The Ninja and the Diplomat, page 16
part #2 of The Chinese Spymaster Series
“You will get no argument from me.”
The finance man continued, “Further, I believe that the fourteenth plan should aim to multiply again by five times. Increase from ten to fifty percent of our national needs. The only constraint I see is the ability of the national power grid to carry the new electricity, but the grid would have to be developed to accommodate increased demand anyway.
“Solar power would most likely be generated in the west and wind farms would mainly be in the north and south, both onshore and offshore.”
“We need another Great Leap Forward in terms of daring and reach,” pronounced Wang in agreement. “Hopefully, it would have better results than the last one.”
Zhang shook his head, “It is about energy, not manufacturing and is based on realistic science, not willful idealism. If we succeed, it would dramatically reduce our need for foreign sources of oil and gas, making the squabbles over the South China Sea irrelevant. To reduce our dependence on coal and petroleum resources by half within ten years and make the air in China breathable, is a worthy revolutionary goal, don’t you agree, Spymaster?”
“Sometimes people need to have squabbles,” observed Wang. “It fulfils them to ta ke something from someone else.”
Zhang stared at the spymaster, seeing in him a cynicism he had not suspected and which now made him uncomfortable. He decided to turn the topic back to an earlier consideration they had started discussing. “The squabbling about the sea and the coast ignores the fact that the resources are not directly under that surface water or island that these heroes are shouting over. The resources are not even on the sea bed under those dispute lines.”
“They are under the sea bed and could be anywhere,” Wang completed his thought for him. “Do you always speak in riddles?”
“No,” replied Zhang, “but you are always impatient for an answer.” Wang bowed his head and Zhang could see that he was laughing.
“You must indulge this old man.”
“You are not old. Anyway,” resumed Zhang, “there is a tried and true technology known as directional drilling. It was thought to be one reason the Iraqis invaded Kuwait in 1990; they might have had good reason to suspect the Kuwaitis were stealing their oil. In the South China Sea, it is as if Indonesia, Malaysia or the Philippines could have straws and stick them into the oil fields to which Brunei thought it had exclusive rights. But as we concluded a while ago, the resources there are not essential to China’s energy needs. They may appeal to our national vanity, who knows?”
Wang shook his head in disbelief that a country would risk international confrontation over such interests. He inquired, “How can we avoid going to war over resources that we know are not sufficient for our needs and that are located in places where we cannot determine or assert ownership?”
“It is not anything groundbreaking,” Zhang responded. “The classic case in oil and gas is the settlement of competing claims over the resources in the Alaskan North Slope, sometimes referred to as Prudhoe Bay or the Sadlerochit Reservoir. That contained an estimated 25 billion barrels of oil, an amount greater than eight years of total production by the OPEC countries.
“The claimants were six different oil companies that owned leases to the surface of the ground. Those leases in turn permitted the companies to drill and extract oil from the reservoir. In order to avoid continuing costly legal actions, the companies agreed to go to arbitration. They called it ‘binding arbitration’ to determine what proportion of the production they would each get.”
“How long did the arbitration take?”
“Years, but it made it unnecessary for each company to rush and drill perhaps to find that they had a dry hole, a non-producing well. The binding arbitration—I realize this concept is cause for a call to arms in some circles—allowed the companies even to appoint one of their competitors to drill and produce the oil on behalf of everyone. It is an elegant solution and one I would commend to our military and foreign policy cadres. In a rational world, it would also be inevitable.”
“Thank you for this lesson. I do not know what a national security expert or a finance minister should do in a dispute involving military and foreign policy interests. But I was concerned from a national security point of view.”
“And I am concerned from an economic financial point of view,” interrupted Zhang. “It really bothers me that those who are ready to go to the brink of war have not counted the cost of their preference or weighed it against the cost of the alternatives.”
“You were right, Comrade Zhang,” agreed Wang. “Your views are not only unconventional, they are heretical. If we believed in wizards and witches, you would be dealt with accordingly.”
The assistant minister laughed, but insisted, “The water is far and the fire is near. Why are we so stupid?”
This man sees the political and military consequences of economic action or inaction, Wang thought. Why don’t we pay attention to him?
***
“Did you have another brilliant day at the office, older brother?” asked Xiao Shu.
Wang barked a laugh and said,
“I shall need to consult the oracle.”
“Of political correctness.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To learn if it is permissible even to think what I found out today.”
“What would that be?”
“That the international liaison committee and the central military commission might be wrong about where we should stand on the South China Sea.”
“Who have you talked to?”
“A man named Zhang in the finance ministry. I understand he is or will soon be a deputy minister.”
“Yes, we have reviewed his file recently. He is very smart and I believe reliable. But he might be … somewhat unconventional.”
“Does that describe me?”
“You are not fishing for a compliment, are you?”
“Your being with me is the only compliment I need.”
“Oh my, you are getting very good at this, older brother. That is the most brilliant thing anyone has ever said about me.”
Contents
CHAPTER 18
The fourth Wednesday
The Yakuza approached his household shrine, his kamidana. It was an old-fashioned practice to have a spirit house in one’s own residence and the Yakuza was not in most respects an old-fashioned man. Perhaps he had become more so when his wife died. That was when he installed the kamidana on the north wall in what had been their bedroom. The former master bedroom had occupied half of the top floor of his simple house in the countryside of north Honshu. The other half, a living area, had glass windows that reached and opened from floor to ceiling. The windows faced south to the hills that were covered with cherry trees. The house contained as much floor space as a luxury apartment in Tokyo but was a far cry from his family mansion. In this corner of Japan, he and his wife had chosen a property that commanded an incomparable view of the valley of cherry orchards.
He always called his wife Sakura, his cherry blossom. She died just after the last blossoms faded five years ago.
His first thoughts, however, were addressed to his father.
***
I apologize for my disobedience, Revered Father, and make no excuses for myself. I do not regret what I did. But it pains me, really and truly, to have caused you grief and anger. Yes, I know that you threw me out of the family business in a rage over my choice to marry my Sakura because you thought I was betraying you. Yes, I married a Chinese woman. You did not care that she came from Taiwan and not the mainland, that she and I had met at a Japanese university, or that she became more Japanese than any woman I have ever met.
She was meant to be only a plaything at college. Who could have foretold that we would fall in love? When I hinted at her existence, you and mother refused to listen any further. You made me pay court to numerous daughters of your esteemed business colleagues. You sent me away on long trips to learn the business, so you said. You and Mother warned me of your implacable refusal to consider a Chinese daughter-in-law, even though I pledged to you my undying hatred for China.
So you disowned me. But you still loved me. I know because you did not cut off my tie to the Russian, the mysterious ally you once mentioned to me. But I remembered him and you knew, I know you knew, that he would be my salvation. He provided the capital on which I built my own business. It had to be one in which there could be no danger of my path crossing yours or that of any of your associates and friends. You knew I would not humiliate you in that way. But I couldn’t even count on my own friends and associates from school or university. So I built an underworld business. The Russian surprised me with some of his advice. I guessed that he himself worked in both worlds. Perhaps it was easier for him.
You don’t know how much it pained and shamed me that Mother refused to let me attend your funeral. She blamed me for your passing earlier in life than your father had. My Sakura was a comfort to me that Mother would have been proud of, if only Mother could have seen our love through my eyes. Alas, my Sakura was a comfort to me, even though she knew that she herself was dying.
Those miscarriages should have warned me, but I was too absorbed in growing my business. What I had to unlearn of your teaching would have staggered you. I learned to make money from the misery of my fellow men, from their need for forbidden and unnatural pleasures. I learned to profit from their weaknesses, their guilty needs and their greed.
Even so, my Sakura found a boy, abandoned or abused by his parents, and his education and nurture became the project that she insisted might be my salvation. The shelter had been good to him, as good as those places ever can be, but Sakura made me promise to rescue and remove him from that life and blighted future. We Japanese are cruel in ways we do not imagine, repressing our guilt for the neglect or abuse of our children, and making it impossible for others to rescue them.
So I arranged for him to become my son.
***
Ah, Sakura, you should see him now, even though sometimes he frightens me. He has eagerly learned things that he should have approached with caution. He is loyal to me and he recalls your memory with tears, but he kills without compassion. I hope I have taught him enough about your compassion, but I am afraid that my own life has not been a good example.
I have sent him to do things for me that, in another life, I would not have done myself. He takes good care of himself and of me. We were attacked in downtown Tokyo once by a drug lord who defied my orders to leave the girls alone. He sent four men with chains and knives to greet us in the parking lot. The boy who has grown into a ninja chopped out the throats of the nearest two before they knew what he was doing and when the other two ran, his knives found the back of their necks just under the skull. Forgive me for boasting but if they had been twice as good, he could still have defeated them by himself.
Do you think of me, wherever you are? I do not know if I believe in noble spirits, but if there are any, yours must be one of them. If so, I hope you think well of me. We have spoken often of the political situation and my views that the polite men in government and business are too timid to assert themselves, to stand up to the Chinese. Sakura, I know you were born Chinese, but I believe that you have been more Japanese than any woman I have met. No one in our village can imagine you as anything other than Mrs. Yamato.
The Chinese, by their presence, humiliate us. I am not crazy; I do not think that we can win a war against a nation with nearly ten times as many people. But I have a way to slow them down, seriously slow them down. Let’s just say, I have been thinking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The beauty of it is that the weapons of destruction were made in China.
In addition, one of the men helping me is from the Yu family that dispossessed your family when they arrived as conquerors from the mainland. No, I did not have him killed. I remember your compassion in all things, even when we met, you had already forgiven him and his family, although your family still suffered. I have made sure that he will live in fear and insecurity, without honor. By a stroke of fate, the family disgrace will be felt even on the mainland. I have arranged for his cousin there to be implicated. I am dazzled myself. That boy is helping me. He is older now than we were when we first met but I still call him that boy. He is my ninja.
***
Revered Father, you should be proud. You should know that it has not been easy to find China’s weaknesses and to recruit the people to assist my designs. It took me years to find that weak man in Taiwan whose cousin is, or was, a rising star in the foreign ministry of mainland China. That weak man’s associate on the mainland corrupted an ambitious and unscrupulous thief. Neither of them deserve to live. I searched many countries around China for dissidents like the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, and even the pro-democrats in Hong Kong, to lead me to those inside China. I hunted for those sympathetic to Japan and for those who did not care about China because they had more selfish or pressing goals. In a month or a year, China will be on its knees. I promise this.
You have always wanted our great nation to stand up and confront China. I have found a way to harass and humiliate it. Those dissidents and separatists want to fight. I will help them create catastrophe in the country. In the rubble of Chinese cities, they will find opportunity to fight and create more chaos until the giant will no longer be able to oppose the influence of our imperial nation in the world.
Could any of the men in your circle and clubs have done this? Your son will do this. I swear to you.
***
The same day, in Beijing.
“There is a visitor to see you, spymaster.”
“Without an appointment? is such a thing possible?” asked Wang, amused and annoyed.
“He claims the privilege of prior acquaintance and he said the magic password,” explained Ma. “Comrade Brodsky.”
“Well, Mr. Kim,” exclaimed Wang as he rose to greet his visitor. “How kind of you to visit! I was just wondering how to get a message to you.”
“Do we believe in coincidences?” Kim smiled as he shook Wang’s hand.
“I wonder all the time,” remarked Wang. “What brings you here?”
“I have been transferred to my country’s intelligence agency.”
“Congratulations, and welcome to the club,” exclaimed Wang.
“The party officials were on their way here and agreed it would be a good idea for me to accompany them. I am supposed to learn their ways and benefit from their contacts here. They were delighted that I knew you from a prior encounter which they pretended not to remember. They know all about that Shanghai episode, of course.”
“You certainly didn’t come here to get my permission,” laughed Wang.
“Seriously, I want your advice,” insisted Kim. “I will not be the spymaster, only the section head over our Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean interests. But I know nothing about what I should be doing.”
“Shouldn’t you be receiving a briefing from your future supervisors?” protested Wang. “It seems hardly prudent to seek counsel from an outsider.”
“I assure you that I have not said anything inappropriate,” responded Kim. “Anyway, what was it that you wanted to pass on to me?”
“It has to do with Viktor,” began Wang. “We have traced him to St. Petersburg and I am informed that he is involved with a man they call the Boss. I believe that this could explain those radio transmitters that we found among the young lady’s clothes in Shanghai two years ago.”
A look of pain and loss crossed Kim’s face but he quickly pulled himself together, clearly having turned the page on the past. But he remained silent for a moment, ruminating on what he had just heard. Finally, he asked, “Are you planning to visit the Boss in the near future? I have recently learned of him and his movements in Japan. He is a very high-level official and my own people have not let me see the files we have on him.”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” declared Wang. “I expect to find him in the company of a person of interest.”
“Well, let this be my present to you,” said Kim. “Do not shake hands with him. He has recently been active in Japan. He purchased a poison that can be transmitted through the skin, wolf’s bane, as well as a custom-made glove that resembles human skin.”
“I see,” Wang observed. “You have already begun your work of intelligence gathering.”
“It was my first tour of our operations in Japan and our assets there were eager to show off some of their latest acquisitions,” explained Kim. “This does make me wonder about coincidences.”
Wang laughed again and stated, “There is nothing I can teach you, but this you should know. Make sure someone, your immediate superior or his supervisor, tells you specifically how they think you are supposed to succeed in your position. Your job is not necessarily defined by the title or by your predecessor.”
“That sounds like good advice,” agreed Kim. “By the way, our assets in Japan had much to tell me about the Boss and someday your agency and mine may decide we should share our information, but for now, I’ll just say, do be careful when you meet him.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kim,” responded Wang as he stood to wave his visitor off.
As soon as he left, Ma, Gong and Owyang arrived. Wang greeted them.
“Ah, my faithful and diligent colleagues bring much news, I trust. May I suggest that we include Chen and Wong in this discussion?” A clerk was sent to alert the two who had been working in an office nearby.
“As usual,” Ma stated with a bow towards Owyang, “our analysis department has performed brilliantly.”
“The cock crows only when he sees a glimmer of dawn. It may seem so,” she began modestly. Wang turned his attention to her, briefly remembering the shy, pretty and overweight analyst of two years ago who was now his confident and most formidable head of the department of analysis. “The Yakuza’s phone records appeared to reveal nothing until we considered the possibility that he might have more than one phone.
