The eight left as they came: unseen and til the morning, when the full horror of their actions was discovered noticed. However, throughout the towns and villages along the SinoVietnamese border om Zhelang from the west and Xiatong to the east Vietnamese guerrillas unleashed a series of `pinprick' operations that struck terror in the hearts of local populations and a desire for retribution in China's leaders 2,200 kilometres to the north.
The New World was the pride of Shell's fleet. Its Liberian-registered owner, New World Transport, was a company jointly owned by Shell Transport Maritime and Consolidated Navigation. Built by Hyundai at its Ulan complex in Korea six years earlier, it had cost nearly $60 million. It was the second of two sisters incorporating the latest `Double-Vee' (double hull) design for very large ships, developed by Hyundai Heavy Industries, Korea's biggest conglomerate in collaboration with Monaco-based Consolidated Navigation SA, which enabled a deeper than usual forward double bottom to better absorb a hull impact, and additional ballast tanks to reduce hogging and sagging in rough seas. It was a mammoth vessel some 334 metres long, with a breadth of 59 metres and a depth of 31.50 metres. It had been designed to enable three grades of oil to be transported simultaneously. In all, it was carrying 270,000 tonnes of oil, which its giant seven-cylinder diesel engine (capable of 34,650 b.h.p.) managed to move through the water at a stately 15 knots.
The New World was bound for the Shell refinery near Tokyo. It had taken on its cargo of oil at the Saudi Arabian Ras Tanura terminal in the Persian Gulf, and sailed straight across the Indian Ocean to the Andaman Sea and through the Malacca Straits. It had entered the South China Sea 70 hours earlier, and was sailing at 16g 49 N, 117g 66 E, about 200 nautical miles to the west of the island of Luzon.
The Master, an Englishman in his late forties, had just looked up at the ship's clock on the bridge. He was weary. All day he and his crew had been noting the position of Chinese naval vessels in the South China Sea. They were used to the scream of the engines of high-performance military jets passing overhead. They had also spotted submarine periscopes. He was hoping for at least a couple of hours' sleep. He took a fix with the ship's Global Positioning System (GPS) and noted it in the log. The Master spoke to Shell in the Hague, to confirm his instructions to keep sailing. His Belgian first officer was being woken up. The Master would wait for the BBC World Service radio news at midnight and then hand over the watch until 0300. As the news headlines were being broadcast, the night sound was shattered by automatic weapons fire. Bullets smashed the reinforced glass in the wheelhouse.
THREE
The master slumped to the floor, bleeding. In the pitch black of night a lookout on the starboard side of the New World had failed to notice the two dinghies speeding towards the tanker. They had been launched by the Chinese submarine moments before. By the time he was aware of the dinghies' presence they were about to come alongside. Each carried six commandos. He froze. The twelve men were dressed in Chinese military uniforms. They carried assault rifles, handguns, and stun grenades. All wore steel helmets which partially covered their faces. The Master had regained his composure and was on his feet once again. The bullet had grazed his forehead. He had a minor flesh wound. Nothing more. He turned to the starboard side of the bridge and peered into the chartroom, where his First Officer had been examining charts a few moments before. But instead of a man bent over a chart table, the master saw his First Officer standing with his hands in the air. In front of him was a Chinese soldier who was pointing a pistol at his head. Before the master could react another Chinese soldier appeared and began pushing him back. With his free hand the soldier opened fire on the ship's communications systems. `Officer? Officer?' he yelled, waving the pistol at the Master. `Me!' screamed the Master. The intruder turned to bundle the Master, still bleeding, down the bridge stairway and past a group of frightened seamen, the last time any of them would see him alive. The soldiers, who had since been joined by others, herded the remaining crew-members at gunpoint into a cabin on C deck. From there, the crew of the New World could only hear what was going on. There was the distant sound of shouting. Then the sound of a scuffle followed by running. A gun shot. Silence. The Master had been murdered.
On the bridge, a man in the uniform of Communist China was at the helm.
Jamie Song stood just outside the perimeter of real power, but to the world's television audience he was the face of modern China. He cut an impressive figure. His command of idiomatic American English reflected his years at Harvard, first as a student then as a visiting fellow in the late eighties. Before the Communist Party recognized the worth of his unflustered urbanity, he became a millionaire software tycoon. He counted among his friends the chief executives of many of America's blue-chip companies whom he had guided over the bumpy path of making money in China. He knew they would be watching his interviews. He had turned down the BBC, France's TF1, Germany's ARD, and the other American networks. The televisions in the Pentagon, the White House, the State Department, and in the executive offices of the men who ran corporate America would be tuned to only one channel N. That's why he had allowed CNN to install a satellite dish in the Foreign Ministry compound.
Song was a spiritual child of Deng Xiaoping. One of the sayings that made Deng famous throughout the China of the late 1980s and early 1990s was his injunction to Communist Party officials to `Be bold'. By this Deng meant they should be imaginative in solving the problems of economic development. If this entailed being entrepreneurial then so much the better. After all, it was he who had also said `to get rich is glorious'. Independently wealthy, Song's boldness was displayed for all to see in his television appearances during the crisis. The American government was his enemy. Through CNN the American people could be his allies. Wires trailed through his office. The camera picked up his library in the background with volumes of Mao, Deng, Adam Smith, Thatcher, Churchill, and others. A carved glass model of a golfer was on the window sill. His desk was busy enough to look as if he had been working. And it was getting close to peak lunchtime viewing on the American east coast…
Anchor: On today's show live from Beijing we have the first, exclusive interview with a Chinese leader since the beginning of the South China Sea crisis. He's one of the masterminds of Operation Dragonstrike and he's here to tell why China's doing what none us can understand. Jamie Song, the Chinese Foreign Minister, is going to tell us why China is attacking Vietnam. Why its troops have occupied the atolls and reefs of the Spratly and Paracel Islands places most of us had not heard of a couple of days ago. You can talk soon enough, Jamie. And with me in the studio is Chris Bronowski, a China expert from the Rand Corporation. Chris is a specialist in the Chinese military. He'll tell us if Americans should be afraid of China. It's certainly a lot richer than it used to be. Welcome, Chris.