The Mandarin Code

by Steve Lewis

  Dunkley weighed his options. He hated publishing online without verifying every last fact. He could fight, but Ryan might give the yarn to someone else.

  No, he’d knock this into shape and file asap, much as it pained him to give his competitors entree to the story before the evening presses rolled into action.

  An hour later, The Australian’s website splashed with a stunning exclusive.

  CYBER-STRIKE: AUSTRALIAN AIRSPACE UNDER ATTACK

  Urgent investigations are under way into a suspected cyber-attack that shut down Australia’s air-traffic system for thirteen minutes this morning.

  The Australian can reveal that Prime Minister Martin Toohey hastily convened a meeting of Cabinet’s National Security Committee to consider the unprecedented assault.

  It is understood the Melbourne-based centre that controls the southern air space across Australia went ‘black’ just before 6am.

  Several figures in the NSC – including Thomas Heggarty, the head of Australia’s overseas spy agency, ASIS – are understood to have pointed the finger at China as the most likely source of the attack.

  A spokeswoman for Mr Toohey refused to confirm that NSC had even met. But another member of the top-level security committee confirmed Cabinet ministers and intelligence heads had been called to the meeting around 7am.

  One senior source, familiar with the NSC discussion, said, ‘There was real fear in the room, and all roads lead to Beijing.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Canberra

  ‘Steady on the powder, love, you’ll have me looking like a drag queen.’

  Bruce Paxton was his usual gruff-and-grumble self, but he had a soft spot for the ABC’s makeup artist.

  The former Defence Minister had stepped into the press gallery bureau to be interviewed – and the ABC was buzzing on a high-octane loop of commentary sparked by Harry Dunkley’s story.

  Reporters were pumping out reaction to the extraordinary news that Australia’s air-traffic control system had been attacked.

  The call had gone out for talking heads and Paxton was happy to oblige as it allowed him to fill two of his favourite roles – discussing national security and pissing on Labor’s bloated carcass.

  He was still a member of the ALP, but in name only. Paxton had recast himself as a dissident. He was now Mr Dial-a-Quote and his bareknuckle assaults made even Mark Latham sound like a voice of restraint.

  ‘Hi Bruce.’ As Paxton entered the studio, ABC News 24’s political editor, Lyndal Curtis, looked up briefly from her notes. ‘We’ll go live in two minutes.’

  Paxton sat impassively as a small team fussed around the studio, wiring him up while makeup gave his face a final dab. When it was time to play ball, he would not disappoint.

  ‘Lyndal, the cyber-security white paper the Toohey Government released in January was a sad joke. It offered no new money to fight on the twenty-first-century frontline and simply rebadged programs that were already funded.’

  Curtis shot back.

  ‘So you are blaming the government for this?’

  ‘My oath, I blame them. I wanted Defence to focus less on its big-ticket toys and more on the main game. Cyber-hacking and warfare are real threats. All Martin Toohey wants from Defence is to strip out a couple of billion to prop up his Budget. And he put Brendan Ryan in charge – what a mistake! He’s a diabetic in a lolly shop. Ryan spends too much time sucking up to Washington and not enough looking after our national interest, Lyndal.’

  Paxton was on a roll and Curtis lobbed another inviting question.

  ‘Do you believe, as the national security team is reported to believe, that China is responsible for this?’

  ‘Look, if you believed everything the brass said about China it would be banged up for dressing up as a dingo and taking Azaria Chamberlain. It could have been anyone, and remember, this is a cyber-attack, not hacking, which is usually the Chinese go. The point is we need better defences and we don’t have them.’

  Curtis shifted tack to the standoff in the East China Sea.

  ‘Well, on that, you won’t get a cigarette paper between me and the PM, Lyndal.’

  Paxton had long argued that it was high time Australia rethought its alliance with the United States and had been critical of Japan’s determination to isolate China. The future, as he saw it, was for Australia to draw back from the US and encourage it to share power in the Pacific.

  ‘I see that the Prime Minister has said that Australia has no view on the ownership of the islands and has urged all sides to act with care and solve the problem diplomatically.’

  Paxton leaned forward and tapped his prosthetic left hand on the oval table.

  ‘Let’s not forget who started all this, that Tea Party tool Earle Jackson. He decided to base his presidency on an ill-conceived attack on China using US financial clout. I think the Chinese have every right to respond. In any event, this fishermen’s convention on the Diaoyu Islands is not sanctioned by Beijing.’

  ‘You mean the Senkaku Islands,’ Curtis corrected him.

  ‘No I don’t.’

  It was some of Paxton’s finest work. He ambled into the bureau feeling chuffed. As a sign that his handiwork had hit a nerve, the hallway outside the ABC was crammed with journalists from other networks, desperate for a Paxton grab they could call their own.

  He was happy to repeat the performance but kept it tight. A ComCar was waiting on the other side of Parliament to whisk him to another appointment.

  Fifteen minutes later, he’d arrived at the Thai embassy in nearby Yarralumla. He usually baulked at diplomatic functions but had struck up a good relationship with the new envoy. And a decent feed was on offer.

  ‘See you here in an hour, Bill,’ he said to his driver.

  Like most of Canberra’s diplomatic estates, the Thai embassy was designed to reflect its nation’s architecture. The buildings had steep, elegantly curved and tapered roofs, made for a hot, wet climate.

  The fragrant smells of coriander, spiced beef and sweet sauces tantalised Paxton as he passed an outdoor marquee. But he made a beeline for the drinks waiter, snatching a Hunter Valley white as he scoured the crowd for friendly faces.

  Oh shit!

  Ali Bakir, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s apparently permanent representative in Canberra, was in close orbit. Paxton used to joke, when he was Defence Minister, that Bakir was a small bore, but could be used with lethal effect. Today, though, the last thing he wanted was a dissertation on the evils of the Jewish State.

  He turned towards trestle tables laden with food, grabbed a plate and edged his way into the queue. ‘The dim sum are delicious,’ a woman remarked.

  He loaded his plate and carefully manoeuvred his way through the crowd with his head down until he guessed he was a safe distance from Bakir.

  A gentle, familiar laugh. He froze.

  It couldn’t be.

  He searched the crowd and there she was, in a tight circle of admiring envoys – laughing in that way that men found intoxicating.

  The last time he’d heard that sweet beautiful sound was at the St Regis in Beijing. He’d just called room service, from memory.

  She caught sight of him, dipped her head and turned, expertly exiting the conversation, leaving disappointed diplomats in her wake.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Paxton’s urgent whisper was part question, part rebuke.

  ‘Good work for my government, Mr Paxton. I arrived just over a month ago.’

  She smiled and old feelings stirred.

  ‘It’s nice to see you, Bruce.’

  Weng Meihui’s hand brushed his arm as she removed an imaginary piece of cotton from his suit.

  ‘And you. And . . . us?’ Paxton surprised himself with his last words.

  ‘That is for another day,’ she said, another small ripple of laughter cutting like crystal through his heart. ‘For today there is someone you need to meet.’

  Weng guided Paxton to a man standing a few metres away.
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  ‘Mr Paxton, this is my husband, the new Ambassador, Tian Qichen.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Washington

  The white folder bore the Presidential seal, a strip of bold red cut across its centre highlighting the black capitals that declared the contents ‘CLASSIFIED’.

  Earle Jackson scanned his copy of the Morning Summary and frowned. The US President loved a good horror story but this was terrifying. And all too real. It seemed as if the whole world was on edge, bad news overlapping ever more dire headlines.

  The overnight watch team in the White House Situation Room had compiled a list of international flashpoints. The Middle East was its usual basket case. Baghdad was ablaze with daily suicide bombings, and the growing tide of Syrian refugees from the civil war was swamping Lebanon and other nervous neighbours. In Thailand the public was venting its anger while South America’s incessant drug war was taking a heavy toll.

  But it was the Pacific, the geographic arc that stretched from the Arctic to the archipelago of Indonesia, that troubled him most.

  In the weeks since he had declared China a currency manipulator, a wave of real and virtual reprisals had washed like a tsunami from East to West.

  China had reasserted its claim over 80 per cent of the South China Sea. But it was in the East China Sea that the real danger loomed.

  The fishermen who had invaded the Senkaku Islands were Chinese folk heroes – the English-language China Daily had dubbed them the Diaoyu Ten – and Beijing was offering no solutions on moving them.

  It had taken an enormous effort to restrain the Japanese from retaliating. They had agreed to wait, for now, but only after the US promised to issue a strong declaration in the United Nations in support of the Japanese being recognised as the ‘administrators’ of those troublesome rocks.

  The US President had been harangued by Japan’s Prime Minister in a personal call. Shinzo Abe had made it crystal clear that his patience was running out. It was time for the US to show that its core alliances mattered. It was time to act. ‘Weakness is provocative,’ Abe had said, quoting Rumsfeld. ‘And nothing is more provocative than a weak White House.’

  The North Koreans, predictably, had decided to reboot their nuclear program and pull out of the five-party talks. The insane hermit kingdom, no doubt at the urging of the Chinese, was planning to test another missile that would track over South Korean airspace. The South was demanding more sanctions but that was being blocked in the UN Security Council by China and Russia.

  There were reports that Chinese nuclear submarines were patrolling the waters near Hawaii and the Commander of the Pacific Fleet was demanding the right to engage ‘the enemy’ if the U-boats entered US territorial waters.

  Through the portals of the internet, all-out war was raging as cyber-warriors armed themselves with ever more potent weapons. The number and scale of cyber-attacks on America and its allies had exploded, ranging from the frivolous to the dangerous. Government websites had been shut down by denial-of-service attacks; Wall Street’s computers had been compromised, causing a run on US blue chips until trade had been suspended. And in Utah, a sewage spill into a local dam was being blamed on hackers who apparently had infiltrated the local water utility’s SCADA operating system. In Washington, the Pentagon was reporting thousands of attempts a day aimed at cracking its formidable defences.

  Jackson slurped a mug of cocoa and looked around the Situation Room, wondering if JFK had felt as impotent during the Bay of Pigs crisis in ’61.

  No, for all his faults, JFK never felt impotent.

  It was Kennedy who had established the Sit Room following that disaster. A half-century later, the forty-fifth President was charged with mapping a path to sort out the mess that he’d helped create.

  The surprisingly small room was crowded with nearly twenty people including the Vice-President, a former Governor of Dakota whose favourite pastime was hunting buffalo with a prized bow-and-arrow.

  National Security Adviser Patrick Denton had been a more sensible appointment. The career diplomat was a rarity in Washington – he possessed impeccable Republican credentials and had enjoyed a stellar career in the State Department, that viper’s nest of bleeding-heart Democrats.

  Denton filled the long pause in the meeting caused by the President’s demand that he be allowed time to properly digest the Morning Book.

  ‘Mr President, we recommend a two-track response. We should make a stronger statement in support of Japan over the Senkakus. And we have to back that with action. We need to do something in the real world that reasserts our position as the dominant power in the Pacific and one that won’t be played for a fool. Not to act only emboldens China and it will invite another move designed to test our resolve.’

  Denton knew this would play better with the President than the rest of his advice.

  ‘But then, sir, we need to offer an olive branch to China over the currency war. We have to settle things down and seek a return to normal diplomatic relations.

  ‘No one wants a conflict, and if things keep tracking the way they are going, the chances that either we or the Chinese will miscalculate are large. And sir, to be blunt, America is in no shape for conflict in the Pacific. We need time to regather ourselves. We need to press the reset button.’

  Jackson scanned the room, wanting to avoid the hard decision for a moment. He picked out Dick Hargreaves, another southerner and the four-star general who ran both the National Security Agency and Cyber Command. NSA was the world’s largest intelligence agency, listening to every whispered secret on the globe. And Cyber Command was the nerve centre for America’s elite computer warriors.

  ‘Dick, what do you think? How are we going to get around the Great Firewall of China?’ The President chuckled at his little in-joke as if he had invented the term, jolting the room into forced mirth.

  ‘Mr President, the number of cyber-strikes from China has gone off the charts. We are certain they have infiltrated – or at least positioned themselves ready to strike – key civilian and military targets. And Cisco is reporting a number of unidentified attacks on Tier 1 ISP networks which we suspect are coming from our red friends.’

  Jackson snorted. ‘Our red friends? Now that’s an oxymoron if ever I heard one.’

  ‘Yes Mr President.’ Hargreaves continued without losing a beat. ‘We have not been sitting idle on this matter either.’

  He lifted a bound folder onto the desk and opened it.

  ‘Sir, Operation GENIE has managed to insert a number of weapons behind enemy lines, behind the Great Firewall, as you put it. In short, we have broken into some of China’s military and civilian networks and placed covert implants within them. Those bugs will allow us to hijack computers and steal data. Or destroy it. I have a full brief here.

  ‘China knows some of its systems are compromised. But we are certain they have no idea how deeply because we have developed hardware, called “Quantum”, which allows us to jump the gap to computers that are not connected to the internet. We can now access, or bring down, some of China’s most sensitive systems using covert radio waves. It is our most secret and lethal weapon.’

  The general was clearly pleased with the capabilities of his computer army, but ended on a sober note.

  ‘In short, our homeland is vulnerable to a serious Chinese attack – but Beijing understands that retaliation would be swift and very, very potent. It depends on how much damage we are both prepared to inflict on each other.’

  Jackson ran his finger around the inside rim of his mug, collecting a rich foam of chocolate-coloured milk. He plunged his chubby digit into his mouth, his signature move, disgusting at least half the people in the room.

  ‘So what you’re telling me is that we’re in a classic standoff. Jesus, it’s the old American versus Commie mutual self-destruction scenario, ain’t it? The goodies against the baddies.’

  ‘Well sir, that is essentially correct.’ Hargreaves thought the analogy trite but decided to leave it.
‘China knows that we could do serious damage to its economy, to its infrastructure, through our cyber-weapons. But equally, they could unleash a cyber-attack on us that would do significantly more damage than 9/11. And Mr President, there are no rules of engagement in cyberspace. Once it starts in earnest there is no telling where it will end.’

  Jackson knew he couldn’t avoid addressing the central question forever. He had to decide whether to press ahead with his plans to continue the currency war by imposing trade sanctions on China or seek some kind of negotiated settlement. And over the last few days he’d finally seen the wisdom of tempering his actions. This escalating fight was consuming all his administration’s energy and his domestic agenda was being swamped.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I need a few moments alone. Can you give me the room?’

  The request came as a surprise but the brass and the bureaucrats dutifully obeyed their commander-in-chief.

  With the room emptied, Jackson picked up the phone and dialled the one man in Congress he feared.

  For Morgan McDonald ignorance wasn’t bliss, it was a career.

  The Republican congressman, known universally as Big Mac, firmly believed that too much information got in the way of clear decision making and, judging by his success, his constituents agreed.

  As a teen McDonald had been horrified when his musical hero Elvis held his 1973 Aloha concert in Hawaii. In protest at the King’s decision to perform outside continental USA, McDonald had burned his Elvis collection. His mother had counselled, ‘It’s still America, honey,’ but that rang hollow to Big Mac’s suspicious mind.

  He had been a founding member of the ‘Birthers’ who claimed Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery. When a TV news anchor presented him with hard evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii, not Kenya, he immortally replied: ‘Well Hawaii is not really America.’

  That quote had gone viral and the Hawaiian Governor was apoplectic. But he was a goddamned Democrat so it went down a treat with Big Mac’s base.