Threat Vector

under the noon sun.

It was a beautiful day. Wei caught himself wishing he came here more than once a year.

A voice called from behind. “Zongshuji?” It was one of his titles, general secretary, and though Wei was president as well, his staff put his role as general secretary of the Communist Party well above his role as president of the country.

The party was more important than the nation.

Wei ignored the voice, and now he regarded two gray vessels in the water just a mile or so offshore. A pair of Type 062C coastal patrol boats sat motionless on the still water, their cannons and antiaircraft guns pointed skyward. They looked powerful, impressive, and ominous.

But to Wei they looked inadequate. It was a big ocean, a big sky, both were full of threats, and Wei knew that he had powerful enemies.

And he feared that after the meeting he was about to have with his nation’s top military official, his list of enemies would soon grow even larger.

* * *

The pinnacle of power in China is the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, the tiny body that sets policy for the nation’s 1.4 billion citizens. Each year in July the members of the PSC, as well as dozens if not hundreds of adjuncts and assistants, leave their offices in Beijing and travel one hundred seventy miles to the east to the secluded coastal resort of Beidaihe.

It is suggested that more strategic decisions affecting China and its people are decided in the small meeting rooms in the buildings in the forests and along the beaches of Beidaihe than in Beijing itself.

Security had been tight at this year’s Standing Committee retreat, even more so than in recent times. And there was good reason for the extra protection. President and General Secretary Wei Zhen Lin had retained his hold on power, thanks to the backing of his nation’s military, but popular dissent in the nation was growing against the Communist Party of China and protest rallies and civil disobedience, something not seen in large scale in China since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, had sparked in several of the provinces. In addition to this, though the coup plotters had been arrested and imprisoned, many associates of the leadership of the plot still remained in positions of high authority, and Wei feared a second coup attempt more than anything else in this world.

In the more than ninety years the CPC had been in existence, it had never been as fractured as it was at this moment.

Several months ago Wei had been one second away from putting a bullet into his own brain. He woke most nights covered in sweat from the nightmares of reliving those moments, and these nightmares had created paranoia.

Despite his fears, Wei was well protected now. He remained under heightened guard by members of China’s security and military forces, because China’s security and military forces had a stake in the man now, they owned him, and they wanted him safe from harm.

But this provided little comfort for Wei, because he knew that, at any moment, the People’s Liberation Army could turn against him, and his protectors would become his executioners.

The Beidaihe conference had closed the day before, the majority of the attendees had returned to the bustle and smog of Beijing, but President Wei had delayed his trip west for a day to meet with his closest ally in the Politburo. He had things to discuss with General Su, the chairman of the Central Military Commission and, he explained when he asked for the meeting, the government offices in Beijing were not a secure enough venue for this matter to be addressed.

Wei had high hopes for this informal meeting because the conference itself had been a failure.

He’d opened the week of talks with a frank and bleak update on the economy.

The news of the attempted coup had only scared more investors away from the nation, weakening the economy further. Wei’s enemies had waved this fact around as even more evidence that his opening of China’s markets to the world had made China beholden to the whims and whimsy of the capitalist whore nations. Had China remained closed, and traded exclusively with like-minded nations, then the economy would not have been so vulnerable.

Wei had listened to these statements from his political foes, and he had done so without any outward expression. But he found the assertions idiotic, and those making the assertions to be fools. China had benefited greatly from world trade, and had China remained closed off for the past thirty years, while the rest of the planet underwent mind-boggling economic development, either the Chinese would now be eating dirt like the North Koreans or, more likely, the proletariat would have stormed Zhongnanhai and killed every last man and woman in government office.

Ever since the coup attempt he had worked tirelessly, mostly in secret, on a new plan to right his nation’s economic ship without destroying his government. He presented it at the retreat to the Standing Committee, and the Standing Committee had rejected it out of hand.

They made it plain enough to Wei; they held him responsible for the economic crisis, and they would not attach their support to any portion of his domestic plan to cut spending, wages, benefits, and economic development.

So Wei knew at yesterday’s close of the Beidaihe conference that his preferred course of action was dead in the water.

Today he would lay the foundation for his secondary course of action. He felt it would work, but it would not be without hurdles as great or greater than some short-term domestic pain.

As he stood at the water’s edge the voice from behind called again. “General Secretary?”

Wei turned to the voice, found the man calling out among the phalanx of security guards surrounding him. It was Cha, his secretary.

“It’s time?”

“I just received word. Chairman Su has arrived. We should get back.”

Wei nodded. He would have liked to stay out here all day in his slacks and sleeves. But he had work to do, and this work would not keep.

He began walking up the beach, back to his obligations.

* * *

Wei Zhen Lin entered a small conference room adjacent to his quarters at the resort, and he found Chairman Su Ke Qiang waiting for him.

The two men embraced perfunctorily. Wei felt the collection of medals on General Su’s left breast against his own chest.

Wei did not like Su, but he would not be in power without Su. He would likely not be alive without Su.

After their perfunctory embrace, Su smiled and took his seat at a small table adorned with an ornate traditional Chinese tea service. The big general — Su stood over six feet tall — poured tea for both men while their two secretaries took seats against the wall.

“Thank you for staying behind to speak with me,” Wei said.

“Not at all, tongzhi.” Comrade.

It was small talk at first, gossip about the other Standing Committee members and light discussion about the events of the retreat, but soon Wei’s eyes hardened in seriousness. “Comrade, I have tried to make our colleagues see the calamity that is about to transpire if we do not take desperate measures.”

“It has been a difficult week for you. You know that you have the full support of the PLA, and my own personal support, as well.”

Wei smiled. He knew that Su’s support was hardly unconditional. It depended on Wei falling into line.

And Wei was about to do just that. “Tell me about the readiness of your forces.”

“The readiness?”

“Yes. Are we strong? Are we prepared?”

Su’s eyebrows rose. “Prepared for what?”

Wei sighed for a moment. “I tried to set in place difficult but necessary domestic austerity measures. I failed in this endeavor. But if we do nothing at all, by the end of the current five-year plan, China will find itself pushed back a generation or more in its development, we will be thrown from power, and the new leaders will drive us further into the past.”

Su said nothing.