wall.
Each cell was tiny, filthy, eight feet wide by nine feet long, with a full-length steel-barred door, like something from an old Western movie. There was a stark wooden bench, a bucket, and no water. And one by one the guards pushed the men inside and slammed the doors shut and locked. The six cells were adjoining and faced a dirt-floored outside corridor that went right around. There were four empty cells at the end of the corridor now occupied by Judd and his men, which probably meant that there were 10 more cells in the back. Judging by the silence, they were empty.
As the last door slammed on Brad Stockton, Commander Li came briskly through the outside door and walked slowly past all six of the Americans.
“These are temporary quarters,” he said. “You will be moved tomorrow with the rest of your men. But first you will meet the most distinguished Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Navy, who will discuss with you the terms of your stay here…and the degree of technical cooperation we expect from you.”
At this point Captain Crocker spoke for the first time. “Commander, we are obliged to provide you with our names, ranks, and serial numbers, under the terms of the Geneva Convention of 1949. We are not obliged to provide you with anything further. Those are the rules of war, and are generally adhered to by all countries.
“Two things, Captain Crocker,” snapped Commander Li. “First, my country had been a very substantial civilization for four thousand years when your people were still eating tree roots. Second, we are not at war, which I suggest makes the Geneva Convention irrelevant.”
“You are treating my men as if we were at war.”
“Perhaps a different kind of war, Captain Crocker. Be ready to meet our exalted Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Zhang Yushu, in one hour. I think you will find him…persuasive. In terms of pure science, of course.”
Admiral Zhang Yushu occupied the big chair and desk normally reserved for the Southern Commander, Admiral Zu Jicai. Gathered around him in this great carpeted military office, seated on huge, carved wooden antique “thrones,” was the very backbone of the Navy of China. To his right sat his friend Jicai, under whose command
Admiral Yibo Yunsheng, the Eastern Fleet Commander, had just flown in from Shanghai. A former commanding officer of the old strategic missile submarine
The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Sang Ye, had arrived from Beijing. He and Zhang had known each other for many years, and neither would tolerate a wrong word about the other. Sang Ye held great influence over the purse strings of the Chinese Navy, and this was an operation that might require the spending of big money.
The Chief of the General Staff himself, Qiao Jiyun, had flown to Canton on the same private jet that had brought Sang Ye, because it was plainly not merely a matter for the Navy. This was a national military matter that might, if improperly handled, suck China into a headlong confrontation with the USA.
To stress the strong political ramifications of the situation, the Paramount Ruler had insisted that the newly promoted Political Commissar of the People’s Liberation Army/Navy, Admiral Xue Qing, attend this strategy meeting in company with a full staff of deputies, who now waited in an outside room.
The main office, in which now sat the most senior figures in the Chinese Navy, was not really an office at all, but much more of a room of state, as if transplanted from the Great Hall of the People. It seemed to be a thousand years old with its massive 100-foot-long antique Persian rug, which had once been transported with Marco Polo all the way along the old Silk Road.
But the room was only four years old, constructed especially for great meetings such as these in one of the buildings of China’s new Senior Service. Only since the turn of the twentieth century had the colossal importance of the Navy been recognized. It had plainly superseded the Army as the front line of China’s military ambitions, and indeed defense.
For several years, visiting politicians and commanders had sat in plain functional Navy-base rooms until, one morning back in 1999, the Paramount Ruler himself expressed disgust that the most exalted and trusted people in the entire country were somehow sitting in a military slum attempting to solve the destiny of one and a quarter billion people.
“I like coming to Ghuangzhou,” he had said, using as ever the modern Chinese name. “And I am always honored to talk to my commanders here, and to see our great ships. But please, will someone provide us with a comfortable room in which we may speak — something commensurate perhaps with the expectations of those who occupy high offices of state, and from whom much is expected.”
Thus the great room was constructed, with four towering round columns decorated with deeply patterned red silk. Exquisite ornamental lacquer ware, inlaid with gold, from the Ming dynasty of the mid-fifteenth century, was placed upon the most spectacular carved tables from the same period. Upon the wall, behind Admiral Zhang, was a giant painting of the procession of the Ming Emperor Wuzong, his ornate carriage of state pulled forward by a team of elephants.
Two paintings of similar size, each 10 feet in height, were set above the door, one of the former Paramount Ruler Mao Zedong, the other of the Great Reformer Deng Xiaoping, who had once occupied the chairmanship of the Military Affairs Commission. It was he who had promoted Zhang Yushu to C-in-C of the Navy.
And now Deng’s protege sat at the enormous 12-foot-square carved desk, flanked on either side by two traditional high blue-and-white Ming vases, placed strategically, port and starboard, upon the scarlet leather. They were there as a testimony not only to the grandeur of Chinese culture, but also as a reminder to visiting foreign commanders and dignitaries that China invented fine porcelain in the seventh century, or, as the Paramount Ruler preferred to state it, “
Staring happily out from between the vases, Zhang looked like an emperor himself. He called the meeting to order and quickly outlined the story of the captured American submarine.
“Frankly,” he said, “the submarine is an embarrassment. Its presence here will infuriate the Americans, who will, first, want it back, second, invent ways to punish us economically and third, may even carry out military action against us, which would be unfortunate in the extreme.
“The USA is very powerful and very vicious when it has a mind to be. And they would have a case against us. Whatever we may say diplomatically, their submarine was in international waters, where they had a perfect right to be…and we have effectively stolen it.
“However, that will not of course be our argument. We will concentrate on how shocked we are that the USA should have brought such a weapon of mass destruction that close to our coastline — as close as the Cuban missiles were to theirs in 1962 when President Kennedy was happy to risk starting a world war.
“Gentlemen, I should like to clarify our purpose. In our great quest to create a modern, blue-water Navy, we lack one thing — the knowledge to build world-class submarines, which is the one boat that will always keep us safe from attack, allow us to blockade and retake Taiwan, and provide us with control over the world’s shipping routes to the east. But despite all of our careful acquisition of the secret computer formulas and discoveries of Western nations, we have not been able to copy them adequately. There are subtleties in the systems that we do not understand.…”
Admiral Zhang quite suddenly stood up. And he paced behind his chair in front of Emperor Wuzong’s parade, and then he stated very simply, “Gentlemen, the answer to all of our prayers is currently parked on submarine jetty zero-five.”
He paused to allow the full effect of his words to settle on his colleagues. And he added, “Working from plans and documents is one thing, but it is not nearly so effective as working from the real thing, which you can touch, and dismantle and restart, and strip down and examine with the finest available minds in China, and even beyond. I have already sent for a team of twelve senior submarine engineers and scientists from the Russian Central Design Bureau of Marine Engineering in Saint Petersburg.
“They were of course reluctant to come at such short notice, but we are, as you know, their biggest customers these days, by a very long way. And they felt they had to oblige us. I sent a military aircraft to bring them in, in the hope that my friend and colleague Vice Admiral Sang Ye will not object to the expenditure.”
