In all the scrambling that ensued, the connection was somehow made. “Hello?” asked Secretary Kow.
“Brief me on the situation, Secretary Kow,” the premier demanded, and Kow did, in just thirty seconds. “We now have less than four minutes to make the call. General Sou and myself.”
“I have informed the secretary that we will not negotiate with economic terrorists,” Sou stated.
“Premier, this man who claims to be Sheldon Jahn has penetrated our defenses expertly,” the secretary said. “The economic benefits to the People’s Republic suffer at a terrific pace when he interrupts the data transfer operations. Ten million pounds every three seconds is not an unreasonable estimate.”
“It’s absurd!” the general snapped.
“Not when you add up the lost trade, the lost banking transactions, the lost commodity trades and all the thousands of small business transactions that go through the wires every second,” the financial secretary argued.
“How could a British pop star have the wherewithal to turn all of it off and on at will?” the premier demanded.
Secretary Kow had trouble getting his words out. “The Hong Kong backbones have all been routed through our offices for better monitoring, Premier.”
“An extremely foolish strategy,” General Sou judged.
“Under your orders. General Sou.”
Sou felt cold. “You are mistaken,” he responded, too quickly.
“One of my predecessors was removed for vigorously resisting your orders to create the data pipeline, General Sou.”
‘Incorrect!” Sou shot back. He vaguely recalled having a handful of number-crunchers dismissed a few years back when they submitted a formal report that spelled out flaws in the ministry’s strategy to isolate possible data leaks. As if some accountant could tell him about security!
“No, I remember this myself,” the premier added.
General Sou said, “Premier—!” But that was as far as he got.
“It is beside the point at this moment. We will deal with this crisis before we deal with the security failure.”
General Sou couldn’t let the accusation go unchallenged. “This is a finance department failure.”
“Obviously, it is not,” the premier said offhandedly. “And did I not say that the matter would wait for later.”
A guilty verdict and a reprimand from the premier, in the presence of another official—what could be worse? Sou found out seconds later. “Secretary Kow, make the call and give the pop star what he wants. We’ll begin damage control immediately afterward. General Sou, you will be on the call with Secretary Kow and you will say nothing unless asked specifically by Secretary Kow. Understood?”
“Yes, Premier.” General Sou wished he were dead.
Chapter 24
“Impressively timed,” Sheldon Jahn sang. “You called back in nine minutes, forty-one seconds. I once wrote a multipart anthem that was exactly that long. It was called ‘Take Me to the Conductor.’ Should have been my ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ You know, of epic proportions, selling records year after year, played to death on FM radio. A standard to measure other epic songs of the era against.”
“What are your demands and who are you?” asked Financial Secretary Kow.
“I’m Sir Sheldon Jahn, don’t you know?”
“I know who you are pretending to be.”
“Listen, Mr. Kow, I’m the real deal. I’m the one and only actual Sir Sheldon Jahn, pop star and knight of the United Kingdom. Anybody else, and this would be illegal.”
The financial secretary said, “I don’t understand.”
“Thanks for asking. You see, I am one of Her Majesty’s knights. Know what it means to be a British knight? It’s a lot more than an honorary title, you know. When I became a knight, I was shouldered with certain responsibilities. The security of the British Empire— past, present and future—rests on my shoulders. Do you understand?”
“Not at all.”
“Then I’ll elucidate. A knight’s role is that of protectorate.”
“You’re a pop star!” The secretary was clearly losing patience.
“I’m a knight. I’m Sir Sheldon Jahn. That means I’m obligated to protect England.”
“What does this have to do with China?”
Sir Jahn tsked. “I’ll explain it just one more time. Hong Kong belongs to England.”
“England occupied Hong Kong once upon a time— it never belonged to England!”
“Once a territory comes under the authority of the Crown, it is always under the authority of the Crown. Any agreement treaty, trade or purchase that would allow the territorial authority to be lost is illegal and nonbinding. By the authority vested in me as a knighted servant of the Crown, I have the legal right to resume control of any former colony, in the name of the Crown. That’s what I have done. Hong Kong belongs to me. Governor Sheldon Jahn.”
“But that doesn’t even make sense!” the Chinese official blurted. “It certainly defies all legal precedent. Your claims are preposterous!”
“Sorry you think so. The fact is, I’m in charge and you can’t do anything about it. Let’s discuss our future cooperative efforts, shall we? I need to meet with my staff. Would you be so good as to let them know who’s the new boss around here?”
“It’s ingenious,” Harold W. Smith said.
“It is?” Remo asked.
“It is,” Mark Howard said. “Sheldon Jahn has gone to the true seat of power in Hong Kong, and it’s a seat of power that almost nobody knew about.”
‘It is an office of accountants?” Chiun mused, stroking his beard. Remo knew he was only seeming to look wise. The telltale wrinkles of confusion were in the corners of his eyes. It made Remo feel better to know he wasn’t the only one who didn’t get it.
“I don’t get it,” he announced.
“Of course you do not,” Chiun said. “The ways of the bureaucratic world are a mystery to you.”
“And that’s how I like it. I don’t need to know what’s going on. I couldn’t care less about any of this.”
“Since they took control of the island, the PRC has assembled a system of electronic data pipelines from throughout the island that funnel data to the Hong Kong Ministry of Finance, specifically to the Financial Logistics Department headquarters. This gives them a central point at which to access all the systems dedicated to financial transactions.”
Remo nodded. “Doesn’t seem too smart, even for Communists.”
“Their compulsion to monitor and control their domain overrode their need to keep their systems distributed.”
“They’ve even done what they could to hinder the use of direct-satellite transmission,” Mark added. “Some satellite feeds go through the monitoring system before being transmitted to the satellites. Jahn’s got control of those now, too.”
“So why don’t they just start sending everything through satellite now?” Remo asked. “Then Sheldon will be sitting there with nothing to control.”
“Not as easy as flipping a switch to reroute the call,” Howard said. “The Chinese designed the system to make it difficult to sidestep. Even if the data feeds could be redirected, there’s the satellite transmission capacity to handle it. The real problem is that you’re talking about all kinds of data, Internet and proprietary data protocols, most of it encrypted. It would take years, and cost billions, to change it all to satellite.”
Smith made a sour, discouraged face. “And Jahn won’t let them do it. He’s created a financial disaster already with his manipulations of the financial data channels. He’ll shut everything down again if he discovers any efforts to bypass his stranglehold.”
Remo made a face himself. He didn’t understand all this stuff. It didn’t make sense to him that electronics had to go one way and couldn’t go another way. It was just electricity, right? Why couldn’t they all just flip a switch and start going into space instead of through the phone wires? “I guess they’re just going to have to bite the bullet and make the switch, then deal with the lost income after they’re up and running again.”