“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 with 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.