The Shadow Game (30 page)

The
Liaoning
was tracked as it pushed deeper into the South China Sea. The Chinese strike group moved into a holding pattern fifty nautical miles north of the Spratly Islands, on the edge of the China Sea Basin where the ocean plunged to depths of 16,000 feet.

At the same time, the USS
George Washington
strike group cruised down the east coast of the Philippines and into the Celebes Sea. It reached the near perfect circle of the Sulu Sea and waited close to the island of Palawan as the
Liaoning
took up its position to the north.

Then, under cover of darkness, the American armada sailed through the narrow Balabac Strait between Palawan and Malaysia's Sabah state on the northern tip of Borneo. The Spratly Islands lay two hundred nautical miles to Admiral Vinson's north. The
Liaoning
was a further hundred away, well within his 600-nautical-mile battlespace.

Everything was ready for the trap to be sprung.

An expensive vase lay shattered on the lushly carpeted floor. Enraged, Jack Webster paced his office, glaring from his fourth-floor window at the distant parliament.

Charles Dancer arrived to find a frightened secretary cowering at her desk. He nodded casually as he sauntered into the defence tsar's lair.

‘The meeting went well, then.'

Webster's eyes blazed with fury.

‘I am going to bury that harlot,' he thundered, emphasising each word with a pump of his fist.

‘The prime minister, I assume. You should know that Ms Scott called Martin Toohey moments after you left. He is in her office now.'

‘What are they talking about?' Webster demanded.

‘I think we can guess, don't you?'

Webster's eyes hardened as he spat his reply.

‘Your job is to find out.'

‘I'm surprised you called me here,' Dancer said as he poured imported mineral water into a crystal glass. ‘It is irregular and unwise.'

‘The game has changed. There are new threats.'

Dancer sipped from the glass, appreciating the subtle taste.

‘You overestimate Toohey and his little band of washed-up pissants,' he said. ‘Catriona Bailey remains the real threat. She can't be allowed to win the election. She was the original mission. We need to finish it.'

Webster snorted at his henchman.

‘I'll decide the mission. You will follow my orders. I have Bailey in hand; she can beat Scott at the election – but she can't beat me. I repeat: there are new threats for you to deal with.'

Dancer put down the glass. ‘Are you ordering me to kill a former prime minister?'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘But you didn't deny it.'

The spit-roasted pig dominated the main table at the Philippine Exporters Confederation lunch in the Solaire Resort's vast conference room.

Experience had led Benigno Aquino to hold low expectations of the food served at such gatherings, so this was a pleasant surprise. But he wasn't here for the
lechón
.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the president.'

Aquino dabbed a napkin to his lips and stood to polite applause.

He began his speech with the usual pleasantries, and moved smoothly to the main game for this business audience: trade. He reminded the listeners that the South China Sea trade routes were the Philippines' arteries and that China's aggressive island building threatened to clog them.

Then he launched into the part of his speech that was the real reason for his presence. It had been drafted in close consultation with his key ally.

‘I'm a student of history and I'm reminded of how Germany was testing the waters in the 1930s and of the weak response of other European powers,' Aquino said. ‘The South China Sea is our Sudetenland, which was seized by Adolf Hitler prior to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia.

‘Unfortunately, even after Hitler annexed the Sudetenland and, eventually, invaded Czechoslovakia, nobody said “Stop”. What if somebody had said “Stop” to Hitler, to Germany, at that point in time? Could we have avoided World War II?

‘We are a small country, but I believe, on behalf of the free world, that we should now cry out “Stop” to the annexation of the South China Sea.'

The president paused to allow the weight of his comments to sink in, and to add gravitas to the punchline. He gripped the lectern with both hands and leaned forward.

‘Soon we will send naval ships to the Spratly Islands. They will be on a peaceful mission in international waters. I expect our ships to pass unhindered.'

The response from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was immediate and furious.

‘Mr Aquino is an amateurish politician who is ignorant of both history and reality,' an official told a press conference in Beijing.

‘His remarks are inflammatory and we urge him not to take any foolish steps that will interfere with China's core interests. Let us be clear. The Philippines has started a small fire. It should not pour fuel on the flames.'

The following day, in Washington, the White House Press Secretary strongly defended the thrust of Aquino's speech, although he noted that the reference to Nazi Germany was ‘his choice of words, not ours'.

‘Language aside, President Aquino is just stating a fact,' the press secretary told the crowded room. ‘Those are international waters. America will fly, sail and operate wherever international law permits. We will do that at the times and places of our choosing. There's no exception to that. In the case of our allies, we will use our power and influence to enforce and defend their rights.

‘Can I remind you that last year President Jackson signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the Philippines, our closest ally in Asia.'

Within hours of the Australian Cabinet's national security meeting, word began to spread among Coalition ministers and senior staff of a telling exchange between the prime minister and her chief military adviser.

Those who had been present noted a significant deterioration in the pair's relationship, which was once considered too close by some ministers.

Elizabeth Scott had raised the row between the Philippines and China and the danger to the region, saying, ‘We have to do something.'

Jack Webster's reply had dripped with sarcasm. ‘What, exactly, Prime Minister? Issue another hollow statement?'

It was the culmination of months of bubbling anger against a hapless prime minister.
The Australian
had taken aim at Elizabeth Scott and fired every gun.

SCOTT SCUTTLES FREEDOM FLEET

Prime Minister Elizabeth Scott has rejected a personal plea from the US president to join an unprecedented regional alliance to press navigation rights in the South China Sea.

Well-placed Australian defence sources say Washington is incensed by Ms Scott's decision, which has all but sunk plans to assemble an international flotilla to challenge China's militarisation of disputed islands.

‘You have to wonder why the prime minister feels she cannot offend Beijing but can snub Washington,' one senior military source told
The Australian
.

The broadsheet's stable of battle-hardened columnists had been let loose in pages of fearsome and excoriating commentary. And the editorial thundered that Scott ‘risked an alliance that has been the foundation stone of peace in the Pacific for seventy years'.

Emily Brooks savoured every poison-dipped word as she scrolled through the coverage on her iPad. The discord in Coalition ranks had been building for months, but the conservatives' natural instinct was to give their leader every chance.

The revelation that Elizabeth Scott had scorned the US president would rattle even the prime minister's most steadfast supporters.

Brooks hadn't been idle, relentlessly undermining her rival. Soon another whispering campaign would begin, circulating the name of an extraordinary candidate.

The well-rehearsed ritual of the political assassination of an Australian prime minister was afoot.

The yellow-and-blue flags fluttered in the light early morning breeze, proudly displaying a stylised map of Australia overlaid with the white stars of the Southern Cross.

Several hundred members of the Australian Workers' Union had been whistled up as stage dressing for the latest act in this political play. Hard hats and high-vis vests were on display for the
dozen bleary journalists gathered outside the front gates of the ASC shipyards at Osborne.

The Bailey Express had hit Adelaide.

Right on cue, the bus arrived at 7am. A riser was assembled before the star emerged and a microphone wailed to life.

‘Being a leader isn't easy,' Catriona Bailey began in the rasp of a voice permanently damaged by months on a ventilator. ‘You might remember I faced the rough end of the pineapple once or twice when I was PM.

‘But, fair shake, some things should be easy. Ensuring national security is the first line on page one of the job description.'

A smattering of polite applause rose from the crowd. The opposition leader's folksy charm still worked with the masses, even if her dated ockerisms left the political class cold.

‘Friends, national security means a lot of things. As I rock around the country, one thing you good folk tell me is it means fighting for job security. And no prime minister with a heart should ever allow Australian jobs to be shipped offshore. It's just not fair.'

A murmur of assent rippled through the workers. Several yelled ‘blood oath'.

‘And, you know something? It means protecting economic security. No prime minister with a brain should threaten that by striking a foreign submarine deal designed to antagonise our major trading partner.'

The crowd rose with the rhetoric. One unionist yelled ‘Scott's a moron' to general merriment and Bailey waited for the cheering to subside.

‘But, let's call a spade a spade, Beijing does need to be warned against militarising the South China Sea. So no prime minister with a spine would humiliate our key ally by refusing to join America's peaceful protest mission.'

Applause thundered, cheers echoed and some stamped their feet as Bailey's language sharpened to deliver the grab that she knew would lead the primetime news.

‘Elizabeth Scott is the clown from Oz. She is a heartless, brainless coward. And her lack of spine is threatening every aspect of our security.'