China Attacks

by Chuck DeVore

  “Suiyi,” he replied time and time again, “just a sip.” He received several dozen toasts in quick and pungent succession. His uncle followed him around with the bottle, grinning, making sure his bowl stayed full.

  Then he saw his father, who had been quiet up to that point, start to rise from his seat. “I respectfully offer my father a toast,” Chu said quickly before his father could speak. “I owe you everything that I am.” He lifted his bowl high with both hands, waited for his father to do the same, then took a sip.

  His father slugged down the entire bowl of liquor in a single motion, eliciting “oohs” and “aahs” from his watching friends. Then he turned it upside down and shook it to show his son that not even a drop remained. “Ganbei,” he said firmly, with only a hint of a smile.

  There was nothing Chu could do. Everyone’s eyes were upon him. “Ganbei,” he said, shrugging helplessly, draining his own bowl in turn. His uncle was quick to refill it.

  Then it was his turn to salute them. He raised his bowl to each in turn, careful to say “Suiyi” and take only a sip. Still, by the time he finished, there was a light, pleasant buzz in his head.

  The first round of toasting came to an end with much laughing and joking. “I have more good news for you all,” Chu couldn’t resist saying. “I’ve been selected to head an elite battalion of commandos. Except for our political officer, it’s an all-Fukienese-speaking unit.”

  Chu himself wasn’t sure of the significance of this last fact. But it sounded mysterious and important to those present, who, like all Chinese, held their own province—in this case, Fukien—in high regard.

  This announcement set off another round of toasting, though by this point in the evening the men scarcely needed an excuse. Chu’s father rose, wobbly and unsmiling, to toast him again, and downed another great bowl of rice liquor.

  The women had been listening from the kitchen, and before the men drank too much on empty stomachs began serving platter after platter of food. It turned out that Chu had underestimated his mother. In addition to the dishes on his imaginary menu she had added a broiled goose, a rare delicacy and his favorite. Steaming in its succulent juices, chopped into chopstick-sized pieces, she placed it in front of him with a smile. Chu reached out with his chopsticks and deftly snared a prime slice of goose. No one else would eat until the guest of honor had taken the first bite. He popped it in his mouth. It was delicious. “Hao chi,” he pronounced. “Good to eat.”

  With that, everyone else tucked into the heaping platters of food with abandon. Everyone, that is, except Chu’s father. He seemed more interested in the bottle of rice liquor sitting beside his bowl. Chu reached out with his chopsticks and attempted to put a slice of goose on his father’s plate, but his father stopped him. “I’ll serve myself,” he said gruffly, and took a drink out of his bowl instead.

  As the evening progressed, Chu noted that his father’s mood seemed to darken further. He, who had always taken great pride in his son’s accomplishments, didn’t respond to his son’s efforts to talk about his promotion or his new command. He took no notice of the talk and laughter that went swirling around him. Chu lost count of the number of times he refilled his bowl. If he doesn’t stop, Chu thought, he’s going to drink himself into a stupor.

  His mother apparently shared his opinion, because she came over and attempted to fill up her husband’s bowl with rice. He roughly pushed the rice scoop away. “Can’t you see that it’s already full, woman!” he slurred, pointing to the clear liquor in his bowl.

  Chu regarded his father’s red face with astonishment. He had never seen him drunk before.

  Chu’s father drained his bowl once again, refilled it, and then lurched to his feet. “A toast!” he shouted thickly, “I’d like to propose a toast.” A dozen conversations died as everyone in the room turned to regard him. “I’d like to propose a toast to Secretary Fu Mingjie.”

  Secretary Fu was not a popular figure in Chu’s village. The sound of his name was greeted by a muttered round of curses.

  “I toast this corrupt, rapacious official,” Chu’s father said in a ominous tone. “We break our backs to make a living, and he drives around sucking our lifeblood. I toast this parasite! I toast this son of a bitch-dog.” Chu’s father lifted his bowl high, then flung it against the wall. It shattered into a dozen pieces with a loud crash.

  He started to sway, and instantly Chu was at his side. “Why don’t you go rest for awhile, Father,” he said softly.

  But his father grabbed onto the table and pulled himself up to his full height. “I swear before the tablets of my ancestors,” he said slowly and distinctly. “If Secretary Fu harms my family again, I will kill him.”

  Chu half-carried, half-walked his drunken father out of the room. He was snoring as soon as he hit the bed.

  Chu’s uncle tried to make light of his younger brother’s outburst, but the threat had cast a pall over the evening’s festivities. The guests looked self-consciously at one another, and one by one excused themselves for the night. The room was soon empty.

  When Chu came back into the central room, his mother was clearing the tables alone. “You go to bed, son,” she said to him. “I’ll clean up.”

  Chu didn’t want to go to bed, at least not until he’d solved the mystery of his father. He carried a stack of rice bowls into the kitchen. “I always thought we got along well with Fu Mingjie,” he said when he came back out.

  His mother, who was wiping a table, stopped and looked at him. “We’ve always pretended to get along with him,” she responded, “ever since he came to the village as an arrogant young official thirty years ago at the end of the Cultural Revolution.” She started wiping the table again. “But your father has never forgiven him,” she added in a low voice.

  Chu was puzzled. “What do you mean, mother? Forgiven him for what? For demanding bribes?”

  “The bribes came later,” his mother responded. She moved to another table and continued to wipe. “A long time ago, when Fu was a junior official, he was in charge of the one-child policy in this part of the county. When population control first began.” She took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “I was pregnant when the policy was announced. But since it was our first, your father and I thought we had nothing to worry about.”

  A look of inexpressible sadness came across her face. “Then we discovered that I was carrying twins.”

  Twins? Chu blinked in surprise. He had been a twin? He had always thought that he was an only child, the first of a generation of only children born under the one-child-per-couple rule. More than three-quarters of the men in his unit were dusheng dz, only sons. The military preferred them. They needed less training to kill on command.

  “Fu told us we had to choose,” his mother said, her eyes welling up with tears. “I couldn’t choose. I wouldn’t choose. But Fu said chose we must. ‘We want the boy,’ your father said, picking you up.”

  “And what happened to my . . . sister?” The word sounded strange on his tongue. He had had a twin sister.

  His mother’s shoulders slumped over and her chest began to heave. The sound of sobbing filled the air—and went on long enough for Chu to regret a dozen times over ever having asked the question. His mother only gradually regained her composure enough to speak.

  “They did . . .” her voice broke. She made a visible effort to pull herself together, and started over. “They did what they always do with . . . with illegal children. They gave her a poison shot. She was killed at Fu Mingjie’s orders.”

  “Why that son of a bitch-dog,” Chu cursed. “That turtle’s egg . . .”

  “Don’t talk like that, Dugen,” his mother broke in. “You sound just like your father. What I just told you happened a long, long time ago. I am at peace about all of this. Your twin sister is with God, and I know that I will one day see her again. I have even forgiven Secretary Fu, though it took me many years to do so.”

  “I have told your father that he must forgive and forget, too,”
she went on, “but he will not listen to me. He is still filled with hate whenever he thinks about what happened to our daughter. Lately, he had even begun talking again about revenge. It doesn’t help that Fu’s demands for money have been escalating. When your father sees Fu he is filled with an almost uncontrollable rage. All I can do is pray for both of them.”

  Chu was a professional warrior. He knew that his father had been ready to kill tonight. And now his mother was telling him that she had seen him rage like this before. But it was her last word that he picked up on: “Pray?”

  “Yes, pray,” his mother answered firmly. “I never told you this before, but I am a Christian. I was baptized as a small girl by Father O’Reilly, the missionary priest.”

  “The imperialist spy, you mean!” Chu spat out with more vehemence than he intended, suddenly, irrationally angry over the loss of his sister.

  “No, Dugen,” she came back quietly yet sternly, in the same tone of voice she had used when correcting him as a small child. “Father O’Reilly was a kind man, who saved the entire village from dying of starvation when the Japanese occupied Amoy City. He went without food—he called it fasting—so that the rest of us could eat. Then when the Red Army came, they said he was a spy, and none of us dared say otherwise. But he was no spy.”

  Chu’s head was spinning. This was too much to absorb in one night. His twin sister dead. His mother a secret Christian. The pillars of his world were collapsing one by one and he was left standing in the ruins.

  His mother looked at him beseechingly. “Your father will not listen to me,” she said. “But he will listen to you. Talk to your father tomorrow morning. Tell him that if he does anything to Fu it will ruin your career.”

  “Goodnight Mother.” Stunned into deep thought, Chu brushed past his mother and made his way to bed.

  Chu slept fitfully, then woke before daybreak and slipped out of his childhood home. He didn’t talk to his father. He could not believe that, whatever had happened in the past, his father would strike out at the local party boss. To do so would be suicide. His parents were still asleep when he got in his jeep and drove back to base.

  12

  Quemoy and Quagmire

  It was Fu’s first visit back to Beijing since being assigned the previous month as Special Emissary of the CCP Central Committee to the Fuzhou Military District. In the City for only half a day, Fu was forbidden to see his wife and child—they thought he was in Baghdad on a secret diplomatic mission.

  Fu waited only five minutes outside Chairman Han Wudi’s office before a uniformed aide opened the door. Fu looked inside the Chairman’s personal office for the first time. He fought back an urge to scan the room.

  Chairman Han stood up. Chief Advisor Soo, already standing, the ever-present cigarette never far from his thin face, smiled. Chairman Han motioned him to one side of the office and led the other two men into a much smaller room equipped with four comfortable chairs, a small table, and a tea service. Soo snuffed out his cigarette and was the last to enter and close the door. It shut with a muffled sound. Fu noticed it was a very thick door.

  The Chairman locked his eyes on Fu, “Well now, Zemin, you’ve been in Fujian long enough to get an opinion on our preparations. How are we doing?”

  Fu was unprepared for the informality; his two days of preparation to give an official briefing were wasted, “Ah, Comrade Chairman. . .”

  Chairman Han sat back in his chair, arms draped over the arm rests, “Relax, Zemin. I need your opinions, not a stiff presentation. Tea?”

  Soo immediately poured tea into the three cups.

  “Now, tell me about the invasion of Quemoy.”

  “Sir, all the military preparations are on track. We appear to be getting the priority we need for supplies and training. The Air Force has been a little slow to respond to our requests, but we have seen a marked improvement in their cooperation in the last week.

  “I do have two major concerns, however,” the Chairman and his Chief Military Advisor sat slightly forward in their chairs, “I worry that Admiral Wong has placed too much emphasis on rehearsals and I get little news as to our efforts to draw American attention to other areas.”

  Han spoke, “Wingji, I believe you can bring Zemin up to date.”

  Soo, looking a little uncomfortable without his cigarette, began, “We know about, and agree with Admiral Wong’s plan to conduct several rehearsal amphibious assaults prior to the actual invasion. It is actually part of a long-standing contingency plan.”

  “To give away our strategic surprise?” Fu was incredulous.

  If Soo was insulted, he didn’t show it, “No. We believe it would be impossible to achieve strategic surprise over Taiwan anyway. Our plan is designed to achieve tactical surprise. Have you studied Egypt’s attack across the Suez Canal in 1973 against Israel?”

  “Yes. Yes!” Fu’s eyes lit up, “The Egyptians practiced mock assaults for years. This did two things: they became well-practiced and their enemy became used to the motions. When the actual attack came, the Israelis thought it was another drill!”

  “Precisely,” Soo responded.

  “But we don’t have years. . .”

  “True, but I bet that the Taiwanese will begin to relax after our third or fourth practice assault—after all, they have money to make. Sounding the alarm every time we move is bad for business, investors hate it. They’ll get used to our moves in time. . .”

  “Then we invade,” Fu’s eyes gleamed.

  “Then we invade,” Soo echoed.

  Chairman Han watched this exchange with interest.

  “What about the Americans?” Fu suddenly shifted gears.

  Han’s face darkened at the mention of the United States.

  Soo pursed his lips and nodded his head, then glanced at Han. “The Americans are being wound so tight they won’t know what to do when we strike. We have begun sending military supplies to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Iraq. We’ve also helped the Iranians install several new anti-ship missile batteries in the Straits of Hormuz. Most importantly, we have strengthened our network of agents in Indonesia. Anytime we wish we can cause that conglomeration of a ‘nation’ to fall apart.”

  “I have been unable to get detailed news of the Americans on East Timor. What about them?” Fu asked.

  Soo smiled expansively and was about to begin when Chairman Han spoke up, “You’ll be pleased to hear that the Marine division in Okinawa left two days ago for East Timor. It seems ‘rogue’ Indonesian Army elements have made life uncomfortable for the UN peacekeepers there. The UN asked for reinforcements. Naturally, we supported the vote.” Now Han smiled, “We are even contributing a battalion of police officers. I would say that East Timor, and perhaps even Indonesia, could become a long and costly commitment for the Americans.”

  “May I ask, when did we start our East Timor initiative?”

  “Within a week of your recommendation last December. Even without the invasion of. . .” Han hesitated, “. . .Quemoy, the East Timor initiative had its own merits. As I said, we find your ideas interesting. . .”

  The three men chuckled with Soo laughing a little too hard.

  13

  Spin Up

  In India, northeast of the Indus River near the Kunlun Mountains and a patch of rugged territory in dispute between India and the People’s Republic of China, a small, unmanned U.S. monitoring station picked up some ground motion. This was not unusual. The station was located near the convergence of three tectonic plates. Earthquakes were quite common in the area. The monitoring station dutifully sent its data to an overhead commercial satellite that routed it around the globe to the regional U.S. Geological Services office in Hawaii. Because the epicenter of this quake was within a certain zone of interest, the data was also routed automatically to a large, tree surrounded office complex in Northern Virginia named after the 41st President of the United States who was its one-time director. There, a few days later, the data were examined and compared wit
h readings from a similar station in Kyrgyzstan as well as from the international civilian seismograph network.

  * * *

  Donna had been working with the East Timor crisis team for more than two months now. She tried to keep up with the steady flow of data from China, but it was growing increasingly difficult, especially now that U.S. Marines were dying and evidence pointed to Chinese complicity in East Timor’s continuing unrest.

  The report on the computer monitor began to blur about six inches away from Donna’s face. She wanted more coffee, but she was so tired she knew it would only make her shake. Why are the Chinese sabotaging the peace in Timor? What do they have to gain? They don’t even seem to be hiding it. . .

  “. . .Ms. Klein, Ms. Klein?”

  Donna looked up to see a middle-aged, vaguely familiar man in a white shirt, out of style blue polyester tie and a pocket protector. He was one of the few remaining seismologists the CIA had left after the end of the Cold War and the virtual halt to underground nuclear testing caused most of them to retire or return to academia.

  “Ms. Klein. Can we talk?” The man stood hovering over Donna’s work area.

  Donna sighed. She wanted to go home and catch some sleep. It was almost 9 PM. “Sure. What do you have?”

  “Well, we received an indication of some seismic activity in China.”

  “A quake?”

  “Not exactly. Well, at least I don’t think so. . .” the man looked very uneasy, almost sick.

  Donna didn’t have time for games at this time of the night after the fifth consecutive day of less than five hours of sleep. “What the hell do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”

  The analyst flinched at Donna’s retort. He was afraid no one would welcome his hypothesis. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you, it’s just that you have a reputation as someone who views China with a little more suspicion than most.”