He leaned across the desk, his heavy face working, sweating with emotion. “I will tell you, Commander, exactly what is going to happen next. You have come to America to investigate the Dead Line. You have found it. Now let me tell you that you have found something else, something very much more dangerous to you and your White brothers.” He showed his teeth. “You have found the Race War! The Whites, led by an unwilling alliance of America, the Soviet Union, and Britain, who will be forced together when the fighting starts… against Communist China and all the rest of the world. All the rest of the world on the move together, Commander — and believe me, we can’t help winning!”
Chapter Fifteen
Suddenly there was no longer anything even remotely funny about that cowboy character, Sanderson — he was, in his way, all of a piece with this unholy, sinister idea of Race War. A backsliding, recidivist Texas-hat White who was, perhaps, for reasons known only to himself, unable to find his place in the sun anywhere but in a world at war. Shaw’s mind flashed across the Atlantic. London, in the grip of the Black octopus, London mortally wounded from within the moment the balloon went up… fighting in the streets, gunfire enfilading Piccadilly, Government tanks ripping up the Park — if indeed there would be time for that kind of warfare before the whole thing went nuclear, as almost certainly it would with China holding the reins of power. Tucker had said the Whites would go to any lengths to avoid war, and so they would until they were pushed to the brink — but the same would apply to the Coloured populations throughout the world, if Tucker and Peking would let them choose. But they wouldn’t, and there was no hope for the Blacks any more than for the Whites in the long run… they were to be just the dupes, the puppets of World Communism in China’s bid for total power.
Tucker had a sardonic smile playing around his mouth now. He asked, “Well? Have the facts penetrated, Commander?”
“You won’t get far with this, Tucker. It’s crazy.”
“Ah — that is precisely what our own people thought at first! But now, you see, they are convinced that it is not crazy at all, and I will give you one good reason from among many why that should be so. It is because it sounds crazy… and such crazy-sounding plans have always had the best chances of success, as history teaches us. You see, no Government will be suspecting what we intend to do. Washington and London and the other Western capitals of the White world are always watching Moscow and vice versa—but none of them watch us!”
“Why stop at Moscow?” Shaw asked. “The West is also watching Peking, possibly more closely than we watch Moscow these days.”
“Certainly,” Tucker agreed smoothly, “but not, I suggest, with anything like our plans in mind. They watch Peking only with a view to calculating the Chinese Communist intentions vis-à-vis the West as such. Their minds and outlooks are attuned to the conventional threat of East — West war, they are preoccupied with that. Despite warnings from time to time by forward-looking politicians, total Race War has not in fact entered their calculations. Despite the undoubted fact, as evidenced by your own assignment, that the existence of the Dead Line has become known to your security services, nothing else has leaked — this I know,” he added with complete assurance. “Throughout the world, the Whites are being watched — and nowhere are they taking even the most elementary precautions such as they would take were they in any way alarmed or even suspicious. Your own reaction to what I have told you confirms that you in Britain had heard nothing. As for America and Russia, they have for years been too busy trying to put the first man on the moon and other planets, and in America’s case conducting attritional wars in such places as Viet-Nam.… All the White world has its collective head in the clouds, and takes no heed whatever of the danger close upon its own doorstep. It is that world that is crazy, Commander — moon crazy! The true lunatics!” Again his eyes blazed and he banged a fist hard on the desk. “In their lunatic preoccupation with things that do not matter, we shall strike them down!”
Shaw asked, “Do you seriously imagine the Chinese Reds’ll trust you an inch afterwards?”
“Certainly.” Tucker lit a fresh Havana and blew smoke towards Shaw. “We have assurances from Peking that under my Presidency, Black America’s autonomy will be fully respected. Here in America, the Whites will be reduced to the status formerly accorded to us. We are quite satisfied with this and on our part we admit China’s right to world over-lordship in return for services rendered. Indeed this is in our view an essential corollary and is basic to our plans. There must be one central leadership. With all the world under this single leadership, and with our brothers in control in their own countries, as they will be, then peace for all time will be an assured fact — and so, of course, will complete freedom for the non-White peoples. This is China’s philosophy, and it is also ours.” Tucker paused. “The difficulties ahead will not be so great as you perhaps imagine, Commander. Do not forget that much of the stage has already been set — has been set for many years past. Already China, as opposed to Russia, has made her mark on the not-wholly-committed nations…” Tucker shrugged, pulling at his cigar. “China has done much spadework in Africa, for example, which has put her ahead of Russia. To mention one point, for years Peking has been broadcasting to Africa at the rate of more than a hundred hours a week — broadcasting in English, French, Swahili, Portuguese and Cantonese — and most of their broadcasts have attacked America and the new colonialism. There are many Chinese diplomats in African countries, indeed one third of all the Chinese missions in the world are in Africa… and in the Congo, at the time of the rebellion against the traitor Tshombe, a certain Colonel Kan Mai of Peking’s diplomatic mission in Brazzaville was the chief military adviser to the Rebels’ National Council for Liberation. He was the man who was responsible among other things for the liquidation of the ‘unpeople’—the Africans with Western ideas and culture.”
“You consider that a feather in his cap, I suppose?”
“Of course! But to go on with what I was saying… there has, again for many years, been a network of Chinese agents, operating in Africa under the direction of the Chinese news agency, to spread propaganda. Many Chinese books have entered Africa, as have films. The political offensive has been mounting fast. Much money has been made available, many fine new buildings presented to the governments, while Chinese trade buyers have proliferated. Some years ago now, Kenya signed an agreement with Peking for economic and technical co-operation, and many Chinese experts were sent to Nairobi. Now there are trading agreements with a dozen African states. The help we shall get from the African nations will be augmented by the Communists in Malaysia and Indonesia and the geographical East in general. We anticipate trouble only with Japan and Formosa and South Korea and possibly with parts of India — but then, as you will agree, all these countries are merely paper tigers in any case.”
“So I’m right in assuming this to be basically a world Communist plot, rather than a Negro uprising as such?”
Tucker shrugged. “You may give it what name you choose. For you and your kind, the results will be the same.”
“When is all this supposed to start?”
“Very soon,” the Negro answered. “Much sooner, I think, than you realize.” He leaned forward across the desk, big shoulders hunched. “I will tell you, so that you will the better understand your own position. Bear all I say well in mind when I come to question you, and realize this: it will be in your own interests and those of the girl to talk fully to me, indeed to admit defeat and throw in your lot with Black America. Because if you will give me your co-operation now, you will be rewarded when the war is won. If you do not… but I think I scarcely need to go into details of what will happen to both of you in that case. You understand?”