The Shadow Game (14 page)

The underling was perched nervously on the chair, hands folded and head lowered.

For the past fifteen minutes Meng Tao had been absorbing her brief, flicking quietly through the pages. The president's face was serious, studious, impassive.

He looked up for a moment and she immediately dropped her gaze. He could see the strain on her face, but gave nothing away.

Finally, he placed the folder on the table, drumming his fingers on it while studying an ornate vase on his desk. He nodded briefly and spoke without looking at her.

‘You may go.'

She rose, bowed, and as she left the room Meng could see a patch of sweat staining the back of her shirt. He smiled. The peon had done as instructed. Her treatise was tailor-made for his plans.

America had been further weakened by the loss of its leader, and the female president had inherited a demoralised country with a broken economy, the underling's report declared. It had a host of enemies, within and without, that consumed its energy. A new force had risen in the Middle East from the ashes of old battles, seeking to spread its malign theology. It waged war in the real world and recruited in the virtual, raising an army of jihadists aching to murder infidels and apostates on a frontline that stretched from Baghdad to Baltimore.

Europe was a disaster. The union that it had created to ensure the continent never again soaked its soil with the blood of its youth had proved a double-edged sword. Its unity was a sham. Too many voices meant too much compromise. Its single currency had crippled weak economies and crisis meetings had become routine as it tried in vain to bandage a financial system that was bleeding from every pore.

The chancellor's decision to open Germany's doors to Syrian refugees had seen a tide of humanity wash across the continent. Borders were being rebuilt as razor wire was strung across frontiers. The dark heart of the far right was beating again. Nationalism was stirring; old grievances were being disinterred.

A formidable, familiar foe was rising to Europe's north. A long-despondent Russia was rediscovering its Soviet-era pride under the leadership of its flint-hard president, Vladimir Putin. He was calling NATO's bluff, proving to the world – in Crimea and East Ukraine – that the West was a fraud: all talk, no action.

All the evidence in the analysis pointed to one inescapable conclusion: weak-willed and internally divided democracies
crumbled when confronted with an adversary that knew what it wanted and was willing to fight for it.

At the very moment China had risen confidently to its feet, the West was on its knees.

‘Sir, your next appointment . . .' The secretary's voice rang through the phone intercom.

‘Yes, send him in,' Meng replied.

The president was emboldened. For the past two years, since the Third Plenum of the 18th Communist Party Congress, China had taken decisive steps to reclaim territories that were rightfully hers.

The Middle Kingdom's shadow of power was lengthening across the Pacific, and the United States was being covered in its shade. The world's axis was tilting, of that Meng had no doubt. America's so-called pivot towards Asia had ended in humiliation under its former leader.

Finally, after decades of stagnation and faltering steps towards her destiny, China's new Long March was into its stride.

Meng was ready to take the next, decisive step. But one irritating detail troubled him. His propaganda minister had been a steadfast ally for the past several years, the president's most trusted confidant. Yet in recent months there were signs his conviction had begun to waver.

Meng breathed out slowly, following his doctor's orders to strive for rhythmic harmony in his body and his mind.

The door opened to Jiang Xiu.

‘Mr President.'

‘My friend, have a seat. Tea?'

‘Yes, thank you.'

Jiang sat by the president's desk as Meng lifted a beautifully proportioned but unadorned brown teapot made by the legendary potter Shi Dabin. He poured his colleague a cup and Jiang took a sip as he waited for Meng to speak.

‘Xiu, our best analysts have compiled a report on what the assassination of the American president means for us.'

Meng pushed the document towards Jiang, clapped his hands and beamed.

‘It is as I thought, and great news for us. Washington is in disarray. It cannot lift its head from the quagmire it created in the Middle East. Russia is making it look like a fool in Syria and Ukraine. The Americans are weakened by years of trying to impose their will as the world's police force and the people are sick of foreign wars. The new president faces an election next year and she is behind in the polls. She will spend every day fundraising and campaigning.'

Jiang picked up the document and flicked through its pages as the president continued.

‘I am accelerating our plans for militarising the South China Sea islands. I am planning to visit them and I would like you to accompany me, Xiu.'

The propaganda minister looked up from the report and nodded, but there was no hint of enthusiasm in his voice.

‘Yes, Mr President. I will ensure my diary is clear.'

‘We stand at an epic threshold,' Meng declared, his voice ringing with confidence.

‘Our engineers are turning tiny reefs into islands that will sustain a population and will serve as unsinkable aircraft carriers.
Our people are working diligently to ensure they are ready. They will be the talons on our hands as we grasp power from the delusional Americans.'

The president glanced at the map on his wall and his tone turned from triumph to menace.

‘Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam.' Meng spat out the list. ‘They make foolish claims on the South China Sea based on incorrect data peddled by the Americans. We will not be dictated to by those who have no respect for our history.'

His face brightened.

‘Jackson's death is an opportunity for us to move faster, push harder.'

Jiang continued to leaf through the report as he listened. He was frowning as he put the document down and tapped it with the forefinger of his right hand.

‘Mr President, I do not doubt the skill of those who wrote this.'

He paused and Meng could sense he was wrestling with what he should say.

‘But I do doubt their courage and their wisdom.' Jiang pushed back his chair a touch, and shifted uneasily.

‘These people know what you want to hear and they shape events and their advice to reflect it. Everything they say is true. But no one can predict the way a wounded beast will react. The authors of this report should have included several possible scenarios in this paper. Including . . . no, especially . . . the worst.'

When Meng replied his voice was cold. ‘My friend, surely you are not afraid to share your wisdom with me. What is the worst scenario we might face?'

‘That the wounded beast will charge.' Jiang's words came in a torrent, and his eyes were urgent, pleading. ‘The American president knows she is facing defeat. And she is more dangerous precisely because she is a woman. She knows she will have to work harder than any man to prove she is an effective commander in chief. The combination is lethal. If I were advising her I would feed those insecurities and tell her that she needs to engineer an explosive demonstration of her strength.'

Meng gestured airily at the document as he dismissed Jiang's critique.

‘That is all in there; you need more time to fully study the paper. She has ordered increased airstrikes in Syria and is sending more military trainers to Ukraine.'

Jiang shook his head.

‘That is meaningless; as the Americans would say, it's “nickel and dime” stuff. Asta needs a victory. She needs to pick a fight with the biggest kid on the block. And she has already started. She's trying to blame us for the death of Jackson.'

He leaned forward in his seat.

‘Mr President, we have bluffed the world. It believes we have America's measure. Or at the very least that America cannot halt our rise. If we move with care we can have everything we want. If we press too hard we risk losing it all.'

Meng waved his arm to silence his colleague.

‘The lecture is over, Mr Jiang.'

His voice rose as he stared hard into the minister's eyes.

‘America is weak. It has lost its leader and the new president is an untested and uncertain woman. She has neither the will nor the means to challenge us. America will not fight.'

His fist thumped the table, unsettling his tea cup and spilling liquid onto the teak surface.

‘And as you have lost confidence in the mission you once championed you will stay at home while I travel to the South China Sea.'

The president pointed to the door.

‘Go.'

Jiang stood and bowed. As he was leaving, Meng delivered a parting shot.

‘It will be good for you to stay in Beijing. You can spend more time at the theatre with your lovely wife. The two of you seem so happy there in a world of make-believe.'

It was a long drive into a painful past and an uncertain future.

Harry Dunkley had escaped Sydney three hours earlier, the city's morning rush giving way to quaint rural settings, roadside diners serving questionable coffee and B-doubles driving too fast and too close. The rhythmic tedium of the highway was a familiar companion.

For the first time in a year he was receiving wages, after Martin Toohey had placed him on his payroll. Last week he'd sorted the paperwork on a loan for a fifteen-year-old Holden Commodore, still going strong after 180,000 clicks.

He had travelled down the Hume Highway, ticking off the kilometres in lots of ten. Just past Goulburn he'd taken the slipway onto the Federal Highway and now, across the flat low grassland of a long-vanished Lake George, an army of wind turbines rose into view, their blades frozen on this breathless autumn day.

A sign signalled Canberra was only fifty kilometres away as ‘Born to Run' erupted from the Commodore's speakers. Dunkley thumped the wheel as Springsteen sang about death traps and suicide raps and getting out while you're young: four-something minutes of rock 'n' roll bliss.

A nervous energy surged through his body. The long sweep around the dry lake dragged him back to the bittersweet past. Then, he was one of Australia's elite political journalists, a newshound both feted and feared, one of Murdoch's Canberra cannons paid to fire at the powerful. It was the thrill of the chase that had got him out of bed each day.

The music switched to the mournful strains of a harmonica and the gentle fingerpicking of a steel-string acoustic guitar. Springsteen's ‘The River'. Now the Boss was singing about shattered dreams and the carriageway was dragging Dunkley back to memories that haunted him like a curse. At the end of this road was the place where his best friend, Kimberley Gordon, had died. There he had confronted her killer, Charles Dancer. There he had been betrayed by the man he trusted, Brendan Ryan. There he had been dumped by Celia, his girlfriend. There he had lost his job, his money and his dignity.

There, he knew, was a city where the man behind it all reigned as an uncrowned but unchallenged king. A national hero. Sir Jack Webster. Defence chief. Warrior. Fraud. Traitor.

Dunkley pulled into a rest stop, his heart pounding. His hands shook as he lifted them from the wheel.

He killed the engine and got out of the car. A few metres ahead of him the land fell down a rocky hillside to a billiard-table
-flat expanse a couple of kilometres wide and a dozen long. The first time he saw this place, in the '60s, it had looked to his child's eyes like the sea, as water lapped the point he now stood on and the hills in the distance were so far off they could have been another country. That men had drowned out there now seemed absurd.

A wave of pain washed over Dunkley. He had been played from the moment he'd picked up the black-and-white photo of Bruce Paxton four years ago. They'd known how to reel him in, to make him feel that he had privileged access to a world of dark secrets. They had watched and listened to every move he made and Charles Dancer had prodded him back on course any time he looked like straying.

Kimberley, unwittingly, had been part of their plan – the insider Dunkley trusted who would confirm everything.

Webster's game had been to destroy Paxton, not because he was a security threat but because he wanted to unpick a multi-billion-dollar defence contract. Worse, the fallen defence minister had dared to question whether Australia should continue to trail in the wake of the United States, and had suggested that it might pay to think differently in a changing world.

When Dunkley uncovered the murky reality of Webster's shadow government, they'd sacrificed him like the pawn he was. Even having proof of their crimes had been useless. In the information age reality could be dialled up and down by the warlords of the web. The truth was what they decreed it to be.

Who was he kidding, this was a fool's errand. What made him think he could beat them now? What on earth was he doing? For
a moment he contemplated turning around and driving back to Sydney.

Irritably, he arched his back, unknotting muscles unused to driving, then wandered over to read a sign explaining the naming of the rest area. He knew the stops along this part of the Federal Highway were named after Victoria Cross winners and wondered who had given his name to this particular dot on the landscape.

It was Major Peter Badcoe. He had been part of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam. In February 1967 he had engaged in an attack across open ground, in the teeth of machine gun fire, to rescue an American adviser. It was just one of a number of acts of courage by the ‘Galloping Major', who was killed in April 1967 by a burst of gunfire as he rose to throw a grenade at overwhelmingly stronger opposition.

His valour and leadership were in the highest traditions of the military profession and the Australian Regular Army.

Dunkley reached up to touch the sign; it was warmed by the autumn sunlight.

The only true hero in his battle had been Kimberley. She was meant to help Dunkley nail Paxton, but when she'd found a deeper, more disturbing story, she had not flinched in pursuing it. She'd found the conspirators in the shadow government, and she'd found the real Chinese spy, Catriona Bailey. Nothing was what it seemed.

What hurt Dunkley most, now that his grief for Kimberley was losing its acute edge, was knowing that he had allowed himself to
fall into despair. He might have died but for the intervention of Martin Toohey, who'd rescued him from himself, from the police lock-up, and had overseen his rehabilitation at Villa Maria.

Dunkley, the great sceptic, had been saved in the company of a dying order of priests, whose church had been disgraced but whose faith remained undimmed.

He didn't share their creed but he had rediscovered his faith in humanity and his belief that its abiding genius was its limitless capacity for hope. You could give up hope but it could never be erased from the world. It persisted in every horror. It could survive death.

As Viktor Frankl had testified after the Holocaust, you don't get to choose what happens to you, but you do get to choose how you respond.

Martin Toohey had offered him hope, given him a job and a reason to live. Now he had a choice.

Dunkley looked up at Major Badcoe's sign again before walking back to his car. He had made mistakes. But so had they. They hadn't killed him. Yet.

The first glimpses of Canberra came into view, the thin spire of the Telstra tower and the majestic Brindabellas, as a sign warned him that the maximum speed was one hundred kilometres an hour. He slowed the car but his mind continued to race as he contemplated ringing a mate he'd not heard from in a year or more.

It was closing on midday and the main artery into Canberra was clear of traffic. The national capital was laid out before him in the uniform blandness and well-kept order that he'd once found so appealing, back when his life revolved around prising open the conspiracies of those whose business was keeping secrets.

This time things would be different.

What lay ahead wasn't everything. But it was all that he had.