by Steve Lewis
‘Apologies, Your Excellency, I was held up at work.’
‘Harry, you know it’s Satoki.’ The Ambassador bowed his head slightly as they shook hands. ‘If you keep calling me Your Excellency, I will fear you have forgotten my name.’
Tenaka was of middle height and the flecks of grey in the thick hair framing his boyish face were the only hint of his more than sixty years. Like his predecessor, Tenaka had a storyteller’s capacity to make the complexity of the world understandable. Dunkley looked forward to these dinners because he always learned something useful.
After several minutes of chatter about family and work, Dunkley asked Tenaka to revisit a story he had told before, from his years as a junior diplomat in Singapore. The journalist wanted to have the history of China’s rise clear in his head.
‘The Chinese were fascinated by Singapore in the late ’80s and early ’90s and there were many delegations from Beijing,’ Tenaka said. ‘Deng Xiaoping was contemplating how to manage the growth of China. In Singapore he saw a state that had everything he wanted: one-party rule; no effective opposition; and, apparently, little corruption. But most important was the social harmony that was ensured because the people were wealthy. And that was the bargain he decided to strike with the Chinese people: “We will make you rich and you will obey us”.’
The Ambassador had exchanged his champagne for sake and he swallowed a mouthful from a delicate cup.
‘So far it has worked, but the Chinese are always wary of their people. They know they are one mistake away from internal unrest. So they need an external enemy to ensure the people focus their anger outwards.’
‘And although we focus on the rhetoric aimed at the US or Australia,’ Dunkley said, ‘Japan is the country China has its major grievance with.’
Tenaka put down his cup.
‘We fought two wars in fifty years between 1894 and 1945,’ he said. ‘In the first we humiliated the Qing Dynasty and became the major power in Asia.’
The Ambassador took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as if he was recalling a personal, painful memory.
‘The second war was from 1937 to 1945. We occupied China and . . . many terrible things happen in war. Some in China think the Americans ended the battle too soon and that China’s war with Japan is not settled. There is an anti-Japanese museum in Beijing and although we have apologised many, many times for the . . . excesses . . . it will never be enough for some.’
Dunkley had more than a little sympathy for China’s anger. He had been horrified by what he had read about the Japanese occupation and the pictures of countless corpses.
‘Perhaps as many as twenty million Chinese died.’ Dunkley knew he was treading on sensitive ground.
Tenaka put his rimless glasses back on and met Dunkley’s gaze.
‘As I said, war is a terrible thing. More than two million of my people died in the Second World War. Over 200,000 died when the two atomic bombs were dropped. But America would argue that they ended a war that would have claimed many more lives. Was what they did right, Harry Dunkley?’
That was a question Dunkley had contemplated many times: can brutality be justified for a greater good? He had no answer, just more questions.
‘So is it just history that’s driving this new nationalistic push from Beijing?’ he asked.
‘No. A large part of it is driven by economic concerns. China’s growth is slowing. If the people do not feel the benefits of growth they will see only its costs, like huge damage to the environment and displacement. And they will become restless. Then there is the direct competition between our two nations for energy.’
Tenaka motioned that the journalist should stir some more wasabi into his soy sauce to go with his sashimi, but Dunkley declined. Tenaka shrugged.
‘So this new leadership embodies three things: a real and deep sense of grievance expressed as a determination to retake China’s role as the centre of the world; and, on an immediate practical level, maintaining a reliable energy supply and ensuring its people are controlled and directed.’
Dunkley had spent enough hours at the Japanese Ambassador’s table to know that the ill-will between China and Japan wasn’t a one-way street. Japan’s foreign policy was aimed at getting the US to use its power to box China in and restrain its growth.
‘But Japan has its own grievances with China, doesn’t it, Satoki?’
‘Japan is only eight hundred kilometres from China. We can feel it. Its rubbish washes up on our shores; its pollution stains our skies. We have economic problems of our own and our key concern is also energy. Since Fukushima, things have got much worse. We have to import 75 per cent of our fuel. So we need secure suppliers, like Australia, and we need secure trade routes. Those routes run through the East China Sea. A rapacious China threatens all that. Never forget, there are two powers in East Asia, Harry, and they are rivals.’
As usual, Mori had deferred to his boss and remained silent for much of the meal. He finally spoke.
‘Things are very bad in the East China Sea, very bad. China is testing us. And we have the views of our own people to consider. We cannot be seen to retreat from Japanese land – it would bring down the government.’
Dunkley didn’t doubt it. Tenaka dabbed his mouth with his napkin and pointed to a world globe on the mantelpiece that showed Japan and China facing outwards.
‘And, thanks to the internet, the front line in this conflict is the whole world, as you point out in your many fine articles. But to be frank we are very disappointed with the response of your government both to the provocations we have suffered over the Senkakus and the virtual attacks on your own homeland. We wonder if China’s wealth is blinding Australia’s government to the very real and present dangers.’
Mori lowered his voice. ‘The battle in Australia isn’t confined to the internet. We were most interested in the pictures you published after the union raid on the new embassy. Do you remember this man?’
He handed over an enlarged version of the picture Dunkley had asked his snapper to take of the be-suited man inside the construction site.
‘Yes, I remember him. He clearly wasn’t mixing concrete. And he scarpered when I tried to front him.’
‘We know him. He is attached to the Communist Party’s Commission for Discipline Inspection. It is a secretive internal investigation unit that interrogates and disciplines party members. It operates independently of the police and is known for its brutality. This man is a Communist Party stormtrooper, Harry. His only role is as a torturer and a killer. So why is he here in Canberra?’
Harry looked long and hard at the picture.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Well,’ Tenaka said, ‘as you say. He’s not here mixing concrete.’
It was very late when the Ambassador saw Dunkley out. Tenaka motioned to the visitors’ book as they walked through the entrance hall to the front steps.
‘Did you sign my book?’
‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
The two men laughed and as they shook hands Dunkley had one final question for the Ambassador.
‘Will there be a war?’
‘We hope not, Harry. But we are planning for it.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Sydney
It was like stepping into a sauna fully clothed. Sydney’s steamy heat engulfed Paul Mahoney as he emerged from the air-conditioned cool of the Great Southern on Thomas Street.
His mood was as dark as the schooner of stout he’d left, half drunk, on the bar.
A screech of tyres snapped his introspection.
‘Look out fuckwit!’ Mahoney slammed his hand down on the bonnet of a petrol-blue Subaru WRX as it swerved, dangerously close, running a red light and playing chicken with a crowd of pedestrians on the busy Chinatown street. The driver proffered a one-finger salute as he sped off.
Mahoney shook his head and continued his trudge back to the ABC’s head office at Ultimo. Typically he was angry. Angry at the inner-city obsessions of his
employer and its employees. Angry that he had moved from Canberra on the promise of a bright future in TV only to find himself back on the treadmill of radio current affairs.
And he was pissed off with himself for being angry, knowing that others would kill to have his secure job in one of the last bastions of serious journalism.
It was Friday afternoon and he’d hoped to slope off for a long lunch only to be dragged back by a radio producer demanding that he file for the ABC’s flagship drive-time current affairs show, PM.
‘But I told you, Sasha, I don’t have a story,’ he complained.
‘And I told you, Paul, right now I don’t have a show. So get your arse back here and find one.’
‘Bastard,’ he’d said, after he was sure she had hung up. He’d left two of his colleagues propping up the bar. They worked for Four Corners and their story had gone to air on Monday, so they were in a week-long wind-down before the hunt for another yarn began.
Both had been full of what they saw as the most recent management travesty.
The broadcaster had been given millions to set up a fact-checking unit, and with space at a premium it had usurped rooms from the children’s show Giggle and Hoot. The outraged kiddie producers weren’t good at sharing and demanded new digs. Management had rolled over and decided to punt them up to the third floor, taking valuable space from Four Corners.
The multi-award-winning journalists were incensed at being ordered to hand over precious real estate to a blue owl and a clown, so the ABC’s HR unit, People and Learning, had been hauled in to mediate.
That was bad enough, but all hell broke loose when the Giggle and Hoot team discovered they would now have to share facilities with their hated Play School rivals. Soon, several nasty incidents had been logged with mediators and open warfare broke out after a damaging leak that was being sheeted home to Rhys from Play School.
James Jeffrey, the acerbic wordsmith behind The Australian’s ‘Strewth’ column, was on the receiving end of a corker of a yarn. The puppeteer behind the blue owl, ‘Hoot’, had suffered a recurrence of a nasty case of RSI. It had flared during a wrestling match with a Play School producer over the ownership of half a packet of Scotch Finger biscuits.
As a result the puppeteer could no longer move his arm to the right. Which, effectively, meant that Hoot’s neck was partially paralysed. The puppeteer blamed his injury on ABC mismanagement, demanded compensation and refused to stand down. He called in the union to ensure the show’s script was modified around his disability.
Human resource bureaucrats now vetted every Giggle and Hoot script, enforcing an order that Hoot never look to the right.
The conservative commentariat lapped it up. A missive from management warning of serious consequences for leaking lobbed in Jeffrey’s inbox thirty seconds after it had been sent, marked ‘Strictly Confidential’.
The unsavoury dispute escalated with the kidnap of Big Ted. He was discovered ritually hanged in the boy’s loos with the menacing note ‘You’re next, Jemima’ pinned to his yellow fur.
That image brought a smile to the face of Mahoney as the ABC building hove into view. ‘It could only happen here,’ he thought.
As he entered the PM workspace in the first-floor newsroom, his phone rang. It was a number he hadn’t seen in the months since he’d left Canberra.
‘Elizabeth Scott, what use do you have for a retired gallery hack?’
‘Now Paul, you know you were always one of my favourites and I know you can be discreet,’ she purred.
Mahoney knew the tone. He was being courted for a favour.
‘Well, I hope you’ve got a story because I have a deadline that’s just an hour away.’
‘Oh, I do. But you didn’t hear this from me.’
‘Sure, what is it?’
‘In twenty minutes a video will be posted on YouTube. I’m going to give you a headstart simply by telling you where to look. The Radio National version of PM will have an exclusive.’
‘I’m intrigued.’
‘You will be more than intrigued. And, my dear, you’ll owe me.’ Mahoney’s mood improved immeasurably. And it soared when he saw the surprisingly graphic images of Emily Brooks and that Channel Nine grub Jonathan Robbie.
Oh, to be able to use the pictures . . .
Once again, he longed to work in the bright lights of television.
CHAPTER FORTY
Washington
Big Mac wiped the crumbs from his lips and lifted a sheaf of papers. ‘Nancy, how do I look?’
‘Like a leader going into war, sir.’
Morgan McDonald was preparing for a press conference in the Capitol building and had been rehearsing the script with his press secretary. The Republican House leader was fired up, ready to rumble.
He clapped his hands loudly, a habit that came to the fore when the adrenalin was flowing. Like now.
The Tea Party – the group of dissident, far-Right-wing republicans that McDonald controlled – was in revolt and he wasn’t about to make life any easier for President Earle Jackson.
He would teach that son of a bitch what it meant to go limpwristed.
‘Right, team. Let’s roll.’
Big Mac led his entourage to the media conference room, a hundred metres from his office.
It was nearing 4pm, and the press corps was getting restless, needing to prepare evening bulletins and newspaper articles.
Oh my, I am popular today.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming.’
McDonald used to hate the press, particularly the liberal media who’d given Nixon, Reagan and Bush Mk 1 and 2 such a hard time. Obama, by comparison, had been shown easy street even though his damned healthcare package threatened to bankrupt the Stars and Stripes.
In Big Mac’s eyes, the New York Times was America’s Pravda.
But he’d learned the importance of forging a good working relationship with the media to ensure his political message was spread as widely as possible.
‘Okay . . . ready, fellas? Today I am here to announce that I am calling on President Jackson to take decisive action to ensure the United States can live within its financial means.
‘America is a great world power. Our friends overseas need us now more than ever. But a weakened United States, beholden to the foreign dictates of countries that don’t share our values and beliefs, cannot be allowed. That’s what being in debt to the world means. As leader of the House Republicans, I will do everything within my power to ensure the US remains a force for good.
‘When the President calls for the debt ceiling to be lifted, I appreciate that he believes he is acting to repair the damage inflicted on this country by the Democrats. But we can’t do that without getting an assurance that big cuts to government spending are planned.
‘Yes, I know the deadline to resolve this, in order to prevent a government shutdown, is drawing close.
‘So tonight I will call the President and offer him a ten-point plan. This has been thrashed out with other right-thinking Republicans. It is a sign of goodwill, that we are willing to compromise.
‘But we will not compromise the supremacy of the United States in world affairs. I urge my friend Earle Jackson to reconsider his weak stand on Chinese currency manipulation. If he doesn’t, then, ladies and gentlemen, all bets are off.’
Several hours later President Jackson delivered a foreign policy speech to the Right-wing hawks of the American Enterprise Institute. He began with some domestic house-cleaning.
‘My friends in Congress are right when they say that we should not live beyond our means. But they are wrong to try and starve this government of funds. I will bring down the deficit but that can’t be done overnight.
‘I have taken a call this evening from my ol’ friend Big Mac . . . sorry, the House Majority leader, and I have agreed to sit down and discuss his ten-point plan to try and find a way to bring Washington to heel. I pledge myself to this: government will be smaller. I am happy to report that the Ho
use Leader will be coming to the White House in the morning for talks on how we can bring about this historic change. As a sign of goodwill, he has offered to pass the debt-ceiling legislation through Congress tonight.
‘So, as friends do, Big Mac and I have had our disagreements. But there is one thing where we see eye to eye: the United States of America should bow to no one.
‘I will be honest and say that there are many voices in my government who are urging me to back off on my demand that China play by the international road rules. They say that we should accommodate the rising power in the East. But if we let China push us around now, what will the future hold? If I step back, China will step forward and, in the end, we will retreat right across the Pacific.
‘So I make another pledge tonight. I will do everything in my power to ensure the best possible relationship with the Chinese leadership. I do believe that we can live together.
‘But I will not kowtow to Beijing. Given China has done nothing to increase the value of its currency, I will be putting a plan to Congress to impose tariffs on a range of Chinese goods. It will begin with motor vehicles and television sets, but the longer China refuses to act the more I will increase the scope of the tariffs.
‘And tonight, in a sign of solidarity with our good friends in Japan, I have ordered two unarmed B-52s to fly over the Senkaku Islands. I also reaffirm that Japan is the rightful owner of these islands, now and forever.
‘God bless our ally Japan. And God bless America.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Beijing
Jiang Xiu pulled back from the TV screen and smiled. The Americans were practically doing his job for him.
What does Jackson think he’s doing? Is he that big a fool?
The Minister for Propaganda had been urging his comrades to take an even more assertive stance. Some on the Standing Committee were still sceptical and were counselling restraint. But Jiang had been deploying all official channels to ensure his aggressive message was disseminated as widely as possible.
