Rising Sea

by James Lawrence

  Chapter 8

  Beijing, China

  Colonel Huang Leiu waited patiently in the waiting room outside Admiral Wu’s office. His meeting with the head of the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) was scheduled at the request of his boss, the Minister of State Security. Under the circumstances, he expected the PLAN Commander to be hostile, but given the top-level interest in the investigation, he also anticipated reluctant compliance. The Chinese president was rumored to have flown into a rage while reading the final tsunami report that had been produced by PLAN. Dissatisfied with the conclusion and recommendations of the PLAN report, President Ping personally directed the Ministry of State Security (MSS) to conduct a separate investigation. Moments later, the Minister of State Security called Huang into his office and at two o’clock that very morning, he gave him a set of very simple instructions.

  “Seven islands do not simply disappear. Find out if they were properly built. If they were not properly built, find out why. Were substandard materials used? If so, why? Was it because of corruption? Was the design flawed? Was a flaw in the design concealed to avoid embarrassment? Look into every possibility for why those islands disappeared and then figure out who is to blame.”

  “Yes, Minister.”

  “Look into the geology. Should the Navy have prepared better for a tsunami risk? What was the probability of a tsunami? What were the considerations and preparations?”

  “Yes, Minister.”

  “I have this report signed by Admiral Wu that concludes that everything was done properly, that it wasn’t possible to predict the disaster. It claims the area is one of the most geologically stable zones on earth. He claims the earthquake was a one-in-a-million freak event— that it was a force of nature that could not have been predicted or prevented. Start your investigation with Admiral Wu. Find out why he is so sure of these claims, and get to the bottom of this tragedy that has set our Silk Road strategy back twenty-five years.”

  “Yes, Minister.”

  “We were only months from beginning the deployment of the J20 fighter to our naval bases in the South China Sea. The J20 is a fifth-generation stealth fighter that would have given us uncontested dominance over the region. Instead, we have now an American Aircraft Carrier Strike Force operating in the middle of our territorial waters and we’re powerless to stop them. The impending timeline of the J20 deployment, the destruction of our island naval bases, and the American Navy deployment all happening at the same time is too much to just be a simple coincidence.”

  “Yes, Minister.”

  “The President is depending on MSS to find the truth. He believes the military will cover up any wrongdoing on their part. Prove him right.”

  “Yes, Minister.”

  A few hours later, Huang arrived at his appointment with the Chinese Naval Commander. Huang was outwardly calm and composed as he sat in the Admiral’s waiting area. An average- looking man of medium stature, wearing a poorly tailored black suit with a white shirt and red tie, he looked like any other Chinese Government functionary. Huang was the son of a dirt farmer from an impoverished northern province. It was athletics that enabled him to escape from a lifetime of backbreaking manual labor and the crucible of hunger that, despite China’s historic economic advances, still persisted in the population of four hundred million who lived in the countryside.

  Huang’s gymnastics potential drew the attention of the Chinese National Athletic Association while he was still only an elementary school student. After being removed from his familiar rural surroundings and family, he spent the better part of a decade intensely training as he climbed the rungs of the gymnastics ranking ladder. Huang eventually reached the level where he was competing internationally as a member of the Chinese National Team.

  An awkward landing on a dismount from the parallel bars ended his gymnastics career during the Olympic tryouts. It wasn’t a dramatic injury, just a simple ACL tear that prevented him from ever competing again at an Olympic level. Huang was well liked by the coaching staff and the committee members who oversaw the Chinese National Team. Being an elite athlete opened up a world to the poor farmer that his parents could never have dreamed of. Not wanting to ever return to plowing fields behind an ox, Huang leveraged his friendships and his elevated status as a member of the National Gymnastics Team and was granted admission to Beijing University.

  Huang graduated first in his mechanical engineering class and, upon graduation, was screened and selected as an agent in the Ministry of State Security. The same intelligence, dedication, and hard work that made him an athletic and academic success also served him well in his career. MSS was a magnet for engineering and science majors because its primary task was corporate espionage. Much of China’s newfound economic and military strength is the result of intellectual property theft from the West and MSS has been at the center of that effort. Huang soon found himself very adept at finding clever ways to steal industrial secrets from Japan and the West. His career blossomed and not only did he make the rank of Colonel by the age of 39, but the Minister himself was now personally tasking him with highly sensitive assignments.

  The outwardly calm facial expression and easy demeanor he showed to the world masked a drive and intensity few could match. Huang considered his situation. The Minister was ambitious. He would use this investigation to gain an advantage over his rival, the PLA Commander. He would also use it to gain favor with President Ping. Huang would be rewarded immensely if the investigation discovered fault with the Navy.

  An aide dressed in the white uniform of a Navy captain ushered Huang into the Admiral’s office. The Admiral remained seated behind his desk and did not rise to greet him. The Admiral did not acknowledge him and did not even offer him a seat. Huang gave the superior officer a slight bow and seated himself in a chair on the opposite side of the Admiral’s desk.

  The two men sat in silence for an uncomfortably long period of time. Finally, Huang broke the ice.

  “Admiral, I realize President Ping’s order to the Minister of State Security to conduct a follow-up investigation on the incident in the South China Sea is not something you deem necessary. I’m very certain your personnel did a thorough investigation and produced an impeccable report. Please understand, this assignment is not of my making; I have been placed in a difficult situation. I wish only to complete a review of the findings from your report and return to my daily duties.”

  “Do you have a copy of the Naval Report?” asked the Admiral.

  “No sir, I do not.”

  The Admiral pressed the intercom on his phone and directed his aide to make a copy of the report and bring it into the office.

  “You shall have a copy immediately. The report is classified, and I will trust you to treat it accordingly.”

  “Of course.”

  “And can I expect regular updates on your investigation?”

  “Yes, I will keep you up to date on my progress. Once I review the report, I will provide your office the names of the people I would like to talk to. After I’ve spoken to the appropriate naval personnel, I should be able to wrap-up my review of the report quickly.”

  “You will have my full cooperation. Contact my aide directly with the names of the personnel you wish to meet; he will make the necessary arrangements.”

  Huang Lieu stood at attention and bowed to the Admiral.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ve taken more than enough of your time.”

  “The report will be available to you outside.”

  Huang signed for a copy of the report at the reception desk in the Admiral’s outer office. The report was three inches thick and came wrapped in a thick brown envelope.

  The studious Huang went directly to his cramped office at the MSS Headquarters in Beijing. Working through the night, he read the detailed technical report cover to cover. He read it a second time and made a list of the personnel he wished to meet. Addendums to the report included a list of the naval personnel killed in the tsunami, lists of survivors, and the C
hinese Navy ships that were operating in the South China Sea during the event. References were also included to the many scientists consulted in the creation of the report.

  It took three months working every day and most nights for Huang Lieu to complete the arduous task of interviewing all of the key figures in the Navy report. He kept both the State Security Minister and the Navy Commander satisfied with weekly status reports. He had found nothing to contradict the Navy’s conclusions. The Navy Report appeared to be complete without deception. The science was solid and the evidence that the reef islands were in a low-risk area for seismic activity irrefutable. Proper precautions had been taken, and the islands were constructed to withstand the highest levels of typhoons. They were not made tsunami-proof, but that was never a reasonable requirement. It would have required tens of millions of square meters of sand and decades more time to build the islands high enough to withstand a ten-meter-high tsunami wave. Tsunami-proofing the islands was never a practical consideration; he could find no fault with the Navy engineers who designed and built the structures.

  He had only one more task to complete before finalizing his own report. He was going to talk to the captains of the commercial and military ships operating in the general area. The report included lists of the ships assigned to the island bases as well as many eyewitness accounts from Chinese naval personnel. He intended to make a thorough analysis of every military and commercial vessel in the general area and interview as many witnesses as he could find. He flew to the naval base in Hainan to begin, and for the next two months bounced around from naval base to naval base interviewing Navy crewman from ships as they returned to port.

  It was in a tiny naval base in Sri Lanka where Huang caught up with the captain of the Chinese Naval Frigate 811 named Jiang. The Jiang was not included in the appendix of the Navy’s official report; he only learned of the ship from the crew of another. He ended each of his interviews with the same question. Do you know of any other ships that were operating in the area at the time of the tsunami? He had been given the name of the frigate Jiang from the Captain of a troop carrier.

  The captain of the Jiang was a short thin man with the weathered face of a seasoned mariner. Huang asked him the same set of questions he had asked the previous captains regarding where they were and what they were doing at the time of the earthquake. He was surprised to learn the Jiang was close to the epicenter of the earthquake. He was even more surprised at the Jiang’s confrontation with the Philippine Navy frigate and the suspicious activity of the Singapore yacht, Day Trader.

  “Captain, during the investigation following the tsunami, did any other officer speak to you about the incident with the Day Trader motor yacht?”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Did you report to Naval Command your position and activities on that day?”

  “Yes of course; it was contained in my daily report submitted to the Regional Headquarters.”

  “Do you still have a copy of your report and do you have any images of the Day Trader?”

  “Yes, of course,” the Captain said.

  “Why did you leave the Day Trader’s position?”

  “We were inside Philippine waters. We were in a standoff with the largest warship in the Philippine Navy. We were in the process of escalating the forcefulness of our demand to inspect the Day Trader when we were given a flash message to proceed as quickly as possible to Fiery Cross Reef.”

  “Why Fiery Cross Reef?”

  “To conduct search and rescue operations as necessary.”

  “Yes, but why Fiery Cross? There were other islands in peril.”

  “I don’t know. I imagine the command allocated rescue assignments based on capability and proximity.”

  Huang’s next destination was Singapore. He researched the records on the Day Trader and learned it was an Azimut 64 yacht, built in 2005 and registered to Stephen Chang. With further research, he learned Stephen Chang was a forty-year-old derivatives trader who lived in Singapore. In two days of searching, Huang was unable to find where Stephen Chang kept the Day Trader docked. Finally, he went to the apartment address he found on Stephen Chang’s boat registration to ask him directly.

  He managed to bypass the doorman and the lobby security guard by entering through the service elevator. The address on the boat registration and tax records showed Stephen lived in apartment 1710. Huang knocked on the door, waited a few seconds and then rang the doorbell. There was no answer. He removed a door pick from his jacket pocket, put it to work and made his way inside. At fifteen hundred square feet it was a large three-bedroom condominium by Singapore standards. He walked into the living room looking for clues. He checked the address of the mail and other documents in the apartment and they all showed it to be the residence of Neo Ling Chong. Huang couldn’t find any clues during a quick search that showed how long Chong had been living in the apartment or how long it had been since Stephen Chang moved out, but one thing he knew for certain was that Stephen Chang didn’t live there.

  He went to the lobby and asked the doorman where he could find Stephen Chang. The doorman wasn’t cooperative, even after Huang offered him money. The doorman insisted that he wasn’t allowed to give away resident information and instead referred him to the property management company. Huang was growing frustrated with the level of difficulty in locating the owner of the Day Trader. The next night, he broke into the property management office. He conducted a download of their tenant files and then spent the next three days reviewing them. It was at this point that he became convinced that Stephen Chang didn’t exist.

  Huang believed that, just as in a good gymnastics routine, investigations have a rhythm to them. When you slow the pace or hurry, you can lose your balance. Sometimes, when the tempo on a particular line of inquiry started to lose momentum, he liked to pursue another line, just to maintain the tempo. He decided to shift from who the owner of the Azimut 64 was, to what the owner was doing at that particular spot.

  He reviewed again the report from the captain of the frigate who had encountered the Day Trader. He studied the images he received from the file. Some showed that members of the crew were diving when the frigate first encountered them. Pictures of the yacht showed lots of heavy equipment and diving gear stowed at the stern of the boat. The report also verified the location of where the yacht was first encountered as being directly above the epicenter of the earthquake.

  Huang’s next stop was the Yulin Naval Base on the island of Hainan. He was aware that the two deep water acoustic detectors (SOSUS systems) located in Micronesia and the Marianas Trench were too far away to answer his next question, but he had another idea. Yulin Naval Base was the home of the Chinese Navy Submarine Headquarters; he was operating on a hunch that a submarine was patrolling within range of the epicenter and had an acoustic recording of the seismic event.

  It took the intervention of the MSS Minister and the reluctant support of the PLAN Commander, but after an additional two weeks search, he finally got what he was looking for. His next stop was back to the geology department at his alma mater, the University of Beijing. It was during the review of the data from the Yulin Naval Base that Huang had his eureka moment. Days later, a fatigued and self-satisfied Huang made an appointment with the Minister of State Security to deliver his report.

  He arrived at the Minister’s office twenty minutes early. He had a classified laptop tucked under his arm and two copies of the report in a red folder marked Top Secret. The Minster’s senior aide met him in the waiting room.

  “I will take those and have the conference room set up. It should only be a few minutes before we begin; can you please provide the password?” the aide said, referring to Huang’s laptop and report copies.

  Minutes later, the aide escorted Huang into the conference room. As he entered, the first thing he noticed was how big the conference room was; he had expected a more intimate setting to brief the Minister. The next thing that caught his attention was that the large U-shaped conf
erence table was filled with people. When he noticed that it wasn’t the Minister sitting at the head of the table, that it was President Ping himself, he felt a minor tremble in his left hand and, for just a second, he was flustered. Years of performing in front of thousands of people at international gymnastics competitions taught Huang how to maintain his composure in pressure situations. He used a meditation tool from his past and gained control of his breathing. He bowed deeply to the audience and began.

  “President, I beg your permission to begin,” he said to President Ping, who responded with a slight nod.

  “Sir, the conclusion of my report is that the destruction of all seven of our man-made island naval bases was the result of a man-made tsunami.”

  “That’s impossible!” he heard the Peoples Liberation Army Commander blurt out. The PLA Commander was sitting to the left of the President. Huang looked into the eyes of the clearly agitated man.

  “We have received your weekly updates and we have had our own scientists review your findings. What you are suggesting is impossible with any munition other than a nuclear device. If a nuclear device was detonated in the South China Sea, we would know about it; the signatures could not be hidden.”

  “Sir, with the greatest respect, I would like to present two elements of information that are very recent and were not included in my weekly progress reports.”

  “Go on,” he heard the General mutter. He moved forward to the next slide of his presentation. “Sir, the seismic wave you see is from an undersea earthquake that occurred three years ago and registered a 7.2. Please listen.” Huang played the sound over the speakers. “Gentlemen, please indulge me while I show you the graphs and play you the sounds of similar earthquakes.” He then played nine more underwater recordings of earthquakes while showing them graphs of the single acoustic spike created by each of the tremors.

  “Sir, this next recording was captured by a Shang Class Submarine located less than sixty nautical miles from the epicenter of the earthquake that destroyed our bases. Please listen.” Huang played the recording three times. Then he advanced the slide.