Off With Their Heads (6 page)

‘Please then, look at this. With the Great Firewall down, we can see what is on the Internet. Please have a look and see the truth for yourself.’

Liang handed a tablet computer to Chen with the browser open to an unfamiliar website. Chen’s English was pretty good and he scanned through the page – it was a posting from someone called Dr. Stan on a conspiracy forum. It read, ‘The chaos around us is engineered by powerful men. The virus reported in China, the lab fire in Washington everybody is covering up. It will all lead to a catastrophe bigger than anything you can imagine. And don’t for a minute think that the wars flaring up around the world are an accident. This is all part of their plan.’

Chen scrolled down and saw that many other posters had responded, most calling the original poster crazy and paranoid. Dr. Stan had never posted again. Chen handed back the tablet, exasperated.

‘You expect me to believe this? The ravings of a lunatic on some crazy forum? Seeing stuff like this makes me believe the Great Firewall has its uses after all.’

Chen saw Liang’s look of disappointment as he gathered his things and got ready to leave.

‘Very well, my old friend. Thank you for coming to meet me. I don’t know if we will meet again but good luck.’

With those words, he got up and left. Chen kept looking at the door for some time, wishing he had said something else. But in his heart, he knew he was right. The world was slipping into chaos – the Middle East was on the verge of all-out war between Israel and Iran; the US economy was tottering and social unrest there was boiling over. Closer to home, Islamic insurgents had intensified their campaign in China’s Xinxiang province. The war of words with the US over Taiwan had grown sharper, and blood had already been drawn in dogfights over the straits. This was hardly the time when China needed internal strife. Chen knew only too well that the Chinese system was far from perfect, but which system was? At least the nation was prospering, and children in small towns did not have to scrounge for food or an education like his parents had to.

Chen was on leave in Beijing for the next two days, after which he had to report back to his unit near the Indian border. While the two Asian giants enjoyed an uneasy peace, Chen knew just how rapidly that could change. There were dozens of incidents at the border each year, and if it came to a shooting match, Chen and his men would not be facing the ill-equipped infantrymen the Chinese Red Army had smashed through in the 1962 war. The Indian army had grown into a modern army and the fact that both Asian giants now had nuclear weapons made any conflict much more dangerous than it had been in 1962. Chen had found Indian officers to be rational and pragmatic, but what bothered them most was their shared unstable neighbor, Pakistan. If things came to a boil between India and Pakistan, then Chen’s leaders would likely ask his troops to take up an offensive posture along the border to tie up India’s Mountain Divisions.

With the growing tensions around the world, the last thing Chen wanted was war between India and China. The two Asian neighbors had prospered recently, and a war would set both nations back many years.

Chen was happy to be back home so he could forget about his worries and spend some time with his wife. When he entered his apartment, his wife had already laid out dinner, and he kissed her as he sat down to eat.

After months of eating whatever their cook could rustle up at their post, Chen found the home-cooked food heavenly. He took in the smell of the thick chicken soup and smiled as he tucked into the noodles and steamed dumplings. However, he had barely started his meal when there was a knock on the door. Then another.

Only the Internal Security men would walk up to a senior officer’s home and knock like this without being stopped by the security guard in the apartment complex downstairs. He had taken a risk in agreeing to meet Liang, and he hoped he could talk his way out of this.

Chen placed his hand over his wife’s before she could rise to answer the door. He spoke in a hoarse whisper.

‘Get inside the bedroom and lock the door.’

He kissed her again and ushered her into the bedroom. His pistol was in a drawer, but he knew that if they had indeed come for him, trying to resist would only make things worse. He forced a smile and opened the door to find two men in black suits.

‘Comrade Colonel Chen, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.’

Chen felt his throat tighten but he forced himself to not let his fear show.

‘Comrades, come in. What has happened that you needed to come by so late at night?’

One of the men held a black-and-white photograph in front of him. Chen blanched as he saw the two bodies lying in a pool of blood.

‘Comrade Colonel, a friend of yours, Bo Liang, met with an unfortunate accident this evening. As far as we can tell, his wife also died with him and we know of no other immediate family. The last dialed numbers on his phone were yours so we thought we would inform you so that you could help make the necessary arrangements.’

*

Edward smiled as he saw his Chinese colleagues talk in hushed whispers in the company cafeteria. There had been only one topic of conversation for the last five days. The Great Firewall was down and the Chinese people were lapping up information from the Internet that had been denied to them for decades. There had been an interruption previously, in early 2012, when the hacker group Anonymous had hacked into a couple of Chinese government websites. But this was on a totally different scale – the entire firewall had been compromised.

The Chinese government had been taken unawares, and at first had tried to avoid any public comment on the situation, but as the days wore on and Facebook and Google+ pages called sprouted calling for political reform and Twitter messages abounded announcingannounced protests against local corruption, the government had been forced to act. The online protests were perhaps something the Chinese regime could have hoped to ignored, but when those led to mass gatherings and protest marches, it had did not have much of a choice but to respond. The response was just as Edward’s bosses had hoped. The Chinese regime had dismissed the protests as the work of `misguided terrorists’ in the media and had taken in some of the protestors for beatings at police stations. That had further inflamed public opinion.

The TV in the cafeteria had been relaying news of ongoing demonstrations in Guangdong province when a news flash appeared, taking even Edward by surprise. As he listened, he reminded himself that he had no business feeling angry at his masters for not showing him the whole picture. He was a small cog in their plan. As reports emerged of a strange, highly contagious virus in inner Mongolia, with the Chinese government blaming the United States for an act of biological warfare, he realized the plan was far more dangerous than he had ever anticipated.

*

‘Comrade Colonel, your men are ready for inspection.’

Chen straightened his back and saluted as his men snapped to attention as one. He felt a strange sense of pride as he saw the assembled men. More than five hundred of his men had been flown into Beijing over the last two days. The rest of his garrison was still at their post, but his superiors had ordered more elite infantry units back to major cities, to deal with ‘potential unrest’. Chen hoped he would not have to order his men to march against Chinese civilians, and he wondered if this was a test of his loyalty, given his links to Bo Liang.

The death of his friend still stung. Chen tried to tell himself it had been an accident, but there was a voice in the back of his head telling him things he did not want to hear. For now his men would stay in their barracks near the airport, and Chen had joined them, awaiting the orders that could come at any minute.

The last week had been one of unprecedented chaos. The Great Firewall had been largely restored, but the damage had been done. Through much of 2011 and 2012, people in smaller towns had been rising up against local corruption and the fact that so many of them had been displaced to make way for the shining symbols of the new China. Many of those had been put down with brutal force. With the Great Firewall down, all those uncomfortable truths came out, and bereaved friends and relatives found a new outlet for their rage and anguish.

The President had made an appearance on live TV, vowing that he would personally crush corruption. He claimed many of the excesses had been committed by local officials without his knowledge. Chen did not doubt that, since he knew how labyrinthine the Chinese bureaucracy could be, but these assurances did not placate ordinary Chinese. Many local government offices had already been sacked and officials beaten up, or worse, and while disturbances were yet to spill over into the larger cities, Chen knew it would take but one spark to set it all alight. A part of Chen’s mind also exhorted him to take a stand and to demand justice for the death of his friend, but that voice was quickly hushed by another reminding him that he had his wife and his parents back in the province to think of.

One evening Chen had sat alone and gotten quite drunk. He had told himself that ifIf he had been fifteen years younger, he would have stormed off and demanded justice for what in his heart he knew to be the murder of his friend. But he was almost forty and had a family to think of, so he needed to weigh his actions. What Chen did not realize at the time was that rationalizing one’s inaction was the first step in accepting tyranny. You either stood up against tyranny or became a slave to it, there was nothing in between.

That night, he had an unexpected visitor in his room near the barracks. It was General Hong, the man who had trained him at the Academy and who had been his mentor ever since.

‘Sir, you could have called me. I would have come.’

The old general waved Chen’s objections aside and sat down, producing a bottle of rice wine and a handful of small packets labeled ‘05 Compressed Food’. Chen smiled as he saw the biscuit packets. These were the battlefield rations of the Chinese infantry – hard, dry biscuits that packed more than a thousand calories with the nourishment making up for the taste.

‘Are you going on a march?’

Chen had meant it as a joke, but there was no humor in Hong’s eyes as he looked at his protégé. ‘We are already at war. We have been sharing these biscuits to remind everyone that we should forget the comforts of the last few years and learn to be soldiers again. Now share a drink with this old man.’

They drank in silence for some minutes, and Chen was increasingly anxious about what his mentor wanted of him. Finally, Hong looked at him.

‘In two days’ time, officers loyal to me will seize control of key government buildings. We will then announce that the government is working with foreign powers to create the current instability. We will help keep the peace while we can normalize the situation.’ The general poured himself another drink, as if he were talking about the weather.

Chen was in turmoil. His long-time mentor was asking him to take part in an armed coup. To disobey all the orders he had followed, to turn against the same leaders he had sworn to defend.

‘Sir, you’re one of the most decorated officers in the whole People’s Liberation Army. How can we turn against the government?’

Hong poured Chen a drink. There was a look of infinite sadness in the old man’s eyes.

‘Chen, I am fiercely loyal to China and would die for my nation. But I serve the people, not a few rich men and their backers. I believe our President is an honest man and he has been trying to steer our nation towards progress, but there are forces at play who have their own agenda. They are the ones who have been discrediting him and the government. There are those in our own Army and government who have benefitted much by being in power, and there are whispers of outside powers working with them to lead us down a path to war with the Americans.’

‘Why would anyone want that? If they drive us to war with the Americans, what does anyone gain?’

Hong looked straight into Chen’s eyes, and Chen saw an expression in the general’s eyes that he had never seen before – fear.

‘I don’t know, but that’s why we need to help restore some stability and secure the President against the forces plotting against him. Will you join us?’

Chen sat frozen in place. Joining Hong would be a huge leap of faith. His mentor was persuasive as always, and Chen did not quite know how to refuse a man who had been more than a father to him. However, joining Hong would mean throwing away his career and placing his wife in tremendous danger. He thought back to the photographs of Liang and his wife, and felt his resolve slipping. Having been a combat soldier for much of his adult life, Chen did not fear much for his own personal safety, but the thought of his wife lying on the road after another such `accident’ almost paralyzed him with fear. Hong must have sensed what was on his mind.

‘Chen, I have other officers to meet, so I will be on my way. I know what I am asking of you, and I would never place you in such a predicament unless our nation was facing extraordinary danger. You will know when the action starts, and your men are one of the most battle-trained units now in the capital. They will ask you to stop us, and I hope we don’t have to meet on the battleground.’

With those words, Hong got up and left.

*

Hong’s plan never got off the ground. The next morning, a Chinese destroyer attacked a Taiwanese frigate in open seas and sank it with a volley of missiles. A dogfight broke out when Chinese fighter jets attacked two Taiwanese planes that had flown to the scene. The Taiwanese government was pleading for help from the United States, but with tensions escalating between Israel and Iran, US forces were not in a position to intervene.

Chen got a sense of just how confused things were when he realized that the actions of the destroyer and the jets had not been sanctioned by the government. His friends in the government said the President was fuming because the commanders involved had acted without orders to open fire. Perhaps Hong had been right after all about renegade elements driving the nation towards confrontation.