The Edge of Madness

by Michael Dobbs

  Harry was listening attentively as they pulled onto the M40 motorway and swung out into the fast lane. At last he was beginning to understand what was hounding Mark D’Arby so pitilessly.

  ‘The old guard’s terrified it’s all going to get flushed down the pan like the Soviet Union,’ the Prime Minister continued, ‘while the new industrialists are worried they’ll return home to find five hundred coolies living in their spare room. So they’ve given Mao unprecedented leeway. And he’s intent on using it. China First.’

  ‘Wave the flag, piss over the garden fence, and hope the masses don’t notice they’re choking to death on recycled plastic.’

  ‘Something like that. But he’s different, he means it. This guy is for real.’

  ‘So what does he want?’

  ‘Revenge. On the Russians for putting the screw on him over energy prices, and on the Americans for being cultural syphilis and the only reason Beijing hasn’t yet got back Taiwan. That’s his ambition.’

  ‘China reunited? That’d be a feather in his cap.’

  ‘The biggest from China’s point of view. Mao brings Taiwan back in from the cold and he becomes the most feted leader his country has ever had, a name they’ll remember right up there alongside Confucius and chilli prawns. Not an insignificant inducement.’

  ‘You think he means that?’

  ‘Not only does he mean it, he may now have the tools to do it.’

  ‘The perfect war,’ Harry whispered, remembering their earlier conversation.

  ‘To be precise–cyber war.’

  For a moment, Harry said nothing. He flicked the lever to engage the cruise control and settled back in the middle lane while a thousand thoughts rushed past him. Cyber warfare. The concept was simple, its ramifications endless. The use of computers to disable, deceive, or destroy your enemy. To cause chaos in their control systems, to make them malfunction, to do things they shouldn’t, to mess around and foul up your enemy so badly that they lose their will to fight. The theory was simple: anything that had a computer chip could be attacked, and nowadays everything had a computer chip–everything from a microwave oven to a nuclear deterrent, from a remote control that ran a television to the systems that manage the world’s financial markets, not forgetting missile guidance, heart pacemakers, air-traffic control, burglar alarms, sewage pumps, power generators, food factories, transport grids, dishwashers, traffic lights and car engines. Even the central-locking system on this Range Rover. Didn’t have to knock it out, just confuse it, tell it to do the wrong thing at the wrong time and it would mess up, perhaps catastrophically, all by itself. Just like the systems on the 777.

  It reminded Harry of something else Mao Zedong had said, something Harry had learned at Staff College. ‘To achieve victory we must make the enemy blind and deaf, and drive his commanders to distraction by creating confusion in their minds.’ Perhaps the old pimple-faced bastard hadn’t been completely raving after all. From the darkness beside him, Harry could hear the strain in D’Arby’s voice. The British Empire had come and gone, the Soviet Union had collapsed, the American dream lay submerged in Prozac, yet the Han endured, as if knowing that their time would come. And, with Mao Yanming, perhaps now it had.

  ‘His ambition’s simple,’ D’Arby continued. ‘He wants to make China great once more. Repay all the historic insults, put an end to the kow-towing. No more exploitation, no more pillage, no more watching Chinese babies being bounced off the end of foreign bayonets.’

  ‘It’s been a while since those days.’

  ‘Grandmothers still remember. And the Chinese have a collective memory that makes the Encyclopædia Britannica look like a comic strip. The Opium Wars, the Boxer rebellion, the imperialist invasions, the era of Unequal Treaties, the rape of Manchuria, the foreign settlements, the enforced leasing of Hong Kong–and Taiwan, of course. They remember it all as though it were yesterday. Mao wants to wipe the slate clean.’

  ‘Settle scores.’

  ‘He’d call it restoring face. But he has a problem. For all its mass, China doesn’t have enough muscle. The People’s Liberation Army is still light-years behind the competition, some of it’s still riding bikes, so Mao knows he’s got to find an answer on the cheap,’ and that appears to be precisely what his boys have done. Cracked the cyber-warfare codes. Now they can worm their way inside our systems, mess with them, and apparently get out without leaving a trace. That’s what they’ve been up to, trying out their new box of tricks on targets all round the world, Harry. Russian nuclear plants, American power supplies, all sorts of things…The list is endless.’

  Harry tapped the brake pedal, knocking out the cruise control. Suddenly he didn’t trust it any more, wanted to be back in charge. He put his foot down, sped away. If only life could be as simple as a Range Rover. Beside him, D’Arby’s breath was coming in short, shallow bursts. When he spoke again, he seemed diminished.

  ‘And you know what really terrifies me, Harry? What’s got me throwing up every night?’

  ‘Right now I don’t care even to imagine.’

  ‘That Chinese bastard has made this country his number-one target.’

  Early Friday morning. Beijing.

  Fu strode away from Mao’s office in his own peculiar manner. He had a bobbing gait, a little like a wading bird, his body leaning forward while his feet seemed to be searching for a secure foothold. The step summed up the man. Nothing was taken for granted. He was a private individual who preferred shadows to sunlight. Not for him the interminable speeches that others made from the podium of the State Council. He didn’t care to explain, certainly not to others, and sometimes not even to himself. Introspection, he found, was a worm that ate away at a man’s courage.

  As he walked into the cleansing morning air beside the lake at Zhongnanhai and towards his car, a large sedan passed. In its rear seat, squashed uncomfortably together, sat three of the most senior commanders of the People’s Liberation Army, dressed in their full military regalia; strutting peacocks all, Fu thought. Their eyes met his yet there was no greeting, nothing but coldness. The PLA’s world was one of military codes and inflexible structures, a world in which minds were always turned back on the last war, not towards the next one. These men had no time for subversives such as Fu, and the mistrust they felt was reciprocated in full.

  Ducks scampered for the safety of the water as Fu approached along the bank. He smiled inside. The generals would be scampering, too, when they found out what was afoot. Not long now: the country had arrived at the crossroads that separated the past from its future. It was time to decide. Modern China was a great nation, and one that carried great burdens united only by the pollution and muck that engulfed them all. It must move on, but to where? It was no longer Communist in anything but name, on that point there was agreement, if on little else. Mao knew which direction to take, of course, but so many were too blind to see it, were reluctant to follow. There were doubters, there were whisperers, there were malcontents and traitors, and that was what made Fu so necessary, like a surgeon who dealt with discontent and cut out the gangrene. Yes, that’s what he was, a surgeon.

  Wu Xiaoling had been part of that malady, a whisperer, a traitor. Yet how much had she whispered, how much had she told? And just how much had Mao told her? Fu hadn’t dared ask, but women had such wiles, could extract so much, infer even more. Fu rejoiced in the fact he had no time for them, it made him feel almost pure.

  It was possible that Wu had told too much, had revealed their plans, so Mao had insisted that those plans be brought forward. But we aren’t ready, Fu had argued. Neither are our enemies, Mao had replied, and we must give them no opportunity to prepare. It must be now! The generals wouldn’t care for it, when they were told, but once the plan succeeded they’d be scrambling over each other’s backs to grab a slice of the credit. It was about to start, the great adventure, the moment when China would stand tall once more, their enemies crushed like ripe fruit and their skins left for the birds.

  Fu s
watted at the mosquitoes hovering around his face. There was no time to waste. As the sullen-faced generals disappeared inside the compound, Fu quickened his pace. More ducks scattered in alarm, seeking the cover of the bulrushes. He smiled as he watched them. In just a few hours, there would be nowhere left for anyone to hide.

  Late Thursday night. Moray, North-east Scotland.

  ‘Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.’

  The air-traffic controller at RAF Kinloss on the north-east coast of Scotland sat up sharply. It was going to be one of those nights. The station commander was on the prowl, breathing down everyone’s necks, making one of his unannounced checks, and now this. There’d been an unidentified aircraft nudging into restricted airspace somewhere to the north and a couple of the new Eurofighter Typhoons from the Quick Reaction Alert force had already been scrambled, but the emergency signal dumped the matter directly into her lap. She tugged nervously at the sleeve of her blouse.

  ‘Mayday. Mayday. Mayday,’ the voice repeated. The voice had a dull, dough-like accent.

  ‘Aircraft calling Kinloss, your Mayday acknowledged. Squawk seven-seven-zero-zero, pass details when ready.’ 7700 was the international distress shout that would alert everyone to the pilot’s difficulties.

  ‘RAF Kinloss, decline Squawk. Keep situation between ourselves, please. This is Russian military. We are Bear. We have major loss of hydraulics. Request straight-in landing.’

  The announcement caused her to catch her breath. This wasn’t some idiot in a Cessna who’d got himself lost in cloud but a big, ugly Russian Bear. Old enmities die hard and the officers’ mess at Kinross was still full of bits that had fallen or been blown from some ancient Soviet warplane, and now she had the latest version, the whole thing. It was a chance for her to shine–and in front of the station commander. Even an experienced controller with the rank of flight lieutenant was allowed to enjoy a moment in the spotlight. She sipped at her tea; the meniscus gave an expectant shiver. ‘Roger, Mayday Russian Bear. This is RAF Kinloss. Pass your message.’

  A silence, as though he were teasing, until: ‘Kinloss, this is Russian Bear. I say again. Major loss of hydraulics. We are one hundred sixty miles–I repeat, one-six-zero miles–north-east of your position. Descending.’

  ‘Mayday. Stand by.’

  The station commander was hovering, trying not to interfere but inevitably drawn like a moth to this Russian flame. The controller didn’t need his advice–had she ever taken advice from any man on this station that hadn’t by the morning seemed limp and ridiculous?–but there was no harm in acknowledging the group captain’s presence. She turned and raised an eyebrow.

  He bounced on his toes, as he did when concentrating, hands clasped behind his back. ‘What do you think, Flight Lieutenant? Shall we make it a bit of an exercise? Hold off on the D&D boys and see if we can handle it ourselves?’

  She took his point. Distress & Diversion, along with a variety of other support services, would normally be brought in to assist with Maydays, but in a full-scale emergency–with the country under attack, for instance–they might not be available. In these circumstances Kinloss would be on its own, so she was being given a chance to try it out, to stretch her wings, and she enjoyed that. When she came back on air, her voice had lost its tight, formal edge and reached out with greater confidence. ‘Russian Bear, you are cleared. Straight in Runway Two Six. Report ready to copy weather.’

  The voice repeated the instructions, still dull and as heavy as an uncooked pudding, very Russian.

  ‘Surface wind two-five-zero,’ the controller said. ‘Twenty-three knots. Visibility six miles. Cloud broken two thousand five hundred feet. QNH on one-zero-one-seven.’

  The voice copied the information.

  ‘Russian Bear, this is Kinloss. Do you request radar assistance?’

  ‘Kinloss, Russian Bear. No. Thank you. We know where you are. And we see you have sent two of your flying traffic policemen to show us the way. We will be with you soon.’

  ‘Russian Bear, this is Kinloss. Glad to hear it. We’ll put the kettle on for you.’

  ‘Kinloss, Russian Bear. Thank you. Just a few thousand feet of runway, that is all we need. But tea would be very good, too.’

  The controller turned to her station commander. Funny that he’d been here, just at this touchy moment, she thought. ‘English breakfast with a nip of vodka it is, sir.’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘Then you’d better hurry, they’ll be here in twenty minutes.’

  ‘I’ll alert the ground emergency services, of course, just in case, sir.’

  ‘And I suggest you tuck our Russian friends away quietly in one of the hangars. They’ll want to lick their wounds and repair their hydraulics in private.’

  ‘We let them do just that, sir?’

  ‘This is a diplomatic situation, not a military one, Flight Lieutenant. We give them whatever assistance they need, then get rid of them.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, an edge of deflation creeping into her voice. No medals, then. No souvenirs for the mess.

  ‘You did well, Jayne.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ She brightened, utterly unaware of the part she’d taken in a dance of shadows. The station commander’s presence was no coincidence, his orders had come straight from the air marshal in Whitehall. No discussion, no explanation, in fact he had almost as little idea of what was going on as the flight lieutenant, but station commanders tucked up here on the Moray Firth had to be adaptable. During World War Two one of his predecessors had found food supplies so hard to come by that he’d dropped a bomb into Burghead Bay to stun the fish. Nobody had asked too many questions, they’d just got on with it. Now he had been asked to give sanctuary to the crew of a Russian bomber until Sunday–and that’s precisely how long he’d been told they would need to fix their problem. Sunday. The air marshal was a most gifted man but even he couldn’t know how long it would take to fix a Russian leak, which meant that hydraulics weren’t the problem at all. What the real problem was, the station commander hadn’t any idea, and neither, perhaps, had the air marshal. Oh, and the station commander was also asked to lend the Russian crew his private car. That’s what had kept him bouncing on his toes the entire evening.

  He was still wrestling with his thoughts when the Bear landed, its four huge engines trailing smoke. Once it had taxied safely to a halt the emergency services were stood down as the follow-me vehicle led the lumbering bomber to its haven in a hangar that would normally house one of the RAF’s Nimrod MR2 reconnaissance planes. The Bear and all those on board would be secluded there, for as long as they needed.

  It was only once he had seen the Russian bomber safely tucked away that the station commander returned to his quarters. He glanced at his watch; he was five minutes behind schedule, but that wasn’t bad, given the circumstances. He picked up a secure phone, dialled a number, and as soon as it was answered said only one word.

  ‘Bingo.’

  That was the agreed signal, a word opaque enough to confuse anyone trying to listen in. That was odd, too, it was as though Whitehall no longer trusted their own secure communications. He glanced down at the blotter on his desk. ‘Beware of Russians bearing leaks,’ he had scribbled. He sighed and scratched his balding head, more confused than ever. Damn world had grown so complicated. Difficult to know whose side you were on. How he missed the Cold War.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Late Thursday night. Balmoral.

  The Russians were coming, and so were the Americans, but not without a little difficulty. That difficulty was named Warren Holt. He was caring, boundlessly loyal, prissily Yankee, and hated being left out. And he was knocking at Blythe’s door.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked as his head appeared round her bedroom door. There were few physical secrets between them, he’d seen her in sickness and in health, in curlers and in nightdress, in tears, in tantrum and in triumph, even in the bath, if the phone call was urgent enough. In fact, they’d held few secrets of any kind from each other, up to
now.

  ‘I need you, Warren.’

  He stepped inside the bedroom, and his eyes flared in surprise as he saw her standing over a small suitcase. ‘You’re packing?’

  ‘I’m going away. A day or so. I want you to cover for me.’

  ‘But you can’t.’

  ‘I am.’

  He made a noise as though he was being strangled. ‘For heaven’s sake…Where?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Then why? I don’t understand.’ He was both anxious and a little angry. ‘You can’t just disappear. It’s ridiculous.’

  Slowly, she closed the lid of her suitcase and zipped it up. ‘Nevertheless, I’ve got to. And that’s why I need your help.’

  ‘Come on, get serious.’

  She gave him a stare of rebuke that told him she was already so.

  ‘Madam President,’ he declared, growing a little pompous and stepping further into the room, ‘you’re perhaps not well. You know you simply can not do this. Go off on your own.’

  ‘I’m not sick, that’s just pretence. And I’m not going on my own.’

  ‘Then…’

  ‘With Marcus.’

  He stepped back, flabbergasted and deeply hurt, the eyes flooded with confusion. A private weekend? With that man? Was she on the rebound? Surely it couldn’t be…‘Are you somehow trying to punish me because I didn’t tell you about Arnie?’