On the mezzanine level, Chun maneuvered quickly through a maze of narrow corridors. The five concentric rings that gave some logic to room numbers on the Pentagon’s aboveground floors all disappeared in the dingy subterranean complex. “I see why you call it the bowels, Major. Tell me, what’s it like working for the top dog? Lotta guys your rank would give their eyeteeth for a chance like you’ve got,” the admiral asked, trying to be informal with the junior officer.
“Well, sir, between you and me, they can have it. Only time I ever see the top dog lately is after eleven at night, when he sends all the other aides home and I get to hang around to close up after him. Sometimes he works till one A.M., making calls all over the country, all over the world. It’s gotten real crazy around here last few months. He’s driven, sir, but I don’t know by what. You can see it in his eyes. There’s a fire. He never relaxes. Even when he went golfing down in Houston last month with these big oil company execs, he was having me place secure calls on the satphone for him almost every other hole.”
They arrived in front of a metal door. A camera looked down on them from the right of the door. On the left was a phone and a small aluminum box attached to the wall. The box had no top, and Major Chun placed his hand inside it and punched numbers onto a keypad hidden from the eyes of passersby. The door clicked open.
“Admiral, I will leave you here, sir, with Dr. Wallace, to get the briefing. If you could, sir, come by when you are done and I’ll have your orders and schedule ready for you to get on the plane tonight and be billeted in Turkey tomorrow,” the major explained, handing Adams off to a civilian who looked to be in his late fifties, with curly gray hair, rimless glasses, and an ill-fitting brown suit. Adams wondered if he would ever be able to retrace his route to the Secretary’s office, many stories above.
Dr. Wallace asked Adams to sign a paper in a folder with a cover sheet that read “Special Access Program, Eyes Only, Opal.” The paper had been prepared with Adams’s name, rank, service number, and date of birth already entered. “Now I can give you the briefing,” Wallace said, walking into a small theaterlike room off the vault’s foyer. There were three rows of cinema-style seating, but no audience. Adams chose the aisle seat in the second row.
Dr. Wallace walked to a podium and pressed a button, and the large screen came alive with an image of a yellow dragon on the deck of a Chinese junk. The dragon and the boat were set on a backdrop of loud red. The words “Special Access Program” and “Top Secret Opal” appeared. The civilian suddenly became animated, too, walking in front of the podium, folding his fingers into a pyramid. “We will now tell you everything we know about the Chinese fleet. And that is quite a lot.”
The screen showed video of a large aircraft carrier slowly moving in what appeared to be Sydney Harbor. The video was clearly filmed from a helicopter. “The Zhou Man arriving for a friendly port call last year in Australia. She was stripped down. Only a few aircraft on board for the visit. No nukes. A few antennae missing. Most of the electronics off. Nonetheless, a most impressive ship, wouldn’t you say, Admiral?”
“I’d say she looks as big as the Stennis, Reagan, or Bush. Only newer. Sleeker,” Adams offered, beginning to understand what he was doing there. “As commander Fifth Fleet, I have not had to keep up with the Chinese fleet modernization, Dr. Wallace, but I do already know that it surprised us.”
Wallace sat down in the chair in front of Adams and turned sideways to face him. “Surprised some in our Navy, Admiral. Not me. I told them it was coming. You could see it. The Chinese bought the HMAS Melbourne, a steam catapult carrier, from the Aussies. Said it was for a maritime theme park. Then they got the Varyag, a sixtyseven-thousand-ton aircraft carrier, from Ukraine and made it into a casino.” A glint shone in the civilian’s eyes. “Our Navy experts said that Russia would never sell carrier technology to a competing Pacific fleet. Well, they didn’t. Ukraine did.
“Ukraine had all the carrier expertise and all the fighter aircraft development skills needed. And Ukraine has no Pacific fleet to worry about! Do they?
“So, in four years, the People’s Liberation Army’s navy, the PLAN, put to sea three full-sized, conventionally powered aircraft carriers from Delian Shipyard, not with jump jets like our Navy experts supposed, but with catapult-launched fighters, Sukois and Yaks, from Ukraine.”
Adams had the feeling he had been locked in a darkened room with a mad scientist. He leaned back in the rocking-chair cinema seat. “But a carrier is just a supertanker with a flat deck. It’s about her electronics, her aircraft’s electronics, and her escorts.”
“ Zhou Man’s escorts were visiting Brisbane, Melbourne, and Perth at the same time she was in Sydney,” Wallace said, jumping up and hitting the clicker to pull up another image. “Here is the Ping Yuen. Looks just like a Burke-class Aegis air defense destroyer, doesn’t it? Vertical launch tubes for supersonic missiles, phased array radar. Jiangnan shipyard has built six so far.”
Adams was impressed.
Wallace was not done. “Here coming into Brisbane harbor is the Fu Po, an eight-thousand-ton nuclear-powered attack submarine every bit as good as the Russians’ Victor III. Long-range cruise missiles that would sink a carrier. They have two already in operation.”
All this information was what he would have known had he been reading his Jane’s Intelligence Report, Adams thought. So why am I locked up with Doctor Science in a vault, having signed my life away to be let in to some special secret club? “Okay, they have made great progress, more than some expected in such a short time frame, but what is so secret about…?” Adams asked.
“I was wondering when you would ask,” Wallace said, resuming his place behind the podium. On-screen was a picture of a PLAN officer posing with the Sydney Opera House in the background. “What we tell people is that DIA has great sources inside China. Well, that’s not really true. Admiral Fei Tianbao, commander of the Zhou Man battle group. He loved Australia when they went there on that courtesy diplomatic port call. Had a great time. Met distant cousins who live there. The Aussies ended up loving him, too.”
Pictures flashed of Tianbao at dinners, bars, sporting events. “I am not supposed to tell you his name, Admiral, but you might meet him someday, so I thought you should know.” Adams noticed that in the bottom right of every picture there was a designation ASIS-C-0091N. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service. They had turned the Chinese admiral.
“Only a dozen people in the building have been cleared by DIA to get this compartment, plus a few at the White House and the intel community. No one on the Hill. What I was supposed to tell you is only that we have a highly placed source in the PLA, with proven access, with a record of reliable reporting, who has told us the following.” A new slide showed south China at the top right and Iran at the top left, and the Indian Ocean at the bottom.
“The Huang Hai shipyard has not been building warships. It’s built roll-on/roll-off vessels to move cars and trucks. Here’s one.” A long, blue-and-white, boxlike ship appeared on-screen. “They are almost five hundred feet long and carry two thousand cars and berths for thirteen hundred people. China Shipping Group owns eight. All eight are scheduled to sail this month from Zhanjiang in south China to Karachi in Pakistan and Port Sudan. Carrying Chinese cars, being exported.