The Shadow Game (4 page)

The morning sun had barely seeped into the Hall of Purple Light but the grand building was already ablaze.

Jiang Xiu stepped around the scaffolding that encased the building and made his way inside. Over a hundred artisans and tradesmen had been indentured to renovate this edifice that had stood at the centre of noble Chinese ceremonies for centuries. They worked with fierce determination, intent on maintaining a cracking pace in order to please their supreme leader.

The propaganda minister had played an important role in building the profile of his president, but it was a remarkably easy job. President Meng Tao exuded the certainty of those who are destined to rule. Thick jet-black hair crowned a strong face set with high cheekbones and intense, intelligent eyes. A touch of puffiness about his jowls hinted at too many state banquets and too little exercise. But his shoulders were wide and his arms
strong. His hands bore the traces of the long hours he had spent in hard physical labour in his youth.

Although Meng was a ‘princeling' – the son of a revolutionary veteran – his path to leadership had been arduous. His father had been vice premier but was purged and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. At fifteen, Meng left Beijing in shame, a ‘sent-down youth' banished to a remote village in the Shaanxi Province for seven years.

Those wilderness years in rural China were the ‘turning point' in his life, according to the official biography that Jiang had commissioned. What was not recorded was that it was there that Meng had forged enduring bonds with other sent-down princelings, the ‘Shaanxi Gang' ultimately rising to grasp four of the seven seats on China's supreme governing body, the Politburo Standing Committee.

Old hands had watched first in admiration then trepidation as Meng's influence grew. Step by step he was taking control of all the supreme institutions in the Communist Party, the state and the military. He already chaired the National Security Committee and the Central Leading Group on Comprehensive Deepening of Economic Reform – two crucial decision-making bodies in Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party's central headquarters.

In this teeming state of 1.3 billion souls, his eyes and ears were everywhere. Jiang was one of the trusted few. The president was a micro-manager, right down to personally supervising the renovation of this monument of ancient power.

Meng had closely studied revolutionary leaders and he'd been struck by George Washington's passion for architecture and
landscape design. He had directed Jiang to read the detailed letters Washington had penned about the rebuilding and expansion of his Virginia home, Mount Vernon, even as the British made their grand push against Brooklyn in August 1776. Washington hated disorder and had fussed over every detail of his estate, down to the wallpaper, paint colour and ceiling ornaments.

So Meng ordered his palace as he ordered society – with the iron resolve of a budding dictator. The president would quote the ancient maxim ‘Virtues are central, punishment supplements them' as he scoured the land to purge dissidents.

He had a fearful temper and his moods had become increasingly unpredictable as his power and popularity had grown. The state was in control, and he controlled the state.

Not since Mao had a Chinese leader so dominated the party and combined power with the cult of personality. Since his ascension to the presidency just over two years previously, Meng had been sending an unmistakeable message that China was not ruled by a faceless party – it was ruled by a man.

He was a Cult of One who made a display of his personal life and cultivated a connection with the masses to become the ‘People's President'. He was married to a famous opera singer who travelled with him abroad. He sat cross-legged with rural peasants to eat dumplings, and carried his own umbrella. The
People's Daily
had even given him a nickname reflecting his exalted status: Meng Dada or ‘Uncle Meng'. Some China observers in the West had adopted a more sinister translation: ‘Big Brother Meng'.

Meng saw himself as greater than Mao because the founder of the communist state had done enormous damage by rejecting China's richly embroidered history. This error, Meng believed, had stunted his country and he was determined to reconnect with that history, recreate it and bend it to his purpose.

Part of Jiang's role was to reinvigorate the belief planted deep in the souls of the Chinese populous that they were the centre of all things. Having that snatched away by the West during the ‘Hundred Years of Humiliation' had created a deep sense of resentment. It was a powerful weapon, but it had to be wielded with great skill.

‘History is created by the people and so is civilisation,' Meng told Jiang during one of their many discussions. ‘We should be more respectful and mindful of five thousand years of continuous Chinese culture.'

Following his president's directives, Jiang revived interest in all things Chinese with a motto that Meng borrowed from the Ming Dynasty: ‘A society without ritual is like a plough without a blade.' The people lapped it up and courses in Confucianism flourished.

The defining moment of Meng's premiership had been when he forced the retreat of the USS
George Washington
from its mission to sail the length of the Taiwan Strait. It drove his status and popularity to levels Western leaders could only dream of. It poured fuel on nationalistic fires and secured his freedom to make ever bolder moves in domestic and foreign policy.

Chinese commentators had hailed it the definitive end of the ‘Hundred Years of Humiliation'. Meng was raised to the rare
status of a leader who ushered in a change in epoch. The internal view was reinforced by the reaction of the rest of the world. Once again the world's potentates were flocking to the Middle Kingdom, begging for an audience with its leader. In the minds of its people China had returned to its rightful place, but Jiang knew that, for Meng, there was still a reckoning to be had. The humiliation would not go unpunished.

Jiang arrived to this morning's meeting to find the president surrounded by a cabal of officials carrying notepads and architectural plans, and whispering in the presence of their master.

Though Jiang dared not give voice to it, he had become fearful of what he saw in his President's unstoppable rise. He believed Meng saw himself not as a president, but as an emperor.

Elizabeth Scott buried her expensively coiffured head in her manicured hands and uttered a long, low expletive.

It had been the Australia Day from hell.

Australia's twenty-eighth prime minister reached for the television remote to banish the barrage of ridicule that had assailed her all day.

Scott was alone in her parliamentary suite, having ordered her staff from the room. She didn't need their reproachful looks and redundant advice on how to dig herself out of this latest deep hole.

She'd disabled her Twitter feed to dodge the blizzard of digital excrement hurled by the masses. Social media had become the twenty-first-century pillory where the faceless and cowardly vented their spleen.

Scott's decision to bring back imperial honours had stirred the piranha pool into a feeding frenzy. What had started as a
Twitterstorm had morphed into Twittergeddon, crowned with an uber-trending hashtag: #Knightmare.

What she'd thought would be a deft political play had backfired. The knighthoods were intended to be a sop to the restive conservative wing of the Liberal Party, a counter to their deep resentment of a string of socially progressive decisions. Now Scott, a lifelong Republican, was branded an out-of-touch, opportunistic hypocrite. The move confirmed the electorate's doubt about her character and judgement in one barbecue-stopping cock-up.

The only winner was the man she had honoured: Jack Webster.

Since he'd risen through the ranks of the RAAF to his current role as Chief of the Defence Force, Webster had been the go–to man in every major crisis – from the war in Afghanistan to natural disasters.

The public couldn't get enough of him. This was a country where real celebrity was in short supply and he seemed to have joined the ranks of rock idols and sports stars. Scott thought privately that Webster was part benign military overlord, part matinee idol. And he was one of the few safe pairs of hands working for her government. She knew she wasn't the only politician to have relied heavily on his uncanny ability to catch the public's mood. She had clung to him in the hope that her low stock would be dragged higher in his reflected glory. But it had only made her appear shabby.

Everyone agreed he was the right man, conferred with the wrong award. When door-stopped at a citizenship ceremony, the burnished and braided military leader had been humble and generous to a fault.

‘The prime minister is a fine woman and a thoughtful leader,' he said. ‘I am certain she did this for the right reasons. It was not my decision and I won't comment on your commentary about it. A military man serves at the pleasure of his leader and I accepted the knighthood to honour the warrior men and women I lead.'

‘Do we call you “Sir Jack” from now on?' one reporter called.

Webster grinned. ‘I'll always be just Jack. But if you serve under me, then it had better be “Sir”.'

The reporters laughed. Everyone was laughing except Scott.

A snap ReachTEL poll on Channel Seven showed eighty per cent of the population thought the move idiotic. Even the hard-right monarchists in Scott's government recognised the danger and were now taking to the airwaves to disavow the award.

‘It came as a surprise and a shock to me,' the education minister declared as he beat a retreat from what was meant to be a low-key and unifying celebration of national pride.

An exasperated chief whip had rung to inform the prime minister that he'd failed to snare even one voice prepared to publicly back her.

‘That includes me,' he snapped as he hung up.

The decision had left Scott friendless, isolated and vulnerable. This was her nadir. She'd been dubbed the Accidental Prime Minister and the sobriquet had stuck because it was true. In seventeen months as the nation's leader, the PM had blundered her way from one self-inflicted disaster to the next.

Scott had regained the Liberal leadership in extraordinary circumstances. Her predecessor, Barry Landry, had lasted just
a few months before he exploded in the only truly technicolour moment of his long gun-metal grey career. It turned out that the man the Liberal Party had thought was Mr Safe Hands – and who had taken his party to a commanding lead in the polls – was corrupt to his brown brogue shoelaces. Labor's dirt unit had uncovered, and leaked, compromising details about his chairmanship of a Victorian utility.

In an exquisite piece of theatre, the Labor prime minister, Catriona Bailey, had timed her visit to the governor-general to ask for an election to the very moment that Landry was tearfully resigning as opposition leader.

Shattered Liberals were left with a Hobson's choice between two deeply flawed former leaders. Scott was considered far too liberal, and the ultra hard-right Emily Brooks was haunted by viral online footage of her spectacular sexual escapades.

‘It's Bambi or the Bondage Queen,' one hardhead lamented.

Scott won the party room by a handful of votes, but the polling collapsed as the election campaign intensified. What had shaped as a Coalition landslide narrowed to a six-seat majority.

There was no honeymoon with a resurgent Bailey declaring that Scott would be a one-term wonder. Despite Scott's fierce intelligence, her radiant good looks, her Olympic past and her stellar business background, it now looked as though the Labor leader would be proven right.

The PM's phone rang and the screen lit with the name of the only person she was always happy to talk to.

‘Looks like you are taking a lot of fire.' Jack Webster's voice was as comforting as hot chocolate on a cold night.

‘Another bad day in a long line of bad days,' Scott sighed. ‘Gets hard to tell them apart. Thanks for your support; I haven't exactly been run down by colleagues offering their shoulder.'

‘I feel a little guilty. We'd talked about the idea but I thought you would run it through the political filter in your office.' Webster sounded genuinely concerned.

‘Don't, Jack.' Scott was clicking lazily through the news websites as she spoke. She was trending on every one. ‘This is all my own doing.'

‘It will blow over.'

‘Maybe. But it might just take me with it.'