The Chinese Agenda

by Joe Poyer

  The five old men and the caravan master got to their feet and without a backward glance

  ,trooped out. Lin

  stood up and the rest of them got to their feet as well, stretching and shedding jackets immediately.

  'This is where you stay for tonight . . . they want you where they can keep an eye on you.

  My people are quartered with the rest of the camp and since we've spent time with them before, they won't guard us too closely. But they do,' Liu warned, 'put sentries around the camp at night. These hills used 'to be full of bandits and south, toward civilization, they still are. The guards are in two concentric rings and you would have no chance of sneaking past them. The penalty for a guard allowing anyone in or out without permission, is death by dismemberment and it ain't a pretty way to go. So they stay on their toes.'

  The door pushed open and four Kalmucks stepped in carrying their packs and snowshoes, which they tossed onto the floor. One of them stared around at the men, uttered one word, spit on the floor, then stalked out.

  'He called you barbarians,' Liu said wryly. 'The fact that you will equip them all with new weapons means nothing. They could just as easily haye slit your throats and taken the ones you have now, but the headman has put them under orders not to do so. You have their hospitality and as long as you don't abuse it, they will leave you strictly alone. So don't expect any favors. If you can't keep up, or if you violate any of their rules, you've had it.'

  'Nice people,' Leycock muttered.

  'Don't forget, these people once ruled half the known world, the largest empire ever assembled. On top of that they've managed to survive war after war and attempt after attempt to kill them off. If they think they are kings of the world, you sure as hell are not going to change their minds. They'll use you only as long as they think there is something to he gained; once they get what they want, or figure that they no longer stand a chance, they'll throw you to the wolves.'

  'Yeah . . . I guess you're right. But it doesn't make me feel any better. I don't like being anybody's poor relation.'

  Liu laughed at that. 'A poor choice of words, my friend. You don't even rate as high as a poor relation.

  They take care of their own. Strangers are fair game ... but only after the rules of hospitality have been met.' Liu, still grinning, motioned to Gillon to follow him outside.

  Gillon nodded and pulled his parka on, tugged the hood down as low as it would go and followed Liu outside into the mounting wind and cold. Gillon had forgotten, in the brief hour they had been inside the yurt, Just how cold it could be outside in the wind – and how fresh the air could seem as well. Liu led him away from the yurt toward the main fire, which was burning in fitful gusts, yet still casting some warmth. Liu stopped beside it and stamped his feet, swinging his arms at the same time to keep warm.

  `Damn, it's cold. I'm sure glad they decided to keep us tonight.'

  Àmen.'

  Liu pivoted around, staring into the darkness, then went back to swinging his arms, assured now that nobody was in earshot – even though the wind would have made it impossible for anybody more than a few feet away to overhear what he said.

  `You know, old buddy, we haven't had time to talk over old times,' Liu clasped his hands behind his back and stared into the fire.

  Gillon waited, wondering what Liu was leading up to.

  'Of course,' he went on, 'that scene in Laos is not something you can really look back on as a good time. Not any of it.

  `How are your legs? They don't seem to be bothering you.'

  Gillon shook his head. 'Okay. The doctors said that only one bone was broken.'

  Gillon half turned to face him, 'You know, I never really did get a chance to thank you.

  By the time I knew what was happening, you were gone and I always did wonder where.'

  . Liu flashed him a grin. 'And now you know, don't you? Two years,' he muttered half to himself. 'Two years in this damned icebox. Freeze in .the winter, roast in the summer and run like hell all year round . . . but

  this is it, the end of the tour. We are on the way out now and nothing is going to stop us.'

  `Then what?'

  Liu watched the fire dancing in the wind for a moment. 'I don't really know. I haven't thought much about it. I guess I'll go home for a while and try and figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life.'

  `Where's home, now?' Gillon asked, and instantly regretted the question.

  Liu turned his head and Gillon saw the puzzlement in his eyes, even though his face was half hidden by the hood. He shook his head. 'That too is a very good question. I don't know ally more. When I was a kid, it was Southern California. After college, it was Taiwan. Now ...

  'What about you?' Liu asked.

  Gillon laughed at that. 'Hell, man, I don't any more know than you do. Once 1 thought I did, now the only thing I know is that I don't know.'

  Àsia has a way of doing that to you,' Liu said quietly. `When you first get here, you think, man-oh-man, I know exactly what I'm going to do and it's right; there's just no argument about it. Then, after you've been here awhile and see some of what is really happening, you begin to wonder. You think . .. these people are getting killed in droves and they don't even know why. They go out without a whimper . . . have been for thousands of years. It's no different today than when Genghis Khan or Tamerlane came through here. Then we send our own people over and they get killed and don't know why either. No one out here knows Communism from a hole in the ground or democracy or anything else either, and you begin to wonder if it's worth all the pain and killing to try to teach them. Then after you've been here a year or two you are pretty damned certain that

  .. . like you said . the only thing you are sure of is that you aren't sure of anything any more. And you look back at home and you see the mess that's been made while you've been away: everybody afraid of everybody else, afraid of saying something because they might offend some minority group and consequently no one has enough guts to stand up and say, by God, this is wrong

  and let's fix it right, all the way right and not just some stupid half measure that will just cost money and make it that much worse.'

  Liu fell silent and kicked at the snow for a minute. When he went on, it was in a quieter voice. 'You and I have both seen too much and done too much to ever rest easy again. I don't know where I'm going to go .

  hell, maybe, when you come right down to it, that's why I asked you to come.'

  Gillon laid a hand on Liu's shoulder and gave it a gentle shake.

  'Hell, maybe it's just as well we don't have time to talk about the good old days . . . I'd probably want to go out and shoot myself afterward.'

  Liu laughed at that and the tension eased. 'Okay, let's talk about why we are really here . .

  'Well, I figured it's not to stand around philosophizing while we freeze to death, you can bet on that.' They both laughed again and Liu became serious.

  'You have got yourself a problem, boy, if you stick with these people. One of them is going to get you killed for sure. I have half a mind to not give you this packet, except that you're a big boy and you've got to make your own decisions.'

  'Jones told me the other night,' Gillon said slowly, 'just before he was killed, that the data you have contain the location of the Chinese hard-launch sites along the Mongolian border. Is that true?'

  Liu stared at Gillon speculatively. 'You believe that?'

  Gillon shrugged. 'First, he told me that it was information and photographs on the latest nuclear warhead test series.'

  'For God's sake, they could get that from satellites ... they don't need us for that kind of work.'

  Gillon shrugged again. 'Could be, but that's what he told me at first; maybe he decided by the other night that I was trustworthy.'

  Liu chuckled. 'New in town . . . ? In this sudden burst of confidence, he didn't happen to tell you just who it is that's keeping the Reds on your tail, did he?'

  'What are you talking about ... ?'
/>
  'Damn,' Liu muttered wearily. 'Didn't you learn any-

  thing in Indochina? Just how in hell do you think the Reds have managed to keep up with every move you've made . . . ? One of those three clowns tagging after you has been telling them every time you blew your nose.'

  'Well, I'll be damned . . .

  Liu laughed softly. 'Now is it all beginning to make sense to you?'

  'You're crazy,' Gillon said feebly. 'Those people were handpicked ...'

  `So was Benedict Arnold,' Liu snorted. 'So was Kim Philby and so was Oleg Penkovsky.

  What the hell does that mean?'

  And he knew that Jack Liu was right. Suddenly, it all fell into place for him – the odds against being accidentally discovered in all those thousands of square miles of forest and at night were just too long. But, if someone had followed them away from the camp, met with the Chinese soldiers at some predetermined spot, then led them back to the clearing where they killed Jones and tried to kill him – it could very well have been that their midnight jaunt had upset someone's plans. They were only a few miles from the rendezvous. If one of them was a plant, he may have figured that the other five could be dispensed with now that Liu was in the bag. But, because they had missed him, and he had managed to wipe out the patrol, the timetable had been offset to the extent that not only had they escaped the net, but Jack Liu's people had as well.

  'Of course,' he muttered aloud. 'Now it all begins to fit together.'

  `What begins to fit?' Liu asked with a trace of sarcasm.

  'All right, so I'm dense, but you people play this game all the time. Somebody in the group is a traitor, a double agent, fink or whatever you call them.'

  'Congratulations. You have just earned your bachelor's degree in spying . . . the hard way. Of course you have a double agent with you. Do you think they have aircraft with instruments that can see through blizzards and trees? How the hell do you think the radio got busted ... that somebody sat on it maybe?'

  Gillon was brought up short by that.

  'Then maybe,' he said slowly, 'whoever he is, he's

  overplayed his- hand this time. The radio must have been smashed sometime during the night, when we were all sleeping . . . probably after he sent a message giving the Reds our latest position. Whoever did it could not possibly have foreseen that you would show up, because as far as he knew, as far as we all knew at the time, you had been wiped out.

  So now the Reds know that we outran their trap. But they don't know in which direction we've gone. When he wrecked that radio, he isolated himself as well.'

  Liu nodded, grinning. 'That's my boy. Now you're catching on to how the game is played.'

  Ì see,' Gillon said slowly. 'So you've known all along?'

  `Let's say that I suspected as soon as I saw the radio. You've got to admit, it was cleverly done. I imagine you all took so many falls during the night that Leycock would never remember the one that landed him on the radio. The damage wasn't much . . . just a cracked circuit board, but without a replacement, there's no way to fix a transistorized radio short of an electronics lab.'

  `Well, since you have had a chance to watch us all day, any ideas as to who it might be?

  It wasn't Jones or Roclek, that's for sure, not unless their ghosts go around• smashing, radios.'

  Liu nodded. 'If I assume that you are safe, that leaves one out of three . . . a Russian and two Americans.'

  Gillon looked at him. 'Why assume that I'm safe?'

  'Because who would know that I would pick you to he the contact? There wouldn't have been time to get to you.'

  `That's what Jones said,' Gillon muttered.

  `What?' Liu asked sharply.

  `Nothing. Just reminding myself how dumb I am.' 'Who was on guard at the time you and Jones left the camp?'

  Gillon winced. He hadn't thought of that. He was so damned tired that it was a miracle he could think at all. He forced his mind back what seemed eons past but in reality was only seventy-two hours . . . who in hell? .. . then he remembered Dmietriev's bearlike form outlined against the tiny fire they had built for warmth.

  'Dmietriev,' he said finally. 'And one other thing .. .

  his tent was right next to Leycock's last night. Nothing short of a bomb blast would have awakened Leycock ... or any of the rest of us for that matter.'

  Liu stared into the fire, thinking. Finally he said slowly, 'Dmietriev was in on the complete plan from the beginning ...

  `That's what Jones told me.'

  Liu nodded. 'All right, then ... ?'

  `Hell, it's pretty damned circumstantial ...'

  `Look, Clarence Darrow, this isn't a courtroom .. 'Yeah, yeah ... but still.'

  `Who brought the Chicom general . . . wouldn't he be a natural to stay with you to make sure they recovered this information?'

  `They'd sacrifice a general for what you have?' Gillon asked incredulously.

  Liu turned to him. Tor what I have, they would sacrifice half of China . .. because that's what it could cost them in the end.'

  Àll right,' Gillon said at last. `So it's something more than launch site locations ... what?'

  Òh, they are launch site locations, all right. But it's what's inside those damned launch sites that counts. How many nuclear bombs or warheads do you think the Chinese could manufacture and stockpile in five to ten years?'

  `What the hell has that got to ... ?'

  Èverything,' Liu interrupted. 'The Russians have had nearly twenty-five years to build up a nuclear strike force. Do you think the Chicoms can compete, can even hope to approach the Soviets' capability, even in retaliatory power, in five to ten years. Red China doesn't have one tenth the Soviet gross national product, manufacturing capability and anything else that you need to run a nation complex enough and rich enough to manufacture nuclear bombs.'

  `So what then?'

  `So this then. Those missiles are loaded with BW weapons.'

  Gillon stared at Liu in stunned silence. 'Bacteriological warfare!' he finally stammered out.

  'Yeah,' Liu answered quietly. 'It takes one hell of a

  huge national organization to develop nuclear weaponry, but a few biological laboratories supported at the cost of nine or ten million each can turn out weapons that could make even the H-bomb look like conventional weaponry as far as killing power is concerned.'

  `Goddamn; Gillon swore. 'It's never dawned on me that the Chicoms could be fooling around with that stuff. They don't have the technology or the background.'

  `Well, don't let the old Chinese-style medicine put you off,' Liu said, sarcasm dripping. '

  When you are 'as poor as China is in skilled professional manpower, even the psychological effect of sticking needles into your patients has its place.

  'Look,' he went on. 'If there is going to be a war between Russia and China, where the hell are they going to fight it out?'

  Without waiting for Gillon's answer, Liu went on, `The action is going to take place along the Mongolian border. For the most part, that's wide, flat, semi-arid desert land.

  And the Russians are so far ahead of the Chinese militarily that if they decide they need another few million square miles of buffer zone, the entire Chinese Army will hardly slow them down.'

  `Crap,' Gillon snorted. The Chinese can throw more men into the field than the Russians have in ...'

  Ùse your head,' Liu snapped, cutting him off in mid-sentence. 'The Russians have 3,375, 000 regular troops compared to China's 2,880,000. It would take the Chinese weeks to mobilize an effective reserve force. The Russians have fifty-two armored divisions to China's five. The rest of their infantry, all one hundred and two divisions, are completely motorized. There are, at best, thirty motorized Chinese divisions, all with obsolete Russian equipment. The Russians have ten thousand combat aircraft compared to China's twenty-eight hundred. The hour that the Russian air force begins preemptive strikes to knock out Chinese interceptors so that the helicopters and motorized infantry divisons can swarm across the D
zungarian and Mongolian plains, the Chinese know the war has begun . . . and ended. And what the hell are they going to do about it . . . march their infantry up to the front on foot to stop them? What front? The Russians will cross the Mongolian border and they won't stop until they have reached Szechwan Province to the south and occupied all of Manchuria in the north. The Chinese can play a great game at guerrilla soldiers with the thoughts of Mao to guide them, but to stand up to a nuclear-equipped, highly mobile army in an all-out, no-holds-barred war, not a chance. China needs some way to stop the Russians before they get started. Nuclear missiles . . . no.'

  Liu shook his head. 'They aren't in that league yet and won't be for twenty more years.

  But, germ warfare? That game they can play and match the Russians counter for counter.'

  'How?' Gillon asked skeptically. `BW weapons are just too damned unreliable. Some of those diseases they've developed are far too deadly for any effective vaccine to be developed. The user could lose his entire army because of an unexpected change in wind direction. And they still don't have a chance against the Russian cities. The Soviet antimissile network might not be effective against the sophisticated American and British missiles, but it sure as hell will be against anything the Chinese will have for several years to come. It just doesn't make sense.'

  Liu stared at Gillon quizzically. 'Have you ever seen the Dzungarian Plain?'

  Gillon shook his head.

  `Well, I have. It's half a million square miles of rolling, almost treeless plain. No water but a lot of mesquite, greasewood, sand and nothing else. It would be great tank country .

  . . if it didn't turn into mud periodically. But the high ground . . . ah, that's something else. The high ground makes perfect helicopter bases and helicopters can carry entire divisions across the plains and into China . . . as long as the Russians hold command of the sky. Hell, we proved the worth of helicopters in Vietnam . .. there's nothing like them for carrying out large and sudden troop movements.

  `The Dzungarian Plain does have one advantage for the Chinese. Summer and winter, the winds blow north, constantly, never stopping. And that is what will make the Chinese use of bacteriological warheads an excellent defensive . . . or even offensive weapon in case they decide that a pre-emptive strike is called for?'