This was familiar ground. McGaffney had been to Stone Town half a dozen times, most recently to cover the riots in 2023. The cause of the trouble, a big bronze statue of Zanzibar's most famous son, looked sardonically down at him as he crossed the street near the Big Tree. FARROKH BULSARA, the pedestal said, and below in smaller letters for the tourists: FREDDIE MERCURY, 1946–1991. The old quarrel between Muslim morals and local pride had broken out into five days of free-for-all when that was unveiled.
This time he was looking for riots that hadn't happened yet. He considered the options and headed deeper into Stone Town.
He knew exactly what to look for, since the American way of manufacturing insurgencies had been glued in place since the 1990s and the post-Soviet color revolutions in Eastern Europe. Once the target for regime change was picked, it was targeted by nongovernmental organizations—the title was a joke, since the organizations in question got all their funding from the CIA's black budget, but that was always the official label—with the cover story of promoting democracy and the real goal of stirring up trouble for the offending government.
Locals with grievances provided deniability, but mercenaries brought in from the nearest US-friendly nation provided the muscle for the riots that followed. If the target government didn't send in the tanks, the mercs and the locals brought the country to a standstill with one swarming attack after another, and tried to force the government to panic and accept exile. If the tanks came rolling in—and they usually did these days—the local cadres called for American help, which was normally right there on the borders waiting, and that was the end of it.
Once the riots started, media people from all over the planet would head for Tanzania, and only the idiots among them would have any doubt about what was happening. McGaffney was there first, though, and didn't mean to miss the chance to grab the story and follow it all the way down, get a series of lead articles, maybe a book contract. That meant Zanzibar, for starters; there had always been strains between the once-independent islands and the mainland, exactly the sort of thing the Americans liked to target.
He spotted the first handbill a couple of blocks into the maze of narrow streets: Swahili but written in Arabic letters, an old Zanzibar habit, ranting about something the government in Dar es Salaam had done and tossing around phrases like “occupied Zanzibar.” There was another one a few blocks further on, and another one a block after that; he stopped at the third to snap a picture and take some notes.
“Well, well!” said a voice behind him. “What brings you here, Tommy?”
McGaffney turned, putting his best bland expression on his face. He'd recognized the voice at once: Hafiz al-Nasrani, a stringer for al-Jazeera who worked most of the same beats he did. “Looking for a tourist story. You?”
Hafiz smiled, tapped his ear twice, and said, “I'm sorry, what was that? My ear doctor tells me I have a terrible time hearing bullshit.”
“Bastard,” McGaffney said appreciatively. “Willing to trade?”
“Of course.”
There was a café a few blocks away, a cramped little place with a few old men sipping tea out front. McGaffney ordered a local beer, Hafiz asked for tea and murmured something in Arabic to the proprietor; McGaffney didn't catch much of it, but “infidel” and “doesn't know any better” were in there somewhere. The drinks came, money changed hands, the proprietor vanished, and McGaffney leaned forward. “You saw what I was reading. Recognize the style?”
Hafiz nodded. “Too well.”
“What got you down here?”
“Rumors in the Gulf. Nothing too specific, but put them together and it means the Americans are getting ready to invade somebody. With the new oil find, it wasn't too hard to guess where. And you?”
“Head up Arusha way sometime,” McGaffney said, “and start counting military haircuts.”
“Most interesting.” Hafiz sipped at his tea. “Have you gone to Kenya?”
“Good God, no. With my reputation? They'd scoop me up and rendition me as soon as I got across the border.”
“I went.” Another sip of tea. “Nowhere near the place that matters, which is south of Narok. There is, you'll be interested to hear, an industrial park being built there.”
“By an American corporation, I bet.”
Hafiz nodded. “You'd recognize the name.”
McGaffney took a long pull of his beer, then stopped, and set it down next to his chair where it couldn't be seen from the street. The background of street noise outside the café had taken on a raw and ugly tone, which turned moments later into running feet and shouting voices. The mob wasn't far behind it, maybe fifty young men, running down the street toward the center of town. None of them paid any attention to the café and the people in it.
When the mob was gone, Hafiz frowned. “I didn't expect that to start this soon.”
“They're on a tight timetable,” McGaffney reminded him. “Dry season's coming, and you can bet that Mkembe and his people are going to catch on right quick, if they haven't already.”
“True.” Hafiz sipped more tea. “And they won't be alone, I would guess.”
11 May 2029: The August First Building, Beijing
“This is insane,” said General Yang Shao, looking up from the briefing paper. “You cannot be serious.”
“Quite the contrary.” Liu glanced at him, then around the table. From their expressions, most of the members of the Central Military Commission agreed with Yang: no surprises there. Now, to convince them otherwise—
“Unacceptable.” This from Ma Baiyuan, a gray-haired old warhorse who served as the other vice chairman of the Commission. “You risk gambling away some of our most important strategic advantages on this plan of yours. We cannot afford that.”
“If not now, when?” Liu asked. “Year after year, decade after decade, we have poured more money than the Motherland can easily afford into gaining strategic and tactical parity with the Americans, and now we have it. You have all seen the same intelligence reports I have; you know how much real strength they have left, and where their weaknesses are. This situation in Tanzania is a golden opportunity to take advantage of those weaknesses.”
“There will be other opportunities,” Yang said. “We gain nothing by haste.”
“I beg to differ.” Liu leaned forward. “Sooner or later we will have to go to war against the Americans. They know that just as well as we do. The only question still to be settled is whether it will begin at a place and time of our choosing, or of theirs. The longer we delay, the greater the likelihood of the latter. That is why we should strike now.”
“I am inclined to agree,” said a voice that had not yet spoken.
Heads turned abruptly. Chen Weiming, President of the People's Republic of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission, considered them, tapped one finger on the table.
“We must never forget,” he said, “not for a moment, that political power comes from the people. They lend it to us, that is all, and the term of the loan lasts only so long as we provide them with the things they want and need: order, prosperity, the chance to hold their heads high in the world. If we fail to give them those things, nothing else matters.
“Do you know what they are talking about on the street corners all over China? They are talking about Tanzania—about the oil and the prospects for jobs overseas and here at home. The internet is buzzing with it. If we let the Americans take that plum from our hands and walk away with it, how will the people react? And how will our allies in Africa react if we show them that we will do nothing for them if the Americans decide to attack them next?”
“And if the Americans attack our interests elsewhere, or assault the Motherland directly?” Yang asked.
“As Liu has reminded us,” the president responded, “there will be war sooner or later, so those risks cannot be avoided.”
“Unless,” said Liu, “we can prove to the Americans that they have nothing to gain by such actions. My plan suggests a way to do tha
t.”
The president turned to him. “That is true. You have made us a tempting proposal. My question now is whether you are willing to set aside your other duties and take personal responsibility for this project.”
The room got very quiet. Liu nodded. “My intention, should the Commission accept this plan, was to offer to do so.”
Yang gave him a long dubious look across the table. “I am still opposed to the project, but if the other members of the Commission support it, I will not stand in the way.”
“Does anyone else wish to speak?” the president asked, glancing around the table. No one did, and he turned back to Liu. “You will take charge of this project immediately. If the reports are correct, there is no time to waste. Keep the rest of us informed of your requirements and actions. Anything else?” He glanced around the table again. “Let us proceed, then.”
16 May 2029: The Presidential Palace, Dar es Salaam
“Yes, of course,” said President Mkembe. “Please send him up at once.”
The days since his last conversation with the Chinese ambassador had been the most difficult he'd ever known. Not that anything bad had happened, quite the contrary: Life went on as usual, and that was exactly the problem. His oldest granddaughter had just announced her engagement to a charming young man who was, not coincidentally, the youngest son of a close political ally of his; the bid to host the African Games in Dodoma in 2036 was proceeding well; the latest monthly petroleum production report from TPC was as good as anyone could have hoped—and all the while, he knew that the United States would shortly sweep all this aside, and everything else, with a torrent of planes and bombs.
He shook his head, waited for Jun Yinshao to come in.
When the two of them were alone in the presidential office and had finished the pleasantries, Mkembe considered the other man. “You have a response from Beijing?”
“Of course,” said Jun. “And one that you may find encouraging. We will be intervening in this situation.”
When nothing more was forthcoming from the ambassador, Mkembe said, “I would be interested in the details.”
“I have not been told them. Neither has anyone outside our Central Military Commission.” Jun leaned forward. “One of the vice chairmen of that committee has been released from all other duties to take charge of our response.”
“I seem to recall that such a thing does not happen often.”
“It is very nearly unprecedented,” said Jun.
Mkembe considered him again for a long moment. “What you are saying,” he said finally, “is that for the time being, we will simply have to take it on faith that China will do something to stop the Americans. So be it. Perhaps, though, you might communicate to the vice chairman that the Tanzanian government and Army will be most ready to assist once we know what it is that we are supposed to do.”
“I believe,” said Jun, “that your excellency will be fully informed when the time comes.”
19 May 2029: The Kremlin, Moscow
“So.” Gennady Kuznetsov, President of the Russian Federation, pushed the printout across his desk. “What do you think of this?”
The man on the other side of the desk took the paper, glanced at it. “Curious.”
Kuznetsov chuckled, a little dry sound like paper crumpling. “No, Misha. I mean it. What do you think of it?”
They said in the Army barracks that you could break a bottle of vodka over Mikhail Bunin's head while he was thinking, and not a muscle in his broad plain peasant's face would stir until he had decided how to respond. Years ago, when he was a junior officer, they said the same thing to his face, and Bunin's unchanging reply was, “Try it.” No one had ever quite dared, and now that he had the four stars of General of the Army on his shoulder straps and the reins of the Russian Federation's military in his massive hands, it was safe to assume that no one ever would.
Kuznetsov sat back, folded his fingers together, and waited as Bunin read the printout a second time. “The Chinese are planning a war,” the general said at last.
“Exactly. A week ago, everything was proceeding in the normal way. Now they want to reschedule the summer exercises, and send someone here to arrange, at the highest levels, for aircraft they won't specify to make flights they won't specify over territory they won't specify, except that it isn't ours. They are indeed up to something. The question is what.”
“I don't know,” Bunin said.
“Understood. I want your best guess.”
“Tanzania,” Bunin said at once.
In the silence that followed, the tick of the clock on the far wall seemed loud. Kuznetsov leaned forward. “Do you really think they will risk intervening?”
“I don't know,” Bunin replied. “You asked me to guess.”
The possibility hovered in the air, uncertain, dazzling. “If that's true,” Kuznetsov said then, “if it might even possibly be true, there should be no hindrance to it from our side. And the Americans—” Old and bitter memories stirred; he silenced them. “The Americans must not find out about it.”
FOUR
20 May 2029: The August First Building, Beijing
“That is the situation,” Liu said. “The only question is how China will respond.”
The men listening to him in the cavernous meeting room were the best of China's best, tough, capable, and patriotic. He'd spent most of three days searching through the PLA's huge personnel database to find the people he wanted—the people who could make Fang's plan a triumphant reality.
“For decades now we have dealt with such events by biding our time, trusting to patience, minimizing our losses and pursuing our goals by other means. The Americans were strong and we were weak; the Americans had the technology and we were struggling to modernize—you know those words. At the time, they were good advice.” Liu considered the officers before him, then: “But that time is over.”
He could see eyes light up as the words sunk in, and went on at once. “During the next few months, the Americans will provoke an insurgency in Tanzania, prepare an invasion force and send it into action. They expect to brush aside Tanzania's armed forces and set up a puppet government that will pour Tanzania's oil into American tankers, not ours. That is their plan. We know it, and the Party leadership has chosen to act decisively in response.
“The war that is about to be fought will not merely be about Tanzania's oil. What is at stake is the global hegemony of the United States. The Americans do not know this. They do not know that I have been authorized to make use of some of our most advanced weapons systems and some of our most secret strategic advantages to stop them. They do not know that Tanzania will not be left to resist them alone. They do not know that the initiative has already slipped from their hands.
“The Americans must remain ignorant of all this. They must not know when and where the first blow will fall, or the second, or the ones after that. They cannot even be allowed to know for certain whose hand is delivering the blow, not until very late in the struggle. That will not be accomplished easily; it will take the utmost exertions of every one of you in this room.”
He nodded to his aides, who began handing out color-coded folders to the listeners. “Each of you has been selected personally for this project. You have been assigned to working teams, each of which will be responsible for one part of the plan.
“One more thing. What we do must remain unseen and unknown until the moment we choose to make it visible, and I have named this project accordingly—Plan Qilin.”
That got appreciative smiles from the officers. The qilin, the Chinese unicorn, was supposed to be able to walk on spring grass without bending a single blade.
“So.” Liu considered them, nodded once. “We have little time and a great deal to do. You will begin work at once.”
21 May 2029: Russell Senate Office Building, Washington DC
“Anything new?” Senator Bridgeport asked.
“Leona Price called,” Nora told him. “She'd like to talk to you about
something in the appropriations bill.”
“Of course. See if she's free for lunch any day next week.”
“Sure thing.”
Bridgeport thanked her and went into his office. Price was the District of Columbia's nonvoting delegate to the House, a member of Congress in all but name, and a genius at the old-fashioned politics of favors, compromises and backroom deals. If the District needed something, Leona could usually find some way to make it worth your while to vote for it: that was one of the things old hands explained to newcomers on both sides of the Capitol dome.
Bridgeport scrawled a note on the notepad on his desk, reminding him to follow up with Leona. That done, he woke his computer and checked his email.
There was something new from his source in the Defense Department, the same one who'd alerted him to the Tanzania business in the first place. He went to the bookshelf, got Gibbon's Decline and Fall, then sat down and started translating the numbers—golf scores, this time—into pages, lines and words. The message took shape on his notepad: Africa war on for July heads up thirty three fighter wing going.
That stopped Bridgeport cold for a moment. The 33rd Fighter Wing was his daughter's new assignment down in Florida. He reached for the keyboard, then stopped. He'd resolved years before not to interfere in her career unless she asked for help, and knew better than to think she ever would. He compromised by closing the email, bringing up a browser window, and going to a news site.
The news from Tanzania was about what he expected. Riots against the government had broken out in Dar es Salaam two days earlier, after scuffles between protest marchers and police turned ugly. Somebody at State had gone in front of the media this morning, criticizing Mkembe for, quote, standing in the way of the Tanzanian people's quest for freedom, unquote. There had already been trouble in Zanzibar and a couple of inland cities; a spokesman for the Tanzanian government blamed those on foreign troublemakers. Bridgeport had seen the same things happen in half a dozen other countries where the United States wanted a change of government, and shook his head.
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