The engine of the Ambassador's Lincoln Continental was running, with the heater warming the interior for Reece Overhalt on his journey to the Foreign Ministry. But the driver walked to the wrought-iron gate to confirm that the noise he was hearing from the narrow tree-lined Xiu Shui Street in Beijing's diplomatic district was a demonstration of students. He had seen nothing like this in China since the Cultural Revolution thirty years earlier. For many of the locally employed Embassy staff, who came out to the Embassy compound to watch, the chanting revived horrific memories of the Maoist-controlled violence which killed so many of their friends and relatives. The compound of lawns and tall green maple and fir trees began to fill up with people, both Americans and Chinese standing side by side in silence as the marchers came closer. The building itself was protected by concrete anti-missile and grenade barricades. The Marine Sergeant posted extra men inside the gate. A small queue of people lining up to get into the Embassy dispersed. Foreign shoppers from the nearby markets hurried away.
The leaders of the demonstration were from Beijing People's University, the spiritual home of the Chinese Communist Party. They had spread out throughout the Jianguomennei area, sealing off roads leading to many of the main embassies. Many wore red bandannas. Others were dressed in blue Maoist suits. Some kept their Western-style jeans. They laid bicycles down as blockades. Students began running, many shaking their fists and screaming as if in a frenzy. Shoulder high, they carried effigies of the Western and Japanese leaders, some made of plaster, some of cardboard and plywood. Outside the American Embassy they doused the plaster effigy of James Bradlay with petrol and set it alight. They stretched the American flag between stepladders until it was taut, then slashed it with knives before lighting it. One student, dressed like Uncle Sam in Stars and Stripes, was pulled forward. They hung a sign around his neck which read: `I am a traitor to the people.' They put a cylindrical dunce's cap on his head, then knelt him down just feet away from the Marine guard on the gate. They pushed his head forward, pulled his arms up behind his back, then pretended to kick, slap, and taunt him. The Embassy compound was now surrounded. One by one students stepped out in front of the crowd to denounce America. There were similar displays of Chinese wrath outside the other embassies which had opposed Operation Dragonstrike. Just a few hundred metres away, the British Embassy and Ambassador's residence were sealed off. Firecrackers were thrown over the gates. On the fringes of the diplomatic area, which adjoined the main tourist district of Beijing, armed and uniformed troops from the Central Guard Regiment were on patrol, ensuring that no one interfered. The Xinhua (New China) News Agency called it a `spontaneous outpouring of anger'.
Reece Overhalt was already half an hour late for his meeting with Jamie Song when he got through on the telephone. The Foreign Minister was careful in his explanation. The only hint that the demonstration was out of his control came when he said: `The timing is unfortunate for our business discussions.'
Overhalt was familiar with Chinese nuances. But he had already decided to play the part of the Western cultural idiot. He believed bluntness was the most effective way to send a message via the Ministry of State Security's telephone tapping agents. `Jamie, we've got submarines with firing solutions ready to go. If we so much as see a tweak of launch preparation from your missiles, you, I, and those students are going to get fried.'
`They won't do it with you here, Reece.'
`Like hell they won't, Jamie. And there are a lot of people in the Pentagon who think we should have done it a damn sight earlier.'
Japanese houses and low-rise apartment buildings were made to fall over. A history of constant earthquakes conditioned the Japanese people to view their housing as essentially temporary structures. It was a mindset reinforced by Imperial ritual. To the south of Tokyo, on the Ise Peninsula, were the Great Shrines at Ise. These commemorated the founding of the Imperial line in the mists of time, and were maintained by Shinto priests. Since ad 478 they had torn down and rebuilt the shrines every twenty years. Sometimes a massive earthquake destroyed everything as in 1923, or the Kobe earthquake of 1995 which devastated that port city, but most of the time people's houses and apartments were buffeted and jolted by an almost continuous series of small and large tremors. Their buildings were therefore lightweight wooden frames and a ferro-concrete surround — and made to flex with the movement of the earth. If the earthquake was strong and they fell over they were comparatively cheap to replace. Light, flexible structures were well suited to surviving low-level earthquakes but were about the worst shelters to use in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. This was not so much because they collapsed in the face of the huge pressures and winds generated by a nuclear explosion: those near the epicentre and for many kilometres beyond were flattened. The lightweight construction of Tokyo's houses and apartments meant that the ones which survived a nuclear attack — the ones at the periphery of the explosion — provided so little protection from the effects of radioactive fallout as to be virtually useless. Gamma radiation passed unimpeded through the roofs and walls of the houses.
The best piece of advice the authorities had given the people was to own a fire extinguisher. Given the materials used in the construction of the Tokyo housing stock, fires were likely in the event of an attack. For survivors of an attack the first two or three days after are a critical time. During this period it is best to stay indoors, because radioactive fallout is at its most lethal immediately after a nuclear explosion. Food, water, and bedding supplies were centralized. A ward could feed up to 300,000 for a day or two; it had 51,000 blankets, 51,000 straw mats, 2,300 portable toilets, and, in underground emergency reservoirs, it had 52,700 metric tons of fresh water. But the surviving population was meant to make its way to designated safety areas where the local government would distribute food and medical aid.
The street that ran past the entrance to Monzennaka-cho on the Tozai line of the Tokyo underground was like any in Tokyo. Next door to Chozushi sushi shop, just four doors from the entrance to the station, is a Japanese sweetshop; next to it a cheap coffee shop, and then Mr Donuts, a popular chain outlet catering to commuters, schoolgirls, and local mums and their children. With a dozen tables and a counter that seats a dozen, Mr Donuts is crowded with as many as a hundred patrons at a time. In the front, two girls bag takeout doughnuts for customers as fast as they can. The store is a virtual madhouse at most hours of the day. The west entrance-exit to the subway is just outside Mr Donuts' door, bounded on the far side by an eat-as-you-stand soba and tempura shop. A woman sits in a tiny news-stand located between the two doors at each end of the soba-tempura shop. Around the corner is the local police koban, sandwiched next to a shoe shop. Then comes Kentucky Fried Chicken, another soba shop, a barber's, a pub, and McDonald's.