The Mandarin Code

by Steve Lewis

  It was time. She gathered her handbag and walked from the embassy. She nodded to the guard on the gate before turning onto the path that ran along the front of the complex.

  Across the road three Falun Gong protesters still camped under their banners. She turned into the crescent. The car was there, silver and official, sporting the familiar ‘HC’ plates. She walked quickly to its rear door, her gaze lowered. She stepped in, collapsing into a comfortable leather seat.

  Her heart surged with relief. She nodded for the driver to proceed.

  The car pulled out from the kerb and indicated a left-hand turn. Weng knew the route well. They would pass in front of the Chinese embassy before turning left at the roundabout. In ten minutes, she would be pulling up at the airport.

  She turned away from the embassy as they passed it on the left, nervously opening her bag to see that her brush was there.

  Something was wrong.

  ‘No. No. Turn left.’ She waved in protest to the driver.

  He said nothing as the limousine doors locked and the car glided up the dirt driveway to the new embassy building.

  When he spoke, the voice was pure ice; his jet-black eyes cruel in the rear-vision mirror.

  ‘Ms Weng, where did you think you were going?’

  ‘Mr Paxton, your flight is ready to board.’

  Bruce Paxton offered a thin smile as the Qantas attendant handed him two boarding passes. It was 7.41pm and the final short-haul flight from Canberra to Sydney was about to depart.

  He’d arrived at the Chairman’s Lounge an hour earlier, ignoring the high-octane buzz of those Coalition MPs who’d managed to escape Parliament and were heading home. The lounge was unusually empty because Labor’s leadership showdown was still playing out.

  That mattered nothing. His entire focus was on willing Weng Meihui to stroll into the lounge.

  He had expected her forty-five minutes ago, positioning himself so he could nab her the moment she walked in. That was the plan. Hiding in plain sight and then a short walk to the gateway.

  His phone calls had been unanswered and his fear began to rise with each empty minute.

  Is she safe? Hurt? Has she changed her mind?

  He was frantic. He left the lounge and looked down the escalators, hoping to see her rushing towards him.

  A booming voice echoed through the cavernous space.

  ‘This is a final boarding call for QF1494 . . .’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Canberra

  A dozen bottles stood discarded beside a bin quickly filling with the shredded remnants of three tumultuous years in power. In a plastic tub, Coronas and Coopers lay covered with ice, while slices of pizza and garlic bread competed for the attention of tired staff. A stereo pumped out dance tunes, rhythms from a more predictable age. On a handsome timber table, still cluttered with Question Time briefs and messages of condolence, three bottles of Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier had been shared around.

  George Papadakis was opening a fourth when he felt Martin Toohey’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Have we declared this plonk?’

  ‘Pardon, mate?’

  ‘The Clonakilla. It’s pricey stuff. Have we declared it?’

  Papadakis blinked. Hard. His mind was blunted by several hours of solid boozing.

  ‘Let me get this straight, Martin. You’ve just been dumped as prime minister. America and China are on the verge of war. Australia risks being sandwiched in the middle. And you’re worried about getting done for not declaring . . . one . . . two . . . let’s say four hundred dollars of booze . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Martin, that’d be like getting a parking ticket an hour after being murdered. Try and get a little perspective.’

  ‘Perspective? Like being done over by your comrades for a woman who’s certifiable and . . . oh, for fuck’s sake, George, she can have it. I’m going back to Geelong to bleed for a while. Pour me a red.’

  Papadakis wasn’t listening. He was bellowing out a tune, a song turned up loud, one that evoked memories of long nights in university bars, chasing skirt, solving economics tute questions, making plans. For a better life.

  He loved 10cc, their quirky tales of conquest. This tune was a favourite, a melange of cricket and dark deeds in the Caribbean.

  Toohey disentangled himself from several sympathisers, rejoining his chief of staff.

  ‘All these years and I had no idea. You’ve got a good voice, George.’

  ‘Well, we invented singing, Martin; the Greeks, that is.’

  ‘What? Singing and democracy. Jesus, it must have been a busy time in ancient Athens.’

  They embraced, loyal mates who’d bled for Labor, for each other. A long genuine hug. Toohey broke it, pointing at the stereo.

  ‘I know when it all went wrong, George.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With everything.’

  ‘You mean when you decided to roll Bailey?’

  ‘No. Much earlier.’

  ‘What, that day in 2006 when you backed her for leader?’

  ‘Mate, not everything’s my fault. No, I mean the day everything went completely pear-shaped. It was 1995.’

  ‘You mean ’96 – when Howard turfed out Keating.’

  ‘No.’

  Papadakis scoured his brain for anything marking 1995 as a particularly bad year for the ALP. He raised his hands in mock defeat.

  Toohey licked his lips.

  ‘To be precise, it was the twenty-eighth of March, 1995. When Queensland beat South Australia and won the Sheffield Shield . . . for the first time.’

  ‘Oh no, Martin, not one of your mad sporting theories.’

  ‘Hear me out, mate.’ Toohey was animated. ‘Queensland had never won the Shield. For sixty-eight years there were three certainties: death, taxes and Queensland losing the cricket. Then came ’95 and bang! It all changes. The natural order of things is overturned. We get eleven years of Howard and the next Labor PM is barking mad. Those banana benders screwed it for everyone.’

  Toohey clinked glasses with a bemused Papadakis.

  ‘Martin, that might be the silliest thing you’ve ever said.’

  ‘No mate, the silliest thing I’ve said was, “George, how about you leave Treasury and be my chief of staff.” And you bought that one.’

  The two men laughed, loud belly laughs. Papadakis, for the first time in months, felt liberated.

  ‘Martin, you promised me it wouldn’t be dull, and it hasn’t been. We did good things; you are a good man. And besides, we Greeks love a bit of masochism.’ He wiped away a tear. Of laughter or sadness, he couldn’t tell. ‘So what will you do now?’

  ‘Sulk for a while, then stand down from Corio, go look for a real job. You?’

  ‘Try and find a job where I can’t be sacked by the new Labor prime minister.’

  ‘Sorry, mate.’

  ‘Don’t fret the small stuff, Martin. Remember?’

  Toohey looked around the room, this epicentre of power, his for three years. Gone in a heartbeat. He contemplated the glass of expensive wine cupped in his hand.

  ‘George, what did you make of Dunkley’s comments, his theory that it was America behind the cyber-attacks?’

  Papadakis poured another generous portion of fine Canberra red. Then he turned the volume to 11 as the Beach Boys pumped out a classic carnival melody.

  God only knows . . .

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  Canberra

  The autumn cool had arrived at last. A light mist curled from the sky, barely skimming the ground baked flint-hard by an unholy summer. Across the lake, a swirl of lights – green, orange and purple – sparkled from the walls of the National Museum.

  Night had descended on Nara Park, transforming a row of trees into ghostly silhouettes.

  A few days earlier, Bruce Paxton had perched on this same timber bench, comforting Weng Meihui as she poured out her fears. Now they were all too real, a waking nightmare.

  For
the first time in a long while, he was frightened.

  A dozen desperate phone calls had gone unanswered. Mei had failed to make the rendezvous at the airport, vanished without a trace. The hire car company said the booking had been cancelled with a phone call thirty minutes before the scheduled pick-up. By a male.

  Paxton had asked his driver to cruise slowly past the Chinese embassy, hoping to pick up some clue. Nothing. Even the Falun Gong had packed up.

  He lifted his gaze to a glade of crepe myrtles, elms, pines. The embassy and its sister compound were just a few hundred metres away, taunting him through the thick foliage.

  A possum scurried across the stone path. He barely noticed it. Instead he raised his tired body from the bench, and wandered towards the lake.

  Think, mate, think.

  Mei had been tense but excited at the prospect of defecting, of leaving her double life behind. They’d sketched out plans – their plans – for the future. But had he misread her? Had he, the great political schemer, been had?

  Or had she simply backed away at the last moment, afraid of turning against a homeland that would pursue her to the grave, no matter where she went?

  Was he a fool for thinking she would discard the security of her past for an uncertain future?

  Yet she had seemed so certain as she’d nestled into his embrace in this park, trembling as she told of the deaths of her three compatriots.

  Her fear was real. He was convinced of it. And he was certain that, if she had willingly changed her mind, she would have sent him a message. He knew enough of her to be sure that she would not want to torture him like this.

  Then what?

  Had the Americans betrayed him, tipped off the Chinese, or maybe his own government, unwilling to deal with the diplomatic stink?

  He reached the water’s edge, shuffling along beside a stone wall that flanked water black as an oil slick. The night held a dangerous edge and Paxton, alone and friendless, held dark thoughts.

  The most likely explanation was that Mei had been discovered, intercepted.

  Perhaps killed.

  Was she lying somewhere below this black surface?

  He shuddered and pulled his jacket tight. He turned and walked towards his ComCar. Bill, his driver, was waiting, racking up the charges, reliable as the morning sun.

  Paxton was resolved. If Mei was alive, he would find her. If not he would expose those who had harmed her. Nothing else mattered. He loved her, he realised, always had.

  He quickened his pace, needing the security of plush leather, the reassuring idle of the Falcon’s V6. Parliament House was just a few minutes away. He would take stock in the familiar surrounds of his office.

  Then he would do what he did best. Exact revenge.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  Taiwan Strait

  The glow on the horizon shimmered across the ocean as Frank Vinson surveyed USS George Washington’s flight deck from vulture’s row. The weather forecast promised a perfect day for flying, a breeze from the south, clear skies and a maximum of 69 degrees.

  A roar of warplanes tore the air, peaking as jet engines and steam-driven catapult combined to hurl them skywards from zero to 165 miles an hour in two seconds. From five decks up, Vinson watched the flight-deck crews performing their dangerous dance of launching and landing aircraft.

  A Hornet thundered from the carrier, trailing a ribbon of vapour. It banked as it climbed to take its place in the strike group’s defensive bubble that stretched from the seabed to the heavens.

  Two-hundred nautical miles out from the carrier, a Super Fudd, the propeller-driven Grumman E-2C Hawkeye, monitored the group’s battle space. From 30,000 feet its long-range airborne early-warning system kept watch for air and surface threats over 120,000 square miles.

  Under water, ahead of the strike group, two USN attack submarines analysed the huge volume of underwater noise their sensors recorded, searching for surface and sub-surface threats. In the relatively shallow, noisy waters, hostile subs would be hard to find. Two cruisers and two destroyers formed the inner perimeter of the picket fence.

  It was a formidable armada but the 110-mile wide Taiwan Strait robbed Vinson’s group of some of its defences. As large as it was, on the open ocean the strike group could disappear, moving from one point to another in a circle measuring 700 square miles in thirty minutes. But here there was nowhere to hide as it passed along the front fence of a nation that had developed ‘area denial weapons’ like the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile.

  The carrier was sailing into danger.

  Vinson could see the Pengjia Islet lighthouse blinking to port, just 33 nautical miles off Taiwan’s northernmost tip. The fleet would sail south-west then turn towards the Taiwanese side of the cross-strait median, the imaginary line that delineated the territory controlled by Taipei and Beijing.

  Two Westinghouse A4W nuclear reactors were driving the ship at a clip below 20 knots. At that speed it would take just over ten hours to pass through the Black Ditch.

  The Admiral contemplated breakfast but was in no mood for eating.

  He caught the tang of spray on the breeze from the China Sea, a postcard of tranquillity, and wondered how long these waters would stay calm. Not since Bill Clinton had ordered the Nimitz and Independence to sail into the Strait in March 1996 – in response to Chinese missile testing – had the threat of conflict been so real.

  ‘Admiral, I’m going to get some coffee, can I get you one?’ Lieutenant Jane Marsh was half-shouting to be heard above the jet engines.

  ‘No thanks, Jane. I’m heading back to the flag bridge in a minute or two. Just wanted to survey this pretty morning out in the open.’

  ‘Yes sir, it’s quite a picture.’

  ‘It is that.’

  The admiral gripped the railing as his gaze turned towards the Chinese mainland, somewhere over the western horizon. He could trace his naval heritage back to before World War I, to a great uncle who’d escaped the tedium of the family’s hardware business for a life chasing dreams.

  Vinson had never questioned America’s role in defending democracy, not even when the fiction of George W Bush’s weapons of mass destruction turned public opinion against the US.

  But this? Something nagged inside. His knuckles were white, and a small feeling of nausea welled in his stomach. He needed caffeine after all.

  He turned one last time to the ocean. An albatross passed close flying north, a flash of white against a golden dawn. The admiral’s spirit lifted. An omen, he hoped, that everything would be all right.

  Hong Kong

  ‘Sir, we will be ready to sail at 0700.’

  ‘Thank you, sailor.’

  Yu Heng mentally ticked off the orders he had been given over the preceding few days and contemplated a quick shower. It had been an arduous night, and there were long, difficult hours ahead.

  Through the window, first light began to brighten the Ngong Shuen Chau Naval Base, and preparations aboard were almost complete. China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was ready for its mission.

  But the rear admiral knew she was not ready for a fight.

  He looked along the carrier’s flight deck with its distinctive ski-slope bow. The Liaoning had been transformed from a rusted former Soviet hulk bought in 1998 under the pretext of it becoming a floating casino.

  Deception had always been one of China’s weapons.

  The first carrier China had bought was Australia’s HMAS Melbourne. She’d been acquired in 1985, and before being torn apart for scrap was studied by naval engineers. Two more Soviet-era ships had followed before enough was learned to refit the Liaoning.

  At the same time, elite sailors were trained for the day the People’s Republic launched its own carrier.

  Yu had been moulded to lead them. Born into a military family, he had enlisted in 1990 and served with the East Sea fleet. His passion for the sea was so great he’d refused to marry until he became captain of a ship. His first command was a frigate,
then a guided missile destroyer, before he was sent to the British Joint Services Command and Staff College.

  His crew on the Liaoning had been drawn from the best of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

  But like their ship they were not ready. Three months of trials in the South China Sea had shown just how much they, and the Chinese navy, still had to learn.

  An aircraft carrier is useless without aircraft.

  The Shenyang J-15 had been purpose-built for this ship. Known as the ‘Flying Shark’, the fighter jet was a clone of Russia’s Sukhoi Su-33. China’s media proudly reported its top speed of Mach 2.4 and range of 3200 kilometres. But at this stage of China’s carrier aviation development the aircraft were for show.

  More like a flopping fish.

  Exhaustive trials had shown the J-15, like most carrier-borne aircraft, could not take off or land if fully fuelled and armed. But this jet’s performance was much worse than anyone had expected. So they had a choice: a modest weapons load with almost no fuel; or a full load of fuel with almost no weapons. The compromise struck gave the combat aircraft an effective range of 120 kilometres.

  In reality, the Liaoning was as yet only a training ship, not a fearsome fighting machine, and half the size of the George Washington.

  Yu had showered and changed into a crisp white uniform when the call came through at 0625.

  ‘Admiral Leng Sha for you, sir.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll take it in my cabin.’

  Born in 1945, Leng was Commander-in-Chief of the PLA Navy and had overseen its rise into a modern fighting force. He’d hand-picked Yu, his protégé, to command the Liaoning. He was a gifted student who would now carry the hopes of the navy and the nation on this dangerous assignment.

  ‘Admiral, we will sail as commanded in thirty-five minutes.’

  ‘Good. Then everything is ready.’

  ‘Sir, you understand the limitations of our weapon systems. We can launch planes but they are only capable of training sorties. They are not combat ready.’

  ‘Yes Heng. But your mission is not to engage the adversary. Liaoning is our flagship. You are to be seen to stare down the American strike group and make it retreat. Your systems won’t be needed if it comes to a fight. Our mainland forces and our submarines can defeat the Americans. And they know it.’