The Ninja and the Diplomat, page 14
part #2 of The Chinese Spymaster Series
“I don’t see it happening that way, brother,” countered Emilio. “The government will be pushed into a corner and it will decide it cannot give in. The people would be frightened into taking the side of the government, at least for a few months. Other countries would be horrified except maybe the Islamic League or the Sudanese or Boko Haram and we do not need friends like that.”
Hashim struggled with his thoughts for a while and said, “I must confess, this whole thing does not feel right even though I was intrigued by the unusual circumstances. I thought perhaps that was a sign of something.”
“Think of the horrendous damage it would cause,” cried Mariam.
“If the government thinks this is the beginning of a series of such attacks,” opined Emilio, “it would declare martial law and ask its allies for help. Meanwhile, our people would be stunned and there will be no way we could rally them to any cause against the government.”
Hashim thought for a moment, then sighed. “It seemed to me at the time I decided to go to Macau, that it would work. But I agree with you. This would be a huge mistake.”
***
In Cotabato, two of Hashim’s recently cultivated associates made their way up a small hill overlooking the camp. They had visited this camp several times over the past few days to determine if the helicopters were parked in any sort of pattern, as well as to assess the level of security they would have to deal with. They determined that the barriers and patrols would not require more than the two of them. Smaller teams had the advantage of greater secrecy.
The same bright moon over Manila shone over Cotabato so the young men were careful to remain in the shadows. Weekend passes had almost emptied the base, but they still worried. There had been a bush near the top of the hill overlooking the helicopters parked in the base. They found it without meeting any patrols and began to prepare the missile for launching. A guard among the helicopters lit up a cigarette. They both stopped, not wanting to take a life.
“This is silly,” said one of them. “We are in a war.”
“Right,” replied his companion as they resumed targeting their missile. They aimed for a pair of helicopters parked together, not noticing a large tank just beyond the birds. The missile tore into its targets and sent a fiery blaze into the clear moonlit sky.
***
Hashim’s phone showed an incoming text. “The missile went off in Cotabato,” he announced. “It made a much bigger show than expected because they actually hit a fuel dump they didn’t know about at the army base.”
“What happens next?” asked Mariam as they pulled into a space near Hashim’s house.
“Something will turn up,” stated Hashim with confidence. At that moment his cell-phone buzzed, another text message.
Meet me at the surau tomorrow. Imam M.
“Who’s that?” asked Emilio.
“Remember the fight in Cotabato? He was the imam there, but several of the other moro groups defer to him. He is in town and we are invited to visit,” explained Hashim.
The next day, Emilio and Hashim drove to a surau on the edge of a shanty town in Manila. Their walk from the car through the neighborhood was closely watched but no one accosted them, even when they entered the modest meeting place. They had dressed in the oldest clothes they had but the manner of their walk signaled that they were not from the neighborhood.
“Welcome, brothers,” hailed a voice from inside a room to the side of the prayer hall. They entered and saw a middle-aged man seated with two younger men and sat down opposite them. They stared at Mariam, a woman and evidently Chinese. No one like her had ever walked into their neighborhood.
“I thought it was time for us to talk,” remarked the imam. “There is interesting news from Cotabato It appears that an army base was attacked last night and many helicopters were destroyed, together with a fuel tanker. What happens next?”
“I do not intend to spread devastation throughout our country,” declared Hashim.
“But,” noted his host, “you want various people to pay attention. You have wanted us to pay attention.” As Hashim remained silent, the cleric continued,
“Let us say, you have our attention. What is your message?”
“It has not changed since we met in Cotabato. I would like the leaders of the Moros to be united. Further, they should be prepared to open the movement to those who are not Muslim.”
“Do you think you will be the leader of all, Moros and their new friends?” asked the imam.
“No, I think there should be a council of leaders,” affirmed Hashim.
“The other leaders will be impressed, I am impressed, by the new weapons you have brought into our conflict. But I do not think that the government can let such an attack on an army base continue without reprisal. Those who suffer will be Moros. How do you propose to protect us?”
“We tell the government that there can be peace or more violence. They have offered us autonomy but what we want is social justice. For example, we want justice for the Maguindanao murdered more than five years ago. But they must understand that we do not want it just for the Maguindanao, we want it for all Bangsamoro, for all Filipinos.”
“You think the government will back down because we threaten them with a revolution? Are you mad?”
“I may be, but I think they have taken us lightly because we have asked for too little and because we have limited ourselves by speaking only for the Bangsamoro. We should stand for all Filipinos excluded from the wealth of the nation. Look at the people in the slums just outside this house. Look at the children on the streets, playing among garbage.
“How long have they lived like that? Their fathers and ours fought for freedom together, yet some have gained great wealth and so many others exist on the margin of this great nation. There are street children sniffing glue, using drugs, so they do not feel their hunger. It is not only the Moros who are excluded. We are only the most organized opposition to the oligarchs who have manipulated the political process to their advantage.”
“You may be right, brother,” interjected the man on the imam’s right, a leader of a moro group that Hashim had known casually. “But the government will condemn these acts as committed by terrorists. They will get much sympathy and support from other countries that fear political violence in their own countries.”
“Then why have the Moros continued to fight?” countered Hashim. “Why have we not surrendered all our arms and gone back to our farms and villages?”
“Brother,” remonstrated another companion of the imam. “We have recently signed a peace agreement with the government. We can look forward to autonomy for Bangsamoro. Do you think that is not a good thing?”
“It is a good thing when the killing stops,” replied Hashim skeptically. “It is much better if justice should prevail.”
“Violence,” declared the imam, “will only bring the government to the position that it must rise to the challenge.”
“Are you saying you will not help us?”
“Hashim,” decided the imam. “I think that you are right. It is better to fight for social justice than to fight only for Moros to be left alone.”
“But you think we Filipinos are all too set in our ways,” interjected Hashim. “Both the national politicians and the Moros.”
“I think that your way is unlikely to succeed. Perhaps some of the moro energy could go into the national political scene. But there is a lot of money against any true reform of Filipino society or politics. The national politicians have agreed to give the Moros some freedoms. Perhaps they did that because they feared further violence. It may be some of them foresaw what you advocate and decided it would be cheaper to do this.”
“I think what you are saying, Imam, is that you will not help us.”
The imam thought for a long while then stated, “You must think, Hashim, what the government will do, what it must do, when you push against it as hard as you are doing. Imagine also how other moro groups will react when they learn about the weapons you have. Have you forgotten what happened to Tok Mat?”
Hashim was startled to hear the name of his old mentor, then he sickened at the realization that the old man had fallen to the same internal quarrels within the Bangsamoro that he now faced.
***
Hashim and his friends left soon, as it had become clear that they could not persuade the imam and the others.
“The imam is right,” conceded Emilio. “Further, unless you want to keep fighting, others will come to take the weapons from us. There are some who will fight to the end. I know that is not what you want.”
“What do YOU want?” demanded Hashim.
Emilio paused briefly before answering, “I am with you for as long as you want. But if you want to stop fighting, I am happy to spend more time with the youth centers. Meanwhile, we need to think about what we want to do with the rest of the weapons.”
“Maybe the police or army will get an anonymous tip telling them where to find the stash,” stated Hashim.
“Even the nuclear device?” asked Emilio.
“Especially that, I would think,” declared Hashim.
“I think that now is the time,” announced Mariam as she reached underneath the passenger seat of the car and brought out a small paper bag.
“A precaution we thought we might need some day,” explained Emilio with a warning look at Mariam who gave a small nod of acknowledgement.
They would say nothing about the Chinese policeman.
“After this, you must not go back to your house,” asserted Emilio. “Come stay with Mariam and me if you like. Next week, you can start that electronics repair shop you have been talking about.”
As they dismantled their old phones and exchanged with each other their new numbers, Hashim felt that they were taking apart his life over the last ten years. It had come down to this, he realized and murmured,
“This is so unreal.”
Contents
CHAPTER 16
The fourth Monday, in Beijing
While Deputy Minister Yu was at the weekly meeting of the Committee on Public Safety, he and everyone else in the committee knew that investigations continued regarding his involvement with the theft and export of military supplies. Indeed, at the very same time, two members of the party’s Discipline Inspection Commission were interviewing Hu, the former administrator of the intelligence agency, who had only recently met with the deputy minister and received from him a gift for his old army comrade Bo’s herbal business.
“You say in your statement that Deputy Minister Yu gave you a large sum of money,” stated one of the interrogators.
“Yes,” Hu replied impatiently. He was familiar with the techniques used in these investigations; he used them himself when, long ago it seemed, he interrogated suspects. But he felt resentment and anger and had consciously to focus his mind on clarity of thought, equanimity of mind.
“Where is it now?”
“Most of it has been spent, and I believe the receipts are included with my statement.”
“The receipts do not add up to the total amount,” continued the investigator.
“I have written an explanation in my statement.”
“Forgive me, Director Hu,” assured the questioner, using Hu’s current title to emphasize the formality of this occasion. “That is what we need you to confirm. Surely, you are familiar with this line of questioning.”
“I am, and I apologize for being impatient. The difference is due to various amounts for which no receipts were received. They were for ‘informal fees’ incurred during the process of applying for permission for the Bo household to transfer residence from the village to the city, for the right to rent their apartment in the city, and for the licenses required to continue their business selling herbal medicine in the village while extending the enterprise in the city.”
“You are not suggesting by ‘informal fees’ that bribes were offered or requested, are you?”
“No. As I understand these matters, they are customary payments to facilitate various processes. They add up to less than five percent of the total sum.”
“This is not a satisfactory explanation, but as you say, the amounts total less than five percent of the total,” declared the lead investigator who had done all the talking for the two of them. “Perhaps you could shed some light on your statement to the deputy minister, that for his investment in the business he could expect to receive fifty percent of the company.”
“I did make that remark, as I noted in my statement, in a jocular fashion. That was how it was received by the deputy minister,” recalled Hu, preparing himself for the question that he knew would come next.
“Why then did you have the business incorporated with legal paperwork and other paraphernalia? This is not usual, is it?”
“I don’t know enough to say whether or not this is usual, but I took this trouble on behalf of my friends in the event this should become necessary. They are people from a rural background and not knowledgeable about these things. Neither am I, actually, but I was able to find a lawyer among my old friends.”
“Did the deputy minister change his mind about accepting half of the company?”
“No.”
“Then, since your statement does not make a reference to this, can we assume that the Bo family still owns the whole company?”
“No. They gave half of it to someone else.”
“Did they sell or give half the company away.”
“They gave it away.”
“Why did they do that?”
“It was my fault to have the paperwork all drawn up. The local party secretary heard about it and asked why it was done. I told him that it was to facilitate raising capital in the future. He indicated that it would be a good idea to give him the shares.”
The other investigator spoke up for the first time, “This sort of thing happens more commonly than we want to acknowledge.” The two of them conferred and asked Hu if he had evidence of the gift of the shares to the party official.
“Listen, I do and will make all receipts, copies of documents and whatever else available to you. But I do not want to jeopardize the Bo family business. The local party official we spoke about can make living and conducting business in the city very difficult for them. I know you have your responsibilities but this is their entire livelihood,” pleaded Hu.
The investigators smiled at Hu and said, “We understand and we will do our best not to make life difficult for the Bo family. Neither they, nor the local party cadre, are the subjects of this investigation. Deputy Minister Yu is. He still has to answer for a number of other things under investigation by another team. Naturally, we cannot say more to you.”
***
In the evening on that same day, Yu made his way across the reception area and nodded a greeting to each ambassador that he passed. To a few he whispered that there would be a special gathering in a smaller room. These turned out to be the ambassadors from the ASEAN countries and Japan, Korea and the United States. They were gathered, as banquets for foreign dignitaries often were, in the Fujian Room of the Great Hall of the People, a gigantic building constructed in 1959 along the west side of Tiananmen Square. The Fujian Room was named after the province from which ancient Chinese navies sailed and which was the part of the Chinese mainland directly facing Taiwan. Subtle observers have noted the symbolism intended by the Chinese in using this particular room.
“Would the MFA care to comment on the attack on Cotabato last Friday?” asked the American ambassador. “There are some reports that the MANPAD may have originated from China.”
“I hope no nation thinks China wishes war on any one, let alone on our neighbors,” declared Yu. “I can assure you all that is not the case.”
“Did I read somewhere that you had security issues with your Army supplies?” It was a sympathetic ambassador who offered this escape.
“That was an embarrassment to the military establishment. One difficult for it or anyone in the Chinese government to admit,” conceded Yu. “I do not know enough to say whether the missing inventory went to the Philippines. We believe the Philippine government is fully capable of conducting the ongoing investigations. Naturally, we have committed to assisting our neighbor in any way.”
“Can you give your assurance that no Chinese agent was involved in supplying the weapon to the party that carried out this act?” pressed the ambassador from the Republic of the Philippines.
“I can and I do,” responded Yu with all the courtesy and gravity he could summon. “My colleague, the ambassador from the People’s Republic of China, will no doubt be giving the same assurance tomorrow to your Department of Foreign Affairs.”
“You do appreciate, deputy minister,” stated the ambassador from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, “that some of us are concerned that China might be flexing her muscles.”
“We are on the record,” assured Yu earnestly, “that we will never initiate a war.”
“With due respect, your excellency,” persisted the same ambassador. “Perhaps not a war, but ‘aggressive’ action.”
“My esteemed colleagues,” declared Yu, “I assure you that China is prepared to discuss and negotiate any action that anyone considers aggressive. But we decline to do so through the exchange of insults in public, on television or in the newspapers.”
“Some of us would like to see more transparency in your actions and policies,” remarked the American ambassador.
“Respectfully, Mr. Ambassador,” replied Yu without hesitation, “we are not Americans. The model of how a nation works that you wish to press on the rest of the world is not for us.”
“We all recognize that there are different forms of government,” answered the ambassador, “but surely the same rules of conduct apply to all of us.” Approving murmurs arose around this important man from an important country.
“I must disagree, Mr. Ambassador,” Yu cut in as his dark brown eyes burned. “It is rude, I know, but perhaps necessary to remind you that the rest of the world has not forgotten the coup d’etat arranged by various liberal democratic governments in 1953 against Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, or the assassination in 1961 by similar parties of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Republic of the Congo and the hero of its independence, or the military coup in 1973 that led to the death of Salvador Allende, the first openly elected Marxist president of Chile. This military dictatorship enjoyed much support from the world’s liberal democrats until it became inconvenient. We might also mention the use of Agent Orange and napalm, but perhaps this is enough.
