by Fritz Galt
Behind bulletproof glass, a local uniformed guard pushed a button and the gate cranked open.
Before them stood the American Institute in Taiwan. It spread like a white bird with its wings stretched around a large, shady tree and garden. It was a one-story masonry building with a clay tile roof and a two-story consulate on one end.
Mick eased the car out of the confusion of scooters, push carts and automobiles to the relative luxury of a parking lot.
There, he parked and looked up at the sky. Clouds were building. Before he shut off the air conditioner, he turned to Natalie.
“What have we forgotten? We won’t be home before the storm strikes, but the apartment is as ready as we can make it.”
“I plan to be home by six,” she said. “Can I expect you back by then?”
“I should be back from Mucha by early afternoon. First, I’ll represent the director at the temple’s rededication. Then I’m invited to a tea tasting at the Plantation Owners’ Association.”
“Then straight home?”
“I don’t know yet. You may find me back here, in which case we can drive home together.”
“I’d rather you get home as fast as you can,” she said.
He closed his eyes. There was one more thing. One more important thing to say.
“The Taiwan Relations Act,” he said. “We aren’t veering from our pledge of defending Taiwan, are we?”
“Are you crazy?” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Just because the Chinese rattle their sabers before the international press doesn’t mean they’re serious. It won’t make us change our commitments one iota.”
“Whew,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”
She jabbed him in the ribs. Flinching, he caught her hand. Her skin was warm despite the air-conditioned car. Whenever she felt that way, he knew that she was ready for action, be it work or pleasure. She was excited and prepared to take on the challenge of her job, her marriage and a super typhoon.
Once inside the front door, they went their separate ways. He watched her punch in the code to the economic section, then he keyed in the code to the technical analysis section.
They parted, tossing each other a secret smile.
A cable from Eli Shaw in Beijing lay in Mick’s in-box. He scanned the block of arcane communications gibberish at the top of the cable and looked for the first detail he wanted. He was the only recipient listed.
Then he sat down to read the cable. Eli conjectured that “Class A” meant domestic stocks in the Shanghai Securities Exchange. “No PRC support” might mean that China’s central government wouldn’t buy shares to bolster the plummeting market probably for the dates given, over the next week.
“Stocks,” he whispered with surprise. The message amounted to an insider’s tip into the stock market. It indicated that stocks would continue to fall, only to rise sharply once China pumped money into the market. Investors who purchased shares while they were cheap could sell them a few days later at enormous profit.
Mick thought it over. Class A stocks would be unavailable to General Li, who would be a foreign investor. Those were domestic stocks, and foreigners and foreign companies were excluded from making transactions in that market. So what would Class A stocks have to do with General Li?
Eli’s analysis continued. He speculated that someone in Taiwan could contact a broker in China to buy shares, albeit illegally, and make a killing in the market.
Of course, one couldn’t simply walk into the People’s Republic of China with a suitcase full of New Taiwan dollars, Eli went on. It would take someone like a Hong Kong broker to disguise the source, and a Chinese broker to buy the stocks. That way, any amount of foreign currency could slip into the Communist mainland at the press of a computer key.
Mick’s thoughts flashed back to his conversation with Alec when his brother had asked about the key benefactor of his research project: “Is he a stock broker from Hong Kong?”
Mick looked around for the secretary. “Juliet, can you have Hong Kong fax us a bio on a certain stock broker named Johnny Ouyang? They might have something on him. He seems to have a lot of money to donate to universities.”
“Our classified fax is broken,” she said. “And we can’t receive a bio on a regular fax machine.”
On that point, he would normally agree. No matter how sketchy information the U.S. Government had on a foreign subject, it was classified. The information itself might not be dangerous in the wrong hands. But, the fact that the U.S. was collecting information on someone, America’s friendliness toward that subject and the type of information that the U.S. Government needed could be valuable information for a hostile regime.
Mick didn’t care much for the attitude of many in the agency that secrecy was a relic of the Cold War. Little could be gained by revealing one’s hand, and diplomacy was still a poker game, no matter how hard people wanted to believe that the game was over with the demise of the Soviet Union.
“Tell them to fax it in over our secure number. I need the information immediately.”
“I’ll have to attach the fax machine to the secure line.”
“You’re a tech head. You have my permission.”
She picked up the phone with a smirk and dialed Hong Kong.
He picked up his phone and dialed Steve Novak in Defense.
Chapter 19
Mick sat in Steve Novak’s neat, airtight office watching his reaction carefully.
Steve was a former naval officer with impressive credentials. A submarine XO, he had transitioned to a career in the civil service. His office walls displayed both his military commission and a diploma from Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies. He had made the successful conversion from spear chucker to missile counter.
Normally fresh-faced and open to suggestions, Steve looked dubious. “Are you sure you aren’t just chasing shadows? C’mon, Mick. A tiny message on a piece of paper? A cabby murdered for no apparent reason? Mere guesswork that money will leak into China? It takes more than that to accuse Taiwan’s military of breaking its own rules and investing in China.”
Steve shoved a legal-size photocopy Mick’s way, leaned over the form and placed his finger on a sum of money at the bottom. $75,000,000. “U.S. suppliers sign this kind of contract every day. Why on earth would Taiwan’s military want to pour money into the Shanghai Securities Exchange? The military here is a buyer, not an investor.”
Mick let him make his case.
“Secondly, why deal with China? Taiwan is as American as apple pie. They’re our boys. They won’t, in fact they can’t, deal with the Chinese. They have to account for their money. It’s unthinkable, not to mention a treasonable offense.”
Steve held his head. “I can’t even picture what you’re talking about. Think of the fallout it would create in the military if they discovered their supreme commander was investing in the archenemy. Think of the risks for even a small investment. We’d need a change in Taiwan law before anyone in the military could do that. And that would have to be preceded by a major policy shift opening up to China. Taiwan isn’t beginning that sort of relationship with China these days. It just flies in the face of reason.”
“Yeah,” Mick said. “That’s what I don’t get. There seems to be some deeper reason that we can’t fathom.”
“Then you’re talking about a professor worried about the Chinese invading Taiwan, a Mainlander physically assaulting your brother on a cliff, and a Hong Kong investor dabbling in your brother’s ocean research. Sounds like sheer coincidence to me.”
Mick let Steve continue.
“And furthermore, where’s the proof of Taiwan’s military involvement? You only have suspicions at this stage and scant evidence. What if your man Captain Leng was playing fast and loose with money behind General Li’s back? Or maybe he forgot the message during the car chase and never gave it to the general.”
Steve was on a roll.
“And how in any event are you go
ing to track down where the money goes? Someone has to purchase the New Taiwan dollars on the Chinese side and buy the stocks in Shanghai. Someone who can get around the foreign investment laws. Then you’re talking about the entire Chinese central government temporarily dropping support of their own markets, then pumping money into the market later in order to give someone in Taiwan’s military a tidy little profit. Insane.”
“C’mon Steve, you know people can launder money into China. Foreign investments are easy to hide.”
“I’ll grant you that. Someone would have to convert the New Taiwan dollars to Chinese currency, buy the Class A stocks, sell the stocks and return the profits to Taiwan. Our team in Beijing keeps a close eye on the large military-financed corporations in China that own everything from steel mills to overseas investment firms. If memory serves, I believe they own a financial services company named Global Services Group. Sounds perfectly legit, doesn’t it? I’d recommend them to my own broker if I didn’t know any better. And I suppose finding a broker in Hong Kong who isn’t slightly bent is as difficult as finding a bride in a brothel. But your scope is too large. You’ve got to narrow your search.”
Steve straightened up the papers on his desk.
“I’m sorry, Mick, but I can’t go with you to Mucha. I have too much on my plate. I can’t be of help until you get more proof.”
Just then, someone knocked on Steve’s door.
Mick leaned over to answer it. Juliet Marsh stepped in and handed Mick a facsimile.
She hovered over him while he read it.
“I hope this is legitimate business,” she said.
“Of course it is,” he said without looking up. “I’m just looking for a good stock broker.”
“Playing the market using U.S. Government property,” she said with a huff, and left with her fists clenched on her hips.
When the door slammed shut, Mick took a closer look at the fax. There they were, as plain as day. The names he had been looking for.
“Johnny Ouyang,” he read from the fax, “manages Hong Kong’s largest stock brokerage firm. They are wholly owned by China’s Global Services Group.”
He looked up.
Steve slumped back in his seat. “Okay. Which way to Mucha?”
President Charles Damon sat at the Resolute, the Chief Executive’s historic desk made from timbers of a British ship by that name. He drew a circle around key passages of the Taiwan Relations Act.
In the 1979 Act of Congress, America declared the following policy: “To consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.” The policy went further. The U.S. would “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” and “maintain America’s capacity to resist any resort to force that would jeopardize the security of Taiwan.”
He heaved a deep sigh of relief. He didn’t have to stick his neck out to defend Taiwan. America was already committed.
He read on. The Act specified how defensive measures were to be implemented. “The United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
We can send them swords, ships and soldiers, he thought to himself.
The next paragraph caught his eye. It was where he came in.
“The President is directed to inform the Congress promptly of any threat to the security of the people on Taiwan. The President and the Congress shall determine appropriate action by the United States in response to any such danger.”
That was his next step. He would have to inform and convince Congress that the Chinese posture was a threat not only to Taiwan, but to the security of the Western Pacific region.
He stuffed the Act into the top drawer of his desk and switched off his desk lamp. As he headed across the great presidential seal woven into the carpet, he looked back at his enormous wooden desk.
An American fishing vessel had saved The Resolute by dislodging it from an Arctic ice floe and towing the ship back to England. When The Resolute was later scrapped, the Queen of England had ordered a desk fashioned out of the timbers and sent to the American president as a gift.
It was a desk born out of good foreign relations. But many men who had sat there before him were faced with more difficult international challenges. They had each found memorable ways to express the problem of the hour.
President Nixon had warned of a “domino effect” in Southeast Asia. That sounded a bit too dire for the current situation.
President H.W. Bush had drawn “a line in the sand” to defend Kuwait. Such an image would paint China as expansionist, which he wasn’t prepared to do.
Then he remembered watching newsreels in the movie theater of Franklin Delano Roosevelt making his impassioned speech before Congress that the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor was a “date which will live in infamy.”
He shuddered. The speech was memorable, but nobody was attacking America.
He might be blowing the whole thing out of proportion, but his presidency would live in infamy if he allowed China to swallow up Taiwan.
He turned and caught his wife staring at him from a portrait on the wall across from his desk. She had been a clear-headed woman, not driven, but with her priorities straight.
He and Jane had visited Taiwan back when he was a congressman from Maine, long before they knew that cancer would appear and claim her life.
They had visited the island’s south, some huge port city down there with an unpronounceable name. He had delivered a speech at the local university along the shores of the South China Sea. Jane had stood beside him during the speech where he strongly supported Taiwan. After the speech, she had held his hand as they responded to the standing ovation.
She had stretched up to whisper in his ear. What was it she had said?
“These are our friends.” That was it. He remembered vividly, because at the moment she had said it, he realized it was true.
He turned off the circle of lights that rimmed the ceiling and headed past his chief of staff.
“Round up the National Security Council for a meeting first thing in the morning.”
Chapter 20
Mick drove his red sports car over the verdant mountain passes east of Taipei. The gentle rising and falling motion reminded him of a pleasant roller coaster ride.
He glanced at Steve Novak sitting beside him and his thoughts returned to the issue they had discussed at the office. “Two murders in two days. Two bodies land at the feet of my brother and me. It’s not a coincidence. It’s what happens when you start poking around in other people’s garbage. Eventually the stench begins to rise.”
“So explain the connection to me,” Steve said.
“It’s the same man at work. He funds a scientific project on which Alec is working, and he serves as a link between Taiwan’s military and the PRC. His name is Johnny Ouyang. Listen, Alec is nearly killed by a mainland Chinese as his team reaches the culmination of Johnny’s project.”
“Okay, I’ve got that much,” Steve said.
“Then Taiwan Foreign Affairs and I discover a Chinese diplomat slipping information to the diplomat’s half-brother in Taiwan’s military. Turns out the half-brother is an aide to General Li, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. This brother kills a man who recognizes him in Peitou. He gets a message to General Li. The message is to purchase Shanghai stocks. Who can broker such a deal? Why not Johnny Ouyang, who is already meddling in Taiwan and who has extensive connections with China’s Global Services Group, which is owned by the People’s Liberation Army?”
“Isn’t Ouyang the name of that radioman? You know, the owner of ‘The Voice of the People?’”
“Damn, you’re right,” Mick said. “Rocky Ouyang. I hadn’t made that connection.”
“Ouyang is an unusual two-character surname. That’s why it stuck in my mind.
”
Mick thought for a moment. Just how much could the leftist head of the taxi union be involved? Rocky Ouyang had spent months in and out of jail for inciting cabbies to riot. It was Rocky’s voice that had exhorted taxi drivers to track down Leng’s motor scooter after the murder.
“Still,” Steve said, “we don’t know that Johnny Ouyang will broker the deal.”
“That’s where I need your help. I’m going to give you the name of a Company man in Beijing who’s helping on that end. His name is Eli Shaw. Tell him what we’ve uncovered so far. I’d like him to look into Mr. Ouyang’s activities in the PRC.”
“I can do that,” Steve said. “I shudder to think of Taiwan’s military mixed up in this. I’d simply stop the whole exchange just to keep them from getting themselves in trouble.”
“I shudder to think of China’s military mixed up in this, too. Natalie swears that someone besides China is provoking the current confrontation, but it still doesn’t add up. The timing of the Summer Wind operation and the general’s investments seems all too close.”
The two settled back to contemplate the problem as they studied the mysterious beauty of the rugged terrain.
Natalie peered out through the grills of her office window. Leafy tips of a fan palm had begun to flutter gently against a black sky. The enormous typhoon had already reached Orchid Island and was gathering speed as it advanced on the large island of Taiwan. She began to hear wind rattle a nearby stand of bamboo.
Suddenly she was hit by an overwhelming gloom. She had caused all the trouble. Bronson Nichols was no longer returning her phone calls. The political, military and press sections were meeting without inviting her to participate.
The institute had isolated her. Even her staff no longer looked her in the eye.
She had failed in a major way.
The wind was clearing away the city’s bad air and sharpening her view of everything. Through the opening and shutting compound gate, she watched distinct images of people and cars hurrying around the urban landscape.