The Devil's Playground

by Michael Reagan

world and slid back into bed by the side of him. She inserted her earplugs so she didn't hear his pig-like sounds, and then lowered her head to the pillow.

  Ever the intelligence officer, Zhang pondered on the contents of the email that had caught her eye. The note she had read had made reference to a conference next week in Tokyo that was due to be?attended by?her lover and other senior?members of Iron Triangle to discuss the formal replacement of the current Prime Minister with that of Hotaru Okazaki.

  This news had surprised Zhang for two reasons: first that man by her side of was an invited member. This piece of information was something that her masters certainly hadn't known when they handed her the assignment because it hadn't been included in his background. It was second reason that though caused her the most surprise: the effect the appointment of such a man would have on her beloved country for it was common knowledge by most of Asia for the last two years that since Korea had become one nation and had started to foster and develop a closer relationship with America that it this had pushed a wedge between the allies.

  It was also known that this wedge had also caused the exponential growth of xenophobic nationalism in Japan and then had allowed Okazaki to propose and support an arms build-up to protect Japan's national interests rather than the hoped for open investment and trade policies with Korea that its neighbors?like China?preferred.

  If the contents of this email were to be believed then a man by definition?representing the?type of individual that caused so much destruction to her country and South East Asia in the 1930s and 1940s, was about to be put in charge of the government.

  "The consequences on the region are going to be devastating," she concluded grimly as she closed her eyes for another night of restless sleep next to a man in a long line of men she couldn't stand.

  Armed with a Harvard MBA and a graduate of Beijing's famed USTB, the appointment of Jiang Zhanpong, who at the age of forty-nine and at the time was the CEO of one of the country's largest State natural resources companies, to head up the MPS and to become one the five State Councilors four years ago had raised the eyebrows of the world's media analysts and that of the intelligence community of the world that watched the appointments of China's senior politicians.

  Up to his appointment although albeit politically powerful, Jiang had been viewed by the media as purely as a strategist, organizer, and a senior negotiator with links to all the world's largest resource companies rather than being an individual who had any detailed understanding of legal procedures that up to his appointment had always been a prerequisite of all of China's previous heads of the ministry.

  A loyalist who had also served as the Party Chief of Heilongjiang Province located in Northeast China bordering Russia, the media often described him as a politician with a background in good business therefore it wasn't much of a surprise that they, incorrectly, believed he represented a changing of the guard amongst the party leadership.

  To his subordinates and the intelligent community, however, they knew him somewhat differently. To them he was a ruthless individual who believed in the maximization of China's interests at all costs. In its purest and simple terms, "if International laws got in the way of the interests of China, ignore them."

  In Jiang's short tenure as his country's premier spy chief it had seen MPS move from that of a traditional intelligence agency, i.e. monitoring its subjects and its neighbors for any potential threats to China's internal security to one that actively assisted all of the State's businesses in the stealing of technologies and patents from across the world, but more importantly to that of an Agency that ensured the natural resources that the country needed to ensure the nation's GDP to keep growing were available. To do this MPS had used a mixture of murder, blackmail, and the development of SIGNIT capabilities that was only bettered by the Americans in terms of spending and investment as its tools.

  It was because of Jiang's intimate knowledge of the world of natural resources and how its markets worked, that once he had finished reading the transcripts recorded by unwitting target's Blackberry that had attended the private meeting involving members of Iron Triangle at a conference of LDP he had decided to act.

  The report had made grim reading.

  "Black holes are not acceptable!" Jiang thought as he referred to the fact this was the first time that the MPS had actually come across the set of individuals who actually made up the group that the Economists and political analysts of Japan always referred to as the Iron Triangle rather than the theoretical disbelief that they actually existed.

  Angry, he picked up the telephone on his desk and barked at his Private Secretary to come to his office so he could give him orders to summon the section chiefs to a meeting where they would be given new orders to make the identification of the senior officials and wealthy individuals that formed the members of the Iron Triangle their number one priority.

  If Japan was about to awake from its deep sleep and rewrite its pacifist constitution in spite of, as it had appeared from the transcript, the Emperor's private objections, who even though he had no political power under the Constitution, was still considered an important voice at the center of so called Triangle, then China needed to ensure she was ready to either take advantage or defend its national interests.

  The spy chief knew full well that some of his colleagues that made up the five Councilors that governed China would accuse him of overacting and scaremongering, using the argument that a military adventure by Japan could only be possible with American support.

  These same arguments would then be used to counter his recommendations that such an action would place America on a collision course with China and risk valuable trade that they needed to continue to rebuild their economy. He also knew they would use the fact that the new Administration had already voiced its dissatisfaction over Okazaki's latest visit to the Yasukuni shine where the spirits of fourteen high-ranking war criminals along with those of two and half million other Japanese war dead were enshrined, calling the move "unhelpful" at the time as further evidence that such an act would be unthinkable. Yet as far as Jiang was concerned these weren't valid arguments.

  His mind countered their arguments with the observation that the new Republican President of America, Daniel Parker, as part of his election campaign had been very successful in his use of anti-Chinese propaganda in the attacking of his predecessor's spending and taxing stimulus plans. He used the xenophobic fears of his people to great effect to get across to the voters not only, that America's over reliance on the selling of its national debt to China and other sovereign nations had weakened its ability to be masters of its own destiny, but also the way the Russians had maneuvered them in Syria and East Africa consistently in his stump speeches. Jiang also considered recent intelligence from the U.S. It had been indicating that "below the line" support led by the Administration's new Secretary of State would be given to a more assertive Japan in the region in an effort to counterbalance China's growing military power.

  If this transcript was true, and he had no reason to doubt it wasn't by the fact that the Foreign Minister had actually attended the conference, then once the man was installed as Prime Minister, Japan was immediately going to embark on a strategy of antagonizing Korea and China to achieve this aim.

  He re-examined one section of the report again, which stated, "By way of undertaking heavy oil and gas extraction on the Daioyu Islands," referring to the minerals rich Daioyu / Senkaku Islands that comprise of five uninhabited islets and three barren rocks lying 120 nautical miles to the southwest of Okinawa.

  The analyst who had reviewed the transcript described this as a direct challenge to China's authority and a precursor to Japan re-establishing its rights on the ownership to all of the surrounding area and its resources of East China Sea. The experienced negotiator in Jiang agreed with the analyst.

  Jiang also knew one further point that was not covered in the analyst's overview was that if China allowed the Japanese the opportunity to compl
ete this action then it could then use the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as their reason to enter into internationally recognized agreements with the Natural Resources giants to begin wide-scale exploration and development of all of the East China Sea's hydrocarbons effectively corralling China on its own doorstep.

  Yes his colleagues would argue that China could refuse to recognize the agreements but Jiang, unlike them, knew the effects such a response would have to China.

  China's oil and gas companies operated all over the world and three were listed on the exchanges of the world's major stock markets and thereby were bound by the same International laws that they would be seek to ignore.

  If China ignored the International Oil Companies' rights then Jiang knew it would immediately result in fines, penalties, and a collection of damaging lawsuits across the world in jurisdictions outside the control of China. Worse still, it would allow nations who signed agreements with China's Oil Companies to declare then null and void and cut them off completely from all their overseas interests.

  He sighed. He could just see the battle he was going to have with them over that. Then as he considered another part of the report, a