“Mr. Prime Minister,” Yoshida said, “if we use diplomacy we may well succeed where General Gotoh has predicted failure. If Greater Manchuria sees logic they will agree to the nonaggression treaty and Japanese control of the nuclear missiles. If that happens, we can avoid this horrible military attack.”
“Gentlemen? General Gotoh?”
“Minister Yoshida, if Len Pei Poom signed a treaty that put those missiles under Japanese military control I will withdraw my motion for the strike. With one condition: that if the Greater Manchurians dissemble, if we suddenly lose communication with the missile-guarding detail, that the strike be executed. I must say that the chances of Len accepting Japanese Self Defense Force personnel at his secret missile depot, with the Japanese in control, is minimal. I do not think he will agree to it.”
“But if he does, we must be prepared to stick to the terms of our own treaty,” Yoshida said. “I don’t want us to demand he sign a treaty and then watch us refuse to sign it ourselves. If our ambassador goes to Len with a peace treaty in hand I must know that Japan will be willing to live by its terms.”
“Japan will abide by the terms of the treaty, Yoshidasan,” Kurita said. “You write the treaty and make sure it is one we can live with. Len may sign the nonaggression pact, and this crisis is over. If he does not, we end the crisis by destroying the missiles. We then help Len by making sure his neighbors still think he has the missiles, and meanwhile we help him arm his military. And we help our own economy as well. In the end we may generate a large market in Greater Manchuria and receive their raw materials. I think we have taken a bad situation and turned it to our advantage.”
Kurita went around the room soliciting opinions. Approval was unanimous. Yoshida merely nodded.
“There is more to discuss, gentlemen,” Kurita said. “General, how will this weapon be delivered? And how will we control its launch?”
“We must ensure that the strike is effective. We plan on using two missiles. For absolute secrecy, these two units will be launched from a submarine already patrolling off the Greater Manchurian coast. Admiral?”
Admiral Tanaka stood. The screen came down and a map of the Sea of Japan materialized.
“We have placed a Destiny-class nuclear-powered submarine here off the Greater Manchurian shore. As you know, the Destiny-class submarines are quiet. They are nuclear propelled, so they will never need to surface after they leave port. The submarine patrols here off the coast waiting for the order from us to shoot the Hiroshima cruise missiles with the Scorpion dispersion-gluebomb warheads. On receipt of orders to fire, the submarine fires the two cruise missiles and departs the area to return home. The cruise missiles come from the sea and fly close to the ground until they reach the target— Tamga. Estimated elapsed time from receipt of orders to launch and missile detonation is less than an hour.”
“Have we tested this method of cruise-missile launch?” Kurita asked.
“Extensively, sir.”
“Very well. Has anyone any questions of the admiral or general? No? I recommend the council stand by to be reconvened later. I move we adjourn.”
CHAPTER 6
President Len Pei Poom, if seen in civilian clothes, would not earn a second glance, being of medium height and weight, with thinning hair and a nondescript mustache.
Which perhaps could explain why he was never seen out of a military uniform, his tunic resplendent with medals and a gold sash. Unlike most military dictators who wore the uniform of the fighting forces, Len’s medals were genuine. He had been a career army officer his entire adult life, ever since a battlefield promotion in Afghanistan when he was eighteen and fighting a pointless war for what then was the behemoth of the Soviet Union. Later, in his twenties, he was detached from the Red Army to the United Nations forces in Ethiopia, Somalia and Bosnia, then repatriated to the Russian Republic Army for the Allied ground offensive against the Muslim United Islamic Front of God, which was an alliance of over two dozen Islamic nations led by a fanatical if charismatic dictator. Len was a mere major when Russian forces invaded northern Iran. He had been in command of an infantry company during the initial assault.
By the time the decapitated UIF had surrendered, Len had been named a general, commanding the Second Combined Infantry Force that overran Tehran. In the interval he had lost every friend, every acquaintance, to enemy fire. The ground war had been a slaughterhouse.
No man could live through that war and not be changed, but circumstances were favorable to Len. In the years after his return from the Iranian front, the Russian Republic had continued to fall on hard times.
Len’s home in the city of Chabarovsk, now renamed by him as Changashan, had been in a rebellious Russian republic. Len had become involved, slowly, since at first he had been regarded as a Russian general and not to be trusted. Within two years he had become the head of a revolutionary movement, determined to split off from greater Russia. He had learned the lessons of other earlier, less successful succession movements, and had managed to consolidate support from China, then in the middle of its own bloody civil war. Len had alternated use of diplomacy and threats. China ceded its Greater Manchurian territory just as the White Army was advancing on it, perhaps knowing that Greater Manchuria would fall to the Whites anyway, but Len had managed to hold on to it as the rebel Chinese fighters had turned toward Beijing. By the time the Chinese Red Forces had consolidated power and taken back Beijing, Len had wrangled Sikhote Alin from Russia. The latter feat was a masterful stroke of diplomacy, but it had boiled down to the Russians being distracted by their own problems far to the west, an economic collapse narrowly averted in the months that Len was shoring up the borders of his new state one he had decided to name Greater Manchuria, a bone thrown to the Chinese that comprised half the land area of the region. Len’s military at the time had been skeletal and poorly equipped, though heavily manned.
All that had been three years ago. Len had just begun to feel confident that the country might survive. The government he had constructed functioned, if crudely, but the people were fed and the trains ran, if not necessarily on time. But it was then that the crisis hit. The Chinese Civil War ended, with West China, the Reds, taking up central and northeast China and East China, the Whites, taking the eastern coastline. Not long after, the West Chinese, sharing a border with southern Greater Manchuria, decided they wanted their territory back, though it took some time for them to assemble their infantry and armored forces along the border. The Russians, with their worldwide intelligence network left over from communist days, saw the Chinese forces, and decided to mass their own armies at the western and northern borders of Greater Manchuria.
At one point Len believed that Greater Manchuria had only days of survival left. Appeals to the Western nations were greeted with monetary aid and advisors, but there would be no one to fight the war for them.
Now, years later, the Western media credited Len with holding off both the Russians and Chinese without firing a shot, making him out to be a diplomatic hero. He had not been, but he had found a silver bullet. His aide. Col. Woo Sei Wah, had flown into Changashan and found Len despondent. “I have news too sensitive for any radio circuit,” Woo had announced. Len had not looked up from his desk. “The old Russian weapons depot at Tamga. We found missiles. Nuclear missiles. SS-34s, in perfect condition, their launchers all there and ready. There are enough weapons there to destroy the Chinese and Russian armies outside the borders and still have a half-dozen in reserve in case they come for more.”