‘What the hell is this?’ Leighton whispered. Other staffers gathered around the folder. The buzz of urgent conversations slowly filled the Security Council chamber. Legends written in Chinese, English and French were cross-referenced to numbers on the map. The Russian Far East bore the number one. ‘1689 — the Treaty of Nerchinsk. Russians cede Amur River basin to China. China rules area for 150 years. In 1858 and 1860, Russian Army forces regional Chinese authorities to sign Treaties of Aigun and Peking, giving Russians north bank of Amur and east bank of Ussuri. Central Chinese authorities promptly repudiate both Treaties.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Leighton whispered.
As the disturbance radiated outward from the chamber, the Chinese ambassador began his presentation. Leighton sent a senior aide out to alert State and the White House of the crisis. The British ambassador leaned over and said, ‘We need to talk.’ Leighton nodded as she donned her earpiece. Simultaneous English translation was being read by an edgy UN translator.
‘… at a time in our history when China was weak and Russia was strong,’ the Chinese ambassador read from his prepared text. ‘No Chinese government has ever acknowledged the legitimacy of those seizures. And now, that balance of power has shifted.’ The sixty-year-old diplomat — young, by Chinese standards, and quite reasonable — looked up. He awaited the translation of his carefully spoken words into over a dozen languages. The room was astir with aides rushing out and staffers beginning to fill the gallery behind the circular table. ‘Asia is rightfully the territory of Asians. But as you can see from the map we have just handed out, rapacious Western powers seized the indicated regions by force or by proxy.’
‘It’s not just Russian territory they’re after,’ Leighton’s aide whispered into her ear. His finger traced the cross-hatched areas spilling over China’s borders to the west and south. ‘It looks like basically they’re claiming every region that at one time or another paid some form of tribute to Beijing.’
In addition to Tibet and Mongolia, Leighton observed, the Chinese were laying legal claim of a sort to Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Assam along the Indian frontier. And in Indochina to Myanmar, Malaya, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. In East Asia to Taiwan, Okinawa, and Korea. And, from the territory of the old Soviet Union, the Pamirs, Sakhalin Island, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan… and the Amur and Ussuri River basins in Siberia.
She turned the page. In each of Chinese, English and French there was a resolution. She didn’t need to read far. ‘Whereas, the former Republic of Russia unlawfully seized the territories of Greater China by military force, specifically 650,000 square kilometers of Siberia ceded by the Treaty of Aigun and 400,000 square kilometers ceded by the Treaty of Peking…’
‘Get me the President,’ Leighton whispered to her aide.
Angela Leighton could tell from the President’s tone that he wasn’t taking the development seriously enough. She sat in a small conference room in the UN trying to decide how to brief him properly. ‘What could they possibly seek to gain out of perfecting some theoretical legal claim to all that territory?’ Marshall asked.
She had to decide quickly how to begin. What to say in her five minutes in private. ‘Mr President, may I take a step back for a moment and address the bigger picture. If you look at a map, China’s present territory seems large enough, even given their enormous population. But only two-thirds of their land is under cultivation, and most of that not intensively. A lot of the territory they managed to hang onto during the imperial expansions is mountain or desert that can’t support even modest populations. Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, for example, have both been heavily populated only in the last hundred years and contribute little to food production. The result is that the fertile central regions of China are all hugely overpopulated. But just across their borders to the north, Central Asia, Mongolia and Siberia are one of the least populated regions on earth. Mongolia is half the size of the continent of Europe, but has a population of only one million people. Yakutia — which spreads across northern Siberia to the Bering Strait — is approximately the land area of the United States but has a population of 365,000! Sure, most of that land isn’t arable, but the exception lies in the Maritime Provinces well inside the “Greater Northeast Area” that was ceded to the Russians in the nineteenth century.’
‘Wait a minute, Angela,’ Marshall said in an angry tone. ‘Are you suggesting that the Chinese are demanding a return of that territory to them?’
‘Yes, sir. And that would give them strategic control of all of Asia east of the Ural Mountains.’
‘But… that’s insane! That sounds like some sort of… of “Chinese Lebensraum”!’ Marshall shouted. Leighton held the phone hard to her ear, but said nothing. ‘There’s no way I’m going to be their Neville Chamberlain! Fuck that! This is a Goddamn election year!’ Leighton closed her eyes as the President ranted. It was the only way she could manage the incredible tension she felt building.
Nate Clark and Major Reed walked down the sloping ramp of the transport. Nate stopped short of the waiting entourage from his forward headquarters to watch troops standing in loose formation at the rear of the giant C-17. The morning was cold. The bright sunlight falling on his Arctic white field jacket did nothing to warm him.
‘Weapons in the a-a-air!’ the platoon sergeant shouted. The infantrymen with whom he had flown in raised the muzzles of their rifles, squad automatic weapons, and machine-guns toward the sky. Like Clark, they wore all white except for their helmets, which were covered in the blue cloth of U.N. forces. Heavy white packs lay to their sides. Other platoons filed down the ramp and formed up in similar fashion.
‘Safeties о-оn!’ the platoon sergeant yelled. Faint clicking sounds could be heard by the dozen. ‘Okay, ladies!’ the sergeant said to the all-male combat unit. ‘Lock and load!’
There were clacks and tapping sounds of metal against metal as magazines and belts of ammo were seated in weapons. The most common sight was of soldiers pulling the charging handles of their M-16s to the rear — chambering a round.
‘Grenadiers,’ the platoon sergeant shouted next, ‘load frags!’
The men with grenade launchers mounted under the barrels of their M-16s inserted stubby 40-mm bullet-shaped grenades into the launchers’ breeches.
‘Check your safeties! Safeties on!’ The men all looked at their weapons, which were still pointed away from their comrades. ‘All right, ladies! You now hold in your sweet little hands a loaded weapon! If it discharges a round, someone will die! It’s up to you to make sure that someone is a very bad person and not the guy standin’ in formation next to you!’
They headed off in two files. Just like that? Qark found himself thinking. Right off the airplane — with a hundred and ten pounds of equipment on their backs — they marched past huge piles of gray and muddy brown snow that had been bulldozed to the edge of the tarmac. They disappeared into the dense forests Clark had seen slide by beneath their plane on final approach. No questions asked. No idea what lay ahead.