavens for electronic tittletattle and spend billions on the latest eavesdropping devices, while you make do with–how do you say in English?–a tuppenny tart. I like your style, Prime Minister.’ Somehow even his compliments came basted in sarcasm.
‘Intelligence doesn’t come simply from machines, Mr President.’
Shunin continued to chuckle, without humour, shaking his head.
‘Would you wait, mocking, until you are on your knees?’ D’Arby suddenly exploded. ‘Until your people are pounding on the door of the Kremlin with their children starving in their arms? Until the world around you has been reduced to darkness, until all the rules by which you live have been torn up and even the snow turns yellow? He is planning this–that I know! He’s planning it now, and if we don’t fight him together he’ll pick us off one by one.’ He turned breathlessly to Blythe Edwards, firing on all sides like a gunslinger in a saloon. ‘And what will you do, Madam President, when Mao turns to you and says he’s going to take back Taiwan? How will you respond–how will you be able to respond when you’ve lost control of your own country?’ Then back once more at Shunin. ‘And when, Mr President, Mao says he wants to renegotiate those oil and gas contracts, how will you respond? What will you do when he says that he wants to renegotiate all those unequal treaties you forced down China’s throat in order to steal vast tracts of his land? Oh, you might threaten him, say you’ll retaliate, but you won’t even be certain that when you push the bloody button your missiles will work!’
‘I’d never go to war on the word of a Chinese tart,’ Shunin bit back sharply.
‘A tart who paid for her words with her life!’
A silence descended upon the table, stretching so
long it began to be painful. No one knew what to say next; perhaps too much had been said already. That was when Flora MacDougall reappeared.
‘Flora, I asked that we not be disturbed,’ D’Arby snapped, his tone too blunt for politeness.
‘I’m sorry, Prime Minister–my apologies to you all,’ she offered, her voice calm and sweet, addressing the others, ‘but there’s something I thought you might be needing to see. It’s been showing on the news this last half an hour or more. If you’ll allow me?’
The Prime Minister nodded stiffly, in the manner of a man on a scaffold giving the sign to his executioner. Flora crossed to an ancient carved elm cupboard and opened its doors to reveal a television hidden inside. She switched it on, then stood back. It took only moments for the news item to appear.
It showed Sammi Shah, standing before the pink-fronted British embassy. As the picture juddered slightly across the satellite link, he announced that strange events were taking place in Beijing. Troops had begun to appear on the streets. Communications had been interrupted and many official meetings had been cancelled. The British and several other embassies had been cordoned off. Something out of the ordinary was happening in the Chinese capital, Sammi told the world.
He was in the process of explaining that the usual government contacts were unavailable for comment when, from behind his shoulder, an officer of the People’s Liberation Army appeared and grabbed his
shoulder. Sammi resisted, pushed back, determined to continue with his broadcast. Two more soldiers joined the officer and a hand came out to cover the lens, but not before those sitting around the table were all able to see Sammi, the BBC’s man in Beijing, being clubbed to the ground and beaten senseless with rifle butts.
‘Oh, my God,’ whispered D’Arby, his voice hoarse with fear. ‘It’s already started.’