Dynasty

by Elegant, Robert;

  “I shall be very candid, Mr. Smith. China does not want war, and we are prepared to be reasonably patient regarding Taiwan. But no Chinese government—and certainly not Premier Chou En-lai’s—can survive unless it can show a realistic prospect of liberating Taiwan.”

  “I take your point, General Shih. Perhaps we should both talk with our principals. After you, Sir.”

  “Perhaps we should. But let me stress one point again. The attack will come within hours unless we are convinced that that realistic prospect exists. Otherwise, I can’t stop it. Even Premier Chou cannot stop it.”

  After posting his bodyguard at the door, James used the scrambler in the library to speak with the acting Chief-of-Staff of the Liberation Army. Neither the Deputy Chairman nor the Premier was immediately available.

  “Comrade Shih, the first assault wave has sailed, and the bombers know their targets,” his nominal superior added. “It will be costly, but we are not bluffing. You must impress that fact upon the Americans.”

  In the broad corridor, James Sekloong again met Spencer Taylor Smith hurrying toward the morning-room. The American scrambler had been installed in the incongruously cozy chintz setting, where James’s sister Gwinnie had told Mary of her determination to make the marriage with Dr. George Parker that produced the Under Secretary’s wife, Blanche. James’s elation at Chinese troops’ finally moving against Taiwan and, if need be, the Americans inflamed his constantly simmering anger at American arrogance.

  “You may be too late, Mr. Smith,” he warned. “Our troops have sailed. It will very soon be too late to avoid a collision. We are not bluffing. Ask your superman President if he wants war with China. Ask him that!”

  “I’ll get back to you as soon as I have word, General Shih. Meanwhile, I’d advise my principals to caution if I were you.”

  James saw no need to pass on the reiterated threat. Instead, he drifted into the drawing-room for a brandy, discovering too late to withdraw that his sister Charlotte, his sister-in-law Sarah, and his brothers Thomas and Charles were chatting with Lady Mary. His mother had resigned herself to the impossibility of sleeping until the wracking tension abated. But she was whispy frail in exhaustion, her pallor other-worldly. The new taipan Albert Sekloong and his wife Kazuko sat outside the circle of their elders, watching Lady Mary with open concern.

  “Join us, James,” Sarah invited. “It’s the first time in decades all our generation is together. I hope not the last.”

  “I hope not, Sarah. Believe me, I’ve often thought about you.”

  James yielded to the appeal to family solidarity, though he required privacy to analyze the intensifying crisis. His acceptance of Sarah’s sentimental invitation surprised the Communist General, who believed he had long ago burned away such bourgeois weaknesses as personal affection.

  “We’ve been talking about time,” his mother said lightly. “Having you all here again may have deranged me, but one thinks about such things at my age. I now know how time moves.”

  “An emendation to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity?” Charles Cardinal Sekloong jested. “Even the scientists now admit it doesn’t answer all questions.”

  “I’m not joking, Charles,” Lady Mary replied. “I’m now convinced there is eternal life. The generations of mankind … the generations of a family … endure forever. Time doesn’t move—in a straight line or a circle. Time is a fixed point, never changing, that we human beings go round in eternal succession. There is our immortality.”

  “A gentle heresy,” the Cardinal murmured. “But you’ll find in due time there is personal immortality.”

  “Not for some years, I hope,” the Communist General mused over his brandy-snifter. “But, Mother, your notion’s Confucian and anti-progressive. Taking the successive generations of the family as the center of human life sanctions all the old loyalties. Corrupt personal loyalties are still the greatest barrier to China’s progress.”

  Albert suddenly felt himself far older than his middle-aged uncles. Their responsibilities and their power were, ultimately, impermanent abstractions; capriciously bestowed by circumstances and by other men, their tasks and their influence could be stripped away as abruptly by the same external forces. But he was, he realized viscerally for the first time, the Sekloong, his responsibilities and his power deriving from his own independent position. Though the world might consider the men who spoke for great institutions like antagonistic nations and the Church more powerful than even the grandest merchant, he was, finally, responsible for them and for all the family. From that responsibility sprang his own power, ultimately greater and more enduring than theirs.

  “The family is at the center.” Albert spoke in the new consciousness of his own authority. “Not in the metaphysical old way Grandma means, but the center of all your politics. What are we talking about except human beings gathered together by God into families? I, for one, intend to keep faith with all my loyalties.”

  “Loyalty to the family and the legitimate leader is the center of our lives,” Thomas assented. “Without loyalty we are nothing.”

  “Your loyalty to Old Chiang, I suppose,” James jibed. “That’s helped everybody a lot, hasn’t it?”

  “Without such loyalty, China would be infinitely worse off.” The Nationalist General had not stinted the whiskey, the rice wine, the champagne, or the brandy. “There would be no hope for the future—only your soulless materialism.”

  “Unquestioning loyalty ruins China.” The Communist General spoke softly, his customary fire extinguished in thoughtfulness. “Yours to Chiang Kai-shek, of course. Perhaps my loyalty too. All men and all systems are flawed. Absolute loyalty to any man or system is ultimately destructive, evil.”

  “I never thought I’d hear you speak those words, James,” the Cardinal interjected. “But, then, you speak from bitter experience.”

  “I do,” James acknowledged. “And I have myself done some things that were wrong, perhaps evil.”

  “Like what?” Thomas taunted. “You’ve always acted as if your damned Communist Party was infallible. Now you admit error. Like what bad things?”

  “We’ve all done things we regret,” Charlotte interposed. “I repent of …”

  “Now, dear, that’s all past, well behind …” Sarah soothed.

  Preoccupied with his brother’s question, James ignored the women’s soft-spoken exchange. It was the first time in decades he had seriously considered anything Thomas said.

  “The cult of the steel Bolshevik,” the Communist General finally said. “The conviction that an infallible doctrine justifies all actions—however vicious. Above all, glorying in revolutionary brutality.”

  “Just exactly what do you mean, James?” The Nationalist General responded instinctively to his brother’s mood, and the wordless communication that had linked them as young men revived to inspire his next question. “Can you tell us more about Harry Sekloong’s death? I know we didn’t kill him, though the Generalissimo considered it. So it must have been you … your people.”

  “It wasn’t … wasn’t my people.” James spoke so faintly the others leaned forward to hear him. “It wasn’t just my people. God help me, it was … was … I who …”

  “James, not really?” Charlotte gasped. “Your own … your own uncle? You shot him?”

  “I’m afraid so, Charlotte. It was for China … for the cause. But now I wonder. Too many killings, too much blood.”

  “James, you! You yourself?” Lady Mary’s voice was so thin it might have come from behind the curtain of the eternity she pondered. “You, James?”

  “Yes, Mother, I did. I’m no longer proud that …”

  “James, I’m suddenly exhausted,” Lady Mary half-whispered. “Please help me to my bedroom.”

  “Mother, can I …” Sarah fluttered in concern.

  “No, no one else. Just James. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

  Leaning heavily on James’s arm, Lady Mary climbed the great Y-shaped staircase she ha
d eagerly descended on Thomas’s arm six hours earlier.

  “I’m sorry, Mother!” James’s words stumbled. “Deeply sorry I told you, profoundly sorry for what I did. But I shouldn’t have told you.”

  Lady Mary did not speak until they entered her bedroom.

  “Sit down, James,” she directed without passion. “There is something I must tell you. Something I alone know.”

  He obediently seated himself on the chaise-longue and gazed into his brandy-snifter.

  “James,” his mother said, “Harry Sekloong was not your uncle, but …”

  “What are you saying, Mother? Harry not my uncle! It’s wonderful, your trying to console me, but …”

  “James, Harry Sekloong was … was … your father. You should know Harry was your father.”

  “My father? That’s impossible … ridiculous.”

  “Nonetheless, true! Who should know better than I? I’m sorry, but you had to know before I …”

  “My father?” James echoed. “Harry—my father?”

  “Yes, James. I hope you can forgive me. I’m too old for anger at your … at what you did. But you had to know. I pray there’ll be no more senseless killing of those we love—or others.”

  James Sekloong’s hand clenched, and the splintered brandy-snifter gashed his palm. Groping for a handkerchief to stanch the blood, he strode blindly from the bedroom. He was enraged at the entire world—at his mother’s frailty, at his brother’s probing, and at his superiors’ ruthlessness. He was, above all, enraged at himself. His lifelong loyalties, already battered by the power struggle in China, tossed in an emotional maelstrom.

  Harry Sekloong his father! Unknowing, he had rendered the Party the greatest sacrifice he could make—a far greater sacrifice than his own life, which he had cheerfully hazarded a score of times. He had killed his own father.

  Bewildered, enraged, and revolted, momentarily demented with shame and sorrow, he stumbled into the storm-torn garden. The wind hurled him against the gray-stone wall of The Castle, and a spear of pain pierced the scar tissue on his left shoulder, which had been torn by the Kempei’s bullet in Peking thirty-three years earlier.

  The same gust rattled the windows of Sir Jonathan’s darkened office. In the baleful lightning’s flare, the last petals fell from Lady Mary’s rose onto the ebony desktop.

  The destroyer-leader U.S.S. Sampson pitched south-southwest through the stormy night seventy-six miles west of Nationalist Taiwan, forty-three miles east of Communist Fukien. Sampson probed the darkness with invisible fingers, but spume rising from the post-typhoon waves clouded her surface-radar. The sailor peering at the green screen monotonously reported: “No contact. No contact.”

  Sampson rolled to starboard, bringing her surface-radar antenna to bear on the sea.

  “Two targets,” the bluejacket reported. “Two targets: bearing 272, course 46, range 3,000 yards, estimated speed 36 knots.”

  The radar of the high-speed patrol-boats of the Communist East Seas Flotilla registered Sampson’s bulk a half minute later. They were pitching wildly, and their antennae were much lower. Nonetheless, the Chinese captains reacted before the American. They had been ordered to fire on any unidentified craft that might threaten the heavy laden landing-ships behind them. The rapid-fire cannon of East Seas 234 and East Seas 249 chattered, and water-spouts rose eighty yards from Sampson’s starboard bow.

  “Return fire,” the American captain ordered. “Main battery, rapid fire under radar control.”

  Orange flame billowed from Sampson’s two 5-inch guns, and her surface-to-surface Tartar missiles trained on the patrol-boats.

  “Yeoman,” the captain directed. “In plain voice to ComSevFleet, CincPac, and DOD: Fired on by two unidentified small vessels at approximately …”

  “… 24′58″ north, 119′42″ east,” the navigating officer supplied.

  “Targets’ course approximately 46. I have taken them under fire with main battery. Request instructions.”

  Relayed automatically to the loudspeaker, the signalman’s Texas drawl echoed in the White House situation room. The President flushed in anger when the Chief of Naval Operations added: “Heading for the northwest coast of Taiwan.”

  “Get the little bastards,” he directed.

  “Turn them aside for the moment, perhaps, Mr. President,” the Security Adviser suggested deferentially.

  “All right, Henry,” the President said. “Turn them aside. But kill them if they won’t divert or there’s immediate danger to the destroyer. Use the missiles.”

  East Seas 234 and East Seas 249 maintained their high-speed base course through the 2 A.M. darkness of the Taiwan Straits, while zigzagging to evade Sampson’s fire. Six 40-millimeter shells penetrated the thin armor of the destroyer’s starboard quarter to explode in the after emergency-steering compartment. A sailor screamed and clutched his mangled arm. Another slumped silently to the deck, dying before he felt the shell-splinter pierce his brain. Sampson’s captain made his own decision as the Chief of Naval Operations’ voice began relaying the President’s instructions.

  “Fire the Tartars,” he commanded.

  Four rockets arched their fiery trails against the night-black sky. East Seas 234 was obliterated forty-three seconds later, and East Seas 249 dodged erratically.

  “Let him go,” the captain directed. “But track him. Damage report?”

  The Chinese convoy slowed and turned north at the urgent command of the captain of East Seas 249. At least fifteen minutes would elapse before his action report reached Peking and an additional fifteen before he could receive new orders—if the decision were taken immediately. The less sophisticated Chinese communications system and the cumbersome decision-making process in Peking had fortuitously given the Chinese almost an hour’s grace before resuming the engagement. Close air-support would be necessary if the vanguard were to proceed to Taiwan, and the Chinese were not adept in the highly technical art of fighting an air-sea battle at night. The critical decision had, therefore, been effectively postponed by several hours. First light was at 4:57 A.M.

  In Washington, the Assistant Secretary for the Far East told the President and his Security Adviser: “I’ve got Smith on the phone.”

  “Put him on the speaker,” the President directed.

  “This is Smith,” the loudspeaker rattled. “General Shih informs me that the Chicoms’ first wave has sailed and …”

  “We know, Smith,” the President said. “A destroyer’s just had a brush with their patrol-boats. She got one after taking some shells. She’s tracking now. Tell the Reds we’ll retaliate against their land bases if there’s any further molestation of our vessels.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the voice from Hong Kong replied. “Shih also says the Premier will fall if he can’t come up with a credible, realistic prospect of gradual American withdrawal from Taiwan. Lin Piao’s determined to press the attack. Shih says only such a concession can prevent his doing so.”

  “We’ll blow them out of the water,” the President snapped. “Are they all nuts?”

  “I don’t know, Sir,” the Under Secretary replied. “But the Chicom military seem absolutely determined.”

  The Security Adviser spoke into his chief’s ear. After two minutes, the President nodded agreement and spoke into the microphone again.

  “I’m told you know the minimum conditions we can accept. Go back and talk to the Commie General. But, remember, any more frigging around and we hit them hard. Tell him that.”

  Pondering his next move, Spencer Taylor Smith returned to the study. He carried thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of lives in his hands; the President’s testy directions from faraway Washington could not relieve him of that burden. He started when he found James Sekloong seated in the same leather chair wearing an open-necked shirt and cream-linen trousers that had belonged to his father Charles. James’s red-rimmed eyes stared unseeing into the fireplace from haggard features.

  “My government, General Shih,” Sm
ith spoke formally, “views with the gravest alarm the commencement of hostilities by your government. Your patrol-boats have inflicted damage on an American destroyer. We have destroyed one boat. Any further hostile action will be countered by attacks on your land bases.”

  “If that’s true, it alters the situation,” James replied automatically. “It’s exactly what I warned about. Next the bombers and then …”

  “For God’s sake, man, how do we stop this insanity?” the American appealed. “It’s up to us, it seems!”

  The urbane Spencer Taylor Smith’s outburst pushed James Sekloong over the threshold. Already shaken by the awful revelation of his paternity, his equilibrium collapsed. The rashness he had fought to suppress all his life reasserted itself, for once enlisted in the service of moderation. Out of his profound humiliation, his rage, shame, and self-loathing, James Sekloong spoke to his nephew by marriage and assumed the ultimate responsibility he had shunned. He would, he decided in that instant, do it his own way—if necessary sacrificing himself to save hundreds of thousands of other lives.

  “Look here, Spencer, I shouldn’t say this,” he exclaimed. “But I will. I won’t haggle. I can’t haggle. I’ll give you our minimal conditions. We must have agreement to further negotiations at the highest level—first Kissinger, later Nixon. And we must have general agreement right now. Agreement to disengage from Taiwan … to let us handle it our own way. We won’t—I can promise you—be hasty or use force, except in the last extremity. Not for several years, at any rate. In return, we offer better relations, trade, access to our oil reserves, and a broad understanding to act in concert against Soviet imperialism whenever possible. But you must accept our minimal conditions right now.”

  “I understand your minimal conditions,” Smith countered. “Can you assure me personally, General … ah … James … that you’re wholly sincere, not just playing for time?”

  “For God’s sake, Spencer, I’m not fooling with you. It’s the only way we can turn the invasion around. Otherwise, there will be war. Lin Piao will win and …”