CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS
Dragonstrike describes a series of events that are global in scale. In the table that follows the clock times in six of the most important time zones in the world are shown as they are at the beginning of each chapter.
France and Germany are an hour ahead of GMT, Moscow two hours, and both the Spratly and the Paracel island groups are eight hours ahead, in the Chinese time zone. Because the tables show clock time the figures are different from those in a map of time zone differences which would show for example 8 as 8 because the sun passed across it at noon eight hours earlier.
ONE
A thin frost covered the paving stones around Tiananmen Square: the most haunting symbol of Chinese Communist power. The lights on its edges shone through the smog which hung around the city. The bored and cold figures of the young soldiers stood guard around the square, a monument to the Party's success in ruling the motherland. Apart from them it was empty. A furtive, eerie silence lingered across its hundred acres and its buildings.
To the south was the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, the twentieth-century emperor, whose turbulent revolutions had laid the seeds of today's robust one-party state. Out of granite he had built the Monument to the Martyrs of the People, 30 metres tall with 170 life-sized figures and a plinth, inscribed in his own handwriting Eternal Glory to the People's Heroes. To the east were the gigantic Museum of the Chinese Revolution and the Museum of History. To the west, the pillars and steps of the Great Hall of the People stretched more than 300 metres from one end to the other. Its banquet hall held 5,000 guests and the Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Rooms served as memories to China's once lost territories and the humiliating dismemberment of the motherland.
To the north was Tiananmen Gate, where Mao Zedong proclaimed Communist Party victory in 1949 and where his enduring portrait still hung. Five bridges ran from there towards the gates of the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Gate was the link between the new and the old emperors. The Forbidden City was the Great Within. There were 9,000 rooms in over 250 acres once attended by 70,000 Imperial Eunuchs. Its doors opened onto the square, from which was drawn the power and patriotism for the whole of China. Tonight this was the reference point for the man who wanted to be emperor. A few hundred metres to the west, next door to the Forbidden City, were the high, red-painted walls of Zhongnanhai. The sign inside the main gate proclaimed in large Chinese characters: To serve the People. Along the wall on the west side of the gate a slogan read: Long live the great Chinese Communist Party. On the east wall another paid tribute: Long live the unbeatable thoughts of Chairman Mao. The broad, uncluttered roads, the drooping willows, frozen lakes, reception rooms, and luxurious houses were more modern but no less mysterious, no less prohibited, than the Forbidden City was in Imperial times. The symbols of power in the modern state were everywhere surveillance cameras, microwave dishes, and radio transmitters. The armed men in green uniforms at the gates belonged to the Central Guards Regiment, once known as the legendary unit 8341, which had protected China's leaders since the Revolution. Their success record was remarkable for such a turbulent country. The unit of more than 8,000 men secured the secrets of the Communist Party. For Western intelligence, this was one of the least penetrable centres of power in the world. Recruits to the Guards Regiment had to be illiterate or barely educated and were usually from peasant families in remote mountainous areas. Not one senior leader had been assassinated since 1949. The guards were told that the Chinese President would leave shortly before 0500 hours. When the motorcade of three stretched Mercedes 88-series limousines approached, the heavy wooden gates swung open. Four motorcycle outriders on turbocharged 1100cc BMWs flanked the convoy at the front and back.
They drove without flashing lights and sirens. It was a black convoy. The moon barely cut its image through the pollution. The streets were deserted. The homeless warmed themselves around fires under flyovers. The latest figures reported to the Politburo said the number of unemployed had now reached 250,000,000. That was the population of America wandering the country, homeless, tired, penniless. They had yet to become violent, but poverty had severed their bond to the Communist Party. Only fear kept them quiet.
Chinese leaders usually preferred to travel by the network of underground roads and railways, but tonight President Wang wanted to savour the city he was about to change for ever. No one spoke in his car. The driver turned west onto the Avenue of Eternal Peace. To the left, they passed the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Cooperation, which had so skilfully coaxed in foreign investment. America's blue-chip companies, Boeing, Motorola, McDonald's, and others, were entrenched in billion-dollar investments and twenty-year finance plans. The landmarks above the Socialist buildings were the neon signs Kenwood, Digital, and Remy Martin. All had ignored the pleading of human rights groups and continued their business with the world's biggest authoritarian government. All had made money and advocated constructive engagement with Communism which had allowed the economy to boom. On the right, they passed the Air China offices, the Minzu Hotel, and the Bank of China. They crossed the Second Ring Road and went by the Military Museum, which would soon have another glorious victory to add to its exhibits.
Further west, outside China Central Television, the regular guards had been replaced by a detachment from the Guards Regiment. They would also be outside the Xinhua (New China) News Agency building. Beijing's street lights became intermittent, the landmarks less important. In less than half an hour they passed the Summer Palace, the imperial retreat sacked by Western armies in the nineteenth century. The road wound round towards the Botanical Gardens, where they turned left into a country road flanked by peach orchards. Military aerials protruded from the ground. Antennas were on the hills in the distance. The Operations Command Centre of the People's Liberation Army was carved out of the mountain in the fifties when China believed it was under nuclear threat from the United States. The cavernous rooms were still used now.
This was the culmination of the President's career, which began when he was given a pistol by his father at the age of five. He was born in the early 1940s in the mountains of Yan'an where Mao was running the civil war against the Nationalists. Wang's father, Wang Fei, was a veteran of the Long March and a Marshal. As the Communist Party became entrenched in power, the young Wang made friends with the sons and daughters of the leaders. He attended the elite 101 secondary school, where he was a star of the soccer team. In the army, he served in Yunnan in the south-west and in Heilongjiang on the Russian border in the far north-east, but the turning point of his career was the command of a regiment in the war against Vietnam of 1979. The campaign was a military disaster. It was meant to teach Vietnam a lesson for overthrowing the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia: instead, the skilled Vietnamese fighters slaughtered Chinese troops as they charged across the border in human waves. China lost between 15,000 and 20,000 men. Wang managed to capture the main border town of Lang Son. He blew up the city centre before withdrawing, and was convinced then that China had to modernize its armed forces. It should never be humiliated again by a foreign army. He also harboured an ambition to avenge the deaths of so many Chinese soldiers. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, Wang was about to launch his terrible riposte. Before the week was over, the strategic map of the Pacific would be redrawn. China's honour would be upheld and Wang's position as paramount leader established as unassailable.