The Paramount Ruler nodded his head gravely. And when he spoke, he addressed Admiral Zhang. “We do know something of the activities of the Hai Lungs, I believe?”
“We do, sir. But I am afraid, not enough. We have established their sailing pattern…the eleven-week tour of duty mentioned by the General is accurate. The Hai Lungs dive very quickly once out of the harbor at Suao, and we have never seen them again until their return eleven weeks later. We have concluded their probable speed is eight or nine knots dived…and that they are covering around two hundred miles a day. That would mean a thousand miles every five days.
“However the real clue lies in the eleven-week absence, which is far longer than any submarine would normally remain on patrol, if it was local. The sheer length of time rules out the possibility that the Hai Lungs are merely lapping Taiwan, or patrolling the Strait, or watching Korea. Otherwise they’d be back within about sixty days. The eleven-week time span is what matters, because it means they are going far away, and they are getting refueled.
“In five weeks they can make seven thousand miles, possibly a little farther. We calculated one week on station and five weeks back. It appears to be a kind of shuttle service. The trouble is, when you are just a few miles out of Suao harbor, to the southeast, the Pacific shelves off very steeply to about ten thousand feet, and we have never been able to track them because they run deep and silent.
“However, this new information about the scientists provides a support for the existence of a possible specific project, being conducted, most likely, seven thousand miles distant.”
“You may think it is time we learned a little more,” replied the Paramount Ruler. “I think it is becoming obvious that Taiwan is taking more than a passing interest in the development of a nuclear capability. The question has become quite sharply defined. How? And where? Where are they doing it?”
At this point General Fang requested permission to speak. “As long ago as three years,” he began, “we received a report that a local furrier in Taipei had received an order from the Taiwan Navy for a large number of garments, jackets, hats, trousers, and boot linings. All in fur. Two months ago we found that the order had been renewed. One of our officers did track the shipment from the furrier to the submarine loading bay.”
“Which proves beyond doubt,” interrupted the Paramount Ruler, “that the submarines are either going to the cold North or the cold South, but probably not East or West.” Everyone else smiled also at the gentle wit of China’s venerable leader.
“Sir,” said Admiral Zhang. “I do agree we must find out what the Taiwanese are doing. And I am honored that you have invited me here today because I think I may be able to assist. I have considered the route of these two submarines on several occasions and I have always found the northern option the less likely of the two.
“I considered that they could be going up to the Aleutian Islands, which are spread out and have some very remote areas. But beyond the islands is the heavily patrolled Bering Sea, and the Bering Strait. Russians to the left, Americans to the right, and both in the middle. If I were seeking a place to establish a clandestine operation, it most certainly would not be up there, and it would not take me eleven weeks to get there in any event.
“Also there is no reasonable choke point on the north route where we could keep watch for the Hai Lungs…I am therefore drawn to the conclusion that we should bear the Aleutians in mind but concentrate on the more likely prospect that the Taiwanese submarines are headed south.”
“And what about choke points?” asked the Navy’s new Political Commissar, Admiral Lee Yung. “Are there any that we can utilize?”
“There are several,” replied Admiral Zhang. “The most usual place to keep watch would be the Malacca Strait, but in this case I’m inclined to think not…the Taiwanese submarines will almost certainly make their journey dived, and the waters through the Malacca Strait have a few tricky, shallow areas. My personal view is that the submarines will run straight through the middle of the South China Sea and head directly south-southwest for two thousand miles. Then, once they arrive in the Indonesian Islands, they will head due south between Sumatra and Borneo, arriving at the Sunda Strait — the water that divides Sumatra and Java — three days later. They can then run through there submerged and make straight for the open ocean.”
He paused for a moment, allowing his assessment to be absorbed by those less familiar with such journeys. “The only alternative I can see,” he added, “is a route past the island of Bali…there is a narrow seaway between that island and Java, but to be quite honest, I am not sure whether a submarine can make the voyage dived. I have not heard of anyone doing it.”
“Admiral Zhang, sir,” said the Political Commissar, “you are surely not suggesting we wait down there and attack the Taiwanese submarine, are you?”
“Absolutely not,” replied the C in C. “I am suggesting we might consider waiting down there, locating the first Hai Lung that comes by, assessing its course and speed of advance since it sailed. That would set us on an initial path to its ultimate destination, where we might find a lot of nuclear physicists involved in nefarious activities.”
“Would it be difficult to track it?”
“Impossible, without alerting them. But as they pass the choke point we could get a fix on them, with a new device we have been perfecting for several months.
“It’s a little complicated, but let me explain…we are all familiar with the Russian and American ELINT trawlers, which have fishing boat hulls equipped with very sensitive electronic interception gear — radar and radio. Anyone can spot them really. Well, we have been working on an ACINT system…which means Acoustic Interception…a highly sensitive listening device…brand-new…passive sonar…undetectable…carried below the waterline by Naval trawlers. They are covert and hard to identify as anything other than commercial fishermen.
“If one of those Hai Lungs passes anywhere near, we’ll pick him up. I’m going to suggest we move one down to Indonesia very soon and station it at the southern end of the Sunda Strait, where we’ll be patrolling, and ready.
“We’ll know when it’s due because we’ll let the trawler know the moment the outward-bound Hai Lung clears Suao. Since the distance is about two thousand two hundred miles, they ought to arrive eleven days later. We will of course be there very early…”
“What if he doesn’t show up?”
“Then we check the Malacca Strait…then the Bali Strait…and if he doesn’t show up there either…well…he’s not coming…and then we have to turn our attentions to the more difficult north. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Tell me, Zhang,” interrupted the Paramount Ruler again. “Where could they be going?”
“Sir, I am as ever honored that you should value my judgment…but in this case I am afraid I may be wasting everyone’s time by speculating…I do have my chart book here…and I have marked out possibilities…I am more than happy to give everyone the benefit of my studies…but I have of course nothing certain…”
“I would like to hear these places, Zhang,” said the Ruler.
“Well, the Taiwanese could be going to the islands of Amsterdam, or St. Paul, which are four thousand miles southwest of the Sunda Strait. And I suppose they might just make the Îles Crozet, which are eighteen hundred miles farther. However there are three places that fit better into our estimated five-week time frame — Heard Island, and two hundred and thirty miles to the northwest, Kerguelen, which is really a large archipelago of both large and small islands. The three desolate McDonald Islands lie twenty-three miles west-southwest of Heard. So far as I know, all of them are completely inhospitable and without power of any kind, except for the French weather station on Kerguelen. The weather on each of them is shocking. They are ice and snow-bound for most, if not all, of the year.
“If the Taiwanese are in the south, working on some nuclear program, they must be in one of those places. I must say, sir, I am nearly at a
loss to suggest a way in which we might find them. They are without doubt the most remote places on the earth. Very nearly inaccessible, no airstrips. And really bad weather and sea conditions. You would need a nuclear-powered warship, with a helicopter…and that would be noticed within a week of arrival.”
“Or perhaps a submarine,” said the Ruler.
“Yessir. A submarine would be helpful,” replied Admiral Zhang. But he did not look too convinced.
“I am somewhat at a loss,” said Admiral Lee Yung. “How could the Taiwanese possibly have set up some kind of a laboratory in a place such as those you have mentioned, where there is no power and no buildings?”
Admiral Zhang answered. “The power is not a huge problem, sir. You could use a nuclear submarine…its reactor could power a small town…no problem with a couple of very large generators.”
“But the Taiwanese do not have a nuclear submarine,” interjected the Ruler.
“No, sir, they do not. At least not one that we know about, or one that has ever been to Taiwan…however there was much speculation a few years ago that they had bought one from France…somewhat inexpensively…it was an old twenty-five-hundred-ton Rubis Class nuclear boat. I believe it was in 1999. But the story became a mystery…it was never delivered, and there was much conjecture that it had been lost on the journey. We never even had confirmation that it had left the main French Atlantic base at Brest.”
“Perhaps it went straight to Heard Island and began its work as a power station,” said the Paramount Ruler.
“Perhaps, indeed, sir,” replied Admiral Zhang. “But if it were not to be detected, it would have to remain underwater for long periods, and to provide power for any facility ashore, it would also have to be moored underwater. Who could ever see it then?”
“Are any of these places on the shipping routes?”
“No, sir. Certainly not Kerguelen, nor Heard, nor McDonald. None of them are even on air routes. They are basically just slabs of granite jutting up from undersea ridges. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone operating anything from there. In my view, the sooner we are able to get a trawler into the Sunda Strait, the better it will be. Then we can acquire some facts.”
“I agree with you, Zhang. And unless anyone here has some serious objection to this course of action, I would like you and Admiral Zu to develop your plan and submit it for our approval as soon as possible.”
The General Secretary of the Communist Party, whose office entitled him to chair the Military Affairs Commission, nodded his assent, and everyone else took their cue from this most powerful paymaster to the Navy. There was no dissenting voice, and Admiral Zhang Yushu confirmed he would take charge of the mission forthwith.
“I would also like to say, sir, that this makes the delivery of the final two Kilos even more pressing.”
“I wondered if that might be the case,” said the Ruler, smiling again. “Tell me why.”
“Because, sir, if we find what we think we may find, behind some remote rock in the Southern Ocean…I imagine we will consider the possibility of an attack…and I would prefer to do so with our very best submarine…a brand-new Kilo would be perfect.”
“If we find what we think we may,” said the Ruler, “there is not the merest possibility of an attack. My orders will be absolute. I want any Taiwanese nuclear laboratory, or factory, or any such facility, destroyed. I hope I make myself clear…Now perhaps we should have some tea.”
“Yessir,” said Admiral Zhang, standing formally to attention.
The pressure on the CIA from the office of the President’s National Security Adviser had been intense for several days now. Scarcely an hour passed without some new instruction, demand, or memorandum landing on the desk of the profoundly harassed chief of the Far Eastern Desk, Frank Reidel. “Admiral Morgan wants this…Admiral Morgan wants that…Admiral Morgan says, ‘Get into the White House right now’…Admiral Morgan wants to know what the hell’s going on…Admiral Morgan says if he is not told what those ‘fucking Hai Lungs’ are up to within one day, heads are gonna roll.” “Jesus Christ,” said Reidel.
In turn he had turned the heat up on all of his Far Eastern field officers, especially those in Taiwan, who were permitted by the friendly government to operate almost at will, making their inquiries, on behalf of the United States, freely, almost like journalists, which indeed a couple of them were.
There was, however, one place on the island where no one was permitted to operate, and that was the Eastern Command submarine base out along the Sutung Chung Road, which runs seaward out of Suao, a coastal town thirty-three miles southeast of Taipei, in Ilan County.
This road comes to a shuddering halt three hundred yards from the post office. A big military-style gate, set into hundreds of yards of wire fencing, is manned twenty-four hours a day by armed police. No one is permitted past the gates without documentation. Dock workers who forget or mislay their pass are not admitted.
Frank Reidel’s Taipei chief had two men in the Eastern Command base who undertook enormous risks for very little information. Carl Chimei, the forty-four-year-old foreman on the submarine loading dock, was one of them. A deeply embittered man, he hated China and everything to do with it, including Taiwan. He had done so ever since his schoolteacher-parents had been murdered by Mao’s Red Guards on the mainland thirty years previously. He himself had escaped the insurrection and made it to Taiwan when he was just eighteen years old.
He was probably the easiest recruit Reidel’s men had ever encountered. He lived for the day when he would be flown to the USA; his wife and two children were leaving early next year, if not sooner.
But on this night, June 28, crouched in the shadow of the stacked crates on the jetty, Carl Chimei was in mortal danger. He had not returned home with his comrades, and his exit pass had not been stamped. Tomorrow, or even later tonight, he would attempt to talk himself out of that. Perhaps no one would notice — he had worked in the dockyard for twenty years. But now he was petrified. Every fifteen minutes, two armed Navy sentries walked within ten feet of his hiding place, thirty feet away from the Hai Lung. If one of them saw him, he would be shot dead, no questions asked. Only the thought of life in the United States, and the promised payment of $250,000 for risking his life on more than one occasion, kept him steady. In his hard right hand he carried a two-foot-long crowbar. But the crate he wanted to pry open was stacked twenty feet up, and he would have to work ferociously fast, with only the distant dock lights to guide him.
He had the pattern of the sentries’ patrol clear in his mind. They walked past the orderly pile of crates, and then hesitated at the light above the gangway to the Hai Lung, which was moored alongside. Twice they had called out something to the guard on the casing of the submarine. They had then proceeded down the jetty and it took precisely fifteen minutes for them to return, from the other direction. Carl had already decided to scale the crates while they checked the shore bridge to the Hai Lung.
And now he could hear the steady beat of their footsteps as he flattened himself behind the wall of crates. He closed his eyes and willed his thumping heart to be silent as the footsteps grew louder, and then began to recede.
Carl counted to ten, hooked the crowbar through his belt, and pulled himself up onto the rim of the first crate, three feet above the ground. The crates were unevenly stacked, and the climb was not difficult for a man as fit as Carl. But there were six more crates to scale, and one mistake might prove fatal. He dug his fingers over the rim of the wood as he cleared the next two, and hung on nine feet above his starting point, his soft work shoes jammed into the cracks between the cases. It took him three minutes to reach the top of the stack, and when he got there he could just see the red-painted letters he sought: HAI LUNG 793. He expertly jammed the crowbar between the lid and the wall of the crate, and heaved with short strokes to prevent the nails from squeaking as they came out. But the lid would not move.
Carl’s fingers raced over the surface of the crate. And he cursed t
he two steel bands that bound it tight. He reached for the cutters deep in his trouser pocket, adjusted them for size, and severed the first band. Then he cut the second and was appalled at the noise they made as they fell away with a twanging, sprung, metallic protest. He thought it would never die away.
But now the six-foot lid of the case moved against the heave of the crowbar, and Carl wrenched it upward and back, leaving it open. Seven minutes had passed, and he ripped at the waterproof wrapping inside the case. Then he switched on his tiny flashlight. He felt around and touched something soft and furry. For a moment he thought he had grabbed a dead panda. But the light told him differently. He was looking at fur-lined clothes, and at the bottom were boots and hats. Carl knew what he had come for — and he knew that wherever those submarines were going was very cold indeed.
He heaved the top of the crate back into position, and pushed the nails back into place with the flat end of his crowbar. The trouble was again the steel bands. He could cut them and get rid of the pieces, but if he left the bands dangling, and ran for it, his break-in would be obvious in the morning.
He had three minutes before the sentries were due back, and he decided to stay and cut up the steel bands, and hope that neither of the guards would look aloft as they passed.
Carl’s luck held. The sentries came and went, and he was able to pull out the bands, one by one, and then fold and carry them to the ground, like fully extended steel measuring tapes.
He cut them into small pieces and then dumped the jangling pieces into a bin. Tomorrow, with any luck, he would himself supervise the loading of the Hai Lung. For now, he just had to get away. And at 2300, that was not going to be easy.
Carl, however, was a senior worker at the yard and had lived right in the town of Suao for many years. If he had a halfway decent reason for being on duty so late, he would almost certainly get away with it.
And so, he pulled on his jacket, picked up a clip-board full of notes, and crate numbers, and marched straight down the jetty toward the Sutung Chung Gate, eight hundred yards distant. As he approached the guardhouse, the duty officer stepped out to meet him. “Hey, Carl,…what are you doing here at this time of night?”
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