“Off spring who are registered as Chinese,” Jenson added, continuing to support his boy.
“What you’re talking about is a systematic attack on Uighur religion, Uighur resources, Uighur freedom of expression.” Josh paused briefly to gather his thoughts. “Most senior officials and all of the military commanders in Xinjiang are Han stooges appointed by Beijing. The Han control almost every element of the local economy, an economy geared exclusively to the needs of China. This builds a huge amount of resentment, a resentment not solely confined to the Turkic population.”
“What do you mean by that?” Lambert asked.
“Don’t forget that we’re talking about Sufi Muslims here. The examples of fundamentalism seen across the Islamic world in recent years, most notably in Algeria with Hezbollah and in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, have thus far failed to manifest themselves in Xinjiang. The Uighur people are not by nature extremist. That said, some of them fought with the mujahaddin and Beijing has long been concerned about cross-pollination between the Taliban and the Uighur minority. Any kind of trade in weapons across the Afghan- Chinese border, for example, would be virtually unpoliceable. And, of course, those same Taliban have strategic knowledge of fighting the Soviets, knowledge which they might be only too happy to pass on to their Muslim brothers in China. Allow me to finish.”
Marston had begun to speak, but such was the force and confidence of Josh’s request that he was silenced. The CEO of one of the largest corporations in the United States of America, a man who had supped with Kissinger and Gorbachev, was briefly humbled.
“I also wanted to add something here about Saudi Arabia.” Josh cleared his throat and saw that Sally-Ann was looking at him. “We believe that the more the Chinese repress the Muslims of Xinjiang, the more the Saudis will be inclined to give financial assistance to their cause. Again, you only have to look at their support for the Afghan resistance between ‘80 and ‘89 for evidence of what they’re prepared to do. Now this is vitally important as far as China is concerned. Saudi Arabia is a source of oil for China, and China needs to keep that oil flowing in order to facilitate its rapid economic growth. In short, Beijing cannot afford to upset the House of Saud.”
“I know the feeling,” Marston muttered.
It was an impressive monologue, produced in its latter stages entirely without notes. Sally-Ann found a more explicit look of admiration for Josh and the young man from the CIA felt buoyed. Then Miles’s voice came thumping out of the speakers.
“So what does all this add up to?” he asked.
Josh and Jenson caught each other’s eye. The question was rhetorical and they knew that Miles had every intention of answering it. He was about to make the CIA’s case for TYPHOON.
“What it adds up to is an opportunity for the American government to run a clandestine operation in mainland China aimed at bringing about the restoration of democracy in an independent Eastern Turkestan. And, as I understand it, you gentlemen have kindly offered us the full co-operation of your organization in pursuit of that goal.”
Miles’s words substantially shifted the tone of the meeting. Everything was now political. Lambert and Marston leaned forward in their chairs and tried to look like patriots.
“We’re here to help,” Marston said.
“And that’s great. But why do we need your help, sir? Why is this meeting today necessary?” Again, the questions were self-evidently rhetorical. “Well, I guess on one level it’s pretty obvious.” He took a sip of water. “If organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, or Freedom House, want to help run fair elections in, say, Central Africa, maybe try to bring democracy to eastern Europe, then that’s something that the Company has always been able to help them with.” Miles’s mouth was dry and he went for more water. Maybe last night’s hangover was finally kicking in. “But trying to pull that kind of thing off in China is infinitely more complex. Beijing has always been suspicious of non-profit organizations operating within its borders. Fact is, they don’t get in. You might find a few Christian missionaries operating in major cities, some of them even on our books, but as far as China is concerned, the Agency’s hands are tied. There are just too many obstacles to running effective campaigns. So we have to resort to other methods. We’ve had to think out of the box.”
Both Lambert and Marston looked at Jenson as if they were now expected to speak. Instead, aware of the gathering silence in Washington, Miles carried on.
“What we want to suggest to you today, gentlemen, is a strategy on several fronts. Dick, Josh, you OK if I go ahead?”
“Absolutely.”
Miles glanced at a sheet of paper on the desk in front of him on which he had scrawled some bullet-pointed notes. “Now it’s my understanding that Macklinson has offices outside of Beijing in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Harbin, Golmud, Xining and Chengdu. Is that correct?”
“That is correct,” Lambert told him.
“Well then here’s what we would like to suggest.”
18
Sally-Ann McNeil is nowadays a mother of three children-two boys, one girl-living in a quiet suburb of Maryland, married to a balding, wealthy, not exactly charismatic tax attorney named Gerry. Their house, with its low white roof and its sprinkler on the lawn, is no more than an hour’s drive from the airport and resembles every other house on the anonymous residential street on which they have chosen to make their home. Sally-Ann works part-time at a local real estate office, offers private tuition to dyslexic schoolchildren and plays golf with her friend Mary up to three times a week.
“Bill Marston got me into it,” she says. “If he was still alive today, I could kick his ass.”
It took a while to track Sally-Ann down. Her name has changed through marriage and, in the wake of TYPHOON, she was understandably reluctant to stick her head above the parapet. We spoke one weekday afternoon in 2006 in a warm, plant-filled conservatory at the back of her house when Gerry was away at work and the eldest of their children at school. If she was nervous about talking to a nosey writer, she did not betray it, although the breaking of her long silence was something for which she had clearly been preparing herself for some time.
“To be honest, it was all so long ago. I thought nobody would ever ask,” she said, letting the two-week-old baby she was holding in her arms suckle on a manicured finger. “It was part of my job to be anonymous, to be the note taker, the assistant who fixed coffee. Nobody even seemed to notice I was there.” She looked sideways out of the window and her gaze seemed regretful. “I knew right away that I was carrying a pretty burdensome secret. I’ve never told Gerry a thing, you know? I figured the day that I did would be the day that they came looking for me.”
Sally-Ann now began to relate what Miles had said on the long-distance line as the Washington meeting developed either side of lunch. Her voice was low and steady and I was impressed both by her memory and by her grasp of the political ramifications of the discussion. In common with most Europeans over the previous five or six years, I had tended to underestimate the intelligence of the average Bush-voting American, but Sally-Ann was as lucid and as perceptive as I could have wished.
“What you have to remember is that Bill Marston was a politician first and a businessman second,” she said. “With Mike Lambert it was the other way around.” I was taking notes and my pen ran out of ink. She was still talking as I swapped it for a biro in my jacket pocket. “Both of them had this image of themselves as patriots, when in fact they were just ignorant, ambitious neocons. I guess you’ve seen it a lot in the past few years. Throwbacks from a different era with little or no understanding of how anybody east of New York really behaves. Men of money and power whose sole objective is to make America richer and more powerful than she already is. So when this articulate, seemingly well-informed spy from Hong Kong started to suggest using Macklinson hardware and know- how to get access into mainland China, they both just started to glow. The plan was so crazy, but it was perfect. They were going to conceal explosives, weapons, cellphones, laptop computers, printers, photocopiers, even Korans, in Macklinson freight shipments coming in by air or sea from the United States.
