by Jeff Edwards
“Roughly a million or so,” the general said.
“Closer to 1.1 million,” Lu said. “And how many deaths among North Vietnamese civilians?”
“I’m not sure, Comrade Vice Premier,” said General Guo. “I’ve seen figures as low as 50,000 and as high as 300,000.”
“Fair enough,” Lu said. “The numbers vary significantly from one source to another. But let’s assume a number on the low end, somewhere around 100,000 civilian deaths. Combined, that puts the death toll for North Vietnam at somewhere around 1.2 million.”
Lu glanced around the table again. “Can any of you tell me how many American military personnel died in Vietnam?”
“I believe,” said General Chen, “that the final count was about 58,000 American dead.”
“That’s about right,” Lu said. He lifted both of his hands, and turned them palm up, shifting each slowly in a reciprocal up-and-down motion, as though they were the arms of a balance scale. “The North Vietnamese lost 1.2 million, and much of their national infrastructure was bombed out of existence. By contrast, the Americans lost fewer than 60,000 soldiers, and the national infrastructure of the United States was completely untouched.”
Lu dropped his hands. “America was winning on the battlefield. They were winning economically. Their ability to wage war was not even slightly impaired. So I ask you, comrades… How did the United States lose the Vietnam War?”
Again, no one in the room responded.
“Their weapons did not fail them,” Lu Shi said. “Their soldiers didn’t fail them. Their economy was not in danger of collapse. Only one thing failed them, but it was enough to send the indomitable American military slinking home like a beaten mongrel. Their national willpower failed. They lost the desire to win. And because of that, they allowed themselves to be defeated by an inferior enemy.”
Lu’s eyes blazed. “That’s what our current conflict is about. It’s not about trains. It’s not about 200 dead PLA soldiers. It’s not about some rat-bitten Indian village. And it’s not about my son. It’s about the strength of our national will. It’s about refusing to bow to a weaker adversary.”
“I… ah…” General Guo looked at the other faces gathered around the table, and swallowed. “How far do we go with this?”
“As far as it has to go,” Lu Shi said. “Until the Indian government backs down.”
“But what if they don’t back down?” General Guo asked.
“They will,” Lu said.
“But what if they don’t?” Guo repeated.
“They are an inferior adversary,” Lu Shi said. “If we raise the stakes far enough, they will have no choice but to back down. And if they don’t… Our Indian neighbors will discover that they do have a breaking point.”
CHAPTER 19
LHASA GONGGAR AIRPORT
SHANNAN REGION, TIBET
WEDNESDAY; 26 NOVEMBER
8:50 AM
TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’
The wheels of the China Eastern Airbus A320 left the runway of Lhasa Gonggar Airport exactly on schedule, and Reverend Bill McDonald took his first easy breath in three days. He hadn’t slept more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time since the massacre in Barkhor Square. Now that he was finally in the air and leaving Chinese territory, he could relax.
His cell phone was safe in his pocket, and the memory card with the video recording was still intact. In three and a half hours, he’d be landing in Kathmandu. Then, after a four hour layover, he’d be on a Cathay Pacific flight to San Francisco International by way of Hong Kong.
He’d be home by tomorrow evening, in time for a late Thanksgiving dinner, but he still hadn’t decided what to do with the video recording. He needed to get it into the hands of the right people. That much was obvious. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure who the right people might be.
He’d considered going straight to CNN or one of the nationally-recognized newspapers, but he didn’t have any contacts in the world of journalism. The major news organizations probably got several thousand crackpot calls a day. If he cold-called the offices of any of the big papers or studios, they’d probably lump him in with the xenophobes and the conspiracy nuts. He’d never get a chance to present his video to anyone with the power to make the story public on a national scale. That pretty much ruled out the major media approach, unless he could figure out a way to get someone high up to take his story seriously.
He’d also thought about cutting out the middleman, and going public with the video on the internet. He could post it to the top dozen streaming video sites and wait for it to go viral, like so many of the video clips from the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. But there were hundreds of millions of videos on the web, maybe billions. Only a small fraction of them ever captured large scale public attention.
Bill didn’t have an established following on any of the popular video websites, and it might take him years to build enough of a reputation to attract a significant audience. He could upload the recording to a hundred websites, or a thousand, but it wouldn’t do any good if no one bothered to watch it.
He might get lucky and the video would spread through the internet like wildfire, until everyone was talking about it and politicians were arguing over it on network news. Or it might vanish into the great ocean of the web without creating a ripple.
The irony of the situation was not lost on him. Despite his personal aversion to violence and the machineries of politics, the video clip in his phone was the physical manifestation of both. He had flown to Tibet in search of one sort of truth, but the fates had selected him to become the witness and bearer of an entirely different sort of truth. One that could affect the lives of many people, and perhaps even the fates of nations. He quite literally carried the truth in his pocket, but he had no idea of what to do with it.
He was still puzzling over the problem when his plane touched down at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. And he hadn’t solved it four hours later, when his Cathay Pacific flight left the runway en route to Hong Kong.
He was so exhausted now that he was practically a zombie. He reclined his seat, closed his eyes and tried to surrender to sleep, but his brain remained stubbornly awake. His mind refused to let go of the problem, turning it over and over ceaselessly and uselessly.
He tried to meditate, to release the cares of the world, and allow himself to find his spiritual center. He controlled his breathing, and one-by-one, willed every muscle in his body to relax.
He was calm… He was focused… He was at peace…
He was… awake.
His eyes came open. It was no use. Sleep was impossible.
His weary hands fumbled through the seat pouch and came up with an in-flight magazine. He leafed through the pages, only half glancing at the photos, and ignoring the text entirely. His eyes were too tired to make reading seem very interesting. He was just hoping to distract his brain long enough to get some rest.
When he reached the end of the magazine, he started over at the beginning, the glossy pages becoming a repeating collage of random photographs and marketing logos. On the third or fourth trip through the half-seen pages, an image caught his eye. It was a group of paintings by a young Indonesian artist, who was apparently getting his first showing in some upscale New York art gallery.
Near the center of the page was a triptych: three rectangular paintings of the same scene, each from a slightly different angle. At the center of each panel was the portrait of an old man with strongly Asian features, shown alternately from the front, right, and left profiles. In all three paintings a circle of rusty barbed wire hovered in the air in front of the old man’s face, like a strangely offset halo or the bevel of an old fashioned cameo.
McDonald stared at the three paintings, focusing not on the old man’s face, but on the circles of barbed wire. They reminded him of something—a billboard, or an advertisement, or something that he had once seen on television.
He closed his burning eyes and tried to remember. Three c
ircles of barbed wire, lined up in a row...
And then it came to him, a poster he hadn’t seen for years. For several weeks before the 2008 Winter Olympics in China, that poster had been everywhere. Five circles of barbed wire atop a chain link fence, silhouetted against an overcast yellow sky. Three of the circles had been on top and two on bottom, clearly mimicking the famous five-ring pattern of the international Olympic symbol. In the upper right-hand ring had been a simple but effective message: Beijing 2008. A ragged scrap of signboard hanging from the fence had enumerated the extensive human rights violations occurring in China as dissident citizens and social activists were rounded up and imprisoned to keep them out of public view during the Olympics.
Bill McDonald’s exhausted brain could somehow remember the poster perfectly, and he could still see the logo at the bottom of the signboard. Amnesty International.
That was it! As soon as those two words popped into his head, he knew he had found the solution to his problem. He might not be able to capture the attention of the major media, but a global human rights organization could. If they brought the video clip to the major media, they would be listened to. CNN and the other news networks wouldn’t dare to ignore a story this big, not if it came from Amnesty International. They wouldn’t risk being left out of what might turn out to be the biggest human rights story since Tiananmen Square.
Amnesty International. It was the obvious answer. So simple. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
The video clip in his pocket had dwindled from a massively insoluble problem to a series of easily accomplished steps. It shouldn’t take more than a few quick phone calls to arrange a meeting with someone who would listen—someone whose entire job was to look for exactly the kind of evidence that Bill McDonald carried, and bring it to the attention of the world.
He could probably get a contact number right off the Amnesty International website. And then he could…
Before he could formulate his next step, the Reverend William H. McDonald—former Soldier, spiritual warrior, and bearer of the truth—fell asleep in Seat #31B, somewhere over the South China Sea.
CHAPTER 20
BEIJING, CHINA
PREMIER’S RESIDENCE
WEDNESDAY; 26 NOVEMBER
1:35 PM
TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’
As usual, Lu Shi’s guards were stopped at the front door, and he had to enter alone.
Lu didn’t like being forced to leave his guards behind. Not because he didn’t feel safe here; the Premier’s residence was one of the most secure buildings in China. Lu’s objection was of a more attitudinal nature. After a lifetime of careful and methodical maneuvering, he suddenly found that he was impatient with anything which resembled an obstacle.
Having his guards held up at the entrance was an unwelcome reminder that there were certain places and circumstances in which his desires were not the deciding factor.
He had to remind himself that he was still officially the number two man in the Chinese government. The fact that Lu effectively ran the country was an open secret, but the formal power belonged to Xiao Qishan, who was the Premier of China—at least in title.
Lu generally tried not to think of Xiao as a figurehead. Xiao was a good man, and in his day, he had served the party well. Nevertheless, the term figurehead was not entirely inaccurate. The old man’s political clout had dwindled away to practically nothing. His leverage was gone. He had no more favors to call in.
Xiao held office now, because Lu Shi permitted it. If Lu pulled his support, Xiao Qishan would not be sitting in the Premier’s chair a month later.
What’s more, the old man knew it. Although neither one of them ever spoke about it directly, there was an understanding between Lu Shi and Xiao Qishan. Xiao gave speeches and held press conferences, and Lu made the major policy decisions that kept the nation moving forward.
That made this meeting doubly annoying. Xiao Qishan had sent for him, as though Lu was a low-grade bureaucrat, or some minor political functionary. Lu Shi was not pleased. Not at all.
He’d been tempted to ignore the summons. He could have used the opportunity to remind Xiao of where the power in China really lay. But such a blatant show of strength wasn’t necessary, and it wouldn’t harm Lu to humor the old dragon.
Lu made a deliberate effort to smile when he was shown into Xiao’s office. The old man was seated at his desk, reading from a small book with a tattered red cover. Lu Shi recognized it instantly as hong baoshu, Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, popularly known in the west as the ‘Little Red Book.’
Xiao looked up, and smiled.
Lu inclined his head—a gesture somewhere between a nod, and a minimal bow. “You sent for me, Comrade Premier?”
Xiao closed the book, using a finger to mark his place within the pages. “Ah, Comrade Lu. Thank you for coming, old friend.”
Lu Shi inclined his head again. “I am always at your service, Comrade Premier.” Not an accurate statement, but it sounded appropriately polite and respectful.
Xiao waved toward a chair. Lu pretended not to see the gesture. He remained standing.
A slight frown creased the Premiere’s brow, but he didn’t insist. “I would like to speak to you about this… situation… with our Indian neighbors. Some of our esteemed comrades on the Central Military Commission are… concerned…”
Lu Shi’s laugh contained more bitterness than humor. “Some of our esteemed comrades are timid old women.”
Xiao laid the red book on the desk top, his finger still marking the spot where he had been reading. “You are, of course, more familiar with our comrades on the commission than I am,” the old man said. “And perhaps some of them are overly cautious. But this seems to be an area in which caution may be prudent.”
Lu Shi resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. “I have no problem with caution,” he said. “And prudence is a virtue in leaders. But I’m not talking about caution or prudence. I’m talking about timidity. Fear. The lack of courage.”
He nodded toward the red book. “Comrade Premier, you are more dedicated to the words and spirit of Chairman Mao than any man I’ve ever met.”
That much was certainly true. As Xiao’s once-formidable power bloc continued to erode, the old dragon’s thoughts were becoming increasingly buried in the past. He spent his days studying the speeches and writings of Mao, in the forlorn belief that such studies made him a wiser leader. In the process, he somehow managed to ignore the fact that his leadership was now mostly imaginary.
But Lu Shi was not above delving into the words of Mao, in order to bring the conversation around to a more favorable angle.
He reached for the red book, and lifted it gently from the old man’s fingers. “Do you remember what Chairman Mao had to say about communists who are too timid to make difficult decisions?”
Xiao nodded. “Of course…”
Lu returned the nod. “And I’m certain, Comrade Premier, that you remember what Chairman Mao wrote about those who protect the enemies of the communist revolution?”
The old man nodded again. “I remember…”
Lu Shi held the unopened book between his palms. “In his wisdom, Chairman Mao cautioned us to unite with our real friends, in order to attack our real enemies. He reminded us that leaders must always follow this principle, in order to avoid leading the masses astray.”
“March, nineteen-twenty-six,” Xiao said. “The chairman was speaking about the analysis of the classes in Chinese society…”
“Yes,” said Lu Shi. “But was Mao speaking metaphorically? Or did he mean for future leaders to put his ideas into action?”
“He meant for us to act,” Xiao said. “He meant always for us to act.”
“I agree,” said Lu. “If we apply Mao’s teachings to our current situation, should we consider our Indian neighbors to be enemies, or friends?”
Xiao hesitated. “I’m not sure we have enough information to make such a stark distinction.”
“
They are deliberately sheltering known enemies of China,” Lu said. “Enemies who have destroyed billions of Yuan in property, massacred our soldiers without provocation, and killed hundreds of our citizens. Yet, our Indian neighbors welcome these terror mongers, and treat them as honored guests. Protect them from extradition, and punishment, even while they’re plotting further acts of destruction and murder.”
Lu Shi returned the red book to the desk top, laying it next to Xiao Qishan’s hand.
“According to our law,” Lu said, “if a man gives shelter and assistance to a criminal, that man is also a criminal. So, what must we call a man who gives shelter and assistance to our enemies?”
This time, Xiao’s hesitation was much longer. When he finally spoke, his voice was not much more than a whisper. “Such a man must also be our enemy…”
Lu stared into the old man’s eyes. “And, do we hold nations to a lower standard than we hold men?”
Xiao shook his head, slowly.
“Then, we must ask ourselves a very simple question,” Lu Shi said. “What did Chairman Mao tell us we must do to the enemies of China?”
CHAPTER 21
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
THURSDAY; 27 NOVEMBER
8:26 AM EST
Kurt Gray yawned heavily as he worked through the multi-step process for bringing his computer on line. He slid his electronic key card into the card reader next to his monitor, and waited for the red LED on the fingerprint scanner to light up.
Between digital tokens, biometrics, and seventeen-digit complex pass phrases, his system was encrypted about nine different ways. In recent years, the Agency had taken information security to levels of obsession approaching pathological mania. Kurt and his fellow analysts agreed that the access protocols would eventually be expanded to include DNA samples and rectal examinations.
That was only half-funny, as there was every sign that the CIA’s cyber paranoia was continuing to escalate. Kurt yawned again as he typed in the first of his pass phrases. It probably wasn’t fair to think of it as paranoia, because there really were people trying to get their grubby little cybernetic fingers on the Agency’s databases. A lot of people. Hostile governments, foreign militaries, criminals, conspiracy theorists, nut cases, garden variety hackers, and even a few friendly governments. For that matter, there were plenty of people in the U.S. government who’d pay good money for an inside look at the CIA’s information stash.
