by Tim Heath
The prisoner was led away, the marines following behind. The roof once again deserted.
“Good job everyone!” said the General, the men all back inside now, prisoner sitting in the interrogation room, as the General joined the Team Commander.
“He’s ready for you now, sir.”
“Thank you,” and with that, General Macauley left the room, three marines going with him.
Outside the room where the prisoner was being held, the General paused, looking through the one-way mirror at the man they’d just captured. He seemed very small in the large metal chair to which he was now chained. His dark, thinning hair still dripping water down his aged face. He wore combat clothing, black and as wet as the rest of him. There was now no sign of any parachute attire; clearly, he’d freed himself moments before being caught. He hadn’t had long enough to escape––they hadn’t allowed him that––not that there was anywhere he’d be able to go, either. Where they were standing was the world’s most high profile, and therefore high security, detention facility anywhere in the world.
“Does he speak English?” the General said, speaking to the one marine who’d been stationed at the door.
“He’s not said anything yet, sir, but did follow our orders on the roof when he was captured, so I’d say he certainly understands us.”
“Get me a Mandarin interpreter, anyway. Just to be sure.”
“Will do, sir,” and he left the General at that point.
“What the hell was he trying to do?” the General said, to no one in particular. “Surely he didn’t think he’d get to the Africans?”
“Well, let’s find out, shall we,” came a familiar voice as a man entered the room. Brad Jones was not army himself but worked for the CIA and was the Chief Interrogation Officer. Brad had been woken when the sirens sounded and were then notified shortly after the capture.
“Brad, it’s good to see you.” The General shook his hand. He didn’t often think that much of the CIA, but Jones was an exception he was happy to make. Brad had only just transferred back from Washington the other day. He’d been grilling the seven Africans for information since his arrival.
Both men walked into the room, Brad opening the door for the General and allowing him to enter first. He knew his place around such people, and that was one of the things that made others warm to him. Two marines stood guard behind the prisoner, but the General waved them out, the men closing the door behind them as they left the room. Now it was just the three of them. Two Americans and, incredibly, an up till now elusive Chinese spy. Brad took the seat opposite the prisoner, without saying anything. The prisoner’s head was low. He was looking at the floor but after about fifteen seconds of silence, Brad just watching him, he looked up. It was the first time Brad had ever made eye contact with him. The man in front of him now seemed much older than he’d thought, maybe in his fifties even, but it was hard to tell. His eyes were deep. There was, however, from everything he’d heard about this man deep menace behind the otherwise blank exterior.
“Do you understand English?” Brad said. Nothing was spoken in reply, but the slightest of nods was given.
Brad looked at the General. His expression in reply told Brad all he needed to know––he’s all yours.
“What is your name?” Brad said. No reply. The prisoner broke eye contact once more to look at the ground again.
“Why did you come here?” The silence that continued was no real surprise to either of them. Before Brad could say anything more, there was a knock at the door, and after it was opened, a marine stood there looking genuinely shocked.
“Sir, you need to hear this.” Both Brad and the General walked out, frustration evident on Brad’s face as they’d only just got started. Now that they were standing outside of the interrogation room with their backs to the mirror, the prisoner looked up, as if watching them. There was a smile on his face.
“It’s the seven Africans. They’re all dead.”
“What in God’s name happened?” the General barked, storming out through the room before a response could be made, heading for D-wing. Brad started to follow, grabbing a marine on the way.
“Sit on the prisoner and don’t let him out of your sight!” The marine acknowledged him as Brad went after the General.
It was nearly morning before the camp had been exhaustively searched. The rain from the night before had now passed, blue skies hinting at the warmer weather to come. The seven Africans had been bagged up, their bodies joining others in the camp morgue.
“A bloody decoy. How did we not see that one coming? Tell me Brad, have we been in the game for so long we’ve both become obsolete?” said the General when it was once again just him and Brad. “We’d heard the rumours, this man of shadows that had seemingly outfoxed everyone for so long. Are you sure it isn’t the man we have in that room?”
“Absolutely, sir. He’s older than I think we’re looking for. He also came down on that roof only seconds before our men got there. There was no way he could have done anything from that position before he was caught.”
“And he’s got away?” That was the hardest part of this profoundly embarrassing situation they had to bear. The loss of some prisoners was one thing, but for the attacker to escape an American camp was a whole new level of mess up. Not that they’d let the news get out, though the British would have to be told and they knew right away they wouldn’t be happy.
“Clean away. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s good. We’d heard the legend, now we’ve seen it firsthand.”
“My God,” the General said. “The fallout isn’t going to be easy on this one.”
“We’ve dealt with worse.” The General started to pour a whisky into a glass tumbler that sat on his desk.
“Want one?”
“It’s a little early for me, sir.”
“Well, I haven’t slept, so for me it’s still late.” With that, he downed the drink in one go and poured himself another.
“I’ll leave you to it, sir. I’ll need to file a report to the Pentagon.”
“Well, best of luck with that.”
Both men shared a smile. They’d been in this type of moment many times before, but nothing quite like this had ever caused such an embarrassment. Brad knew his office would not be pleased at all.
2
One Month Earlier
Beijing, China
The speeches were long, and the tone was often dull. Was it because English was not their first language or because they were talking about a power plant? It wasn’t easy to know, but the press were there in their hundreds. Television news teams from around the globe here today to mark a significant moment. A nuclear story that didn’t, they hoped, have a disaster linked to it. London felt an awfully long way away at that moment.
For China, this day marked a turning point for the nation. They’d been the first to harness the full force of the nuclear age. Where the British had got their fingers burnt, rather literally, the Chinese had delivered. Newsrooms around the world, reporting live from the events unfolding in Beijing, were picking up on the same theme. A theme China had been behind enforcing, branding, publicising––that today they had become the energy giant. Today, China had cornered the world energy market.
In the half-decade that had seen the broken UK trying to bounce back from disaster with an ever-divided Europe, China had been forging ahead to become the number one market for nearly everything in the process. Energy was the final piece. The future looked bright.
All China’s leading political leaders were present. Today was a significant photo opportunity not to be missed. A day to show the world how united they were. A nation of over one billion individuals and yet able to think and work as one. Chinese scientists, Chinese ideas. Had it not been for the British stealing their advanced but not yet complete blueprints some fifteen or so years before, who knows where they’d have been as a nation today. Even more dominant, no doubt.
For many nations, that would have been all wat
er under the bridge. Time to move on. But for a country where honour meant everything and where harsh punishment followed for minor crimes, they were not a nation ready to forgive. Revenge was a dish best served cold.
Chinese counterintelligence was becoming a thing of legend. It was believed that China had more spies than the West had, combined. A few high profile exposures in recent years had done nothing to dampen those rumours. The Americans, and chiefly the British, were very wary. Neither was in a position to do anything about it. The former kept a more considerable distance from conflicts, their economy struggling, the most prominent losers to China’s growth. And the latter was a wounded nation; even if the evidence of the nuclear explosion was less evident on the landscape, the scar still ran deep in the British people. Many had a family member who had died, and most knew of someone, a friend or friend of a friend, who had perished in the attack.
China had yet to reopen their embassy in the United Kingdom. Their staff had fled during the incident in London nearly five years before. It was not known if they would ever return. The British had not requested they open up again, either. Politically, relations were strained, though the truth was, the new government in place had little understanding of what had happened. Times were changing.
So this was the day to get the news out. The world must know that China had done it, that they’d solved the world’s energy problems, though only of course if countries would pay for it. Something that had started more than twenty years before with a group of just five scientists could finally now be revealed to the world. The fact that it was happening in China at all was more than only chance.
Now they would make those responsible for the delay pay. It was China’s turn to act again, and this time it wouldn’t just be behind the scene, out of sight––in the shadows.
London, England
At the same time as the announcement was being made in China, several high-level meetings were taking place in the UK. There was a cabinet meeting underway in Westminster and MI6, the British intelligence service, was meeting to discuss China at their headquarters, Vauxhall Cross.
At 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister was midway through a day of meetings with key cabinet personnel. His government had won the election four years before and were keen to stay there with an election possible within the next year. There was no date set for it yet, but it was never far from the Prime Minister’s thoughts. His had been an overnight success, it seemed. As a latecomer to the race, his party had swept to victory in the election, following all the terror and horrors that had befallen his country. The Africans responsible for the disaster which had brought London to its knees were thought to be from Nigeria. The popular response had been to declare war on that country, but the war had turned ugly and Boko Haram, the Jihadist Islamic militant group, had been the only victors. They’d made considerable ground in a country precariously balanced before the British launched a military retaliation. On the home front, that proved the final straw. UK public opinion, which previously had been so supportive, turned overnight and the government fell. When elections were called, it was anyone’s race. The fact an Independent party won amply reflected a nation still grieving a foreign assault and angry at a Europe keeping its distance as if from a leper.
Four years on, it still felt like his government was cleaning up the mess left behind by the previous administration. The rebuilding of London had been extensive. There was no leaving burnt-out shells of former homes by which to remember things. The country needed to move on, to recover, to come back stronger. Still, London was not the place it once had been. It sat at the top table, but other players were calling the shots now, China one of the loudest.
“They’ve just announced the power plant, sir,” said Daniel Bradford, a third-generation politician, and as upper-crust as you could get. He was also a long-term personal friend of the PM and was, in fact, the Home Secretary.
“Thank you,” he said before adding with a note of frustration, “and how many bloody times do I have to say to you Danny, you can call me Alan. Man, we’ve known each other long enough. It’s just you and me at the moment, and no one is here. We can cut the crap. I wasn’t raised with a silver spoon in my mouth.” 'How very true', Daniel thought, but he didn’t want to talk about how his friend had been raised. Still, they’d been colleagues for years, and he’d been swept along by it all as much as the PM had. Now he held a top cabinet position, something neither his grandfather, nor pushy father ever did. Alan was in good spirits, despite the day’s meetings.
“Well, good luck to them, I say. Can’t say we’ll be using their energy while I’m in charge.”
“Indeed, Alan. Anyway, there is an emergency meeting underway at MI6.”
“What is it with them now?” You could read a million things into his tone at that moment, though Daniel knew what he was thinking precisely. He mostly agreed with him though had resisted the call to have them shut down entirely following the attacks of five years before. Alan Moore was no friend of MI6, and the feeling was entirely mutual. Still, as Head of State, and as MI6 was the counterintelligence service at hand, it was a working relationship he had to tolerate, though he gave little time to fostering it. He left that to others as much as possible.
“I think you need to meet them on this one,” is all Daniel said.
“Really? This should be fun.” Both knew it would be anything but.
At Vauxhall Cross, emotions were running high. The room of three men and two women represented nearly one hundred years of intelligence service experience. All five had been in position long before the nuclear disaster, predating the beginning of the research in fact by some fifteen years. All knew what had gone on. While the governments came and went, the latest one wetter than them all, they were the constant backbone, the ones in MI6 who kept the country safe and knew most, often from first-hand intervention, of the real dangers facing the nation. Nigeria was one of them, China another for different reasons.
There was a rumour that three high profile former British spies had gone missing. They had known what had led to the disaster five years ago from the time when the British stole the power plant blueprints from under the noses of the Chinese until the nuclear attack on London. These three former spies were all too sensitively placed, hidden even, ever to be extracted. One was in prison in North Korea, though for him that was probably the safest place. MI6 couldn’t touch them. It would be too apparent to the various foreign spying networks watching. The three themselves knew the rules anyway, having agreed to work for MI6 in the first place.
A junior aide entered the room, only to pass a piece of paper to someone before leaving again.
“It’s confirmed,” the MI6 agent said, glancing up from the paper and addressing the other four. “As far as we can tell, all three have disappeared.”
“Can we be certain?”
“Two are confirmed. Our people on the ground in Hong Kong and Siberia are at the location. North Korea is a little harder to confirm. Satellite imagery has shown a lot of activity at the prison. No official word yet, though.”
“Well, I wouldn’t expect anything from them anytime soon. So, what’s our position?”
“China announces the opening of their next generation power plant, and on the same day, the only three people who were actively involved in the theft in the first place go missing. Come on, that’s no coincidence.”
“Absolutely not; it’s a message––and a threat.”
“Are we at risk here?” That indeed raised tension levels in the room.
“I think we take natural precautions. We’re going to have to inform the PM.”
“Must we?” There was a general level of good humour after that comment. They all knew the procedure. “Very well, arrange a meeting. Let’s put all airports on alert until we know anything more. And if we hear back from the likes of Hong Kong that they’re all off golfing, I’m going to kill someone. Let’s get on with it, shall we,” and with that he stood up, the others rising also, a
nd left the room.
Lagos, Nigeria
Jianguo Ming was a seasoned Chinese diplomat. An ambassador for many years, his last posting in that particular role had been to London, which ended five years ago, when the final few Chinese officials fled the UK after the fallout, of both kinds, which followed the London attack. He’d returned to China, partly to face the music, but was decorated instead, which opened new doors for him in the world of business. He had spent the last three years travelling, working for the State to secure lucrative contracts around the world. It was his third visit to Nigeria that year. China was leading the rebuilding effort following the conflict that erupted not long after the attacks in London. Nigeria had been held responsible, and punishable, by the wounded UK, though entirely who the targets were after months of fighting that left Nigeria on the verge of civil war, no one quite knew.
Jianguo was in Lagos once more, and with the release of news that his country’s next generation power plant was fully functional, he had the blueprints of the new technology to sell. Nigeria had fostered a more significant relationship with China over the last decade, and especially since the war. Lagos, the largest of the cities in this troubled nation, was still government run. The capital, Abuja, sat in the middle of Nigeria and not much further north than that Boko Haram mainly ran things, especially in the ravaged northeast, spilling over into Cameroon and increasingly Chad. It was all very unstable, and Nigeria feared losing more ground to the terrorists, as they called them. China offered them a strong arm, so they needed the relationship as much as China wanted the business.
Fear walked the streets of Lagos, however. Rumours of roaming parties of jihadists making raids even that far south of the capital were not unfounded. Jianguo now travelled with heavy security. Most Western embassies were no longer open. China was by far the most significant superpower still present in the country. They were the biggest trading partner, too. Jianguo was collected from the airport, and his convoy drove to the city’s most exclusive hotel. Luxury in a country where many people were now homeless and starving.
