‘CIA has discovered the name of the Hua Hin’s captain was Chen Chu-Sun — seemingly a model officer, except that his wife and children are reported to live in mainland China. Efforts to contact them have failed, and it is possible that they were used to influence Chen’s actions.’
‘Can that be proved?’ asked Clark Mason.
Dos Santos shook her head. ‘Not at present,’ she said, ‘but we are still developing intelligence as we speak. We should know more in the next few hours.’
‘You said the captain’s name was Chen Chu-Sun,’ White House Chief of Staff Martin Shaker said. ‘Does that mean he’s dead?’
Dos Santos nodded. ‘Yes, him and the rest of his crew; the PLA Navy responded instantly, blew the submarine out of the water.’
‘So you think it was all a set-up?’ Shaker asked.
‘We think that’s a distinct possibility, yes,’ Abrams interjected. ‘It makes no sense at all for Taiwan to attack China, absolutely no sense at all. To my mind, it’s the same as Hitler using his own troops to attack that German radio station in Poland, to create a pretext for the invasion. Nothing else makes sense.’
‘Unless the captain of the Hua Hin went rogue?’ suggested John Eckhart, National Security Adviser. ‘A man with his own personnel vendetta? Just one lone madman?’ He looked at dos Santos. ‘Have we managed to get his file yet?’ he asked. ‘Can we assess his background? Mental state?’
‘Not yet,’ dos Santos admitted, ‘but we’re working on it, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense have offered us full cooperation.’
‘But we do have other indicators that it was a set-up,’ Pete Olsen announced, his bulky frame ensconced in full military uniform as he sat two places down the table from the president. ‘The Chinese military have already moved in — from positions they had already taken up prior to the attack on the Huangshan. In this light, we can also see the invasion of the Senkaku Islands as a preliminary step in taking Taiwan, as the Chinese military will be using those islands as staging posts.’
‘So what are you saying, Pete?’ said Mason, eyebrows knitted.
‘I’m saying that elements of the People’s Liberation Army, Navy and Air Force were all lined up to invade Taiwan before they had any reason to, and that the attack on the Chinese frigate was just the catalyst — or, rather, the excuse — Wu and the other generals needed for that invasion to go ahead.’
‘But they can’t possibly have thought that we would believe them!’ India Parshens said, still struggling to come to terms with what was happening.
Abrams shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter what other countries believe,’ she said sadly, ‘only what we can prove. And at this stage, all that can be proven is that a Taiwanese submarine opened fire on a Chinese frigate and killed her entire crew. Wu is just reacting as he would be expected to, especially by his own people.’
Dos Santos nodded. ‘Let’s not forget that the Xinhua broadcast was to a large extent aimed at drumming up support from his own people. He has taken over the country by force, taken away the ‘elected’ government, and he will have no idea how long he can hold onto such power for. This attack on a Chinese ship gives him something to rally the people behind; he’ll invade Taiwan — an island most mainland Chinese believe should be theirs anyway — and he’ll be admired and loved for it.’
There was silence in the room for a time, as the ramifications of Wu’s actions began to sink in.
‘So what are we going to do about it?’ Parshens asked, breaking the silence.
‘What can we do?’ Abrams said candidly. ‘We have no defensive agreements with Taiwan, and in fact, under the ‘one China’ doctrine we haven’t even officially recognized her government since we recognized Beijing in 1979. China has a de facto reason to go to war with Taiwan — engineered perhaps, but legitimate as far as anyone can prove at this time — and our hands are tied.’
It pained Abrams to admit it, but what she had said was the truth. There was simply nothing that the United States could do to help Taiwan, and she inwardly cursed General Wu. A clever bastard, she had to admit, but a bastard nevertheless.
What concerned her most was what would happen next. If Wu succeeded in taking Taiwan — which he surely would, if given enough time — then when would be his next target? Abrams had already started to field the phone calls from China’s worried neighbors — India, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, the list of panicking Asian nations was growing by the hour.
Abrams sighed inwardly, careful not to let the rest of the council see her agitation. The invasion of Taiwan was already underway, and there was nothing anyone could do to help her.
She could only hope that Mark Cole was able to stop General Wu before too many people were killed in the process.
Clark Mason watched Ellen Abrams closely, as he always did at these meetings. He was probing for a weakness, anything he could use against her.
She seemed to pause momentarily, and Mason could see — although she tried to hide it — that the situation was getting to her.
And why wouldn’t it? She was between the proverbial rock and the hard place, unable to help Taiwan and with the whole Asian continent clamoring for US assistance, lest Wu set his sights on them. And without leading by example, without retaliating against China in some way, what weight would be given to US promises in the future?
Mason didn’t envy her at the moment, but he could sense — like a shark in bloody waters — that there was a hint of opportunity here. If Abrams failed in the eyes of the public to show strong leadership, to at least offer token resistance to General Wu’s wholesale takeover of China and her territories, then her position could arguably be so weakened that her presidency would become untenable.
And who would step into her shoes, once the crisis was over and the world had returned to the status quo?
Yours truly, Clark Mason thought with a sly grin, the Vice President of the United States.
Ready to assume the presidency itself, if the current president was unable to perform her duties to the expectations of the American people.
The thought reminded him of the last time he had tried something like this, hoping that Abrams’ handling of the bioweapon threat the previous year would create a similar opportunity. That opportunity had never come, but something else suddenly struck him with that memory — the voice of Doctor Alan Sandbourne.
He knew where he had heard it before.
It took him a while to digest the knowledge, to accept it as true, but in a few short seconds, he was sure. He had no doubt about it at all.
He had heard Sandbourne’s voice piped through the speaker system of this very room, during the bioweapon crisis. Only the name attached to the voice was Mark Cole, a deniable covert operative — a government assassin — codenamed ‘the Asset’.
He had never seen the man, had only seen pictures before his plastic surgery — but Mason was sure he was not mistaken. Doctor Alan Sandbourne was Mark Cole.
And what did that mean?
It didn’t take long to figure out — Mark Cole was on Abrams’ payroll, maybe as an individual contractor, maybe even in command of his own damn hit team.
As the meeting droned on around him, Mason withdrew his cellphone and texted his assistant. ‘Get everything you have found on Sandbourne and the Paradigm Group to my office. One hour.’
Mason pocketed his cell and turned back to the meeting, hiding his smile.