Chiang’s report today pleased everyone in the locked room in Taipei. There were no stress fractures. All systems were operating perfectly, and even the richly carpeted bedrooms for the professors were still in excellent condition. The two Dutch-made submarines that ferried supplies every three months made living bearable if not luxurious. The tours of duty were long, the work slow and difficult, with little time for recreation. No one looked forward to returning for a second eighteen-month spell. But each of the professors was paid a half-million-dollar bonus for their time. No one had ever refused to work for the Taiwan nation, deep inside the deserted island at the end of the world.
In winter, conditions were appalling. It was light for only a short while every day, and the weather was so vicious it was impossible to walk even a short distance on the rare occasions anyone was allowed out. The summer months were slightly better, but it was dangerous to move far from the base because the howling gales could bring raging seventy-mile-per-hour winds screaming up the fjord in moments, and these winds were sometimes accompanied by sleet and even snow. The katabatics, the fluke circular winds that swing off the tops of the surrounding mountains and then “suck under” like a wind tunnel, from an unexpected direction, were able to frighten even experienced ocean navigators operating inshore.
The President of Taiwan, nominally the Commander in Chief of all the Republic of China’s armed forces, now thanked Chiang Yi formally for his report, and spoke to the gathering carefully. He reported that twice in the previous twelve months, the Navy of China had brought warships very close to Taiwanese coastal waters in a gesture which had been perceived by everyone to be threatening in the extreme. There had been two additional live rocket tests, each involving the firing of the lethal HQ-61M surface-to-air missile from a “Jiangwei” Class frigate. Both incidents were designed to intimidate. The Chinese, he said, had continually sent destroyers and frigates in close to the Spratley Islands — the fifty-three rocks, shoals, and reefs in the South China Sea that Taiwan claims as its own, and indeed occupies with a military force on the largest of the islands.
“We do, of course, enjoy the theoretic support of the United States in these matters,” said the President. “But in the past two years we have been singularly unsuccessful in our efforts to build up our own submarine capability. We have tried to order from the French, the Dutch, the Germans…every time we have an acceptance from the shipbuilders, the project is overruled by the respective governments. They are, quite simply, afraid of damaging their trade relations with mainland China and will not supply us. Even the Americans will not sanction a submarine sale to us. Nor will they provide us with their Aegis missile system, even thought they know we constantly face the known threat of a massed air attack from mainland China. We are within range of their fighter bombers.
“I conclude that we must make our own arrangements. These military exercises by China are nothing less than a threat to our survival…letting us know that if they so wished they could blockade the Strait with a surface and submarine force. This threat, in my judgment, is ever present.
“Gentlemen, as I have said so many times before, we cannot count on the USA to help us. Things are changing. The United States may one day value China more than it values us. A new American President may feel his armed forces have no business engaging in military adventures in the Far East. Who knows what they may conclude?
“During my time at Harvard, I learned much about American flexibility. It is a nation that will adjust its views as the tides of history ebb and flow. You will doubtless recall that in the late 1980s Saddam Hussein went from being America’s Great Stabilizing Hero of the Middle East, to Public Enemy Number One in less than three years.
“Gentlemen, I have said so many times. If we are to resist China’s attempts to bring us back into their fold, which means we would be occupied by them, militarily, we must have the means to frighten them. And since the West will not sell effective military hardware to us, the only way we have to guarantee our survival is to possess our own nuclear deterrent. This is not a weapon of war. It is a weapon of peace. It will not be deployed but will always be in the back of the minds of the mainland’s politicians, and indeed the Chinese military commanders. They will know that if Taiwan were to be pushed against the wall hard enough, we have the ability to unleash a weapon of such terrifying power, it could obliterate a major mainland city in one strike.
“No one has ever used such a weapon, not since Nagasaki. And I doubt anyone ever will. That is why even the most powerful military forces in the world have contented themselves with minor wars during the last half-century,…skirmishes, nothing on the grand scale with hundreds of thousands dead. This is simply because no one dares. Gentlemen, I say to you again, there is nothing more important to this nation than our nuclear project in the Southern Indian Ocean.
“I owe a personal debt of gratitude to all of you who have contributed to its work, but my own debt is as nothing compared to the debt the Taiwanese people have to you all. And now, as always, I am most anxious to hear of our progress, and perhaps Professor Liao, who we know has recently returned, would enlighten us.”
The nuclear scientist from the National University, a small man in his late fifties, dressed in the tweed jacket, checkered shirt, and club tie beloved of academics the world over, climbed to his feet and bowed to the President. His news was careful to the point of pedantry. He spoke of the extreme difficulties of making a fission bomb, and the endless time it takes to produce the elusive isotope of uranium, U-235—the isotope used in nuclear power stations, from which weapons-grade plutonium can most readily be made.
For the benefit of the two visiting military men, and the politicians, he explained briefly the process of turning the already heavy metal into a gas, and the subsequent process of trying to spin off the heavier 90 percent in order to leave the invaluable U-235. “To achieve this, the process has to be long, slow, painstaking, and precise,” he said, “but at last we are getting there. We have now achieved solid production…sufficient Uranium-235 for our first core for the PWR, which we should have in six months.
“This is not yet sufficient to build a nuclear warhead, but we have the designs, and I estimate we will be transporting our first untried warhead back to Tsoying in three years. Professor Longchen, as you know, is returning to Kerguelen in November.”
The President smiled. It was not a smile of triumph, it was a smile of relief, for here was a man who lived on the edge of his nerves every day, wondering what the military dragons on the other side of the Strait were planning. He dreamed of the day when he could make it known that any nation threatening Taiwan would do so on equal terms — that Taiwan was a match for any aggressor, even one like China, with its Navy of 285,000 men, 140 major warships, and 450 fast-attack craft. The nuclear warhead, the President realized, was the world’s great equalizer.
And now he turned his attention to the question of security in the waters around Kerguelen, and he called upon the Marine Commander, who had spent four years in Kerguelen, both organizing the security system and setting up the military surveillance post on Pointe Bras deep down the fjord at the head of Baie Blanche — eight miles north of the laboratory.