The damn fools are going to the big demonstration!
Governor Sun Siu Ki read the news of the clearinghouse computer disaster in the flyer labeled The Truth as he dressed for the day. An aide had brought him one of the sheets.
“Is this true?” he demanded, waving the offending paper at the aide.
“Yes, sir. The director of the clearinghouse called us with the news at three this morning. The entire clearinghouse staff is working now to determine the extent of the damage.”
Sun was not the swiftest civil servant in Hong Kong, but he wasn’t stupid. “How did the writers of this flyer get the news so quickly, get it printed and onto the streets?”
“Sir, we do not know. These flyers were thrown out of trucks all over the S.A.R. as early as five A.M.”
“This computer failure the story speaks of, could it have been sabotage?”
“We do not know.”
“Find out,” Sun snapped. “Immediately,” he added and shooed the aide out.
The story was libel, of course. Well, probably libel.
Sure, there were grotesquely greedy men in government — there had been misfits and rogues in every government in every age since the world began. And of course some of these misfits might have twisted arms in the Hong Kong banking community. But to suppose that these people, if they did owe money to the local banks, would destroy the banks so they wouldn’t have to pay it back? The whole thing was preposterous, pure poppycock.
And even if the story were true, this rag should never have printed it. The sole purpose of such a story was to lower the people’s respect for the government and the men who made it function.
Mao would never have tolerated such disrespectful diatribes from anyone, Sun told himself primly, and certainly he should not.
Regardless of what the bureaucrats in Beijing thought, the time had come to take off the gloves with these people. Show them the government’s steel backbone and this type of libelous misbehavior will stop.
Sun was capable of applying the pressure, of crushing enemies of the state. He didn’t have many skills, but at least he had that one. He picked up the telephone on his desk and told his secretary to call General Tang.
Tang came to City Hall by car to confer with Sun. The two of them ate a hurried breakfast of rice and fish at Sun’s desk while they waited for a call to Beijing to be returned. An aide came in and told them that the subway trains refused to operate this morning. “It is the doors,” the aide said. “The administrator of the system says the doors will not open on the trains.”
“Can’t they be opened manually?”
“Yes, but then they cannot be closed. The chief engineer blames the fluctuations in the power grid.”
When the minister in Beijing called, he was obviously distraught. “First Hong Kong, now the nation is under attack. We do not even know who the enemy is, and he is wounding us seriously.”
Sun didn’t have a clue what the minister was talking about. He made noises anyway.
The minister explained: “Several hours ago our ballistic missiles exploded in their silos, starting horrible fires that threaten to contaminate large areas. Last night the Hong Kong and Shanghai banking systems collapsed, the stock exchanges cannot open, the railroad dispatch computer refuses to come on-line, refineries all over the country have had to shut down to prevent dangerous conditions progressing to explosions and fires… and every air traffic control and GCI radar in the country is mysteriously broken. The nation is wide open to an aerial invasion, and we won’t know it is coming until enemy troops arrive at the gates.” His voice rose an octave here.
The minister paused to get himself under control. “Obviously the nation is under cyberattack. The telephone network has been used to sabotage critical computers. The premier has decreed that the telephone system be shut off on the hour, in ten minutes, until such time as the critical systems can be brought back on-line, our enemies identified and rendered harmless, and future attacks of this sort guarded against.”
Sun couldn’t believe his ears. He pushed the mute button on the speaker phone and asked General Tang, “What is a cyberattack?”
“Computers,” Tang replied.
The minister was still going on, about how Sun should notify Beijing immediately of any change in the situation in Hong Kong, and then he hung up, leaving Sun staring at the little telephone speaker on his desk, quite unable to grasp the import of what he had just heard.
“They are turning off the telephone system?” he asked General Tang.
“So he said.”
“The Taiwanese,” Sun said bitterly. “I have argued for years that China must bring those rascals to heel. Events will prove me right.”
“I suspect the Japanese,” General Tang shot back. “They are our natural enemies.”
They finished eating in silence, each man deep in his own thoughts.
When they pushed the plates back, they discussed the situation. They were on dangerous ground and they knew it. The nation under cyberattack from unknown enemies, the power of the government being tested here in Hong Kong…
The right course of action was unclear. Still, they were the men who would have to answer to Beijing for inaction as well as action.
When he had heard Tang out, Sun issued his orders. “Today many unhappy people will congregate in the Central District. They will once again attempt to embarrass the government.” The British legacy was still causing problems, Sun thought sourly. “That challenge to the government’s mandate to rule is, in my judgment, our most important problem. Put your troops in the downtown and refuse to let the demonstrators in.”
“The subway problems will keep people from coming into the Central District,” Tang remarked. He assumed that most of the city’s citizens would want to demonstrate against the government, an assumption that Sun didn’t challenge.
“The time has come to be firm,” Sun declared. “We must show the people the steel of our resolve. Show them the might of the state they hold in such contempt.”
Lest there be a misunderstanding, Sun added darkly, “I abhor the useless effusion of blood, but if we do not hold our ground now, that failure will cost more blood.”
“We will give the order to disperse, then enforce it.”
“We must tell the people,” Sun told the general. “Go from here to the television studio. Stand in front of the camera and tell the people to stay home. Tell them the nation is under attack, but we shall prevail because we have the resolve of a tiger.”
“Only one television station is still operating,” the senior aide informed them. “The others have had power outages or equipment failures.”
“All?” Sun demanded.
“Yes, sir. During the night they went off the air, one by one.”
“Sabotage,” said Tang. “Could this be related to the nuclear weapons disaster?”
“Impossible,” the governor opined. “Here in Hong Kong we are dealing with criminal hooligans.”
Had the brain trust in City Hall asked about the situation with the radio stations, they would have been more alarmed. Of Hong Kong’s dozens of stations, only one was still on the air. The morning DJ at this station atop Victoria Peak was a Hong Kong personality named Jimmy Lee, easily the most popular man on the south China coast.
Lee was funny, irreverent, crazy, with it, and cool, a combination that delighted the young people and brought smiles to the faces of everyone else. Listening to Jimmy Lee was always a breath of fresh air.
Jimmy Lee wasn’t himself this morning, though. The man was constitutionally unable to keep a secret — it wasn’t in him. Everything he knew eventually slipped out, usually when he least wanted it to. Normally this trait didn’t do him any harm since his off-kilter personality was his stock-in-trade. For the past two weeks, though, Jimmy Lee had been the possessor of a huge secret, one that had grown heavier with each passing day.